Leading the Revival of Individualism & Self Reliance

Posts

Without Spontaneous Order, Ridesharing Would Never Exist

/in /by

In a previous essay, I discussed how the English language and its lack of central control exemplified what economist F.A. Hayek referred to as spontaneous order.

Spontaneous order is the belief that when individuals are left to their own devices, they will organically create order out of chaos. However, since we have grown accustomed to living under an extreme regulatory state, many have lost faith in humankind’s ability to self-organize.

But the beauty of spontaneous order is that it exists whether we believe in it or not, which makes any attempt at regulation not only wasteful but harmful. Those who doubt the existence of this organic order will usually attempt to demean its pivotal role by labeling it as dangerous and destructive.

Without manmade laws, it is believed that human beings will fall victim to their alleged carnal nature and seek to do harm unto others without any regard for how their actions impact others.

We have seen this type of justification from almost every government agency in existence today. Without the FDA, it is believed by many that those in the food and drug sectors will fall prey to their own self-interest and sell harmful substances in order to earn more money and grow rich at the expense of the consumer. But many fail to realize that this is not the case. And once such example is the sharing economy.

The Sharing Economy 

When the sharing economy began rising to prominence in the marketplace, it was virtually unregulated. Its existence was born of the consumer’s desire for higher quality transportation.

When it came to hailing a ride,  consumers were not left with many choices. Cabs had been the only game in town for over 80 years. The traditional cab companies had not had to deal with competition before, therefore, they had no real reason to innovate.

But this void in the market left a natural opening for spontaneous order to occur. Without asking for permission, companies like Uber and Lyft were able to grow their own free market legacies. And the consumers were grateful.

The model was simple, if you owned a car and wanted to make money you could turn your car into a taxi and work only when you wanted. Talk about a truly spontaneous model! But it didn’t take long for doubt in spontaneous order, and a love of cronyism, to influence policymakers.

“This must be regulated,” many shouted. Without ridesharing under the thumb of government, there was a misguided belief that chaos would roam free and consumers would be placed in harm’s way. Without having to obtain the same licenses as can drivers, what would ensure these drivers would not be a threat to consumers!

Of course, these fears completely disregard the fact that traditional cab drivers are humans too, which means they are also prone to error. And while required to obtain a license, many drivers still encounter traffic incidents and wrecks. A license does not ensure safety, or only ensures government involvement.

This lack of faith in the sharing economy led to regulations that not only harmed consumers but also those who sought employment through these services.

In addition to driver safety on the road, there was also the fear of “getting into cars with complete strangers.” And even though can drivers are also strangers, these fear tactics were used by the cab unions specifically to incite government action.

The Invisible Hand

True, human beings are not all good people, however, humans are fueled by self-interest. And as a motivator, self-interest can be a source for good. The principle of the invisible hand is the belief that even when someone’s motives are purely financial, this inspiration can actually serve to help others and benefit society as a whole.

The billionaire who loves his wealth but is also creating thousands of jobs for individuals is not by default greedy. Think of the households that now have financial security as a result of this alleged greed.

The billionaire’s self-interest has actually benefited society by creating jobs. And the goods and services created will also benefit numerous consumers. This concept of the individual hand in vital to spontaneous order. It is a natural guideline that ensures things run smoothly and that consumers and the producers both mutually benefit.

It is highly unlikely that your Uber driver will hurt you just because they can. Absent the legal consequences, the driver has accepted this job as a means to make money. The passenger, on the other hand, has used Uber because they need a ride. This mutual exchange ensures that things will run smoothly.

And let’s say, for argument’s sake, that a drive is harmful to a passenger, or that a drug or food product harms a consumer. Do we need government for accountability? The answer is no.

Feedback and word of mouth provide what is needed to ensure quality and consumer safety. Yelp exists absent any government intervention and it helps consumers make informed decisions. If you harm a consumer, those harmed will signal a warning to other consumers. Just like flocks of birds are capable of swerving to avoid predators. All animals are obsessed with self-preservation, and we will do what we need to ensure we stay safe. We do not need rules and regulations for this. In fact, these rules are the same that would have most likely prevented companies like Uber from ever existing in the first place.

Consumers want to consume quality products that will leave them safe and satisfied. This mutual understanding is exactly what makes spontaneous order so remarkable.

The Future Of Work Will Be What You Make It. 8 Principles To Follow.

/in /by

There’s a lot of disinformation circulating about the future of work, much of it along the lines of “A.I. will eliminate all our jobs”. We’ve presented the more positive case – for example here – which is based on the principles of Interconnected Individualism.

We are each responsible for expanding our opportunities in this emergent era.

Our future is up to us. Self-reliance and self-efficacy are the watchwords of individualism. There is no limit to the opportunities available to each of us. We must take responsibility to identify those opportunities by asking the individual entrepreneur’s questions: Who Am I? What Do I Know? Who Do I Know? What Are My Resources? With this knowledge, the entrepreneur derives further answers to questions like How Do I Contribute? How Do I Serve Others? Technology will be an augmenting factor, helping the individual to answer these questions and support the action plan that emerges.

When we expand our own opportunities, we do the same for others in an interconnected world.

The principle of interconnection is simple. In the new technological age, we are capable of connecting to any one in the world, to all knowledge, and to a vast array of tools and infrastructure. To cite just one example, cloud computing gives each of us access to huge amounts of computing power, in our hand or on our desktop. Global exchange platforms enable market exchanges for talent or services or content all over the planet. Each time we advance our own opportunities, we are doing so in collaboration with others, and serving their purposes at the same time. Interconnected individualism can drive a new era of global growth.

We will be defined by our skills and how we augment them.

The principle of the division of labor is as old as Adam Smith. The more we specialize, the more valuable we become. The pursuit of specialized knowledge and skills becomes more demanding as global exchange expands. It also becomes more rewarding. Everyone in the world who is a buyer of talent and skills can find your profile; if you are unique in filling a specialized niche, demand for your services will be high. When you have defined your niche, collect all the knowledge you can, and utilize the technologies of augmentation to the greatest degree possible. Your personal brand will benefit.

The consumer is still boss –- by making consumer choices we continue to direct market development. An augmented consumer is an even smarter boss.

The basic laws of economics have not been repealed in the age of A.I. Consumers – using the term broadly to include consumers of final goods and services as well as businesses who consume interim goods and services higher up the supply chain – determine what is salable and therefore what is produced. They do so by buying or not buying. With the technology of A/B testing and the capacity to run unlimited numbers of value proposition experiments for unlimited consumer segments, the entrepreneur can quickly find out what sells and what doesn’t. Let the consumer decide – quickly!

The entrepreneur drives innovation, and we can all become entrepreneurs.

The outcome we are contemplating is a universal culture of entrepreneurship. Everyone is an entrepreneur. We can all ask ourselves the entrepreneur’s questions and take action on the answers. We can start a business or join a business, or plan a career or pursue a professional vocation, all with the same entrepreneurial attitude: what is my special opportunity to serve, and how do I implement in a different, better and unique way?

The new spontaneous order can be good for everyone, if we act to make it so, since spontaneous order is the result of human behavior.

The system that emerges from universal individual entrepreneurship can be called spontaneous order. When we each have the opportunity to do our best to serve others, and everyone else gets to give feedback, positive and negative, the system tunes itself. It’s the best and most just social system, without social engineering or central planning. It’s an optimistic and exciting future.

Our values and empathy for others can guide us to meaningful and fulfilling lives.

The essence of entrepreneurship is service to others. The entrepreneur’s value proposition is the offer to make a customer’s life better. To do that, we must understand our customer’s values, through our empathy, and we must reflect those values to be credible and to earn loyalty. There is no more fulfilling life than that of the entrepreneur.

Different forms of organizing, different principles and different metrics and priorities will make the AI transition work for us.

Part of the reason for the pessimism surrounding the possible loss of jobs to robots in the future is the old thinking inherent in the term “jobs”. Jobs are embedded in the old institution of employment, and of employers and employees. Future organizational forms will be a lot different. We can each be independent contractors or individual entrepreneurs. We can join a team, perhaps multiple teams. We can move in an out of teams as the work and project stages change. We will be compensated based on our contribution, as opposed to a negotiated paycheck. We’ll organize our own healthcare, and compile and manage our own networks of collaborators, suppliers and experts. We will be the ones to organize our own economics and revenues, as opposed to joining someone else’s organization. A. I. will not eliminate jobs, because the concept of jobs will be redundant.

 

This post is an edited extract from The Interconnected Individual, to be published by Business Expert Press, later in 2018.

 

 

How Are We To Achieve Spontaneous Order In Our Society? Let’s Try Inverse Design.

/in /by

How are we to achieve a state of spontaneous order in our society? Let’s take a lead from scientific researchers.

Sharon Glotzer is a scientist who has made a number of discoveries that, in her words, “completely change the way you look at the world”.

Changing the way we look at the world is exactly what we all need to do in order to appreciate the potential for spontaneous order in society. So let’s listen to Sharon Glotzer’s story.

Studying Emergence.

She studies emergence – the phenomenon whereby complex systemic order results from the undirected individual behaviors of multiple participants. Starlings flying in complex ordered patterns in the sky is one example she cites, as does Steven Strogatz in talking about Sync. How are those birds communicating so that it seems like they are all following a blueprint?

Glotzer is searching for fundamental principles that govern this emergence of ordered patterns from seemingly random microscopic interactions and arrangements. She found a method: computer simulations.

The Answer Is Entirely Counter-Intuitive.

She discovered something entirely counter-intuitive. In scientific terms, she expresses it this way: entropy, a concept commonly conflated with disorder, can actually organize things. Her example is simple pyramidal shapes called tetrahedra spontaneously assembling into a quasicrystal, a super-complex spatial pattern. The shapes organize themselves – because, in conditions of entropy, “there are no direct interactions, no charges, no nothing” to direct them. In entropy, the particles have no constraints, and therefore more options to arrange themselves. They “wiggle around” freely to find their best position and orientation and alignment. The outcome is “the most complicated entropically stabilized structure that anyone has ever seen”.

Wow!

From The Lab To Society.

Let’s see if we can translate this from the lab to society. Scientists used to believe that entropy results in disorder. Entropy in society could be characterized as no government, no central control, no rule-making intermediaries, no hierarchies, no central planning, no social engineering.

As Professor Glotzer says, this way of thinking creates a complete change in the way we look at the world. We are conditioned to think of the organization of our world in terms of hierarchy and central control. Someone, or some piece of legislation, or some institutional rule is always telling us what to do and how to line up. There is hierarchy in government, hierarchy in religious institutions, hierarchy in corporations, and hierarchy in families.

In a world of social entropy, there would be no such control.

The Method Is Inverse Design.

We are told that such a world is impossible. They call it anarchy, the absence of social order. But Professor Glotzer’s research tells us the opposite. Without central direction, and just a few general rules that apply to all, her particles find “wiggle room” – i.e. individual freedom – and self-organize into a complex order that provides the best result for each of them: the preferred amount of space and the optimum alignment.

How did the system achieve this self-organization? Professor Glotzer calls it inverse design. Don’t try to design a process to achieve the desired outcome. Leave the particles alone and, using their wiggle room, they’ll get to the best outcome by their own devices.

The equivalent in society would be to get rid of all social engineering, well intentioned but harmful legislation, central planning, and hierarchical structures. How can we do this? Like Professor Glotzer, we need a laboratory where we can run simulations. It’s probably small, and protected, and a place where it’s possible to think differently and experiment with new forms of organization and entropy.

Tony Hsieh Is Applying The Method.

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos and he has famously been experimenting with just such organizational innovation in his company. In place of hierarchy, Zappos distributes decision-making in self-organizing circles, in which members have roles (often several at a time) rather than via hierarchy, job descriptions and titles. There is no manager to instruct individuals on their place in the organization. The structure is continuously changing (“50 times a day”, said Hsieh, in an interview with McKinsey (MckInsey Quarterly, Oct 2017)). It’s self-organization.

The general rules are (1) culture and values, (2) purpose, (3) market-based dynamics (meaning the organization is a market-based system). Each member has an entrepreneurial mindset for operating in the organizational market.

Tony Hsieh says he is comfortable with the fact that he does not know which way the ship called Zappos is headed. It steers itself. He rejects linearity and rigid structure. His mantra for organizational experimentation is, “Is it safe enough to try?” Zappos provides us with a real-life example of changing the way we look at the world, and of organizational entropy producing complex order.

Glotzer, Hsieh and Hayek.

Both Sharon Glotzer and Tony Hsieh are bringing to life the spontaneous order theory of Friedrich Hayek in Individualism True and False:

“…the spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend.”

How do we achieve spontaneous order in society? We need more thinkers like Sharon Glotzer and more doers like Tony Hsieh. In combination, they will change the way we organize our world.

(An interview with Professor Sharon Glotzer by Natalie Wolchover appeared originally in Quanta Magazine in March 2017.)

 

Hip-Hop and Spontaneous Order Have More in Common Than You Think

/in /by

Netflix recently released an original documentary series called Hip-Hop Evolution. Already intrigued by this topic, I devoured the entire series in one evening.

Hip-hop and the spontaneous order of free markets are inseparable: a fact that was reinforced after watching the series. It was born out of the unregulated exchange of ideas. And it has become what is arguably the most organically market-oriented musical genre existing today.

Intellectual Property

Hip-hop was built upon taking someone else’s art, putting your own spin on it, and creating something new. In other words, it is the antithesis of intellectual property.

The most obvious example of this free exchange of intellectual property is Grandmaster Flash. From a young age, Flash was obsessed with anything that spun: washing machines, bicycle wheels, and most of all, record players.

He began “scratching” by finding breaks within song tracks, a place where there was a natural pause in the music. He would then “spin” the record, making his own melodic remixes. Marking the exact spot where these breaks occurred on the record with a crayon, he would be able to remember where these breaks occurred while DJing in a dark club on the weekends.

By taking something someone else created and literally putting a “spin” on it, he created an entirely new genre of music.

Dubbed the “Turntable God” by Bronx locals, he became a legend. Eventually, other aspiring DJs began putting their own twists on his style, something he boasts about with pride:

“I’m so proud that my science has been taken to so many levels, and I see so many DJs do super-incredible things, but the real fact of the matter is… it would be totally impossible to do any of those things without what I invented.”

And he’s right. All these original “new and improved” upgrades to “scratching” and “spinning” came from his method. And because of it, more music was put forth into the world.

 

 

 

 

Inhibited by Government 

Hip-hop arose from the underground of some of New York City’s roughest neighborhoods. These were the streets un-patrolled by police and essentially left to their own devices. However, in the absence of government there was a unique opportunity to form tight-knit communities that looked out for each other. “Turfs,” so to speak, were created and while there were surely instances of violence, the real turf wars were fought on stage. By providing alternative means to solving disputes, violence was mitigated and these communities were able to have open discourse among themselves.

It is not by mere coincidence that the “gangsta rap” sub-genre came around when it did. Like many things in popular culture, hip-hop was a response to what was happening in the world, and more specifically, in the country.

Many of these communities were those most impacted by the drug war. As such there was an inherent distrust for government. No one in these neighborhoods was ignorant to what had been going on; they knew the role government had played and they knew they could not rely on them for assistance.

Each neighborhood had its own hip-hop group with its own unique sound and a place at the community table. When there were larger issues at play that impacted a larger sphere of communities, the hip-hop groups were often the ones who would come together and attempt to solve the problem.

Truthfully, hip-hop is spontaneous order at its finest. Absolute consensus was important and each of these neighborhoods, viewed as underdogs in the outside world, were given the chance to voice their opinions, as the documentary series shows.

As the years progressed and the escalating drug war decimated these communities, the distrust for the state grew and was expressed more and more throughout the music. NWA, Public Enemy, and others used their platforms to express dissent and expose the state for its maltreatment of vulnerable communities.

Upward Mobility

Above all, hip-hop is a genre centered on the ability to write one’s way out of poverty and take control of individual destinies. It is a means to an end. As this is a topic I have touched on before, I will be brief on this topic but it is one that should always be highlighted. Hip-hop is the most capitalistic music genre ever created.

In addition to being a vessel for raising one’s standards, success within the genre relies on practicing smart entrepreneurial skills. Hip-hop artists are not just selling their music, they are selling a brand.

Whether it was selling a “cool” look with matching tracksuits back in the earlier days, or selling actual clothes as is typical of modern hip-hop artists, they each have appeal beyond just the music. There is a survival aspect about, a need to survive by thriving in wide array of facets.

As the documentary highlights, the popular group Run DMC was able to use their style to partner with the shoe brand Adidas. Shoes, or “kicks” as they were called in these circles, were vital to mastering your hip-hop style and Adidas was at the top of the hierarchy of cool shoes. Eventually recording a song called “My Adidas,” the group was able to gain an endorsement while also selling records. A genius entrepreneurial move.

Likewise, West Coast rapper Dr. Dre has created an entire empire of high-end headphones with his “Beats by Dre” line, which has allowed him to expand beyond just his music. Both Kanye West and P Diddy have also expanded their brand by creating their own unique clothing lines.

Entrepreneurism and Hip-Hop: Two Peas in a Pod

For anyone who is as entranced by the connections between free market libertarianism and hip-hop as I am, Hip-Hop Evolution is an enlightening experience. It took the observations I had always suspected and tied them together without having to bluntly spell it out. Of course, that may just be that I went into the series with the topic on my mind. Either way, hip-hop and libertarianism are a match made in free market heaven.

Chaos on the Road Is More Orderly Than You Think

/in /by

To most people, an “anything goes” approach on the road seems crazy, to say the least. And why shouldn’t it? Cars weigh thousands of pounds and once moving at high speeds are essentially large deathtraps all charging towards each other.

On its own, this concept is concerning enough without having to imagine what would happen in the absence of all traffic signals. How would cars know when to stop and when to go? Surely this type of system, or lack thereof, would result in increased fatalities and sheer madness on the streets.

But while conventional wisdom says that some sort of traffic authority is needed in order for individuals to travel safely from point A to point B without killing each other, spontaneous order provides an alternative to this tradition.

Broken Traffic Lights

We have been trained our entire lives to obtain permission from authority figures before acting. Since the age of five, those of us sent to public schools were even taught that we must ask permission before doing something as simple and self-regulating as leaving our desks to grab a tissue or use the restroom.

It is no wonder then, that so many naturally accept government regulation as a necessity. Our lives have been riddled with rules and we fear what might happen without them.

However, as I have explained previously, individuals have an amazing ability to survive and even thrive in the absence of regulation and authority. And since cars are operated by individual actors, roads are no exception to this rule.

We have all had the experience of pulling up to a busy intersection only to find that the traffic lights are not functioning. But instead of panic or chaos erupting throughout traffic, something rather amazing happens: Within a few seconds, all the vehicles involved have managed to figure it out and traffic slowly gets moving again.

As a society, we have determined that the best course of action in this situation is to treat the intersection like a four-way stop. There was no meeting held or book printed in order for this to come to pass, it was simply adopted by society as the best practice.

Economist Steven Horwitz comments on this phenomenon:

If everyone agrees—whether explicitly or tacitly—on a particular practice, we no longer have to outguess or outstrategize other actors. The classic example of such so-called coordination problems is deciding which side of the road to drive on. As long as all agree, the particular choice is irrelevant. A rule about which side to drive on reduces the need to make a fresh choice on a case-by-case basis.

He continues:

We are born into a social world of various norms, rules, and institutions into which we are socialized from an early age. We learn to form expectations of others’ behavior based on those regularized practices.

But in addition to these “regularized practices,” there is another component of spontaneous order on the road: self-interest.

The Invisible Hand

As Horwitz writes:

The appeal to self-interest is our best way to convince others to do what we wish when we do not know them well enough to appeal to their fellow feelings for us.

Unless you live in a tiny town, you likely do not know all the other drivers stopped at any given intersection. Since there are no personal relationships with the other actors, the best way to proceed is to act out of self-interest, which in the case of a busy intersection would be to act out of self-preservation.

Most everyone wants to get safely from point A to point B. And because of this innate need to live, when we encounter obstacles, like an intersection without functioning traffic signals, we proceed more cautiously out of our desire to protect ourselves against other drivers. This also makes us more willing to cooperate and communicate with others on the road.

When our own survival is at stake, this self-interest works to the benefit of others. Just like you are concerned with your own safety on the road, so are other drivers concerned with their own safety as well. All the actors are better, more alert drivers because each is primarily concerned with his or her own wellbeing.

No one is eager to speed through an intersection without lights simply because there are “no rules.” Instead, in the absence of authority, individuals are actually more conscious of their decisions because they are, in this manner, directly responsible for their actions. They cannot blame it on a traffic light or on a silly law. All actions are their own.

Is precisely this self-interest that helps keep all other drivers safe. And because we have each experienced this situation, it makes it easier to encounter in the future.

As Horwitz writes:

A larger number of rule followers makes using the rule more attractive to potential newcomers because more users implies more opportunities to use the rule as a predictor of behavior, enhancing the likelihood of coordinated outcomes. When the behavior in question is so widespread that we can call it ‘generally accepted,’ the rule has become a social institution.

It is in our best interest to work together, not for some greater altruistic purpose necessarily, but because our own survival often depends on it. It is for this reason that this ability to recognize and operated within these generally accepted practices is so important to spontaneous order, as we will explore in more depth as the series continues. 

NFL Players Are Confusing “Kosmos” With “Taxis”.

/in /by

The debate about the NFL Players’ protests during the playing of the national anthem at the beginning of their games continues. Is it appropriate for them to make an act of protest, during the implementation of their contractual obligations to their employer, against social conditions they perceive as being unacceptable to them?

Emergence.

The emergence of this conflict between players and team owners, and players and some part of their fan base, and between players and media commentators and politicians, can be traced to a single spontaneous act. At an August 14, 2017 NFL pre-season game, Colin Kaepernick, a player, sat instead of standing during the playing of the national anthem. He explained why: he wanted to bring attention to people who, according to him, are being oppressed.

As we might expect in spontaneously ordered activities, the protest expanded and morphed. More players joined in, and the act became “taking a knee” during the anthem, in addition to sitting. It also generated controversy: is the protest activity appropriate?

Taxis And Kosmos.

If the NFL players had read their Hayek, they might realize that they are confusing two forms of social order, and doing so in a way that is inappropriate if we want to preserve our society.

Hayek, a philosopher who probably never attended an NFL game (although that fact might be in the realm of the unknowable) had a strong point of view about this issue. He distinguished between two kinds of order: taxis and kosmos. He used the term taxis to refer to concrete order, deliberately designed and resting on hierarchical structures of commands and obedience. Kosmos, on the other hand, is spontaneous, self-generating order based on abstract, unspoken relations and expectations of others’ behavior, without specific hierarchical rules or organizational purpose.

NFL Players Work In Taxis.

The NFL players work, voluntarily, in a taxis. They each signed a contract, which binds them to the specific organizational purpose of the NFL to provide entertainment to consumers, preserve and grow the NFL brand, and generate a profit for their team owners. The owners, Hayek points out, “will normally prefer a larger return from their efforts to a smaller one”, and have the power to tell players “what they ought or ought not to do” to abide by this rule. These kinds of taxis organizations exist throughout the economy and have proven themselves to be beneficial to society by generating popular products and services, innovation, and economic growth. They are necessary and beneficial.

NFL Players Live In Kosmos.

Taxis organizations exist within kosmos systems that are self-organizing and self-generating. Society is an example of such a system – it’s a spontaneous order that emerges, Hayek tells us, “from the individual elements adapting themselves to circumstances which directly affect only some of them”. Spontaneous orders can’t be “deliberately arranged” because we do not have “power over the details of such an order”. There are no owners in a spontaneous order system, and no-one can dictate specific rules to individuals in such an order.

The protesting NFL players are adapting themselves to circumstances they subjectively observe in their kosmos. They feel that some individuals in society are oppressed by taxis organizations, such as police and the courts. It is their subjective individual right to express an opinion about how they feel and to offer their expressions to others, so that those others can consider their own opinion and their own expression.

Crossing The Line.

However, by translating their kosmos perceptions into behavior in the taxis without the owners’ approval, the players are crossing a line that disrupts order. It is necessary for social order that the kosmos and the taxis co-exist but do not conflict. We cannot “combine them in any manner we like”.

Rules within an organization “must be rules for the performance of assigned tasks”. The place of each individual in a fixed structure is determined by command. “The rules each individual must obey depend on the place which he has been assigned and on the particular ends which have been indicating for him by the commanding authority.”

By contrast, “the rules governing a spontaneous order must be independent of purpose…and their application (by individuals) will be independent of any common purpose.” The players want to protest, which is an abstract idea with no specific purpose. That’s OK. They can do so as individuals on social media and in their life outside their contractual obligations to their employer. The owners have specific purposes to which the players have bound themselves in their NFL life, and they are contractually obligated. If they prefer to pursue other abstract ideas, they must do so outside of their contractual restrictions.

It’s when we confuse taxis and kosmos that we cause dangerous disorder.

All quotes are from F. A. Hayek; Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1.

Photo by Sandro Schuh on Unsplash

Spontaneous Order: The Beautiful System That Emerges From Individualism.

/in /by

As humans, we are a product of spontaneous order, specifically of a version of spontaneous order that we call evolution. With no plan and no planner, innovations (genetic mutations) occur randomly, are tested in the marketplace of survival, and the most successful go forward. The outcome has been beneficial for the entire species.

Spontaneous order is a concept with a long history in economics and sociology. Steven Horwitz has traced the spontaneous order tradition from Adam Smith to Carl Menger to Hayek. It is F. A. Hayek who is viewed as the primary champion of the idea that the spontaneous collaboration of free people “creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend.” Allowing spontaneous orders to flourish is the essence of a free society.

Why are we not more open to the idea of spontaneous order?

Why, then, is spontaneous order repressed in modern societies and economies? Why do we insist upon, and seem to prefer, hierarchies, authority, designed institutions and planned economies?

Our human brains do not seem to be able to understand or conceive of a system of emergent order for the social organization of the species. We insist on a linear vision of cause and effect, on hubristic processes of design, and on rigid authoritarian and hierarchical social structures.

If, instead, we could recognize the beneficial outcomes of spontaneous order and embrace a future characterized by conditions that favor spontaneous order, we’d all live better and more fulfilled lives.

Sync is everywhere.

Steven Strogatz can help to open our minds to this possibility with a book called Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In The Universe, Nature and Daily Life. Dr. Strogatz is a Professor of Applied Mathematics who has focused on a science of Synchrony, Sync for short.

He starts the reader of his book on a journey of explanation with a seemingly simple example. Fireflies are known flash in synchrony, each flashing on and off at the same time. How do they orchestrate themselves? At this point he introduces us to an important concept: coupled oscillators.

These are pairs of biological phenomena that can influence each other. If one firefly fires early, it can influence its coupled oscillator neighbor to speed up. If one fires late, it can influence its coupled oscillator to slow down. Eventually, each pair gets in sync and an entire neighborhood of fireflies can become synchronized. How do they do it? Dr. Strogatz reveals the big idea: they self-organize.

He then gives us additional examples of coupled oscillators synchronizing, including crickets chirping, the firing of pacemaker cells in the human heart, and stock market booms and crashes. The richness of the world is due, in large part, he says, to the miracle of self-organization.

But he observes, “Unfortunately, our minds are bad at grasping these kinds of problems. We’re accustomed to thinking in terms of centralized control, clear chains of command, and the straightforward logic of cause and effect. But in huge, interconnected systems, where every player ultimately affects every other, our standard ways of thinking fall apart.”

Free Markets In Sync.

In fact, he has given us our first clue to the acceptance of spontaneous order. We can think of individuals in unhampered economic markets engaging in mutually voluntary exchange as coupled oscillators. Buyers and sellers. Producers and consumers. Each aligns with the other through market feedback (when the producer observes what the consumer does and does not buy) and the pricing mechanism (when the producer discovers what value the consumer assigns to different choices available to them). These coupled oscillators can achieve sync if there are no restrictions on their mutual communication.

Sympathy Begets Sync.

Another chapter is entitled “The Sympathetic Universe”. Dr. Strogatz tells the story of the seventeenth century Dutch physicist Christian Huygens, who observed two pendulum clocks hanging close to each other in his room whose pendulum swings started out unsynchronized but, over time, synchronized themselves. He attributed the phenomenon to “a kind of sympathy” between them. In fact, Strogatz demonstrates that the effect springs from the laws of mathematics and physics.

Yet the word “sympathy” resonates, because Adam Smith told us (in Theory Of Moral Sentiments) that sympathy is the basis for the synchronized working of markets and societies.

We are each endowed with a natural sympathy towards others. When we see others distressed or happy, we feel for them. In markets, this sympathy results in entrepreneurs developing new offerings designed to alleviate others’ dissatisfactions and improve their lives. The feedback loop from customer to entrepreneur, indicating whether the new offering is accepted and valuable, is sympathy operating in the reverse direction. The entrepreneur and the customer are coupled oscillators synchronizing via sympathetic connection.

Small-world Networks

In the final section of Sync, Dr. Strogatz tells us about “small-world networks.” In studying the networks in which oscillators are connected, scientists have identified some conditions under which sync and the rapid, sometimes explosive, spread of information and ideas are most likely to emerge. The pattern of connections between individuals – “the architecture of relationships” – is what matters.

Structure always affects function. The structure of social networks, for example, affects the spread of information. The “small-world” structure refers to a complex network which includes a tight knit set of “local connections” (think family, friends, neighborhood, work colleagues) and a widely flung set of global connections (think people all over the world whom we correspond with on e-mail, our LinkedIn network of connections, globally distributed connections in a professional association, and so on).

The internet is one simple example of a small-world network. Most web pages link to others on the same topic, but occasionally may veer off onto idiosyncratic byways. To use the example of infectious diseases, “Ebola demonstrated that infectious diseases spread mainly within tight-knit communities, but also hitch rides on airplanes.”

Simple Rules.

Simple general rules determine how sync emerges in vast networked populations. In a separate TED talk, Strogatz explained the general rules for a flock of starlings or a school of fish to move in incredibly beautiful synchronized motions.

“There are just three simple rules. First, all the individuals are only aware of their nearest neighbors. Second, all the individuals have a tendency to line up. And third, they’re all attracted to each other, but they try to keep a small distance apart. And when you build those three rules in, automatically you start to see swarms that look very much like fish schools or bird flocks. Now, fish like to stay close together, about a body length apart. Birds try to stay about three or four body lengths apart. But except for that difference, the rules are the same for both.”

This brings us neatly back to F.A. Hayek and his sociology of spontaneous order. He proposed that all individuals be free to act and to innovate in a system of general rules that apply to all, and do not favor one individual or group over another, or favor a predetermined outcome. They connect with each other through knowledge and information sharing, and provide feedback to each other through the price system.

Today, individuals can share and express their sympathy for each other both locally and globally, in what Dr. Strogatz would call a small-world network. And, as Brittany Hunter has pointed out, if we look, we find spontaneous order all around us.

Conditions are ideal for sync and spontaneous order – if we let it emerge.

Spontaneous Order Can Be Found All around Us

/in /by

The world we live in is full of unpredictable, individual actors. This alone has been enough to justify state intervention in almost every aspect of our lives since the very first governments were formed among men. Yet, even though the world is full of chaotic moving parts, there is an organic order that occurs when individuals of all species are left to their own devices.

The belief in this natural alignment is what Hayek referred to as “spontaneous order” and examples can be found all around us, both in human society and in nature.

Music Festivals

Throughout our lives, we have been told that there must be some sort of authority present in order to keep humankind in line and lead us to desired ends. This, it is believed, is the only way in which a society of individuals can be made to conform and coexist with each other.

But this is not so, as anyone who has ever attended a music festival can attest.

In my adult life, attending music festivals has not been a main priority. But set on trying new things, I accepted an invitation to electronic dance music (EDM) festival.

I will admit that upon walking through the gates of the Atlanta Motor Speedway, I was intimidated by the hordes of people all marching to the beat of their own drummer. As an avid individualist, I thought this would be my own slice of heaven, but I was mostly just terrified by the eccentricities of other festival goers. How would we all be able to dance next to each other without anyone fighting or getting hurt?

As I began walking toward the main stage where a crowd of thousands had gathered to watch their favorite DJ, I was taken aback by what I saw before my eyes. From a distance, it appeared that the entire crowd was moving as one. But this couldn’t be possible. I had walked around with these people all day and there was no way each unique spirit had made a coordinated effort to dance in unison.

But as I made my way through the crowd and to the very center of the action, I had a different perspective. There was no unity at all, in fact, each dancer still maintained their individuality perfectly. Yet, everyone was dancing to the same beat.

In the world of EDM, there are a few moments within in each song where the beat begins to escalate. Before this happens, each individual in the crowd is his own. He, or she, dances and sways in whatever capacity they feel so inclined. And believe me, this can manifest itself in all sorts of ways.

But as the music builds and intensifies, something quite extraordinary happens to the crowd, they work as one without sacrificing their individualism and without being led by any being.

And while I didn’t have the words to describe what I was witnessing at the time, I would later watch a lecture that perfectly summed up my music festival encounter.

Synchronized Individuals

Mathematician Steven Strogatz presented a TED Talk some years ago on the topic he refers to as “sync.” Explaining how all organisms are capable of “syncing” together and working as one without some sort of puppet master pulling the strings, Strogatz begins his talk by asking the audience to clap.

With any precognition, the audience manages to clap as one. But even more fascinating, the audience begins to pick up speed in unison as well. Again, this group had never been gathered together before this presentation. There was no plan in place and aside from the Strogatz inviting them to applaud, there was no leader. Yet somehow, the crowd managed to clap as one.

Explaining this phenomenon Strogatz says:

This is a room full of intelligent people, highly sensitive, some trained musicians out there. Is that what enabled you to synchronize? So to put the question a little more seriously, let’s ask ourselves what are the minimum requirements for what you just did, for spontaneous synchronization. Do you need, for instance, to be as smart as you are? Do you even need a brain at all just to synchronize? Do you need to be alive? I mean, that’s a spooky thought, right? Inanimate objects that might spontaneously synchronize themselves. It’s real. In fact, I’ll try to explain today that sync is maybe one of, if not one of the most, perhaps the most pervasive drive in all of nature. It extends from the subatomic scale to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. It’s a deep tendency toward order in nature that opposes what we’ve all been taught about entropy. I mean, I’m not saying the law of entropy is wrong — it’s not. But there is a countervailing force in the universe — the tendency towards spontaneous order.

Anyone who has ever watched a nature documentary has seen this occurring within the animal kingdom. Flocks of birds flying in unison and even swerving as one in order to escape a predator. Human beings are no different.

Commenting on spontaneous order as it applies to the animal kingdom Strogatz says:

There are just three simple rules. First, all the individuals are only aware of their nearest neighbors. Second, all the individuals have a tendency to line up. And third, they’re all attracted to each other, but they try to keep a small distance apart. And when you build those three rules in, automatically you start to see swarms that look very much like fish schools or bird flocks. Now, fish like to stay close together, about a body length apart. Birds try to stay about three or four body lengths apart. But except for that difference, the rules are the same for both.

What was particularly fascinating about these rules is that they are the same that I observed at the music festival while attendees were dancing. Commenting on the fourth rule Strogatz says, “There’s a fourth rule: when a predator’s coming, get out of the way.”

At music festivals, where alcohol is sold in abundance, predators come in the form of rowdy dancers who may not be completely aware of their surroundings. But again, without any preplanning, the crowd is able to swerve and sway and hold space in order to protect themselves. And while it appears to be done as a group it is not. As Strogatz says, “Even though it looks like they’re thinking as a group, they’re not.”

Similar observations can be made on a crowded Manhattan street. Anyone looking down from a skyscraper window would be amazed that so many people are capable of walking, each at their own pace and to their own respective destination, without colliding. Yet, every single day this happens and individuals are able to bob and weave and navigate their way around each other without placing a great deal of thought on the matter.

Central planners will often use the unpredictability of individuals as grounds for legislating almost all aspects of our lives. But when individuals are left to their own devices, not only does the world continuing spinning as it always has, people actually benefit from this great freedom.

Write for CFI