Extropy Magazine: Spontaneous Order

From Extropy Magazine, Issue #1 (1988):

<<After wandering along at a slow pace for centuries, our world has started to enter a period of Change that will far outpace historical Standards. The changes occurring in the twentieth century dwarf those of any previous thousand years, but they only hint at what the future holds.>>

 

A very optimistic worldview, belonging to the late modern era.

 

<<Who invented language? Who thought up money? Who is responsible for our society's customs? No one - these are all three 'spontaneous orders' that have arisen unforseen through the free actions of individuals seeking their own interests. Spontaneous orders (also known as 'abstract', 'social' or 'polycentric' orders) find their contraries in planned orders (also known as 'concrete', 'corporate', or 'monocentric' orders). Whereas spontaneous orders tend to come about through the voluntary cooperation of all concerned, planned orders tend to be imposed on others by those who take command of their hierarchical structures. All of the most inhumane social institutions have shared the features of planned orders (though planned orders can serve humane ends when manifested in companies that lure employees through soley economic incentives). Spontaneous orders, on the other hand, benefit all who join them. Extropy will more fully delineate the features of these two sorts of order, demonstrating that rather than submitting to the planned orders that now coercively rule so much of our lives, we can more fully enjoy the future's promise from within cooperative, voluntary spontaneous orders.>>

 

The demoscene is a good example for a spontaneous order, IMHO.

<<Researchers such as Friedrich Hayek have demonstrated that the most efficient economic and political systems are those that exert a minimum of control, allowing spontaneous orders to flourish.>>

 

My interest in the demoscene effectively sparked my interest in libertarianism. By contrast, socialism is a system of purely planned order.

A letter from a reader, published in Issue #2 of Extropy Magazine, 1989:

 

<<But my main suggestion is tht you are really too optimistic about the future. I remember when I was in college, all diseases would be cured or curable within 25 years, and there would be no more wars. (That was two years before World War 2 broke out.)>>

From Extropy Magazine Issue #5 (1990):

 

<<By "anarchy" I do not mean chaos, but rather the absense of statist coercion. An anarchistic society actually promises to be more orderly than a statist one, because statism depends on the use of coercive force. Statist coercion disrupts society by distorting the prices that convey information in a free market, and by directly enslaving and killing innocent individuals. The easily visible order imposed by statist laws crushes the spontaneously evolved order embodied in market processes, customs, and voluntary associations. Statism thereby increases entropy and thus merits the enmity of all those who value freedom, peace, and extropy.>>