Towards a Theory of Symbiotics: Illuminating Societal Evolution through a Theory of Entangled Political Economy

Abstract

This paper argues that most neoclassical theory today fails (Boettke 1996) to illuminate ‘unseen phenomena’ in our entangled political economy. Specifically, most economic theory operates using static terms such as efficiency (inefficiency). I argue that by applying such a concept to institutions—which are largely orders not organizations (Hayek 1973)—we not only make logical and ontological errors, but adopt a framework that leads us, as theorists, to miss important phenomena on which much of our analysis depends. To mitigate such errors, I suggest that we heed Buchanan’s (1964) claim to move our study closer to that of symbiotics—the study of relationships among dissimilar organisms. Such a framework would place economics on par with complexity and systems theory and allow us to focus on the spontaneous phenomena that emerge due to praxeological actions and interactions among dissimilar organisms within certain given institutions. I conclude that adopting a framework allows us to examine ‘unseen phenomena’ such as moral orders.