Idea Of Spontaneous Order Research Articles

Is Friedrich Hayek Relevant Anymore in the Age of Artificial Intelligence?

This work reassesses the relevance of Hayek's idea of spontaneous order in the Age of Artificial Intelligence that rests upon two important information premises: information is dispersed and individuals know the best use of the information. Even dropping these two premises, this work suggests that competition between A.I. will ensure the market is no less efficient than the state, though A.I. would improve efficiency of those duties originally carried out by the state. The state may outperform the market through its authority to collect personal information, but this work questions its authority to do so. Given competition in the private sector, individual data would be better protected by the market than by the state, as the latter faces no competition and lacks incentive to sincerely avoid exploiting the data.

Smith te Tutarlılık Tartışması Bağlamında Görünmez El Metaforu ve Kendiliğinden Doğan Düzenin İktisat ve Toplum Açısından Önemi

This study, deals with the emergence of political economy along with the production of goods and services depending on the capital accumulation process. The Smithian impact in resolving the link between the definition of political economy and distribution and accumulation shall be explained. Moreover, the view that Smith’s works titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of the Nations contain consistency rather than inconsistency are evaluated in the study. Smith deals with the market and political process in his work titled The Wealth of the Nations. Therefore, it is expressed that the bases of political economy have been established by his work. Moreover, Smith evaluates the moral philosophy in his work titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments which focuses on the importance of concepts like utility and ethics. Accordingly, that the thinkers of Scottish Enlightenment focus on emotions instead of mind and then Smith’s tendency towards emotional rationality realized in consistency are expressed and that these thinkers are turning towards the concept of sympathy is emphasized in this study. Smith, one of the thinkers of Scottish Enlightenment, attempted to describe the desire of people to be accepted, adopted and esteemed in society by the concept of sympathy . Furthermore, Smith mentions that there is a relationship between the concept of sympathy and ethical values . In this context, this study explains the assessment of the concept of sympathy from a social and ethical point of view by the thinkers of Scottish Enlightenment. In addition, it is argued that the idea of spontaneous order and the invisible hand metaphor in Smith have integrity with Smith’s Moral Sentiments Theory . Smith, with the idea of spontaneous order, claims that individuals are pursuing their self-interest in the commercial society, as a result, a collective development can be achieved by this way. In the spontaneous order, there are cooperations and exchanges in the market among people. On the other hand, Smith expresses that public good will reach the highest level with the invisible hand metaphor. Besides, the invisible hand metaphor is an instrument which balance both market and society that has the function of regulatory force. This study, discusses the importance of Smith’s invisible hand metaphor and spontaneous order for economy and society. In the study, it is emphasized on the argument that Smith’s invisible hand metaphor can be explained with work titled The Moral Sentiments Theory. Nevertheless, it is evaluated that the principle of sympathy in The Moral Sentiments Theory is referred to the sense of competition in The Wealth of the Nations and the economic life of the buyer and the seller is realized in a consistent way. In this context, the purpose of the study is to reveal and discuss whether Smith’s invisible hand metaphor and the idea of spontaneous order and also his ideas on economics, society and morality in general are linked to each other or not. As a consequence of the study, it is stated that Smith had tendency toward the ideal of integrating economics and moral behavior in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of the Nations . Moreover, in general, that the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers referred to moral values rather than to the self-interested reason and the discipline of the political economy has developed with Smith is manifested.

Hayek and the Use of Physics in Economics: Towards a Progressive Synthesis?

F. Hayek is known as an economist and a political philosopher who provided a specific social theory based on the idea of spontaneous order. This order state comes from a process that Hayek called ‘catallaxy’ and that results from a particular phenomenon of emergence. In this context, social systems such as money, market or language are presented as spontaneous orders, resulting from a particular evolutionary process of society. Although Hayek is well known to be an opponent of importation of physical concepts into economics, this article proposes a parallel between the Hayekian theory and a new field called ‘econophysics’. More precisely, I will show how the way of characterizing the phenomenon of emergence by econophysicists might, to some extent, be an analytical characterization of the Hayekian emergence. This claim will be explained and illustrated with the presentation of econophysical works describing money and language as a spontaneous order taking the form of a power law. The last section will discuss the debates about the methodological relevance to associate Hayek’s theory with an area of knowledge coming from physics and the potential\economic implications of such a rapprochement. JEL: B25, B41, P11

Autopropiedad y orden espontáneamente desarrollado. El corazón del anarquismo individualista de Max Stirner

Author of the article argues that in spite of a subjectivist nature of Max Stirner’s thought which is distinct from libertarianism, there’s a strong intellectual affinity between anarchist wing of it and Stirner’s conception. This position is based on three crucial arguments. First, Stirner’s opus magnum The Ego and Its Own is one of the most zealous declarations of social individualism based upon the idea of self-ownership. Second, the Archimedean point of both analyzed political philosophies is the idea of spontaneous order, i.e. the conviction that the efficient cooperation between egoistic individuals – and thus not mediated by any external constraints - is possible. Third, there are important historical connections between Stirner’s conception and representatives of individualistic or libertarian anarchism.

Phenomenology and economics

The question of relevance of phenomenological method for economics has been revived in recent decades especially in the context of the Austrian school and also in more general considerations of economics (see Duppe 2011). My thesis concentrates mainly on the important contributions of formerly Viennese social thinker Alfred Schutz. I attempted to find an interpretation of the original Schutzian legacy that would fit present methodological discussions and show the virtues of the Schutzian framework in comparison with Misesian aprioristic praxeology on one extreme and the empirical ventures of behavioral economists on the other.Chapter 1 (World and science by Ludwig von Mises) shows that Misesian theoretical approach can, on one hand, provide a good tool to defend a specific character of social sciences that rely on folk psychological (or 'mentalist') concepts (finality, means-ends relationship) from purely pragmatic (i.e., not metaphysical) grounds. The mentalist concepts are indispensable in providing the only presently viable way of describing human action and this allows us to use instrumental rationality as a tool to explain economic phenomena. The effort to get the scientific description of the world rid of 'ontologically unreliable' teleology using, e.g., the behaviorist notion of revealed preference cannot get too far because they implicitly rely on particular psychological assumptions that smuggle it back in. On the other hand, unsustainability and inconsistencies of Mises's uncompromising defense of rigidly aprioristic character of praxeology have to be stressed. There is no finite set of eternal and never-changing truths underlying any successful attempt to grasp human action that would be tautological and, at the same time, describe features of the world.In Chapter 2 (Alfred Schutz between phenomenology, historicism, and the Austrian school) I argue in the context of Alfred Schutz's work that it is much more suitable to understand economic principles (under the label of praxeology or otherwise) as typifications with an empirical origin, although 'empirical' in a broader sense than a positivist would acknowledge. Schutz's methodology is based on concepts of typification and anonymity that allow us to grasp the continuity between immediately perceived everyday reality and abstract theoretical concepts used in scientific description that underlie economic models.Schutz's methodological instrument, the telescopic ideal type-term coined by Prendergast (1986)-dissolves the dichotomy between theory and history that was one of Mises's central themes and allows us to better understand the specific standing of economics that tries to emulate the rigor and precision of physics but is, at the same time, fundamentally connected with interpretation of the actions of naive agents in their lifeworld. Abstract formal models can be created after 'zooming-out' and anonymizing the agents to an extent that allows us to replace the real people living in particular historical, cultural and biographical conditions by anonymous transparent puppets whose utility function has been implanted by the economist acting as a 'small god' of his model world. Such formal models can be, of course, sometimes applied to particular empirical circumstances only using additional ad hoc assumptions, constraints, and the like. This fact, nevertheless, does not undermine the scientific value and legitimacy of economic approach as many critics suggest-it is a process necessarily connected with descending on a lower level of abstraction where various circumstances become relevant which we did not need to pay attention to before.In addition to its philosophical virtues, the Schutzian approach also sheds light on methodological problems connected with Hayekian idea of spontaneous order (Foss 1996). Spontaneous coordination and rise of a social order that has not been designed by any individual mind represent a problem that needs to be solved considering institutional context of the coordination because it is not possible to decide a priori which of the multiple equilibria a rational agent going to choose. …

RINKONOMICS: A WINDOW ON SPONTANEOUS ORDER1

The idea of spontaneous order is here exposited by analogy with roller skating at a roller rink. In the roller rink and in the economy, the key ingredient of spontaneous order is coincidence of interest. This makes the beneficial outcome possible. Central planning is bound to fail if for no other reason than because of the knowledge problem. The meaning of ‘spontaneous’ is discussed, along with the limits of the principle.

Options, sustainability policy and the spontaneous order

This paper examines the implications for sustainability policy of environmental uncertainty and indeterminacy, and relates the associated problems with a conventional understanding of sustainable development to Hayek’s critique of collective planning. It suggests that the appropriate recourse is not, however, a Hayekian endorsement of the free market, but an extension of his key idea of spontaneous order to characterise the learning society. The argument is illustrated by a practical application: the analysis of natural capital explored in this Special Issue is shown to be directly relevant to the improvement of the UK’s headline sustainability indicators package.