It is my contention that this concept of spontaneous order is the central idea of the enlightenment, brought to a pinnacle nine years later by Adam Smith with his invisible hand and applied to life itself by Charles Darwin some decades later. If the English language can get along without a government, why do we so quickly assume that English society cannot organise itself?
To labour the point, today in London roughly 10 million people ate lunch. Working out just how much of each type of food to have available in the right places at the right time to ensure that this happened was a problem of mind-boggling complexity, made all the harder by the fact people made up their mind what to eat mostly at the last minute.
Who was in charge of this astonishing feat? Who is London’s lunch commissioner and why does he get so little credit? Why is this system not subsidised? How can it be so lightly regulated?
The protesters who gather to criticise free enterprise from time to time use Facebook and iPhones to arrange their protest, drink Starbucks and eat Pret, wear shirts and shoes, in some cases even use toothpaste and shampoo before setting out. They swim where they wish to in a sea of possibilities provided by free enterprise.
— Matt Ridley, Free Markets are Revolutionary, Liberating, and Democratic (Foundation for Economic Education [FEE])
Leave a Reply