Spontaneous Order

"Thus every Part was full of Vice/

Yet the whole Mass a Paradise;

The worst of all the Multitude/

Did something for the common Good"

The Grumbling Hive by Bernard Mandeville, 1705

The notion of spontaneous order has had a long tradition in the history of economic thought, as and it can be traced back to as far as the 14th century. In The Grumbling Hive published in 1705, a time of turbulent campaigns against the luxury and vice displayed by England’s ruling class, Bernard Mandeville (1670- 1733), a Dutch physician practicing in Britain, supports the idea of spontaneous order by arguing that the actions of the rulling class, despite being regarded as non-beneficial by the populace, actually contribute to the general well being. Mandeville consideres that “passions” of men should not be censored as they are not detrimental to the society in which they live, but should simply be channeled in the right direction [2]

The term spontaneous order describes the fact that well structured social patterns (i.e. property rights, money, trade, law, contracts, languages, moral systems, honesty, ethics, etc.), despite appearing to be the product of rational, omniscient minds are actually the outcomes of spontaneous forces emerging as a consequence of individuals following self-interested ends, and have evolved through a complex mechanism of behaviors passed down from generation to generation through tradition, teaching, and imitation. In their pursuit for self-interested goals, individuals adapt their behavior to common rules and constraints, which enables them to successfully interact among themselves and maximize their gains. Spontaneous order is thus not a product of human design but of human action [1]. It is important to note that the theory of spontaneous order only applies to regularities in societies and orders of events that are not a deliberate product of human mind (i.e. constitutional law) or susceptible to purely natural phenomena (i.e. weather) [2]. Theorists of spontaneous order reject the idea that reason solely—which is believed to itself be the result of an evolutionary selection process—can allow humans to build an extended order of human society and civilization. Rather, they consider that this can only be achieved through a process of evolutionary development which allows decentralization of decisions and division of authority to include the human order.

While it would clearly be extremely interesting to give a more in depth account of the history of spontaneous order, the purpose of this project is to concentrate on the recent past, as it is modern economists who brought the greatest contributions to the development of the notion of spontaneous order. It is the work of great thinkers of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightment like David Hume, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Reid that set the stage for economists like Jean-Baptiste Say, Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises Friedrich A. Hayek, Samuel Bowles and Jack Knight, to further develop the principles of spontaneous order and find them new applications. The economist who has made the greatest contributions to the concept of spontaneous order was Friedrich A. Hayek. It was he who applied the term "spontaneous order" to define "a system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or a few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation, and trial and error" Read more Hayek Quotes [3]

General Overview | Major Contributors | Game Theory Models | Objections/Arguments | Sources