Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Let Chaos Rule (to a point)

I decided to tackle a book that found its way in my social media circles called The Singularity and Socialism. This book referenced many people whose work I was already familiar with, such as Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Hayek. So I thought why not? Provoking title too. Basically this is a pro-libertarian techno-optimistic book that brings in the ideas of complexity and chaos theory to the world of economics. And I have to say I agree with much of it, because let’s face it, we can’t doubt that the change Hericlitus talked about 2500 years ago is just getting more rampant! And that makes it near impossible to centralize all the knowledge that has accumulated from the top-down.

Townsend goes on to mention that “Hayek began as early as the mid 1930’s to begin to think of the market and economics as well as all social phenomenon, culture and civilization, not as a given and static condition reacted to by discrete autonomous rational actors and created by omnipotent rational planners from on high, but as interdependent yet heterogeneous interacting agents who are constantly evolving and bringing about an emergent and spontaneous order that is constantly adapting and changing to, and discovering, new information, just as the cells in complexity theorists computer simulations act.” Yup, so try to wrap your heads around that Federal Reserve. Just can’t happen, but they can play chess for a while until the queen gets taken out!

Hayek probably was one of our first systems theorists, and got that the world does not lead by intellect alone. Hayek observes: “It is not our intellect that created our morals; rather, human interactions governed by our morals make possible the growth of reason and those capabilities associated with it. Man became intelligent because there was tradition –that which lies between instinct and reason– for him to learn. This tradition, in turn, originated not from a capacity rationally to interpret observed facts but from habits of responding.” Now, that makes sense to me. We are not purely rational agents. And that explains all the dumb and beautiful things we do too.

So why do so many insist that government should solve our economic woes? Again Hayek makes a lot of sense when he says, “the main lesson which the true liberal [classical, not modern] must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion.” You see, if you don’t have real religion, you’re going to make one up through some utopian impulse. And that’s one of our many fallibilities… so better to get real religion and let Caesar have what is Caesar’s!

Townsend’s book has many good insights. One shortfall is he doesn’t seem to ground himself in any real religion, so I have my doubts that market forces alone can cure all social ills. But more on that later!