[ExI] Order Without Orderers, online for the first time

[BillK]

On 9/3/09, Max More wrote:
>  "Order Without Orderers", my paper on the importance of spontaneous order
> in transhumanist thinking, appeared in Extropy #7 in 1991. It has never been
> available online until now.
>
>  My thanks to Natasha for OCR'ing the paper from the original print edition
> of Extropy #7. I've been through the result, further cleaning it up. It
> should be in pretty good shape now.
>
>  www.maxmore.com/Order_Without_Orderers.htm
>


As history, it's an interesting read.
But after the 2007 financial markets debacle I think you should delete
all the discussion of self-regulating markets. That was Greenspan's
flawed ideology - that government regulation wasn't needed because the
market players would self-regulate because it was in their own
interest to do so.

Now I know that you will immediately shout 'But it wasn't really a
free market!'  But the general reader will obviously say that if you
can't have a free market in the US where rampant capitalism rules,
then where can you?
Thus leading to the thought that your 'free market' must be a mythical beast.

Greenspan's ideology failure has been discussed in many places and
books have been written about it, but this is a good summary:

<http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/stiglitz200901>

Capitalist Fools
by Joseph E. Stiglitz        January 2009

Stiglitz first discusses the history of all the wrong decisions that
led to the financial crisis, then sums up in the final paragraph:

The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a
belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government
should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this
fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a
flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other
words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not
right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said.
The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this
flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually
arrive at the place we are today.
-------------


BillK