Bruce Caldwell wrote: "For me, the phrase "the  
unintended consequence of intentional human action"  
captures the sorts of thing that Hayek meant by  
spontaneous order. In the market order, people just do  
their jobs, they have what Paul Seabright called  
"tunnel vision" - they don't see what role they play  
in the larger order.  No one person decides to feed  
Paris; but Paris gets fed, ..."  
  
Commentary:  
If a day came when our historical scholars would see  
brightly, they would smile and say: Oh well, EVERY ONE  
PERSON in Paris decides to EAT food and adequately PAY  
for it, in direct consequence of which others would  
rush to SELL food to them for PROFIT.    
  
Students would remember someone named Bohm-Bawerk and  
a concept called roundabout production. They would  
know that the event called "feeding Paris" does not  
occur at all, but the event called "Parisians eating"   
does occur. Before Parisians decide to eat and pay for  
the food that they wish to eat, no event called  
"feeding Paris" can possibly occur.   
  
In fact "feeding Paris" is neither intended nor  
performed: the suppliers of food do not feed Paris at  
all- they merely earn PROFITS by SELLING food. Their  
intention is to earn the profit, and not to feed   
Paris.   
        Leontief provided the analytical device to understand  
the matter under brighter light. To see brightly, one  
will have to identify a variable subject to precise  
measurement, and then link it to another variable in  
some causal frame. Leontief makes it absolutely clear  
through an input-output relation. So a student will  
see the quantity of food the sellers bring to Paris as  
a dependent variable,   
where the amount of profit from food sales is the  
independent variable. The student will never waste  
time looking for intentions behind a consequence (such  
as feeding Paris) that does not happen at all. The  
student will next find the buyers of food, who most  
surely intend to eat the food. Here, the quantity of  
food bought will be the dependent variable, linked to  
the utility of food consumption (benevolence in Adam  
Smith's lingo) as the independent variable.   
        The people of Paris cannot eat food merely by wishing  
to eat: they must pay for it. Then the utility of food  
consumption is not the final output; food is an input  
into the production of the means of   
payment the Parisian produces. In physical imagery,  
the food the Parisian consumes is an input to the  
Parisian goods he produces and delivers to the  
suppliers of as payment for food. This payment then  
becomes the input for the non-Parisian food producer,  
who consumes the Parisian good as input to produce the  
non-Parisian food for Paris.  
        All told, there is a complete circuit. Every part of  
this circuitous process is intended by somebody whose  
intention is relevant. And being relevant means that  
it is subject to precise observation and measurement,  
and to causal linkage.   
        The tragedy is that people who do not care about the  
causal issue do not see brightly, for example, as they  
do not see that the causal linkage is between food  
supply and the profit from it, and not with the  
non-occurrence called feeding Paris. They cannot find  
the intention because they are not looking for it.  
Nobody feeds Paris, and the event named "feeding  
Paris" never occurs. Parisians buy food EVERYDAY. Are  
Parisians beggars to let somebody feed them?  
        The tragedy of the Austrian School's obsession with  
words without measurement is that it often loses  
track, like in case of grandpa Adam Smith, and  
meanders into fanciful imagination of the empty  
wilderness. Consequence, for example, is an  
essentially meaningless word until it is converted  
into a variable subject to strict observation and  
measurement. Intention likewise is a vaporous word   
unless it is converted into a strictly defined  
variable. Thus eating food is not a consequence of  
feeding by the producer: it is a consequence of buying  
food by the consumer. And feeding Paris is not   
the consequence of the producer's action of selling  
the food: the earning of revenue is the consequence.  
  
The quoted passage omits the act that creates the  
consequence, and wonders why the consequence occurs.   
The phrase "but Paris gets fed" should be changed to  
"and Paris gets billed for the food its eats" to  
become a truthful description of what happens.   
        The tragedy on the neoclassical side is that it is  
obsessed with the idea of ONE decision maker as in the  
phrase: "no one person decides to feed Paris; but  
Paris gets fed,".  
        Now, whose idea is it that there must somehow be ONE  
person to decide (to feed Paris)? What is wrong with  
many persons?  The idea of coordination in the market  
place without ONE central planner is the   
relic of an era that did not have the brightness of  
Leontief.    
        Students of Leontief can very clearly see that there  
is never a need for any ONE person to generate the  
entire aggregate outcome of the market. The aggregate  
outcome combines the small parts played by different  
individuals, each of whom has a very limited  
intention. But when all those intentions are added  
(and they must be added within one complete circuit of  
exchange to describe the entire economy-wide outcome),  
the analyst easily understands how the aggregate event  
occurred. No individual agents has to see his role in  
the larger order, but the analyst must see it; and see  
he can and brightly too, if input-output model is his  
tool.   
        The micro-orientation is the tunnel vision of the  
analyst who sees dimly and incompletely. Thus, eating  
the food is carried out as intended by the consumers  
and there is no reason to search for the   
producer's intention behind the consumer's act.  The  
analyst disregards the Parisian's intention to eat and  
sees the phantom named unintended consequence (feeding  
Paris).  
  
So all I can pray is: Let there be light.  
  
Mohammad Gani