John Medaille wrote:  
> Now, it may be, as you have suggested, that I have simply   
> misunderstood MI, and I am open to that possibility. However, it will   
> be necessary to demonstrate the connection between MI and the social   
> in a way that differs from the mere summation technique of NCE.   
  
  
I must admit my bafflement at this, given that the entire Mises-Hayek   
approach to economics is founded upon the notion of unintended order,   
where the social order is an emergent property that is more than the sum   
of individual actions.  The whole argument is that the social   
relationships that emerge in the market cannot be understood by "mere   
summation" because they depend on context and the actual "playing out"   
of the process.  Knowing everything about the individuals cannot tell us   
what the social order will look like because the latter is an emergent   
property - it is greater than the sum of its parts.  In Buchanan's words   
"order is defined in the process of its emergence."  
  
In *Human Action*, Mises points out that that although society "is the   
outcome of conscious and purposeful behavior," the behavior is the   
"cooperation and coadjuvancy with others for the attainment of definite   
singular ends" as opposed to a sort of "collective intentionality" to   
create society.  In other words, society is the unplanned complex order   
that emerges from individual actions.  It cannot be ultimately reduced   
to them because the particular order that emerges depends significantly   
on the particular relations among those individuals and firms and   
households, and those relations cannot be defined a priori, but only   
through the actual process of social interaction.  
  
This is very far from the "mere summation" you attribute to NCE.  
  
Steve Horwitz