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Date: | Thu, 8 Oct 2009 13:31:05 -0400 |
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Michael Perelman wrote
> Most of the examples of spontaneous
> order actually seem to occur outside of
> the market, often in the context of a community's
> willingness to accept a convention.
>
> Such events have little to do with the working of a market;
> only a decision that is non-governmental.
>
That uses a narrow definition of "market" as buying and selling.
In a pure market economy, all activity is voluntary for
everyone. Thus more broadly, all freely chosen human action is
spontaneous, in that it is of one's own free will, not directed or
altered by an imposed governmental authority.
In today's mixed economies, governmental intervention alters human
action so much that few acts are completely spontaneous. For
example, someone who decides to buy a house may be responding to a
governmental subsidy for the purchase of real estate, and so his
altered act is not purely freely chosen. Government directs actions
mostly by altering costs, as well as by prohibitions and commands.
Fred Foldvary
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