And traffic jams?

I say this having just driven on I-84 in Connecticut, where traffic 
(at least in my direction) just seemed to jam and free without clear 
events (or economic rationality) causing the changes.

(The other direction was a solid parking lot, but maybe that too was 
spontaneous action, within a general constraint of staying on the 
road -- except for approved exits.)

(I also think of the Place d'Etoile in Paris as being spontaneous 
action -- there probably almost without any [effective] rules.)

Spontaneous action can, it seems, produce a differing types of 
results.  It is not just that market mechanisms may not be perfect; 
at times spontaneous actions produce jams, bubbles, roadblocks 
...   And, good grief, when did I last drive in Cambridge.

I think that really what I object to in Doug Mackenzie's phrasing is 
this, how do you distinguish between "defects in a broader type of 
order" and what I would see as disorder that occasionally produces 
the appearance of order.

Peter G. Stillman