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Societies for the History of Economics

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Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
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Mohammad Gani <[log in to unmask]>
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Wed, 7 Oct 2009 08:38:50 -0400
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"What does "instinctively" mean? I thought instinct theory was a 
dead  issue, the word "instinct" simply being used to express a lack 
of causal understanding." -Samuel Bostaph



Instinctively means without conscious deliberation. My point is that 
if people act consciously, being aware of the consequences or 
pursuing certain consequences, then such action is not spontaneous. 
If going the wrong way in violation of traffic designs had no 
penalties and yet if people all followed traffic rules, it would be 
spontaneous order. But the presence of traffic courts and traffic 
police tell me that it is not spontaneous.  That most people 
willingly obey traffic rules only means that the rules have been made 
with much deliberation to create advantages for them.

I think it is a rhetorical problem of using careless words just 
because our ancestors had used them. What is the point of believing 
in spontaneous order? Suppose that I do not believe in spontaneous 
order, what will I miss? In contrast, those who believe in 
spontaneous order miss almost all of history: a minimum of ten 
thousand years of relentless struggle against plunder to establish 
rules of commercial conduct in the market. To condone slavery or the 
suppression of women in all agrarian societies simply as spontaneous 
order is unpardonable.

Good things are designed, bad things are spontaneous.

Mohammad Gani

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