Questing for Atlantis

There was a recent post at Boing Boing on roads and pathways Detroiters carved out for themselves when thick snow coverings covered the roads for days at a time. Both these paths and the (possibly anecdotal) experience of London following the Great Fire, which Mark Frauenfelder mentions in the post, are fantastic examples of the principle of spontaneous order.

The fact that the post never makes mention of Hayek or any of the other notable economic theorists who dealt with it, but instead quotes from Gaston Bachelard, calling them “Pathways of Desire,” very interesting and very telling about our society. In general we seem far to susceptible to being awed by the wonders we have planned, those that are the realization of the execution of human will, and relatively blind to those that spontaneously occur on their own without any outside guidance.

This fetishization of planned orders is bad enough when it’s benign. As the examples noted by several commenters highlighted, it is routinely common that sidewalks are laid out according to some planner’s design and then are promptly ignored. This is inefficient, but it doesn’t harm anyone.

On the other hand, the fetishization of planned order can also be very dangerous. It leads people to ignoring the miraculous order that governs the market and has yielded untold benefits to our lives. It has also led to the institution of governmental regimes built around central planning, regimes that also murdered millions of people and forced countless more to live in misery and squalor.