The Economy as a Complex Adaptive System
Lately, I’ve been reading up on emergent phenomena, systems in which complex behavior “emerges” from small scale interactions between relatively simple elements. Free market economies is a poster child of emergence–no one entity plans out every actor’s behavior. Rather, resource allocation decisions “emerge” from the local interactions of a large number of economic actors. I found some of the comments that Keith Downing made on free market economics in his book “Intelligence Emerging” fascinating, and figured I’d share them here for you all to appreciate. The eye-opening fact that the world works without excessive global manipulation and without many guarantees may initially Continue reading The Economy as a Complex Adaptive System