Re: -Reply: What is Economics?

[Bruce McFarling <brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 28 Feb 1995, John Gelles extended my remarks on Greg
Ransom's recent remarks with:

> 	Moreover, Greg,
>
> 		Markets, technology, and language, have all
> 	evolved without an a priori plan -- but with a trail
> 	of laws, customs and institutions in their wake!
> ...

	It is important to note that market order is
*not* spontaneously generated, any more than organisms
are spotnaneously generated.  You can hide the institutions
in the functional relationship and definitions of a
mathematical model, you can pretend that they have been
chosen in some hyper-rational way, but the likelihood of
viable and sustainable market systems emerging spontaneously
is quite remote.  And, beyond that, for a wide range of
economic activities, centralized redistributive systems
have been far more successful than market solution: these
centralized redistributive systems are called corporations.
No OECD nation has gotten to that level without a substantial
corporate sector.

Virtually,

Bruce McFarling, Knoxville
brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx