Cafe Hayek - Latest Comments in Marvelous Arrangement

Re: Marvelous Arrangement

plopplop — Wed, 16 May 2007 07:35:31 -0000

"...the number of different ways to arrange, in a single dimension, a mere 20 items is much larger than is the number of seconds in ten billion years."

It's even more interesting to consider graph theory: for example, a simple graph with 19 unlabeled nodes has 24637809253125004524383007491432768 nonisomorphic combinations. That's more seconds than there are in 700 sextillion (7x10^23) years. Would-be central planners should keep this in mind when considering the possible states and interactions of 7 billion labeled nodes (such as people).

Re: Marvelous Arrangement

Speedmaster — Wed, 16 May 2007 07:16:04 -0000

That was fantastic, thanks Dr. Boudreaux!

Re: Marvelous Arrangement

Sam Grove — Wed, 16 May 2007 07:03:58 -0000

top-down approach requires the flow of impossible amounts of information to the top

Whic must be accurate as well. Another impossibility.

Re: Marvelous Arrangement

George — Wed, 16 May 2007 05:00:32 -0000

Someday, we'll be able to model this process by using a sophisticated version of a mathematical approach called "celular automata". In this way you can model a population of individuals which obey their own set of motivations and constraints, reacting to the economy around them.

The biggest falacy that statists have is that they believe that organization in an economy requires a top-down structure. Free market economics recognizes the self-organizing properties of a population which is persuing rational self-interest on the individual level.

The main benefit is that, while a top-down approach requires the flow of impossible amounts of information to the top, a free marked acts as a massively parallel computation resulting in overall optimization of resource utilization.