Online Library of Liberty - The Tradition of Spontaneous Order: A Bibliographical Essay by Norman Barry (oll.libertyfund.org)
- Highlight Loc. 533-37 | Added on Thursday, January 12, 2012, 08:28 AM
Thus, whereas Adam Smith and his successors saw the market and law as co-ordinating the self-interested actions of agents so as to produce an unintended beneficial outcome, Hayek speaks of the co-ordination of the actions of necessarily ignorant people. Thus the theory of spontaneous order does not depend for its truth on the so-called 'egoistic' behavior assumptions of traditional economic theory because there remain universal co-ordination problems whether people are selfish or altruistic in their impulses.
