A few years ago I wrote an article for FEE entitled, ‘Obamacare and Hayek’s crystals‘, that sunk like a lead weight. Despite that, I was proud of the fact that it even saw the light of day on that vaunted publication’s front page. The editor urged me to make the article “relevant”, so I threw in some BS about Obamacare, although I didn’t really care about the specifics of that policy for the purpose of the article. My main purpose in writing it was to draw attention to a passage in Hayek’s first volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty that I had never before seen mentioned. That passage referred to the purpose of a maker of public policy when dealing with a spontaneous order, where Hayek likened that order to a crystal, and the policy maker to a scientist in a lab whose goal it is to create such a crystal. The scientist doesn’t construct a crystal, atom by atom, but creates an environment conducive for the formation of a crystal. In the same way, lawmakers must be mindful of how to encourage the flourishing of society: by crafting law that allows the spontaneous order to allocate, innovate, and evolve. Here’s part of the passage in question, from Chapter 2:
“It will be instructive to consider briefly the character of some spontaneous orders which we find in nature, since here some of their characteristic properties stand out most clearly. There are in the physical world many instances of complex orders which we could bring about only by availing ourselves of the known forces which tend to lead to their formation, and never by deliberately placing each element in the appropriate position. We can never produce a crystal or a complex organic compound by placing the individual atoms in such a position that they will form the lattice of a crystal or the system based on benzol rings which make up an organic compound. But we can create the conditions in which they will arrange themselves in such a manner.”
This is far more profound than Hayek has been given credit for. A spontaneous order is the result of millions of daily, uncoerced decisions by countless, anonymous individuals. The preservation of that order means the protection, and expansion, of the individual’s sphere of choice. The protection of our freedom to choose is the sole worthwhile task of the policy maker. Unfortunately, most policy makers are impatient in the extreme when it comes to social change, and advocate government coercion to force change onto society more quickly than it is ready to accept. And it never ends well.
