C[omp]ute

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 16:30:50 -0400 (CLT)

A rather hysterical piece of writing (by someone who seems to throw that
term around with relish), but with an intresting idea buried in the
polemic:

"There are also many political "moderates"--journalists, scholars,
technologists, scientists, artists, and business people, all far less
famous than Summers--whose intellectual appreciation for self-organizing
systems has come from outside economics: from complexity theory, from the
decentralized evolution of the Internet, from the process of scientific
discovery, from ecological science, from cross-cultural exchange, from
organization theory. These centrist dynamists share an appreciation for
dispersed knowledge and trial-and-error evolution that spills over into
their attitudes toward markets. They do not always prefer markets to
government, but they usually do. They lack the reflex that says a single,
government-imposed approach is the best solution to public problems. They
are more concerned with finding mechanisms to encourage innovation,
competition, choice, and feedback. One thing that makes our political
discourse confusing is that the term moderate does not distinguish between
those whose moderation implies an appreciation for market processes and
those whose moderation suggests just the opposite--a long list of schemes
for small-scale government tinkering."

http://reason.com/9911/fe.vp.after.shtml

From a reference in Caldwell's "Hayek's Challenge" -
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226091937 (see my review there).

Andrew