Markets are the creation of government.

Wrong. There are markets where there is no government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible.

Wrong. You can have markets without currency. It's called barter.

With a start like that, I'm not going to be convinced by anything this bozo writes....

Papaya: I run across this nonsense constantly representing property owners up against confiscatory government regulation. The argument goes that there are really no property 'rights,' only 'privileges,' because without public infrastructure, etc. property has no value, so owners should be grateful for whatever crumbs regulators grant.

Fred:

At the most basic level, you are correct, but that public infrastructure really does add considerable value.

As I write this, I'm in rural eastern Colorado, with dirt roads and all.

The difference in value between the property close to a blacktopped highway, easy electrical access, etc., and not, is at least 300%.

Also, as several posters have pointed out in the past, a big part of the value of suburban homes depends on which school district they're in.

Papaya:

And a free market barter economy exists where?

oj - It existed in America through about 1815. Very few people used currency in colonial days.

I should say, currency was used rarely. Accounts were kept by merchants in dollars, but currency changed hands typically once per year, if that, after accounts were settled up after the harvest season. Normally, goods were purchased on credit and accounts settled in kind. The Industrial Revolution changed all that.

pj:

certainly that would have been the case on the frontier, but when a ship docked in NY, Boston, or points south, wasn't the cargo likely paid for? And were not the taxes that so riled the colonists likely paid for in some form of currency, rather than in trade?

OJ, markets are intelligently designed only to the extent that intelligent people participate in them and make conscious decisions about their individual purchases. From an overall perspective, a the level where prices and production decisions are made, it is beyond the ability of any intelligent actor to control. Thus the failure of central planning. The "invisible hand" is not an intelligent entity.

Robert:

And? The point is precisely that it requires intelligent desicion making within an intelligently designed system. What difference if we don't know precisely how it ends up. We know generally and we know it depends on decisions prior to and after creation of the scheme.

No, but it is symbolic of man's nature as a market oriented creature. The self-regulating nature of men and markets supports oj's point about the importance of a moral infrastructure instead of an over-regulating, administrative state which always develops interests of it's own, many times at odds with the interests of free individuals.

"No sensible person would deny that the free market is a function of intelligent design."

The particulars of any given market are a function of intelligent design. The function of that market is not.

Jeff-

Markets, like language, are human constructs. Markets and languages function and change bit by bit as individuals make deciscions about buying, selling or determining which word to use. Individuals use their intelligence to make those decisions and markets and languages change accordingly. The more often a word is used the more likely it becomes part of the language. Products which serve the needs of people become more common as production revs up to meet demand. Idividuals are using their reasoning capabilities and making decisions. If that isn't design, on a person by person basis which is eventually represented in the marketplace or by the language, I don't know what is. Individuals make markets and language function to serve their own purposes.

Markets which are no longer free tend not to work very efficiently nor satisfy needs of individuals since those with the needs no longer make the decisions. They are designed by committee rather than by the free decisons of those with the need to use the markets or the language.

Tom

"a person by person basis which is eventually represented in the marketplace or by the language, I don't know what is. Individuals make markets and language function to serve their own purposes"

You're virtually saying it, but you're not understanding it. You have to be able to tell the small picture (controllable by intelligent individuals) from the big picture (the net, complex, often unpredictable, undesigned results of a large number of independent individual decisions.)

An intelligent individual deliberately uses a word. But no single intelligence can determine the overall development of a language over 10, 50, 100, 500 years.

A single intelligent person launches several brands of toothpaste onto the market. A different intelligent individual chooses a particular brand of toothpaste. But no single person can control which brands succeed in the marketplace over a ten year period.

A single intelligent woman chooses this particular man to have a family with. A single (slightly) intelligent gazelle outruns the slowest gazelle and escapes the lion. But no individual intelligence can determine the changes in large populations over time.

Brit:

How did non-intelligent beings evolve?

Jeff:

No, it's pixies?

OJ:

The presence of intelligence, and teleological intent, are two different things.

Water is necessary for fish. But the presence of water says nothing about how fish change over time.

Yes, but both are present in economic systems, language, and as you've proved by analogy, Creation.

As I've asked before, but I don't think you have ever quite answered, with regard to the economy, or language:

What is the plan?

What words are we going to be using in 50 years?

What is going to be the hot industry in 10 years?

What is the goal?

OJ

Blind, goalless natural selection.

Pay attention, you at the back there...

Communication

Those we choose to use

Whichever one we choose

Affluence

OJ

You've just succinctly proved Jeff's point. You're vague because you have to be.

As a stock market tip, "whichever one we choose" isn't going to make me rich.

Nobody says "I'm going to buy this brand of toothpaste to help it succeed in the marketplace over the next ten years".

Nobody says "I'm going to use the word 'sound' to mean 'good' from now on, because I want to do my bit to help ensure that in 100 years time it has become prevalent in common usage of the language."

Human beings use intelligence, gazelles are instinctual. Human beings are forward looking, gazelles have the goal of living out the day. If men were purely instinctual rather than self-w=aware and questioning creatures the purely mechanistic view of markets and language would make more sense. Human beings generally make decisions through the use of intelligence. Individual decisions shape markets. In that sense, the consensus expressed by the markets could be described as intelligently designed.

The basic moral infrustructure which allows markets to function peacefully and with some degree of efficiency while generally improving the human condition is without question a result of design through consensus. Unless one believes that democratic values, peace and liberty are the natural human condition.

Tom

So let's untangle this little web...

First, if you're defining intelligent design' evolution - such as that which occurs in language and the markets - as "the net result of lots of independant (and often conflicting - people buy different toothpastes) individual intelligent decisions", then by contrast biological evolution can NOT be intelligent design. Since as you say, gazelles are instinctive. And bacteria scarcely even that.

But I'm being mischievous there. That's not what people mean by 'intelligent design'.

Here's the crux:

Everything you say about humans is true. But in regards to the point Jeff and I are making, the intelligence of humans versus the instinctiveness of the gazelles is a red herring.

The point we're making about the evolution of language is to illustrate a few things:

1) that the big picture of evolution - eg. when you step back and ask, 'why don't we speak like Shakespeare anymore?' - is the product of lots of small-scale intelligent decisions or instinctive behaviours, or events or instances, which happen without themselves having the bigger picture in mind. As opposed to a single designer consciously guiding it towards a destination. This makes evolution the product of an extreme complexity of factors - rendering prediction very difficult, if not impossible.

2) that evolution can happen without a goal in mind. That is, without teleology. There is nothing intrinsically 'better' about language now than in Shakespeare's time. It's just different.

For example, there's nothing intrinsically better about today's defintion of the word 'gay', compared to its definition 100 years ago.

A language just develops through use, not because its users are aiming to invent the 'perfect language' for their great-great-grandchildren.

Brit:

Aha! I've figured out the problem and it's mostly just one of semantics. As you and Jeff argue the case, the Washington Monument is not a case of intelligent design because they switched the kind of stone used midway through. Ditto the Vietnam Memorial because a statue was added. You are requiring complete determinism, that someone have a vision and then replicate it precisely.

By that standard I'm inclined to agree there is no such thing as intelligent design anywhere ever.

Classic case of misdirection. Possibly useful for polemics, useless for defending your point.

OJ, a monument is an object on a scale that can be intelligently designed. The designer can envision the result beforehand, and cause it to be constructed in a way to match the vision.

An economy cannot be so designed. Nations have tried, and they have failed. The scale is too large, and the decisions that shape the outcome are distributed across millions of individuals. Intelligence is not synonymous with design. Each of the decisions individually made is a product of intelligence, but their combined outcome is not. Design implies a single conscious vision for an outcome which can then be realized through purposeful action to achieve that vision. Without the prior vision, and without the purposeful action to achieve the vision, there is no design.

Robert:

Yet in neither exam,ple were they. Indeed, it seems fair to say that nothing in human history has turned out as envisioned. To make such the test is therefore to deny that either intelligence or design exists.

That's fine, it just means we need to redefine our terms.

No, it's just that the term design is over-applied to human activity. Much of what we think of as design, in terms of invention & discovery, is accidental or is trial by error. There is true design, such as we see in architecture and artwork. There are things that have the appearance of design - structure, order, symmetry, beauty, utility - but came about without intelligent intent. Both have to be present, in my view.

OJ

Of course intelligence exists. Humans design things intelligently all the time. Things like monuments, and buildings, and computers, and weddings.

It's easy to understand our point. You just need to grasp the following:

1) things happen on the small-scale. These could be intelligent decisions, or stupid decisions, or accidents, or flukes, or the use of a word, or the misuse of a word.

2) in any given sphere, such as the market or linguistics or biology, lots of these small-scale events happen.

3) there are all done for their own reasons (or for no reasons in the case of accidents and flukes.) They are not done with the 'big picture' in mind. You buy a certain soft drink because you like the taste, or it's the cheapest, or the colours on the can caught your eye, or you're thirsty and it's the nearest, or a TV ad got into your consciousness. Or some or all of the above. Not because you want that drink to be successful in the marketplace in ten years (or maybe that is even one of your reasons. It doesn't matter: it's only one of the many possible reasons for the choice).

4) the net sum of all the small-scale, often conflicting, often interacting and counter-balancing events results in visible change over time in the 'big picture.'

5) depending on the level of complexity in your defined 'big picture', this change, or evolution, ranges from being difficult to predict to impossible to predict. Some people think they've got the market sussed. Or they can predict the outcomes of baseball matches. But nobody can predict the devlopment of language - there's far too many variables.

And biological evolution, which depends on random mutations, changing environments and interactions of predator and prey, sexual selection etc, is inherently impossible to predict.

6) so in any defined sphere change can happen - in fact, must inevitably happen - just as the result of lots of individual small-scale instances, and without any overall conscious plan, goal or design.

Robert:

By your definition neither architecture nor art is "designed".

Brit:

You married? Your wedding an exact replica of your idea for it? Please...

hey I didn't say designs always work out...

I never got to play for Liverpool Football Club, which I'd been planning since I was about six.

And what happened to that Nobel Prize...And the exciting career as an international spy?

Brit:

We're human--it never works out.