Last week, I had the pleasure to go skiing for several days at the Wintergreen Resort in Virginia. While out on the slopes, I noticed something that might serve as a good example of how order emerges out of what would appear to be chaos.
When I first began to ski (which I hadn’t done since I was 10, and wasn’t exactly an expert), I was nervous that I would collide with other people on the more elementary slopes where I started. After a few good runs down the hill, I started to notice that everyone was watching out for themselves on the hill to avoid collisions and other skiing disasters.
The slopes had several sections that would merge into one central area. People would be skiing in to the elementary slopes at high speeds from the more advanced hills. However, I saw almost no accidents! And, there was no one there policing everyone on the hills.
How could this system possibly work, one might be wondering?
I believe this was a result of people naturally protecting themselves. Everyone wanted to avoid incident. No one was particularly interested in colliding. And no one was assuming that they did not need to observe their surroundings.
No police officer was needed to direct traffic at the merge points and no government regulations were needed to keep people out of certain areas. Everyone knew naturally how to move about in an efficient manner.
This isn’t to say that there were no incidents on the slopes, but I can imagine that the central planner would have been scared to see what was happening out there. The people policed themselves. And when there was incident, people naturally corrected their behavior.
This is another small example of how order will emerge naturally without force from a central planner.
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