ECOSYSTEMS AND SPONTANEOUS

ORDERSCRITICAL REVIEW: A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND SOCIETY,

FORTHCOMINGANDY LAMEY

Professor: Paolo Fabbri

Students:Mario Conti, 250466Valentina Fiore, 251286Dalila Putignano, 248298

KEY CONCEPTS

Non intervention in financial and ecological systems Understanding the ecosystem as spontaneous order

INTERFERENCE implies the operation of a process that proceeds by itself on certain principles because its parts obey certain rules.

(Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty)

ECOSYSTEM

ECOSYSTEM is defined as “the whole system”, including the complex organisms and physical factors that forming what we call

the environment.(Hayek)

There is an affinity regarding our ignorance of financial and ecological systems.

SPONTANEOUS ORDERS

SPONTANEOUS ORDER is one that no individual has designed and which aims at no particular purpose.

(Hayek)

Characteristics: Inevitability Complexity Abstraction of components Not created by an outside entity

ECOLOGICAL IGNORANCE

• Static ignorance related to limited awareness of the number of existing species.

• Dynamic ignorance about the interactions of countless different organisms.

The same type of reasoning can be also applied to price

THE MORAL ASPECT

• Moral obligation not to harm human beings

• It must be extended to animals and non-sentient life

• International environmental and financial organizations: Greenpeace, WWF and IMF

• Sometimes the intervention is not just permitted but recommended

EXCEPTIONS: PERMITTED INTERVENTIONS

Such manipulations of the environment (nature or market) are allowed weather they contribute to the same outcomes that a spontaneous order should reach itself.

Imperfect information system is the cause of impossibility to know what will be the future outcome of spontaneous order.

Ecosystem

DISRUPTIVE MANIPULATION CORRECTIVE MANIPULATION

Market GROWN ORDER MADE ORDER

INTERVENTIONS INTO ECOLOGICAL ORDER

DATTEL MUSSEL 5 km of coast for year 80 years to grow Lex 25 October 1988

GLOBAL WARMING + 4°C in the last 11000 years Kyoto Protocol, 1997 United Nations Climate Change

Conference (UNFCCC), 1992 Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC), 1988

INTERVENTIONS INTO MARKET ORDER

OIL’S PRICES Organization of Petroleum

Exporting Countries (OPEC), 1960 Oil Crisis in 1973 leads to the

increase of oil’s price by 70% Austerity policies (such as Sunday

Walking)

SUB-PRIME MORTGAGES

US recession (2008-2009) Community Reinvestment Act in

1977 Promotion of affordable housing

CONCLUSION

Human actions break the spontaneous order and then can restore it.

It is a mistake to think we can take all, or most of the nature and the market under our control.

When we do seek to manipulate the ecosystem or the market, as we inevitably must, we should do so in a manner that seeks as much as possible to preserve the number of species or the level of prices they contain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND WEB LINKS

Andy Lamey, A journal of politics and Society, Forthcoming

Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, volume I and II

Maurizio Cortese, Cose che è necessario io riesca a comprendere: i datteri di mare non si mangiano, www.dissapore.com

Subprime Mortgage, www.Investopedia.com

UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, www.un.org

www.opec.com

www.treccani.it

www.wikipedia.com