This is the first in a series of articles on a concept known as spontaneous order or the invisible hand. This is the introduction to the concept:

If you were to enter into the lunch room of my school around lunch time and attempt to assess the organizational structure of how teenagers were sitting, you would likely come to one major conclusion; it’s separated into different groups, almost factions. You have the football players taking up an entire table, groups of girls gossiping, a group of people who are accustomed to more urban or “Ghetto” forms of culture, people who sit by themselves, etcetera. It’s amazing how separated it is bases around friendships and lines formed by topics of interests. At the same time, while the cafeteria is separated, if you were to walk up to one of the teen inhabitants that presides in it presently eating their lunch and bring up the topic, they would be unaware that this sort of separation even exists beyond their own personal faction. Why? It’s called a spontaneous order.

Spontaneous order is the idea that a group of people acting as individuals and only for their own interests will through their ambitiousness to benefit themselves, actually benefit every other member of the group even without a central planner guiding the process. This works all across the spectrum of life and is fundamental to conservatism. Let’s go back to that cafeteria. Even though no outside force or planner arranged it and likely, little forethought was put into where anyone would sit aside from one’s self, most everyone in the cafeteria is happier where they are than they would be at any other location in the cafeteria. This is because people came in and sat next to who they found to give the most utility to their time and conversation. If someone didn’t like someone else, they could move. Those people who are sitting alone got that way by either preferring to eat by themselves or being the type of person without a compatible personality in the cafeteria.

How does this principle relate to conservatism? Simple, it makes capitalism work and is responsible for capitalism being the best system. Liberals often say that capitalism is unfair because some are paid more than others, it destroys the environment, it is a dog eat dog system in which competition tears people apart, products in capitalism are dangerous to consumers and of poor quality, it benefits capital over labor, is unfair to laborers, it allows “immoral” products such as coke and trans-fats to succeed, and of course, the grand-daddy of all of liberal arguments, capitalism could not exist without the help of the government. All of these arguments can be refuted using the principle of spontaneous order.

-John Golden