"Readers' Forum, Comments on 'The Tradition of Spontaneous Order' by Norman Barry"

Norman Barry states, at one point in his essay, that the patterns of spontaneous order "appear to be a product of some omniscient designing mind" (p. 8). Almost everyone who has tried to explain the central principle of elementary economics has, at one time or another, made some similar statement. In making such statements, however, even the proponents-advocates of spontaneous order may have, inadvertently, "given the game away," and, at the same time, made their didactic task more difficult.... [From the text, James M. Buchanan, "Order Defined in the Process of its Emergence"]