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Let's get radical!
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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... the functioning of markets comes to mind.
Hmm, are markets self-ordering?
I think in the purest sense, just having some form of common currency would be considered "order" - unless you're suggesting that only pure barter is necessary for a functional society - but then even that requires some broad agreement on weights & measures in order to function (e.g. how long is a board-foot? how much flour is 1 kilogram?). Collectively the market must agree on some standards in order to function.
Also, unregulated markets always end in monopolies, with or without a capitalist economy. Sooner or later someone will try to establish themselves as the sole supplier of some good or service. Only active oversight and regulatory enforcement can prevent it.
But agreement without hierarchical imposition is self ordering. Common currency and measurement standards can and do arise without the imposition of state fiat.
The great advantage of markets, as observed by Adam Smith, is that they're self-ordering. No grand plan has to be drawn up by any central authority, not even an advisory one, for even very complex and completely disconnected supply chains to be coordinated between firms with great geographic distance and numerous degrees of separation between them.
This was not the argument. You are moving the goalpost. The argument was:
Self-ordering is still ordering. Whether a government is involved in enforcing it or not is irrelevant, there will be enforcement of agreements even if the only ones conducting the enforcement are the concerned parties. That is order.
Sure, they don't have to be planned and regulated in advance, but eventually common agreements will produce a regulating group with enforcement authority because organizing in this way is more efficient for the market overall.
That group doesn't have to be a government per se, but it will have regulatory authority.
That's a misunderstanding of what I said, though I'll gladly concede to poor wording on my part. Ordering in the sense that it is imposed by someone else; self ordering is thus innately opposed to ordering in the sense I was using it in the original claim; though, again, I concede to poor wording. "does not require ordering" was meant in the definition 2 sense, not definition 1, which I thought was implied by the imperative infinitive.
Sure.
This is a point of legitimate disagreement - while it is more efficient (and desirable), I agree, it is not inevitable.
In any case, your argument is in agreement with the core point - that people do not NEED ordering (definition 2) from an authority to organize their own affairs.