Spontaneous Order – John Stossel – Page full

Most decision making works much the same way: Leave people free to make their own choices, and a spontaneous order arises — buyers and sellers adjust to changing prices; inventors invent; families raise kids; musicians create jazz.

Yet control freaks have criticized such spontaneity for at least 2400 years. Plato warned that music should be simple so that it does not stir up passion. In the 1920s, Ladies Home Journal complained that jazz would lead “to a breaking away from all rules.” We’re lucky America didn’t have a U.S. Dept. of Music at the time.

On my TV show, one government-lover said decisions must be made “by technocrats … who have this expertise.”

via Spontaneous Order – John Stossel – Page full.