I recently encouraged you to check out this site as a beautiful example of spontaneous order. (And if you have a slower connection to the internet, you might try this version.) What you’ll see is a visual representation of air traffic in the United States over the course of the day, using FAA data. It’s really magnificent. Comments to that post make it clear to me that there is some confusion over what I had in mind when I called the result orderly.
I didn’t mean that any one flight is spontaneous. And of course, the overall pattern of commercial air traffic is managed rather than spontaneous. The orderly part comes from the visual image that emerges and the implications of that images. Each flight is represented as an animated path of light between the departure city and the destination city. The visual image that results is an illuminated map of the United States. The borders of the country emerge and then cities even though no boundary or city is shown explicitly. The animation also evolves over time. At first, you see only darkness. Then the East Coast becomes illuminated and the light moves west as the sun rises across the country. Then Hawaii is lit up with planes going and leaving there. And at the end of the day, the last red-eye flights head westward from California.
The flights around the country aren’t random. They spring out of population density and the routes people want to travel. These are the source of the order and its visual representation. What you’re seeing is a visual representation of the market for air travel and its service of its customers.
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One might take this as yet another illustration of why the term spontaneous order should be dropped all together.
If you use the expression every other week and readers STILL get confused, maybe it's not very good at conveying your ideas?
To be honest, I'm still confused over what it means too. If a picture representing the managed movements of air traffic is an example of "spontaneous order" is there anything that ISN'T a "spontaneous order"? Apparently, anything less than Soviet-style central planning is a "spontaneous order".
this is not to dispute the previous comment. just adding my two cents.
i found the animations compelling. who ever would think to see the united states like this? it makes you wonder what european aviation would reveal. or if you could do this for big rigs driving around the country, or even cross-border between the united states and mexico/canada. maybe fedex and ups trucks?
to be fair, if the term "spontaneous order" doesn't seem clear, it doesn't seem clear. but really, i think the point is that when we look around, we may think chaos. but the person who has a grip on what spontaneous order means — and i don't mean to make this a pejoration for those who don't — finding the order in those seeming chaotic things is truly magnificent.
if changing the name of the concept would mean that everyone in america would understand it, i'd like to see it changed in a heartbeat. but it is what it is.
Russell,
I now understand what you meant: The flights (individual and in aggregate) aren't spontaneous. The overall perspective of how many flights, the natural order in which they occur (lighting the map from east to west, for example), the departure & arrival locations….all of these arise out of the natural order of the marketplace. The conditions that give rise to each flight is/are not controlled, nor managed, but (as the illustrations show) inherently beautiful.
Spontaneous order, indeed!!!!