Thursday, February 18, 2010

. . .distributed intelligence

Steve Horowitz channels Hayek and Sowell in his posting over on the NPR blog. The ASET book club is reading Knowledge and Decisions and I see echoes of Sowell's thesis throughout Horowitz.


Sowell compares and contrasts informal decision making processes (marriage) with formal decision making process (the draft. His point, I believe is not to judge the desired ends or even the process, but to evaluate the process in terms of costs and benefits. And, he takes the Hayekian stance that individual agents, voluntarily and independently acting will typically select the process that aligns both with value in society and with wealth creation, while a centralized, hierarchial, tops down selection will typically result in decisions withe perverse and unintended consequences that are, clearly unintended by the man or woman at the top making the decision.



I am excited to be reading this book and looking forward to our discussion.

Greg

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

National Council for the Social Studies 2010 Conference

2010
Denver, Colorado
November 12–14, 2010
Colorado Convention Center
Headquarters Hotel—Hyatt Regency Denver