Exploring and celebrating the history, theory, and practice of free, prosperous, and tolerant societies.
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Nick Wilson compares the political, social, and moral thought of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
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When we think of the word “order,” we might imagine a plan that tells us how to organize things, a command coming from some authority figure, or a social hierarchy with designated ranks for people. These are all examples of a top-down “constructed” order.
But not all order is the product of a design or mandate. For example, think of the weather or of the laws of physics. There is no central organizer of these phenomena. They are part of nature, so we consider them “natural order.”
When we include people in the equation, order can arise spontaneously. As an unintended consequence of individual human action, both simple and complex systems can emerge. No plan needed. This is, in economics and the social sciences, known as “spontaneous order.”
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Featured Collections
Free Trade
In 1958, Leonard Read gave the world a deceptively simple parable: “I, Pencil.” In the humble voice of an ordinary wooden pencil, Read explained how something so unremarkable in daily life could only exist because of an extraordinary, global tapestry of human cooperation. Millions of people—loggers, miners, chemists, factory workers, truck drivers—contribute, often unknowingly, to the making of a single pencil. No one person knows how to make one from scratch, yet pencils exist in abundance because of the power of markets, prices, and voluntary exchange.
Decades later, this essay still resonates, but the world it described has transformed beyond recognition. That is why Larry Reed’s new work, “I, Smartphone,” provides such a timely and powerful update. If Read’s pencil symbolized the beauty of spontaneous order in a mid-twentieth-century world of wood, graphite, and rubber, Reed’s smartphone represents the breathtaking complexity of a twenty-first-century digital age—an object that depends on unimaginably intricate supply chains, rare earth minerals, satellite networks, microchips, and the labor of millions across continents.
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Freedom of Speech
Free speech is tested most in times of crisis. The assassination of Charlie Kirk reminds us that silencing voices breeds only fear and division. We, the people, must unwaveringly protect each other’s rights. When we stop, we enable the government to chip away at the Constitutional protections our society is built upon. Government attempts to censor and control the responses to this tragedy are misguided. From Milton to Mill to the digital age, the libertarian case is clear: defend speech for all, trust liberty over fear.
Bad speech should be addressed with better speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
In many parts of the West, people can mostly develop and hold their own beliefs and express them freely. These liberties, known as Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Speech, were part of the foundation that helped develop modern societies as we know them. Nonetheless, these interconnected ideas of freedom have historically been under threat, and the struggle to establish and protect these rights stretches over the past two thousand years.
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Just Sentiments
The phrase “just sentiments” highlights the willful and cognitive aspect of sentiment, which is emphasized in Smith’s ethics. The sentiment that someone experiences is influenced by actions he took prior to the experience. And, during the experience, or immediately after it, the person can reflect on his having felt the sentiment. He asks himself: Should I affirm the sentiment? Should I revise it? Should I reject it? The experiencing of a sentiment can be seen as a matter of the will and thus of acting justly. “Just sentiments” suggests one’s responsibility for one’s sentiments.
