David Friedman
Sep 4, 2018 · 1 min read

Interesting piece. Two points:

There is an old technology for managing complexity that you don’t mention — property and trade. As long as you can break the world up into pieces such that each piece is linked to an individual, most of what he does affects mostly that piece, the rest has affects on a small enough number of others, ideally one, to be managed by bargaining, contract, exchange mechanisms, you can have each person have control over his piece and come close to optimizing the whole system — the efficiency theorem in price theory.

The problem, which I discuss at the end of my _Future Imperfect_, is that technological change may mean there is no way of implementing that solution. Global warming provides a good example. As it happens, I don’t think it is the catastrophic threat many claim, but it could be. If it is, I don’t see any solution, given that each person’s actions are having an effect spread among billions of other persons.

Second point … There is a currently existing society that has come to terms with the need to consider the effect of technology on it — the Amish. Each congregation has a set of rules, the Ordnung, on what technologies its members may use. The rules appear designed to permit technologies that do not disrupt the Amish social system, ban ones that do.

    David Friedman

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