How Do Free People Coordinate Their Actions?

Column for week of December 1, 2014

     We have considered the vital importance of the
contributions others make to our satisfaction.  We can't benefit
from the actions of others without interacting with them.  To
smoothly interact with others their actions must to some extent
be predictable, and coordinated with ours.  Of course, our
actions must also be predictable by them.  Imagine driving if
you had no way of predicting what other drivers would do.

     Commonly observed rules are vital to our interactions
with others.  Sometimes it isn't vital which choice others will
make.  It is vital that we can predict that choice.  It isn't
important whether the approaching drivers hold to the left or
the right.  What is important is that we know which choice
they will make.

     Some choices are so destructive to peace and prosperity
that we need to eliminate, or at least minimize, those choices. 
Murder, robbery, fraud and other aggressive actions are
destructive to peace and prosperity.  The lists of destructive
choices and choices we need to be able to predict are indeed
long ones.

     From the time people began interacting experience has
defined the choices we must be able to predict and the ones we
must try to eliminate.  It would have been impossible for the
first humans to have fashioned a list of all those choices.

     Fortunately we have the benefit of experiences down
through history.  Essentially every society has arrived at lists of
dos and don'ts that are quite similar.  These rules were not
enacted by kings or legislatures.  These vital rules were
discovered independently by many societies.   Legislation
followed the rules rather than creating them.  They became
rules to live by, not because they were enacted, rather because
people lived by them and found them beneficial.

     Whether a rule is a good one or not depends on whether
it aids the general pursuit of satisfaction, not on how many
politicians vote for it.  The natural, beneficial rules gain
widespread acceptance simply because people recognize the
benefits that flow from observing the rules.  The most that
government and enacted laws can do is try to enforce the
generally accepted rules against the few violators.

     Making up rules and trying to enforce them against a
population that contains a substantial number of dissenters
doesn't work.  It only creates strife and controversy, even if the
rule might be a beneficial one if generally accepted.  The world
might be a better, more satisfying place if people used far less
alcohol and drugs.  Trying to enforce no alcohol, no drug rules
against substantial dissent only creates strife and disaster.  The
rules of society must be discovered and accepted if they are to
work.

     Rules against destructive practices, such as "honor
killings" and racially motivated attacks won't work unless a
substantial majority of people accept the rules.   Education and
persuasion, not legislation, are the effective ways to change
behavior.  The peer pressure that goes with generally accepted
rules is far more powerful than cops and courts.

     The most cops and courts can do is round up a few
stragglers that refuse to abide by the rules already generally
accepted and enforced by peer pressure.  If most people treat
drunk drivers as unclean misfits and shun them, drunk driving
will cease to be a major problem.  So long as society shows
tolerance for drunk drivers, drunks will continue to drive.

      Within the framework of accepted rules, free individuals
agree to interact as they may choose.  So long as the rules
forbid aggression, no one is free to forcibly interfere with any
peaceful conduct.

     The more we look to government for new rules and the
imposition of old ones, the less effective all rules will become. 
Such an avalanche of laws will destroy respect for all laws,
including the natural ones that have evolved and passed the test
of time.

     Next time: Why do prices lie?

aldmccallum@gmail.com
                                * * * * *
                                 * * * *
                                  * * *
                                   * *
                                     *
Copyright 2014
Albert D. McCallum