Interesting in its own right, the below lesson in breaking open parmesan cheese strikes me as providing a graphic analogy of how spontaneous order and man-made order interlock fruitfully. To adapt to and use the possibilities of a self-generating order to your advantage you must study and understand its nature, and learn to find an interface between its features and your needs. Respect for and insight into emergent order will tend to enhance the range of wholesome applications for conscious intervention. It would be rather a surprise if people, on being given more liberty, were not to extend their efforts at controlling their environment and making it accord ever more closely with their needs. For that reason alone, politics and freedom are inseparable twins of great potential and ambivalent effects.
See also my post on Greed versus Self-Interest, in which I argue that what defines man is the urge to adapt to his environment by developing and satisfying new needs. This fundamental anthropological condition explains the incidence of the entrepreneur and free markets, no less than the presence of political ambition and creativity. Proper stewardship of liberty requires participation in the vast areas in which politics rather than market based activities determine the nature and extent of freedom in a society.
Also of interest: Goodbye to Anger - A Christmas Message to Libertarians.
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