Most people take it for granted that the market system is a self-organizing entity.
We understand that no master plan is needed for the entire economy to work as an integrated whole, without the need for any one participant to know more than two sets of links: his suppliers and his customers.
Immensely complex structures develop to provide the most mundane and basic consumer goods, all driven by the decision making of individual entrepreneurs based on firsthand information.
The political process is also a self-organizing entity. Just as the market system, it is an immensely complex system in which any participant needs only to have a relationship with those who provide his funding and his authority. As with the market, large-scale events and patterns develop without the need for conspiracy, collaboration, or awareness.
Wars and other political atrocities happen not because of evil geniuses or secret conspiracies, but simply because the political process facilities the organization of evil activity on a large scale in the same way that the market facilitates the self-organization of value-producing activities on large scales.
The great butchers of history were not especially smart, ruthless, or capable – they just happened to be in the right time and use the political machine that their political-economic system generated.
