Cybernetics has revealed something remarkable to us—there is virtually no chaos to be found in this world. Everywhere you encounter orders or their components. And, of course, the overwhelming majority of them are invisible to simple observation. Moreover, this is often precisely the case when the observer destroys the observed. We, entirely without noticing it, are participants in a vast number of orders that constantly arise and disappear. We do not recognize many phenomena as orders because we are accustomed only to simple cause-and-effect relationships, linear dependencies, closed structures. But orders of this type and connections of this type are but a small part of what surrounds us, and even of what we ourselves have created and in which we participate directly.
Our ignorance of them by no means signifies that such orders do not exist or that their influence is insignificant. On the contrary, most of these orders have a decisive impact on our lives. A classic example is the market, which represents a constantly changing set of self-organizing orders. In reality, it is a fundamentally regulated thing. In other words, it can only be effective through constant self-regulation. We do not know and cannot know “how everything is arranged inside,” if only because we ourselves are participants in the process. I should note that this knowledge is not needed, and if it is at all possible, it will always be a snapshot, an instantaneous photograph of a situation that will already be completely different in the next moment. I also note that the case of the market clearly demonstrates the results of attempts to change the principles of orders that we do not understand. This result is constantly and persuasively demonstrated to us by states that, in the majority of cases, with their intervention make the market dysfunctional, destroying self-regulation, trying to replace natural orders with their own understanding of expediency.
An understanding of these simple things already makes the idea of a factory where we all, under the leadership of the president, are fighting for growth in economic indicators, laughable.
Society is too complex a conglomerate that, moreover, cannot by definition have common goals. Our desire to “bring order” precisely in political power obviously has a simple cause—after all, political power is perhaps the most visible order that, as we believe, is “called upon” to organize other orders. But this understanding is a clear misconception. Political power is probably far from the largest and perhaps even not the most significant order. Meanwhile, the desire to organize political power according to a strict hierarchical principle means that its influence will spread to many other orders of which we have no idea. Thus, we prevent ourselves from self-organizing into orders serving our everyday goals.
We cannot say which orders are necessary and how they should function. They will arise anyway, regardless of our desires. We can only create conditions under which people would have maximum information and freedom when making individual decisions. It is precisely under these conditions that the best coordination and self-organization occur, and therefore also the correct elimination of disorder through the emergence of orders of those types and forms that are necessary in a given situation.
Well, speaking in completely practical terms—order does not begin with the strong hand of the president, but with your home.
In conclusion, I will quote another passage illustrating the limits of the hierarchical type of management that we so love: “In sociology, an experiment is known in which participants sitting in enclosed cubicles were given cards with numbers, with only one number being common and appearing on all cards. The task was to identify this common number under strict restrictions on communication possibilities. In one of the experiments, participants exchanged notes with a proposed number with their neighbors in a circular layout of cubicles; another scheme provided more opportunities for contacts; in a third scheme, all information went through one ‘boss’ unknown to the others. In the latter case, the correct answer was obtained faster, although moral feelings were worse. Participants spoke of some ‘cretin’ who was preventing them from acting effectively. However, when the task was complicated, when instead of numbers, balls with complex patterns that were difficult to describe in a note were offered, the experiment broke down under the hierarchical scheme. Participants left the cubicles in anger, and insults appeared on the notes. Attention switched from communication to communicators. When determining the common ball using a democratic scheme, people not only solved this problem but also created a common language for designating patterns, noting pleasure from the work.”
A good example of what Hayek’s Spontaneous Orders look like
A good example of what those “spontaneous orders” look like—which are the result not of conscious planning with a predetermined goal, but of the activity of many people pursuing their own goals—exists in the classic book by Jane Jacobs “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” I do not know if Jacobs was familiar with Hayek’s ideas at the time of writing her book (it seems to me that most likely not). In any case, one can say with certainty that Jacobs does not set any apologetic tasks in her book, is not an “anarcho-capitalist” and follower of the “Austrian school.” She does not present her examples within some speculative “how it could be.” Her goal is much more mundane—this is a critique of urban planning policy adopted in the USA. All the more valuable, it seems to me, are her observations. There will be many quotes ahead and quite a lot of text overall. So, Jacobs describes how a “correct” street produces the safety so loved in our discussions, which, as many believe, cannot be obtained in any way without state coercion. It turns out that safety (understood in this case as the absence of robbery and violence) can exist without police patrols if a certain spontaneous order develops on the street. The conclusion regarding police is my own, but it will occur to any “anarcho-capitalist” reading this book. Jacobs, however, asks a different question: why are some streets safer than others? In the course of answering it, she describes that very spontaneous order that underlies life on safe streets.
First, she dispels several persistent misconceptions:
“This problem (of safety—VZ) cannot be considered a problem of old urban areas. Sometimes it reaches staggering acuity on reconstructed urban sections, including those considered exemplary—for example, in housing developments for people with average incomes. Recently, the chief of the local police precinct of one such development, which was praised throughout the country (praised primarily by urban planners and lenders), warned residents not only against walking the streets in the dark but also against opening the door to strangers. Such life greatly resembles the life of the three little pigs or the seven kids from children’s thrillers. The problem of safety on sidewalks and at entrance doors is equally serious in cities where conscious efforts were made to renew the housing stock and in cities that have lagged behind in this regard. Unproductive is also the attempt to place responsibility for urban dangers on various minorities, on the poor, on the ‘dregs of society.’ Among such groups and among urban areas where they live, there are enormous differences in terms of civility and safety. For example, some of the safest streets for pedestrians in New York at any time of day or night are those where the poor or minorities live. But some of the most dangerous areas are populated by people from exactly the same categories. The same can be said about other major cities.”
Then follows, actually, the thesis:
“The first thing to understand: the public tranquility of big cities (tranquility on their sidewalks and streets) is maintained by the police only in the second instance, however necessary it may be. First of all, it is maintained by a complex, almost imperceptible to consciousness network of control and surveillance, woven by the population itself. On some urban sections (obvious examples are often old public housing developments and those streets where population turnover is extremely high) the maintenance of law and order on public sidewalks is almost entirely placed on the police and special security. Such places are true jungles. No police forces are capable of establishing civilization where the normal mechanisms of everyday, unconstrained its maintenance have been broken.” “And here we come to the most important question concerning every street of a big city: how convenient opportunities for crime does it provide? There is an opinion that every city has some volume of crime dependent on nothing, which will be realized one way or another (I do not believe this). In any case, different streets receive very different shares of barbarism and fear of barbarism.”
“Some streets give barbarism no chance whatsoever. A remarkable example is the streets of Boston’s North End. In this regard, they, I think, are second to no place on earth. Although most North End residents are Italians or of Italian descent, those streets are intensely and constantly used by people of all races and any origin. Some of the ‘outsiders’ work in the North End or nearby, others come to shop and stroll, many, including minorities who settled in dangerous areas abandoned by former residents, cash their paychecks at North End stores and immediately make large weekly purchases there, because on these streets there is no risk of parting with money before spending them.”
“Frank Heavey, director of the local social institution North End Union, says: ‘I have been in the North End for twenty-eight years and during all that time have not heard of a single case of rape, robbery, child molestation, or other similar street crime in this area. If such had happened, I would know, even if it hadn’t made the newspapers.’ Several times over three decades, Heavey says, potential rapists tried to lure a child into their nets or attack a woman late at night. And invariably these attempts were thwarted by passersby, store owners, or curious onlookers who noticed something wrong through a window.”
Jacobs says that a big city differs from a village and small towns in that strangers are constantly present on its streets. In villages and small towns, people are usually acquainted with each other and order there is largely based on reputation in the local community. In a big city, of course, there are also plenty of various communities, but streets are used by everyone and strangers on streets are the norm, not an exception (it should be said that there exists a practice of kind of closed settlements within city limits, which Jacobs also talks about).
How can an urban street maintain safety under these conditions? Jacobs’s answer is that order on a street depends on “the complexity of the use of the environment”
“This is a truth known to all: an intensively used urban street is, as a rule, safe. A deserted urban street is, as a rule, a danger zone. But what mechanisms are at work here? And why are some streets used intensively while others are not? Why do people avoid the commercial-promenade zone in Washington Houses, created specifically to attract them? Why are the sidewalks of the old city slightly to the west of the complex full of people? And what can be said about streets that are lively for part of the day and then suddenly empty out?”
“For a big-city street to be capable of withstanding the influx of strangers and even raising the level of safety with their help, which always happens in successful urban areas, it must meet three main requirements.”
“First, there must be a clear distinction between public and private spaces. They cannot flow smoothly into one another, as is usually the case in suburbs and in housing developments built according to a single design.”
“Second, there must be eyes looking toward the street—eyes belonging to those who could be called the natural owners of the street. Buildings adapted to deal with strangers and to ensure safety for both local residents and strangers must face the street. They cannot turn their back to it or present a blank side and deprive it of sight. And, third, there should be more or less constantly people on the sidewalk using it. This is important both for increasing the number of useful eyes at their expense and so that a sufficient number of people in the buildings along the street have an incentive to look at the sidewalks. Few people enjoy sitting on a porch or at a window and staring at an empty street, and almost no one does it. But lively street life is an exciting spectacle for many and many.” “Not all city residents participate in caring for the streets, and many who live or work in cities have no idea why it is safe in their district. The other day an incident occurred on the street where I live, and it interested me precisely in this regard.”
“I should explain that my block is small, but it has quite a lot of different types of buildings: from several varieties of cheap apartment houses to three- or four-story small structures, either converted so that each floor except the first has a low-rent apartment and the first floor has a shop, or, as in my case, adapted for single-family living. The opposite side of the street was previously mostly built up with four-story brick tenement buildings without elevators with shops on the first floor. But twelve years ago, several of these buildings, from the corner to the middle of the block, were converted into one building with elevators and small apartments rented at high prices.”
“The incident that attracted my attention involved a hidden struggle between a man and a girl of eight or nine. It seemed he was trying to get the girl to go with him. He alternately coaxed her and adopted an expression of feigned indifference. The girl stood, straight and tense, as children resisting often do, against the wall of one of the cheap apartment houses on that side of the street.”
“Watching the scene from my second-floor window and thinking how I could intervene if needed, I soon saw that I need not worry. A woman came out of the meat shop on the first floor of that very building across the street, who runs the business there together with her husband. Crossing her arms over her chest, with a determined face she stood within earshot of the man and the girl. At about the same moment, on their other side, Joe Cornaccia appeared with a firm look, who together with his sons-in-law runs a deli. Several heads stuck out from windows in the building, one quickly withdrew, and a few moments later its owner appeared in the doorway behind the man. Two patrons of the bar next to the meat shop approached the door and began waiting. On my side of the street, the locksmith, the fruit seller, and the owner of the laundromat came out of their establishments, and from several windows besides mine, residents watched the scene unfold. Without knowing it, the stranger was surrounded. No one would have let him drag the girl away, even though everyone was seeing her for the first time.”
“With regret—although this regret is of a purely theatrical nature—I must report that the girl turned out to be his daughter.”
“The main condition creating the possibility of such observation is the abundance of shops and other public places located along the sidewalks; it is especially important that among them there are establishments operating in the evening and at night. The main categories of such establishments are shops, bars, and restaurants; they ensure safety on sidewalks in several different and complex ways.”
“First, they give people—both residents of the area and ‘outsiders’—specific reasons to use the sidewalks onto which these establishments face.”
“Second, they encourage people to walk along sidewalks past places that are not attractive for public use as such but become intermediate stops on the way to something else; because geographically this influence does not extend very far, establishments must be located in the area frequently enough to populate intermediate sections of the street with passersby. Moreover, there must be many different types of establishments so that people have reasons to move along cross routes.”
“Third, the owners of shops and other small business enterprises themselves are usually active defenders of law and order. They cannot stand broken windows and robberies; it is extremely disadvantageous for them if visitors are nervous about safety. If there are enough of them, they form a very effective system of surveillance of streets and sidewalks.”
“Fourth, street activity created by those going about their business and those wanting a snack or a drink serves as a magnet attracting other people.”
“This last point—that people simply by being present attract other people—seems incomprehensible to urban planners and architect-designers in major cities.”
“Strangers have become a tremendous benefit and stimulus for the street where I live, especially late in the evening and at night, when the means ensuring safety are especially necessary. We are lucky: we not only have a local bar and another one around the corner, but also a famous bar attracting hordes of strangers from neighboring city sections and even from other cities. It gained fame because the poet Dylan Thomas visited it and mentioned it in his works. Every day the operation of this bar is clearly divided into two periods. In the morning and early afternoon hours, it is a traditional meeting place for an old local community of Irish longshoremen and workers of other professions. But from mid-afternoon onward, a different life goes on here, more like a cross between male student beer gatherings and a literary cocktail, and this continues well past midnight. If you pass by the White Horse on a cold winter evening and at that moment the door opens, a powerful, warm wave of conversation and excitement washes over you. People going to and from the bar do not let our street empty out until three in the morning, and it is always safe to walk on it. The only case of beating on our street that I know of occurred in the dead interval between the bar closing and dawn. The beating was stopped by our neighbor who saw it happening through the window and intervened, subconsciously confident that even at night he is not alone, that he is part of a sturdy system of street law enforcement.”
“In some wealthy areas where independent civic surveillance is weakly developed—for example, on the Park Avenue residential section or on the northern stretch of Fifth Avenue in New York—special street watchers are hired. In particular, the monotonous sidewalks of the Park Avenue residential area are surprisingly little used; instead, potential users crowd onto the interesting, shop-, bar-, and restaurant-rich sidewalks of Lexington Avenue and Madison Avenue to the east and west and on the cross streets leading to them. A network of doormen and building managers, messengers and nannies, a kind of hired local environment, provides the Park Avenue residential area with eyes. In the evenings, relying on doormen as a bulwark of their safety, dog owners take them for walks and add their eyes to the doormen’s. But this street is so poor in observers organically connected to it, it creates so few reasons to use it and monitor it, rather than turning the corner at the first opportunity, that if apartment rent falls below the level allowing the maintenance of all these numerous doormen and elevator operators, it will certainly become an extremely dangerous street.”
“Beneath the apparent disorder of the old city, where it functions successfully, there is a delightful order ensuring street safety and freedom of citizens. This is a complex order. Its essence lies in the richness of sidewalk life, continuously generating a sufficient number of watchful eyes. This order consists entirely of movement and change, and although this is life, not art, one nevertheless wants to call it one of the forms of urban art. A fanciful comparison suggests itself to a dance—not a simple synchronous dance when everyone raises a leg at the same moment, rotates simultaneously, and bows together, but an intricate ballet in which all dancers and ensembles have their own special roles that somehow miraculously reinforce each other and form an ordered whole. On a good city sidewalk, this ballet is never the same from place to place, and on any given section it invariably abounds in improvisations.”
In general, safety, if the conditions of “complexity of the use of the environment” are met, arises and exists as a Hayekian spontaneous order. That is, none of its participants set the goal of the emergence of such an order, no one “monitors” it specially. The diversity of the surrounding environment generates it as it were “by itself,” this is a new, unplanned quality that is maintained by the environment itself, and if some conditions change, the order may collapse. Some spontaneous orders (Hayek usually gives the example of language, morals, and law) turned out to be so useful that they can apparently only be destroyed along with humanity. In utilitarian terms, one can say that the diversity of the environment and the “complexity” of its use “reduces costs” for people who will be directly at the scene of a crime (Jacobs’s neighbor is confident that he will be supported even at night), which allows maintaining an acceptable level of safety.
I think no explanation is needed that spontaneous orders are a common phenomenon in our lives, most of these orders we do not even notice; a special interest and a special situation are needed (to find out why some streets are safe and others are not) in which a spontaneous order can be detected and approximately described.
Jacobs describes the conditions under which safety is possible as a spontaneous order. Obviously, such an order cannot be created artificially, even if one tries to carefully reproduce all these conditions. Rather, one can speak about what should not be done. Essentially, this is a particular case of the more general problem of state intervention, because “complexity of use” usually arises where things go on as usual and where the life-giving hand of the state has not reached. Urban construction is a highly regulated “industry.” City authorities around the world regularly demolish and rebuild entire neighborhoods. It is not the market that regulates this process, but the bureaucrat. The most typical example of regulation is “zoning,” that is, artificial placement of structures according to their use (“residential buildings,” “enterprises,” “shops”). All this, as a rule, simplifies the “complexity of use,” leading to various problems that in other cases resolve “by themselves,” that is, through the existence of spontaneous orders.
In conclusion, a very revealing story.
“Consider, for example, the reaction of orthodox urban planners to the fate of Boston’s North End district. This is an old neighborhood with low rent, transitioning to a coastal industrial zone, and it is officially recognized as containing the worst slums in Boston and a disgrace to the city. It embodies everything that enlightened people with conviction consider bad, because it has been called bad by the most authoritative specialists. Not only does the North End adjoin industrial enterprises—it also has residential premises most complexly coexisting with all sorts of workplaces and shops. Here is the highest in all of Boston and one of the highest in American major cities density of residential units on areas used for housing. There are few parks and squares here. Children play right on the streets. There are neither big nor even comparatively big blocks—all blocks are small; using the jargon of urban planners, the district is ‘wastefully cut up by unnecessary streets.’ The buildings are old. In a word, whatever you take, nothing in the North End is as it should be. In the worldview of orthodox urban planning, this is a three-dimensional textbook example of a ‘megalopolis’ in the final stage of corruption. No wonder the North End has become a regular assignment for students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University studying architecture and urban planning; again and again, under the guidance of teachers, they transform it on paper into a set of enlarged ‘superblocks’ and park zones, eliminate unsuitable activities, convert the district into a model of order, elegance, and simplicity, into something that can be engraved on a pinhead.”
“Twenty years ago, when I first saw the North End, its buildings—townhouses of various types and sizes, divided by floors into apartments, and cheap four- to five-story apartment buildings, built to accommodate the flow of immigrants initially from Ireland, then from Eastern Europe, and finally from Sicily—were terribly overcrowded, and there was a general impression that the district was subjected to cruel physical beating and, self-evidently, extremely poor.”
“In 1959, when I again visited the North End, I was amazed by the change that had occurred. Dozens and dozens of houses had been renovated. Instead of mattresses replacing broken windows, I saw retractable blinds and fresh paint on the walls. In many small converted houses, one family or two now lived instead of the previous three to four. Some families living in cheap apartment buildings got more space by combining two apartments into one and equipping it with a bathroom, new kitchen, and the like (I found this out later, visiting people at home). I peeked into a narrow alley, thinking that at least there I would see the old, untidy North End—and I was wrong: again, neatly patched brickwork, new blinds, and a stream of music from a suddenly opening door. Truly, this is the only district of a major city in my memory where the side walls of buildings around parking areas were not left unfinished and as it were amputated—they were repaired and painted, like the sections that are in full view. Between residential buildings there was an incredible number of excellent grocery stores and such enterprises as furniture upholstery workshops, metalworking shops, woodworking shops, food establishments. The streets teemed with life: children played, adults shopped, strolled, chatted. If it were not for the January cold, some would surely have been sitting in the open air.”
“The general atmosphere of cheerfulness, friendliness, and health prevailing on the streets was so contagious that I began asking passersby how to get to one place or another, just for the pleasure of talking with them. During the previous two days I had seen much in Boston, mostly quite depressing, and the North End against this background caused me relief, seeming the healthiest place in the city. But I could not understand where the money for all this renewal came from—for it is now almost impossible to obtain any substantial sum as collateral for real estate in a large American city unless the house is in a high-rent district or a district imitating a suburb. To figure this out, I went into a restaurant with a bar where there was lively conversation about fishing and called a Boston urban planner I knew.”
"—Oh God, what brought you there?—he was surprised. —Where did they get money? No one invests money or labor there! Nothing happens there at all. It will start happening someday, but not now. It’s a slum!"
"—No, the North End does not seem like a slum to me," I objected."
"—Come on! The North End is the worst slum in the city. Two hundred seventy-five residential units per acre of residential development! Very unpleasant to admit that such exists in Boston, but it’s a fact."
"—Do you have any other figures?"
"—Yes… strange thing. Levels of crime, morbidity, and child mortality there are some of the lowest in the city. Also—the lowest in all of Boston rent-to-income ratio. People sure know how to find good deals! Let’s see further… number of children—average for the city, down to the dot. Mortality low—8.8 per thousand with a city average of 11.2. Tuberculosis mortality very low, less than one case per ten thousand, I don’t understand, this is even better than in Brooklyn. The North End used to be the most tuberculous area in Boston, but now, it turns out, things are not like that. Strong people, probably… One way or another, it’s a horrible slum."
"—More of such slums would be welcome," I noted. “—Just don’t tell me there are plans to demolish all this.”
"—I understand your feelings," he said. “—I myself often drop by there—just to walk the streets, to soak in this wonderful, welcoming street atmosphere. You should visit there in summer—that’s when they have real fun! In summer your head would spin. But, of course, sooner or later we’ll get around to this area. We need to get people off the streets.”