Cybernetics framed global economy as price-driven feedback among guided agents
Evidence
Petersmann also cited Hayek’s work on stratification of rules of conduct to argue that “principles and rules are designed to influence individual behavior and to promote ‘spontaneous order’ or deliberately created ‘directed orders’ so as to enable economic agents to form reasonably correct expectations regarding the future behavior of individuals (including government officials) in the economic sphere.” His own definition of the global economy adhered strongly to cybernetic metaphors. “A far-reaching international division of labor among billions of people is possible only by relying, to a large extent, on the informations [sic] conveyed by spontaneous market prices (as a cybernetic feedback mechanism) and on the free efforts of millions of people guided by general framework rules of private and public national and international law.” — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 832
Categorization
- DEFINE: Gives the working definition of the global economy held by a key GATT legal theorist: spontaneous prices as cybernetic feedback plus framework rules.
- XREF: connects to: Neoliberal Geneva experts adopted Hayek’s cybernetic systems view of world order — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 831; Failed prediction exposed latent flaws in the rational economic agent concept — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 696; Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Failed prediction exposed latent flaws in the rational economic agent concept
#qualifies(0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 696 - Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior
#expands(0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939 - Institutions coordinate agent behavior and persist beyond individuals
#expands(0.72)