Definition and use on the show
On The Bob Zadek Show, “spontaneous order” is the label Bob Zadek gives to the proposition that citizens left alone will build institutions, markets and political systems that work, developing them from the bottom up rather than as the result of top-down control. Zadek states the definition directly in his 2014 interview with North Korean defector Yeonmi Park: spontaneous order describes a system whereby citizens, if left alone, build institutions and markets and political systems that work, doing what is best for everybody, and it develops spontaneously rather than by top-down control Yeonmi Park – North Korean Defector: “Juche” Die, Markets Rise (2014). In the same episode he pairs the term with the claim that any top-down economy cannot work and must instead be driven by spontaneous order, and he contrasts North Korea, where he says spontaneous order is slowly taking hold, with what he calls the opposite trend in America toward a top-down Washington dictates system.
The concept is not confined to that episode. A 2015 episode with David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, lists spontaneous order among the core principles of libertarianism alongside individual rights and limited government, in a discussion of Boaz’s book The Libertarian Mind David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015). The same episode’s topic list also names the abolitionist and feminist movements as part of libertarianism’s historical roots, the failures of the drug war, the unintended consequences of the welfare state, and the tension between religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws, though the excerpt does not state how spontaneous order figures in those arguments.
North Korea: markets the state could not suppress
The most developed treatment comes from the Park interview. Zadek frames the lesson of the episode as twofold: that a totalitarian socialist economic system could not feed the people and had to let markets in just to feed them, so that the free market system came to the rescue of a socialist top-down system; and that information is what causes the change. He tells listeners that markets are the salvation and the source of freedom and economic health, and that any effort to suppress markets is bad for the country Yeonmi Park – North Korean Defector: “Juche” Die, Markets Rise (2014).
Park supplies the ground-level account. She describes herself as part of the Black Market Generation, which Zadek characterizes as having grown up with no real allegiance to the Kim dynasty, having experienced free markets for the first time, and having had access to information. Asked how easy the adjustment was, Park answers that people can do it very flexibly if they have money, but that there are lots of restrictions even though it is called a market, with the government controlling it extremely and sometimes banning the market; people now consider the Kim dynasty an obstacle to private work. Asked whether the first market visit seemed strange, she says the market was not anything special because it was the place she went most often with her parents, and that she learned to count money, bargain and trade there before schoolwork mattered. Without the market, she says, North Korean society cannot move and people cannot survive; the market created the things they need to survive and is the most important thing for North Koreans.
On the government’s stance, Park says it tries to suppress the market because as markets and economics grow people gain wealth, see more outside media and access outside information easily, but that the government lacks the money or food to feed people and so cannot stop the market. Zadek suggests the government, somewhat like China, would be happy to hold on to political control while giving up some economic control, and Park agrees, adding that the North Korean government is afraid because economic freedom comes first and later the — the excerpt breaks off there. On the country’s trajectory, Park says she cannot say North Korea will change tomorrow but that people are changing from the underneath, that they have lost faith in the government and can see the truth, and that nothing is forever; she calls the biggest possibility a change like China’s, opening the economic system first to the world and later changing politically, though she says they at least have to do something with the economy because people are starving.
Cities as unplanned order
In a 2020 episode on the future of cities, Brent Orrell offers a four-part definition of what a city is. Cities are social, he says, the human instinct for community expressed on a massive scale and quite literally encoded in our DNA. Second, cities are like circuses, with thousands or millions of performances enacted simultaneously; the whole project works not because it is planned but because it is the product of an uncountable number of individual actions that spontaneously emerge into order. Urban systems such as government, police, transit, education and health do not create cities, he says, but are created in response to and as part of this spontaneous order The Future of Cities (2020). Third, cities are self-compounding, building upon themselves and depending on density; Orrell states that the largest 300 cities in the world account for about 50% of global GDP and that Americans in large urban areas are 50% more productive than those in smaller metro areas. Fourth, cities are both delicate and resilient: easily disrupted by catastrophe, but rarely failing and disappearing, tending to emerge stronger after disasters. He calls this a reason for hope that cities will stay with us and evolve rather than disappear.
Pandemic behavior and the common law
A 2020 episode with Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute applies the idea to COVID-19. Young’s central claim is that government did not start the lockdown — people did. Once people learned what it takes to flatten the curve and what physical distancing and wearing masks can do, they started doing it, and he says that has been much more helpful than any mandate that came along later. Politicians, in his account, see which way the parade is headed and scramble to get to the head of it; they are not leading but following Reversing the Ratchet (2020).
Zadek connects this to the common law, which he describes as people behaving in a society in a certain way so that the law evolved not by legislation but by millions of people interacting, with statutes passed late in the game not to alter behavior but to put the force of government behind norms people had already concluded were right. He calls this the common law of behavior in a pandemic and asks whether Young prefers one size fits all or every individual armed with good information using it in a way that fits their lifestyle. Young agrees and adds that because the virus is novel, learning and adaptation are ongoing, and that in trial and error a big part of trial is error, so people can make mistakes, learn and adapt more quickly and on a much more mass scale than Congress or — the excerpt breaks off there.
Across episodes: no single line of development
The excerpts do not show the same question argued and then revised across episodes. Park’s 2014 interview supplies the definition and the North Korean case; Boaz’s 2015 episode lists spontaneous order among libertarian core principles without developing it in the excerpt; Orrell’s 2020 episode applies it to cities; and Young’s 2020 episode applies it to pandemic behavior and the common law. Each treatment is self-contained, and no speaker in these excerpts responds to another’s formulation.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state who coined the term spontaneous order, nor do they name the economists Zadek alludes to when he says libertarian economists use it. They do not give the founding date or principles of the Cato Institute or the Competitive Enterprise Institute beyond the titles and roles named, and they do not state what any case held or which amendment any dispute turned on. Several passages end mid-sentence, including Park’s remark on economic freedom coming first and Young’s comparison to Congress, and those thoughts are left unfinished here as in the source.