According to our contributor Poor Richard:

“This is the best article on the science of economics (almost an oxymoron until now) I’ve ever read. Reverse engineering from reality is the basic scientific method, and it has been sorely lacking in a mythic economics full of fictitious rational agents, “free” markets, and invisible hands.”

He’s referring to a landmark essay by Manuel de Landa, Markets and Antimarkets in the World Economy, which distinguishes between hierarchical capitalist anti-markets, and the more egalitarian meshwork markets consisting of small businesses.

According to Poor Richard, the following paragraph expresses the cause for optimism:

“Computer networks are an important element here, since the savings in coordination costs that multinational corporations achieve by internalizing markets, can be enjoyed by small firms through the use of decentralizing technology. Computers may also help us to create a new approach to control within these small firms. The management approach used by large corporations was in fact developed during World War II under the name of Operations Research. Much as mass production techniques effected a transfer of a command hierarchy from military arsenals to civilian factories, management practices based on linear analysis carry with them the centralizing tendencies of the military institutions where they were born. Fresh approaches to these questions are now under development by nonlinear scientists, in which the role of managers is not to impose preconceived plans on workers, but to catalyze the emergence of meshworks of decision-making processes among them.”