Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ There Is No Invisible Hand

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
Really important bit for network theorists to read: "After more than a century trying to prove the opposite, economic theorists investigating the matter finally concluded in the 1970s that there is no reason to believe markets are led, as if by an invisible hand, to an optimal equilibrium — or any equilibrium at all." The same is true of networks (after all, the same principles are in effect). Networks don't magically lead to goodness. To understand networks is, first of all, to understand that design changes outcome. That's why it's absurd to speak both of 'intervention in the marketplace' as though it were a bad thing, and 'network design' as though it were illogical.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 23, 2024 6:51 p.m.

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