AN ‘AUSTRIAN’ THEORY OF ORDER

Abstract

According to 'Austrian' Liberalism, an order could be defined as the unintentional result of individual choices with which, sometimes in unforeseen situations but supported by experience, individuals have managed to select rules of conduct aimed at reducing unintended, unexpected consequences and undesirables of human actions. In this order – which is therefore a provisional 'state' that no one in particular wanted and whose future is open to unexplored possibilities – knowledge and time play a primary role. However, not only has this type of order never existed (because the political regimes we have experienced were formed above all through acts of oppression, of power and through collective and political choices), but today it also has little chance of being realized . In fact, in situations characterized by the continuous emergence of new circumstances and scientific, technological and moral innovations, the time in which individual and social expectations are formed, modified and spread tends to increasingly diverge from that which institutions use to make choices. policies that favor or maintain a dimension of order understood as predictability of the outcomes of behaviors and choices in a non-ergodic world. Nonetheless, starting from 'Austrian' themes such as the theory of exchange, institutions, catallaxy and above all time, the author believes that a perhaps unorthodox but fruitful elaboration of a liberal theory of order is still possible.