Henry George and Austrian economics - History of Thought

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Dec, 2001 by Leland B. Yeager

When he receives an order for such a ship, the builder does not send men out with detailed instructions for doing all the necessary work--cutting various woods, mining and refining various metals, planting hemp and cotton and breeding silkworms:

Nor does he attempt to direct the manifold operations by which these raw materials are to be brought into the required forms and combinations, and assembled in the place where the ship is to be built. Such a task would transcend the wisdom and power of a Solomon. What he does is to avail himself of the resources of a high civilization, for without that he would be helpless, and to make use for his purpose of the unconscious cooperation by which without his direction, or any general direction, the efforts of many men, working in many different places and in occupations which cover almost the whole field of a minutely diversified industry, each animated solely by the effort to obtain the satisfaction of his personal desires in what to him is the easiest way, have brought together the materials and productions needed for the putting together of such a ship. (SPE:389-90)

Deploying insights later also achieved by F. A. Hayek (1945), George goes on to speak of the mobilization of knowledge that is inevitably dispersed and that simply could not be centralized and put to use by a single mind or a single organization:

So far from any lifetime sufficing to acquire, or any single brain being able to hold, the varied knowledge that goes to the building and equipping of a modern sailing-ship, already becoming antiquated by the still more complex steamer, I doubt if the best-informed man on such subjects, even though he took a twelvemonth to study up, could give even the names of the various separate divisions of labor involved.

A modern ship, like a modern railway, is a product of modern civilization ...; of that conscious cooperation which does not come by personal direction ... but grows ... by the relation of the efforts of individuals, each seeking the satisfaction of individual desires. A mere master of men, though he might command the services of millions, could not make such a ship unless in a civilization prepared for it. (SPE:390-91)

The cooperation required for sailing a ship is relatively simple. The kind required for building one is beyond the power of conscious direction to order or improve. "The only thing that conscious direction can do to aid it is to let it alone; to give it freedom to grow, leaving men free to seek the gratification of their own desires in ways that to them seem best" (SPE:391).

George has more to say on the spontaneous mobilization of dispersed knowledge. Physical force can be aggregated, but not intelligence:

Two men cannot see twice as far as one man, nor a hundred thousand determine one hundred thousand times as well.... No one ever said, "In a multitude of generals there is victory." On the contrary, the adage is, "One poor general is better than two good ones." (SPE:392)

In spontaneous cooperation, however,