ABSTRACT
London’s commuters get to work (or try to) on an underground railway they inherited from the Victorians and cannot repair. Football took off when neutral referees and an externally drafted rulebook allowed its teams to take the field and add up the points on level terms. Bats fly with wings that were once made for walking. Products are now routinely traded (and the more digital of them distributed) via electronic networks which such trade could never have produced. State intervention in the economy is condemned by tenured professors in publicly funded universities. The world abounds in structures which provide essential supports for its inhabitants’ action, but which that action by itself could not create or carry on. It is a troubling discovery for those who wish to view societies as able to play by their own rules, without divine or benign dictators to set the ball rolling or keep it on the pitch.
