ABSTRACT
A decentralized economy motivated by self-interest and guided by price signals would be compatible with a coherent disposition of economic resources … It is important to understand how surprising this claim must be to anyone not exposed to this tradition. The immediate ‘common sense’ answer to the question ‘What will an economy motivated by a very large number of different agents look like?’ is probably: There will be chaos … quite a different answer has long been claimed true and has indeed permeated the economic thinking of a large number of people who are in no way economists.
