 Understanding Social Order and Change
Exploring the Role of Voluntary Action in Society
Austrian economics explains how Adam Smith's "invisible hand" produces spontaneous order in commercial markets. What invisible hands are at work in the not-for-profit sector of the society, and how do they work to promote social order? How can philanthropy work in concert with spontaneous social orders?
Research may include:
- Compiling a social typology and map of the social landscape, including an inventory of the principal categories of voluntary formations and organizations, from individuals to the growing number of global voluntary agencies.
- Postulating a hierarchy of voluntary organizations, ranked from the most local to the most remote. How might the doctrine of subsidiarity be applied? Should voluntary entities have constitutional status so that responsibilities could not be assumed without due process by a more remote institution?
- Compiling examples of collaboration between voluntary non-profit agencies and commercial organizations. What are other possibilities for such collaboration? Which presumably necessary social services now provided by voluntary non-profit agencies might be commercialized and their reach extended with vouchers? Which presumably necessary social services might voluntary agencies contract out to competitive commercial vendors?
- Identifying invisible hands at work in society's non-commercial sector.
- Finding better terms to distinguish spontaneous order and contrived order. Cosmos and taxis won't do, nor will "the visible hand" and he invisible hand". How do we describe the whole society that includes commercial institutions and excludes agencies with the power to tax and command? We call governmental assumption of a responsibility "socializing" it. We call the return of responsibilities to commercial organizations "privatizing" them. What do we call the voluntary non-profit assumption of responsibilities from government?
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