This is interesting because opponents of regulation have always portrayed the rules as too complex and cumbersome. But the reason they fail, says Postrel, is that no amount of specificity in centralized rulemaking can ever be truly relevant to the exigencies of an organic, infinitely complex society. Simplistic rules that appear complex pervert nature. But complex, unknowable institutions work with elegant simplicity to solve problems in society. The technocrat is oblivious to this notion.
Centralized direction is therefore the agent of change.
But in reality, change happens because the market harnesses and takes into account the inherent complexity in society by devolving choice to the level of the individual. It is the only effective mechanism for optimizing the preferences of a society that always wants to progress economically and technologically. The second pillar of stasism are the reactionaries, who are brusque and arrogant about their desire to keep us mired in the past. Their idols are stability, predictability, unchanged geographic communities, equality, romanticism of the past, and tradition. Those on the right take the basically good idea of national sovereignty to its absurd extremes of xenophobia and insularity.