Taken over time, the twin phenomena of competition and cooperation have yielded the diversity and abundance of the earth's ecosystem in one realm and the complexity and productivity of the global market economy in the other. The most difficult concept to accept about the natural world is that it runs itself. No conscious force is needed to keep the ecosystem going. Life is a self-organizing phenomenon. From the interplay of hormones in the human body to the expansions and contractions of the great Arctic caribou herds, nature's intricately linked feedback loops automatically maintain a delicate, yet robust balance.
Markets perform the same function in the economy.
Without central planning, buyers and sellers constantly adjust to changing prices for commodities, capital, and labor. A flexible economic order emerges spontaneously from the chaos of free markets. Needless to say, this thinking bears little resemblance to conventional economics. Nonetheless, history has demonstrated that no economy behaves like a simple, cyclical machine. Like ecosystems, economies are spectacularly complex and endlessly adaptable.