From Gary Alexander
Your coverline “Hands off! Why things work better if you just let go,” and its teaser on the contents page – “Sometimes life runs more smoothly when you relinquish control” – misrepresent what Mark Buchanan’s article establishes (9 August, p 28). He compares attempts at centralised planning and control with local, decentralised or self-organised control, not with no control: the traffic lights he described worked more effectively when they shared traffic information with neighbouring sets of lights.
We have learned that centralised planning, with its five-year plans, cannot begin to cope with the variety of conditions on the ground. Also, no control – i.e. the “free market” – is a major cause of our current environmental and financial crises, and applying central regulation or control to this is not likely to help. A more promising alternative is a locally cooperative and self-organising market based upon principles such as Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. Your headline should really have read: “Local self-organisation does better than central planning and control”.
Diss, Norfolk, UK
