(I have endeavored, over the past year or two, to avoid just this sort of hot air vortex...but now I've failed....)
I don't think it's true.
Markets are not chaos. They specifically are order, whereas states pretend to cause order by putting words on paper and cause chaos. Neither does the public's response to those edicts resemble order, nor the acts of law enforcement, or for that matter, the courts. The market, on the other hand, is a voluntary order, that can be seen from the atomic level though not always from a top-down hierarchical level--because it's not a hierarchy, nor can it be.
The chaos which is caused by impossible edicts is real, at the top, bottom, and in between. The order, which is caused by markets, and the fundamental atomic action of quid pro quo, is order, at every level, though the person who sees order as top-down design does not see the order.
As for Riggenbach, his point that a is salient. There have been successful examples of communism within a free market, because free markets can tolerate voluntary communism within, though communism cannot tolerate markets within. Yet, all the "great" American communist colonies eventually failed when they became populated by progeny who were not as "faithful" in the system as their progenitors. The two obvious responses to this are to allow failure or to force those within to follow the system. Neither worked, and hence, those colonies, even after attaining considerable success, failed.
It's been said that organizing libertarians is like herding cats. That's because in the context of liberty, top down hierarchy does not work well. That does not mean a voluntary order is not possible--but these fantasies of top-down design are just that--fantasies.
That said, there is a system in which hierarchies, though probably not optimal, are in common use, in a context of liberty. This is in combination with property. When a property owner sets the rules on his property, he organizes, top down if he chooses, the way in which labor will be structured, in addition to the flow of resources. The providers of labor voluntarily participate, or leave if/when they choose.
Management gurus have learned that the hierarchy in such an endeavor, unlike the state, is not necessarily a rigid hierarchy. The most successful market endeavors allow an astonishing level of autonomy on the part of the participants, but ultimately hold them responsible for any abuse or unwise use of this autonomy (to some extent, this is self-evident--it is why middle managers are needed in large endeavors.) Recognize how much more this is true of a typical private business than a corporation.
This is why corporations are wasteful and rely on their state connections in a competitive context, while private businesses are more robust (and, typically, much smaller.) Once again, the voluntary order at the atomic level trumps imposed hierarchy. The only reason this can be accomplished, in a large endeavor, is because the property owner chooses not to impose strict hierarchy, while also holding the participants accountable. Without a property owner, this is not possible.
Thus, the ownership of the means of production allows the owner to choose the direction of an endeavor without necessarily defining all tasks and all uses of resources, while participation can remain voluntary, in a free market. In such a system, all actors can be held accountable, which is not possible under any other known system. People can voluntarily attempt another system, within the context of liberty, but it is my belief and that of many others that such an attempt is foolhardy and either results in its failure to create wealth in the long term or its failure to remain voluntary.
The Free Talk Live BBS
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Topic: Mises' Jeff Riggenbach shreds the Zeitgeist movement (sort of) (Read 21388 times)