[tomdemaine]

I ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a coke at a restaurant and got it. If you think for a few minutes about the steps involved in that I hope you'll see how amazing it is. First the burger. We have a bunch of different elements all on massively different timescales that came together at the exact time I wanted. It takes maybe 3 months to make cheese? Probably 9 to grow wheat, make flour and turn it into bread for the bun and the process or raising slaughtering and preparing a cow for a beef patty must be a 4 or 5 year process. There's also lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise that all had to be farmed and processed on wildly different timescales. Similarly for the potatoes used to make the fries and the corn syrup in the cola. All these things miraculously happened to be in the same place at the same time ready to be cooked as soon as I ordered. Then it had to be cooked by a chef with some training in these matters and brought to me with a smile by an attractive young waitress. Within 15 minutes of ordering I had myself a tasty meal.

And here's the important part. At no point during this process, this incredible, astonishing feat of coordination was anyone doing anything other than voluntarily acting, trading with others for their own selfish benefit. There was no central plan, no oversight committee and no hamburger allocation fund.

You know how much I paid for this? A job that took up to 5 years to come to fruition? $7, plus tip (which was a pretty irrational thing to do seeing as I'm just passing through and will probably never eat there again I should've free ridered). Individuals acting in their own self interest in a broad and free marketplace can make the most amazing occurrences seem incredibly mundane and I think we sometimes forget how amazing the things we take for granted often are.

If humans beings can accomplish feats like this over and over to the point that we stop even thinking about them and take them entirely for granted there is nothing that we can't achieve.