Limits of Reasonable Planning

Abstract

In the last half‐century, strange notions about planning have taken hold in the technological community. Their origin can be traced to the socialist idea of total planning, but engineers and planners are usually unaware of this. The present paper attempts to clarify these notions by seeking the proper framework for planning. This framework is based on the concept of order. Human social order is governed by two kinds of laws. The first are general laws of conduct independent of purpose; they form the basis of the general, spontaneous order and permit statistics. The second are the command‐like laws that govern the order of organizations created for the pursuit of purposes or objectives. Planning applies only to this last order, the statistics of the first being a necessary input. To apply the command‐like laws of planning to the first order is a senseless idea. Whenever attempted, it only produces distortions that upset both kinds of order.