[Alberta's Child]

The modern international free market economy is a marvelous, interconnected system.

I'm not disputing that -- What you didn't mention is that the entire free market economy is a human construct and therefore can't be compared to a single organism. The fact that humans alone among all the species on the planet have the capacity to create a "free-market economy" tells me that human ingenuity is not the result of a random process.

If you can find any evidence of monkeys in Africa buying and selling bananas on a futures market, I'll gladly concede the argument. Since you probably can't even imagine something as nonsensical as that (due to the inherent, permanent place that monkeys have as a form of life lower than humans), you'd have to say I've got a point.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

You're missing the distinction between centrally planned economies and free markets. In a centrally planned economy you have "intelligent designers" who decide how to allocate resources. In a free market, you don't. Free markets are an example of a complex system where system state is not a product of design.

[gdani]

...due to the inherent, permanent place that monkeys have as a form of life lower than humans

Don't be so sure about that....

[jennyp]

I'm not disputing that -- What you didn't mention is that the entire free market economy is a human construct and therefore can't be compared to a single organism. The fact that humans alone among all the species on the planet have the capacity to create a "free-market economy" tells me that human ingenuity is not the result of a random process.

If you can find any evidence of monkeys in Africa buying and selling bananas on a futures market, I'll gladly concede the argument. Since you probably can't even imagine something as nonsensical as that (due to the inherent, permanent place that monkeys have as a form of life lower than humans), you'd have to say I've got a point.

No, that's not the point. The point is that even with our intelligence, nobody actually sat down and designed the economy. It just evolved. In fact, nobody can even predict the future structure of the economy with any specificity. This evolving system has "a mind of its own", so to speak.