What Bees Can Teach Us About Why People Should Run Their Own Lives

The Federalist ^ | 7/23/16 | John Conlin

[John Conlin]

Individual honey bees aren’t very smart, yet honey bee hives, which may contain tens of thousands of individual bees, show remarkable intelligence. Scientists who study this type of swarm intelligence point out a key ingredient: no one is in charge. The hive functions just fine with no management, just countless interactions between individual bees with each following simple rules of thumb. A system like this is called self-organizing. Life itself is self-organizing.

That’s how swarm intelligence works: simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. No bee sees the big picture. No bee tells any other bee what to do. No fearless leader is required or desired. In fact, if a self-appointed “super-bee” were to attempt to take charge of this process, the entire hive would cease to function and all the bees would be doomed.

[Rebelbase]

Need my glasses.

“What Bees Can Teach Us About Why People Should Run for Their Lives”

[PGR88]

Yes, but bees have queens.

[Red Badger]

Sounds just like the Democrat Party...............

[sagar]

If they were so smart, why are they going extinct?

[Buttons12]

I love bees. But I don’t advocate killing our non-contributing population as they do, and as for remarkable intelligence, if somebody in my house were going about with a parasite the size of a turtle on his back, I’d think about prying it off.

[all the best]

Free “chaotic” markets work infinitely better than controlled economies. Excellent post. No one person has all the information need to take charge. It is the interaction of many millions that, in effect, is the mastermind.
The less control, the more order.

[super7man]

We are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

[refermech]

Yeh, we can all walk around staring at video screens all day. That will get the work done.

[John Conlin]

You got it! and the amazing thing is “chaotic” markets actually create order, structure and progress.

The top-down, command-and-control systems are the ones which lead to chaos. And these are found nowhere in the natural world.

[Know et al]

I worked with a beekeeper for a few years. He introduced me to the “finer points” of beekeeping.

It was one of the most interesting things I have ever done.

[GBA]

Castiel, from Supernatural Season 7.21

"Outside today, in the garden, I followed a honeybee. I saw the route of flowers. It's all right there, the whole plan. There's nothing to add."

"I don't fight any more. I watch the bees."

Yeah, me, too.

[stylin19a]

bees are born into adulthood...kinda like our liberal snowflakes

[Sergio]

bkmk

[B4Ranch]

That’s pretty much how India operates. The result is cows walking out in the city traffic. People crapping wherever and whenever the urge takes them. Dead bodies floating in the rivers. Unbelievable traffic jams.

No thanks, I prefer law and order.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

American socialists have been determined to evade the totalitarian implications of socialism. Thus, they call socialism “liberalism.” And thus, they follow longstanding tradition of suppressing - by propagandistic abuse of the very word for it - the very concept of “society:”

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. The burden of the article is how diffuse are the inputs to make a simple item like a pencil. Of course a particular company - Eberhard Faber, in the example instance - made the pencil. But Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Faber did not simply speak the pencil into existence; the company has to have buildings housing machinery, and workers to operate the machines. But beyond that, the Eberhard Faber workers have to have food, shelter, and normal amenities - including those required by their families.

And the same is true of the vendors who supply Eberhard Faber with the machinery they require, and all the obvious materials - wood, graphite, rubber, and the ferrule material and the enamel. All those vendors have their own equipment, workers, and supply chain. And in all cases the workers need food, shelter, and normal amenities. So although the pencil certainly does not exist without Eberhard Faber, society works together to make pencils - and everything else.

So, “you didn't build that? Somebody else made that happen?” Yes - but that “somebody else” was not government. The “somebody” was more like everybody - mostly very indirectly.

Improvement in efficiency via government “planning” is a paper tiger. Government planning is merely interference in society’s subtle workings by people who have nowhere near the competence needed to make such large decisions and be responsible for them. It is nothing more than the irresponsible separation of responsibility from authority, in violation of the first principle of good management.

[bankwalker]

“Oh, the jobs people work at! Out west near Hawtch-Hawtch there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher, his job is to watch. Is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee, a bee that is watched will work harder you see.

So he watched and he watched, but in spite of his watch that bee didn't work any harder not mawtch. So then somebody said "Our old bee-watching man just isn't bee watching as hard as he can, he ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher! The thing that we need is a bee-watcher-watcher!".

Well, the bee-watcher-watcher watched the bee-watcher. He didn't watch well so another Hawtch-Hawtcher had to come in as a watch-watcher-watcher!

And now all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch are watching on watch watcher watchering watch, watch watching the watcher who's watching that bee. You're not a Hawtch-Watcher you're lucky you see!”

― Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?