The metaphors of the Enlightenment, taken to scale during the Industrial Age, led us to conceptualize markets as running with “machine-like efficiency” and frictionless alignment of supply and demand. But in fact, complex systems are tuned not for efficiency but for effectiveness—not for perfect solutions but for adaptive, resilient, good-enough solutions. This, as Rafe Sagarin depicts in the interdisciplinary survey Natural Security, is how nature works. It is how social and economic systems work too. Evolution relentlessly churns out effective, good-enough-for-now solutions in an ever-changing landscape of challenges. Effectiveness is often inefficient, usually messy, and always short-lived, such that a system that works for one era may not work for another.

Liu, Eric; Hanauer, Nick (2011-12-06). The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government (Kindle Locations 341-346). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.