What is Praxeonomy?

A Mini-Primer

Praxeonomy explores how societies coordinate action under radical uncertainty, where no agent fully grasps others’ preferences or future constraints. Social order emerges not by design but through decentralized actors testing behavioral strategies, with enduring norms reflecting those that best reconcile subjective values while minimizing conflict costs.

Value is an interpretive act, a conjecture about how scarce resources might satisfy needs. Coordination, then, is an epistemic challenge: knowledge remains fragmented, much of it implicit and inaccessible to any single agent. Rules—monetary norms, property conventions, contractual frameworks, and reputational mechanisms—result not from deliberate planning but evolve as unintended by-products of repeated exchange.

Prices signal (material scarcity); institutions signal legitimacy. These two axes form a dual calculus guiding decentralized choice. Entrepreneurship thrives in the space between them, not just by re-allocating resources but by resolving latent tensions between what is valued and what is permitted. Institutions persist when they reduce cognitive labor in conflict resolution, as seen in the adaptability of common law versus rigid statutory codes.

Sustainable coordination demands continuous adaptation. Centralized interventions disrupt this process by imposing static assumptions about values or constraints, severing the feedback loop between choice and preference evolution.

Praxeonomy, ultimately, is a meta-theory of spontaneous order—one in which economic and institutional discovery unfold through trial, error, and competitive imitation.