The January 2008 issue of Scientific American includes an
interesting article by Michael Shermer, Evonomics: Evolution and
economics are both examples of a larger mysterious phenomenon.
In it Shermer writes, As with living organisms and ecosystems,
the economy looks designed — so just as humans naturally deduce
the existence of a top-down intelligent designer, humans also
(understandably) infer that a top-down government designer is
needed in nearly every aspect of the economy. But just as living
organisms are shaped from the bottom up by natural selection,
the economy is molded from the bottom up by the invisible
hand.SKUs are Stock Keeping Units, a measure of the number of
types of retail products available. The correspondence between
evolution and economics is not perfect, because some top-down
institutional rules and laws are needed to provide a structure
within which free and fair trade can occur. But too much top-
down interference into the marketplace makes trade neither free
nor fair. When such attempt