Spontaneous Order vs. Dionysus vs. Rousseau

Ok, that is a strange combination. But I was thinking about different theories of the group. I have been obsessed with thinking about collective action since I first read Hayek who articulated the idea in a way I had not found in other places. Now I know that collective action problems are everywhere, but it really depends on how you look at them. So I want to break these down into categories:

The ancient Greek idea of Dionysus was of a harvest god, a god of excess. So what do you do when you have a harvest and much of it will cannot be stored for the long term? Well, you feast. The feast celebrating Dionysus must have been quite a few people's favorites, but over time the creation of myth about the god suggested something very interesting. Dionysus as a fetus was ripped apart on the order of a jealous goddess Hera because, as usual, Zeus had been fooling around and fathered Dionysus from a mortal woman. One way that the dismembered god could be re-united is when his worshipers all worked themselves up into a drunken frenzy. Dionysus here stands for the transcendental union of the mob in its most animal form. The individuals have to be reduced to a totally unconstrained state, like an orgy.

The French author Rousseau also talked about where political authority comes from. By trying to imagine a sovereign who most perfectly captured the majority of political will, Rousseau posited that the general will could be achieved in society in at least a relative degree. Rousseau did not have the benefit of social choice theory, nor the intervening scholars that have studied the issue, but he becomes an early expression of approximating a social choice solution at an aggregated level. Arrow would later call this solution a dictator.

Finally there is Hayek. The theory of spontaneous order deliberately rejects the solution of collective action through one mind (be that god or sovereign). In its place Hayek finds that the price mechanism help to communicate information so that totally isolated individuals could get what information they need to move resources in the right direction to everyone in society's benefit. Typhoons cause damage to catfish farms in Vietnam, no need to read the paper, the price rises and people start conserving catfish by eating other foods at the margin.

What is explicitly rejected in Hayek's theory then is that the aim of this process is deliberate. There is no god, no sovereign whose purpose this whole process serves. Looking at the three different cases we note the similarities. All have two levels: social order and individual action. The Dionysians debase the individual in order to celebrate their god, whatever happens happens. Rousseau ignores the minority, which causes some problems that even he would have to admit. Ultimately Rousseau's system is unstable because it is too bold with majority will. Hayek rejects the teleos, the goal of society that Rousseau would want, and the thing Dionysians couldn't care less about.

Hayek, to my mind is the one that cares the most about the individual. Some say to a fault. Perhaps Hayek's biggest challenge is to deal with a world where the minority gets some power or privilege by historical accident or evolutionary failure. Rousseau's majority would take care of this problem, but it would soon start looking like a Dionysian mob because, as far as I understand, Rousseau didn't have a solution for run away majority will (French Revolution). So the biggest question is, in avoiding the mob, are we doomed to have entrenched interests?