Economists and sociologists often don't view the world in the same way. But here is something that might make the most-ardent free market economist smile ($$$ req'd):
One of the central tenets of disaster sociology is that most communities can, to a large degree, spontaneously heal themselves. People affected by disaster obviously often need resources from the outside world -- food, water, shelter. But that does not mean that disaster victims also need outside direction and coordination, most scholars in the field say.
A prime example of spontaneous cooperation was the extraordinarily successful evacuation of Lower Manhattan during the September 11 attacks. James M. Kendra, an assistant professor of emergency administration and planning at the University of North Texas, estimates that nearly half a million people fled Manhattan on boats -- and he emphasizes that the waterborne evacuation was a self-organized volunteer process that could probably never have been planned on a government official's clipboard.
"Various kinds of private companies, dinner-cruise boats, people with their own personal watercraft, the Coast Guard, the harbor pilots -- in very short order, they managed to organize this evacuation," Mr. Kendra said.
If Friedrich Hayek read this, I believe it would make him smile.