Students of the eonic effect will be familiar with the phrase 'econo-sequence != eonic sequence', which means that the evolution of cultural systems and economic systems are distinct things, sometimes the one embedded in the other, requiring a special apparatus of theory to keep track of the separate effects. 

The resemblance of of Darwin's theory to classical political economy has often been noted, Marx one of the first, and pointing to the connection is often seen as a discovery, but, like a case of cribbed notes, it's a small world, and the connection merely shows the influences on Darwin of the economic ideology of his time, as it enters unconsciously into the formulation of theory. 

Thus S. J. Gould  in  The Structure of Evolutionary Theory states the unwitting confusion with especial clarity, “I would advance the even stronger claim that the theory of natural selection is, in essence, Adam Smith’s economics transferred to nature”. [For reference and comment cf.  Critique of Evolutionary Economy]

This connection, or the belief in it, has gone on so long we forget how (we suspect) it arose, and fail to consider that the application of economic or Malthusian reasoning to evolution is not theory, but a substitute for theory in a context where evolution is improperly observed. We can deduce the fact of evolution, long before we deduce the nature of the mechanism(s), and natural selection requires far greater observation than we can provide at this point. Cf. The Hurricane Argument

Darwin's reading of Malthus is well known. Less familiar is the ideological debate over Malthus, now seen as the demographer, who, we forget, wrote in the context of the French Revolution at the moment when the Terror was driving conservatives to ideological counterattack, debating Godwin and others for a generation, as the idea of evolution or, in the language of the times, transformism, suffered its period of eclipse until Darwin, matching the idea to classical political economy, ensured its resurrection and eventual success. So, to place Malthus at the source of theory had a set of echoes and innuendoes now lost on us. The point is clear enough in Herbert Spencer, whose 'theories' of cultural and biological evolution scrambled together were instantly pressed into the service of social class arguments, in the generations after the Reform Bill, etc... 

The question is, just what is a theory of evolution, and how did natural selection get the booby prize for Big Breakthrough? We have been transfixed by this Darwinian ploy, and the fact is we don't know. Anyone who tries to produce a theory is suspicious of what Darwin did, for it is the 'scrounging for a mechanism' that defines the game, and that process produced the 'theory', 'my theory' in Darwin's gollum-like mutterings, with hints from classical economics and Malthus. This point is impossible to grasp if you think Darwin actually did produce a theory of evolution. 

If you had never observed true evolutionary mechanisms in action on the proper scale, and you were a naturalist living in the wake of Malthus and Adam Smith (and were a Whiggishly inclined 'brit' of the nineteenth century upper classes), and if as a naturalist you traveled to farflung jungle scenes to observe teemingly savage competitive habitats with their distributed spectrum of closely related species and if you were aware of the rising tide of facts suggesting 'transformism' (not yet called evolution, and dangerously associated with the radicalism of the French Revolution) and if you wanted to make a name for yourself it might suddenly strike you like a ton of bricks that the solution to all these problems was to propose a conservatized Malthusian theory of natural selection, which is not at all like the dreaded radical version,  and not unlike the teemingly savage competitive habitat of the Whiggishly inclined in nineteenth century England. Which is not to exclude Tories. 

But, unfortunately, we may ask, how does it follow? We have never seen the crux of evolution, why should it follow economic situations? Not all bon idees are science, and some are due to ideological suggestibility and fall by the wayside once the ideological connection or other limits of the idea are seen. But if it is a question of ideology, then the moment of truth may never arrive and, none the wiser, a subtle fallacy will persist because--well, the ruling ideas of the epoch are those of the bourgeoisie, another term for the Whiggishly inclined. Since noone has observed evolution at close range at the proper scale to detect the mechanism, noone can conclusively refute the idea.  

So the connection of evolution to economic dynamics is simply not established. It is interesting that Paulos brings in the connection to intelligent design. The idea is that design is not required for economies, and therefore is not required to explain complex biochemical structures. But wait a minute here. 

Economies ARE designed, even those designed to be free market systems. Pass a law in Parliament, and free trade creates one economy, pass another, and the initial conditions for a revised economy are set. Which one is the correct analog? And how does Parliament figure into the Paleolithic? 

In general, the evolution INSIDE one type of economy is not the same evolution that we see in the evolution BETWEEN economic systems. The transition between economic systems is a very difficult question. It depends on the timely appearance of the right social institutions. And these just don't appear for economic reasons. One factor is the issue of law, and international law. To what are we referring? The conduct of economy according to law, or the scofflaw process of anything goes? If you say anything goes, then explain why capitalist systems with slavery and capitalist systems without are different, and whether you are indifferent to this factor, in the name of economic self-interest. The contradictions mount, and soon the 'evolution of freedom' behind abolition becomes an issue. Note that Adam Smith was very sensitive to such issues. 

The modern capitalist system arose, to make a long story short, quite suddenly in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and the suggestion of figures such as that designer Adam Smith that mercantilist control of economies was counterproductive. Fine, but the result then is to design systems with less control, but still with some control. As that counterdesinger Marx pointed out, control of the economy had a concealed class basis, the Whiggishly inclined again,  in the background, and theories were forms of legitimation to deflect attention from that fact. It is more than arguable, as noted, that capitalist economies of some kind existed before this, or always existed, but the point is the same. In general the evolution of social systems goes by one process, economies by another, voiding the analog to biological evolution. Ancient systems of economy in many cases were capitalisms manque, because they were too uncontrolled, or lacked the social instruments, to get underway. 

Furthermore, the functioning of capitalist economies is carried out, not by a random mixture of unthinking molecules, but by intelligent economic agents, who are connected by information networks over geographical space. These factors are not allowed to be present in biological evolution of the Darwinian variety. 

To say, therefore, that what appears to be the 'self-organization' of economies can be analogous to the construction of complex biochemical machines simply doesn't follow.  

The final issue is, of course, the powerful suggestion that leftist critiques of a socialist or anti-market variety are all wrong since Nature in the two supposed instances, complex structure in biochemical systems, and market economies, provides the substitute. We can see that this doesn't follow either. We can agree that attempts to control markets can wreck capitalist economies, or not generate wealth, or that Bolshevik planning was a disaster, but the fact is that control of markets is present in capitalist systems to a large degree, in their social systems of law, regulation, and the like. These are not the result of 'spontaneous order'. And this seems to imply that planning is somehow banished from thought. But the factor of planning is always a player in multiple forms of discourse, it being merely the case that planning very large economies has historically failed by comparison with the less planned capitalist variety. One might note in passing that the American economy changed gears in a week when confronted with the survival of the fittest episode called the Second World War as it produced something closer to a planned economy. It couldn't have been the desire for less efficiency. So competition inside an economy changed gears when the question came of putting an economy on a war footing in the struggle between economic and cultural systems.   

The issue of Behe's mousetrap is a tricky one, and needs another discussion. We have clear evidence of economic designers, but no candidate for a 'designer' in this instance! The point is merely that natural selection fails here as an argument. If that's the case, then we need to go back to square one and devise a theory of evolution, post Darwin. Most of all we need to have the facts of how it actually did happen! Everyone forgets this point in the design debate. It is not a question of theoretical assumptions, but of empirical facts, facts we don't have. 

In part, the problem is the punning over the word 'design'. There should be two or more terms, one of them 'natural design', i.e. some unknown factor that integrates complex biochemical systems. Almost by definition, complex biological systems show de facto 'design' because they perform teleological operations like computer programs that have a start and finish point. How these programs function (teleologically) is one question, how they evolved is unknown, and it doesn't follow that that too must be teleological, since we haven't really observed the steps, so everything is up in the air. 

In general, the failure of natural selection does not exhaust the possibilities of naturalistic explanation. 

In any case, to say that the perceptible efficiency of certain types of market systems can explain the complexity of biochemical structure, and of biochemical evolution, is simply speculative extrapolation, and almost certainly false. 

Go back to Darwin's Malthusian Aha! moment, and press the reset button. We see teeming populations, the struggle of life-form in natural environments. That day-to-day, minute-to-minute, competitive environment has not been shown to perform the uphill work of evolution. So we default back to our ignorance. 

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The mousetrap