This statement comes from certain discussions with a friend about the "market" which he sees as if it were a tool, or a vehicle, or some utilitarian construct which we USE to create something called "wealth," but sometimes "inequities" in h...ow it "distributes" that wealth and the conclusion taken from that definition that the "market (often) fails" and that we "must not leave everything to the market."
But that is a flawed definition and a flawed conclusion. The market is not a tool, it is literally everything, or nearly so. Why? Because the market is the people. The market is simply the expression of the choices people make. A FREE market does not fail, that simply implies that the people failed to make the "correct" decisions when left on their own and so, ergo, "the state (or some other coercive power) must right the wrongs, fix the failures and prevent more failures from happening." If the market were a tool then there may be a failure, but how does one classify the choices people make a failure?
Say you have one kid. Unless you have an accident, the choice as to how many you want will be based on your knowledge of your situation and a response to incentives only you really know about. If you have only one kid, does that mean you are not responding to the demographic needs of your country? If you have 4 then you are overpopulating the planet. If there are many people like you, making the "wrong choices" that then becomes a "market failure." People not making the "right choices." That is only one example. Many others can be given. But he point is that in the above view the market being a tool can be adjusted, played with, "tinkered with," led, cajoled, planned for, or corrected to prevent all sorts of "market failures."
My position is that the market is fundamentally something different. It is everything in that IT only contains all the knowledge, IT only can make the right decisions, IT only has the right to make those decisions. The market is you, me, Stephen, and all the people making choices based on the knowledge we only have, the incentives we only see.
In other words, the market is us, the market is information, the market is an EXPRESSION of liberty, freedom and all those good things. To override the market, by misrepresenting it as some tool that was CREATED (for the benefit of some, of course, and at the expense of others, surely) and can be TUNED UP like some car is to override our liberties.
So yes, the market is everything.
Does the market sometime arrive at results some may not like? Of course, but to make the leap that we should not leave things to the market, means really that we should all be at the whim of all sorts of policies from the bureaucrats at the top.
