The latest “Curious Capitalist” column in TIME begins:
Markets can be merciless, bloodlessly processing available information to price assets appropriately.
The assertion is true as far as it goes. But the implication is clearly false, when you consider what “markets” are. In a book chapter titled “Myths About Markets,” Thomas Sowell reminds us:
Perhaps the biggest myth about markets comes from the name itself. We tend to think of a market as a thing when in fact it is people engaging in economic transactions among themselves on whatever terms their mutual accommodations lead to. A market in this sense can be contrated with central planning or government regulation. Too often, however, when a market is conceived of as a thing, it is regarded as an impersonal mechanism, when in fact it is as personal as the people in it. This misconception allows third parties to seek to take away the freedom of individuals to transact with one another on mutually agreeable terms, and to depict this restriction of their freedom as rescuing people from the “dictates” of the impersonal market, when in fact this would be subjecting them to the dictates of third parties.
