by JARED A. BROCK
There is a small but extremely loud cohort of mostly right-wing white males who believe from the bottom of their heart that the best way to structure human society is to get rid of government and taxation and regulation and… wait for it… let the market decide.
Having perhaps read a Wikipedia entry on Adam Smith and probably a short stack of novels by Ayn Rand, they believe that the market is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful.
They believe the market knows best.
Trust the market.
Serve the market.
Worship the market.
But what is the market, exactly?
This, of course, is the wrong question.
The market isn’t a thing.
The right question is: Who is the market?
The market, it turns out, is us.
The evolution of the market
Originally, the market was just producer-sellers and purchasers.
It’s still that way in my little village:
- Robert’s family raises grass-fed cows, and I buy their meat.
- Marie grows fruit and tends bees, and I buy her jams and honey.
- Justin and Emma grind flour in a centuries-old watermill, I buy their flour.
My local market is still just producer-sellers and purchasers.
Globally, of course, it’s far more complicated than that.
There are working producers — the only true contributors who apply time/energy/skill-sacrifice to raw materials in order to create real value — and there is everybody else.
Wholesalers
Retailers
Bankers
Brokers
Insurers
Politicians
Landlords
Shareholders
All flaying their pound of flesh.
But generally speaking, we can group the market into three main constituencies:
- Buyers
- Sellers
- Shareholders
The investors have the most power, by far.
Hard-working sellers and debt-laden buyers aren’t spending billions to lobby (bribe) Congress in order to pass crony bills and extract corporate socialism.
That’s the investor class’s full-time job.
Surviving Tomorrow for more