Soixante-Retard wrote:Someone5, I'll reiterate in case you didn't understand the linked article. "Markets" don't literally do anything. There is no market. It is not a "thing".
"The government doesn't actually do anything. There is no government. It is not a 'thing.' There are only individuals working towards similar goals."
Any human collective activity can be reduced to individual activity if you want to be absurd enough. If we really want to get down to business, we can also point out that
people do not exist, because they are nothing but individual atoms chemically bonded to other atoms. For that matter, atoms don't exist either, because they are nothing but individual particles clumped together by the four fundamental forces... Then again, those particles might not actually exist, so if we really want to be specific, nothing might exist at all.
Laying aside the absurd reductionism, markets "exist" as an organizing principle that motivates collective behavior. The same, incidentally, is true of governments. If markets can't ration because they don't exist, then governments also can't ration because they also do not exist--there are only individuals working towards similar goals. By this token, we cannot actually say that rationing exists at all, because it is nothing more than individuals choosing not to exchange goods.
We can talk about a motivational principle as a thing when it results in systems and predictable behavior among its adherents. Your whole argument here, by the way, is a bit of sophistry reliant on limitations of the English language. The language we're using to discuss this does not make a distinction between a noun existing in the abstract and a noun that exists in the concrete. Markets, like governments, exist in the abstract. Their only concrete expression comes from individuals acting according to the dictates of said abstract concept. Of course, when you get massive systems and networks of individuals who are adhering to a common concept, it's sensible to reasonably discuss that concept as a "thing" (where the noun refers to both the concept and to the actual systems of individuals that implement it).
But then, the author knew that ahead of time, which is why he made the sham argument. If we actually had to adhere to this bizarre perspective, we would also be unable to discuss things like philosophies and religions, because those too are not concrete things, despite having a massive influence over the concrete circumstances of human existence. As much as I am loathe to point this out, arguing that markets do not exist because they are not concrete is effectively the same as arguing that thought does not exist because it is not a concrete thing.
Of course, if I really wanted to be a dick, I could point out that the author is factually incorrect because markets are ideas that concretely exist within human brains as electrochemical signals. Oops.
Let me be clear about what I am not denying. I am not denying that economic goods are by definition scarce and that at any given time we must settle for less of them than we want. I am also not denying that the marketplace is relevant in determining who gets how much of those scarce goods.
I am denying that this is appropriately called “rationing.”
It's rationing by the only sensible definition of the word. The rationing occurs because you are exchanging the concrete acquisition of one good for the potential acquisition of another.
To see that the market does not ration one need only see that “the market” doesn’t do anything. To talk as if it does things is to reify the market—worse, it is to anthropomorphize the market, ascribing to it attributes — purposes, plans, and actions—that only human beings possess.
See the third and fourth paragraphs of my response as to why it is not reification to discuss markets as a thing.
[The market] has no purposes or objectives. It is simply a legal framework in which people do things with their justly acquired property and their time in order to pursue their own purposes.
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The market as a principle guides people towards certain patterns of collective behavior; in this sense, it can be ascribed goals and purposes. Systems can have goals and purposes without having
agency--meaning the ability to make a conscious choice, or to consider what they are doing. Goals, purposes, objectives... none of these things require agency. I can write a piece of software that will do something without having any capacity to make a choice about it. For that matter, I can write a program that will assess its situation to plan a course of behavior in advance. That doesn't require agency either. Indeed, all of this can be done by way of very determinate algorithms (condition x is met, therefore output y). Said program can even delegate tasks and organize behavior among other programs--or even between itself and physical machines it is able to control.
That software is no more existent in a computer than the idea of a market is existent in the brain of a human being (that is to say that both exist as signals); and indeed the market has no more agency than a program does. However, both software programs and motivating principles like markets
can actually have goals and purposes--and the ability to translate those goals and purposes into actual action. Programs do so by way of electromechanical systems, motivating principles do so through the actions of their adherents. We can talk about markets existing in precisely the same way that we can talk about programs existing; because both exist as concepts that guide concrete actions in predictable and prescriptive ways. Indeed, both actually concretely exist as stored data in either a computer or in a brain.
Make no mistake here; markets guide people to act because people exercise their agency and let the principle of markets inform their behavior. People willingly choose to do what the principle of a market suggests they ought to do. Without a doubt, concepts like markets, governments, religions, philosophical systems... all of these things do actually exist, because they are made manifest by the actions of their adherents.
If you want to start discussing this matter if more definite language (markets-in-the-abstract rather than simply "markets"), I'm up for doing so, but that has a tendency to become tedious (which is why people simply refer to a concept as a real thing). Natural languages are not well suited to discussing philosophical issues, requiring some ugly jargon.
- By litwin
- By KurtFF8