How distinct is the market as a phenomenon (exchange) from the market as an institution (an economic order)?

Liberty as a virtual handshake in the market

BY KAREN HORN

Most people like to walk down to the farmer’s market to get some vegetables. Doing one’s groceries at the market feels a bit as if the countryside has come to town, and with it the good old days. The market stands are small, the produce is alluring, the farmers have wrinkles in their face and honest dirt under their fingernails. People love the market.This market. The market however, i.e. the more abstract market, associated with capitalism, doesn’t seem to have a similar warmth to it at all.

To the contrary, the market evokes a vast array of strong negative feelings, from shivering to shuddering, from uneasiness to hatred. A former German president has spoken of the (financial) markets as a “monster”, other politicians and intellectuals seem to have a wild horse on their mind when calling for “bridling the market”. In the same spirit, the philosopher Michael Sandel landed a bestseller with his book “What money can’t buy” (2013), describing it as obscene to have recourse to the market for anything we really cherish, such as politics, culture, friendship and health.

Isn’t it odd that there seem to be so many bad feelings about that conceptual location which we all use every day, that very place where people freely engage in exchange relationships while using and feeding the price mechanism? The same mechanism that the economist and social philosopher Friedrich Hayek quite rightly viewed as “a marvel”. A device we could be tremendously proud of, had we invented it – but we haven’t: It is the result “of human action, but not human design”.


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