[Link] Why don't people like markets?

GLaDOS

An interesting piece with speculation on possible reasons for why people seem to be biased against markets. To summarize:

Market processes are not visible. For instance, when a government taxes its citizens and offers a subsidy to some producers, what is seen is the money taken and the money received. What is unseen is the amount of production that would occur in the absence of such transfers.
Markets are intrinsically probabilistic and therefore marked with uncertainty, like other living organisms, we are loss-averse and try to minimise uncertainty
Humans may be motivated to place their trust in processes that are (or at least seem to be) driven by agents rather than impersonal factors.

The last point reminded me of speculation from the recent LessWrong article Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions:

Do all theories of legitimacy also perhaps rest on the same cognitive failings that conspiracy theories do? The difference between a shadowy cabal we need to get rid of and an institution worthy of respect may be just some bad luck.

Before thinking about these points and debating them I strongly recommend you read the full article.

An interesting piece with speculation on possible reasons for why people seem to be biased against markets. To summarize:

Market processes are not visible. For instance, when a government taxes its citizens and offers a subsidy to some producers, what is seen is the money taken and the money received. What is unseen is the amount of production that would occur in the absence of such transfers.
Markets are intrinsically probabilistic and therefore marked with uncertainty, like other living organisms, we are loss-averse and try to minimise uncertainty
Humans may be motivated to place their trust in processes that are (or at least seem to be) driven by agents rather than impersonal factors.

The last point reminded me of speculation from the recent LessWrong article Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions:

Do all theories of legitimacy also perhaps rest on the same cognitive failings that conspiracy theories do? The difference between a shadowy cabal we need to get rid of and an institution worthy of respect may be just some bad luck.

Before thinking about these points and debating them I strongly recommend you read the full article.

Don't judiciaries share all these properties? Is there a comparable level of mistrust in systems of justice?

Come to think of it, don't systems like internet infrastructure or language also share those properties? Aside from a few niche groups, I don't think either of those have a significant amount of mistrust levied against them.

Well, there are all those lawyer jokes.

Open judiciaries seem to be agent-driven and a lot more visible than markets, though; if the American Supreme Court turns up a result you don't like, you have a record of the way its members voted and can feel free to badmouth (say) Justice Kennedy for obviously misunderstanding the problem. In principle you can trace that all the way back to the local court level. In line with this, most of the criticism of the courts that I've seen takes the form of accusations of arbitrary rulings or abuses of power, both of whic... (read more)

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[Link] Why don't people like markets?

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[Link] Why don't people like markets?

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