[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.

Downvoting this as too political, but:

This is highly relevant to lesswrong - markets are one of the best information aggregation mechanisms available and so understanding why people oppose markets is useful.

Understanding why people oppose markets is very useful, but I've already got many redundant sources of information helping me at that task. Having a forum where discussion isn't infected by "Why do all those wrong-thinking people oppose our truth?" would also be very useful, but there I'm mostly out of luck. I can split my time between the liberal (conservatives and libertarians are so heartless!) and conservative (liberals and libertarians are so evil!) and libertarian (liberals and conservatives are so stupid!) sites instead, but a diverse se... (read more)

-1Manfred14y

Do people "oppose markets" in a way that this classification is useful? If not, a priveleged hypothesis could lead down a blind alley.

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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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