> Meaningful markets account for a relatively small portion of modern economies.
There's no way that's true. Like, how many monopolies in America, say, can you even name? I've almost never in my entire life been in a situation when I literally only had one choice for a product or service, even in areas of so called natural monopolies.
Edit: Actually I can name some true monopolies: NBA, NFL, etc.
I would add, Patent protected drug companies, local electric company’s, railroads, water, cable TV, etc and arguably IP including Books, Movies, Games etc are true monopolies. Don’t forget governments as the Social Security, FBI, etc does not compete on an open market. Collectively, government spending is a huge portion of the economy.
OPEC (Oil) and De Beers (Diamonds) are not true monopolies, however they have enough control over supply to have pricing power.
But as I alluded to, Walmart’s 2.3 million employees don’t use markets internally to set prices for services. IT, Legal, HR, etc are not separate companies. Instead executives just allocate and get allocated money for a specific use.
It’s not obvious how you could measure such a wide range of hidden interactions collectively. But, market transactions have real overhead so it should be as not surprise it’s limited. After all your spouse will tell you to take out the trash rather than paying you to take out the trash.
There's no way that's true. Like, how many monopolies in America, say, can you even name? I've almost never in my entire life been in a situation when I literally only had one choice for a product or service, even in areas of so called natural monopolies.
Edit: Actually I can name some true monopolies: NBA, NFL, etc.