“Market Failure” is commonly thought of as something that goes wrong with the way normal (“free”) markets work. There are actually a lot of assumptions made about how such markets work normally, and many of these are so illusory that it seems amazing anyone would ever pay any attention to what any economist says — ever.
I will let you consult introductory economics textbooks to find out more about such introductory affairs. [1]
Here, I wish to talk about something completely different.
There are some other assumptions often made (not only by economists, but even by regular folks, too) … such that “producers” exist only to produce, “consumers” exist only to consume. For the most part, this has to do with language: if you don’t want to single out “producers” or “consumers” (or any other groups), then just say “people” (or if “people” unfairly privileges human beings, maybe “things”?).
Long gone are the simple days of “supply” and “demand” and “widgets”. Today, the world is complicated. [2] Today, we may be stupendous at calculating breakneck speeds of growth with mathematical precision, but only a fool would overlook the simple fact that all of these fancy bells and whistles are financed with fossil fuels.
This brings me to our current daily diet of revolutionary uprisings. It seems like all over the place, we’re hearing about farmers showing up riding their tractors and blocking markets (for their own products, no less) … making demands for oil. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply show up at the harbor and unload the oil from the tankers arriving there? Oh, wait — maybe there might be a few glitches in the technology, right?
Socio Business blog 