As promised, to commemorate Jim Buchanan having reached the age of 90 I will post here at the Cafe a series of quotations from Buchanan’s extensive works. The one below is from his 1963 Presidential address — entitled “What Should Ecnomists Do? — to the Southern Economic Association:
The “market” or market organization is not a means toward the accomplishment of anything. It is, instead, the institutional embodiment of the voluntary exchange processes that are entered into by individuals in their several capacities. Individuals are observed to cooperate with one another, to reach agreements, to trade. The network of relationships that emerges or evolves out of this trading process, the institutional framework, is called “the market.” It is a setting, an arena, in which we, as economists, as theorists (as “onlookers”), observe men attempting to accomplish their own purposes, whatever these may be [original emphasis].
On page 38 of James M. Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, Vol. 1 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan (1999).
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“The network of relationships that emerges or evolves out of this trading process, the institutional framework, is called “the market.”
Is, in your opinion, Buchanan saying that my trading my okra with my neighbor for his eggs is not a market because we don’t do that in a network of relationships, no institutional framework? Or, is he really saying that my example is that of a relationship that has implications beyond my neighbor and I, and that we are indeed the first plank in that institutional framework?
The exchange itself is I think what Buchanan calls a “voluntary exchange process”, but if you think about other actual and potential “voluntary exchange processes” for your neighbor’s other eggs, I think those relationships taken together is what he calls “the market”.
I had intended to post my question on Cafe Hayek where I might get an answer of some substance and experience, but somehow I wound up on Blog DK again.
I had a thought about your question, vidyohs. Why do you always have to be such a jerk?
Put your hand down kid, sit down at your desk, and shut up for awhile. I was asking a man who actually knew Buchanan and is intimately familiar with his work. That doesn’t describe DK.
Since no one else had posted it was obvious my question was directed to the host, Prof Boudreaux. I intended that specifically to be the case because I think he has had the age, experience, and intellectual time to either give me the answer I am looking for or give me an answer that would tell me I am not on the right track. I don’t expect that from you DK, you can’t help me.
If he chooses not to answer me, that’s fine. Perhaps someone else of knowledge and experience will. Again, that is not you, DK.
IMO, Buchanan would consider your relationship with your neighbor to be one of the relationships in the network that evolves, and therefore part of the institutional framework called “the market”
I suspect that this would be the case, but perhaps the answer may be more basic than that. I am looking for the basic answer, the root.
“Observe”? “Voluntary”? I don’t get it. Where does *intervene* come in?
Do you by any chance know where I can find that piece by Buchanan online?
Also, I’m looking for ‘Is economics the science of choice?’
thanks