… is from page xiv of the Mercatus Center’s hot-off-the-press 2020 reissue of the late Ludwig Lachmann’s 1986 book, The Market as an Economic Process:
The central idea of this book is the market regarded as an economic process, that is, an ongoing process, impelled by the diversity of aims and resources and the divergence of expectations, ever changing, in a world of unexpected change.
DBx: Lachmann here describes well a central feature of real-world markets.
Nothing is more uninformed and off-base than are the many allegations that those of us who propose to “let the market handle it” are lazy simpletons who are enchanted by a false nostrum. In reality, we advocates of the market process and opponents of industrial policy and other forms of interventionism endorse the market precisely because we appreciate, far more than do most other people, the astonishing complexity, and importance of detail, of real-world economic challenges, possibilities, and limitations.
The true simpletons are those many persons – left and right – who suppose that government officials are capable of gathering and processing enough knowledge to ensure that their commands will result in economic outcomes that are superior to the outcomes that emerge from decentralized competitive market processes.