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… is from pages 62-63 of Thomas Sowell’s monumental 1980 book, Knowledge and Decisions [2] (original emphasis):
No single individual, nor any collection of individuals, could have in their heads all the complex technical information on production processes and the nuances of personal feeling involved in matching millions of investment sources and users. The most efficient and imposing bank, corporation, or government bureau has only scratched the surface. The astronomical amount of knowledge in the whole system is sorted and coordinated in fragments by the simple process of each transactor seeking the best deal from his own subjective viewpoint and not necessarily (or even usually) by knowing why the deal that suits him best emerged as it did from the millions of other possibilities in the market.