The market cannot be seen in full. Many of its results are regularly on display around you, including (among countless other things) the food in your pantry, the clothes in your closet, the working of your smartphone, and – my favorite example – the stuffed shelves of any ‘ordinary’ modern American supermarket. But because the market is a globe-spanning process that consists more of norms, bargaining, contractual terms, and dispersed knowledge than of places and machines, it’s not something that one can view in full in the way that a person can view the Mona Lisa or watch a baseball game.
Nevertheless, we can get glimpses of some particular market operations that reveal vital lessons about the larger whole. One such glimpse is provided by this short video of a New York City fish market. (For alerting me to it, I thank Tim Townsend.)
This marvelous video reveals (1) the market’s complexity (no one could possibly have designed the pattern of actions that regularly occurs in this NYC fish market); (2) the amazing specialization of knowledge that goes in to making everyday life possible (if you eat fresh fish, dozens of individuals who are strangers to you – and using important knowledge that you don’t even know exists – worked to ensure that the fish you’ll buy later today, at a restaurant or at a supermarket, is what you expected); (3) the truth of Adam Smith’s insight that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer, or baker, that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest” (while you were sleeping in the wee hours, dozens of people worked furiously, getting their hands and clothes dirty and smelly, so that later today you – if you choose – can buy some fresh seafood; these people do what they do because you, and others, are willing to pay them to do what they do, yet you, except in this video, almost never see such workers, or even realize that they exist).
Enjoy!
