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Full Idea
The price system is a way of signalling and transmitting information. The fact that the price of a good rises shows that the good is in short supply. And if prices rise in a sector because of increasing demand, then new producers rush in for the profits.
Gist of Idea
Market prices indicate shortages and gluts, and where the profits are to be made
Source
Jonathan Wolff (An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) [2006], 5 'Free')
Book Ref
Wolff,Jonathan: 'An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev)' [OUP 2006], p.145
A Reaction
[Woff is discussing Hayek] Why do we have a shortage of decent housing in the UK? Centralised economies lack this direct way of discovering where their efforts should be directed.
| 7670 | Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil [Kant, by Berlin] |
| 5284 | Communism abolishes private property and dissolves the powerful world market [Marx/Engels] |
| 22599 | Hayek was a liberal, but mainly concerned with market freedom [Hayek, by Dunt] |
| 22600 | Impeding the market is likely to lead to extensive state control [Hayek] |
| 18641 | If people hold things legitimately, just distribution is simply the result of free exchanges [Nozick, by Kymlicka] |
| 18640 | Libertarians like the free market, but they also think that the free market is just [Kymlicka] |
| 9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
| 20524 | Market prices indicate shortages and gluts, and where the profits are to be made [Wolff,J] |
| 20685 | No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari] |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |