In some senses, I think it might be worth avoiding "markets" as a canonical example.. for two reasons. One is that the ground is not just well covered, it's b

In some senses, I think it might be worth avoiding "markets" as a canonical example.. for two reasons. One is that the ground is not just well covered, it's been a major ideological battleground for at least the last 150 years. The invisible hand of the market has had countless brain cycles, books, and political sermons dedicated to exposing it. We're hyper-aware (and paranoid) of it. We've basically been inventing invisible hand detection devices, and everyone is sure that their device is the accurate one. The second reason is that it's inevitably unclean as an example. Governments are usually taken as non-participants in markets, alternatives to markets and such. Reality is much messier. Governments are simultaneously participants, regulators and alternatives. More importantly, there's a tendency to think of markets as being made of people, where in fact they're largely made of companies. Companies are institutions made of people, like (sometimes very like) governments... but they aren't people. They're another thing, another(aside from markets) way of organising economic activity.. Ronald Coase started his nobel-winning line of enquiry with the question "if markets are so great, why are companies run like totalitarian regimes?" As you say, markets are both top down and bottom up.. in a mesh of ways. Most importantly... fresh examples help with fresh thinking. How about "languages" instead of markets. They're made by people, evolve in organic-like ways, are undirected.... The invisible hand is far less visible here. Most people have barely noticed its existence.