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Just that trading occurs anywhere people get together doesn't mean everything is a market. I'd have liked to +10 you. It's so hip these days to see everything i

• cynicalkane 16y ago
  It's a generalization, not a trivialization. Saying all human interactions are markets is like saying everything in computer programming is an object (or everything is a function, or everything is data, or whatever). It's a particular way of looking things that yields insights depending on where, how, and how well it is applied.
• DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  It trivializes it only if you draw some grand conclusions from economic theory. I think many times we get the simple fact that humans are traders mixed up with all this political and economic theory nonsense. To acknowledge that people are always trading is an important observation in itself, and doesn't imply any other conclusions. Draw your own. If anything, it looks like the study of economics is doing exactly what you say: it's showing that these trades many times are irrational, are not for money, and are driven by as many complex forces as exist in the human psyche. So you can start with "it's all a market" and end up with the complexities of human existence, or you can start with "It's not all economics" and end up with the complexities of human existence. Same difference. Either way, the problem is taking huge generalizations and beating them with a rhetorical hammer until they fit some personal worldview, not the observation of the phenomenon itself.