Great exploration, and it highlights that we don’t have any good general theory of aggregation of individual behavior/utility/preference. Let alone sub-individual → individual → pair → family → Dunbar-sized groups → supergroups → universe.
It’s pretty clear that market behavior is not a separate atomic thing, it’s just one way of adding up interactions between many individuals. It’s a fine metaphor to talk about it as if it had agency, but really that’s just an acknowledgement that there’s enough similarity in the human participants that the statistical sum of those measured interactions is a bit predictable. sometimes.
Great exploration, and it highlights that we don’t have any good general theory of aggregation of individual behavior/utility/preference. Let alone sub-individual → individual → pair → family → Dunbar-sized groups → supergroups → universe.
It’s pretty clear that market behavior is not a separate atomic thing, it’s just one way of adding up interactions between many individuals. It’s a fine metaphor to talk about it as if it had agency, but really that’s just an acknowledgement that there’s enough similarity in the human participants that the statistical sum of those measured interactions is a bit predictable. sometimes.