The ‘Free Market’ is a Fever Dream and Adam Smith Wasn’t in It

One concept that comes up a lot on the Rhodes Center Podcast: the idea of the 'free market’.
The idea, as you might know it, begins with John Locke, is fashioned fully by Adam Smith, and is delivered to us gift-wrapped (after some delays) by the likes of Hayek and Friedman in the mid 20th century.
But as our guest on this episode explains, the idea of the free market is hardly so straightforward. Jacob Soll is a professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California, and in his book “Free Market: The History of an Idea,” he begins way back in ancient Rome, stops in 17th-century France with Louis XIV’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and, on the way to the present, barely mentions Adam Smith at all.
No matter what you think of when you hear the words ‘free market’, Jacob's incredibly informative - and highly readable - history will make you see the concept in a whole new light.
Learn more about and purchase Jacob’s Book “Free Market: The History of an Idea”
www.amazon.com/Free-Market-Hi...

[@samuelrosander1048]

29:35 "There are terribly-run state industries that should be privatized." Except that most of the time they are terribly run because of the intentional sabotage of capitalists pushing the narrative of "government can't do anything right, only private industries can." Privatization isn't the answer. Better public accountability is. Turn over those industries to the workers and guarantee worker democracy if you want things to really improve. Sure, privatization may TEMPORARILY increase quality and productivity, but it doesn't takes long for those at the top to start cutting corners and other things for increased profits. The times it does take a long time are the cases where there is greater accountability. That applies just as much to private as to state industry. If it's controlled by workers and has public (which is not "government") accounting/accountability (meaning that the public, not the government, directly oversees the industry's regulation) then that's the greatest form of accountability that can be had. It may not be as PROFITABLE (which capitalists rename "efficient") as a privately run industry, but most of those profits go to the people at the top (including shareholders) anyway, and public utility is way more important than private profits. The issue of privatization is really all about privatizing the profits while socializing the costs. Private profits are the only consideration. Everything else is coincidental and/or narrative-twisting.

[@MrMarinus18]

Sometimes they indeed were badly run. But instead of arguing to fix it they argued that fixing it is impossible.

[@lukegardner6917]

So nice to actually get the history instead of the mythology

[@sevensages5279]

More like this speaker is debunking at least a century of propaganda.

[@levinb1]

Agreed.

[@JonathanSchattke]

Its not like English or Hamiltonian Mercantilism was a secret.

[@JonathanSchattke]

@@sevensages5279 what? America is Fascist, and its education lauds the Fascist plans of government.

[@_derpderp]

By “mythology”, did you mean to say- compulsory public education in the USA and Canada? but I could be wrong ;)

[@charlesputnam9370]

When the government gives business money everytime there is a hiccup. It's not really a free market. I personally know a lot of people got a lot of money from the government in the last few years. Hurricane damage relief to people raise trees and crops. Lot of people got payroll protection relief. USDA gives row crop farmers a lot of money. If you are getting subsidies from the government you are not in a free market.

[@diarmuidbuckley6638]

That is the whole point of the interview

[@mtn1793]

That doesn’t mean that government should not make investments in the infrastructures which help make free markets productive. But it shouldn’t be making free agents rich without accomplishing the infrastructure at all.

[@jvb5590]

Wow. Thank you for this historical overview!

[@brianjennings7644]

Thank you Mark, this was needed. This is best, for driving alone thru the Countryside..

[@polyglot8]

Cicero enjoyed such a high status in Christianity that unlike the esteemed Greek and Roman philosophers and poets that Dante encountered in Limbo, Cicero is often depicted alongside Old Testament figures like Adam and Abraham as having been rescued by Christ (hence before Dante arrived there) when he descended into Limbo just before ascending into Heaven. This scene is often called "The Harrowing of Hell" and in the Early Middle Ages, was depicted as Christ effecting the rescue right out of the mouth of the monster, Golgotha. There are also brass so-called "alms dishes" used for displaying The Host with the head of Cicero. Most of these were made in Nuremburg in the 16th & 17th centuries.

[@paolosarpi8069]

That's so cool

[@jimbob-robob]

I thought Golgotha was the Crucifixion Hill/Cemetery in Jerusalem...

[@lawsonj39]

@@jimbob-robob Supposedly Golgotha was shaped like a skull, so it's easy to see how that transmutes into the figure of a monster.

[@thomasjamison2050]

One thing to beer in mind about the Roosevelt years is that when an allegedly free market economy runs into a true existential threat, it invariably falls back onto centralized economic controls to save itself. They do this because such systems consistently perform more efficiently than the previous market forms these countries had. We are talking gas and commodities rationing as well as a focus on reclaiming recyclables. Sure, profit then goes mostly goes to waste in war, but without the centralized controls a large part of the profits would simply not be there..

[@clumsydad7158]

you know, all the best utopia's are dreams ... it's called the 'golden slumbers'; he who has the gold, makes up the dreams 🙂

[@maxheadrom3088]

I did get the witticism but ... gold was divine - a metal that never rusted and that you could strech as much as you want. Lead rusts (oxidates) very quickly and it brittle. Lead is evil - something that pretends to be God but in fact is the opposite.

[@spoonikle]

@@maxheadrom3088 Divinity in metals? this is total crap. If anything is divine it is water. Gold is the Devils bribery.

[@jimbob-robob]

LOVE a Mark Blyth podcast! 👍

[@Kevin-Schmevin]

This was eye opening, I feel like I need to go back and read Smith again.

[@rugbyguy59]

There is some cross over in themes with Ha-Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans". This is more detailed and a fascinating take. I'll add it to my list.

[@thefisherking78]

I quite enjoyed that. Thank you!

[@tinoyb9294]

Philosophy, History and Accounting equals Economics. Sounds right.

[@gordondavies7773]

History and accounting are essentially the same... the use of contemporary documentary evidence to construct a socially agreed record of past events. Both history and accounting can provide useful insights into current affairs

[@JoaoSantos-lv4rc]

&t=1560 - It could be mentioned, it goes along with the argument, that in many ways, France has retained its empire.

[@01Tanthallas]

Very good discussion, however quite confusing as to he keeps saying, Smith said wealth comes from agriculture… smith, in setting up the idealized free market clearly states wealth comes from labour and price changes from the productivity of labor

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Smith did arguably not even advocate for the "idealized free market", but instead had in view a more efficient political approach to matters of trade and regulation

[@merbst]

My greatest nightmare is of a Neofascist America ruled by Austrian / Chicago / Neoclassical School Economists & bigotry. I fear the day it comes, but how would I be able to notice that it has has arrived? (NB: my ignorance is feigned for comedic effect)

[@kaimarmalade9660]

I've been reading Smith for the last several months and I'm enthused to hear that I'm not the only one kind of tearing my hair out. Smith isn't the father of capitalism; if anything he's a kind of proto-Jeffersonian agrarian.

[@lawsonj39]

I think a lot of Smith's reputation is based on his metaphor of the invisible hand--in other words, his imagery rather than the logical coherence or correspondence to empirical reality of his ideas.

[@kaimarmalade9660]

@@lawsonj39 After reading, "Moral Sentiment" and the one every loves to talk about I think people seem to think that Smith's idea is that whatever gives rise to the invisible hand is a kind of irrefutable good but most of what he argues for is, "how do we direct the invisible hand toward building and maintaining public institutions?" and this is news to 95%+ of his followers.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Smith was what could be described as a proto-utilitarian. He recognized the state as an economic necessity, but argued to redirect its efforts and in so raise the general well-being by means of decreasing taxes, tariffs and import restrictions. Regulatory measures on the market were not out of question for Smith, but admitted only if their effects could be proven beneficial for the common good. Economic theory as we are familiar with it today, of the Austrian, Neo-classical, Econometrical or even Keynesian stripe, were not conceivable in Smith's days. Indeed, it is more often the case than not, that emerging fields become more self-sufficient only when for the purpose of gaining new insight, people are forced, to think outside the realm of pre-established notions of common sense or expertise

[@kaimarmalade9660]

Respectfully you come off as another armchair intellectual that didn't actually finish the book. You obviously haven't read Theory Of Moral Sentiments. @@user-hu3iy9gz5j

[@fyngolnoldor4891]

20:36 So basically Adam Smith was a one-man Institute for Economic Affairs :)

[@thomasd2444]

00:50 - In the story that [ 20th & 21st Century girls & boys ] you know, that [free market] idea begins w/ John Locke, _________ is fashioned fully by Adam Smith, & is delivered to us, gift-wrapped after a few delays, by the likes of Hayek _________ & Friedman in the mid-20th Century 01:02 - BUT that's not the story discovered by professor of PHILOSOPHY-HISTORY-ACCOUNTING Jacob Soll

[@thomasd2444]

00::00 - Rhode Ctr Podcast Episode Introduction 00:26 - Jacob Soll , "...the standard idea of a FREE MARKET has ever existed. It's something we're always being promised we'll get to if we do certain things. So it's a dream. It's been a dream forty, really long time." 00:43 - Jacob Soll , professor of PHILOSOPHY & professor of HISTORY & professor of ACCOUNTING @ S CAL Univ

[@lawsonj39]

I guess you mean 00:26 - Jacob Soll, "...the standard idea of a FREE MARKET has NEVER existed...."

[@Johnconno]

I love the Stoics they're all wonderfully rich.

[@thomasd2444]

00:47 - new book : FREE MARKET : The History of an Idea _________ (That subtitle remind you of an Brown Univ professor we can think of ? < grin > )

[@mtn1793]

We can’t have free markets, sustainable markets, successful markets without individual responsibilities, even if it takes government to ensure those responsibilities.

[@joythought]

Sort of. Normally yes but if you look at crypto as a field and Bitcoin as the specific example, it fundamentally allows for trustless transactions. So the transaction doesn't require good actors to ensure the transaction that both agree to actually occurs.

[@Feracitus]

the thing is governments are not there to ensure responsabilities, that's just their outwards justification for their powergrab. And they use that power to benefit their Elites.

[@davidwilkie9551]

The "Watchmaker Universe" has the most accessible timing cycles in the half-life Nucli in the Periodic Table of sync-duration Elemental e-Pi-i AM-FM Communication In-form-ation.., it drives the Circuitry of Gaian Ecology and is the chaotically unstable reason short-term, for longer cycles of Economics etc. Re-vision requirements before reiteration of pulse-evolution positioning terminology used in the Curriculum?

[@DemonetisedZone]

Its always the people who have the advantages that want "free market" 👍

[@Orson2u]

Not so. The breaking of the “Corn Laws” in order to feed the people, while Ireland starved in mid-19th century, was very much a ground up movement. A groundswell. The Manchester School of political economics became their voice - Cobden and Bright, especially - and succeeded in opening closed trade. Ergo, free markets.

[@highvoltageswitcher6256]

@@Orson2u Even had a meeting about it in 1819 and the Westminster landowner system had to put it down with the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. Partially the meeting about the corn laws, partly about having no parliamentary representation.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

The free market is not a fixed idea system but a general outlook. If, for example, people choose the lesser rate of active state involvement in a situation where state involvement is inevitable, it would be a win for the "free market", as compared with the higher rate "People who have adventages" will be able to survive economic crisis and systemic regulation at a higher rate, simply by being in possession said advantages. Consequently, I don't think the claim that the free market appeals disproportionately to the rich and wealthy is fair. Indeed, corporations of scale will generally embrace legal privelages in cases it provides protection from external market forces

[@murrayscott3513]

That was worth listening to.

[@akoben]

This guy is a philosopher. Nuff said.

[@marybusch6182]

Not just a philosopher.. Take a read of his book Reckoning.. all about accounting and the messes that the elites get us into because they dont do the accounting.. Think DOD, think balancing to the nearest million... And Remember Fouquet who built the prototype for Versaille...

[@ilesalmo7724]

My main objection to unrestrained free-market is that successful people tend to marry other successful people and leave their power, wealth & connections etc. to their children. This concentrates said benefits to fewer and fewer families who have not earned it themselves, but will do whatever it takes to hold it even if doing so prevents new people from lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is why every time everywhere in history when a new free market was produced in a new frontier, it inevitably evolved into an aristocratic feudalism, which is bad for most people in it and the economy. What prevents our grandchildren in the future from living in neo-feudalism?

[@antonijaume8498]

Ile Salmo, for people in the USA it already is neo-feudalism. I would say it is even worse, as people are under a massive delusion that they are free.

[@mtn1793]

Maybe not as immediate as you’re thinking. Families building wealth expands the market as well, creating further opportunities to those coming up. Society is a flux which we are challenged to understand and form to the greatest value. Values including social.

[@joythought]

​​@@mtn1793 yes and also there are actually very few people benefitting from significant multi-generational family wealth. Societal upheavals occur too frequently on the multi-generation scale for most to retain their wealth more than 4 generations but we fixate on stories of Hapsburgs, etc

[@gordondavies7773]

Basically, transfer of wealth between generations of one family is a distortion of the free market. Which is why it should be taxed in the same way as other sources of wealth

[@TheGameFilmGuruMan]

An interesting alternative narrative that does rather look down on France in 1890 (which Jacob Soll here seems to claim wasn't a thing til post WWII) is Mahan. While he's more famous for starting naval arms races, Mahan's reasoning for the importance of naval assets has to do with France's failures concerning merchant shipping. I notice that Soll doesn't even touch on this-France economically does very well, but it didn't have nearly the shipping empires the Dutch and later British did. Note that Mahan DOES also praise Colbert's efforts, as Soll does here. In short, there are some very influential anti-French economy ideas pre-WWI, I just don't believe Soll was looking in the right place for them. Still a very very interesting discussion on this book, however.

[@thomasd2444]

01:05 - Jacob's [ discovered ] story begins in Rome

[@thomasjamison2050]

Time to break out the Fermamd Braudel. Of course, he's really looking for the roots of Communism, but he does a very interesting job of tracing the development of international markets.

[@spartacusforlife1508]

Given the state of the global economic system, now, do we really want a free market. No red tape, light touch oversight etc etc. Well the simple fact is the economic system we have is not fit for purpose

[@SeventhCircleID]

...erm... that reading of Smith is very very different to my own. Feels like some mile wide interpretations are being made to make the content fit the narrative the author wants to argue... I think I'd enjoy debating some of them.

[@paolosarpi8069]

Explain the unproductive class

[@SeventhCircleID]

@@paolosarpi8069 ...are you asking me for an essay? that's not a small subject, and any short reply would not do the complexities or nuance justice... could you narrow it down please.

[@Orson2u]

Agreed. He argues as if these notions were not understood and debated in the late nineteenth century. He does not know that in Central Europe, Christian education was deeply influenced by Aristotle. And that was before university study.

[@lowersaxon]

Absolutely. Absurd narrative overall. Very strange.

[@lewisjohnson8297]

The accent is poignantly appropriate to this discussion.

[@lewisjohnson8297]

The laws of "Celestial Mechanics", not an automatc mechanism.

[@maxheadrom3088]

St. Francis' father was a mechant, if I'm not mistaken. He was really weatlhy and then decides to give everything to the poor.

[@marybusch6182]

Well I dont know if St Francis practiced double entry accounting..

[@diarmuidbuckley6638]

@@marybusch6182 it was not invented until the days of Luca di Pacioli , who tutored Leonardo

[@marybusch6182]

@@diarmuidbuckley6638 true. I dont know st francis dates.

[@mtn1793]

I always took that story that he walked way from his birthright to serve the poor. Wasn’t there an early chapter of debauchery connected?

[@davidwilkie9551]

The whole by production of real economic practices has left an un-cleared pile on the other side of the Stables. Educational purposes only? This particular review is interesting and informative. Thank you.

[@thomasd2444]

22:54 - Adam Smith is not the father of capitalizing production thinking

[@macrosense]

But what about steam engines and mining and metal?

[@tonywilson4713]

I'm an engineer who's been informally studying economics for a few years because I got so frustrated with clowns waving the economics degrees interfering in projects. I find it incredibly annoying that all these people ignore what it actually takes to make a modern economy function at all. If you haven't already found the channel machine thinking then here's one of his best regarding the machine that made steam power possible: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpulaqKBa9WemKM Then there is the vid about a Swede and what he did that has made all of modern manufacturing possible: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nX-1n6Wkaql4a5o

[@diarmuidbuckley6638]

Steam Engines had a 'blocking patent" put on them by Watt, to expire in the year 1800, so totally not a free market

[@tonywilson4713]

@@diarmuidbuckley6638 On mining one of the most important patents in history was the one a member of the Bayer family got for processing bauxite. Prior to it aluminium was more expensive than gold. After it the Bayer family were able to build the pharmaceutical empire they are now famous for. Closely associated with mining because it is a form of mining is the oil industry that was dominated by the greatest pirate/robber baron of all time John D. Rockefeller, who proved that a "free market" without limits, controls and regulations guarantees that it leads to oligarchy. JDF helped fund the University of Chicago where the current deregulated market economics was formulated by Hayek & Freidman. On other metals there are literally 1000s and 1000s of patents on various alloys.

[@blackbeard00]

Don't know why he focuses on the Franciscans when the same is true for all early monastic orders.

[@clonie9963]

Sounds like Sean Connery 😀

[@Achrononmaster]

@3:20 "...land owners conducting disinterested exchange..." that's not a moral economics, it is highly immoral. Leaves the peasants making the real goods the land owners are trading out of the picture. Sure, Cicero, Hume, Locke and others are free to claim this is "moral" but that's a pretty twisted definition. Not my definition.

[@pillmuncher67]

The Free Market is an eschatological soteriology, I've said it for years. Or is it a soteriological eschatology?

[@jimbob-robob]

Sounds like scatology to me...👍🖖✊️

[@BUSeixas11]

What is so wild about the idea of voluntary economic exchange?

[@pillmuncher67]

@@BUSeixas11 Lemme guess: You're an Ayn Rand fanboi? Or a Murray Rothbard fanboi? I think haven't understood the joke I was making. Well, listen closely, grasshopper: Eschatology is the teaching of the last things, of the end times, when paradise is upon us. Soteriology is the teaching of how the world will be saved. The proponents of the Free Market tell us that when the state has finally has withdrawn completely from all things economic, a paradise of voluntary exchange will magically emerge, where all our needs will be met by the hidden force of the Invisible Hand and we're thus saved. Paradise, finally. You see how that is nothing but a secular religion, don't you?

[@antonijaume8498]

@@BUSeixas11 There are criminals.

[@highvoltageswitcher6256]

@@BUSeixas11 Because about 1% of people are psychopaths. They believe they can take whatever they want by what ever means.

[@torstenkranz5839]

There are 2 countries who have never been at peace and have never been attacked!!! If you got the US and UK on your site, you don't need enemies, but will always have would like to be's

[@antonijaume8498]

Torsten Kranz, neither the UK nor the USA have never been attacked: Nazi Germany attacked both even if they could not hit a lot at the USA continental territory Britain did suffer quite a bombing. And Japan too, even if they could not hit at the UK European territory which they did with Pearl Harbor.

[@torstenkranz5839]

@@antonijaume8498 kzbin.info/www/bejne/lWTMgmawf6p8odE

[@torstenkranz5839]

@@antonijaume8498 kzbin.info/www/bejne/hJvUoJyKYreGaqM

[@Orson2u]

Jefferson’s economist was Turgot - a Frenchman.

[@Orson2u]

Soll argues as if French thinkers were not read in England - or if they were read, then they were misunderstood. The latter point is sounder because they debated French economic thinking. And incompletely understood Continental thinking.

[@paolosarpi8069]

Luckily, America's economist was Hamilton. He didn't believe a word Smith wrote. Where does soll say French economists were not read in the UK? It sounds like he says the opposite.

[@matthewdolan5831]

Money is a meme which has had its day.

[@BUSeixas11]

You're right. We should go back to exchanging chickens for a loaf of bread.

[@casteretpollux]

Question of definition- is looting at gunpoint "free trade "? Arguably, yes. And arguably, no.

[@Orson2u]

Nonsense. Taking by force presupposes just or rightful ownership, or property rights. Theft is unjust taking.

[@mtn1793]

Take it another step: Is looting by deception, manipulations, politicizing, even if legal, is that free trade? I think it’s not, at least as the mythologizing of “free trade” defines itself.

[@highvoltageswitcher6256]

@@Orson2u In that case a lot of leaseholders in the UK should refuse to pay feudal ground rents and service charges. It’s unaccountable immoral usery.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Robbery is what Franz Oppenheimer defined as "political means" as opposed to providing for personal needs through the "economic means" of work and trade

[@steve-real]

The UK is being hobbled because it’s seriously hard to take in the migrants and actually assimilate everyone under one banner. Brexit is cultural push back to this. They could of handled immigration differently and not cut themselves out of the EU.

[@StumpyDaPaladin]

Nah, thats Rubbish. On the surface; Brexit looks like Parliament managed to collectively stuff its head up its own arse. And then sneezed. All due to some rather silly culture war nonsense about "we pay more and get less in return when we are part of the Union. while immigrants are taking all the jobs (that pay not enough to make the locals want to do them anyway) and using up all our social programs (which they dont actually qualify for)" But this is not actually the case. The Members of Parliament have been (collectively) running the Empire since William and Mary. And every single decision they have made has been to either enrich or maintain their own standard of living. As a means of enriching or maintaining their social status. Which then gets leveraged into increasing or maintaining political power. Which is used to enrich or maintain their standard of living ... Yes that is an oversimplification but the point stands. MP's and The Crown both enjoy a Huge pile of entirely legal financial incentives and tax breaks. And it is entirely due to them being the biggest fish in the pond that is Great Britain's economy for the last 350 years. Properly joining the EU means that while they are now part of a much larger economy ... they no longer answer to no one. The Crown and MP's would need to chip in (and quite heavily) to Brussels just like France, Germany and the rest of northern Europe. And when they try to pull the usual financial shenanigans they have grown accustomed to getting away with ... the rest of the Continent would (quite rightly imo) treat that sort of behavior as criminal. So it makes perfect sense (if you are an MP) to threaten to leave the EU unless some considerations are put in place (such as a special trading partner status that allows London to be a financial back door to the EU market as a whole. And the Banking sector in particular. like Singapore is to East Asia). It is just unfortunate that Brussels saw Brexit as a huge rug pull that was an insult to the hard work of the prior 50 odd years of political, social, and economic cooperation. So not only did Parliament get absolutely nothing; they effectively lost their status as a world power. Which garnered them their own personal Head up your own Arse trophy. The sneeze comes about where they almost restarted the Troubles and probably encourage Scotland to Leave.

[@casteretpollux]

Awful blather omitting or obscuring almost everything that should be talked about, until the last throw away line. None of the obvious hard questions asked. Read Adam Smith: his analysis of capitalism is extremely useful as it is observation based at formative stage. Half of Marx's "Capital" is taken from it.

[@robertallen591]

there are no free markets i cant use child labour or to make dangerous or addictive products, there are always rules and there always politicaly defined, free markets are an absurd proposition

[@steve-real]

Wow what a fascinating discussion but the cover art to the KZbin pod blows chow. Does not represent the feel and excitement to this off the hook presentation.

[@chioma3100]

Slavery has a lot to do with America's riches. Free labor, low wage labor, prison labor helps the bottom line. Reverse Robinhood.

[@JonathanSchattke]

Actually false, Slaves were more expensive than tenant farming, and the fact that cotton production ballooned by 50% immediately after emancipation proves it.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

The slave, unlike the laborer, must be equipped not only with necessary means of production (capital, knowledge, oversight, guidance) from his laborer, but is likewise burdened, quite aside from that, with expenditures to provide for additional needs of substinence (management, housing, clothing, foods and beverages)

[@benjaminhenderson5025]

And yet, the conclusion, stick with capitalism. 🙈🙉🙊

[@rer9287]

OMG - it is a mathematical tool that describes human behavior. derp. like maybe go back to freaking elementary school and try again.

[@antonijaume8498]

RER, you sound very much a sole-licker. What is this mathematical tool that describes human behaviour? If you meant markets, they are procedures for assigning values at some moment in time, however they can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent. You appear to be of those people that attribute divine property to markets.

[@rer9287]

@@antonijaume8498 sorry -it looks like maybe you are EASL, because I dont think you understand any of the words you are trying to use. If you doubt the validity of using markets as a mathematical tool, you only need to consider the value of the US dollar which is a fiat currency. The only mathematical tool the federal reserve has to assess the value of the dollar and decide how to regulate its value is the market paradigm. That is it - that is the only tool. I suppose the other option is just luck or maybe magic. But if you notice that your dollars - the dollars in your pocket have nearly the same value today as they had yesterday then that can only be attributed to the efficacy of math and the model of markets the USA has used for decades. But you seem to be confusing math with magic. Math is not magic, but whatever alternative you think you have - that is magical thinking. However since you have plainly demonstrated in your comment that you dont understand math - thats where you should start. You cant pretend to understand objective knowledge like math - other people actually understand it, so when you pretend to understand it, you just look like a child with chocolate all over your face. So go learn some math. go on - it will be good for you.