Reddit mentions of Ecological Economics, Second Edition: Principles and Applications

> The markets, that is the collection and sum of all humans in the world, assign value to everything

No They don't. That is the error upon which all your other false statments are based. The free market only measures value in a very particular narrow band. It reduces a rich complexity of values to a singular metric and it does so in a way that is biased towards particular values.

The central reason for this is because it is impossible to have a perfect free market, as a result of this, monoplies always develop, which in turn distort the market in many ways: e.g. through propoganda, media and the manipulation of governments and market mechanisims. Resulting in people spending in ways that they would not otherwise do, and often against their own interests.

Humans are not perfectly aware actors in the market place, they are largely unconcious, goverend by many unconcious congnitave biases and emotional drives.

The free market is fundemtaly biased towards human values that are selfish, greedy, manipualtive and consumptive. Humans are capable - and do - express a far richer set of values than a free market encourages, despite the free market being the dominant form of values exchange.

I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to understand. It is a first years social science topic.

I'm going to bed. If you want more go and argue with Herman Daly or Karl Polyiani