JD Vance Is Wrong: The Market Isn’t a ‘Tool’

As economically illiterate as any leftist Democrat, he even imagines the word is spelled with a capital M

By Matthew Hennessey. Excerpts:

"Nobody, not even these editorial pages—whose longstanding motto is “free people, free markets”—capitalizes the “M” in markets. The market isn’t a proper noun, and it also isn’t a tool. The market simply is. Nobody controls it. Nobody worships it, but only a fool ignores it.

Long before recorded history, long before people settled in cities and started building fruit stands, before Adam Smith, before Wall Street, before dating apps, before crypto—before all that there was trade: I give you this, you give me that. Simple exchange is what makes a market. Not faith, not mantras, not brick and mortar. Wherever people come together to trade is a market."

"Markets harness supply and demand to coordinate economic transactions between people and firms. They facilitate the free exchange of goods and services. They are mechanisms for shared prosperity based on freedom from coercion. They don’t enslave us, they liberate us."

"Markets, whether for cheap consumer goods or government bonds, can’t be bullied into compliance with a political agenda. They aren’t governed by the philosophies and desires of men like Mr. Vance. They are governed by the laws of economics the way the physical world is governed by the laws of gravity. You can moan about them all you want, you can lament the trade-offs they demand and the constraints they impose, but you can’t ignore or wish them away. No amount of political will or spilled ink can overrule them. Supply and demand are undefeated."