[jmyeet]

Markets have been glorified in the modern political discourse, at least in the West. It's one of the core tenets of neoliberalism: markets for everything. Side note: markets actually have nothing to do with capitalism. If you think they do, you don't know what capitalism is.

All of this stems from the idea that independent actors will create an "efficient" market to reach a price equilibrium in the most Econ 101 way possible with an awful lot of hand waving. This ignores the desire and ability for actors to put their thumbs on the scales.

Markets exist to extract wealth from participants to support the current economic order. This is done through lobbying, rent-seeking, putting up barriers (or enclosures if you prefer), restricting competition, using market power to crush competitors and reaching a monopoly or oligopoly to maximize wealth extraction.