[mindslight]

iff P == NP.

Otherwise the market is just a heuristic for obtaining one type of workable solution and then refining it into a local optimum.

Business thought heartily embraces this when talking about how to make a profit - profit itself is an indicator of non-optimality, and nowhere near a small epsilon for most businesses. But then when criticizing instances where the heuristic has failed and created solutions/structures that look quite non-optimal, so many people want to brush this aside this reality and invoke the efficient market fallacy.

[from-nibly]

No I'm saying that if you have found the cheapest way to do something with money (all inclusive, not local) then you have found the fewest resources plus labor as well.

[Towaway69]

Would that not imply eating the cheapest food available would also be the healthiest?

Buying the cheapest car would be the most resource efficient and most reliable car?

The implication being that cheap is best, which it most certainly isn’t. In your case cheap = fewest resources used.

But cheap could also be achieved by tax breaks, financial trickery (shifting debt around shell companies), producing products in cheap labour countries and then shipping it around the world as opposed to producing locally with less resources required for transportation.

[mindslight]

Yes, I understood that. It's a common fallacy, but in reality markets just aren't fully efficient like that. Reread my above comment.