[clicks]

Why are we presupposing the market economy to be free of human behavior in any case? In practical terms a market economy will always be involved with human behavior... because it's a market where all parties involved are human.

[Mikeb85]

A market economy presupposes a market ruled by supply and demand, free from regulatory interference. In such a market, there is no inherent mechanism to make the rich richer, or the poor poorer.

Rather it's human behaviour which determines wealth and distribution of wealth. So while this effect is certainly something that economists study and will continue to study, it's entirely due to human behaviour, independent of the 'type' of economy. Even in Communist countries you see this effect - the ruling party consolidate their wealth and power while the subjects are handed out a finite amount of resources/wealth.

[quadrangle]

"A market economy presupposes a market ruled by supply and demand, free from regulatory interference."

Science does not spent time on fantasy. Science is for things that exist in the observable world.

[fennecfoxen]

Excuse me. I spent some hours in high school physics learning the non-relativistic way to add velocity vectors, to say nothing of simplifying assumptions ignoring friction or wind resistance. Turns out it's a pretty good approximation in a variety of common cases. This is as much "fantasy" science as the example you're complaining about is "fantasy" economics, and either are darned useful ways to idealize problems where the discrepancies between the real world and the fantasy world are small.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go work on my Turing machine with infinite memory and all that jazz...

[Mikeb85]

There are markets in this world where governments cannot reach. There are also planned markets, and everything in between.

Economics is as much theory as it is observation. Much like other sciences, for example, math and physics.

[freshhawk]

Hmm, I definitely agree it's entirely due to human behaviour, that's where my confusion came from. I'm confused about how you expect this "meme" to die. It's never going to. It's inherent in any system with a disparity in power between the involved actors if the actors are even remotely free in their choice of actions and even a single actor is willing to act selfishly.

An economic system with the controls in place to stop the Matthew effect would look nothing like a free market.