[kanzure]

> In the market at large, participants certainly don't need to understand the global ramifications of their actions, only the local ones. I don't see why that isn't the case here as well.

The primary reason why that does not apply here is because nobody is selling "the market at large" to you as a cryptographically-secure decentralized consensus system. And besides, those ledgers are edited all the time by Authorities; it's irrelevant to this topic.

Edit: you are attempting to reason by analogy about a pricing system, and then trying to apply it to proof-of-work consensus? May I ask why?

[nbouscal]

No, the market economy is sold as a surplus-maximizing decentralized price system. I was attempting to reason by analogy. You've pointed to a difference between the two, but haven't given an explanation of why that difference is sufficient reason for the analogy to break. I'm happy to believe that it is, but am as yet uneducated as to why.

Edit in response to your edit: It just occurred to me that most of the critiques that nullc was making were in very direct correspondence to critiques one could make of the price system. I have no idea if this analogy is useful, but it seemed awfully coincidental.