Markets don’t function without prices.  Without prices, production collapses into chaos.  Prices convey the preferences, demands, and scarcities of society—without needing a single word.  This makes them indispensable.  Price doesn’t just appear.  It emerges from voluntary exchange.  From trade.  From property.

The price system only works under conditions of ownership.  If no one owns anything, then no one can trade anything.  If no one trades, there are no prices.  If there are no prices, then no one knows what anything is worth.  There’s no way to allocate resources.  This isn’t a theoretical issue.  It’s real.  Look at every centrally planned economy.  It always ends in shortages, waste, and decay.

Socialists try to solve this with formulas, equations, computer models.  None of it works.  No equation can replicate trillions of decisions made by individuals, each with knowledge only they have.  No central planner has access to it.  No algorithm can process it.  The market doesn’t need to be told, it knows.

The beauty of prices is that they transmit information without coercion.  They guide entrepreneurs.  They expose waste.  They reward efficiency.  They punish fantasy.  Try planning without prices—you’ll plan ruin.

Some argue prices are unfair.  That some goods should be distributed by need, not by market forces.  Need without production is just demand without fulfillment.  The market is the only system that can even begin to meet needs—by making production possible.

Prices aren’t arbitrary.  They’re not created by decree.  They result from real exchanges.  From people valuing something more than what they give up to get it.  That’s how wealth is built.  That’s how civilization grows.

The alternative?  Guesswork, politics.  Theft dressed as fairness.  Without prices, everything becomes a fight.  Every resource a battleground.  Every good politicized.

Prices allow for peace, calculation, growth.  Without them, we return to the primitive.

That’s why the market matters.  That’s why property matters.  That’s why price isn’t just an economic issue.  It’s a civilizational one.

References

Ludwig von Mises; Human Action

Murray Rothbard; Man, Economy, and State