Sohrab Ahmari gets everything right. So far I haven’t heard one false note in his discussions.
In this interview with Trish Wood he focuses on the standard Friedmanite lie that price is an automatic result of equal forces on two sides, like a drain trap.
Nobody believes this brazenly delusional lie. Even the economists don’t believe the lie. They only USE the lie as propaganda to wipe out resistance to Bezos and Fink and Dimon. The “efficient market” blocks people from discerning and discussing the PLAIN REALITY of unilateral power, in exactly the same way that “democracy” stops discussion of absolute tyranny, and “meritocracy” stops discussion of innate status.
Marx and Mohammed and FDR started from a CORRECT understanding of unilateral power, and developed various methods to BALANCE unilateral power, by placing government on the side of the powerless.
Ahmari starts from the obvious fact that the forces are NEVER equal. His version of the law:
Price measures the imbalance of power.
More precisely, the variability or flexibility of price measures the imbalance. When power is all on one side, price is rigid. When power is closer to equal, price is more negotiable.
In math terms,
d(price)/dt ∝ d(power)/ds.
This strongly resembles magnetism or Ohm’s law. It’s closer to magnetism because the output side is variability of prices instead of flow. When there’s no dominant North-South field, molecules wander and rotate freely. When a field is applied, all molecules line up in the same direction.
There are three traditional ways to turn a piece of soft iron into a permanent magnet.
First, simply stroke the piece with a magnet in one direction. This gentle method only persuades some of the molecules to line up. It creates a weak and semi-permanent tendency.
Second, heat the piece and apply a field. The heat gets the molecules moving around more than usual, and the field forces the molecules to line up. Then cool it down to crystallize the unilateral direction.
Third, apply a field and strike the piece with a hammer. The hammer blow momentarily jangles the molecules, and they settle down in the unilateral direction.
Politicians create a unilateral direction in the same three ways.
First, give people a political solution to an important problem. Stroke the country gently with the solution and let people realize that the solution is worth trying. FDR.
Second, heat up a country with constant disorders and troubles and depressions, then apply a strong field. When the country cools down, everyone will align with the unilateral field. Most US politicians use this method.
Third, apply a sudden hammerblow like “9/11” or “virus”. Everyone loses their bearings and flips around in various directions. The applied field (Homeland Security, CDC) forces a unilateral orientation. Bush/Trump.
= = = = =
Not incidentally, Georg Ohm’s original concept, which was very recently vindicated, was more like the process of permanentizing a magnet.
Polistra's Mill 