From Cambridge to Eternity: “Market as a Framework of Reference” (2)

  

Suppose the product “widget” to be traded in the market of Mini-polis with a certain limited number of households. We assume the accounting period is the month. We additionally imagine for the sake of convenience the demand curve and the supply curve as illustrated in textbooks.

             We certainly have the “equilibrium price” which would clear the market in the month of April. We might call such a price as “the price of market average,” which we can figure out ex post if in reality. At any rate, the market has been “cleared.” Or, the market has ended up “in equilibrium” except for this regret: The “equilibrium price” will surely be different in May as long as the market is awake.

 

What Opportunity? In the marketplace, there are prices. In the market, there is “the price.” There is one commonality among a price in reality, the price of imagination and all the other different prices as realistic: that is, each being decided upon the basis of bilateral free wills.

             Suppose a price in a certain exchange done. The particular price in the thaler, the currency unit of the republic, represents the opportunity cost to the particular buyer while the opportunity benefit to the particular seller. There is no such thing as “the opportunity” to unsuccessful participants, quite many of them, who voluntarily chose to walk away  from  the markeet. Deal done or not, the free will is the flipside of the market “Adam Smith from Edinburgh talked about.”

.          Apparently, a price of bilateral consent comes first and the opportunity follows thereafter. After all, where there is "no price" there is "no opportunity."

             Apparently, a demand and a supply schedules come first and the price next.

             Apparently, defining the demand curve in terms of the opportunity cost, the General Practice in Cambridge macroeconomics, is preposterous. Listen honey, I have hereby put the cart before the horse.