The result, Polanyi observed, is that in order for markets in fictitious commodities ever to cohere and function (even imperfectly), various props, rules, regulations and norms must be fashioned and applied. These serve to make it appear like what exists is a real market, featuring real prices and actors earning real profits. But this is always a fiction – a kind of pretence. Prices and profits in such cases are always as much a matter of external institutional intervention (essentially, social construction) as of supply and demand, and all market actors are party to the collective fiction,
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