The possibility of new knowledge makes the steady state impossible. Somewhere somebody will have a new idea and that idea will enable him to invent a new combination of atoms both to create and to exploit imperfections in the market. As Friedrich Hayek argued, knowledge is dispersed throughout society, because each person has a special perspective. Knowledge can never be gathered together in one place. It is collective, not individual. Yet the failure of any particular market to match the perfect market no more constitutes ‘market failure’ than the failure of a particular marriage to match the
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