Thankful for the Market Process

     We have come a long way from the village farms and deer hunting ways of the first Thanksgiving and a lot of that is due to the institutional framework here in the United States. The constitution set up a system of limited government in contrast to more controlling regimes of kings, queens and aristocracies. This allowed for the growth of modern America and the wonderful things we can be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Markets move to please and allow grocers to compete for the attention of local consumers through Turkey Price Wars. I can find everything I need for my Thanksgiving meal by walking into my local Wegmans. This is a product of the market process alive and well.


     As George Mason University's Dr. Walter Williams would say, these grocers are "serving there fellow man". We can only imagine the logistics behind getting food from farm to grocery store and ultimately your table this Thanksgiving day. The market process is easy to see when we look at our pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. Do you have to know the conditions cranberries or pumpkins grow in to purchase them? No of course not, you just exchange your value dollars for the cranberries and pumpkins and you are off to a delicious Thanksgiving. Things like the seamlessness of food infrastructure exist because of the market process. We might have to bear the slight pain of a packed grocery store, but the food is there for us.


     On behalf of the George Mason Economics Society I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving and may the rest of your holiday season be full of good cheer.


Michael Levesque is a senior economics student at George Mason. He currently serves as the Market and Creative Director of the Economics Society. He lives in Fairfax and loves to bike on the George Mason Cycling Club. You can find him on twitter: @tylerlevesque and his blog Let Markets Decide.
Note: Image found on Wikipedia. Originally in the Library of Congress Archive.