"Reinventing the Bazaar" by John McMillan Chapter 1 Questions

1. John McMillan goes into great detail about what defines a market.  "A market for something exists if there are people who want to buy it and people who want to sell it" (p. 5).  He does mention that this definition does not go deep enough into what a market is.  McMillan later says this... "A definition of a market transaction, then, is an exchange that is voluntary: each party can veto it, and (subject to the rules of the marketplace) each freely agrees to the terms.  A market is a forum for carrying out such exchanges" (p. 6).

2. I think that there is a huge spectrum where people stand when it comes to their thoughts of the market.  Many people may distrust markets most likely because they did not feel satisfied with an investment made.  Trust in the market is huge, and a bad experience can easily burn that bridge.  I feel that people that distrust non-market action use other societies as examples.  I think that people will look at other societies with very small, weak markets, look at their way of life, and feel that it is very basic and not very pleasurable.  For me, I feel that non-market action would put society at a large disadvantage in advancing technology.  I think that markets are extremely necessary and, without question, irreplaceable for the advancement of technology and for the future of society.

3. I am not entirely familiar with the market today so this may not be entirely true.  From what I can remember from my high school history class, I believe that the government outlawed monopolies after the strong monopolies of the early 20th century.  Monopolies can be very detrimental to the economy because monopolies will, with ease, drive small businesses out of business.  I believe that the government has several laws in place to avoid a single power in the economy.  These laws are in place to keep the economy going strong.  Another "rule" could be copyright laws associated with downloading online music.  Without these laws, music would be (and still is) illegally downloaded and artists would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.  $1.29 may not seem like too much money for the artist to be missing out on, but if a million people illegally download a song, the artist is losing $1.3 million.  We could find that becoming an artist is less lucrative and music could no longer be made (now that's a little extreme but artists are losing a lot of money).