Why I Believe In Self Ordering Markets: Witness the Grateful Dead Parking Lot
Free minds and free markets
I was recently talking with a colleague and we were discussing the nature of markets. He seemed to think they were something that were invented by humans. I argued that no, markets are as natural as the tides or the changing or the seasons. Markets emerge in nature for instance, separate from humans. The rain forest is a great bustling market with plants and animals all working together, or against one another in the pursuit of energy. Markets are one of the ways that the universe orders itself. Markets, no matter the political system always emerge and they always clear. Some markets are freer than others, and those I have found are the most fun.
The below post examines the freest market I have ever seen, the Grateful Dead show parking lot. I wrote it over a decade ago but the recent discussion with my friend reminded me of it so I thought I would share.
I believe in the spontaneous order of markets. Left free, markets are in fact not unstable as we are often told, they actually order themselves quite nicely. It is usually only when the force of government is introduced that there are dislocations within an economy and associated pain for participants.
One of the best places to see this is in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show.
The Grateful Dead sadly are not the Grateful Dead any longer, but what is left of the band continues on under various names. Regardless, the economic experiment that happens outside of these shows now is essentially the same as what one witnessed years ago.
A Dead show parking lot is the single freest, most capitalistic place I have ever been to in my entire life. Miles beyond Wall Street for instance.
This might sound surprising as deadheads are not known for their love of capitalism. In fact many of the heads I knew in college railed against capitalism. (Though for the most part economics was not really their bailiwick.)
Yet in the parking lot of a show all of the rules society imposes upon commerce are temporarily suspended. Though the police are always present in the background, and everyone knows they are there, there is the assumption that so long as people are peaceful and not starting trouble the cops are unlikely to hassle them. It is a little island of free markets.
There are no drug laws in the parking lot. There are no licensure laws in the parking lot. There is no enforcement of supposed “intellectual property” in the parking lot. There is no zoning for businesses that sell anything from beer to veggie bagels to t-shirts out of the backs of Subaru station wagons. And yet, and I have been to a good number of shows over the years, the whole place orders itself beautifully every time, with no force of law.
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