This mirrors the development of the cerebral cortex in humans, developed to repress the raw power of the inner layers of the brain because it is simply more prudent to do so in order to survive more powerfully. Mandatory self-enslavement due to nothing more than successful biological circumstance.
Reflecting this aspect of human biology back outwards to society, one’s individual purpose translates into economic organisation - to which we freely are, on an individual level, happy to subject ourselves to - but apparently not on a societal level. But then individual biologies differ (but so do various different parts of our body, that all work together). Our economy must take this into account. Else we fall into the same trap of blaming the name of the institution - whether it be “God”, “State”, or “market”, rather than the common form of all three.
The OP just seems like a dishonest rationalisation that the market is any different from God or State. Maybe the market just hasn’t yet developed capital letter status. It’s just another form of the same meta-individual purpose…
The market is the God-State of mediocrity because price is the average “quantified” value that everyone is individually willing to sacrifice for something. Only it is mixed with the God-State of elitism because prices are set more by those in power than those without. Think of it like a bell-curve (Gaussian distribution) but shifted “to the right” where the y-axis is degree of market-value influence. The more luxury the item/service, the further shifted to the right. Adding all markets together, you get a cumulative distribution function. This has power as the y-axis.
The common criticism of solutions such as “evening out the distribution of power” (equality) is that the volume under the curve has to be constant, lessening the power of the rich to the benefit of the poor (only the volume might even decrease if we allowed this).
I propose we make more use of the poor without compromising the power of the already rich. The poor don’t need keeping down, they need their potential to be realised. The rich already have that.
I suppose I am advocating some kind of Hindu system, except instead of being based in endogamy it would be based on individual preference with “castes” infinite and self-formed. Any incentives based on superiority are internalised within each “caste” so there’s still competition. Only I’m fairly sure that such a system needs an overall direction of the “brain”. But that would take us back to the conundrum of which “overall purpose” we are to bow down to: God, State or Market…
Much the same as saying “[any type of economy] works in theory but not in practice”. One can either say that such a theory did not take sufficient account of the nature of the people using it, or it did not sufficiently discriminate between people using it - disallowing those that would otherwise ruin it.
The problem with this ideal is that essentials need other services applied to them in order to be available. Water, food, clothing and shelter need raw material extraction, often manufacture, and always distribution. Farming has to be intensive and localised in order to provide for so many people, necessitating distribution, and even security and supervisory analysis. Water needs to be treated because we’re so fucking dirty. Clothing and shelter need to be constructed… All these services have to be applied to the essentials in order for them to become available - services that don’t come for free.