Because you are telling me I'm wrong, and then redefining meanings.
And this because I think the rules of a game are part of the game? How have I 'redefined' anything?
Because with *your* definition - shoplifting is a market force.
It IS, you know. Has to do with demand. It affects supply. Changes price.
and now you can't analyze ANYTHING, even in the sterile world of economics.
Oh - so only simple models are possible. I suppose analysis grows more valuable, and more reliable, the less it's connected to the real world?
Laws are specifically not addressed in beginning models, more so in more complex ones.
So - you are saying that laws are addressed in more complex models, or are you saying that they are addressed 'less than not' in more complex models? If they are addressed more, then it seems that laws shape the market after all.
Things that increase cost or decrease the price, they can be mapped. "Antitrust" cannot.
But MONOPOLY can... So laws that 'prevent' abusive monopolies cannot? Sorry - don't 'buy' it.
Suddenly tossing that in is wrong - yes, wrong - and makes discussion impossible.
Insist all you like - but making a subject more complex does not make it 'impossible to discuss'.
Try and draw up a simple supply demand curve. Now show me where you're doing the "antitrust" representation.
So 'simple' is the sticking-point. Fine. Considering laws passed by the consumers that make up a market makes things more complex. So what?
Contracts are distortions of the model. Just like ceilings, and floors. The whole concept of the "free market", which doesn't totally exist, is that there's open transactions. The more elasticity you have, the better.
So - without the 'contract' that is implicit in having a unit of exchange, your simple model is back to barter as a means of exchange. Talk about disconnected from reality! The more elasticity the 'better'? The better for what? Modelling a so-called 'free market'?
The less elastic, the more complex the modelling gets. Laws are represented as constraints on price, and contracts would be the same way.
How do you propose, in the common supply/demand curve, to show the law for "monopoly" as part of the market?
So - you are saying that a monopoly condition can't be represented in an economic model? That constraints or limits on that condition in said model are impossible to represent?
Oh.
Fine.