ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that prices are governed by tastes, endowments, and what he may call epistemic circumstances. There are five ways in which the epistemic circumstances of a real situation can depart from that condition where everyone possesses perfect knowledge. First, there may be no adequate organization for pre-reconciling the simultaneous choices of different individuals. Secondly, present valuations may be made in awareness that choices will be made in future, with which no pre-reconciliation is, in the nature of things, possible. Thirdly, present valuations may express speculation on conjectural future valuations. Fourthly, present valuations may have regard to the unpredictable mutations of technology, fashion, politics and diplomacy, and of every facet of the evolving general scene. Fifthly, there are the deliberate deceptions and concealments practised by those engaged in bilateral monopoly or in duopoly or oligopoly, and the very breakdown of logic which the latter virtually entails.
