ABSTRACT
This book is about a market mechanism that in the modern world is ephemeral, existing only briefly like a flickering light. It is a marketplace that appears from time to time when conditions are just right in the economies we now know, and then disappears again as conditions change. It is also a marketplace that bestows some remarkable benefits on the people who are able to buy and sell in it during its brief appearances, but one that could conceivably be strengthened by legislative or other sorts of human intervention and made a permanent feature of the economy of any people who wished to enjoy its benefits on a regular basis.
