MAA-PIX

View of interior of Aquarium on Belle Isle; visitors look at fish tanks along corridor walls. Potted ferns hang from tiled and barrel-vaulted ceilings. Printed on front: "Aquarium, Belle Isle, Detroit, Mich." Printed on back: "1577, the Aquarium on Belle Isle is one of the most popular attractions on the island. In it will be found all kinds of fresh and salt water fish. The Commission brings the water direct from the ocean for the latter. This card shows the interior view." Miller Art Co. and Metropolitan Metrocraft publisher trademarks on verso.

You’re not the person who’s making the chair, you’re not the person who bought the chair, but you nevertheless end up with all their money, because you’ve been allowed to gouge the buyer for as much as you can extract from him, and then pass on as little of his money as possible to the creator. Which is a lot more than just “an exchange of goods and services.”

It also means a weird, warped, self-defining measurement for “efficiency,” which isn’t calculated by whether the creator built the best chair on the market, which isn’t calculated by whether the buyer got a product that fulfilled his requirements as well as possible, but instead is calculated only by whether the middleman was able to extract the maximum amount of value out of the two of them. (And, in fact, whether the middleman was able to extract at least X% more out of the two of them than he was a year ago: being just as successful as you were last year is considered a failure). Before you know it, parts of society that have nothing to do with markets are now being judged according to that definition, and either get discarded or deformed to the point where they can’t fulfill their purpose anymore.