The market and “intervention” in it emerged together. We might say that the market has always tolerated some intervention and never existed in pure form anywhere—meaning a market limited solely by law. Sometimes it is difficult to draw a clear line between law and intervention. Indeed, what was law for a time may become intervention under changed conditions. Likewise, many legal norms arose as generalizations of the practice of both successful and unsuccessful interventions in the market.
To be sure, we can trace the origins of intervention. First and foremost, it rests on certain intentions. Intentions spring from assumptions—that by acting in a particular way, we will obtain a certain result. In this process, we can operate only with information. After all, assumptions and the methods for implementing intentions require logic, and logic can work only with information. Any intervention, therefore, is initially based on partial and outdated information.
Unlike deliberate intervention, the market generates many “invisible institutions” that are results of people’s activities but not their intentions.
In general, although intervention in the functioning of the market is inevitable, it will never be beneficial, since any information (that is, data) about a system is always inferior to the knowledge that the system already possesses.
Consequently, intervention distorts knowledge and generates errors in decision-making.