As Adam Smith observed, the outcomes from markets make it appear as if the markets were guided by an invisible hand. The miracle is that there is stuff I want at a price I can afford at the grocery store down the street. That's amazing-it's something the immense staff of planners in the Soviet Union never managed, even using the visible hand of state control. Markets work because they are a means of aggregating local knowledge at very low cost. And it is not because powerful people want them to.
Markets work because entrepreneurs spot opportunities to get rich.
In Lessig's markets, however, there are no entrepreneurs. No one enters the market for computer code or for goods and services to offer consumers privacy and books at a discount. No one enters the market for anonymous communications. No one sets up a Web site based in the Cayman Islands to process anonymous financial transactions. Considering the record of entrepreneurs in reaping rewards from the Internet, his claim is astonishingly erroneous.