Arbitrage forms the basis of what we call capitalism. Creating and moving, literally and figuratively, products and services across price differentials at a profit creates concentrations of money, capital, which are employed both as continuing arbitrage and 'spent' as end user purchases, personal and capital goods, on a basis of opportunity cost in pursuit of efficiency, which is the minimizing of long term opportunity cost, which does make markets.
Markets require a stable currency, private property or legal stewardship, and the apparatus of contract law. All three define the possibilities of any political economy based on the existence of markets. Properly speaking it is not capitalism, the outward form of arbitrage. It is marketism, a political economy arranged for the success of markets.
Do Well and Be Well
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