The ontological schism: from the smell of fish to the algebra of risk

“ November 15th.—Yesterday morning we went to London Bridge and along Lower Thames Street, and quickly found ourselves in Billingsgate Market, —a dirty, evil-smelling, crowded precinct, thronged with people carrying fish on their heads, and lined with fish-shops and fish-stalls, and pervaded with a fishy odor. The footwalk was narrow,—as indeed was the whole street,—and filthy to travel upon; and we had to elbow our way among rough men and slatternly women, and to guard our heads from the contact of fish-trays ”

“ Those who have once reached the Monument, may “smell” their way to Billingsgate; for there is an old monastic odour about the shops, recalling Lent and stock-fish, and telling you that you are hemmed in with smoked haddock and salted herrings—which, when nothing else could be had, it must have been a heavy penance to have lived upon, and caused the poor sinner to have made many a wry face while devouring such dry and thirsty food. Once in Lower Thames-street, and you are in a land of danger. You come in contact with big men bending beneath bulky boxes ”

“ But if anyone wants to see practical experiences of the civilization of illiteracy unfolding in their quasi-pure manner, one has only to look at the stock market and commodities exchanges and auctions conducted over the Internet. Moreover, one must try to envision those invisible, distributed, networked transactions in which it is impossible to define who initiated a transaction, continued another one, or brought a deal to an end, and based on what criteria. They, too, seem to have a life of their own. ”

“ Speculation, as we know it in our time, is a very different affair from what it was fifty, and even thirty, years ago. Value in all markets in our day is unsettled with the lightning flash that laughs at the bed of the Atlantic as no better than a span of space, while the forces that close in on all sides, representing demand and supply, with a responsive thunder-clap, adjust the new level as each market grasps in a moment the cause of the disturbance. ”

“ Others may outlast centuries. The prices vary from day to day; the credits may not survive the next panic; the Constitution may very slowly evolve for ages. None of these objects, moreover, can be called mere ideas inside of any man’s head. None of them are arbitrary creations of definition. The individual may find them as stubborn facts as are material objects. The prices in the stock market may behave like irresistible physical forces. ”

“ It is often seen what a disagreeable thing it is to keep a large parcel of fish hanging on in the face of a fluctuating market, the chance being oftener against us than in our favour; and fish, in particular, being such a perishing article, the risk is very often great. ”

“ How can a manufacturer protect himself against a decline in the price of cotton, while his goods are being prepared for the market?
How can a manufacturer accept orders for late deliveries, without possessing the cotton?
How can an importer take advantage of the great quantity of offers, which flood the market, during the first few months of the gathering of the crop?
To anybody in the cotton trade, these questions present no difficulties, but, for the outside world, be it mentioned, that it is the "future" market that furnishes the means to overcome these apparent anomalies. ”

“ As has appeared, the plaintiff's chamber of commerce is, in the first place, a great market, where, through its eighteen hundred members, is transacted a large part of the grain and provision business of the world. Of course, in a modern market, contracts are not confined to sales for immediate delivery. People will endeavor to forecast the future, and to make agreements according to their prophecy. Speculation of this kind by competent men is the self-adjustment of society to the probable. ”

“ Thus the market consumes itself, and the sequels of literacy, requiring provisional and distributed literacies.
Each time individuals project their identity in a product, the multi-dimensional human experience embodied in the product is made available for exchange with others. In the market, it is reduced to the dimension appropriate to the given context of the transaction. Human behavior in the market is symptomatic of the self-awareness of the species, of its critical and self-critical capabilities, of its sense of the future. ”

“ We all deplore the continuous shrinking of the intimate sphere of our lives, but admit, in the act of constituting ourselves in the space and time of market transactions, the integrating power that the market exercises, ignoring how close the relation between the two aspects is. Literacy was once a protective medium and entailed rules of discretion and decency. Illiteracy makes us fear; it allows us to become more efficient, but at the same time we become subject to intrusion by all the means that capture our identity. ”

“ A conglomerate of the readings mentioned above is the mug shot of the abstract consumer, behind whom are all the others who constitute their individuality through the transactions that make up the market. A used car or computer salesman, a small retailer, and a university professor identify themselves in different ways in and through the market. ”

“ The market-in its narrow sense as transaction, and as a sign process joining structure and dynamics-focuses all that pertains to the relation between the individual and the social environment: language, customs, mores, knowledge, technology, images, sounds, odors, etc. Through the market, economies are ascertained or subjected to painful restructuring. Recent years brought with them turmoil and economic opportunity as an expression of new pragmatic characteristics. Competition, specialization, cooperation, were all intensified. ”

“ In the latter place a good trade is frequently done between twelve at night and two in the morning. For the morning trade the best districts are the Strand, Oxford-street, City-road, New-road (from one end to the other) , the markets, especially Covent Garden, Billingsgate, Newgate, and the Borough. There are no coffee-stalls in Smithfield. The reason is that the drovers, on arriving at the market, are generally tired and cold, and prefer sitting down to their coffee in a warm shop rather than drink it in the open street. ”

“ In Thames Street are the ancient markets of Billingsgate and Queenhithe. The former has been a market and a port for more than a thousand years. Customs and tolls were paid here in the time of King Ethelred the Second, that is, in the year 979. The exclusive sale of fish here is comparatively modern, that is, it is not three hundred years old. As for Queenhithe it is still more ancient than Billingsgate. ”

“ There are underground communication with several railways, to bring in, right under the market, meat and poultry from the country, and meat from the slaughterhouses of the Copenhagen Fields Cattle Market. Newgate Market, as a market, no longer exists. Leadenhall Market is a depôt for meat and poultry. At Whitechapel there is a meat market also. The minor meat markets require no special note here. Billingsgate, the principal fish market of London, near the Custom House, was greatly extended and improved in 1849. ”

“ In one instance, we find an order made that no cook shall charge more than one penny for putting a capon or a rabbit in a crust; the materials for the pastry, with the exception perhaps of the flour, being evidently found by the customer employing him.
The wholesale markets for corn, malt, and salt, brought to London by water, were at Billingsgate, and Queen Hythe. Sometimes in the reign of Edward III. and Richard II., we find it enacted, that the commodities brought to these quays shall remain three days on sale to the public, before the dealers shall be allowed to buy ”

“ Billingsgate is more like a wholesale warehouse than a fish-market, although you may purchase a single mackerel in it. The hundreds of carts which are drawn up in Thames-street, proclaim how far and wide the produce of river and ocean is dispersed. From the next street to the most remote suburb are the loads of fish borne, to be washed and laid out temptingly in the thousands of shops which abound in London and the surrounding suburbs. Nor is the supply limited to this circle; the rapid trains carry off tons of fish to the distant towns, where they arrive in time enough for dinner ”

“ Hence we gather that at a very early period Billingsgate was not merely a fish-market, but for the sale of general commodities. Paying toll in kind is a curious fiscal regulation; though, doubtless, when barter was the ordinary mode of transacting business, taxes must have been collected in the form of an instalment of the goods brought to market.
Our ancestors four hundred years ago had, in proportion to the population of London, much more abundant and much cheaper fish than we have now. ”

“ It is the natural tendency of markets to admit goods for sale other than those for which they were created.
Thus we find in the fourteenth century that wheat was sold in the “corn market of Newgate”; that poulterers who were freemen had to sell their fowls either in Newgate Market or else west of the Tun in Cornhill; that cheese brought into the City by “foreigners” had to be sold in the market between the Shambles and Newgate, and nowhere else; that blacksmiths were forbidden to sell their goods 306except in the pavement of Newgate or else by the Tun of Cornhill ”

“ If you would see the market at its best you must visit it at five in the morning, when the day’s work begins—the place is then already crowded; you will find bustle and noise enough over the sale of such an enormous mass of fish as will help you to understand something of hungry London. Hither come all the fishmongers to buy up their daily supplies. If you try to connect this vast mass of fish with the mouths for which it is destined you will feel the same kind of bewilderment that falls upon the brain when it tries to realize the meaning of millions. ”

“ The only street-seller of tools at present frequenting Billingsgate-market is an elderly man, who is by trade a working cutler. The articles he displays upon his tray are oyster-knives, fish-knives, steels, scissors, packing-needles, and hammers. ”

“ So again, the action of the brain, which goes on prior to our realising the idea in which it results, is not perceived p. 101by the individual. So also all the deeper springs of action and conviction. The residuum with which we fret and worry ourselves is a mere matter of detail, as the higgling and haggling of the market, which is not over the bulk of the price, but over the last halfpenny. ”

“ The unanimous feeling appeared to be, that an establishment outside the metropolis, with adequate room for the animals, where they could be free from that state of excitement to which they were subjected, from being driven through the streets, would necessarily be advantageous; the main thing that opposed itself to the plan, was the actual scarcity of buyers there, and he much feared that as long as the interests, which then surrounded Smithfield market, were made to tell, as they now did, on the butchers and salesmen, so long buyers would be deficient there ”

“ Just as it is cant of the worst description to say to the London Corporation, ‘How can you exhibit to the people so plain a spectacle of dishonest equivocation, as to claim the right of holding a market in the midst of the great city, for one of your vested privileges, when you know that when your last market holding charter was granted to you by King Charles the First, Smithfield stood in the Suburbs of London, and is in that very charter so described in those five words?’—which is certainly true, but has nothing to do with the question. ”

“ This great market, like Bartholomew-fair, is doomed to be swept away, and Smithfield to be shorn of its glory, and the old houses left to mourn in silence. A horned and angry bullock is not the most fitting object to rush through our crowded thoroughfares, to the terror of pretty nursery-maids and little children. But, as the inimitable Matthews said, “We cannot take a hackney-coach for it;” nor can such a danger be got rid of without great injury to many of the old inhabitants, whose very bread depends upon the market. ”

“ Yet down to the204 ’ fifties, in the nineteenth century, among the booths there were always some which kept up the semblance of serious trade; between the toy-stalls and the gingerbread were booths of cheap books and booths of hosiery and clothing.
Let us go on to consider the conduct of the trade of London Port. And, first, as regards the English merchants. When trade begins, all the regulations of trade for its security, such as the enforcement of debts, the due carrying out of contracts and agreements, must begin at the same time. ”

“ Risk is being assumed, traded, diversified out of, avoided, insured against. It gives rise to visions and hopes and it is the most efficient "economic natural selection" mechanism. To be a market participant one must assume risk, it in an inseparable part of economic activity. ”

“ All speculations, and even the most conservative investments, have at least some slight element of risk; all lines of business are more or less a gamble; marriage is a gamble; political preferment is a gamble; in fact nearly everything in life, including our very existence, is an uncertainty ”

“ But seriously, I suspect that a good deal of the allurement that trade possesses for so many of us is the risk which it almost always implies, and risk means uncertainty, and uncertainty connotes the unknown. So you see our despised grocer turns out, after all, to be of the kin of Columbus, of the treasure-seekers, and mystery-mongers, and delvers after hidden things spiritual and material. ”

“ But you see, don't you? that gambling, even under its most sordid aspects, is not altogether sordid; it's the mystery, the uncertainty, the hours of "strange [2] surmise" that the smallest bet gives to the bettor that make the real delight of betting. When the office-boy wins and gets ten shillings for the risk of his two-and-six, his delight is not by any means pure love of gain, it is distinguished by a very marked line from the constantly repeated joys of the grocer, who is always buying delicious tea at ninepence and selling it at one-and-six. ”

“ The extra profits to be derived from over-trading are scarcely ever worth the risk incurred.
To sum up the whole situation in a word, those who would make money speculating in the stock market should first understand that it requires as much caution and business acumen as any other money-making enterprise, plus some knowledge of the psychological handicaps; also plus the rare faculty of maintaining a complete mastery over one’s impulses, emotions and ambitions under the most heroic tests of human endurance. ”

“ There are now six industrial companies with an aggregate capital of 171,927,540 shares outstanding; and from the side lines it looks as if there ought to be time enough to start another boom when the stock market gets over its present case of indigestion.
In the final analysis the following essentials should be constantly borne in mind: The stock and grain markets are always capable of playing new tricks on you—of doing things you never dreamed of. ”

“ Thus the professional investor is forced to concern himself with the anticipation of impending changes, in the news or in the atmosphere, of the kind by which experience shows that the mass psychology of the market is most influenced. This is the inevitable result of investment markets organised with a view to so-called 'liquidity'. ”

“ It seems to us an extraordinary and unlikely proposition that the dealings which give its character to the great market for future sales in this country are to be regarded as mere wagers or as 'pretended' buying or selling, without any intention of receiving and paying for the property bought, or of delivering the property sold, within the meaning of the Illinois act. Such a view seems to us hardly consistent with the admitted fact that the quotations of prices from the market are of the utmost importance to the business world, and not least to the farmers ”

“ You know, Monsieur, that, in the stock-market especially, and more or less in every other kind of speculation, the greater part of the transactions are fictitious, to a certain extent. Par exemple: you buy or you sell so many barrels of flour, at such a price, on time, as it is called,—that is, you engage to receive, or to deliver, so many barrels, at the prices and in the times agreed upon, in the hope, that, before the period of your contract comes round, prices will have so varied as to enable you to buy, or sell, the quantity bargained for, upon terms that will give you a profit. ”

“ All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talking of nothing else, and on the outskirts of every group one could overhear the words: "Seizure of custom house," "ultimatum," "Eastern question," "Higgins-Pasha incident." It was the rumour of the day, and before very long the pit traders began to receive a multitude of despatches countermanding selling orders, and directing them not to close out trades under certain very advanced quotations. The brokers began wiring their principals that the market promised to open strong and bullish. ”

“ In the first place, if the general view as to what is a safe level of r is unchanged, every fall in r reduces the market rate relatively to the 'safe' rate and therefore increases the risk of illiquidity; and, in the second place, every fall in r reduces the current earnings from illiquidity, which are available as a sort of insurance premium to offset the risk of loss on capital account, by an amount equal to the difference between the squares of the old rate of interest and the new. ”

“ There is, moreover, a further ground for liquidity-preference which results from the existence of uncertainty as to the future of the rate of interest, provided that there is an organlsed market for dealing in debts. For different people will estimate the prospects differently and anyone who differs from the predominant opinion as expressed in market quotations may have a good reason for keeping liquid resources in order to profit, if he is right, from its turning out in due course that the 1dr's were in a mistaken relationship to one another. ”

“ The more nearly the actual conditions approach to the ideal of a market, the less are prices fixed by higgling, and the more impersonal they become, the buyers and sellers being compelled to adjust their bids to the needs of the market, and not being able to vary them greatly one way or the other. ”

“ Nobody really calculates whether rice production covers the needs of humankind at any given instance, or if enough entertainment is produced for the billions living on Earth today. The immense complexity of the market machine is reflected in its dynamics, which at a certain level of its evolution could no longer be handled by, or made subject to the rules and expectations of literacy. Market processes follow a pattern of self-organization under the guise of many parameters, some of which we can control, others that escape our direct influence upon them. ”

“ At best, markets appear as erratic to us. Market prediction seems to be an oxymoron. Every time experts come up with a formula, the market acts in a totally new manner.
An amazing number of transactions, ranging from bargaining at a garage sale to multi-prong deals in derivatives, continuously subject the outcome of practical experiences of human self-constitution to the test of market efficiency. ”

“ It changed again when the pragmatic framework required writing, and so on until the identity of the literate person and the post-literate emerged from practical experiences characteristic of a new scale of human experiences. Today we are, for quite a broad range of our social life, an identification number of a sort, an address, and other information in a database (income, investment, wealth, debt history) that translates into what marketing models define as our individual expectations. Information brokers trade us whenever someone is interested in what we can do for him or her. ”

“ When literacy reaches the limits of its implicit capabilities, new transaction languages emerge, and new forms of freedom, tolerance, and creativity are sanctioned through the market mechanism. There is a price attached here, too. New constraints, new types of intolerance, and new obstacles come about. An example is the preservation of wildlife at the expense of jobs. ”

“ We often speak of man's identity as though there were but one identity attributed to him. This is not the case. Man has as many identities as he has opinions, and the one his senses are attached to last is the one that governs him. This may seem strange but it is true. Our senses are not our identity, because they cannot change, they are principles. But our belief, thoughts and opinions can change. So when we say a person never changes it is as much as to say he is only a brute. We say that our tastes change. Does the principle change, or our belief? ”

“ That prima facie, the market price, that is to say, the price that is ever resulting from freedom in competition, is the right price; the one that will restrict over production and at the same time stimulate the needed production in times of scarcity. ”