The Most Artificial Part Of Modern Economics

Even though concepts of economic systems could always be objectively discovered by a hypothetical group without any ties to a previous culture, it remains true that actual currencies, "markets," and products for sale are social constructs.  There is nothing about economic practice that is present without a society in place to carry it out.  A single person is not enough to do anything more than think of certain economic concepts, as there is no such thing as a need for something like currency outside of a cultural setting.  When people do mutually contribute to an economic system, they have usually just decided to act as if the social construct is something more than it is whether or not they are aware of this fact.

A stock market is even more artificial than a standard economy based on exchanges of items or currency for belongings or services: it is literally just an add-on to the economy where people are willing to pay money to be associated with companies that are popular or that they hope or expect to be popular.  In fact, this is as artificial as economics gets!  Paying money and receiving financial rewards for merely be associated with a successful industry or firm, even if the investor is relatively poor or inexperienced, is as utterly artificial--while still being potentially helpful--as economic systems can get.

The stock market is a particularly arbitrary invention within a category that is already full of arbitrary constructs.  This does not mean it is not a useful way to develop wealth, as it can be maneuvered skillfully.  However, even then, it is impossible for someone who is not free of human epistemological limitations to truly know how exactly prices and popularity will rise and fall; investing in companies is always a shot in the dark no matter how likely it seems that a given firm or industry will financially perform without issue.  Only a philosophically incompetent person would believe that they know the future of any economy.

Uncertainty might motivate some people to engage in even more artificial practices by manipulating or tampering with the stock market in hopes of forcing a more personally favorable outcome, at which point they would have dived into the most artificial way of handling something that is already a random construct that only remains in operation because people keep participating.  Of course, all economic transactions involving an actual currency are already examples of social constructs in action, so artificiality is a key feature of economics with or without the stock market.  People who do not believe that money or an economy has some higher nature than this can avoid plenty of fallacies and existential grief rooted in them.