Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Prices are a secret language

We tend to think of prices as just the tags on things we buy, but they're actually one of the most brilliant communication systems humans have ever built. When a tomato shortage hits, the price goes up, and suddenly farmers know to plant more tomatoes next season without anyone needing to hold a massive planning meeting. When technology becomes cheaper, millions of people independently decide it's now worth buying—no government directive required. Prices transmit urgent information through signals so simple that a five-year-old understands them.

What's counterintuitive is that this works precisely because most people aren't trying to coordinate anything. You're not thinking about the global economy when you decide whether coffee is too expensive today. Yet your choice, multiplied across millions of others, tells coffee producers something real about demand. It's like the price system is a language that lets strangers collaborate without ever meeting, without anyone being in charge.

This matters now because we're constantly tempted to replace prices with rules—rent control, minimum wage laws, price caps during shortages. The problem isn't that these rules come from bad intentions. It's that they silence the price signal, leaving decision-makers blind. Suddenly no one knows what people actually need or what resources are scarce.