Abstract: While the majority of market interventions is concerned with market interventions that are good for particular market participants, this article is interested in interventions that are good for markets. We draw on observations of historical markets as presented by Hamilton Grierson and Max Weber to rediscover markets as forms of communication that systematically transcend the ambitions and influence of the individual market participants. This non-possessive and non-instrumental concept of markets cancels established definitions of market failure and corresponding justifications of market interventions. We imagine market intervention strategies that account for rather than problematize the non-instrumental and double-contingent nature of markets and outline systemic intervention strategies that emerge if we observe markets in the medium of the health system rather than in the medium of the economy.

Keywords: Market, intervention, Luhmann, systemic therapy, social systems, differentiation theory.

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Citation: Roth, S. (2018) Market therapy? On intervention in the consociation with non-members, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 127-138 [SSCI 1.034, Scopus, ABS**].