markets are not ’every man for himself’

Financial markets are not 'every man for himself':

Contrary to the critics, the free market does not mean we are all on our own and struggling for survival against our fellow citizens. The market is, in fact, the greatest forum for human cooperation ever discovered. In the market, we truly are all in it together.

Consider the shirt you're wearing. The cotton fabric, the dye, the thread, the buttons and the label were all produced by different people working in different companies. Turning raw material into a shirt requires cooperation. Some people brought the cotton from field to market. Others had to process it and turn it into fabric. Others ran the trains or drove the trucks that moved it through the process. Others built all the machines to do all that work. Still others had to create the dye. One could go on all day.

The market process that produced your shirt involved millions of strangers cooperating with each other.

What destroys this intricate fabric of social cooperation is when politicians and bureaucrats intervene, thinking they know better who should be producing which things and how they should be doing it.