I interpret Fred to be using the term "society" in an historically descriptive sense. We understand the meaning of "market" by a process of abstraction from the historical actions of individual persons and a summing up of their results. The "market" did not decide on an historical price; individuals meeting in a market context agreed upon a price in an exchange transaction. If a simultaneity or series of such transactions took place, then we abstractly can say something about the stability of a price in a particular market for a specific historical time period. To say that the market "decided" anything is a misuse of language if it means any more than an historically aggregative statement of of a sum of individual decisions and actions. So far as "social construction" is concerned, this means that the sum of actions of a number of individuals create a pattern of interaction which each takes to be the context within which their own actions are to be conducted. For example: I went to the bank this morning to resolve an error that some clerk or other made in my account. The "bank" did not make the error, a person did. I resolved it by speaking with a supervisor who entered a correction in the account. Rules of civilized discourse were followed by both of us because we both, perhaps subliminally, recognize that our transaction would go more smoothly if we followed them. We did not invent them; they were invented piecemeal over the past few millenia by countless anonymous individuals. "Society" didn't invent anything. "Society" is not a decisionmaking entity. It is a figure of speech that helps us thing about the actions of many people. We have to be careful about the terms we use. Otherwise, we'll say things like "America is at war on terror" and communicate nothing other than some sort of vague expostulation. Samuel Bostaph