Because a producer's successful anticipation of consumer demand and market trends enables him or her to invest more capital in the future, at any point in time the producers with greatest resources to invest will tend to be those who are most skillful in predicting and planning for consumer demand. In the long run, therefore, the greatest resources will tend to be targeted toward future consumer desires, at least insofar as there exists any rational basis whereby such trends can be predicted. Furthermore, competition assures that resources will be channeled into the most efficient structures of production for satisfying any particular demand.

Investment in the capital markets favors those investors and corporations that correctly and efficiently anticipate future demand. Sophisticated methods of accounting and technical analysis have been developed to enable investors to increase their profits, resulting in more efficient allocation of resources to satisfy consumer demands. As such methods become generally accepted, however, they cease to generate profit for investors. Consequently, investors can realize further profit only by developing additional refinements to those methods. Spectacular profits are only available to those who are not content to "follow the crowd," but who discover better methods of analysis by independent thinking. In ethical terms, the free market again rewards the virtue of independence, and it is perhaps already evident that it promotes all of the other virtues discussed above as well.