Human beings are not omniscient, and the market may be subject to patterns or discrepancies that are too subtle for even the sharpest speculators to discover. But the free market constantly operates to eliminate such discrepancies, to the greatest extent that is humanly possible.

To a housekeeper, asked to clean when homes become untidy, human beings may seem slovenly; however, it is precisely because the customers have high standards of tidiness that the housekeeper was hired. Similarly, from the speculator's point of view, the market may look irrational and imperfect, thereby offering him or her opportunities for profit. But from an external perspective, which recognizes that the speculator is also part of the market, the free market is rational within the limits of human knowledge. As we have seen, a reasonable and practical standard of knowledge must be appropriate to the nature of human beings, whose experience is by necessity finite (cf. pp. 1.3:74-7). By such a standard, we can indeed say that the free market is rational.