征发信号价格垄断 / Procurement Signal Price Cornering

征发信号价格垄断 / procurement signal price cornering enters the wiki through Hanji 920 as the late-Han horse-price branch. The court creates an office to receive and feed grain and war horses requisitioned from commanderies and kingdoms; local strongmen then monopolize horse trading and raise a horse to two million cash.

The concept names a specific failure mode. State demand is meant to mobilize military supply, but the announcement itself becomes a price signal. Actors with local market power can corner the needed asset, forcing the state or requisitioning households to absorb an inflated price.

This differs from ordinary market speculation. Speculation can sometimes smooth allocation across time; this case is closer to captured procurement, where concentrated control over a needed good turns public demand into private rent. It also qualifies market coordination because the price signal is not coordinating dispersed production under workable competition; it is being exploited through monopoly-like control.

Key Claims

• Public procurement can move prices before supply arrives because it broadcasts urgent demand.
• Local strongmen can convert a state requisition signal into a rent opportunity when supply is concentrated.
• The damage is not only fiscal; inflated procurement can feed local burden, corruption, and resentment.
• Market tools need institutional guardrails when the buyer is the state and the good is militarily necessary.

Connections

• Hanji 920 and 汉灵帝 - source case and court setting.
• Market Speculation - adjacent but broader price-expectation concept.
• Market Coordination - contrast case where prices coordinate rather than being captured.
• 边疆征发反噬 - adjacent late-Han mobilization failure in which requisition pressure destabilizes frontier order.
• 帝王私库进奉盘剥 - another 181 CE branch where public channels carry private or court-created burdens.