Price

A free market price is very important, because it's the only measure we have.
The argument is not about how accurate the measure is, rather that it is more accurate than anything else we've got. Socialists thought they could figure out something better, but they've proven otherwise repeatedly.

The price in a free market arises out of the choices of a great many people. Among these people there is great variation in knowledge, as well as great variation in how they value whatever it is they are making judgements about. It is not perfect, nor particularly predictive, but any other option is foolish by comparison.

A measuring tape is not as accurate as a laser, but in this case there is no laser. The socialists have proven time and again their interference only makes things worse. It makes no sense to throw out the measuring tape because you've come up with some imaginary measuring system in your mind, but that is exactly what this comes down to. Of course, what ends up happening is that the socialist bails out his friends. The thoughts of man are too limited, and even with the latest technology there is no way to provide a better measure.

Introduce the concept of time, and indeed, the dynamic nature of things, and we lose the socialist faster than he can take control. Knowledge comes into the market assymetrically, as do new products and innovation. Every new interventionist action is hopelessly behind because they cannot possibly absorb all the information.

And each new intervention hides what would have been the actual price signal, so whatever set of indicators the socialists are working off of become more and more suspect. This has been happening for a while now; even so-called conservative politicians feel the need for economic growth in order to increase their chances of re-election, so the government increases regularly increases the money supply (inflation) and encourages easy credit in the hopes of generating more growth.
Now we see a stock market whose price signal is wedded to betting on who is going to get the most piles of money from the government, and not on the businesses of the actual stocks, so we will see extreme volatility for a while.