Markets are conventionally justified as machines for aggregating dispersed information (Hayek, 1945). The price system is celebrated precisely because it communicates truth no central planner could know. And yet the same competitive pressure that rewards efficient information transmission also rewards its *distortion*. Whoever can make a buyer believe a lemon is a peach captures a surplus. This is the founding paradox: **the market is simultaneously the best information machine we have built and a machine that pays a premium for lies.**