A market can assign a price to something before a community agrees it should be sold.

Markets can price things before anyone has decided they should be for sale. Attention, genetic information, access to housing, care, all acquire a price by being tradeable rather than by any collective decision that trading them is right. The price arrives first and the argument about whether there should be one comes later, if at all.

When you notice a new market forming, the question worth asking is who agreed that this should be bought and sold. Sometimes the answer is fine. It is worth asking before the pricing becomes normal, because afterwards it looks like a fact about the world.