Why should we care what "markets" say?

I don't understand the argument some cryonicists make about how the collective behaviors we call "markets" are somehow transhumanly smarter than individuals and that their net decisions accurately and rationally allocate the use of resources and predict the likely outcomes of events (as in recent proposals to create "ideas futures markets" and the like). If a cryonicist seriously holds this view, why is he signed up for a procedure that the market has overwhelmingly rejected? If you compare the almost-moribund cryonics movement with spontaneous activities that have metaphorically exploded in recent years, like music file sharing, the contrast is even more startling. Clearly the market judges the iPod as immensely more valuable than a possible means of medical time travel to a future cure for aging and death.

I see examples in markets all the time of colossal wastes of resources that just cannot be rationally defended. (The political examples of waste, like Bush's crusade in Iraq, would require a whole other discussion.) Many of the trivial but meretricious "goods" are abundant -- think of junk food, Britney Spears CD's and novels about bible prophecy -- while the important goods and services like healthcare, education, scientific research and infrastructure are supplied grudgingly and haphazardly, if at all. Despite the propaganda about the sovereignty of the consumer, American corporations often produce what they want to put onto the market, whether we order or want it or not. The money squandered in making and advertising unwatchable films like Van Helsing or Cat Woman could revolutionize the field of engineered negligible senescence, but no, we're supposed to pretend that we have no business in complaining how super-wealthy corporations and individuals misuse their wealth despite the deadly opportunity costs they inflict upon us by not investing into what we really need. (That's why I absolutely refuse to see movies in the theater any more. The people who create this garbage already have enough money without my giving them some of mine, regardless of how "good" a movie supposedly is.)

I, for one, refuse to worship market outcomes when they conflict with my own judgment about rational priorities. In an economy that accepts death and channels resources away from possible scientific means to conquer it, I as a "consumer" not only don't feel sovereign, but positively ill-used. We have only one shot at long-term survival, and the older I get, the more I see that I have to repudiate many of our society's economically expressed values that just don't contribute towards that goal. I can also see that the canned ideologies we've inherited aren't particularly helpful either. Libertarians for the most part expect to die pretty much on schedule, if they think about death at all, so I don't understand why libertarianism appeals so strongly to cryonicists. Dying rich and tax-free is still dying, and it by no means follows that a libertarian utopia would also be pro-immortalist if the wealthy people who thrive in it aren't interested in long-term personal survival. Given how socially conformist and conventional most wealthy people are in the current society, how would they be any different in libertopia? Only a handful of rich people are like John Sperling. Most are religious or dumb or both, and it's not uncommon to find ones who promote positively retrograde ideologies.