This article focuses on the basic ways in which the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) fail to assist in the economic resolution of social conflict. As a focal point in economic theory, the market mechanism is a cultural control device for allocating economic resources. It has been viewed as a grand harmonizer of conflict among economic actors. Little internal entrepreneurial coordinating would be possible without internal administrative accounting. In the extreme case, all costs of using the price mechanism could be avoided by establishing a single conglomerate firm for an entire economy. However, those avoided costs might be exceeded by both costs of internal administration and costs of transition from private competition to state capitalism. The fundamental way in which GAAP fails to assist in the economic resolution of conflict is their lack of relevance to the decision problems of economic actors. This would be so even though GAAP reports were timely and public enough to eliminate the conflict over "insider" information.