New solutions appear quite a great deal more than you would think, thanks in no small part to scholars, inventors, and visionaries. Whether these solutions are

New solutions appear quite a great deal more than you would think, thanks in no small part to scholars, inventors, and visionaries. Whether these solutions are viable for the marketplace are a whole different question, but these solutions can (and have often) popped up without any financial incentive driving the creators. So no, new solutions do not only appear when a market incentive is there. If anything, the market's role is better described as determining whether to drive the mass-production of these solutions. On a tangential note, innovation and free markets may have little more than a relationship by happenstance now that I think about it. And to your point regarding sales and marketing, this is exactly what I meant when I talk about not coddling stupid people. If stupid people are driven to buy a product because a particular celebrity endorses it, let them waste their money on that crap. Honestly, the government could only do so much to baby-proof the world for the stupid people. I am a big believer in the notion that government should only intervene against this idiocy when such behavior negatively impacts the rest of society (see chain smokers and the cost they incur on our health care system). And nobody here is condoning this notion that companies be allowed to openly lie and deceive consumers. I'm not quite sure where this information asymmetry aspect you bring up is coming from. Free markets require an informed citizenry to perform efficiently.