Your entire argument is that there exists a subset of the world which has been forcefully maintained as "owned by everyone", ie. a commons; the commons exists b

Your entire argument is that there exists a subset of the world which has been forcefully maintained as "owned by everyone", ie. a commons; the commons exists by compulsion and operates in a matter which is entirely contradictory to the way a market works; in no way would a sensible person confuse a commons as being part of a free market; then when things don't work out well for the commons you want to call it a "market failure". It's a complete misnomer. It's a mind boggling definition. The markets didn't fail. The commons failed. And because the commons failed it's somehow a good idea to punish the market. But I get it, you didn't come up with the examples or the theories. The pseudo-economists did. I'm merely exposing the shallowness and contradictions of their theories. You talk about "playing with definitions" but that's the entire point. The cost of the bag is irrelevant. The cost of disposing the bag is irrelevant. The important facts are that the dump is a commons. That's it. You ask for the solution and I have already told you the solution. Privatize the commons. It solves the entire problem. In this case you do not even have to privatize all the roads, national parks, oceans or anything else. In this case if the dump was privatized and municipalities did not try to take control of it through onerous regulation, your plastic bag disposal problem would be entirely solved. >And explain why the free-market approach failed to occur for 40+ years straight First of all I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for not saying "explain why the free-market failed for 40+ years straight". Your question acknowledges that you recognize that the free market did not fail but rather the free market approach was not attempted. Why was it not attempted? I don't know. Not being very familiar with history of municipal garbage collection across countless jurisdictions, it would be hard for me to expound on their history and evolution. Similarly I don't know all the reasons why bad laws are passed and remain. I don't know why prohibition, despite its wondrous failure in the 1920s and early 1930s, continues in kind today. I could provide some anecdotes, but it wouldn't be the full picture. But I do know if you look at the history of the world, free markets are a new concept. Free markets have brought incredible prosperity to the world. I know that, from the big picture, the world is trending towards more open and free markets. Perhaps in my day I'll see the widespread privatization of the dump.