First: "captitalism" means "the ability of private property owners to gate access to their property to others." What you're talking about is "market economy," w

First: "captitalism" means "the ability of private property owners to gate access to their property to others." What you're talking about is "market economy," which is not the same thing. Second: For a market economy to lead to the optimal outcome, it requires that rational actors make decisions based on perfect information. We have large swathes of society set up to reduce the access to "perfect information," under the guises of "trade secrets" and "privacy" and a host of other values. In fact, as soon as there is any information assymetry, there is a very strong incentive to slant the market to favor the information holder, which leads to much less efficiency. We can fight that either by regulating, or by making it a crime to hide any information. Until now, we have chosen the former. I doubt that you are arguing that the latter would be better. That's the reality of the world we live in today. Third: For the market economy to work, we also need "rational actors." We know from psychology that humans are nowhere near rational, and often act counter to their own self-interest. We also know from sociology that humans in larger groups are often easily misled from their own best-benefit path.