> It's also the case that, in practice, we regulate and politicize much - maybe all - of the free market. Do we? Perhaps you do in the US. Where I live, Aust

> It's also the case that, in practice, we regulate and politicize much - maybe all - of the free market. Do we? Perhaps you do in the US. Where I live, Australia, it's true most of the noise from the echo chamber is about what sort of regulations to impose on markets. But if you stop and look, they are invariably markets that aren't functioning well. The classic things that we appear to be always arguing about are things like power, landline internet, and water. But that isn't a surprise - they are the things that tend towards monopoly, so the market for those things is always broken or teetering on the edge of broken. We are now seeing the same effect for internet search and social media, where again network effects drive the markets towards monopoly. At the other end of the scale, here in Australia we've toyed with creating market's to solve political problems. One perennial problem in the driest continent on the planet is water. So they created a market based on virtual water, so rather go and haggling with your local pollie for water access right you have to buy it. It's been pretty successful from what I can tell, but now there are political stouches over how much virtual water there is. I guess that the water market could be viewed as yet more rules imposed by a central authority, as indeed could rules about regulating monopolies, and rules about truth in advertising and honouring warranties and the like. But I think that's miss leading. Rules about truth in advertising are really about setting up the conditions a market needs to flourish - equal access to information from the buyer and seller. While politicking on those rules is indeed a discussion about rules being imposed by a central authority, the purpose of those rules is to enable efficient decentralised decision making, not about "how much centralization is appropriate"