Of course Somalia's not an example of something that works better. I meant it as (I guess the term would be) a co-example; there's no market regulation, & it's

Of course Somalia's not an example of something that works better. I meant it as (I guess the term would be) a co-example; there's no market regulation, & it's pretty obvious that pretty much anything else works better. However, I do insist that, strictly speaking, anarchy is a free market system - it's the reductio ad absurdum of free-market-ism. It's only fair if you're willing to cite North Korea, a totalitarian dictatorship with absolute state power, ie the reductio ad absurdum of state regulation, as an example of such. North Korea also lacks a functional judiciary, a respect for property rights, etc etc. I take it you at least consider justice & law enforcement to be sectors that benefit from state regulation - and I'd be surprised if there were no other such sectors as well. To take less extreme examples: * the (pre-Obamacare, as it's too early to judge the new setup) US healthcare system, which is less regulated than most developed countries', is the most expensive & least effective. * In the UK, the cheapest & most reliable part of the rail network is the part in Northern Ireland... being the only part that wasn't privatised back in 1993. Everywhere else, costs have grown & reliability has fallen. ... To try to find some common ground here: you believe in "as little regulation as possible", but that "as little as possible" is not none; I believe in "as much regulation as necessary", but that "as much as necessary" is not totalitarianism. I suspect these beliefs are, in the end, adjoint - opposite approaches to the same fundamental idea, although we may disagree on the details. Does that seem reasonable to you?