I don't understand why you think the free market will not produce waste or shortages, to say nothing about other effects such as reckless exploitation of human

I don't understand why you think the free market will not produce waste or shortages, to say nothing about other effects such as reckless exploitation of human and natural resources. Assuming that you're right in thinking that in the free market—presumably to the exclusion of other way to organize economy—prices function as signals that steer (or influence, or regulate if you will) activities of the active forces in that market: where do you get the reassurance that any and all signals for demand are consistent in their relation between desirability and profitability? I think the USA are a good model for how you do not want the raw unbridled power of money regulate everything. At this point the USA are politically a failed state, and if the present regime goes on for much longer, the welfare of the people will suffer even more. The US has the most expensive health care system in the world, yet everyone except the top few percent is constantly risking bankruptcy from illness, and despite the staggering amounts that people have to pay for their private ensurers (that are not meaningfully kept in check by laws and do not experience competition from public insurance options), figures like infant mortality and life expectancy do not look rosy. Because the US has a freer market than most other countries, higher education has been made ever more expensive, to the point it has become virtually unobtainable for many. As for "the gray, soulless stagnation that defines every controlled economy", I want to hang that on my wall next to a picture of a Detroit suburb.