Defense and infrastructure are inherently the responsibility of the state. I'm not a small-government libertarian. Market forces should be used here whenever possible (military-industrial complex, etc) but there obviously can't be competing national militaries or competing national highway systems.

Scientific research: maybe, it depends. Innovation is complicated and there's no linear investment-to-payoff in research. People concerned with profit at least are discouraged by the profit motive from dumping huge amounts of money into failed research. At the same time, some critical research isn't market-profitable.

Universal rules definitely exist in the form of things like supply/demand curves. I would rather live in a hardcore capitalist hellhole than in the shambles of a failed society that would result from the alternative. We should be wary of assuming that non-market intervention is necessary, but we shouldn't shy away from acting when that intervention is necessary.