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Comment by athrowaway3z | Hacker News Reader

The author seems to make some grand philosophical point. Instead here is my take :

a handy list of things we know markets can't solve in societies best interest ( 1: at some specific scale , 2: given a certain moral framework )

-Violence (police , jails)

-Firemen

-Healthcare(/insurance)

-Currency

-Transport / Infrastructure

-schooling

And probably a couple more I missed.

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-schooling

This is a pretty big stretch, considering what it costs the public to provide and the results it achieves for that price.

Thomas Sowell's[0] latest book has a fair amount of evidence to the contrary.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Schools_and_Their_Enem...

citation needed. Why do "we know" that markets can't solve these issues?

Well put and proviso[d]. I cannot quote the page, but Hayak in Road to Serfdom himself endorses government handling of [health insurance or care]. "Many people don't know their own scriptures."

I agree with violence, it is perhaps the one true natural monopoly, but the rest of the items on that list are very much up for debate.

you haven't provided any proofs, but I'm sure the best you could do is to give examples of failed flawed implementations.

It's still entirely possible that if done right some of it could work and it's even possible that there already are examples you are just not aware of

To sum up: The free market is only useful for things in where maximization is the optimum.

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