[touktouk]

"Free markets, except when the markets do not work" is not particularly specific - I fail to think of any mainstream party in the West that do not agree with this principle. The disagreement is about 1. when do markets fail and 2. what are the acceptable policies to fix it.

For instance, environmental externalities could justify an endless list of regulations, a massive carbon tax and/or cap-and-trade policies, as well as tariffs for countries not complying with environmental regulations. Because the markets does not work. Yet this is clearly not something everyone agrees with, despite being a market drive the economy but intervene to keep them spinning until the (climate) crisis passes.

I do not mean to enagage in politics and suggest the example I gave is what we should or should not do.

My point is that most people beliefs about the economy are a lot more specific than "markets with some intervention".

[bermanoid]

Totally agree with pretty much all of this; I'm just arguing that "don't subsidize, ever" is a very extreme vision of capitalism, and doing a one year or less intervention is nowhere close to throwing away the whole system (which GP is implying very clearly elsewhere in the thread, and to be fair I probably should have responded to those specific comments instead of this one).

I agree that when and how we intervene is important to discuss, it's just important to argue the details, not "but muh capitalism" as a way to argue against every government action ever.