[WalterBright]

> Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position?

The trouble with calling free markets folly is they are enormously successful, in every place and time where they have been tried. The trouble with central economic planning is it always does badly.

BTW, one of the functions of government in a free market is to regulate the externalities - costs of doing business that are not borne by the business. Pollution is the most obvious one of those externalities, so calling a polluting business "extreme free market" is incorrect.

[Apocryphon]

The paradox of maintaining free markets is that you often need state power to ensure competition is being done fairly. That means regulations, and intervention from time to time. That’s at least the ordoliberal line in Germany, at least, the Freiburg school. They seem to have built a quite successful postwar economy there. Endorsing free markets does not have to equate with an unquestioning obsession, bordering on fetishistic, with liberty.

[WalterBright]

That is not a paradox. A free market presumes the existence of a government to protect rights and enforce contracts.

> Endorsing free markets does not have to equate with an unquestioning obsession, bordering on fetishistic, with liberty.

Question it all you like!

[Apocryphon]

I don't question it. We are agreement that a strong hand is necessary to reduce externalities that arise in the course of commerce; we are simply quibbling about what is within that purview.