[thwarted]

One might argue that the government allocating some resources is more efficient than the market doing so purely because specific outcomes are desired that the invisible hand is not motivated or incentivized to provide. If the goal is to keep people healthy, efficiency is based on how successful that is, not on the monetary cost. Few people seem to understand it this way, though.

[nradov]

In most cases government employees simply aren't prescient enough to allocate resources efficiently. Like in theory maybe central planning could be more efficient if everything worked correctly, but in practice it never works efficiently at scale. Much of the resources simply end up wasted.

[thwarted]

If one looks to "government employees", as individuals, then yes, they aren't prescient enough to allocate resources efficiently. But comparing the free market to government employees is not an apples to apples comparison, because individuals don't allocate resources efficiently either in a free market; the "market" as a whole is what optimizes for efficiency.

And I think there is a distinction in different kinds of efficiency that can be optimized for, not just monetary cost. If we desire clean, paved, safe roads, that can be used by all equally for efficient movement of goods, because we recognize that as a prereq for a strong economy, we can not rely on the free market to deliver that, much less optimize for it. It can be more efficient, in terms of actually delivering the desired goal vs not delivering it at all (or delivering a grossly bastardized version of it) to pool our resources and explicitly work towards making something available rather than hoping that the free market will deliver it.

The free market did not deliver on reducing congestion in New York (in fact, one might say that over the decades, the free market is what made it worse), but the congestion pricing program has, and has resulted in a bunch of valuable/desirable knock-on effects.

I do not think that a centrally planned economy is workable; but collectively being deliberate about building the things we need/want, and taking a longer view, can result in significant efficiencies.

The free market ends up simply wasting resources in its drive to discover where efficiencies lie and how to take advantage of them.

[nathan_compton]

I'm not sure this is the way to think about it. It obviously matters if money is being wasted, but the question is to what end is the money utilized?

In capitalism, roughly speaking, the purpose of spending money is to generate a return on investment and the market does a reasonable job of doing that and a reasonable knock-on effect is rising standards of living, etc.

But in health care, for example, we might decide that a return on investment isn't the point, but the efficient allocation of resources still matters, to the end of making people healthier. Its more that free markets really struggle to optimize efficiency that isn't directed towards ROI. I think its a genuinely moral philosophical question - if you really prioritize freedom over all else, then markets are sort of the best you can do and you just give up on collective or philosophically motivated goals. But, genuinely, and I think the current political moment underscores this basic fact, people care about plenty of other things besides freedom and even besides democracy.