[davidw]

I'll take a contrarian point of view, just for fun:

> But economists who debate certain issues about the perfection of markets are not debating, say, whether prices give incentives. Almost all economists recognize the core benefits of the market mechanism; they disagree only at the margin.

Sometimes, though, you wonder how marginal the 'margins' are. For instance, information asymmetry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry). In a modern, advanced economy with complex products and services, who can really judge a product just by picking it up and looking at it? Even something so simple as the food we eat might be grown with toxic weedkillers, and we can't tell that just by picking it up and looking at it.

Not that I'm actually anti-market or free trade... far from it. I just like to push back, at times, it's healthy to question things.

[jimbokun]

I'll bite.

We likely have more information about product quality than at any time in history through the Internet. This is also an argument for allowing legal action like the class action lawsuit to discourage faulty and negligent craftsmanship. Although, if that is an argument for or against market forces I'm not sure.

[davidw]

Sure, but having that information is not the same as being able to utilize it. I can't look up everything I buy every day, nor would I really want to. It makes things easier if I can basically trust that people aren't trying to rip me off. I think in most markets, it's in the interests of the vendors to not attempt that, but still, it's an interesting question, and I'm suspicious of all-or-nothing answers on any side (the market/government should take care of everything).