[wpietri]

> I don't think having a large number of relatively equal agents interacting freely is ever realistic.

By which logic, free-market approaches are also never realistic.

> On the surface it is unfair to those under 6 feet tall but the NBA, being a market [...]

Your example doesn't make much sense to me. The actual market involved is the labor market, which does indeed have a large number of relatively equal agents interacting freely. Known labor market failures occur when that's not the case. (E.g., company towns, employer collusion.) But when it does work well, it both provides a kind of fairness and also acts as a reasonably good way to allocate talents and abilities.