Kevin D Williamson makes an important point about the free market (thanks to Instapundit):The genius of the free market is that is replicates the most powerful earthly force—evolution—in the realm of material development. We try new stuff all the time, some variations thrive, and some variations die. Things adapt to their environment—an environment composed of human desire—through millions of tiny, iterative changes. As with the case of biological evolution, those changes are inherently unpredictable.
Those of us who favor market-based solutions to social problems don’t do so simply because we don’t like government or the sort of people who go into government, or don’t like to pay taxes, or because we want to create profit opportunities, or because we are on some sort of Taylorist quest for efficiency, whatever “efficiency” means in the current context. What really matters is that in the free market things get better: Where there is capitalism, ordinary people are with each passing year better fed, better clothed, better housed, better doctored, better entertained, and better employed. Better and cheaper and cheaper and better — except where politics inserts its big ugly snout.