MARKETS DON'T FAIL!

Thanks to Ben & Camilla for getting Brian P. Simpson's book, Markets Don't Fail!, at the Objectivist conference in San Diego. I have now read the first chapter, Capitalism, Socialism, and the Mixed Economy. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction.

This book will show that the arguments claiming market failure fail to provide a critique of the market. The only thing these arguments prove is that some people accept false ideas and use these ideas to mistakenly claim that markets fail. I will defend the market against attacks concerning monopoly and the antitrust laws, predatory pricing, "externalities;" the regulation of safety and quality, environmentalism, economic inequality, "public goods," and asymmetric information. Not only will I defend the market from an economic standpoint, I will provide a moral and epistemological defense of the market as well. The first step in doing this is to provide a description of the nature of three types of political/economic systems: capitalism, socialism, and the mixed economy (or welfare state). (Page 3.)