“This is an excellent, timely topic and I commend Jason for posting it as well as his excellent work in health care economics. Dr. Shafrin rhetorically asks, “Is there empirical evidence that a market economy is superior?” He does a fine job presenting the topical perspectives. Thought I’d comment with a few concordant thoughts. There is a rich history of empirical evidence of the failure of centrally planned societies. The inefficiencies of any centrally planned system, whether collectivist or monarchical, emerge from the natural constraint that the human capacity for consequential knowledge is extremely small within individuals. Applied to ‘managing’ an entire society, a recent example of the failure of central planners to keep track of the hundreds of millions of interactions occurring at any time in a society of any reasonable modern proportion is the USSR debacle. That failed system asserted that it’s possible for a few hundred, or even a few thousand, central planners to keep track of the country’s 24 million prices (Sowell). Anyone who has tried to follow even a thousand prices is very quickly overwhelmed, as stock traders, portfolio managers and other financial workers know too well to even consider falling into that trap. But you don’t have to be a financial wizard to intuitively conclude that while one is perfectly comfortable deciding how much he is willing to pay for shoes, he would never consider deciding how much his neighbor should pay for shoes, never mind trying to decide the price of shoes for every person in one’s town. The collective work of the venerable Say, Hayek, Williams, Sowell and Friedman (and, of course others) points to the empirical exemplification of the role of individual decision-making at the point-of-exchange in a market/consumer economy. Yet, many seem to want to continue the non-debate between capitalism and collectivism. Suggesting that a system in which the means of production is centrally controlled benefits society more than a consumer-emergent system mechanized by locally chosen prices in a free society is as antithetical to logic as the notion of treating hypertension in 2010 with mercurials (Circulation. 1950;1:508-515). The reason being that both have been factually proved to be false and detrimental. New hypotheses, even if well constructed will not alter the course of historical facts in either case. I doubt that physicians prescribing Thiomerin for hypertension would have their justification for its use dignified in any serious current discussion on the matter. When a line of argumentation ceases to have extrinsic value ought it not exempt itself from serious thinking?”