The right is constantly harping on how it's important that we let the free market work, that government not pick winners and losers, that the free market is always the best possible system and we must never try to replace free market systems with national ones.
All of this is wrong. Actually, most of it is correct, but the right misapplies it in almost all cases.
The theory is that the market correctly evaluates all ideas and the best ones are the ones that succeed. There's a lot of truth in this, but there are some big caveats. The most important is that there are a lot of cases where the market fails to be free for some reason. More than a century ago, it was recognized that monopolies have the power to manipulate the market for their own purposes, and with very few exceptions, when they did this it was to the detriment of everybody. Railroads, oil companies, banks, the phone company and more were all either broken up or strictly regulated to assure that the good of the public remained the first priority.
About 30 years ago we forgot what the problems had been, and set about reversing this: deregulating all of these industries and more. That mistake has led to the current high unemployment, congressional gridlock and corruption.
There's actually a fairly good metric for whether a market is free. A market is only free if it can be seen embracing new ideas. If there are better ways that are not succeeding, there has to be some reason, and usually it's that there's something preventing the free market from working.
For example, US health care is capable of providing the best service anywhere, but at a sufficiently high cost that most people can't afford that excellent standard of care, and many people can't afford any health care at all. Our rank by "outcomes" is among the lowest of any advanced country and we're the most expensive per capita by far--about double all those countries with better outcomes. We have a collection of tacit collusion, perverse incentives, corruption and several other things that allow insurers and providers to maximize profits without improving service. Most regions have only a handful of providers and many have only one. Until recently, insurers were allowed to reject customers for pre-existing conditions, which prevents customers from changing insurers when they find out their coverage is bad. There are obviously several better ways out there: Japan, Switzerland, Great Britain, many others have a variety of different approaches. All have found that eliminating or strongly regulating the market is what works. Nationalizing seems to work a little better than strongly regulating, but I think it's significant that it's close, and that costs for these others is broadly similar, with the difference mainly being in the program's generosity.
Another example: During the first years of the 20th century, Standard Oil controlled about 70% of the US market for petroleum, and almost 90% of the refining. In 1911, the Supreme Court ruled that Standard was a monopoly and required it to be broken up into 34 "baby Standards". Within a few years 9 of them: Standard of New Jersey (later Exxon)
Standard of New York (later Mobil)
Standard of California (later Chevron)
Standard of Indiana (later Amoco)
Atlantic (later part of ARCO)
Continental (later Conoco)
Standard of Kentucky (later Kyso)
Standard of Ohio (later Sohio)
Ohio Oil (later Marathon)
were all bigger than Standard had ever been. Part of this growth was the rise of the private automobile, but the success of creating a free market is undeniable.
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