Assume a miracle.....................

     It is axiomatic among right-thinking people that there are many things the market cannot provide, and therefore the state must.  The sheer magical thinking inherent in this thought is rarely examined.  Because the market cannot do something, why must we assume that the state knows better how to do it?  All too often this is, to borrow a phrase from Don Boudreaux, to "assume a miracle."  Yet the history of government over the past few centuries is that when the state steps in to provide something that was under provided by people for themselves, things do not necessarily improve; often they get worse.  Market failure is a favourite phrase; government failure is not.
      Take six basic needs of a human being:  food, clothing, health, education, shelter and transportation.  Roughly speaking, in most countries the market provides food and clothing, the state provides healthcare and education, while shelter and transportation are provided by a mixture of the tow - private firms with semi-monopolistic privileges supplied by government:  crony capitalism, in a phrase.
       Is it not striking that the cost of food and clothing has gone steadily downwards over the past fifty years, while the cost of healthcare and education has gone steadily upwards?

-Matt Ridley,  The Evolution Of Everything:  How New Ideas Emerge