> There are no documented instances of a truly free market.

But why is that interesting?

If you enter into a contract to sell your car to someone and then instead of paying you they steal your car and kill you, that's crime, not a free market. Killing people by dumping mercury into the river is still just crime. Killing people by burning dirty coal is something that should be crime, even if it officially isn't.

But this is different than banning things where each involved party is consenting, or imposing unfunded mandates or bureaucratic filing requirements. The less of those things there are, the freer the market is, and those places tend to do better than the places captured by central planners.

Moreover, the main point is completely valid. If Palm's product isn't as good as an iPhone then you don't have to buy it and then they go away. If the DMV sucks, what are you going to do?

> those places tend to do better than the places captured by central planners.

There is no deterministic evidence for this and you cannot unilaterally say that. The problem here is that the market/service requires context. The main point made was that you can take any market and it will eventually self correct - this is simply untrue and we have countless examples of this.