I see so many people saying things like this.  Where does faith like this come from?  Is it a statement of personal experience or is it confidence in a trusted authority? Or is it that for some of us the 'free market' has become part of our identity and not having faith in it is too much like heresy?

I do not know you so I am not really talking about you here. I just see people having faith in economic ideas a lot. This seems like an especially bad thing to have faith in. It adds to the irony that a lot of people have strong faith in economic ideas even when they make fun of people who have faith in other things.

I bet a lot of Fox News viewers literally have faith in "free markets" and a lot of MSNBC viewers have faith in Keynesianism. I doubt either group really has any good reasons for what they think, but both groups are likely to get angry at people who doubt them. This is the danger of false certainty.

I have been lurking on here long enough to have read several of your posts. I know you are not like the people I described in my last paragraph, and I am also inclined towards a confidence in 'the market'. It's a point of view I favor because it makes sense to me and fits in nicely with my other values. When people challenge the idea it seems a little like they are challenging me and I am likely to defend it with some zeal. That is why I caution myself to remember that 'the market is a benign force that inevitably brings about what's good for people' should not be an article of faith, and is probably, sometimes, wishful thinking.