unfortunately, the data has shown that this is not true anymore, and hasn't been for more than 4 decades.

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there is very much so such a thing as a natural monopoly and if you disagree you are at odds with basic economics. you also conveniently forgot to address every other item on that list. there is no "free market" ideal, there is only the apparatus that exists, and the present apparatus rewards huge negative externalities and is perpetuating and accelerating wealth inequality, both things which render it unsustainable in the long term. high rates of unemployment coupled with wage suppression creates poverty traps worse than the welfare state. we're not talking about "Capitalism" or "The Free Market", we're talking about global capitalism as it exists today, and the global market. the ills are most certainly not the sole fault of governments, and scapegoating them in this way is a dangerous misdirection away from the real issues endemic in the apparatus that are contributing to the suffering of millions...

in other words, i don't care about your lofty Randian free market ideals. while capitalism may be "the best solution we can aspire to", and that would be hard to disagree with, it is also clear that our present form of global capitalism is suffering from a huge amount of inefficiencies, many of which cannot be attributed to meddling governments. how can we reconcile these two things? i have no clue, but we've first got to get our heads out of our asses and stop worshipping the sacred cow long enough to think critically about why the apparatus is failing at efficiently distributing resources.

--arepo