[vhawk01]

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From what I've read from AC posters it seems like they are saying that the free market would handle these issues perfectly.

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You don't read very carefully. The free market is not utopian. Problems exist in free markets. The market is, in fact, a system for dealing with problems at minimal cost, not for magically making them go away. If there were no problems, there would be no need for markets.

Think of it like this. There are two general strategies that you can imagine employing to solve the problems that arise due to being alive. You can allow people to freely cooperate and compete, innovate solutions, and allow consumers to choose amongst alternative solutions for their various problems, allowing good solutions to flourish and bad solutions to falter. Or, you can institute a violent monopoly that arrogates to itself the tasks of a) unilaterally deciding what is and what is not a "problem", b) unilaterally deciding what is and what is not a "solution" to the "problem", c) force everyone to buy into that solution, regardless of whether it is actually a good idea for them (in their opinion), and d) institutionalize these "solutions" in the absence of any sort of market testing.

It is clear to me which of these is the better strategy, and which the worse.

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I think an interesting, SMP-related tangent to this thread would be discussing the situations and personalities of those who would prefer the latter of these two choices (although no one would say they preferred it when put in such terms). I'd bet the majority of them would not be the power-hungry, impose-my-will types, but rather the "I'd rather trust the gov't to take care of that sort of thing for me" type.