Irrational actors
I’ve seen a number of anti-market pundits make the claim that since people are irrational, they can’t be trusted to make optimal decisions about how to invest their money. Therefore, governments should control that allocation of funds, to avoid deadweight loss (that is to say, the waste that occurs because individuals have imperfect information).
There are only two problems with this:
1) Individuals have all sorts of reasons for what they do that go beyond pure monentary interests, and governments have no ability to capture that.
2) The government is made of people… who are… irrational! So why should they be making decisions about how others allocate their funds?