Indeed, many of the greatest thinkers of the last two centuries favoured free market systems because they mimic the process of biological change,3 as the author Tim Harford notes in his excellent book Adapt.4 Different companies competing with each other, with some failing and some surviving, facilitate the adaptation of the system. This is why markets – provided they are well regulated – are such efficient solvers of problems: they create an ongoing process of trial and error.
