I'm listening to Thomas J. DiLorenzo's most recent "Monopoly and Competition" lecture from Mises U 2008 while making final edits on a forthcoming paper. In his discussion of "the nirvana fallacy," he asks a very interesting question about how we analyze government and the market. Superficial analysis of the market proceeds by identifying imperfections in the market and prescribing corrective intervention accordingly. The presumption seems to be that the burden of proof is on the market to show that it is competitive. DiLorenzo asks what would happen if we put the burden of proof on the government for any proposed intervention: show that the government can intervene perfectly, or you get no intervention. I would predict that we would have a lot less intervention.