Perfect Markets and Easy Virtue

“The market mechanism also has what many would regard as its dark sides, which do not vanish even when the market assumes the forms that constitute its theoretical ideal – perfect competition or perfect contestability. The object adopted for the Mitusi Lectures was, accordingly, to explore those dark sides, seeking to outline them explicitly and to bring them fully into the open. For, surely, unless those less lovable aspects of its workings are understood fully, a dispassionate evaluation is impossible.”