Tonight after the discussion I had with three economist, or to be more precise two economists and an economic geographer, the economists stayed for beer and one of them said: “I can explain why the state is sometimes more efficient than the market, because the state has a monopoly on violence. So it can force people to enter a necessary transaction that they would otherwise never enter. Without the monopoly on violence the winners of the genetic lottery would never be willing to pay for an insurance that protects the losers of this lottery.”

The big question of course is: how much protection do we want to give the less lucky participants in this genetic lottery.