Free markets need visibility to work

From Slashdot’s “Pay-per-email and the ‘Market Myth’“:

But I think there’s a bigger problem underlying all of this. It’s not about specific problems with GoodMail’s or AOL’s or Hotmail’s system. The problem is that many advocates of these systems say that any flaws will get sorted out automatically by “the market” — and in this case I think that is simply wrong. And in fact the people on Thursday’s panel can’t really believe it either, because one thing we all agreed on was that Bonded Sender sucks. But has the marketplace punished Hotmail for using it? Have people left in droves because non-Bonded-Sender e-mail gets blocked? No, because if they never see it getting blocked they don’t know what happens. Free markets only solve problems that are actually visible to the user.