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> In a free-market economy, the companies that make less optimal decisions will have their lunch eaten by those that don't.

In a race to the bottom, concern for others is a liability. Ugh.

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I'd say an example of not showing concern for others is, for instance, using state power to bail out banks after the executives gambled with their customers savings and cashed out. Bad corporations are given a lifeline until the next set of customers is screwed.

Sure; or spending 8 trillion dollars - well over a trillion on interest to those same banks - on a 'war on terror' that actually increases terror.

But was any of that state 'power'? Or state weakness?

The free market would have allowed those banks to fail and their customers would have lost all their savings. Personally I'd prefer if they'd bailed out the customers instead, but that still counts as a state intervention.

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