One problem with economists is this lazy tendency to describe economic solutions as "efficient" or having "benefits" without describing the goals with respect to which they are efficient, or who and what they benefit.

Also, most of the standard derivations of the benefits of market solutions have multiple flaws:

1. They assume a level of competition among producers and consumers which doesn't arise in practice
2. They assume a level of rational decision making among actors which doesn't arise in practice
3. They assume that the rules of the game (laws, taxes, spending decisions, standards, property rights including IPR etc) are neutral and so put everyone on a level playing field from the start. They don't.

The consequences of this are quite well known. Strong countries demand "free trade" from weak countries (and get it) while maintaining barriers to trade for their own products (agriculture, weapons etc.) which - very mysteriously - never go away. Corporations preach the wonders of competition, while carefully managing (or reducing) competition in their own sectors through mergers, IPR, brand protection, standards, licensing and a whole host of other tricks. (Regulators, even formal competition authorities, often help them). Financial institutions demand de-regulation (which they get) but then grow too big to fail, and subsequently demand bailouts when they make collosal mistakes threatening the whole system (and they get those too). Then they put all the blame on governments for over-spending, and demand huge spending cuts to maintain national credit ratings (and amazingly that happens as well). Economists acknowledge that externalities (like pollution, global warming impacts from fossil fuels) should be priced in (via taxes or tradeable quotas), but then that never happens (taxes are too unpopular, or the price is deliberately kept too low by giving out excessive quotas). And so on.