The economic literature contains much debate on the idea of market failure. In theory, it is fairly easy to reason that market failures of particular types have occurred in the past. We know that if people had anticipated these failures and had taken certain actions, they would have been better off, by their own accounting. We cannot be so confident about the future. The problem is that we are dealing with human beings.
Human beings are creative.
They can discover problems and solutions to them that outsiders cannot even conceive. To decide whether a market will fail in the future, we must use our imagination and judgment. We must try to imagine the ways that individuals can find and take advantage of potential gains from trade. We must then judge whether they will actually discover those ways or other ways that are beyond our ability to conceive at the moment. There is a lot of uncertainty here.