> centrally directed plans cannot perfectly allocate resources and there is no such thing as 'efficient' capitalism, no matter how smart the committee who decides where to steer things is.

I honestly have no idea at all where you thought I was making this point. The entire premise behind my comment was the preservation of the ability of the market and the profit motive to direct capital (i.e. capitalism), and I drew an explicit contrast to Soviet-style central direction of capital. "The whole point of free-market capitalism is that.... there is no such thing as efficient capitalism"? What?

Efficient capitalism is capitalism in which the flow of capital (by free markets) to where it will create the most wealth is unimpeded. Every time this flow is blocked or diverted by some external factor, that's a loss of efficiency. If some factor that was irrelevant to wealth creation determined that people born in the month of March (or people of a certain race) were not allowed to go to good schools (even if their parents can afford it), that would be a (somewhat silly) loss of efficiency in capital. "Deciding" that people born to middle class or lower parents don't deserve the kind of education that's increasingly critical to survive in the modern economy is basically the same thing in terms of its effect on wealth creation (though of course it's more palatable ethically).

All too often, people conflate capitalism with "government that's as small as possible", when it's blindingly obvious that this couldn't be farther from the truth. For an obvious example, contract enforcement is an essential for markets to function. Responsible regulation is another case (A company dumping toxic waste into a town's river and causing cancer among its citizens is a case of the company's capital direction decision-making process not being exposed to all the costs to the economy; the company could theoretically destroy more wealth than it creates for society).

To get to my point, a big part of America's historical economic dynamism (aside from the fact that we've got probably the richest geography in the entire world) was the fact that we didn't have class systems as entrenched as Europe did. Whether your idea was successful was (more) dependent on whether it was _good_ and would create wealth, as opposed to how you knew or how you were born. Arbitrarily closing off the class of potential entrepreneurs to people who are "high-born" obviously reduces the potential for new sources of innovation (and thus wealth generated for society). Being able to afford a private school or being able to afford to live in a district with a good public school (where you pay your "tuition" in the price of your house) is the modern equivalent of being "high-born" (it's certainly much more flexible than strict class systems, but it has much the same effect).

As far as healthcare and basic income, this should be particularly familiar to anyone reading HN. The idea that your healthcare should be tied to your employer is insanely stupid. This system very clearly incentivizes being an employee over being an entrepreneur which, again, is not the way to have a healthy, innovative economy*. Every time a person is prevented from building a startup solely out of fear that their kid might get sick and they won't have good healthcare, that's a loss of efficiency.

A similar argument trivially applies to basic income. The US (in contrast to our formerly deserved reputation of the probability of rags-to-riches stories) has worse economic mobility than most of the developed world. It's absolutely pathetic that we've gotten to this state given that this was a big source of our historical economic dominance.

TL;DR: Efficiency in capitalism is the unimpeded flow of capital to where it is most needed. This is best achieved by a meritocracy of ideas. Anything that affects that flow negatively is an inefficiency. Healthcare, education, and a basic income have nothing to do with the government directing the economy's capital but rather with the government ensuring that capital can flow correctly.