Tyler continues to baffle me. Now he’s deeply misstating the free-market case against European social democracy:

Market-oriented types look at Europe and think it is on the verge of collapse, when it isn’t. They can’t imagine that it doesn’t, in every way, have American-style government failure.

I can’t think of any smart market-oriented person who claims that Europe is “on the verge of collapse.” What market-oriented people do claim is that Europe has pig-headedly regulated its labor markets into shockingly high unemployment, and its economy into low growth.

Market-oriented people add that the few ways in which Europe does look better than the U.S. on paper are largely arithmetic: They don’t admit many poor immigrants, which trivially raises averages.

For the basic facts on Europe’s deficiencies, see fellow Templeton Prize winner Olaf Gersemann’s Cowboy Capitalism. Europe is not doomed; it’s just a big disappointment. And contrary to Tyler, market-oriented types who think otherwise are very rare.