… is from page 278 of my late Nobel laureate colleague Jim Buchanan‘s 1987 paper “Market Failure and Political Failure,” as this paper is reprinted in James M. Buchanan, Federalism, Liberty, and Law (2001), which is volume 18 of the Collected Works of James M. Buchanan:
Almost all observed market arrangements generate results that fall short of achieving the ideal. The reasons are familiar. Such an assessment of failure does not, however, carry any implication for ultimate institutional or policy change until and unless a pattern of results from an alternative set of arrangements demonstrated to be feasible can be shown to exist.