Mixed market economies don't fail because of the "market economy"; they fail because of the intervention and price controls that get forced onto the market economy by the men and women calling themselves "government".
The function of prices is to express consumer demand in terms of some finite supply. All other things being equal, a seller profits by supplying consumer demand as efficiently as possible. All other things being equal, a seller incurs loss by being wasteful or inefficient, or if there is no demand for what they are selling. Competition among sellers increases efficiency and drives down cost, thereby driving down price. Increased efficiency and profit means more investment capital can be transformed into production capital, which further increases supply and efficiency, thereby further reducing costs.
This is what increases the quality of life for everyone.
Price controls and market intervention totally fuck this process up. When someone slaps a price control on something, it removes the mechanism by which consumer demand is expressed in terms of finite supply. If the price control is higher than the natural market price, it results in an artificial surplus. If the price control is lower than the market price, it causes people to "eat their seed crop" and completely waste present resources with no regard for the future. That's why people end up starving when governments take over the food supply. Just look at Venezuela. Or Cuba. Or North Korea.
And that's why the American economy is going to get one hell of a shock when the fallout from price controls on interest rates and the resulting counterfeiting hits. Interest rates are the price of borrowing money. If price controls on food lead to food shortages and starvation, what happens when you impose artificial price controls on the cost of borrowing money for several decades on end?
The answer: systemic failure, as was the case in Japan, except Japan's currency wasn't in use as the global reserve currency for oil. By contrast, there won't be an industry in the entire world that isn't affected by the impending collapse of the USD.
There's cause for optimism though: cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Steem, as well as hard monies like gold and silver - all of which will skyrocket in price when the dollar collapses (which makes the Steemit platform a pretty good place to be). The coming crisis will be blamed on the "market economy" aspect of the economy, yet it will be competition in money markets that allows people to both hedge their savings prior to the collapse and rebuild after it occurs.
The cause of the coming collapse is counterfeiting and artificially low interest rates, as demonstrated by the Austrian business cycle theory (which will be validated as a principle and natural economic law post-collapse). The men and women calling themselves "government" and "media" have been selling the public a lie for several decades. They've been so efficient at coordinating the delivery of this lie that it's hard to tell where the former group of men and women ends and the latter begins. Don't make the mistake of letting them sell you more market intervention as a panacea to sickness created by market intervention.
Central bankers and the people closest to them are drug addicts in the truest sense of the term, and they're not opposed to dragging everyone down with them in their endeavor to overdose.
I'm Jared Howe! I'm a Voluntaryist hip hop artist and professional technical editor/writer with a passion for Austrian economics and universal ethics. You can catch my podcast every Friday on the Seeds of Liberty Podcast Network.