so "let the market decide" is a lousy rule. there's no justification
for it.
People should generally reject religious fundamentalism, including what you said there. If you have an a priori case for this or that, fine, but you seem to be making a mystical argument for a wildly generalized claim.
for some, "let the market decide" is a religious statement. it's generally based on an unexamined faith in market conditions as an effective way of making a good choice among competing technologies. there are cases where letting the market decide makes sense - but it's easy to find several cases where this is not so, and difficult to generally outline the set of cases where the rule does apply. there's no justification for citing "let the market decide" as a general rule, not even for applications, because there are too many cases where application functionality is severely compromised by poor market decisions.
(which design shall we use for a bridge to cross the river between these cities? let's let the market decide!)
the other justification for "let the market decide" is when the speaker believes that his financial interests will be better served by letting the market decide than in the absence of input from IETF, than by letting the market take such input into account. ultimately, the market decides in either case. the real intent of "let the market decide" within IETF is to try to keep individuals within IETF from influencing the market. the speaker presumably believes that the market will make a more favorable decision (for him) without IETF's input than with IETF's input. the speaker may hope that by exploiting some people's misguided faith in market conditions, and exploiting the tendency of the market to make poor decisions, he can silence those who would propose a better way to do it.
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