Omnibenevolence, Omniscience, and the Inherent Failure of Interventionism

One often encounters the following concession on the part of the proponents of the free market to the proponents of state interventionism: the free market is more effective than any form of state interventionism because 1) its efficiency-inducing incentive structure does not depend on the benevolence of its participants, and 2) it is particularly suited to aggregating decentralized and tacit information in a speedy and comprehensive manner. If, however, state officials were omnibenevolent and omniscient, then state interventionism would be the superior alternative.

I never understood the point of making this concession, as it seems to me to be completely unnecessary, and in fact plain wrong. This is because 1) if state officials were omnibenevolent and omniscient, then they would most likely know how to employ voluntary means to convince everyone else to follow and implement their plans, but in this case they would not be state officials any more, since they would no longer rely on monopolized violence to put their will into action, and 2) if they knew that there are no voluntary means that can be employed to convince everyone else to follow and implement their plans, then - their omnibenevolence and omniscience notwithstanding - coercive imposition of these plans on others would still be Pareto-inferior, since it would be contrary to the latter's subjective values and preferences.

In sum, the free market would be superior in terms of efficiency to any form of state interventionism even if state officials were omnibenevolent and omniscient - no concessions to the proponents of "correcting" the market by means of monopolized violence are needed, regardless of what moral and intellectual qualities its wielders might hypothetically possess.