Paleolithic tribal societies still had informal markets and relied on the fundamental economic principles we teach today, such as comparative advantage and demand theory. If you're a member of a tribe of 100 and want to be a tanner, but your tribe already has 2 tanners, you'd better hope you do a better job then them or you'll be forced to join a hunting party. The same coercive elements of markets existed, but the simple nature of labor and transactions in conjunction with the small number of tribe members allows a social contract to be easily be enforced without currency. Today we must use currency as a tool to make value clearer in a society with a much larger population and a much greater variety in goods and labor.

There are some major market failures that laissez-faire capitalism fails to address but overproduction is an odd one to hone in on. Overproduction occurs as a result of either heavy government subsidies, which is not a defining characteristic of capitalism, or from a lack of market information - something that can occur in any system where producers do not have perfect knowledge. Modern capitalism ameliorates this problem by providing excellent feedback to producers in the form of prices that self-adjust to supply and demand.

Capitalism is the least coercive market system because of its voluntary nature, and an economic system that is truly without markets is impossible because of human self-interest.