The Market Economy versus Capitalism

I've been sitting on this a while, hoping to get back to it and extend and polish it. Haven't found the time, so here it is warts and all.
1) Markets are inevitable.
As long as tastes are not uniform, and goods and resources are not distributed to those who value them most, individuals will benefit from the opportunity to trade with one another. Trading in markets is such a natural impulse that societies which oppose markets have to go to incredible lengths to suppress them, usually with minimal success.
2) Markets are moral.
a) Market exchange is morally superior to exchanges mediated through coercion or deception. Is there really any doubt that it is better for individuals to be able to freely make choices rather than act under some real or imagined compulsion.
b) Because market exchange is base upon an equivalency of values exchanged, it creates a sense of equity in market participants.

3) Markets promote economic efficiency.
By establishing the opportunity costs (the sacrifice necessary to acquire) goods, prices established in markets promote movements of resources towards their best use.

4) Well functioning markets require a legal/regulatory framework that :
a) Promotes a "level playing field" i.e. does not favor particular activities and disadvantage others.
b) Prevents/limits transactions based upon coercion or deception.

5) A capitalist economy is a market economy where government functions as "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie" per Karl Marx's description.
The difficulty is that while single minded pursuit of self-interest is an excellent strategy for success in business, pursuit of self-interest in societal rule-making creates all sorts of difficulties.
The recent experience with deregulation of financial markets is an exemplar of this. Regulation has many defects, including stifling innovation. However, financial innovations have the side-effect of potentially increasing the risks of the economies payment systems. If the risks grow large enough they can threaten the very stability of the system.