Submit all you want that markets work exceedingly well. Economic theory says otherwise. In particular look at the well-known phenomena of the tragedy of the commons. Or more specifically read the classic but far from dated text, The Logic of Collective Action.

That applies in spades to space. You see, cleaning up one piece of space junk does very little for helping the overall problem. The cost of cleaning it up is born by the organization that does it. The benefit is shared by all organizations in space. Thus even if the overall benefit makes cleanup worthwhile, cleanup is generally not worthwhile for whoever does it.

This is not always an insurmountable problem. For instance in many cases (eg environmental protection or maintaining fish stocks) governments have been able to solve the problem by creating artificial regulations that reduce externalities and create incentives that align the free market with the common good. Of course no country has the ability to impose such a solution on space.

A second common solution is what The Logic of Collective Action calls exploitation of the large by the small. In this situation a single actor, in the case of space probably the USA, gets sufficient benefit from acting in the common good that they will unilaterally do it. And, of course, once that organization does it, the others don't have to. US military policy is a fairly good example of this, as long as the USA is willing to patrol the world, international security is good enough that smaller countries, such as ones in Europe, do not bother to do the same. Nor do they contribute substantially to help the USA. (And, of course, they resent the USA for acting in ways that they don't like, and the USA resents them for not helping. This solution is a recipe for resentment.)

The third common solution is that a small group can find it worthwhile to cooperate. However the dynamics get very complicated - it is in the group's interest that the task actually be accomplished, but it is in every member's interest that they personally do as little as possible. A classic example of this is provided by OPEC, and the history of agreements within OPEC and their partial enforcement is a testament to how complicated the dynamics get.

In any case there is substantial economic theory on this exact problem. That theory says very clearly that near Earth space junk is a problem that markets are poor at solving. In addition the simple physics of of the situation make solving the problem very, very difficult. And nobody has come up with any good proposals for how to solve it.

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