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That's only if you assume that businesses can't influence market forces and the business environment, which is a grossly incorrect assumption.


Free markets are non-coercive. Anything which is not a voluntary exchange of value is not a free market by definition.


Then by that same definition, free market is so fragile that it's an impossible pipe dream. Any actor that gains enough power to influence the market destroys the free market by its mere existence.

To take it to its extreme -- you cannot have a truly free market with existence of the State. However, if you don't have the State, there's nobody to enforce your property rights.


But the real world doesn't run on definitions and platonic ideals. There's no perfect "free market" and there will never be, because it's an inherently unstable state in our reality. For the very same reason you can't have world peace by making everyone agree that all conflicts will be resolved by playing chess.

EDIT:

Here[0] you're actually making the same point as I am. Free markets are fragile. They self-destruct if not externally enforced. Unfortunately, the enforcement itself is not immune to market forces either.

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[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14520747




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