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Notes -
I think we're partially making the same point. Regardless of how you want to frame it, we don't live in a pure free market, so defending X or Y or Z by saying "that's just the free market doing its thing" is frequently disingenuous.
I would extend it however and claim that there's no such thing as a "pure free market" even in principle. Even if we can imagine a complete absence of government interference, private individuals could still collude and engage in social engineering; to the extent that they don't, it's because there are cultural prohibitions against doing so. And if we were to make such social engineering formally illegal, then that would simply be government interference in the market. You're always going to have some sort of culture, and it's going to influence your economics; you can't escape to a pure realm of abstract rational agents untainted by culture and politics.
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