If "free market" has any coherent and muscular meaning, it is as an alternative to those in political power assigning the equivalent of royal patents to pursue

If "free market" has any coherent and muscular meaning, it is as an alternative to those in political power assigning the equivalent of royal patents to pursue markets. So any rents-ey looking use of the political process is not free market no matter the wealth of those practicing it. This is what need work. Wal-Mart in specific originally hired women in rural areas at a wage appropriate as a second income. Their husbands worked at an industrial or agricultural job. Then they went through an explosion, but as the South Park says, the soul of every Wal-Mart is a mirror. The ag. or industrial job isn't there any more but by sheer momentum, that's the deal. Wal-Mart is also not exactly a sentence of eternal penury - people who stay a few years, just by self-selection can move up the food chain. I'm not current, but a department manager made enough to raise a family very frugally. A store manager made pretty decent money. The reason it's Wal-Mart and not Sears is decades of hard work at the logistics end - Wards and Sears shipped by train, even in the '60s. Wal-Mart just overran them with trucks. But in a way, what's waiting for the end of Wal-Mart seems worse - Amazon. The labor component of production of goods is still disappearing.