Your entire premise is that "free market trumpeters" are wrong because we don't have a free market. And as absurd as that sounds, you are right. I've heard mor

Your entire premise is that "free market trumpeters" are wrong because we don't have a free market. And as absurd as that sounds, you are right. I've heard more times than I can count from Libertarian ideologues that we could totally avoid these problems by just leaving the market alone. So many people in the US stubbornly believe that a totally unregulated market would be a totally competitive one. Back over here in reality, we see corporations taking every opportunity they have to be anti-competitive, and no amount of deregulation would change their motives. The liberation we need is not for the market itself (as a whole), but for any new marketers who wish to compete against the giant incumbents that regulate them out of business. And the only option I'm aware of with enough leverage to intervene is government.