An efficient free market was never a thing except in the fever dreams of economists. Most forms of the efficient market hypothesis have been formally proven in

An efficient free market was never a thing except in the fever dreams of economists. Most forms of the efficient market hypothesis have been formally proven incorrect. The remaining ones are harder to disprove but can be tied to other things (ie only true if p=np). There are literally mountains of evidence that you have to ignore to believe in efficient free markets at this point. The evidence for them has always amounted to "I have a theory, I looked at a market for a while and it was sometimes true. Therefore my theory is proven" All countervailing evidence is "no true scotsman"'d. No inefficient market is free enough you see. It’s one of those things that people feel like should be true, but just isn’t. meanwhile, if you start from the theory that there’s no particular reason for free markets to be efficient, stories like this aren't even news.