I'm trying to get you to stop throwing around the word "free market" in a meaningless way, especially in a negative light, because it muddies your argument and

I'm trying to get you to stop throwing around the word "free market" in a meaningless way, especially in a negative light, because it muddies your argument and throws mud on "free markets" which most people have a positive impression of. When you say "free market", it is completely unclear to anybody who is not in your head wtf you are talking about; it only comes out when you finish your sentence slagging it. "Free market" does not have a clear or set definition. It is not a term used by economists except as a catchall in the context where the audience knows what the economist is talking about. It comes from the time of "classical liberalism" when the liberalizing was "freeing" markets from the control of the aristocracy, but today we also need to keep them free of collectivism, even though collectivism in modern parlance fits the thinking that we now call liberalism, so I don't think it's a great idea to use those terms either. To keep out of that linguistic morass, stop slurring the term "free market". Markets always exist, because people will always trade, even if it's a spoonful of my prison rations for a spoonful of your prison rations. If we as prisoners make a trade, are you calling that a freedom? So just talk about markets. The little description I just gave is a clear thought, and the word free doesn't add anything. Black markets are the truest free markets, they entail free trade of all items. Everything not free about a black market is exogenous. Learn the terminology of markets; economics studies "perfect markets", and then identifies sources of "market failures" and "market inefficiencies". The type of unregulated free market that devolves into cartels and monopolies and caveat emptor is better known as laissez faire. Markets that are regulated within western democracies are free markets that don't devolve. on the surface you're just throwing words around on top of however many layers of more complex thought goes into your arguments. Free markets are a good thing. If you want to talk about market failures, don't use the word free. Free does not mean "unregulated".