What is a Free Market?

What is a free market?

Let's look at a textbook definition:

A market economy based on supply and demand with little or no government control. A completely free market is an idealized form of a market economy where buyers and sells are allowed to transact freely (i.e. buy/sell/trade) based on a mutual agreement on price without state intervention in the form of taxes, subsidies or regulation.

In financial markets, free market stocks are securities that are widely traded and whose prices are not affected by availability.

In foreign-exchange markets, it is a market where exchange rates are not pegged (by government) and thus rise and fall freely though supply and demand for currency.

In simple terms, a free market is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is a voluntary agreement between two parties who trade in the form of goods and services. In reality, this is the extent to which a free market exists since there will always be government intervention in the form of taxes, price controls and restrictions that prevent new competitors from entering a market. Just like supply-side economics, free market is a term used to describe a political or ideological viewpoint on policy and is not a field within economics.

(Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp )

Now, here is a serious question related to free markets: name the last time there really was a free market in the United States, or any other so-called democratic nation. Can you pinpoint even one?

I didn't think so.

The closest era to true free-market conditions was shortly post-revolutionary, pre-republic confederation or, perhaps, in the days when the western territories were nearly ungoverned and ungovernable.

Free markets, like communism, exist only in theory, not in practice.

The economic system in the United States is, and always has been, mercantilism. The spill-over effects (trickle down) from the mercantilist system have enriched all of us, but as you would discover with a short research session, those at the top always grow richer faster than those at the lower levels.

We don't discuss mercantilism much in the modern times because it is supposed to be an artifact of history. We have capitalists, and corporations, and capitalism.

We also have increasing government-corporate cooperation, decreasing liberty, controlled markets and limited opportunity.

In other words, what we have is fascism, which is the accurate label for what is called capitalism, but which is nothing other than old-time mercantilsm.

Think about and then think about this: If you want to have free markets step one is to outlaw corporations.