Completely free markets...meaning societies in which there are no boundaries imposed on capital or the marketplace...are conducive only to the concentration of capital. Capital, as a social proxy for power, acts precisely the same way all social power operates. It is drawn to itself, as those with power are empowered to amass more power. This is true politically, and it is also true economically.
The two spheres are and have always been interwoven, as wealth supports the state, and the state protects wealth.
What neither inherently protects is your personal liberty. Without the clear boundaries established by disciplined adherence to constitutional law, the state can easily become a monster. Without a constitutionally ordered state to counterbalance its unfettered venality and avarice, the market is no less dangerous. Slavery and indenture are both, after all, the state of being owned, and that's economic.
In a market unresponsive to any purpose higher than itself, there is no motivation other than profit maximization, and profit maximization ultimately enslaves us all. This is particularly true as the marketplace seizes control of information ecosystems, because then capital can create not just products and services, but our desire for those products and services.
"Marketing," after all, is no different from propaganda. Both seek to shape the minds of a malleable populace, because it's often easier to make people want your product than to make a product people want.
And Lord, do we now "want" some strange things.
Like, say, thousand dollar phones. Or sixty thousand dollar SUVs. Or health care that is cripplingly, overwhelmingly, inhumanly expensive. We placidly accept the expectation that life must be spent forever in debt, that debt is the norm, that paying interest to a corporation for the privilege of buying groceries is just the way things work.
These assumptions are imposed because they are a profitable imposition. They are also markers of a disordered market, where enlightened self-interest has been intentionally blinded.
An unregulated and disordered market is the collective equivalent of an unregulated and disordered mind. If driven by solipsistic self-interest alone, it is no more free than a soul trapped in megalomania or paranoid delusion.
And we are trapped in that cage with it.
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