I know you weren't trying to argue for free markets -- but I do like some of the points you make!
I like that you point out that regulation is needed. I agree, in that there needs to be some sense of "rules" or "laws" that ensure how some (hopefully widely agreed upon) definition of fair and free markets should work. E.g. regulating it as necessary, rewarding/enabling "fair" trades/exchange/commerce and penalizing those that abuse that ideal version of the "fair"/"free" market.
Ignoring that-- and recognizing that we need regulation & wisdom as consumers, I think an interesting aspect of the above challenge we face is the matter of scale and how that has changed things.
I have often thought that legislation, policy, regulation, etc. and consumers view of the market has and will continue to have massive challenges given the frequency with which change (in technology especially) happens and the scale it enables. For example, right now there is a lot of questions about AI and how to regulate it... which is sort of nice to hear that there's at least some thought for how it should be regulated before complete disaster strikes. AI is just the latest though in a series of disruptions over the past several decades.
I think it's also instructive to look at how the "free market" used to work before the internet, before globalization, etc. Going back a hundred years or two, imagine processing 1000s of information transactions a second in 1825 or 1925. Similarly, shipping expenses would have made buying things from "far away" (whether that meant a few states away, or countries across the sea) more expensive and therefore there were less businesses that would set up a factory in one (cheaper to manufacture place) to then mass deliver components to other factories (in other places) to then assemble and deliver the products to yet another far away place.
I think that many systems and ways of doing things existed for hundreds of years, and in localized & smaller markets. The world has changed a lot in the past 100 years-- and what's best (policy-wise, marketwise, regulation wise) barely gets time to soak (much less be cooked) on the global stage before the next new thing is disrupting things and changing the way the world works... There is also much less humanity in all these automated systems & corporations that operate & play at a global scale.
Notes:
1) before you would have had many more ma & pa shops, and less Walmarts, less Amazons, and other corporate giants & tyrants that squeeze every ounce of humanity away in the process of pursuing profit to the tune of data driven profit & performance, corporate profits, etc. Consumers often trade convenience and cheaper prices for the loss of that humanity... And then the consolidations begin (in the race to the bottom) and pretty soon there are only a few major players left and both consumers & employees who would work in those industries have less choice.
2) The changes in the industrial revolution (train,planes & automobiles) and information tech age -- are not minor changes to our society. Think of the following technologies (and I'm sure there are more) that didn't exist even 50 years ago: internet*, social medial, online purchasing, AI, cellphones --> smartphones, etc). I imagine similar changes in businesses (startups with their public IPOs, MBAs, the ability to leverage one market into another, to be a monopoly or quasi-monopoly and not get broken up,etc.). The industry moves so fast that setting good policy, regulatory framework, and laws around this (a back and forth process that if it happens well, takes time...).
3) I'm not arguing we should go back to the stone-ages, not use Amazon, etc. I enjoy my cell-phone & other modern perks often just as much as the next person. That said I feel like -- to borrow from Michael Chricton's and Jurassic Park wisdom -- “[People] are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.” Move fast and break things is great perhaps on the small, but not so much in the big. And we've been doing things bigly for better or worse for the past hundred years ... I'm always hoping we can figure out how to do things for the better for humanity (as well as from a tech side).
