> The best anyone can hope for is a free market, with everything properly priced. But for decades, the American market has not been free. It’s used purposefully added friction to exploit a time asymmetry between the business and you.

A free market that is "properly priced" is a not a real state of existence.

Resource and information asymmetry, and the exploitation by the those with resource and information privilege of those without it has been present from the very beginning. A free market is just a tool (among many) to achieve a goal for a society.

For some, that goal is explicitly the concentration of wealth and welfare in very few hands. This is oligarchy.

For others, it's the advantaging the welfare and dignity of their "tribe" at the cost of welfare and dignity to perceived outsiders.

And for yet others, it is the advancement of universal welfare and dignity.

Neither a free market nor socialism gets you any of these. What gets you there are the shared narratives that utilize tools like free markets, regulation, and redistribution.