Comment by andrekandre
4 days ago
well free markets meant something very different in adam smith's time; what they meant by free was 'free from rents' whereas today its usually mean in the milton freedman terms as 'free from any interference' which is how i interpret the parent poster...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market#Classical_Economic...
D: "I want to be free" by Milton Schulman.
H: Milton Friedman.
D: Why are they all called Milton? Anyway, I've only got as far as Milton Keynes.
H: Maynard Keynes.
D: I'm sure there's a Milton Keynes.
H: Yes, there is, but it's... [appears quite miffed]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgUemV4brDU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes
Coincidentally it’s where the British version of the Office is set
It's not free from interference either. It requires enforcing antitrust, for example, which the US seems to have forgotten. Literally what you quoted:
> the term free market refers to a market free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
yep, to keep them "free" you have to "interefere" with them
as an aide, the overloading of the term free is really annoying because it muddles things so much...
> free from any interference
That’s even less true in the US these days, though