What I love most about the free market is the single fact that no exchange takes place within the free market unless both parties benefit, or believe they are going to benefit at the time.
No one can force you to buy that bag of chips, that car insurance from the company that you have heard negative feedback about, or force you to sign up for life insurance that you don't see any value in today or possibly ever.
If you were forced to engage in those exchanges and forced to take on and pay for services that you didn't want then this would be an obvious violation of your individual consent and therefore your liberty.
When two individuals look to enter into an exchange within the free market they are doing so because they are making that choice on their own, they see what they will get in-return as something worth more than what they are giving up. The 2 dollars to them at the time that they are holding, isn't worth as much as the chocolate bar that they want right now in-return, and so they are peacefully choosing to trade for that chocolate bar.
Peacefully trading in this way, where both parities benefit, is what the true free market is all about.
Or they could agree to a certain contract with you during the exchange and then later they might fail to fulfill their end of the bargain, these sorts of violations will happen but they aren't always a guarantee.
To try and alleviate some of those potential bad exchanges, we could establish an organization that would help us to sort through those products, services, and agents selling them. We could use services from that organization to be sure that we are making honest deals, but that agency should be sought out voluntarily.
When they fail us then, if they let too many products through that have been found to harm people for example, where they have designated the product or seller to be trustworthy, then you could make the decision to withdraw your support for that organization, because you wouldn't be pleased with the results that you were getting any longer.
With government as we have it today though, we aren't given that choice in many respects. Our consent is violated in many ways and we are forced repeatedly to pay for services that we do not want anything to do with. This is not a free market.
This is a market which fosters exchanges that could be construed as a violation of our basic human consent and liberty. Although we might fear those illegitimate exchanges taking place, violating the consent of every single individual to try and prevent it from ever happening, doesn't seem like a coherent solution to put into place. When the danger occurs anyways then you've violated consent for no reason at all, simply inconveniencing the freedom and rights of many without anything to show for it.
The most defining attribute of the free market could be said to be this, that no exchanges are ever going to take place unless both parties agree to it and both parties believe they are going to benefit from it at the time.
Pics:
pixabay