Think America's markets have been free? In the 1930s, the New Deal government stepped in to try to raise prices of agriculture and food. So right there, the market is no longer free or unfettered (and never has been). But are you aware of the history of this particular government effort?
In order to keep food prices high (even though the US was in a depression and there were many poor and starving people in America) the government shot cows and doused fruit with kerosene to make it inedible (an un-salable). This was to reduce "surplus" supply. There was another way to reduce surplus supply: why not just pass out the surplus food to the poor and starving people? There's no difference between consuming food with kerosene and gun shots and consuming food with hungry mouths. In both cases, the food is consumed, used up, destroyed, gone.
This is the government project, the New Deal, that high school history teachers still gush over, that politicians still point to with pride as a great and historical solution to America's economic problems... as something we should venerate and continue! I wonder how markets left alone would have allocated all that surplus food. I really do.