You're confusing free market capitalism with "perfectly competitive market".
Nowhere in the study of economics does it say that free market capitalism necessarily leads to all industries having multiple competing companies that drive prices down.
On a somewhat unrelated note, if history and human nature is any indicator, then we know that with an under-regulated market most industries will gravitate towards oligopolies with homogeneous product offerings, monopolies or cartels (colluding oligopolies)
> the presumed arbiter of what constitutes "free markets" or "economic freedom"
This assumption is ludicrous. I can't even imagine the thought process that would lead you to think that that makes any sense. Being the loudest proponent of your vision of a concept doesn't make you a good arbiter of what constitutes it: in fact it makes you a terrible one.
Not that I have as low an opinion of Heritage as I do of them, but do you think the Westboro Baptist Church is the "presumed arbiter" of what constitutes Christianity, simply because they shout the loudest about God?
I wonder if their viewpoint has changed since the more than decade and a half since that article was published. Is it that hard to find something current if it's so fundamental to your argument?
A prison is not a free market, its by definition a place administered and controlled by an entity in order to restrict the liberties of those imprisoned there.
Nowhere in the study of economics does it say that free market capitalism necessarily leads to all industries having multiple competing companies that drive prices down.
On a somewhat unrelated note, if history and human nature is any indicator, then we know that with an under-regulated market most industries will gravitate towards oligopolies with homogeneous product offerings, monopolies or cartels (colluding oligopolies)