[thoth]

>Really free markets would have solved this.

How do you figure that? Wouldn't a free market solution require United to honor its contracts and the legal system in the first place? Which they provably already ignored when they removed ALREADY BOARDED AND SEATED passengers?

This didn't fall into "involuntary denied boarding" situation so United was free to offer whatever they wanted to. Which they chose not to do. Essentially, they had the situation you think would have solved the problem, but did not solve the problem.