[achenet]

Voluntary two party agreements work because they are enforced by a government.

Markets only exist in the presence of government. Read David Graeber's Debt if you want a history of how markets and money work - generally speaking, they are things created by governments, to ease the work of figuring out taxation. Those quarters and nickels and dimes only have value because you know that come tax season, Uncle Sam will knock on your door and ask you for some, and if you don't give them to him, he'll toss you in jail. This creates a demand for those coins, and therefore a market for them, so now Uncle Sam can pay his soldiers in coin, the soldiers trade it with civilians for food and lodging and boom, it's a market!

You seem to be doing that thing where you want to believe the world is fair, so you invent this magical free market to be able to pretend that life is fair.

To paraphrase Dan Luu: markets are people, all the way down.

you can read https://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/ and https://danluu.com/talent/

for more info.