[pdonis]

> It's the thumb on the scales that allows the free market to exist.

This is an oxymoron. A free market is a market in which all transactions are voluntary. Government intervention, by definition, causes some transactions to be involuntary. So you can't have a free market with government's thumb on the scales.

> Without it there's just men with guns, and men with more guns.

Historically, this is simply false. There have been societies that did not have governments that could manipulate markets, and they did not work this way.

In terms of guns, in such societies everyone had guns; there was no one who had overwhelming military force at their disposal. (They also had less wealth inequality than modern societies with governments.)

[flir]

> Government intervention, by definition, causes some transactions to be involuntary.

Here is a list of transactions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_market) we're making illegal next Tuesday. Note that after Tuesday, all market transactions are still voluntary. Therefore your claim is wrong. (In other words you're not considering positive and negative freedoms).

> In terms of guns, in such societies everyone had guns; there was no one who had overwhelming military force at their disposal.

Tell me about power laws.

I recommend Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber.

[pdonis]

> Therefore your claim is wrong.

No, it isn't. You are simply giving evidence that a market with any government intervention is not a free market. Which is perfectly true.

Whether the particular interventions governments make are good policy is a separate question. A free market is a tool. So are government interventions. Sometimes you have to make tradeoffs. But that doesn't change the fact that they are tradeoffs: that every time the government intervenes in a market, it means the market is no longer a free market, because some transactions are not voluntary. (Or because some transactions that would be voluntary if they happened are prevented from happening; see further comments below.)

> Note that after Tuesday, all market transactions are still voluntary.

First, even taken literally, this claim is not true, because there are lots of other government interventions in place that dictate non-voluntary transactions (the most common, of course, being taxation).

Second, you're quibbling. I gave the short version of the proper definition of a free market; the full version includes that preventing transactions from occurring that otherwise would occur (because both parties benefit) by making them illegal also counts as making transactions non-voluntary. In other words, "voluntary" has two sides: not forcing people to make transactions they wouldn't voluntarily choose to make, and not preventing people from making transactions they would voluntarily choose to make.