[FirmwareBurner]

>America’s free-market allies

No market is truly free. Once you have a free market it very quickly stops being free as dominant players monopolize it and shape the rules of the game causing the government to (sometimes) intervene to counter it and make it more fair, but it is never "free".

[walterbell]

(apologies to G. Michael Hopf)

  Free markets create strong companies.
  Strong companies create unfair markets.
  Unfair markets create strong governments.
  Strong governments create weak companies.
  Weak companies create free markets.

[potato3732842]

>dominant players monopolize it and shape the rules of the game causing the government to (sometimes) intervene to counter it and make it more fair

The dominant players shape it in large part by getting the government to intervene shaping rules to their benefit making it less fair. Naturally everyone with a brain hates this so there's a constant give take where the incumbent interests allow just enough competition, make the barriers to entry just barely surmountable that there's a strong enough trickle of new entrants that they can point and say "look, anyone can do it" and just enough idiots will believe it that they keep their heads.