A truely free market would but we have too many carrer representives getting their pockets lined by big corporations, unions and other speical interest groups for that to happen.
Courtesy of my friends at econlib.org (
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeMarket.html):
“ Free market” is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services. Thus, when I buy a newspaper from a newsdealer for fifty cents, the newsdealer and I exchange two commodities: I give up fifty cents, and the newsdealer gives up the newspaper. Or if I work for a corporation, I exchange my labor services, in a mutually agreed way, for a monetary salary; here the corporation is represented by a manager (an agent) with the authority to hire.
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Pockets lined by corporations... sounds like the makings of a free market to me.
Pretty much every definition available of "free market" means the economics of exchanges being dictated by supply and demand while remaining free of outside intervention against transactions, with the sole exception being the maintaining of a public legal system and private party rights. This Laissez-Faire system makes it fully acceptable to use financial incentives to ensure favoritism, relating to your unions and special interest groups. The only step beyond this is an anarchistic capitalism, where government can't intervene even for public legal reasons.
The free market, as you defined it, can never work because it can never be devoid of the things you mentioned. Greed, special interests, and the absorption or destruction of competition.
A lot of people say they want to see an example of socialism that works. I want to see an example of the free market that works. Last time I checked, the world is in a financial crisis. People will be quick to throw up the "WELL, IT'S BECAUSE OF..." It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you won every game up until the championship. If you lose the last game, you are not the champions, and no excuse or reason or "but" will change that.
I'll wait for someone to hopefully read the whole article and point out how socialism doesn't work, just so I can follow up with "How does that change the fact that right now, here, in this country, we are at the point of economic decline?" And I'll wait for the inevitable response of "It was regulation and government intervention that got us here!" Repeat, ad nauseum...