Free Markets Might Not Mean Freedom After All

Over the last several decades, a new idea about freedom has, slowly, eroded our beliefs about what freedom really means. [...]

They tell us that free markets and personal freedom are, actually, the same thing [... and] restricting or regulating markets just prevents people from obtaining their freedom. [...]

But [...] some scholars have begun to doubt that free markets lead to freedom. They've correlated the extent of market regulation in a nation to the extent of human rights abuses that occur in that nation. And they've found that there is, in fact, a clear correlation, but it's not the correlation they had been told to expect. Apparently, the freer the market, the less free the people. [...]

But how could this be? [...]

Maybe the word free means something different when it's used in markets than when it's used for people, and, maybe, markets aren't as benevolent as we've been told. Maybe there's a reason citizens keep demanding that their governments reign in the activities of domineering market players. Maybe market forces alone can deprive people of freedom