[dietmtnview]

> To summarize a big complicated thing in a nutshell, a market system is pretty neat because market forces are determine the price (a reflection of the value) of goods and services in an unplanned manner. It's a system that takes in information, and the various actors in the system respond accordingly. It's never 100% accurate, but given enough time and stability, it's usually pretty close.

No. A massive majority of the prices of things in the US are distorted by the government or the Federal Reserve. Agriculture is propped up by the government, the prices of healthcare are distorted by capitalist interests, landlords have benefited from lax government oversight, the railway workers strike was made illegal by Biden.

The list goes on and the prices are a reflection of these distortions. To say prices reflect reality is to be delusional to the political situation.

[UtopiaPunk]

I'm sorry that wasn't captured in my nutshell explanation. A pure, "free" market would not have any such distortions, at least in theory. A pure free market would also not have any government services, such as roads, landfills, or the military/police, so that would affect market prices. I would also argue that such a pure "free" market system would still not collect all the information needed to accurately determine the "cost" of a thing, as certain costs are often not naturally captured in the price without some kind of government intervention (for example, a factory dumping toxic waste into a river for free without any government environmental oversight to say that is not allowed).

So yeah, I don't think there's a pure free market system in the United States.