   a free market is a market system in which the prices for goods and services are set freely by consent between sellers and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority. a free market contrasts with a controlled market or regulated market, in which government intervenes in supply and demand through non-market methods such as laws creating barriers to market entry or directly setting prices. a free market economy is a market-based economy where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy, and it typically entails support for highly competitive markets and private ownership of productive enterprises. although free markets are commonly associated with capitalism in contemporary usage and popular culture, free markets have been advocated by market anarchists, market socialists, and some proponents of cooperatives and advocates of profit sharing. ==economic systems== ===laissez-faire economics===   the laissez-faire principle expresses a preference for an absence of non-market pressures on prices and wages, such as those from government taxes, subsidies, tariffs, regulations (other than protection from coercion and theft), or government-granted or coercive monopolies. friedrich hayek argued in the pure theory of capital that the goal is the preservation of the unique information contained in the price itself.the pure theory of capital, f.a. hayek, 1941 the definition of free market has been disputed and made complex by collectivist political philosophers and socialist economic ideas. this contention arose from the divergence of classical economists such as adam smith, david ricardo, and thomas malthus from the continental economic science developed primarily by the spanish scholastic and french classical economists, including richard cantillon, anne-robert-jacques turgot, jean-baptiste say and frÃ©dÃ©ric bastiat. smith discarded subjective value theory and contended that an unregulated market was prone to the rise of 
Capitalism Classical_liberalism Economic_liberalism Free_market Libertarian_theory