> No. I'm using "regulation" in a more general sense here, to mean "giving market participants incentives to behave in particular ways, and not to behave in other ways".

I'm using regulation in the sense of preventing destructive behavior.

> You are incorrect. To take just the most obvious example, prices in a free market are regulated by supply and demand. That is "self regulation", as opposed to, say, prices being regulated by government dictates.

I'm not against free markets, free prices for their most part are essential signals for free markets. We're not talking about price control.

> Just as a brief response, you are making an underlying assumption that the only thing stopping, for example, milk suppliers from leaving harmful microbes in milk is government regulation. Do you have any support for that assumption?

You conveniently ignored my previous examples of destructive byproducts of free markets. Monopolies for one are inevitable in pure free markets. Your assumption is that ALL suppliers will by some magic willfully expend the effort to provide people with safe milk. Care to explain why all of them will do that?

> If you object that no reasonable person would have different preferences for microbial content in milk, I suggest that you spend some time looking into the disputes over whether pasteurization actually removes beneficial microbes (and nutrients) from milk. It is by no means the slam dunk that you appear to think it is.

I will argue that no reasonable average person is equipped to reliably determine what safe milk is. You might be better equipped than the average, but most people around you aren't. Even so, you may have a different preference towards microbial levels in milk, but if you get them wrong you will become sick, and in some cases infectious. Once you're infectious, you are a danger to me. Putting someone at risk is a form of aggression. And in that case my rights of not being subjected to aggression thump your rights to choose specific levels of bacterial content in milk. Same argument goes for some drugs, food, guns, medical drugs, pollution or chlorine in the water for that matter or a lot more other regulated things.

> And one of the things I read was that the industrial companies who imposed those conditions had government monopolies;

There were thousands of private mining companies, thousands of private textile/cotton companies, and so on. Thousands of anything doesn't make a monopoly. I'm not sure what are you referring to.

>> as opposed to the slaves who voluntarily agree to be slaves?

That was a question for you, based on a statement of yours, not my statement.

> You're not reading very carefully. Slavery was legal, because governments legitimized it; there was never a time when it was illegal (prior to it being outlawed in most of the developed world over the past century or two). But it wasn't voluntary for the slaves, so you can't use slavery as an example of a free market having "awful" effects.

OK ... So basically your argument is ... because people had their freedom taken from them by some who then proceeded to sell and buy them, effectively turning them in commodities - this can't be used as an example of buying and selling?? You will have to elaborate on that, because if that's your argument it's dubious to say the least.

There was a need for labor in the market, and the market happily fulfilled the need by stripping people of their freedom and turning them into cheap commodities - it externalized the suffering. The fact that governments eventually taxed this trade (I'm assuming this is what you mean by "governments legitimized it") did not legalize it or legitimized it, since it was a practice already very well entrenched.
I hope you are aware that slavery did not start or end in the US, in fact it predates by a lot most forms of anything which would resemble a government.