[A. Pole]

We can look at the Free Market much as Churchill looked at Democracy - "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

How many examples of free market systems can you find in history of mankind?

[Monkey King]

True Free Market or Bowdlerized? I don't believe (no economic historian here - trust me!) there's ever been a *true* Free Market.

My (limited) understanding is that the system we (U.S.) have now developed out of the Mercantilism of the early colonizers and was never allowed true regulatory freedom.

Still, like the lesson of Plato's chair, it's closer to the ideal than anything else I suppose.