this is mostly a kitchen midden of assertions. Where to begin?
First of all, what is a free market? Most of these people think it's some sort of "system" or set of policies. In fact, it's the lack thereof. It's simply a concept referring to a situation in which all acts of exchange of goods and services between the people of the community are voluntary rather than coerced. Any voluntary interaction is compatible with the "free market." any aggressive (coerced) interaction is antithetical to the "free market." gift-giving is free market. Voluntary communes are free market entities, even though they follow some of the same economic forms as soviet russia. What's the difference between stalin's collectivized farming and the collectivized farming of a catholic monastery? The former was coerced while the latter is voluntary. Thus, "free market" simply refers to whatever happens to arise in a fully voluntary society.
Of course, there has never been a fully voluntary society. All society's that i know of have been plagued by aggression. I don't mean just petty and sporadic aggression, burglary and so forth, which are generally despised and therefore relatively harmless, but forms of aggression that are accepted and normalized by most of the society's members and that therefore can to much greater harm than any individual burglar. Common forms of culturally normalized aggression include slavery, enforced religious orthodoxy, subjugation of women, of children, of foreigners, and of other groups, various forms of ritual bodily mutilation, human sacrifice, and so on. The state is just another form of this. It's an inherently aggressive, coercive institution. If it weren't, it wouldn't be the state under our definition.
Since there has never been a society that has culturally prohibited all forms of aggression, of course there has never been an absolute free market! There has never been a crime-free society either. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't strive in the direction of an absolute free market (an absolutely voluntary economy) any more than we shouldn't strive in the direction of an absolutely crime-free society. This is a moral issue before it is a practical one and even if a free economy was less efficient than an economy riddled with coercion, we would still be for it because it is the only moral way.
Of course, we don't have to make that choice because freedom is, logically, always more efficient, more equitable, more peaceful, more prosperous, more replete with all human goods, than aggression, which never has, never will, and never can produce anything other that discord and poverty. How could it? Aggression, by definition, is an invasion of a person's legitimate boundaries. It is therefore, by definition, the generator of discord. It is also, by definition, parasitic, with the invading creature draining the strength, wealth, and might of the host. Thus, it is inherently impoverishing to the host and even to the parasite if the parasite drains the host excessively. It is certainly impoverishing to society as a whole, as it drains the productive in favor of unproductive parasites. No statistic or empirical datum can refute these axiomatic truths.
Some other points:
1) "...property rights, zoning laws and so on are all regulations..." two totally different things. The right of property is an innate and natural right of man, each individual being inherently entitled to the fruits of his own labor. It is derived from the natural law, an extension of the right over one's own body; it has nothing to do with "regulations" in the sense he means. The state not only did not create the right of property, it infringes on it by its very existence as an enforced, territorial monopoly. The authority that the state claims over its "territory" is illegitimate precisely because the people who make up the state did not acquire through legitimate means (through their own labor or through having it given to them freely by a legitimate owner) but through violent, aggressive conquest. Zoning laws, on the other hand, are simply decrees passed by the people who make up the state, dictating what people can and can't do with their own property, violating the natural right of property once more.
2) "anytime there are inequities those in position of power use that for bargaining power to aggravate inequalities." equality under the law is the important thing. It means that every person is possessed of the same natural rights. This is only logical since natural rights are inherent to every human soul. Any other "equality"--of wealth, of talent, of intelligence, of luck--is a chimera. Such things only matter is there is aggression involved. If there is no aggression, the fact that someone possesses more wealth than another is a morally neutral fact of life. Only when aggression is allowed are the wealthy, the smarter, the more attractive, the more ruthless allowed to prey on others. Thus, the state is the true aggravator of inequality; it will also be captured by those best positioned, who will use it to aggress against others. The idea that this apparatus of violence will or could be used the benefit the poor and downtrodden is absurd. Even welfare and union protections largely co-opt the poor and laborers respectively, making them dependent on the state and staving off possible dissent.
3) "markets are grossly inefficient since they allocate the wrong resources to the wrong places." who defines what's inefficient or what the "wrong places" are? Does our friend imagine himself to be some philosopher-king imbued with wisdom to make such judgments?
4) "...explain how free enterprise could have invented gps, satelites, cell phones, the internet, etc." who cares? This is a such ridiculous question they always ask: How, how, how, how, how...i can't lay out, in precise detail, how free enterprise could produced everything we have anymore than he could explain how his ideal economy is could have produced it had it been in place for all of human history. It's pure speculation. If there had been a pure free market for, say, the past thousand years, bereft of a singly act of aggression, who knows were the free individuals who made it up would have chosen to allocate resources and what would have been produced. I imagine medicine would be more technologically advanced. On the other hand, weapons would probably be more primitive, because there would have been no wars to spur their development. Maybe we'd still be using swords. Would that mean the free market is less efficient at developing weaponry? Or would it just mean that free and peaceful people allocate resources differently from violent, parasitic kings, dictators, and presidents? Maybe the internet wouldn't exist right now because those resources would have been invested to grow food or make clothes instead. Or maybe the free society would develop such a thing just as it managed to develop language, money, measuring systems, customary laws, and transportation networks without the state's help. I know only one thing, material wealth would be more abundant and more equitably distributed in a free society than in a coercive one.
5) the market is "oppressive, antisocial, inhuman, grotesque, a predatory monster..." emotional blather honeycombed with idealogical dna descended from marxism, whether he knows it or not. When someone is able to figure out a logically coherent reason why an act of voluntary exchange is any of those things, i'll listen. But that will never happen because there is no logical reason.
) but since I referred to him in the third person, I think he may be confused.
