According to wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
"... are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority."
The government is supposed to step in to block monopolies from controlling the market, but that implies that the government is intervening in the market. All I was pointing out is that there is no perfect system where politics, monopolies and private interests won't compete to control the market.
That's up to the society which wants to have a free market. For instance, anti-trust laws is one way of doing it.
> The government is supposed to step in to block monopolies from controlling the market, but that implies that the government is intervening in the market.
Someone should to step in here, whether it's government or not, is another question. But clearly, if market has no way of preventing a monopoly, it's not really free.
Actually, it is the central question, because without a feasible answer all you have is a fine-sounding principle that is utterly infeasible.
Which will make it non free. Free market requires mechanisms of preventing monopolies by its definition.