The idea of a "free market" is an absolute fallacy.
Every market has some set of rules and regulations. At the definitional level, it is irrelevant whether the regs are written, spoken, or tacitly understood, or whether they are enforced by law or self-imposed limits. Without regulation, no market lasts.
The question is what regulations exist and how they are enforced.
With very little regulation, markets coalesce to monopolies; the strong/wealthy get stronger & wealthier, and buy out or force out the smaller players. Even without explicit collusion among large players, they have the ability to sustain predatory practices to kill upstarts or buy out any promising ones. With collusion, they can enforce predatory low quality and high pricing on entire nations.
Which is what we see here. The barriers to entry are high and the competition is so little that the entire appliance market has been massively enshittified — there is literally only crap available (unless you want to go full professional restaurant or hotel equipment). Even multiple different brands are literally made to the same specs in the same factories. I don't recall the details, but this was the case over a decade ago when we last looked for appliances, when it was bad enough that we found a couple new-old-stock from a previous mfg year of some units we knew were good. And I repair them when they need maintenance b/c it's only worse.
This is only one of many industries, and tech is even worse, where incumbent positions and insane piles of capital effectively kill off any upstarts.
Anti-trust needs to be a LOT stronger, more clear, and rapidly enforced.
