if there's rules to ensure fairness then it isn't a free market. and if a market with rules could be called a free market, but only for arbitrary slices of time, i'd submit that also isn't a free market.

"allow lucky or unscrupulous owners to swallow less lucky or more ethical owners' businesses until there's only 1-3 players left that are too big to start to compete with and too big for the others to buy out."

I find perfectionism gets in the way in such conversations: the goal is aiming for the freest market possible, but no - you can't legally sell services to assassinate people; unless you're the state who has a monopoly on violence.

Because on the other side we have people blaming the free market and capitalism in general for the problems, when capitalism is the solution - it's crony capitalism or what I prefer to call it - corruption and things like regulatory capture that's the problem.

The problem is heavily industrial complexes' funding and lobbying of politicians, placing politicians who will favour policy for them - is the problem; and it appears that foreign bad actors have also helped certain politicians get elected elsewhere.

I like the Democracy Dollars and Journalism Dollars solutions proposed by Andrew Yang during his presidential run to help act as a counterweight to the power of industrial complexes.