Thanks for the thoughtful answer @joeljaeschke; it seems to me that what we're really looking at here is that in theory free markets are fair, but there's so much external "noise" that comes along to make things UNfair. Somebody gets a subsidy, someone does not. As you say, working conditions can be horrible because the market tends to "meet" at the lowest possible price of a willing seller and the highest possible price of a willing buyer.

And so (which I also won't get into in detail) we come to the next question of whether a "free market with ground rules" is better than simply "a free market." When you go to a football game, you can do whatever you can think of to win... BUT the game IS controlled by a set of rules everyone is subjects. If it weren't, the winner might be whomever brought along a bazooka and blew away the opposition.

But as you rightfully say, it also depends on which side of the equation you fall: I happen to think people (when left to their own devices) are inherently deceptive, greedy, exploitative, deceptive and as likely to sabotage their opposition as to excel on their own.