Thanks for a clear and well organized comment! You touch on many such themes I was thinking to write in future posts, so I will postpone my replies until then =) So, for now, only a short comment:

Hehe, as usual, I think a lot comes down to defining the concepts, ie. what exactly does 'free market' mean. Free of what? Free of government regulation? Free of workers unions' collectivist agenda? Free of monopolies? Free of import tariffs? Free of taxation? There are a lot of messy details down this line of thinking =)

Well, to put it shortly, based on real-life evidence, to me it seems that 'free market' was one of those mythical basic beliefs which kind of a worked (or could've worked) 150 years ago, but which is not up to date in the modern world. So the options are: either going back to the society, technology and economy of early 1800's, or then take an another look at the myth of 'free market' to see if it can be updated a little to better meet the reality of 2000s.

But more of that in future blog posts - although, feel free to comment here as well =) And, yes, personally I didn't find anything you said offensive. And here my intention is not to prove your comment wrong, I'm just going deeper into details of explicating the way I see the world. And the way I see it, there indeed seems to be a lot of confusion around the concept of 'free trade', so I'd guess it is in need of some clarification, although many people find 'defining the concepts' a boring business with little to do with the actual matters =)