The "Free Market" is a fantasy originally pushed by Think Tanks funded by the Koch Brothers.

All the great things we're told about The Free Market^TM^ only ever work in highly competitive markets with no barriers to entry were it's easy for any Jane, Jack or Joe to enter the Market and start competing with the rest: thinks like soap or teddy bears.

As soon as something as simple as Land-ownership gets involved (for example, for your store in a prime location) it stops being perfectly competitive and all of a sudden you get feedback loops were the more money somebody does the more money somebody is capable of doing, meaning that first mover advantage is close to unassailable (and what we see in the modern world is that the ones with the biggest first mover advantages inherited them).

The Free Market^TM^ is really just an ideological excuse from neoliberals to convince people that the power of the vote should be indirectly weakenned (sure, you can vote, but the State, which is controlled by voters' elected representatives, can't regulate or otherwise "intervene in the market", so de facto the vote loses most of its power) so that the Power of Money can do whatever it wants because "the Free Market knows best". Dig through the technochratic pseudo-Economic mumbo-jumbo and what you find is a ideology to weaken Democracy and replace it by Oligarchy.