Adam Smith noted, in his book The Wealth of Nations, that the role of government is to prevent cartels from forming and fleecing customers. Only then can markets work properly.

Unfortunately, the USA has always had a pay-to-play system where politicians are permanently on sale. Thus the USA has never had anything approaching free markets, and the various abuses cited in this article are the result. The author is deeply confused about what markets actually are, and seems to think the corrupt US system is "free market" when in reality it is precisely the opposite.

That said, even badly functioning markets are infinitely better than any alternative - after all, the lack of markets is why the USSR collapsed, why Venezuela and Cuba are basket-cases, and why stagnation and even worse corruption always follows from any attempt to impose arbitrary rules & targets by some central authority.

So what is actually required is for governments to be less corrupt - which is why civilized countries like the Nordic nations don't have problems with markets. Unfortunately the USA is so deeply corrupt and so deeply dysfunctional and the citizens so ignorant that no meaningful reform is possible. In fact, even meaningful discussion is impossible, because rational outcomes cannot arise from profound ignorance.