Thankfully, there isn't such a system anywhere in the developed world. We have price controls on rent, utilities, healthcare, etc. It would be extremely hard to convince folks in a democracy to vote against those.
We also have changing legal frameworks for the free movement of capital, the repatriation of profit and the free movement of labor. Fairly sure that if you fully explained the actual repercussions of these, folks in a democracy would not vote for them either. But we got them anyway.
You didn't say which country you were referring to, but capital is heavily regulated in the US. So is labor, so is profit. All economic activity is within the context of the governing laws, of which, there are too numerous to list here.
There are aspects of democracy that are pure self-interest driven, and some that are driven with rose-tinted glasses to create a future society that we all want to live and thrive in.
"Explaining actual repercussions" is just another way to inject bias, there isn't a proven method to reliably predict macro-level impacts of laws and regulations. We all have beliefs, and hopes :)
I don't see anything we disagree on really. Maybe just the phrasing of things.
I was expanding the list of things that make markets "non-free".
Before various "free trade" agreements it would have been impossible for capital to have been moved to other countries, used to build facilities there, and then repatriate the profit. Now, in many cases, that's completely legal (and one might even say "encouraged").
The EU provides us with an example (sadly the only one I know of) where free movement of capital and profit was coupled to free movement of labor.
Sort of. If you pay new-hires significantly more than existing employees for the same work, its not going to end well (and it can potentially open the company up to a lawsuit on discrimination grounds). I suppose the caveat is check your local laws.
