> The point of a free market in practice is to ensure that sale values are correlated with, and reasonably close to, production costs.
Some free markets result in natural monopolies so they don't always cause sales values to trend to production costs. I believe the scenario you are thinking about is "perfect competition". A free market results in perfect competition when a number of other conditions are met, including, but not limited to low barriers to entry, and lots of buyers and sellers.
Some free markets result in natural monopolies so they don't always cause sales values to trend to production costs. I believe the scenario you are thinking about is "perfect competition". A free market results in perfect competition when a number of other conditions are met, including, but not limited to low barriers to entry, and lots of buyers and sellers.