Can free market exist without socialism?

Question

Bare with me : )

A market needs certain criteria before it can be considered a free market.

One of those being that there can not be any barriers to entry into the market. If there is barriers, it reduce competition, thus creating inefficiencies making to no longer a free market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry

Alot of the barriers(except the government regulation barrier.. ironic right?) that a company or person would encounter seems to need government regulation in order to work.

Like protection from international companies, in order to lower the barrier of entry for local companies. Which is generally seen as bad economics.

It maybe counter intuitive but it seems that we need a big government for a truly free market to exist.

Answer 1

it can. b/c it does.

market economy does need government to enforce property and contract laws. Export controls are anti-market, but governments impose them to protect workers in domestic industries (at the expense of everybody else).

E.g. cars. Japanese cars are better, but Detroit people need jobs, so we slap an import tax on imports making car more expensive (or lower quality for same $$$)