A Truly Free Market

The best economic system is one where a person can participate in any informed consensual exchange of services, products, and labor.

free of fraud or coercion

I'd hope it would look like self-sufficiency, bartering, and charity.

People who want power gave us the impression that we couldn't do certain things or that it was easier to let someone else do it. Then they planted the idea that resources were scarce and we had to compete for them.

They created a false sense of low self worth.

They create a product and make us think we cannot live without it.

An important factor is exercising our rights enumerated in the first amendment. Equal in importance is transparency, information, and education.

A more realistic goal is a mixed system. Let private entities sell and trade things that aren't necessities. Let us collectively (through the community) provide things that are necessary for life. Maybe basic Food, shelter, health care, education.

This decision is made by voluntary association or democratically (consent of the governed)

If a free market allows people to exchange goods without interference, then the people can choose the method of exchange.

Who says that the American economy has to be strictly capitalist? A group of people or a state could choose a socialist system.

Individuals can agree to participate in a co-op

Individuals can decide how they want to produce and exchange goods and services without government intervention.

Individuals could also choose not to participate in any economic system they oppose.

The only role for the government is to settle disputes if the parties choose government intervention

In order for a free market to work, the workers and the consumers have to be informed and have to participate.

The peril of any economic system is power. People in power use divide and conquer to gain more power and maintain power. All -isms boil down to divide and conquer.

I think the idealistic systems of capitalism, communism, and socialism can never be perpetuated.

The best we can do is try to maintain them on a micro-economic level;
but, when we get to macro-economics, the society, the government, then things get out of hand. People can not be kept accountable. Workers and consumers have a harder time uniting.

It seems like tribal cultures were collectivist/socialist...

When people unite for the betterment of us all, free markets can strive.

Workers unite for fair wages and safety, etc.

Consumers unite for safe products and fair prices, etc.

But, this is planet Earth and divide and conquer works because it feeds off of basic primal human instincts.

Economics should be handled at the lowest level possible. When the production of goods reaches a national level (corporate or government), things get out of hand. Accountability is lost.

Capitalism, socialism, anarchy, communism, etc. are all idealistic systems. They assume people are benevolent and the current system is not allowing them to be benevolent. People aren't benevolent. Each system can and has been corrupted by people. They have all caused suffering. When enacted in the real world, they all are stunted. Capitalism turns into plutocracy, socialism and communism turns into totalitarianism.

Seems no matter what you do, power always ends up in the hands of the few at the expense of the many

The day that humans realize that we are here for each other and throw off selfishness, we won't be worrying about the economy