Mr. Slater demonstrates a lack of understanding about how a free market really operates. For example, his view of capital movement is that it "stays where it is well-treated." Well-treated? Subsidized by the government? Allowed to ignore worker safety? Permitted to pollute and plunder natural resources?

Granted, there are those who mistakenly equate "profit" and "greed." Just as others mistakenly equate any kind of profit and virtue.

Both Mr. Slater and his alleged detractors suffer from a "bipolar delusion disorder": all or nothing. These extremists perceive any and all private enterprise as a "free market."

Mr. Slater tells his readers that, if less than satisfied with what a business offers, that they (the consumers) will "not buy anything, right?" Wrong.

For a free market to function well, the buyer needs to have choices, as well as accurate information as to the quality, availability and cost of products and services. When these requirements do not exist, the buyer can only get overpriced, inferior products and services. Is a person to buy no food, no clothes, no healthcare and no housing because it is not good value for money, even though better alternatives do not exist?

According to Mr. Slater, "what keeps the free market under control is competition." In a competitive market, yes, there is more discipline. But what about noncompetitive market practices that distort the free market?

Fraudulent advertising, externalizing costs of environmental and health hazards, predatory pricing and other real-world deleterious market activities are regulated by governments for good reason: They are contrary to the operation of a free market.

A lack of understanding of the real-world marketplace is made quite evident by Mr. Slater's assertion that "minimum-wage people are typically employed in businesses that sell to the less affluent." How can anyone view dishwashers, toilet cleaners, garbage collectors, fruit pickers, grass cutters and other minimum-wage servants as being employed in a business that sells to the "less affluent"? If there is reputable data to the contrary, I will retract this statement.