The definition of &quot;free market&quot; is that all transactions are voluntary. If what is being sold is not worth the price the buyer would have to pay for it, the buyer can simply choose not to buy it. But whether or not that&#x27;s true has nothing whatever to do with what price the same item sold for last week. It does have something to do with what price the same item might sell for next week, if that price will be enough lower than the current price to make it worth it to the buyer to wait a week. But that&#x27;s for the buyer to judge.<p>If you think buyers are somehow unable to tell when they are being tricked into buying something they don&#x27;t really need, then you think free markets are basically impossible because you&#x27;ve defined &quot;voluntary&quot; out of existence. The problem with that is that all other methods of regulating the behavior of sellers do even worse. People who are in favor of free markets, like me, aren&#x27;t in favor of them because we think they&#x27;re perfect; we only think they&#x27;re the best we can do. Often there is no perfect solution, since we don&#x27;t have any omnipotent benevolent dictators to run our economies for us.