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Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for anything. If a paid product gains enough momentum to crush free products, then it is the free market in action yet again. Short of rough men threatening to do violence upon you, nobody is being "forced" to pay for anything.

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I think your point is largely valid today, but there is push for a regulatory regime to force some of those privacy invading, but "free" options to either be greatly curtailed or eliminated. Without getting into whether such a push is valid or not, should it succeed... the rough men threatening violence won't be coming to force you to buy something... but they will come to stop those from offering you a product that you might choose to use. In that event, we shouldn't confuse the outcomes as being free market outcomes.

How would you even begin to imagine a free market around this? To get even the slightest approximation you’d first need to abolish copyright and patents and any other distortions enabling hoarding of imaginary capital, probably need to take a stab at the very definition of a corporation even.

Whatever market there is to speak of currently has very little resemblance to a free market in any case.

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