Wheelchairs are regulated (barriers to entry), pollution is the nonexistence of property rights, and your take-it-or-leave-it noncompete agreement is a consequence of high transaction costs (job search, legal negotiations).

To expand on this inconsistency, it comes from different people cheer-leading "the free market" with different and conflicting sets of assumptions about what the phrase means.

For example, one economist makes an assumption of "perfect information on prices and transactions", and declares that it's the most efficient thing ever.

But another one assumes actors are free to make secret deals and private transactions, and concludes that the free-market doesn't have a cartel problem, because individual members will secretly defect and undercut so that it falls apart.

Those two assumptions are in direct contradiction, yet somehow the overlap phrase "the free market" still gets touted as having both of the incompatible features.

We are also told that democracy is the best form of government, and we are also told that our democracy is genuine, and that it must be protected. For some reason, people are unable to wonder if these various stories are true...perhaps because that skill is not innate, and is not taught in school?