There's something between those extremes that works very well and produce societies that are great for all people, regulated markets and socialised democracy.
US also has strong regulation in some aspects, but its less impactful these days due to regulatory capture, those were created when the free market was for example killing babies with unpasteurized milk, and tried to avoid doing that due to cost by putting formaldehyde in it instead. Free market believers want to go back to that age where companies are completely unregulated and hired guns to break up unions and believe this wont happen again. What regulations do is put everyone on the same playing field, so there's isn't one milk company that can lower costs by not pasteurized its milk.