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The free market is a funny thing. It doesn't actually exist anywhere, because as has been mentioned, the "freedom" of any market is necessarily provided for and protected by some external force- market forces can't make someone not steal your product, or your ideas, or your money.
It is also funny because of how often it is erroneously deified.
Markets don't necessarily drive technology, and, as has been alluded to above, in some instances they can actually stifle it. For instance, i know of a certain medical device start-up company that produced a product and process that would have replaced open heart surgery for a lot of people who would have otherwise needed it. In case anyone doesn't know, open heart surgery is pretty hard on the human body. The device and procedure were together promising enough that the start-up was bought by one of the major players in the heart device technology industry- this was news- i saw the president of the start-up company being interviewed on cnn's market-y show (i'm not sure what it's called) about the sale. But then, nothing. The company that bought the start-up sat on their hands. Didn't market it. Didn't work all that hard to sing its praises to doctors. Whether it was incompetence or conspiracy, they just didn't do shit with it. They ended up laying off everybody who worked at the start-up and essentially wrote it off as a loss.
Hooray for the market, and hooray for all the ways in which we benefit from it as consumers.
Often, the invisible hand is just giving us all the finger.
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