Markets and Competitive Markets
Markets are almost entirely a product of government regulation and enforcement, and cannot be anything but. This is not just about the common observation that government must enforce contracts, but about the how it enforces contracts because contract law changes over time, and is differs from country to country.
Even more fundamentally, what property is, government determines. For example, most land could not be sold through most of history. Patents and copyrights are not universal in human existence and they radically undermine the argument for markets because for competition to work people must be able to enter any business which has high profits. If patents or copyright make it impossible to produce products that others are, then competition does not drive down prices.
Competition in many products is hard, in any case. Take cable and phone companies and the internet access they offer. In 90s America government forced phone companies to let other companies sell internet over their phone lines. When they stopped, internet prices soared because competition is impractical. A new company cannot drive new phone lines to every house, or new cable, and we don’t want them to: it would be an insane misuse of resources.
Property, from ownership of land, to the right to broadcast over the airwaves, to the right to make something and deny other people the right to make it as embedded in patents and copyrights is entirely a social choice, enacted through government. What property is, what may be sold, and what may not be sold: what is a market good, what is tradeable, is a matter of law and convention.
Markets are a way of distributing goods and services through the profit motive. A competitive market is a market where it is easy for new businesses to enter markets and in which no competitor has a sustained advantage other than their people.
Every grant of monopoly, such as copyright and patent, every natural monopoly such as water and sewage and power and phone and internet and cable; every oligopolistic grant such as auctions of spectrum to telecom companies; every grant of money-creation to a few; every network-effect or first-mover advantage; every inherited fortune or oligopoly engaged in non-competitive pricing makes a market less competitive.
Markets which are not competitive do not produce the benefits of competitive markets. They are, however, still markets. They still distribute goods and profits according to what is most profitable.