The dealers chose to enact legislation rather than quit a business model that was being squeezed by their supplier. Find me a business that doesn't squeeze suppliers and vendors to increase their bottom line. The worst enemy of the free market isn't itself, its the crony capitalism that takes place when government gets involved. Its rare (if ever) that the intentions become the outcomes.

> It's been this way for 70+ years now. The "free market economy," then as now, turns out to be its own worst enemy.

You have it backwards. The problem that we have today is a result of not letting the free market be free 70+ years ago. The article you link to says GM "forced" dealers into buying their cars during recessions despite having little chance of selling them. Bologna! They didn't force anything! The dealers had zero obligation to buy their cars. What should have happened is we should have let the free market destroy those dealers. Destroy the dealers that bought cars without being able to sell them.

And you know what? You know what would have happened if all of GM's dealers went out of business after being "forced" to buy their cars. GM would die! Good! GM needed it's dealers to sell their cars. It's a balancing act that the free market easily could have handled but the dealers and legislators took the selfish way out. We would have had direct car sales decades ago if it wasn't for anti-free-market legislation.

The moral of the story, let the free market be free and avoid the shit show that will always without fail happen as a result. (See: Uber)

I believe 'levers of power' arise by entities exploiting simple liberties which are given and assumed in a free economy. Once those liberties are hedged and protected from use by others, we scramble around trying to figure out how to get the lever away from the entity who holds it.

Monkeys with sticks and rocks, if you will.

The problem is the state is for sale to the mega-corporations at the top of each industry. Laws and protection rackets are instated as you can see in the car dealer industry which is heavily regulated.

This isn't free markets eating itself, it's the dangerous hazards of mixing free markets with an over-bearing state, that modern economies have chosen as the primary operating model. Aka Neoliberalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

It ultimately results in: you can have a free market, but after you get to a certain size you have to have friends within the state.