A free market is an incredibly efficient and equitable means of adjusting price to supply and demand so that everyone involved gets a fair piece of the pie and a fair shake overall. The problem arises when people who are very familiar with the market and how it operates try to subvert the process and seek to control it through collusion, creating bottlenecks, or other means for their own benefit. Usually, this doesn't work because the greed and innovation of the participants causes someone to break ranks or otherwise find a work-around and try to make a killing by undercutting his competitors. So usually markets work very well at controlling this by the very nature of the way they operate. Still, marketeers are usually among the best and brightest among us, and they're always looking for a way to beat the system...