When Free Market Supporters Slug it out

Just as I had finished writing trite prose about free market, this is what I read.
I fail to see where is the disagreement ? May be it is because I am a novice in economics but it seems more like a case of either talking past each other or splitting idealogical hair.

I will try to summarise in the best fashion I can

Shivam stresses the importance of government (or a impartial regulating body) as regulator for ensuring that free market doesn't get hijacked by monopolists or oligopolist (here I admit I have a very dim recollection of monopolist from one semester of economy course, which I hardly attended , but simplified it means market where product sold by sellers are not differentiated to a large degree) and chides libertarians (in a fashion) for not stressing this.

Amit Verma responds to this by saying while libertarians are all for law, a good law enforcement system being a cornerstone for libertanism, empowering government will just bring grief and opining what Shivam's arguement is a non sequitur

The reason that I find trouble with this is that this to me seems like playing both sides.
Arguing for law enforcement and regulation and at the same time opposing role of government for regulation seems a far fetched idea.

I admit that some industries could be self regulating is specific situations (I have read it but have forgotten all about it), however it is not a universal rule applicable for all places and all times.

IMO in most of the cases Government is a qualified authority to regulate market.
I don't think that what Shivam said was such a non sequitur either.

Mridula joined in and supported idea of regulation for what she called imperfect market.

Amit Verma and RaviKiran at that point started defending free market and implied that Pro- regulators were doing a strawman routine, which to me seems a tad unjustified.

From then on the debate started making even less sense to me, Amit and Ravi were defending free market , whereas Shivam and Mridula were pointing out that theories apart, if free market has to be established in real world, government will need to intervene, and real world being what it is, free market will remain an idealization, it will be achieved in few instances but market will be imperfect and it is best to take that into calculation.

Later on the battleground was shifted to here, here, here, here , here , and here.

All this seemed more and more disconnected to me. I mean what is the point libertarians trying to make other than defense of free-market , which is not being questioned at all !


I mean where is dissonance ?

Here I will state that by free - market I understand an idealized market where buyers and sellers trade accoring to condition of supply or demand and no coercion in form of asymmetrical power is occurs. If this is inaccurate then I think this arguement may begin to make sense to me.

Free market to be free it need government intervention in benign way, as much as libertarian horror for government (which I share), I do not see any way of doing away with government.

Gautam opines that only form of monopoly that is possible is legal monopoly, I think this might be true for long term, however other monopolies do exist and can cause lots of mischief in short and medium term. As in long term we are all dead, may be it will be good to tidy up short term and long medium term.