“Marketplace of ideas” is actually a far more apt term than its proponents realise (and not in the way they’d like): It’s a marketplace; a private space owned by someone else who decides who can and cannot set up shop, where only those with the means can afford to rent a stall, and where the size of your stall depends on the size of your wallet.
@aral yes, so not a "free market" in the way Adam Smith meant (if you gotta pay someone to take part in the market, it's not free). Kinda like Amazon.
@aral
If you read ://unifiedscience.blogspot.com
(Heavy reading!) You will learn that capitalism at one point or other will be replaced by "The Idea society". In feudal times the new dynamics of goods producing city states started the capitalist revolution. In future something equivalent though different will happen to idea production.
@aral idk, marketplaces used to be very heavily regulated regarding quality and pricing. (officials would check the quality of the wares like bread, that the weights used were correct and everyone uses the set prices)