I get this, but I think there's a few nuances.

Markets are almost never really "free".  They are just markets.  As you might say, "all markets are wrong, only some are harmful".

I think there might be a way to look at the problem by taking out some of the loaded terms, and just treat things as a mechanism with trade-offs.

A well funded actor could severely distrupt bitcoin.  Let's say they didnt allow tx into the chain for a year.  That would be disruptive.  You could not say at that point it was a "free" market.

What is wanted is a well functioning bitcoin for the next several decades, and then to ossifly to the next centuries.

We've yet to agree on the final mempool size, but it should be something that can run in a decentralized network, and benefit the most number of people.  I think we'll only get one shot at it.  And more eloquent people than me can articulate the case.

The problem with any change is that you risk a chain split.  So you have to have a really sound argument, and you probably only get one shot at it.  I think maybe in 4-8 years time after we get AGI might be the time.  Generally I think there could be benefit from a slow increase in block size over a few decades, as proposed by sipa back in about 2015.

I agree we should not respond to high fee events, or make any knee jerk reactions.  But the last change was segwit in 2016 and it was left with an open ended block size increase in the medium term.  8 years has passed since then, so at some point there will be a possibility to reopen this loaded discussion.

We have to do a hard fork anyway due to the great consensus cleanup.  After that I'm generally against any forks of any kind as they can lead to chain split.  However an optimal block size before ossification, in line with the hardware of the day, is likely a good thing.  Hard to get people to agree, but there should be a discussion around trade-offs.  Then it never needs to be touched again, but there's some work to do before that.