Not really sure where there's a straw man here. I've addressed your concern on whether power dynamics are orthogonal or not. I've described the academic definition of what a perfectly competitive market is and referred to Coase's Theorem which essentially concludes such markets rarely exist in reality.
You say they are orthogonal, and I provided evidence that they are not.
It's a straw man in that no one in this thread is arguing that a free market is eminently desirable or otherwise making ideological arguments (contrary to the implication in your post). There's the chance that you weren't talking about "arguments made in this thread" and were simply digressing to "arguments made by other people elsewhere in the world" which is differently bad (off topic).
To be clear, I wasn't remarking about any comments you made about my orthogonality claim.
Yeah, I was talking to the immediate commenter, not the parent. I can understand where you're coming from with my off-topic comment; it was not intended to imply anything about anyone on the thread as such, nor was it a response to the op. It was just a lament of a frustrated person when it comes to their field of study.
You say they are orthogonal, and I provided evidence that they are not.