>Regarding markets: they are only the sum of the people that constitute them.
No, they're the sum of the constitutive people, minus all the parts that don't deal with property, trade, contracts, and debt, plus distortions added by institutional arrangements.
I'd say if there is a distortion or limiting arrangement, it's not a free market, and thus its participants behave differently, because they can't freely take their decisions.
If people take their decisions freely, quite often money is not the top priority, but more traditional - and human - values may be.
>I'd say if there is a distortion or limiting arrangement, it's not a free market,
Then the term "free market" is an oxymoron. By conjuring a market, which deals with money, property, and profit therein, you have already made it unfree.
And why is that? If you make a profit, you sell something for more than the sum of its parts. You add value and get something in return. Property is just stuff you kept after an exchange. Money is a medium of exchange. Where is the unfree part?
IRL, there are lots of problems (in general), most of them not from markets, but lots also because people make bad decisions in markets. I think those are communication problems, though - people not agreeing on values. So many people scream "market failure", but nobody ever screams "voter/election failure", when people make bad decisions there that cause problems.
No, they're the sum of the constitutive people, minus all the parts that don't deal with property, trade, contracts, and debt, plus distortions added by institutional arrangements.