A lot of economics assumes that businesses don't collude on prices/employee conditions etc, this isn't true in my experience. Casual conversations, business magazines, investors, even monitoring other companies prices all set the norms, a truly free market doesn't exist.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
