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Mercantilism and Profit Maximization Reduces Choice
Mercantilism reduced choice by allowing state-run corporations monopolize the entire economy via colonization.
This system was replaced by Capitalism after steam engines, steam trains, and steam boats democratized production, transportation, and trade from the 1830s.
By the 1870s, the Marginal Revolution had enshrined the absurd concept of profit maximization which was consistent with the American Gilded Age.
Profit maximization conflicted with free choice as no longer could businesses choose low profits at high turnover. Instead they chose only high profits and the reduction of supply.
Proof of this contradiction is in Marshall’s Principles of Economics (the textbook that came before Samuelson’s Economics)
It is commonly said that the tendency of competition is to equalize the earnings of people engaged in the same trade; but this statement requires to be interpreted carefully.
For competition tends to make the earnings got by two individuals of unequal efficiency in any given time, say, a day or a year, not equal, but unequal; and, in like manner, it tends not to equalize, but to render unequal the average weekly wages in two districts in which the average standards of efficiency are unequal.
Monopoly
A big capital or credit is needed to collect taxes. These would alone restrain the competition for such an undertaking to very few people. The competition is further reduced by the knowledge or experience needed. Those few with all of these would find it for their interest to combine and be co-partners.
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