It may not be common everywhere in the country, but it's a fact of life in the poorer and less affluent states. Especially in Appalachia, where many state governments are basically run by industry groups.

Case in point: [1] Caperton v A.T. Massey Coal Co: A recent case from my former home state where a coal operator effectively bought a judge, who then ruled in favour of said coal operator. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually made sense of it [and unfortunately the case was later dismissed on a technicality], but there are many, many other examples of this type of "corruption" that never make it to a higher review.

So in that sense, no, we don't really have a free market. We have a Corporate Republic that protects the interests of its largest citizens.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caperton_v._A.T._Massey_Coal_Co.

It's very common in the US, at all levels of government, from the smallest towns, to big cities, county governments, state governments, and the federal government. If you look up the "Institute of Justice," the law firm representing the monks, you'll find some pithy prose on their site describing such favoritism as the "favorite pastime" of said governments.

As a Louisiana resident, I've been following this case for a while, and I'm delighted by the results. But there are many more such ridiculous laws that should be overturned. Here's hoping that the monks prevail all the way to the Supreme Court.

It happens on a number of fronts and it's not always quite as explicit as government making the decisions. Sometimes it's as simple as the government saying "we need a board to watch over and regulate this industry.. who is best to run the board? Oh! Those companies!"

Then you end up with a group of established companies working to define the requirements for new companies to join that field. Of course, they try to make it as difficult as possible.

State licensing boards do the same thing. While professional licensing makes sense for some safety reasons, why in the world would interior decorators need a license? That's the case in Florida.

And the licensing process itself can be ridiculous..

Not long after I turned 17, I got a job as a pharmacy technician at a local hospital, so I had to file for a license. There was no age minimum to be a tech but you had to be 18 to get a license. Regardless, I could start working as soon as my application was filed.

The review took 3-4 months and as soon as I was rejected, we filed an appeal which took another 3-4 months. By that time, I was a month or so from being 18, so we requested another appeal and by the time they got to it.. Voila.

And that was considered legitimate..

"I don't mean to judge; I just genuinely wonder how these things are viewed by common Americans."

This is part of the reason why Libertarianism is such a popular thing in America. So much regulation is introduced ostensibly to protect the common people from unscrupulous and powerful companies but when regulations turn out so often to be protections for cartels and the like, people begin the doubt the utility of the government in that area. America, unlike some European countries, tends to have a lot more government take place at the local and state levels, and while this is a good thing as it allows people more direct control over their communities, it also leads to stuff like this when folks don't pay attention. (Which happens when folks are too distracted by national elections to pay attention to local politics.)

On the other hand, a lot of Americans don't mind these kinds of things as, as often as not, they are the beneficiaries of some kind of favoritism in regulation, or it doesn't directly affect them, which is why this stuff survives.