What are you arguing? What's unfree about the section of the knives market relevant to the example? The government isn't forcing/incentivizing them to buy the cheaper products. Economic considerations are.
The average consumer lacks the knowledge and skill to objectively assess the quality of a knife, the seller is aware of that and manipulates them through advertising.
Is a democratic election free if everyone voted freely, but was under the influence of widespread propaganda?
If they weren't able to objectively assess the quality, they surely wouldn't be complaining, would they? But you mean pre-sale assessment, and that's again not an issue of skill because this is a repeat game. They are well aware by now that they're being manipulated but still price wins over quality.
I'm not going to argue the political metaphor because I feel the parallels there are too far apart to be a useful comparison.
This is predicated on viable options being present and available to consumers. In a lot of cases, for a lot of products, the options offered are a curated selection by the dominant forces, packaged up to appear different, but offering fundamentally very little actual difference.
In this scenario, you can not “vote with your wallet”.
