Free markets help the big producers much more than consumers.

The Peter principle doesn't apply to consumers, but it does to producers. And if nobody regulates how big you can get, you eventually end up with a nothing but ruthless monopolies in every industry. Regulated markets tend not to generate as many monopolies. And of course, for natural monopolies, the state is the least bad option, because consumers have at least some say in how its operated through voting, and there is no profit motive.

I wouldn't say 'help' the consumer as that makes it seem like things are biased.

The idealistic perfectly competitive markets entail exhausting all gains from trade.

TINSTAAFM. There is no such thing as a free market under capitalism, as the first winners - which there are, even in a perfectly free market - will put their resources into making it not-free, as we're seeing here. These advantages accumulate and you end up with a few massive monopolies which the market exerts little control over. Not zero, but little, much less than most economists claimed for close to a century.

Keeping a market free would require magnitudes more regulation than right now - the opposite of what free market proponents advocate for.