A free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to enforce ownership ("property rights") and contracts. It is the opposite of a controlled market, where the government regulates how goods, services and labor are used, priced, or distributed. Advocates of a free market traditionally consider the term to imply that the means of production is under private, not government control as well. This is the contemporary use of the term "free market" by economists and in popular culture; the term has had other uses historically.