Free Market to me connotes a system where you are free to set up businesses without having to earn that privilege from some form of political entity.
Laissez Faire is more about the right of the wealthy an fortunate to keep their (supposedly) well earned property from pesky taxation, redistributive schemes and social obligations.
Both models emphasized that only certain types of individuals made good economic actors and should be empowered. It has always basically been a battle between different groups of rich people fighting over ways to make themselves richer lol.
I would echo Little Faith's point here. Not only is Free Market the more universal term, it also describes a system, while Laissez Faire is more like a specific type of policy within that system.
Free Market might be more closely associated with Anglo-American or European thought on economics (which is kind of hard to avoid considering where the field originated), but its central features - such as private property and corporations as the main economic actors as opposed to the state - can certainly be found in other economies, even if they did not explicitly think of it as Free Market.
I think it is actually more the opposite. Laissez Faire described real actual historical economic systems in a variety of countries, and the term was used far outside France. Smith was theorizing about it even though he didn't use the term himself, but he was adding to a conversation that had already been established.
Free Market was particularly anglo until the last century and was always more an ideal or theoretical model rather than an actual working economic system. Many have made the case that there never has been nor is there now a Free Market economy in or between any real life countries.
In addition, corporations were seen in the laissez faire model as 'creatures'
of the state and needed to be regulated in order to keep the model working. I think Corporatism, where they are the main 'individual' economic actors is actually a system that describes real economies more so than Free Trade lol, especially in the last century. Now that they can even have religious views of their own and are the only 'voters' that actually matter, we are in uncharted territory lol.
On the other hand, I get the idea that Free Market as an ideology rather than a historic system might be useful as a component of a meta-civics, so that it could influence a whole variety of political/social/legal systems. However, I still would argue that the term has taken on a meaning in contemporary times that is simply not historical and thus should be avoided. In most of the post-communist world it equates with 'Looting' in the popular consciousness (yes, that vast world outside graduate schools of economics), so another reason maybe to avoid it lol.
Xyth puts a lot of effort into the pedia articles and I see no reason why Laissez Faire couldn't be used in an educational way, whereas using Free Market will make plenty of people think they know what that means and skip the reading, and they would be wrong.
But since Market mechanisms have influenced thinkers from anarchism to communism to fascism, maybe you could call the civic Market Economies? That is bland but would act as that flavor for a variety of civics and avoid the particulars of either Laissez Faire or Free Market. Especially if you are going for actual practice rather than ideology in your design of the civics.
I think it's also a question of what the Multiculturalism civic is meant to encompass. Is it just modern progressive multiculturalism, which is mostly focused on immigration and cultural relativism/equality? Or does it also include older concepts, for example multiculturalism in states like Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire? In that case multiculturalism is a much older concept though, and probably the "norm", while Nationalism is the new paradigm that broke with it.
I'm hoping it is the older concept, which I would really like to see in the game, even if it is located at the 'end' of the category and thus looks like it should be the 'latest'. Its hard to avoid the positivist orientation of the game overall, but I think for most players of HR it will be clear enough that any civic can be useful throughout the game, once prereq's have been met.
Human Rights seems like the civic that gives Citizenship to all humans in the world, regardless of nationality, or even without it, such as refugees or stateless people. I guess this particular civic wouldn't be in the game anymore, unless Multiculturalism is intended to include this meaning as well.
