![]() ![]() They also recognized that taxation was required to enable governments to perform those functions. Governments therefore need to stay out of the way, lest they “distort” the market and prevent it from doing its “magic.” In the late twentieth century, market fundamentalism was cloaked in the seemingly ancient raiment of received wisdom.Ĭlassical liberal economists-including Adam Smith-recognized that government served essential functions, including building infrastructure for everyone’s benefit, and regulating banks, which left to their own devices could destroy an economy. Government, according to the myth, cannot improve the functioning of markets it can only interfere. Market fundamentalists treat “The Market” as a proper noun: something unique and unto itself, that has agency and even wisdom, that functions best when left unfettered and unregulated, undisturbed and unperturbed. It’s a quasi-religious belief that the best way to address our needs-whether economic or otherwise-is to let markets do their thing, and not rely on government. In the 1990s, George Soros popularized the name we find most apt: market fundamentalism. ![]() Some people call it market absolutism or market essentialism. Over the past several decades, American business has manufactured a myth that has held us in its grip: the idea of “the magic of the marketplace.” (Kayana Szymczak) Book excerpt: 'The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market' But we also know that self-interest has to be tempered against the common good, and that when we have inadequate regulation of markets and workplaces, people get hurt.” Naomi Oreskes co-authored "The Big Myth" with Erik M. But people do continue to say that self-interest is good, that self-interest drives entrepreneurs, it drives people to invent things and be creative,” she says. “Not too many people today would stand up in public and say greed is good. The latter come from the idea that letting the rich do business will benefit everyone, but evidence shows that’s not true. Market fundamentalism plays out in Republican opposition to action on climate change and regulation of drugs like opioids, Oreskes says, as well as tax cuts for the rich and income inequality. “What we're trying to show in the book is how an ideal of the free market in the singular was put forward by business interests in the United States,” Oreskes says, “as a way to fight back against regulation of the workplace, to fight back against people who are trying to limit child labor and to persuade the American people that government regulation of the marketplace was not in our interest.” ![]() The myth referenced in the title is market fundamentalism, says Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard Univeristy. The idea of a pure, unadulterated free market and how it came to be is the story in their new book, " The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market." The book acknowledges a useful nature of market forces to set prices and reward work. Their best-selling 2010 book "Merchants of Doubt" explored how four physicists laid the groundwork for climate change denial by arguing against government regulation and in favor of the free market.
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