Defending the Free Market
Defending the Free Market

Author: Robert Sirico

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-05-21

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1596988118

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Thirty years ago, the economic system of the Soviet empire—socialism—seemed definitively discredited. Today, the most popular figures in the Democratic Party embrace it, while the shapers of public opinion treat capitalism as morally indefensible. Is there a moral case for capitalism? Consumerism is an appalling spectacle. Free markets may be efficient, but are they fair? Aren’t there some things that we can’t afford to leave to the vicissitudes of the market? Robert Sirico, a onetime leftist, shows how a free economy—including private property, legally enforceable contracts, and prices and interest rates freely agreed to by the parties to a transaction—is the best way to meet society’s material needs. In fact, the free market has lifted millions out of dire poverty—far more people than state welfare or private charity has ever rescued from want. But efficiency isn’t its only virtue. Economic freedom is indispensable for the other freedoms we prize. And it’s not true that it makes things more important than people—just the reverse. Only if we have economic rights can we protect ourselves from government encroachment into the most private areas of our lives—including our consciences. Defending the Free Market is a powerful vindication of capitalism and a timely warning for a generation flirting with disaster.

The Illusion of Free Markets
The Illusion of Free Markets

Author: Bernard E. Harcourt

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0674059360

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It is widely believed today that the free market is the best mechanism ever invented to efficiently allocate resources in society. Just as fundamental as faith in the free market is the belief that government has a legitimate and competent role in policing and the punishment arena. This curious incendiary combination of free market efficiency and the Big Brother state has become seemingly obvious, but it hinges on the illusion of a supposedly natural order in the economic realm. The Illusion of Free Markets argues that our faith in “free markets” has severely distorted American politics and punishment practices. Bernard Harcourt traces the birth of the idea of natural order to eighteenth-century economic thought and reveals its gradual evolution through the Chicago School of economics and ultimately into today’s myth of the free market. The modern category of “liberty” emerged in reaction to an earlier, integrated vision of punishment and public economy, known in the eighteenth century as “police.” This development shaped the dominant belief today that competitive markets are inherently efficient and should be sharply demarcated from a government-run penal sphere. This modern vision rests on a simple but devastating illusion. Superimposing the political categories of “freedom” or “discipline” on forms of market organization has the unfortunate effect of obscuring rather than enlightening. It obscures by making both the free market and the prison system seem natural and necessary. In the process, it facilitated the birth of the penitentiary system in the nineteenth century and its ultimate culmination into mass incarceration today.

The Politics of Free Markets
The Politics of Free Markets

Author: Monica Prasad

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2006-07-17

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0226679020

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The attempt to reduce the role of the state in the market through tax cuts, decreases in social spending, deregulation, and privatization—“neoliberalism”—took root in the United States under Ronald Reagan and in Britain under Margaret Thatcher. But why did neoliberal policies gain such prominence in these two countries and not in similarly industrialized Western countries such as France and Germany? In The Politics of Free Markets, a comparative-historical analysis of the development of neoliberal policies in these four countries,Monica Prasad argues that neoliberalism was made possible in the United States and Britain not because the Left in these countries was too weak, but because it was in some respects too strong. At the time of the oil crisis in the 1970s, American and British tax policies were more punitive to business and the wealthy than the tax policies of France and West Germany; American and British industrial policies were more adversarial to business in key domains; and while the British welfare state was the most redistributive of the four, the French welfare state was the least redistributive. Prasad shows that these adversarial structures in the United States and Britain created opportunities for politicians to find and mobilize dissatisfaction with the status quo, while the more progrowth policies of France and West Germany prevented politicians of the Right from anchoring neoliberalism in electoral dissatisfaction.

Free Market Environmentalism
Free Market Environmentalism

Author: T. Anderson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2001-02-02

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0312299737

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The original edition of this seminal book, published in 1991, introduced the concept of using markets and property rights to protect and improve environmental quality. Since publication, the ideas in this book have been adopted not only by conservative circles but by a wide range of environmental groups. To mention a few examples, Defenders of Wildlife applies the tenets of free market environmentalism to its wolf compensation program; World Wildlife Federation has successfully launched the CAMPFIRE program in southern Africa to reward native villagers who conserve elephants; and the Oregon Water Trust uses water markets to purchase or lease water for salmon and steelhead habitats. This revised edition updates the successful applications of free market environmentalism and adds two new chapters.

Free Market Fairness
Free Market Fairness

Author: John Tomasi

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-05-05

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0691158142

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A provocative new vision of free market capitalism that achieves liberal ends by libertarian means Can libertarians care about social justice? In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, Tomasi argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, he encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, Tomasi offers a "market democratic" conception of social justice: free market fairness. Tomasi argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberty and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to Tomasi, free market fairness is social justice, American style. Provocative and vigorously argued, Free Market Fairness offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice—one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.

The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy's Only Hope
The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy's Only Hope

Author: John A. Allison

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2012-09-21

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0071806784

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The #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Required reading. . . . Shows how our economic crisis was a failure, not of the free market, but of government.” —Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO, Koch Industries, Inc. Did Wall Street cause the mess we are in? Should Washington place stronger regulations on the entire financial industry? Can we lower unemployment rates by controlling the free market? The answer is NO. Not only is free market capitalism good for the economy, says industry expert John Allison, it is our only hope for recovery. As the nation’s longest-serving CEO of a top-25 financial institution, Allison has had a unique inside view of the events leading up to the financial crisis. He has seen the direct effect of government incentives on the real estate market. He has seen how government regulations only make matters worse. And now, in this controversial wake-up call of a book, he has given us a solution. The national bestselling The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure reveals: Why regulation is bad for the market—and for the world What we can do to promote a healthy free market How we can help end unemployment in America The truth about TARP and the bailouts How Washington can help Wall Street build a better future for everyone With shrewd insight, alarming insider details, and practical advice for today’s leaders, this electrifying analysis is nothing less than a call to arms for a nation on the brink. You’ll learn how government incentives helped blow up the real estate bubble to unsustainable proportions, how financial tools such as derivatives have been wrongly blamed for the crash, and how Congress fails to understand it should not try to control the market—and then completely mismanages it when it tries. In the end, you’ll understand why it’s so important to put “free” back in free market. It’s time for America to accept the truth: the government can’t fix the economy because the government wrecked the economy. This book gives us the tools, the inspiration—and the cure.

Free Market
Free Market

Author: Jacob Soll

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2022-09-06

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1541620232

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From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first century After two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.

Selling the Free Market
Selling the Free Market

Author: James Arnt Aune

Publisher: Guilford Press

Published: 2002-02-01

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781572307575

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While accusations of "political correctness" are frequently raised aga inst liberals, there has been surprisingly little discussion of how co nservatives foment the use of their own "economically correct" languag e. In this engaging book, James Arnt Aune examines how the rhetoric of the free market has become the everyday language of political debate in America and around the world. He illuminates the inner logic of fre e-market ideas, using rhetorical theory as an analytical tool. In the process, Aune confronts head on what he sees as the most serious flaw of economic correctnessyits destructive impact on the lives of million s of working people and families.

Free Market Environmentalism
Free Market Environmentalism

Author: Terry L. Anderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-04

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0429719043

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Although there is in the United States a clear national consensus supporting the protection of the environment, advocates often profoundly disagree about the policies best designed to achieve this end. The traditional answer has been that government must intervene, through legislation and regulation of behavior, to preserve environmental values. Th