Selling The Free Market

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.

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.

Understanding the rise of state capitalism and its threat to global free markets The End of the Free Market details the growing phenomenon of state capitalism, a system in which governments drive local economies through ownership of market-dominant companies and large pools of excess capital, using them for political gain. This trend threatens America's competitive edge and the conduct of free markets everywhere. An expert on the intersection of economics and politics, Ian Bremmer has followed the rise of state-owned firms in China, Russia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere. He demonstrates the growing challenge that state capitalism will pose for the entire global economy. Among the questions addressed: Are we on the brink of a new kind of Cold War, one that pits competing economic systems in a battle for dominance? Can free market countries compete with state capitalist powerhouses over relations with countries that have elements of both systems-like India, Brazil, and Mexico? Does state capitalism have staying power? This guide to the next big global economic trend includes useful insights for investors, business leaders, policymakers, and anyone who wants to understand important emerging changes in international politics and the global economy.

Free-market economics has attempted to combine efficiency and freedom by emphasizing the need for neutral rules and meta-rules. These efforts have only been partly successful, for they have failed to address the deeper, normative arguments justifying – and limiting – coercion. This failure has thus left most advocates of free-market vulnerable to formulae which either emphasize expediency or which rely upon optimal social engineering to foster different notions of the common will and of the common good. This book offers the reader a new perspective on free-market economics, one in which the defense of markets is no longer based upon the utilitarian claim that free markets are more efficient; rather, the defense of markets rests upon the moral argument that top-down coercive policy-making is necessarily in tension with the rights-based notion of justice typical of the Western tradition. In arguing for a consistent moral basis for the free-market view, we depart from both the Austrian and neoclassical traditions by acknowledging that rationality is not a satisfactory starting point. This rejection of rationality as the complete motivator for human economic behaviour throws constitutional economics and the law-and-economics tradition into new relief, revealing these approaches as governed by considerations derived by various notions of social efficiency, rather than by principles consistent with individual freedom, including freedom to choose. This book shows that the solution is in fact a better understanding of the lessons taught by the Scottish Enlightenment: the role of the political context is to ensure that the individual can pursue his own ends, free from coercion. This also implies individual responsibility, respect for somebody else’s preferences and for his entrepreneurial instincts. Social virtue is not absent from this understanding of politics, but rather than being defined through the priorities of policy-makers, it emerges as the outcome of interaction among self-determining individuals. The strongest and most consistent case for free-market economics, therefore, rests on moral philosophy, not on some version of static-efficiency theorizing. This book should be of interest to students and researchers focussing on economic theory, political economics and the philosophy of economic thought, but is also written in a non-technical style making it accessible to an audience of non-economists.

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 #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.

Taking "free markets" from rhetoric to reality For three decades free-market leaders have tried to reverse longstanding Keynesian economic policies, but have only produced larger government, greater debt, and more centralized economic power. So how can we achieve a truly free-market system, especially at this historical moment when capitalism seems to be in crisis? The answer, says John C. Medaille, is to stop pretending that economics is something on the order of the physical sciences; it must be a humane science, taking into account crucial social contexts. Toward a Truly Free Market argues that any attempt to divorce economic equilibrium from economic equity will lead to an unbalanced economy—one that falls either to ruin or to ruinous government attempts to redress the balance. Medaille makes a refreshingly clear case for the economic theory—and practice—known as distributism. Unlike many of his fellow distributists, who argue primarily from moral terms, Medaille enters the economic debate on purely economic terms. Toward a Truly Free Market shows exactly how to end the bailouts, reduce government budgets, reform the tax code, fix the health-care system, and much more.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A look at how our current crises are caused by too much government, and how Ayn Rand's bold defense of free markets can help us change course. The rise of the Tea Party and the 2010 election results revealed that tens of millions of Americans are alarmed by Big Government, but skeptical that anything can or will be done to stop the growth of the state. In Free Market Revolution, the keepers of Ayn Rand's legacy argue that the answer lies in her pioneering philosophy of capitalism and self-interest –a philosophy that more and more people are turning to for answers. In the past few years, Rand's works have surged to new peaks of popularity, as politicians like Paul Ryan, media figures like John Stossel, and businessmen like John Mackey routinely name her as one of their chief influences. Here, Brook and Watkins explain how her ideas can solve a host of political and economic ills, including the debt crisis, inflation, overregulation, and the swelling welfare state. And most important, they show how Rand's philosophy can enable defenders of the free market to sieze the moral high ground in the fight to limit government. This is a fresh and urgent look at the ideas of one of the most controversial figures in modern history – ideas that may prove the only hope for the future.