“We don’t talk enough about common sense and what outcomes the market should produce”
This article is part of The Rules, a forum on government’s proper role in the market.
Dean Baker properly calls the “libertarian” ideology of the past 30 years a mere façade behind which government actively participated in the crafting of rules and priorities that benefited specific groups—banks, big pharma, certain land owners. I surely do not believe that more than a few intellectuals of the right actually ascribed to the theory that a market could exist without government and rules-enforcement. Virtually all who mouthed libertarian rhetoric fully understood that the battle was over whose interests would be protected and how the fruits of the economy would be distributed.
This article has become a book!
Government’s Place In the Market
Eliot Spitzer
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / April 2010
With all the technocratic talk about credit default swaps and bailouts, Americans still have not come to terms with what we really need: a market that delivers public benefit. Spitzer lays out a map of when and how government should intervene to ensure that the market works for everyone.
With responses from Dean Baker and Robert Johnson.
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About the Author
Eliot Spitzer is former Governor and Attorney General of New York.
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Part of The Rules, with Eliot Spitzer, Sarah Binder, Andrew Gelman and John Sides, Dean Baker, and Robert Johnson.
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