Page 23 - Issue 18

to all that, if left to fend for itself, the private market
would collapse.

If the lesson of 2008 was that in the absence of
independent regulation, the financial system will wreak
destruction and transfer wealth from the many to the few,
the lesson of the year of the coronavirus is much broader:
In 2020, the world began to bid farewell to the fairy tale
known as the “free market.”

Fairy tales about the free market really began to gain
ground in the 1970s, with the common thread among
them being that the less a government “interferes” in an
economy and society, the more that “natural” and
“spontaneous” forces will be freed to work their wonders.
For proof, one had to look no further than the complete
failure of the Soviet Communist project that by the end of
the 1980s was totally kaput.
But while rightists and leftists continue to argue over the
optimal type and extent of government interference, the
real problem of free market theory lies in the very term
“interference.” This terminology causes us to believe that
the natural, spontaneous state of modern society is the
existence of a “market” in which the government then
comes and “interferes.”

This popular notion lost relevance over the course of the
last century, as incredible leaps in the standard of living,
quality of life, technology and science – in conjunction with
liberal democracy becoming the most popular type of
regime – were paralleled by the development of political
institutions, social safety nets and laws and regulations