Comment & Debate
Jonathan Stein – “Once we begin distinguishing the many forms capitalism can take, analytic utility is lost by retaining talismanic terms like “free market.” There is no national economy in the world today that is not a mixed economy, which also means that there is no market that is free, or even “mostly” free. Rather, markets are structures that are culturally bounded, always regulated, and genetically dependent on government intervention for their reproduction. Never are they simply “permitted.””
Walter Laffer – “What I do think is that our lives and ethics and society should shed the myths from the past and try to create a better world for our time. Most of us humanists have done that relative to religion. I think that economic and political myths deserve the same scrutiny and subsequent bashing as does the Bible. I think that free market economic theory falls into this category of myth. Much as faith healing, the resurrection, or the second coming does. Many of the theorems and ultimatums from the theory just do not stand up in the light of historical or contemporary analysis.”[1]