Free Market, Jacob Soll

"After two government bailouts of the American economy in less than twenty years, free market thought is due for serious reappraisal. Free Market: The History of an Idea shows how the idea became so powerful, why it succeeded, and why it has failed so spectacularly. In 1990, the G7 Countries enjoyed 70 percent of world GDP.

In the face of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was supposed to be a story of the success of free markets. However, in the past thirty years, that number has dropped by half, and Asia has emerged as a major motor of world economic growth. Today, state-run China is the second biggest economy on earth, and tiny Singapore, with its state-owned companies, has become a new model of wealth creation.

In other words, Milton Friedman''s free market dogma, that only private companies can create wealth and that states hamper it, has not proved very clearly to be untrue. This book shows how we got to the current crisis of free market thought, and suggests how we can find our way out. Contrary to popular free market narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets.