The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

Name: The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
SKU: 70581
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4.6 | 261 ratings

Price: 26.72

Last update: 07-01-2024

About this item

"A carefully researched work of intellectual history, and an urgently needed political analysis." --Jane Mayer

“[A] scorching indictment of free market fundamentalism … and how we can change, before it’s too late.”—Esquire, Best Books of Winter 2023

The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America’s most tenacious--and destructive--false ideas: the myth of the "free market."

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, they unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma: the “magic of the marketplace.”

In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with “big government” and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names; recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books; and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagan’s political career.

By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate destruction, and a baleful response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.

Gary

Important work

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2023

When you throw out a rule book, people cheat. When you deregulate an industry or market, people cheat. In any country of over 335 million people, many are opportunistic and selfish. Greed does not want to deal with its pollution of our air or water. Greed fights against paying its fair share of taxes. Greed likes to label any social program as "socialism," knowing that such a label is a dog whistle to other greedy types.

There is no invisible hand involved in a free market. There is only the bottom line. Those who claim that a free market is a magical thing are lying. These same people despise finance laws, the EPA, OSHA, the IRS, and any social program that might help the poor. Problem is: the greedy have the money and power to force their way. They don't want to help the poor until they become the poor. Then it's bailout time.

According to the Economic Policy Institute CEOs now make more than 344 times what the average worker makes. An average worker cannot make in his/her lifetime what a CEO makes in one year. Neither can his/her kid, grandkid, or great grandkid. Say you work 40 years as an average worker. If your lineage follow you as average workers (40 years each), it won't be until your great great great great great grandkid retires that you will have collectively made (that's five greats, or seven generations beyond you) what the CEO made in one year. That is not remotely reasonable.

I've seen the one star reviews. One review is a cut-and-paste of an article from Reason magazine/website. Another says that rather than thinking for yourself, just read the Reason article. This appeal to authority works for many. How can something called Reason be wrong? Simple, Reason starts from a Libertarian perspective rather than an unbiased perspective.

This book is awesome (as was Merchants of Doubt). It is not an easy read. I could have used less writing about Ingalls's works but that wasn't hard to skim through. The facts presented in this book are not partisan. Bill Clinton's mistakes are as clearly presented as Ronald Reagan's brain-washed corporate puppeteering. Of course you will see more conservative/Republican names since they are most involved in fighting necessary regulation. It's easy to say the government is inefficient when in fact the real blame is rightfully on corporate greed. See CBS's "Weapons contractors hitting Department of Defense with inflated prices for planes, submarines, missiles" by Bill Whitaker, May 2023.

Eric

Enlightening

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2023

I have long been suspicious of the ever-growing message in North America that life is transactional, the government is horrible and Business will take care of everything if only we would let it. This book has been extremely illuminating of how and why we wound up in this situation. So illuminating, in fact, that several market believers I know refuse to even attempt reading it yet readily denounce it as leftist propaganda. Wow.
I am extremely glad to have read it, although it does get tedious at times reading what seems like the same evil deeds over and over by many and various persons and organizations determined to carve the world into something they can easily control. I kept wondering when the authors would discuss the better alternatives to the market fundamentalist worldview. That actually comes quite late in the book, after they have thoroughly aired out the entire history of movement conservative manipulation and propaganda. You have to hang in there.
I am just old enough to have watched a significant slice of the evolution of the American capitalist mindset as it occurred. This book has demystified much of my confusion concerning how so many people could fall for such garbage. I highly recommend it.

Donberry

Finally . . . Answers!

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2023

Finally, answers to questions that have been bugging me forever, like why so many people conflate communism and socialism when they're two very different systems? (No, it's not stupidity.) And why do so many people insist big business is benevolent despite all evidence to the contrary? (Again, not stupidity.) The authors provide documented historical explanations for the magical thinking of so many Americans. My only issue is they provide too much documentation, giving 5 or 6 examples when 1 or 2 would do, which I'm sure delights academics but makes this a long slog for the ordinary American who really needs to read this.

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