The Surprising Design of Market Economies
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- $23.99
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
The “free market” has been a hot topic of debate for decades. Proponents tout it as a cure-all for just about everything that ails modern society, while opponents blame it for the very same ills. But the heated rhetoric obscures one very important, indeed fundamental, fact—markets don’t just run themselves; we create them.
Starting from this surprisingly simple, yet often ignored or misunderstood fact, Alex Marshall takes us on a fascinating tour of the fundamentals that shape markets and, through them, our daily economic lives. He debunks the myth of the “free market,” showing how markets could not exist without governments to create the structures through which we assert ownership of property, real and intellectual, and conduct business of all kinds. Marshall also takes a wide-ranging look at many other structures that make markets possible, including physical infrastructure ranging from roads and railroads to water systems and power lines; mental and cultural structures such as common languages and bodies of knowledge; and the international structures that allow goods, services, cash, bytes, and bits to flow freely around the globe.
Sure to stimulate a lively public conversation about the design of markets, this broadly accessible overview of how a market economy is constructed will help us create markets that are fairer, more prosperous, more creative, and more beautiful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Marshall, an urban planning and architecture journalist, draws on his interest in design to provide a lively examination of how and why markets work as they do. He invokes the image of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, a man-made site that looks natural, to convey "the constructed nature of markets" and the legal, physical, cultural, and international facets involved in their creation. Historically, the transformation of economics from a political philosophy to an objective science was based on a faulty metaphor, one that has allowed "free market" myths to present what is as what must be. Marshall counters that "markets are our handiwork," citing examples of successful agricultural and industrial co-operatives to demonstrate the need for "a renewed respect for the noncompetitive, more cooperative parts of our society." Turning to the public interest in intellectual property and corporatism, he claims, as it is in our power to do so, "we would do well... to rewrite, to redesign, the essential corporate architecture that creates and governs our corporate citizens." Marshall's thoughtful critique accounts for social dynamics often ignored by modern economists and is grounded in a multitude of fascinating examples, underscoring his thesis that we can, and should, debate the powers allotted to our creations, rather than let them, falsely, set the terms of their own existence.
