For two centuries, Americans have been fighting for freedom from the market. Their stories provide a powerful legacy to draw from and build upon. ...
People have used markets for trading and exchange for centuries. What is unique today is how the economy has been restructured to extend and accelerate our reliance on markets into all aspects of society. ... The things we need to lead our lives are forced into markets where we are compelled to obtain them, at the mercy of private, profit-seeking actors and our own ability to pay. Many of our needs are left unmet or poorly provided for by the market -- from health care to retirement security to providing for children -- and more suffering is the result. ...
This book argues that true freedom requires keeping us free from the market. In some places this will require the government to provide key services directly and universally, rather than requiring citizens to rely on the marketplace. These services include social insurance, education, and health care, among others. Elsewhere it will mean suppressing the extent of the market, such as the number of hours we work or the ability of businesses to discriminate against their customers. The form this takes will depend on the contingency of everything from technology to the aspect of our life in question. But in all cases, market dependency is a profound state of unfreedom, and freedom requires checks and hard boundaries on the ways markets exist in our society and in our lives.Konczal makes a series of critiques of market dependency; what follows are are my opinionated, simplified summaries of his points:
• the market distributes necessary goods like health care and access to education unfairly -- and anti-sociallyThe book consists of short chapters describing the history of struggles in this country about who got to own the lands being stolen from native peoples, who rules workers in workplaces, how the New Deal managed to provide a framework for collective social security within a still-ascendant white supremacy, how public daycare was invented for the World War II war effort and trashed afterward, the ongoing struggle for universal health care provision, and for public education for all.
• the market doesn't provide incentives to businesses to produce what won't be profitable -- such as health insurance to sick and old people
• market dynamics allow businesses to structure employment for their convenience and profit, leaving workers only the "freedom" to take it or leave it
• market dependency means people are only valuable if we turn a profit for some entity -- other social goods can be ignored or rendered invisible
• market dependency can't survive without using the state to reinforce its power, so those who own the markets need to own the state.
It is simply and clearly written. For a work of political and economic history and theory, it is delightfully approachable.
Konczal concludes:
... The story told here, about how freedom requires keeping us free from the market, is capable of short-circuiting [the Trumpian] far-right threat. A genuine movement to check the market through public action needs to be broad and welcoming, rather than walled off and for the few. Universal social insurance, free public programs, economic security, and power for workers are the things that ensure broad prosperity -- they succeed because they work. ...
To succeed we need to harness and build on the proud legacy created by two hundred years of battles to carve out a free space beyond the confines of the market. Battles for the future of our country and society are not won on arguments about market failures, on the balance sheets of accountants, or on narrowly tailored, incremental solutions. They are won on arguments about freedom. ...It strikes me that the folks making policy in the Biden administration are listening. The book is an easy, worthwhile read.
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