Daniel Stedman Jones

Jones describes how conservative thinkers developed thought that influenced economic policy from the 1970s until about 2008. What's interesting is that this way of thinking had a strong influence on both the Left and the Right. The book is a history of how pro free market policies started in the heads of academic economists and philosophers and became mainstream between the 1930s and the 1980s. It began as a way to counter the New Deal.

Jones equates neoliberalism with the idea that free market policies are a panacea. I associate neoliberalism with the rich wanting to keep the rules that make them richer. That means they want unfair rules to exist whether they are free market or not. Jones also blames neoliberalism for the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the 2007-2008 crisis. For me that's a stretch. Money and banking have had strong ties to the government since the creation of the Federal Reserve. There were plenty of regulatory bodies in place in 2008. They just weren't effective. I vehemently disagree that 2007-2008 represented a failure of markets. If markets failed, then why were the problems largely concentrated in the financial sector? Where were all the market failures on Main St?

Jones declares a housing market failure when someone can't afford a place to live. Under that logic, there's a big private plane and yacht market crisis going on right now too.

While I disagree with some of Jones' conclusions, this is a wonderful story of how ideas go from academia into the mainstream through think tanks and other media. It also goes through how these ideas get distorted through politics and through time. How will new ideas spread in today's world of the Internet?… (altro)