Fred Block: The Tenacity of the Free Market Ideology

Fred Block discusses his book “The Power of Market Fundamentalism,” which extends the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why free market dogma recovered from disrepute after the Great Depression and World War II to become the dominant economic ideology of our time.

[@NVRAMboi]

Since the 2008 crash, I find myself chuckling at any suggestion that "the free market" actually exists (beyond an idea, a theory, or on paper in various forms). A true free market includes absorbing and enduring the negative consequences involved with financial risk and/or excesses. "Moral hazard" indeed.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Your money or your life, you're in the Free Market choice.

[@debralegorreta1375]

Polanyi and Block argue that market fundamentalism is impossible. Indeed, Neoliberalism which was launched as an attempt at market fundamentalism as a way to regulate not only the economy but also all of society has collapsed in that what we have now is not driven by the market, the central tenet of market fundamentalism, Instead, as Polanyi predicted, what we have now heavily depends on the state. The stock market lives day to day, hour to hour on state interventions. Likewise business depends more on more on the state to protect its monopoly rights such as intellectual property rights, regulations that stifle competition, and laws that keeps labor in check. . . hardly a "free market." There's nothing liberal left in neoliberalism.

[@Yor_gamma_ix_bae]

Pretty sure even to call it a "market", is what mont piellar school neoliberals considered the immediate road to communism. Especially hayek and mises...people focus alot on the chicago school, as if they called themselves neoliberals. Nothing new about it really in most sense of the word. Also all the huge amounts of lawyering and WTO type structures...thats "neo"liberalism. Free market worship is just liberalism. You dont use government as a neoliberal, you use the judiciary! Markets are like the force, you just go with the flow...and use lawfare/repression to deal with bottom up democracy. Using intervention is what neoliberals hated, especially Keynes and his ilk. People who thought they could contain the "GLOBAL" money system, nationally...no neoliberals conceived of an empire which served those who served it's global markets best. Politics, and political had no place in the neoliberal worldview in a way. They were more after creating structures of power to prevent politics from interferring with the administrators of power. The idea being that if you could create a political theater which conveyed democracy, while controlling the implementation from the shadows people would be content. Things like the International Monetary Fund, WTO, education apparatus, NGOs, institutes,trade deal which gave corporations rights to elect those who would veto national governments, lobbying agencies after legislation is passed to make implementation favorable to their goals... Complex laws, financialisation,.... these are the sorts of things you will find neoliberals had a hand in mostly. Or would of found useful.

[@Yor_gamma_ix_bae]

liberalism has always used government intervention, overseas, at home..."don't tread on me." isn't don't tread on everyone. Its like being an insider and an outsider. If we are all the "good sort" who trade and grow rich, thus pay taxes and lend the government money. Then it better work for us, against everyone else....liberalism. The main job of course being the protection of those who matter's assets. Which fits nicely with neoliberals and the global need to encase democracy around the world to keep peoples hands off of their own government policy. That which must not be named, must be protected for the sake of humanity. Thatcher is a fairly good example of the way a neoliberal speaks about things. Very abstract, stuff like pointing out everyones a blank slate. Calling economists neoliberals, over the last century is a strange thing people do... Well the mont piller society(home of the neoliberal) has modern members in europe, much of the new right wing in europe are members. And they see culture war as another way forward. Instead of calling it free trade though, they call it tariffs/protectionism which is ironic if one understands what free amounts to at all. Or what "trade" looks like for most of the developed world. The real difference is xenophobia instead of flirting with the idea, with a few members...

[@ericwilliams626]

I find these descriptions to be moot and a disservice. Free Marketplace, allowing the individual to create and compete is the only way to have an evolving economy. Look at history, individuals changed the world, not corporations. Corporations simply swallow up what individuals have accomplished. That's a different discussion. But the nucleus of the context is political or sociopolitical conversations have nothing to do with results. Results come from smart people, period. Philosophical discussions aren't affecting anything other than people selling books. That type of nonsense has been going on from the court jester, to Mozart, to Marx to today. Entertainment with zero results. Laughable.

[@herzwatithink9289]

Seemingly lots of good sense talked here.

[@DaveE99]

I think that concept of freedom never took hold because it wasn’t till today that we began to recognize trauma in people.

[@david8157]

Excellent exposition. Thank you.

[@watching99134]

I think his argument about predation being a zero-sum is true but only in a universal sense, that is, it's *not* zero-sum for individual countries to engage in this (indeed this is practically the definition of mercantilism as I understand it; western European countries succeeded in extracting wealth from the rest of the world for centuries).

[@ttrons2]

We need to know how to deal with greed.

[@teslaturbinetime]

yes. yes. yes!

[@teslaturbinetime]

Also the interviewer is great. His questions and comments are great The conversation is great

[@MrSpectaman]

A question for armchair and actual economists. Would factoring in a monthly car note for a new toyota (around 400 dollars) and the monthly cost for an ok apartment (1100 dollars) into the monthly check of someone on a fixed income, particularly those on social security who worked their whole life, cause the current monetary system to fail?

[@akash_goel]

You mean a pension adjust for inflation?

[@vladdumitrica849]

Countries with parliaments are in fact oligarchs (few lead). In order to be a true democracy, the decisions of the Parliament should be submitted to the approval of the citizens. The democratic aspect is a side effect in societies where economies have a strong competitive aspect, ie the interests of those who hold economic power in society are divergent. Thus, those with money, and implicitly with political power in society, are supervising each other so that none of them have undeserved advantages due to politics. Because of this, countries with large mineral resources, like Russia and Venezuela (their share in GDP is large), do not have democratic aspects, because a small group of people can exploit these resources in their own interest. In poor countries, the main resource exploited may even be the state budget, as they have converging interests in benefiting, in their own interest, from this resource. This is what is observed in Romania when, no matter which party comes to power, the result is the same. The solution is modern direct democracy in which every citizen can vote, whenever he wants, over the head of the parliamentarian who represents him. He can even dismiss him if most of his constituents consider that their interests are not right represented

[@marktaylor1139]

The question remains, why was there no major paradigm shift? Why did those concepts of 'freedom' remain?

[@irisryu6437]

+Mark Taylor Propaganda?

[@MelancoliaI]

+Mark Taylor Because unfettered laissez-faire capitalism and private property constitute the bedrock of freedom and democracy. David Koch told me so.

[@irisryu6437]

aviomaster when freedom goes with democracy, it is often understood as some sort of equality (everyone have the same set of rights). It is deeply problematic to powerful people because by the power they wield, they by nature have more freedom. And academic people like to use jargon like "paradigm shift". There is only change in paradigm if the power changes. If not (the same or similar people continue to have power), then there's no reason for a paradigm shift. Why? because the core assumption is to serve the power. Not anything fancy.

[@marshallsweatherhiking1820]

Some reason 2000 year old religions remain.

[@Yor_gamma_ix_bae]

The people alive in 1930s and 40s who wanted to burn FDR at the state still haven't all died.

[@ugiakyi-wenda4705]

...powerful.

[@danbk99]

Please increase the volume in the video , it is too quiet

[@oracleofottawa]

Fred Block talks about the insane right wing concept of the free market utopia. This INETeconomics channel is one of the best and most progressive economics channels on all of You - Tube at the time of this writing. Check it out...

[@DaveE99]

We just need to share it with young conservatives without mentioning progressive or liberal.

[@THDYoung]

oh that's a good idea: getting democracy involved again.

[@vonkruel]

Strengthening or "scaling up" democracy shouldn't mean allowing everybody to get involved in everything or vote on everything. To me, it means that in any activity of public life, any citizen who's capable of contributing to that can get involved. Obviously it's essential to have a fair way of deciding who's capable in a given context. Experts in a given area can recognize each other & I think this is the foundation of a sane way to handle the assessment. If you're not a climate scientist, your belief that the planet is cooling should have no impact on public policy. On the other hand, if you _are_ a climate scientist, it should be possible for you to have a place in forming related public policy. A democracy should be able to leverage the great wealth of knowledge that exists in the citizenry, and not fall into the trap of letting idiots make a mess of everything. There's an awful lot of room for us to improve our "democracies".

[@davidmutua4158]

It's paradoxical. It's not cool to involve everybody in almost everything, but not involving everybody will eventually concentrate the political power on a few %ge of the people. I.e the political 'class', who are easily controlled by other powerful interests

[@Howsonify]

I swear Thorstein Veblen never died. He just changed his name to Fred Block

[@TheDavid2222]

Jeremy Howson Long live Veblen!

[@DarkKnightOmega]

Veblen was much more harshly critical of the privileged classes.

[@dmoneytron]

The whole point is that the capitalist class is diametrically opposed to democratic government by the working class but not by the capitalist class.

[@TheShootist]

there really isn't a "Capitalist" class, people don't break along those lines, wealth yes, but one need not be capitalist to be wealthy. And of course there is nothing magical about democracy but if you're going to have some form of representative government, everyone should be equally represented.

[@stefanjones8042]

@Aye Aye Ron someones drank the meritocracy kool aid

[@DaveE99]

Watch Michel sandel , a political philosopher, who teaches at Harvard, he has a video on meritocracy I suggest you watch.

[@kayedal-haddad9294]

Is Fred Block a relation of Walter Block?

[@rodfer5406]

👏👏

[@jimsykes6843]

It's depressing watching this in 2023 because nothing's changed. In the U.S. we had a real moment in 2016 where Bernie and Warren surfaced as bringing the critique of neoliberalism to the fore. But both the centrist democrats and republicans delegitimized this fervently, and the critique was shoved underground. As I write, Biden has indeed made some moves in the right direction, but after the 2016 election, the progressives turned away from the economic argument just to cultural ones (race) and policing. Those latter issues are important, but they are no replacement for the argument to move beyond neoliberalism. And so the U.S. remains stuck.

[@watching99134]

Combine the two solutions: credit unions and local/state reform = public state (or municipal) bank(s).

[@voranartsirisubsoontorn9010]

I was an MBA graduate who studied fundamental market theories with full heart then worked as marketer with full belief. I have lived during the period when free market has created the best world ever up until now. Any group wants to state otherwise that more control from people in power will solve today’s problem then I have to disagree. Actually the problem is in finance and its risk without control.

[@debralegorreta1375]

You cannot divorce free market from finance. You cannot blame one without implicating the other. You are wrong that free market created the best world ever up until now. Turn of the century Vienna was better than anything you've ever experienced or heard about. You just want to be super rich and want an excuse to justify believing in your utopia.

[@rgaleny]

SEE THE VIRTUAL SPIRAL

[@smartiepancake]

Without Georgist tax reform the free market can never prove it can work.

[@smartiepancake]

***** The single land value tax is unique amongtaxes in not distorting markets. It would also shrink the state - in many ways, including by reducing the need for welfare. Even if it is not the silver bullet that some seriously say it is (I think it is a silver bullet) it is still worth doing, it's doable, it's voteable, it's a transition.

[@julsius]

@@smartiepancake “ Men like Henry George are rare unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice. Every line is written as if for our generation. The spread of these works is a really deserving cause, for our generation especially has many and important things to learn from Henry George. It almost seems to me as if you had no conception to what high degree the work of Henry George is appreciated by serious thinking people. ” - albert einstein

[@juliancochran]

Yes, it really is nonsense. Amazingly few people realise that just about every component in your iPhone and the original early, non-profitable, innovative and risky work, from the state sector or firms funded by state customers earlier on (particularly the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s). Just about every internet protocol, satellites themselves, Algol-69 from which just about every language is now derived as a minor modification, VN machine, the silicon chip design, silicon chip manufacturing, GDP, you simply cannot easily name any part of the phone that came out of the private sector other than the profitable low-risk incremental work, yet we are constantly cheering how wonderful the free market is. It is quite the opposite, with nearly all the innovation in the state sector, and then when the hard work is handed over to the private sector, the profitable and more predictable incremental low-risk work takes place there.

[@akash_goel]

You could make a similar argument in support of free market by citing the greatest inventors of our time (Thomas Edison, Ada Lovelace, etc). Innovation comes from incentives. For entrepreneurs like Edison, its equal parts money and fame, and for scientists, its purely fame and the intellectual challenge. Also, its not like private companies don't do research or make inventions regularly. Innovative firms file keep filing for patents and churn out research relentlessly just so that they can stay ahead of the pack.

[@Itsmespiv4192]

@@akash_goel Innovation come from knowledge and means not "incentive"

[@watching99134]

@@akash_goel Most great inventors don't do it for the money, they do it for the sheer joy of creating that's why Google has its employees spend a certain percent of their time working on projects unrelated to their main task, creativity disappears as soon as it's focused on being monetized. (The ease with which companies file patents nowadays has actually created problems, a kind of "patent thicket" or "tragedy of the anticommons").

[@kimwhitfield8557]

So much for Neo-liberal nonsense.

[@johnginos6520]

Dont you guys get it, you shouldn’t allow a small group of business people run the country and oppress you... you should let a small group of politicians and academics do that... you know that!!

[@donald347]

He never substantiates the claim that you need the state to have money. Or that one's wealth prevents someone from being wealthy. It's terrifying to hear someone say suggest the expansion of democracy and demotion of the individual will over the will of the majority should be considered freedom. This is Orwellian. The way he talks about predation being avoided by GOVERNMENT? How will it not be a form of predation when people assigned by this democracy to carry out a job use part of his budget to campaign for other contracts? And if democracy is imperfect as of today why would you even want it's role to be expanded or accepted? If people hated the bailouts they should hate central planning because these things are guaranteed to happen. You can't just ignore incentive in an economic theory wtf lol

[@debralegorreta1375]

You don't need the state to have money. That's not his claim. His claim is that money cannot be regulated by the market. In fact, without QE the stock market would've collapsed. Bill Gates' wealth prevents you from creating an OS that challenges his market share because of the patents he owns. Yes, his wealth is preventing you from creating yours.

[@baronmeduse]

@@debralegorreta1375 What are you talking about? You DO need the state to issue and have functioning money. The very point is that it has to be a monopoly. This is a basic fact. Don't reassure the person you are reply to with more error!

[@GetRealVA]

Bro why are you scared

[@rogggggerful]

The extreme inequality we have now favors extreme monopolies, the wealthy billionaires absorb all the money from the lower classes, store it away in fiscal heavens and so the money is not reinvested. Middle class people on the other hand reinvest almost all the money and so the businnes cycle continues. So, unless you tax away the extreme inequality we have now, you wont have prosperity, this is just 1+1. You have either a middle class economy or you have a billionaires and poor people economy, you cant have both. The "free market"-mantra is just pure ideology, not factual in the real world

[@know-it-alltoknow-nothing4150]

This guy and Polanyi don't think that labor is a commodity to be bought and sold. He should go down to a 7-Eleven or Lowes parking lot early in the morning and see for himself. Labor reacts to supply and demand in pretty much the same way as any other factor input does.

[@nathandwelley3671]

Hahaha you have no idea what you're talking about. They're calling it a "fictitious commodity", meaning people like you have been essentially led to believe, based upon the thoroughly debunked and anachronistic notion of the homo economicus of Smith and Ricardo, that labor, land, and capital are commodities to be bought and sold. This has little basis in any social science and is little more than an unfortunately propagated bit of dark magic pseudo-sociology. Through generations of this myth being propagated it has manifested quite fully in the collective consciousness. Its a religion essentially. If you dont think myths make people believe backward things, and act on them, go to church this Sunday.

[@jackvac1918]

Labor is not a commodity that's created to satisfy demand in the market in the sense that a wrench, a phone, or productive machinery is. It's only treated as such by economic analysis. People don't pop out babies to satisfy demand for labor, and the act of laboring is so much more to a human being than just applying time and effort to make commodity in exchange for other commodity. The view that labor is merely a commodity is borne from the extremely reductive view of neoclassical economics where everything is reduced to exchange values and where the human being is reduced to a completely rational actor who would sell out their own mother if the exchange benefited them.

[@watching99134]

People sell their labor in certain ways as you and Marx say but people also have a need to work (e.g., volunteering) which means for healthy people there is an irreducible need to labor which cannot simply be conceptualized simply in terms of a commodity I think.

[@bobbybobby3232]

Why did the welfare system failed in Britain in the 60s?

[@theriversexitsense]

it did???

[@rgaleny]

FREE AND UNREGULATED MARKETS IN FACT GO HAY WIRE

[@nuchinuchitekton7730]

Regulating themselves : Land : can be regulated, is NOT "happened to be here" , as we reach type 2 civilization "land" or "physical objects and space" is infinite, and creative ways can be made for example using the ocean Labor : can not be regulated ??? what ? Capital/Money : bruh central banks ARE the problem Pure free market economy is the sign of a high IQ civilization just as current form of govt, however flawed it is was first used/created by people with intelligence higher than that of those living in monarchy.

[@dangelo1369]

What makes a market? Markets are not "free"; you can't sell slaves on the market. We cannot sell or buy hitmen or assassins, can we? Where there are restrictions by the society, therein lies the limit of the marketplace, therefore it's not "free". All the "free market" can do is set prices...no more than that.

[@debralegorreta1375]

You can't increase the supply of land like you can increase the money supply and not all land is of equal value. It is what it is and we have to deal with what we got as we find it. Once I know some land, I can kick you out of it, but that's not regulation in the sense that Polanyi means the word. That's ownership. The ownership of land can regulated, but not the land.

[@jimsykes6843]

"bruh" (if I may), you're sounding like you're driving over someone's foot in your Ferrari, pretending you have a high IQ.

[@123axel123]

Most of the INET stuff is turning into a left-wing think-tank. Johnson's pontificating is quite annoying. "thank you for formenting the critical discourse" Why does he has to sound like a parody on an academic. Surely he could have found one difficult question to the professor.

[@profd65]

Peter Schiff has plenty of videos I'm sure would interest you.

[@123axel123]

Behind your sarcasm, I think you are right. Peter Schiff and INET are on the same level of intelligence. 100% predictable and no originality.

[@ChessGM1]

123axel123 Much like your reply: 100% predictable and no originality. Thanks for stopping by.

[@JesseMaurais]

123axel123 On the same level? Really? Schiff is clearly trying to make money by hucking gold and other commodities to unsuspecting rubes, and to do that he weaves a story about hyperinflation which bears only a tacit relationship with Austrian economics; even other Austrians think he's nuts. And on his radio show he engages in the same kind of asinine social commentary as Molyneux and Limbaugh. If anyone's on a level, it's these three. But Fred Block and most of those who do INET interviews at least have earned doctorates, undergone peer review, and in some substantial way studied the history of the facts and ideas that have informed their discipline. And if the latter appears to you "on the same level" as the former, you must suffer some grave difficulty in discriminating credentials and appraising arguments.

[@123axel123]

If you think you need a PhD to have the right views you are strange. Next thing is probably that they start talking about vampires.

[@GeorgWilde]

Yeah. Let§s completely ignore austrian economics as always.

[@jimsykes6843]

Do you mean an emphasis on excessive individualism and Hayek, i.e. neoliberalism? This is precisely what this guy is (rightly) against. So he's not forgetting it, he's acknowledging it by being against it.

[@sdozer1990]

I'm more of a capitalist, but, because in science fiction, there is no difference between a utopia and a dystopia, I call the socialists' world a dystopia- perfect world with a grave caveat (classic utopian / dystopian fiction).