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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
THE BIG MYTH
How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America's most
tenaciousand destructivefalse ideas: the magic of the marketplace.
tenaciousand destructivefalse ideas: the magic of the marketplace.
Merchants of Doubt exposed the origins of climate change denial. Now, its authors unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma. Why do Americans believe in the magic of the marketplace?
The answer, as The Big Myth reveals: a propaganda blitz. Until the early 1900s, the U.S. government's guiding role in economic life was largely accepted. But then businessmen bristled at efforts to make life better through regulation. Trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies built a new orthodoxy: down with big government, up with unfettered markets. Unearthing staggering archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Hayek and 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 (and the young Ronald Reagan) to millions.
By the 1970s, this crusade had succeeded. Its 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.
About the Author
Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. Her 2004 essay The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, cited by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth (2006), led to op-ed pieces in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle, and to Congressional testimony in the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Erik Conway is the resident historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena's California Institute of Technology.
The answer, as The Big Myth reveals: a propaganda blitz. Until the early 1900s, the U.S. government's guiding role in economic life was largely accepted. But then businessmen bristled at efforts to make life better through regulation. Trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies built a new orthodoxy: down with big government, up with unfettered markets. Unearthing staggering archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Hayek and 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 (and the young Ronald Reagan) to millions.
By the 1970s, this crusade had succeeded. Its 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.
About the Author
Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. Her 2004 essay The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, cited by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth (2006), led to op-ed pieces in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle, and to Congressional testimony in the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Erik Conway is the resident historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena's California Institute of Technology.
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Book
Published 2023-02-01 by Bloomsbury |