WE, the People, call Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway to testify on “How American Business Taught us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market”
Adam Smith: “We can’t have free markets because the world is too complex and interdependent
to let everyone run around doing whatever he or she wants to do. As a society, we have to
regulate conduct when it interferes with other people’s freedoms or when it threatens to
damage other people’s properties.”
Oreskes & Conway: “Market fundamentalism is not just the belief..free markets are the best means to run an economic system but also..belief..they are the only means that will not ultimately destroy our other freedoms; the belief in the primacy of economic freedom not just to generate wealth but as a bulwark of political freedom; the belief..markets exist outside of politics and culture, so it can be logical to speak of leaving them alone.”
Oreskes & Conway: “Market fundamentalism wasn’t just about economics..It also involved religion and mass culture.” Mont Pelerin Society and FEE promoters “overlapped with a movement called Spiritual Mobilization, designed to convince Christian clergy..unregulated capitalism was not merely compatible with Christian values but founded on them. Spiritual Mobilization’s biggest donor Sun Oil President Howard Pew..also backed Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale.”
“Pew was also friends with libertarian journalist Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder” the ostensible author of Little House on the Prairie stories. the stories had in fact been crafted into parables of individual self-sufficiency and government superfluousness by her libertarian daughter.”
Oreskes & Conway: Market fundamentalism was a giant public relations triumph; advocates built and sold the myth. “..a network of libertarian think tanks, heavily funded by industries selling dangerous products including tobacco and fossil fuels, had been established to promote these views in schools..universities, American life..; distributed free..millions of copies of Hayek’s..Friedman’s [and Rand’s] books.”
Oreskes & Conway: “A key part of [1930s] manufacturers’ propaganda was the myth of the Tripod of Freedom, the claim.. America was founded on three basic, interdependent principles; representative democracy, political freedom, and free enterprise. This was a fabricated claim. Free enterprise appears in neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution, and the nineteenth-century economy was laced with government involvement in the marketplace. But NAM spent millions” to sell the Tripod of Freedom myth and the Great Depression villain wasn’t “Big Business” but “Big Government” to weaken confidence in government institutions that protected ordinary citizens.”
Oreskes & Conway: A major creator and conduit of market fundamentalists ideology: the University of Chicago. Businessmen funded star Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.” Chicago economist George Stigler wrote an edited version of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” [“Which expunged nearly all of Smith’s caveats about free market doctrine, including his extensive discussion of the need for bank regulation..adequate wages for workers..taxation for public goods”]. Aaron Director’s Antitrust Project argued monopolies represented economic natural selection in action: the fittest corporations were ones that survived. One of Director’s students was Robert Bork.
Oreskes & Conway: “Climate change IS a market failure, because markets, acting legally, failed to provide what people need and created a problem..markets have been unable to solve.”
Oreskes & Conway: “Contemporary conservatives, libertarians, and market fundamentalists are not really defending capitalism..They are defending a certain IDEA of capitalism, a vision of growth and innovation by unfettered markets where government jst gets out of the way. That capitalism is certainly not what Adam smith imagined or advocated.””..
“A group of individuals and institutions worked to make people believe they had to choose between “The Market” and “The State,” between unconstrained capitalism and Soviet-style centralized planning.”
Oreskes & Conway: “The FTC [1930s] found..industry actors had attempted to control the ENTIRE American educational system..grade school to university – in their own economic interest…focused on social sciences, economics, law, political science, and government – but also included engineering and business. Its purpose was to ensure “straight economic thinking” – by which NELA meant capitalistic, free-market principles – and to supply young people and their teachers with “correct information.” The goal was to mold the minds of the current generation and those to come.”
Oreskes & Conway: One estimate had NELA spending [in current dollars] $15 million a year on a media campaign. Supposedly “independent” articles and editorials were ghostwritten. “Red-baiting was pervasive..Advocates of the right of the people to own and operate public utilities “were labeled as “Bolsheviks,” “reds” or “parlor pinks.”..the goal – expressed outright in numerous documents – was to change the way America thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation.”
Oreskes & Conway: “Like NELA..the American Liberty League’s task was to “educate” the public about..benefits of unregulated markets and business freedom. It launched an extensive propaganda campaign to convince Americans to oppose New Deal labor reforms, utility and financial regulation, and relief and fiscal policies – and, above all, to persuade people..these policies threatened their freedom.”
Oreskes & Conway: “In 1948, Pierre du Pont would write to a friend..”it was a mistake to give negroes a vote, and it is also a mistake to give all white men and women a vote; that is if we are to have good government.”
Oreskes & Conway: “By promoting a false dichotomy between laissez-faire capitalism and communist regimentation, market fundamentalists would make it difficult for Americans to have conversations about crucial issues, such as appropriate levels of taxation or the balance between federal and state authority, or even how to appraise the size of..federal government objectively.”
Oreskres & Conway: Motion Picture Association of America head: “We’ll have no more Grapes of Wraith, we’ll have no more Tobacco Roads..no more films that treat the banker as villain.” During the 1940s and 1950s, libertarian moviemakers and their allies in business deployed censorship, intimidation, and overt propaganda to change the tone of America’s screens and disseminate the myth of the free free market.”
Oreskes & Conway: “..During HUAC, the content of movies changed..in 1947, about 20% of Hollywood films addressed American social problems; by 1953 only 8% did.” Big business as villainous [20%] and the rich as a moral threat [50%], decreased to “less than 5% during the fifties..”
Oreskes & Conway: “If market fundamentalism were a scientific theory, by the early 1960s it would have been viewed as refuted..European experience disproved its central premise – the compromises to economic freedom would necessarily compromise political freedom. European social democracies had taken steps toward..”the mixed economy”..”
Oreskes & Conway: Quoting Milton Friedman, a factory owner has a right to pollute; ‘if I own a factory, then my right to operate it as I see fit encompasses the right to pollute, and that right is “extremely important” and has to be given “considerable weight>”
Oreskes & Conway: “Most people think of revolutions as overturning ruling classes..The Reagan Revolution was the reverse…Reagan would promote the interests and ideology of some of the most powerful people in America..would ingeniously sustain the impression..the rich and powerful were somehow victims of an unfair system..work to reverse more than half a century of progress for ordinary people, and..do it all in the name of freedom.”
Oreskes & Conway: “Wall street never believed the rosy supply-side forecasts. They saw exploding deficits, not surging revenue. When the tax bill passed in August 1981, markets dropped, interest rates increased..the economy entered the deepest recession since the Great Depression. the investment boom that was supposed to follow the supply-side tax cuts never came..The. economy would not recover until late 1983..”
Oreskes & Conway: “..the crucial fact..the growing inequality of ther past 40 years has been driven by changes in the rules of how our capitalism operates. They include changes to our tax structure, forms of deregulation that hugely favor the wealthy, and these changes have been justified – in some quarters even celebrated – as “letting the market do its magic.”
Oreskes & Conway: “The Nordic countries are..happiest..Their high level..coincides with high levels of democracy and political rights, lack of corruption, trust among citizens and government, social cohesion, gender equality, and economic equality, and their people feel themselves to have a high level of freedom.”
Oreskes & Conway: “..Nordic countries [have] “..a virtuous circle,’ where well-functioning and democratic institutions provide citizens extensive benefits and security, so that citizens trust institutions and each other, which leads them to vote for parties that that promise to preserve the welfare model..the very thing NAM and opponents of the New Deal, Hayek, Friedman, and the Reagan Republicans all railed against.”
[note”. all the above comes from Oreskes & Conway’s “The Big Myth. They also wrote “Merchants of Doubt…How a handful of scientists obscured the Truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.” These books document a SMALL part of the L I E S the Far Right, rich and corporations have been pushing for 100 ears – and they’re winning – look at the world YOU. ive in in 2024, compared to the world America USED TO BE, 1947-75. – before the Far Right succeeded in destroying that. STATISTICAL. middle class peak civilization.]
With Justice For All 