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Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival

Online ISBN:
9780300195217
Print ISBN:
9780300141245
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Book

Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival

Published:
19 March 2013
Online ISBN:
9780300195217
Print ISBN:
9780300141245
Publisher:
Yale University Press

Abstract

To what extent is economic freedom good? This book tells the story of how the business community, and the trade associations and think tanks that it created, launched three powerful assaults during the last quarter of the twentieth century on the federal regulatory system and the state civil justice system, to accomplish a revival of the laissez faire political economy which dominated Gilded Age America. Although the consequences of these assaults became painfully apparent in a confluence of crises during the early twenty-first century, the patch-and-repair fixes that Congress and the Obama administration put into place did little to change that underlying laissez faire ideology and practice, and it continues to dominate the American political economy. In anticipation of the next confluence of crises, the author offers suggestions for more comprehensive governmental protections for consumers, workers, and the environment.

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