"The market cannot, unaided, educate and train our workforce, plan and fulfill national research goals or restore or even compensate for our battered infrastructure," runs its introduction. "And the market, unregulated, tends inevitably towards socially undesirable ends such as pollution, inequality and monopoly."
Let's recall that even neo liberals rarely want the whole total-deregulation thing. Rarely do they propose a return to child-labour, deregulated weights and measures, advertising which is blatantly lying ... and their policies usually at least pay lip-service to breaking up monopolies (towards which market 'winners' tend). The fact is that neo-liberalism lionises perfect competition which often in practice becomes a stalking horse for oligopolies -which are a very different animal.
So, the reality in not a debate between regulation and laissez faire but degrees of regulation. Let's be honest about that and get down to the real business of effecting regulations that truly harness the power of the market for the common good.
The dream of a neoliberal nirvana is coming to an end | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited: Filed in: market, economics, policy, justice, regulation
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