Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand

by Mike Konczal

The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom

"Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform' [a] heroic critic of austerity' and a huge resource for progressives."--Paul Krugman

Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership--these are the issues driving America's current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single should we allow the free market to determine our lives?

In the tradition of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free.

At a time when millions of Americans--and more and more politicians--are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Public Policy, Audiobook, Academic

250 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Wick Welker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time to redefine freedom, again.

Konczal offers a brief and concise little treatment of the history of US markets and how they've become the ridiculous behemoth today that is more reminiscent of a fiefdom with serfs than a free market thanks to the disastrous neoliberal zeitgeist and policies of the 1970s and 80s. Konczal takes a welcomed perspective that everything we think about the markets has to do with two things: property rights and how it is that we define freedom. Another crystal clear argument here is that the idea that markets were once free and operated without government structure is a complete libertarian fantasy and such circumstances have never existed. Neoliberalism and unfettered market control cannot happen without the help of the government.

At the genesis of the United States, the question of owning property was novel and was readily viewed as the gateway to self sustainment. The Homestead Act was one such attempt to provide a level playing field for all Americans (who had white skin) by giving public land for free. This lifted millions of (white) people from poverty and also helped to free up slave labor in the south. This is but one example of the federal government actually wrestling control from "free" markets and attempting to make things more equitable for the good of more people. This is the main theme of this book.

The state has always controlled relationship between employers and employees, to believe the contrary is again another libertarian fantasy. And it's a damn good thing too or else our children would be working 18 hour days right now for 10 cents an hour or being paid in company credit. The US certainly did not "leave it to the market" during WWII but instead restructured the economy to allow woman to join the work force to fill in for men who had left for war. And of course heaps and heaps of restructuring occurred during the New Deal era whose main attempt was to protect the common (white) person from the tyranny of the "free" markets. Additionally, federal structuring of markets and regulations can accelerate equity. Withholding millions in Medicare dollars to southern state hospitals is what finally gave them the push to desegregate their care.

Things changed in the 70s and 80s. We had a reckoning as the business roundtable went ahead and took back the word "freedom". It was rebranded and sold to the public as freedom to exercise dominion over property without government involvement. With this came a complete paradigm shift of what a shareholder of a company even is. Prior to Reagan era, a shareholder did not manage a company and was quite separate from managerial staff. But, once property became sacred again, shareholders are now "owners" of property in the form of a corporation. So suddenly it is shareholders who have all the rights, not the labor class. It is shareholders who only care about maximizing profits and throwing shares and money at their CEOs to do the same. It is ONLY the shareholders who benefit from a reduction in corporate taxes. It is yet again another libertarian fantasy to believe that corporate tax cuts are somehow used to reinvest for the good of a company and go toward the labor class. This is a laughable notion whose belief is a product of highly paid propaganda from conservative think thanks. Corporations went from being quasi-public organizations where money and power was spread across the labor into an organization of only a few individuals who concentrate the wealth.

A business revolution was created in the 1980s full of privatization, junk bonds, financialization and leveraged buyouts all of which has resulted in the greatest wealth disparity that has ever existed. Combined with the ballooning of copywrite and patents, the ownership of property has now become sacrosanct so much that this is the way Americans believe this country was intended to function. We are currently living with the consequences. Ironically, as Konczal points out, it was the federal government involvement of freeing up AT&T patents that forced the company to license the transistor to small businesses which is what helped ushered in the tech revolution. The "free" market is not responsible.

This all boils down to what we are calling freedom. For neoliberal and neocons, freedom is defined by what they own and what they are allowed to do with that ownership. I, and the author, strongly argue that freedom is having access to education, a living wage, healthcare all without burdensome loans. The current "free" market does nothing but protect the tyranny of the mega rich from the dignity of the labor class. Solutions abound, we just need to act.

Good read, brief and to the point.

[David Wineberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Freedom requires keeping us from the markets”

“That the market can’t provide genuine security against poverty, sickness, old age and disability is something that is understood but not readily accepted, as we keep looking to the market and local communities to solve it,” says Mike Konczal in Freedom From The Market. We know it doesn’t work, so we double down and try even harder. And insist it is the only way. And all this despite the will of Americans themselves.

In this remarkably concise, systematic and direct book, Konczal shows that America has always been about free services, but that capitalism as practiced is incapable of providing them. The resulting inequality is leading to unrest as the pendulum has swung too far. The market offers only the opposite of freedom.

His chapters examine the history of access to services and their help in leveling up to a decent quality of life. They examine Land, Time, Life, Security, Care, Health, Economy and Education. In every case, the USA actively sought to distribute goods and services to all, only to have Conservatives roll back and terminate such programs. He says of his research: “Free programs and keeping things free from the market are as American as apple pie.”

For example, education used to be free. Starting in 1862 with land grant universities, the federal government sought to offer a higher education to all comers in an effort grow a smarter and more skilled populace that would be more affluent and self-reliant. It was only in the Reagan era that states began cutting those subsidies, causing tuitions to skyrocket and an entire industry of student loans to dominate the lives of students. This had the effect of keeping them away from benevolent paths as they needed (and need) big money fast, and it is now keeping parents from funding their children’s educations as they still have to deal with their own crippling loans.

Similarly, Americans benefitted massively from grants of land – 160 acre plots – to (pretty much) all comers in exchange for living on them and working them. This gave the agricultural middle class a big boost, and the land became the basis of their family wealth and legacy.

The biggest concentrated push away from the market was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s and 40s. Facing the depths of the worst depression ever, caused by the collapse of the stock market and the banks, FDR built out a series of programs to put a floor under all Americans. From public employment until they could find jobs to Social Security for all when they reached age 65, FDR took America towards the kinder, gentler status it had constantly fought for since its founding. FDR specifically aimed for “freedom from dependency on the markets.” It led to an unprecedented era of support for Americans, and the biggest addition to their wealth and wellbeing right through until the 1980s. In Konczal’s analysis: “The dislocations and insecurity caused by the expansion of capitalism give the government a justification to expand to try and address these problems, at the expense of civil and private institutions.”

FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, kept the flame alive by proposing Medicare For All, in 1946. It was beaten back, and took 30 more years before it was enacted by Lyndon Johnson’s administration – but only for seniors again. The Johnson administration was also the zenith of government activism on behalf of Americans. It was the era of auto safety, exhaust restrictions and better mileage. Senate committees were constantly shaming corporate greed. Mergers were denied. Drugs got a much closer look, and so did farm production and food safety. Female equality, voting rights and access for the disabled all flexed their new wings. Nixon then implemented pollution penalties.

Konczal shows the rollercoaster rise and fall of freedom from markets throughout US history. Starting in the late 1800s, the courts suddenly decided that government could not interfere in markets or contracts, damaging labor in favor of companies. “Freedom of contract” came out of nowhere to become a (bogus) foundational right in the courts. Courts affirmed companies’ right to pay workers in scrip they printed themselves, instead of US dollars. Scrip was valid only at the company store, where outrageous prices were set by the company. Conservative courts ruled it was absurd that they couldn’t do that.

In the early 1900s, Isaac Rubinow laid out the principles of free and social insurance. He was a Russian immigrant, a doctor. He was the kind of doctor who gave his own patients cash if they could not pay him. He left medicine for economics and statistics and became the American authority on social insurance worldwide. His argument against the Conservatives who opposed freedom from markets targeted their beliefs directly: If “freedom from anxiety as to the future must be demoralizing, then the character of the rich, who have no such worries, must already be destroyed. If being able to meet human needs must necessarily weaken our spirits to an equal degree, then all of human progress has been immoral.”

The problem, as Rubinow analyzed it, and as has become clear and obvious since, is that private insurance and private charities and nonprofits simply do not have the ability to reach everyone. Private pensions were businesses that needed to profit from their insureds. In Rubinow’s time, private pension funds ripped of customers so that as few as 10% actually collected anything at all. Charities could target emergencies and disasters, but even combined, they could not cast a net as widely as the federal government could. It was just never going to work, as we see on a daily basis today. The market does not take care of any issue. The country cannot rely on the market to do its job, caring for Americans.

Social insurance seems to work best when it is universal. The bureaucracy needed to monitor means testing, make denials and fight for them in appeals is a waste. Medicare should be for all. Pensions as well. A universal basic income would raise all boats as long as it was actually universal.

It was Ronald Reagan who turned the tables on Americans. Suddenly, government was the problem, not the solution. Tuition was an “investment” by the student in him or herself, and not for the government to have a hand in. Americans were suddenly welfare queens, lazy slobs who lived off the state. Even the mentally ill were tossed out of their institutions, and eventually ended up filling prisons instead. Prison became the number one institution for the mentally ill in America.

Americans could see the attack on higher education coming. As governor of California, Reagan was literally at war with the state’s universities. The protest movements of the 60s were his worst nightmare. He sent in paramilitary police. He accused the universities of hosting wild sex parties, on taxpayer dollars. As president, he choked off funds to the states, which choked off funds to the schools, forcing them to find other sources, namely their students. Tuition went from $650 to tens of thousands. Food pantries began appearing on campuses. Full time jobs became a critical necessity to stay in school. Volunteer work or work in nonprofits fell by the wayside, limiting students’ experience.

For those who could pay for it, schools began laying out the red carpet. All kinds of amenities became available as schools sought to attract the wealthy as much as the bright. Students became customers, whose every whim merited serious consideration. The result is a cheapening of universities and the degrees they confer, as well as impoverishment for non-rich students, often lasting their lifetimes. University degrees are no longer a ticket out of minimum wage lives.

For Konczal, it all boiled down to property rights. Reagan made property the fundamental freedom. Everything bent over to bow to property. Shareholders ascended, mergers blossomed, antitrust actions faded, banking was allowed to get totally out of control (again), and the average American began a long ignominious slide into irrelevance. The only thing that mattered was property, and the “masters of the universe” who leveraged it became American heroes. Wall Street and banking became the number one goal of college graduates. The poor became the enemy within. The market dictated ruthless efficiency, as if all Americans were simply commodities that might or might not fit its goals.

In case after case, chapter after chapter, Konczal shows the unintended consequences of keeping Americans subject to markets. It has basically never benefited them, and always hurt them. The manipulators reap fortunes at the expense of the average citizen. At some point, the pendulum will have swung too far and begin its return to the center. Konczal thinks he sees that now, as a new generation of activist politicians begins to make itself heard, to the great enthusiasm and relief of the voters who get the opportunity to elect such people. Despite the rantings of those in power, it has always been what Americans wanted, and they have always been better off for it.

David Wineberg

[Mark Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the best explainer I've seen in telling how neoliberal dogma gained a dominant foothold in American economic and social thinking; and in so doing it provides critical pointers for regaining lost ground in refuting that dogma and making people economically whole. If you've been looking for an objective foundation for debunking the false assumptions behind the push to privatize everything, Mike Konczal provides it here. The content is persuasive enough by itself, and the list of peer reviewers in the credits additionally confirms that this is not just the subjective work of yet another progressive.

Konczal covers issues that in past decades have taken a back seat to rent seeking by the very wealthy. These issues include providing sufficient health care, education, and public infrastructure. Credit and ownership of one's own labor is an essential element of a just economic system, including time for family, community involvement, and personal pursuits. History demonstrates that markets are far from being a panacea, and that the invisible hand has an agenda that is hardly natural—practicality shows a better way.

The history recounted is essential in providing relevance to 21st Century efforts toward restoring middle class prosperity—this time including all those left out of the original New Deal. In this book Konczal offers both hope and practical solutions from trails already blazed, essential tools in countering the well funded disinformation mechanisms that continue to be sustained in society by those who benefit inequitably from neoliberal policies. Mindful of the crucial battles won and lost throughout US history that are recounted in this book, we can achieve a strong and diverse middle class.

[Bobby Pillote · Rating 5 out of 5]

WARNING: Reading this book will radicalize you in favor of social democracy. Konczal brilliantly makes the arguments I wish I could have over the years in conversations with my dad and other conservatives. There can be no better summation of how over-reliance on “market-based” solutions leaves so many of us worse off. Anybody who dreams of universal social programs, admires the Nordic democracies, or knows what VAT is should read this book. If you’re looking for a a political manifesto for the 21st century, this is it.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Freedom from the Market, Mike Konczal has produced a tremendously important book that all progressive policymakers and designers owe it to themselves to read. At its core, this book is an argument for reclaiming the meaning and ownership of "freedom" from recent generations of market extremists who have defined it narrowly, only through the exercise of property rights and unregulated markets. Instead, Konczal argues, the historical American understanding of freedom is much, much wider: freedom is as much or more about what we choose to place outside the fickle, unequal nature of markets as what we define within them.

To make this argument, Konczal has put together a tremendously accessible and thoughtful jaunt through a history of American public policy. It's structured in eight chapters covering topics like the free land movement, the development of the five-day/forty-hour work week, and the history of public higher education. Even in the parts that I thought I knew a reasonable bit about (the development of Social Security and Medicare, for example), Freedom from the Market offers a different perspective that brings a broader vision of freedom to the foreground. The author cites an excellent variety of historical sources to contextualize his arguments and highlights how good policy design can make people more free as, for example, the creation of Medicare both freed millions of seniors from worrying about affording healthcare and also was crucial leverage to integrate southern hospitals and massively improve healthcare for millions of Black Americans. (Seriously, the improvements in Black infant mortality following integration were equal parts stunning and horrifying; read the book!)

This book is such an important corrective and an honest effort for progressives to reclaim values they have (largely unknowingly, but devastatingly) ceded to conservatives. In that cession, progressives have fallen into a trap. Now, the public sees other important values like equity and opportunity in tension with freedom, rather than directly flowing from it. The more-expansive vision of freedom Konczal explores in Freedom from the Market rights that order and demonstrates how a public-minded definition of freedom, one where everyone is truly able to pursue the good life, free from the vicissitudes of corporate dominion, the circumstances of their birth, and pure, dumb luck.

As these efforts so often are, it's an imperfect book. Some of the chapters are stronger than others, and several fly through large chunks of history at a dizzying pace that probably would have benefited by shifting from the page count devoted to a couple issues that were less well-constructed or bogged down by a focus on some individuals who weren't essential to the larger point. A longer, more complete work might also have attempted to engage more aggressively with the likely counterarguments to what the author argues, as well. (For example, lifespans are longer and even the poorest Americans today generally are much richer than they were. I agree with Konczal and don't find these arguments very compelling given the devastating consequences of inequality and the increasing precarity many Americans face, but it would be worth taking them on more explicitly).

That said, those flaws are minor when considered alongside this work's general brilliance. While there is certainly an excellent magazine piece in the heart of this book, the "insight/page ratio" is easily high enough that I award it my seal of approval for being a book instead (a rare compliment). This work ties together so many strands of progressive thinking I've been exploring but unable to articulate coherently. Well worth a read. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC!

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

While depth gets sacrificed for scope, this provides a good overview of how capital in different sectors has been funneled to the wealthy through political manipulation of markets. Particularly interesting commentary on the way that education became an individual responsibility (and therefore potential moral failing) rather than a collective benefit.

[Sarah left GR]

Interview with the author on the 1/21/21 episode of The Weeds: https://www.vox.com/the-weeds

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freedom from the Market by Mike Konczal is a clearly written but thorough examination of the ways in which capitalism is unable and unwilling to make life better and more equitable for all.

Each chapter examines a particular area (land, health, education, etc) and shows how the country has tried from its inception to provide for most of its citizens and how, particularly in the last several decades, market capitalism has undermined those benefits and offered some weak counter that inevitably widens the gap between the haves and the have nots.

The history here is well researched and accurate, as is the assessment of market capitalism. If a faux "former economics teacher" claims otherwise, ignore them, they have been just about everything in their pursuit of 1-starring any book that leans even a little left. I have no doubt there are likely some minor points glossed over, but I have yet to read a book that can lay claim to 100% accuracy in both fact and interpretation. This book is as close as any other to that ideal.

I would recommend this to any reader, regardless of where you currently stand on these issues, as long as you read it with an open mind. You may not agree with everything but you won't be able to honestly claim the history, theory, or application is objectively wrong. Your disagreement, if there is still any, will be about the subjective ideas for what we need to do now.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Dylan Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m biased (Konczal is a friend and I’m in the acknowledgments, which gives me more credit than I deserve but still) but this is a remarkable little book trying to connect one of America’s cardinal values to an agenda of active, agile, and unapologetically interventionist government.

Coming in at 187 pages, plus endnotes, it does not aim at comprehensiveness but instead is structured as a set of vignettes, each of which explores a different moment in which market values and freedom came into tension. Many of these stories are little-told and welcome in a popular volume, like the life story of IM Rubinow (father of social insurance), the desegregation of Southern hospital through the bargaining power of Medicare, and early American skepticism about intellectual property (which dates at least to Jefferson). I would read a whole book-length treatment of Konczal’s anecdote concerning the federal government’s decision to force AT&T to license its patent for the transistor - a decision that enabled the electronics and computing revolutions.

If I have a complaint it’s that I wanted more, a Konczalian treatment of American economic history that stretches hundreds or thousands of pages. But until Mike turns in his magnum opus, this is a wonderful synthesis and an important intellectual contribution to the project of imagining a post-neoliberal economic framework.

[Jud Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

For over a century now, American politicians on the right from Taft to Reagan to Cruz have relied on a single cheap-shot scare word to frighten voters: SOCIALISM [cue scary sounds and floating, ghostly faces of Fidel Castro and Vladimir Lenin]. It is an unfortunate reflection of the intellectual bankruptcy of American political culture that such a shallow device gets any traction at all, much less comprises the policy core of one of the two major parties.

Mike Konczal sets out to unplug this device (in effect) by showing how the real threat to American freedom comes from -- and has always come from -- the so-called "free" market.

He does this in three ways: first by showing that the Federal government has from the very outset intervened in the market by structuring it and directing it with cash outlays; second by showing the times in the past when the Federal government has bestowed resources on and enacted economic policy for the public at large as a way of correcting market imbalances; and third by demonstrating the times when and the manner in which the market has grossly offended the principles of freedom and democracy.

His approach is a historical one. His concern is that "in recent years, our historical consciousness has been clouded by glib libertarian fantasies where the government played no role in checking the market before the Progressive Era and the New Deal. In this fairy tale, there was no need for the state, especially the federal state, in creating capitalism itself, and no role it played in determining who would benefit from this nominally private marketplace. This is wrong, and we need to recover our genuine history of American freedom. We have forgotten that free programs and keeping things free from the market are as American as apple pie." (p. 4)

Chapter titles highlight fundamental areas of life in which, throughout American history, constitutional, democratic/republican processes have replaced (or attempted to replace) the monetary bias of the market to bestow freedom: free land, free time, free life, free security, free care, free health, free economy, and free education.

"Free Land," for example, is mostly an account of the Homestead Act of 1862, which in Konczal's words "provided a floor of opportunity for all those who were able to use it. It was a massive transfer of wealth, one of the largest in American history, to everyday people to provide for their families. Over the next seventy-six years, 3 million people applied for homesteads and nearly 1.5 million got them. That was a transfer of around 246 million acres of land, or 16 percent of the public domain. to give a sense of the scale, this is around 90 percent of the size of Texas and California combined. One estimate finds that 46 million Americans are descendants of those who received land under the originalHomestead Act. And all of it was free, given from the public domain to citizens willing to cultivate the land." (p. 31)

One of the heroes of the book is I.M. Rubinow, a doctor-turned-actuary-turned-statistician who made it is his business to become the recognized expert on international public- and private-sector models of insurance in order to be able to shape governmental policy in the direction of "social" insurance, which he defined as "the effort of the organized state to come to the assistance of he wage-earner and furnish him something he individually is quite unable to obtain for himself." (p. 62) Rubinow proved influential in the shaping of governmental policies for workmen's comp and social security. The latter became politically possible with the onset of the Depression, which prompted him to say that "the great American bubble of private philanthropy as a basis for social justice -- one might say the great American substitute for social policy -- has finally been burst." (p. 80)

Critics argued that "insuring someone's risks leads them to a state of moral degeneracy: being insured means they'll simply take more risks and that they will not look out for themselves." Rubinow's counter-argument: "If 'freedom from anxiety as to the future must be demoralizing,' then the character of the rich, who have no such worries, must already be destroyed. If being able to meet human needs must necessarily weaken ours [sic] spirits to an equal degree, then all of human progress had been immoral." (pp. 68-9)

Konczal doesn't shy from showing the ways in which ethnic bias blighted some of these programs: the homesteads of the West depended on clearing out the native Americans, and many progressive measures up through the New Deal and beyond were shaped by political considerations (the Solid South) that cheated African-Americans. But one of the fascinating by-products of the book is how first the Great Migration of African-Americans into northern states and then the civil rights movement (culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964) changed the face of the Democratic Party in the first case and, in the second, forced the desegregation of southern hospitals by way of the implementation of Medicare.

The book shows effectively how recent developments in government policy and corporate organization have not only weakened past accomplishments, but also fomented an ideology that purports to be conservative and patriotic, but is in fact nontraditional and radically anti-republican. The policy responses of New Deal progressivism were influenced in part by Founder skepticism of an unbridled market, as shown in FDR's remark that "[E]ven Jefferson realized that the exercise of the property rights might so interfere with the rights of the individual that the Government, without whose assistance the property rights could not exist, must intervene, not to destroy individualism, but to protect it." (pp. 77-8) Konczal offers here a sound corrective to the ideology that places "the market" rather than "freedom" at the heart of American values.

[Eric Bottorff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was honestly a little disappointed. It’s pretty good, but also rather lacking in originality. And some of the chapters don’t fit as nicely as he thinks they do into the overall theme, or only do by oversimplifying the history. Nonetheless, it’s a solid blow in the fight to reclaim the language of freedom for the left. And is something I would definitely recommend to people who aren’t aware of the histories and stories described. He’s also a very good writer, which obviously helps a lot.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a committed new liberal/neoliberal I don't generally tend to see government and business as fundamentally at odds - often they're merely different means to the same end, and it doesn't matter so much what label you put on a service provider as long as something gets done. But there is almost always a major tradeoff between the flexibility and responsiveness of the market against the stability and accountability of the government, and it is worth exploring the points in American history where we made deliberate choices to have the government provide services directly to see what worked and why. Konczal reviews the moments in American history where the government directly provided land for settlement, health care, childcare, education, social insurance, and more, making a powerful case that our post-Reagan (really post-Carter) deregulatory environment may have brought vast wealth but left us less in control in some important ways. Interestingly he doesn't even mention public utilities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Lower Colorado River Authority, even though those efforts were and are crucial to their states and would have made excellent examples of how little we have to fear from government-operated enterprises, but the rest of the book is a very useful history, and possibly a useful guide to the future as well, even if you are a little less bothered by market forces than he is. Perhaps the true essence of liberalism, whether neo- or paleo-, is in figuring out what works best for both the individual and for the people, and certainly that debate does not look like it will end anytime soon.

[Marvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't expected much from this book. I wasn't familiar with the author, but am interested in the subject, and consider myself reasonably knowledgeable on the subject I think some algorithm suggested I would like it, so I gave it a try. The algorithm was right.

To address inequality, there are a couple of paths an author could take. First, an author can drown you with charts, figures, and statistics to "prove" their point. Konczal does not take this path. Second, an author could highlight egregious outliers and say, "See this outrageous outlier...it's really common and you should be scared!!! Now that you're scared, read my book and believe everything I write!" Kind of like televised political punditry. Konczal does not take that path either.

Instead, Konczal takes a third path where he mixes retellings of 19th and 20th century American political economy and explains how a market-first approach coupled with an unhealthy obsesssion of corporate property rights (not as complicated as that mind sound), led to a decoupling of the public good from American capitalism. In its stead, and prompted by economists like Milton Friedman and politicians like Ronald Reagan, American capitalism placed primacy on the shareholder, not the worker, and then defined the market, rather than the people, as the highest purpose of government.

I learned a lot from this book and it is a quick read (I finished in four days - quick for me, at least).

[Matthew Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid overview of nearly two centuries of expansive (and understandably #problematic) legislation in the United States' history that shows our political imaginations need not be contained by the intellectual blinders of our political opponents.

It does a fine job connecting the ideological dots between recent histories of conservative intellectual movements of the 1970s and 1980s (including and especially the work of Nancy Fraser and Quinn Slobodian) and the crises downstream of these movements we find ourselves grappling with today, in terms of healthcare, income inequality and corporate consolidation. The book makes a clear, non-wonky and non-academic case for federal intervention in markets as an ethical good we should defend and expand.

If I have one complaint, I know the writer is a policy wonk for the Roosevelt Institute and I wish he'd included some more concrete policy prescriptions for each of the issued explored (especially since much of that work might feasibly be taken up by the Biden admin) but that's a minor quibble.

[Annie Jabs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing particularly special about this book but giving it 3 stars because it’s part of a genre I really enjoy. Much of the focus is on the public relations used by the proponents/detractors of radical bills or ideas. This was probably my only new takeaway from the book since the arguments themselves are all very high level. The crux of the book does rest on the belief that the government owes something to its citizen and that it can be effective at providing such services...which is a belief intuitive to some but anathema to others so I wish Konczal had explored that a little more at the outset.
Thesis of the book is that big business/late capitalism policies pushed by elites have created an "unfree" system in which the average person is dependent on a market that is fundamentally ill-equipped to provide them with basic needs. It looks back through American history to pinpoint 8 policies where the government almost instituted policies that either mitigated (e.g., Homestead Act) or prevented (e..g, universal healthcare) such a reliance but then either ultimately failed or the plan was cut up so badly it was rendered moot. In that sense the book is sort of depressing? The conclusion tries to end on an optimistic note but it seemed forced. Very much enjoyed “The Weeds” podcast episode promoting the book which I think is a more cogent explanation of Konzcal's argument.

[Winmonroe · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10

One of the best books on economic policy I have read in a long time. Konczal recovers the history of progressive american economic thought and battles, following those who have fought to structure the economy in a way that can empower and free people from the vicissitudes of the market. While historically focused, the book does not shy away from data and research or bigger picture philosopical questions. For example, following an overview of the history and research on childcare policy, the discussion broadens to probably the clearest articulation of what a progressive economic vision should be for a social welfare state against the precarity and injustice of the neoliberal turn most of us have grown up in (pages 112-114). The author has a blog named after the philosopher Richard Rorty, who once wrote that we should strive for "narratives which connect the present with the past, on the one hand, and with utopian futures, on the other." Freedom From the Market does exactly this for economics. Well researched and compellingly written, I'd strongly recommend it for anyone interested in economic policy.

[Brandon Westlake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like Konczal's book is able to put into words what many people are feeling, but don't really know how to express. The view of free markets as a manifestation of liberty sounds good in theory, but has a lot of flaws. What people don't realize, that I think Konczal does a good job explaining is that many people don't want to throw out all markets, but rather "de-marketize" some aspects of our lives. Sometimes, competition is not good. Rent-seeking behavior and market manipulation puts many people ahead at the expense of others. It also leaves out a lot of morality around the issue: should people be susceptible to the whims of those who have a larger hand in controlling the market?

Konczal also does a nice job explaining the alternative view: that talking about health-care reform, for instance, is socialism and tyranny. But, he does a not job explaining the philosophical shortcomings of such a stance. Reform does not necessarily mean a revolution.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freedom from the Market is a pretty well researched book with a common theme that stayed on topic. It provides a concise but holistic look at the history of social welfare philosophy, charting the huge swings in national political discussion about what freedom even means.

I do think Konczal missed a rather large chunk of the driving force behind the change in public opinion between the Reagan years and now, placing too much emphasis on the emergence of Miltonian economic thought as a unique invention rather than a reaction to increasing upward mobility of women and minorities. I'm not saying this definitively, but it deserved more exploration.

I haven't read it yet, but I think Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us would provide a really excellent pairing with this book, covering some of the nuances of so-called drained-pool politics that Konczal missed.

The deciding factor between 3 and 4 starts was the quality of the writing.

To use a sports analogy, it's like these powerful companies are both a player in the game, trying to win, but also a referee as well, making calls on all the other players as well

It's hard to muddle through writing like this. Everything from sentence structure to chapter organization needed work.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction that Konczal gives is quite strong and is the stand out portion of the book. His musings on market forces that dominate US life are quite compelling. He lays out his book as a ‘history of people fighting against market dependency’ with four arguments against reliance alone on markets, and the rest of the book does a pretty good job of supporting this thesis with a bit of retreads if one is a bit familiar with these topics in areas such as health care, education, social insurance, etc. It’s not super dense to treat any one of a broad set of topics in the depth needed and that’s where it suffers a little bit although he did give a nice detour into the writings of Isaac Rubinow, but these are kind of minor quibbles on an otherwise fine overview of the deleterious effects of overreliance on market forces.

[Hayling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another helpful reminder that on economics is more philosophy than math.

Using historic examples, Konzcal traces the evolution of property rights and public goods in the US, advocating for government’s role in unlocking the “emancipatory potential of decommodification.”

In short: “The romance of markets as self-correcting, dynamic and resilient machines has made us forget… how necessary the legal and political environment is to creating innovation and prosperity, and how vulnerable it becomes when the economy is treated as the mere property of owners.”

I’ll be holding onto the notion of property as a “horizontal” relationship between people, rather than a “vertical” relationship between individuals and what we own. Something to consider for those trying to be thoughtful participants in this system we’ve inherited.

[Julian Gerez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book Winners Take All should have been. A great read on the places where the market fails and the government has to step in—importantly it’s a history of the times the government has stepped in successfully, so it offers a clear and coherent path forward (for most of the chapters). It also highlights the importance of rhetoric and politics in passing such progressive policies, which the “podcast Left” seems to completely ignore in favor of disparagement. My only complaint was that a few times the book hopped too quickly across different time periods within each chapter so it was a bit confusing to follow.

[Kenan Sprague · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second to last chapter (IIRC - the one about corporations) felt like it could’ve been fleshed out more, but otherwise this was a very comprehensive read on the roots of US social policy, and the logic of returning to those roots after several decades of neoliberal revisionism.

Also a great explanation of the need for a practical, rather than merely theoretical, view of the whole idea of freedom. Very much in the same vein as FDR’s “freedom from want” principles etc.

Full of illuminating historical facts and narratives that I was either only loosely aware of or totally new to - learned a ton. Very well written as well, an easy read. Highly, highly recommend.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was generally a pretty good book, even if it felt like it was a history—a quite interesting one—of American resistance to market fundamentalism with a short section on policy recommendations thrown in at the end. I also felt that the chapter on the history of corporations was weak and a bit unconvincing, and I would've liked to see a longer and more persuasive version of it. On the other hand, I definitely learned quite a bit about how the Great Society was used to desegregate hospitals, which is something I'd never really known about at all. And the history of Social Security was quite interesting as well.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Defining market regulation and social safety net programs as pro-freedom is an interesting (and I think successful) argument. I don't know if anyone before Konczal has argued this, but I thought the book was illuminating and novel.

The narrative seemed a little disjointed - more like a series of essays than a coherent whole. Most of the material in the book was not new to me but was framed in a novel fashion. I definitely recommend.

[Andrea Stephenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review. The book is very direct and details out how America has wanted to provide free services but we are unable to. The book explores the history of offering these services and how they have been terminated. The book was eye opening to me - as this is not an subject that I have explored much prior to this.

[John Mihelic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good, short book laying out many of the ways that the market has crept up on us and made our lives smaller.

Konczal provides necessary pushback to the neoliberal project, showing just everything that we have lost as the forces of capital decided that the Great Society, the New Deal, and the Progressive Era were bridges too far against the corporate form.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept waiting for either a conceptual framework or a call to action or a synthesis, but it never came. Sure this book does a decent job exploring American historical precedents for progressive ideas, but it feels disjointed. The writing is decent, and I had a bunch of highlights and notes, but it needed more.

[Devin Lowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing but good things to say about this book (except that it was maybe too short!). I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the use of Medicare to desegregate Southern hospitals, showing the power of universal programs to address racial injustices. Thankful for the detailed bibliography as well, will definitely be digging into a lot of the source material.

[Jonathon Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most striking thing to me about the various topics covered in the book is the historical precedents for things that seem fringe / crazy today. For example, the chapter on "Free Education" discusses public college and how it was largely free until the 70s. It makes many of the ideas seem much more reachable, to think that they in fact were attainable in the past.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to give copies of this book to all my conservative friends and relatives (mostly relatives) and tell them, 'THIS! THIS is what we're talking about when we say X is a right, and you say but who's going to pay for it, and we say that's not as important as doing it, and...' round and round and round.

Eh, who am I kidding. None of them would ever read it anyway.