Mark’s Reviews > The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time > Status Update

Dated but still relevant as the view we have today of the poor and the unemployed have not changed from a market perspective. With new classifications for the unemployed like; functionally unemployed, and ‘gig’ workers, it looks like labor, as a factor of production, is under more pressure than ever.

While many ‘classic’ economists, and I am not an economist but I teach high school IB economics, may consider Polanyi and his contemporaries as ‘dated’, or irrelevant in today’s world, the fact remains that his ideas on the dangers of unregulated markets are more poignant than ever. ‘Free’ markets are mythical unicorns whose rainbows distract societies from the dark and stormy realities of capitalism.