Book Review: The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
In this book Joseph Stiglitz effectively shreds the destructive neoliberal economic dogma that has caused such immense suffering for the past 50 years. Siglitz artfully debunks the theories of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek so that they now no longer may be asserted as if they were axiomatic truths. As the title of this book deliciously pans Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom, Siglitz demonstrates with overwhelming empirical evidence and associated supporting logic how the neoliberal heaven of absence of regulation has produced exactly the opposite of freedom, and has instead produced a serfdom of its own, in which people have no freedom to be themselves for fear of losing their livelihoods.
Stiglitz frequently references John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” throughout the book as a means of achieving the necessary impartiality in implementing the economics of a good society—treating everyone according to their inherent humanity is always good policy. Stiglitz effectively exposes the lie of neoliberalism that claims the answer is an unrestrained free market, by objectively demonstrating that there is no such thing as a free market, as all of society is rigged at so many different levels—and he damningly illustrates how Friedman and Hayek (and their disciples) knew this to be true and deliberately ignored this inconvenient evidence.
Government regulation, on the other hand (as Stiglitz illustrates in this book), has demonstrated its superior economic effects by the results it produces—greater advances in research, higher productivity, and greater wealth for all who accept its reasonable restraints on excesses. It’s readily evident that neoliberalism has no plan (except to let the bullies rule the playground)—in stark contrast, properly executed industrial policy does provide the necessary framework and energy for all people to be prosperous (not just a few kleptocratic oligarchs). Fortunately there are increasing numbers of voices correcting the disinformation of neoliberalism, among whom Joseph Stiglitz is a most prominent voice. Let’s join them in advancing this common sense doctrine and send neoliberalism into the abyss where it belongs—for the sake of all of us.