Schumpeter Would Not Be Surprised

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Editor:

I’m grateful to Barton Swaim for eloquently reviewing Jacob Soll’s Free Market: The History of an Idea and thereby saving me from suffering the exasperation that would come from my slogging through yet another of the many ill-informed and ideologically blinkered briefs against free markets (“‘Free Market’ Review: The Olympians v. Laissez-Faire,” September 9). I can’t tell if there’s more irony or dark comedy in the fact that the market that Soll and his audience are convinced works so poorly nevertheless unfailingly satisfies today’s intense demand for ignorant diatribes against capitalism by prompting major publishing houses to churn out a steady supply of such diatribes – and, no doubt, paying their authors handsomely.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030