Free Market: The History of an Idea

Jacob Soll - Free Market: The History of an Idea

Prof Jacob Soll will join the Rhodes Center to discuss his new book "Free Market: the History of an Idea"

From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first century

After two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed.

Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.

Jacob Soll is University Professor and a professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California. The author of The Reckoning and The Information Master, Soll is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the MacArthur “Genius” grant. He lives in Los Angeles.

[briandenzer]

Attempting to debunk economic myths may be one of the most important tasks of our era to save the planet.

[dolphin]

Possibly one of the most interesting and important lectures given this decade.

[dangle]

This man has shattered my view on economics.

[davidwilkie]

So that was a discovery, they, the Lairds, sent loaded ships into the Irish sea to sink, and my ancestors made it all the way to Tasmania.., filled with eternal resentment.
Very edifying lecture. Thanks.

[ivanferraz]

He confirmed what I've learnt in History classes when I was just 12 years old. Maybe, the economist Mariana Mazzucatto talks aboout the myth of free market in a more economic approach, but also desmistifying it like he did briliiantly in this lecture in an Economic History manner.

[clumsydad]

Fantastic and semi-mind blowing talk; only semi- as many of us already knew about the myths. But I had never heard of Colbert so that was revelatory. Also great discussion on the England-France economic competitions of the 17th and 18th centuries, something most of us Americans forget/take for granted. Also the now well documented role of state spending, programs, and infrastructure in forming functioning markets, and how later the 'free market' mantras and myths are used by developing nations to prey on colonial or third world humans. As you say, economics has washed its hands of its own history. Social sciences like psychology, sociology and history readily acknowledge their errors and limited views/understanding of the past, but economics is strident in defending a narrow and mythical point of view deeply embedded in bias, power, and privilege. As Mr. Soll says, it's only the beginning of our understanding (and creation) of systems of wealth, distribution, and sustainability ... civilization has yet only begun - we'll just have to see how painful our corrective lessons will be.

[swaguelclemens]

Who would've thought that in an era defined by government centralization and the extension of state authority, the state would play a major role in guiding economics!

[StabilityReport]

Thanks. Enlightening, not least on the Enlightenment! Gotta read the whole book, though. Damn it. Thought I was past

[robbliss]

At 16:36 Soll misinterprets what Smith is saying. Smith is not saying that “you can get rich farming”. He is saying that farming is more labor intensive than alternative uses of capital. I.e. “quantity of labor” is not the same as “return on capital”. Seems obvious.

[JJ-frki]

1:03:22 Cambridge has a full professor of philosophy who does free-market debunking as part of her work as a serious, philosopher of social science, whose brain hasn’t been poisoned by dusty archives—Prof. Alexandrova. You Prof. Soll should do a survey of the economic revolution underway and talk to contemporary post-analytic philosophers of social science along with critical remedial work.

[richardsawicki]

"He got caught.. " Famous last words? I HOPE NOT ! Looking forward to Jackson's next episode ! That WILL be a relief !

[clumsydad]

yo, Rhodes Center peeps, I think it would be great to mention in the description Dr. Soll's contrast/analysis between Jean-Baptiste Colbert and Adam Smith (those two names are not found in the summary above). This is the main content of his talk. Thank you !!

[JJ-frki]

Ok this is outlandish and I’m a fan of C. and Post-Chicago exonomics and we’ll read in 19th century heterodox exonomics.

[JJ-frki]

36:39 Running log of errors: Car invented in Germany, Plane in Dayton, USA; Cinema contested patent but Edison solved the critical chemistry problem that made it practical.
Also WRONG: British Common Wealth still larger than France’s “empire”. The lingua franca is English.

[robbliss]

at 10:00: Soll claims that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the first publicly traded multinational company (whatever that means) The VOC was founded in 1602, the British East India Company was chartered in 1600 as a joint stock company. I doubt how "publicly traded" the shares were. They were probably privately traded.

[TheCommonSNse]

I always love pointing out the context that Adam Smith was writing in when speaking to someone who believes in the Austrian school. He was writing in a monarchy, complaining about the monarchy. When he says “the government”, or “the public”, or “the sovereign”, he is talking about the monarchy. The Austrians just took his complaints about “the government” (aka monarchy) and applied them with no modifications to the current government system (aka democracy), as if there was zero real economic distinction between the two.

I knew that part but I didn’t know how many errors and contradictions he made on top of that. I would never criticize him as being ill-informed or unintelligent, but he was someone writing with a particular bias in a time before they had access to the amounts of data we have today. He’s not perfect, and he’s not an idiot. He provided some important aspects of economical understanding, but he also completely whiffed on a bunch of things. The same thing could be said for most economists… it’s just that nobody builds a shrine to them.

Either way I will definitely be buying this book!

[cyberpunkalphamale]

13:35 Margaret Jacob and Matthew Kadene

[Henry-teach-Chinese-in-jokes]

I’ve spent about 100, 000 hours studying English humor and Western culture, and about 100, 000 hours studying Chinese culture. My native language is Chinese. I teach Chinese in humorous way and with cute pictures.
Hope somebody recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese

[cameronmclennan]

Really interesting talk, but it seems like he didn't really search very widely for similar histories. I read the Norwegian economist Erik Reinert's "How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" 15 years ago and learnt many of the same developments.

From the blurb:
"In this refreshingly revisionist history, Erik Reinert shows how rich countries developed through a combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment, rather than through free trade. Reinert suggests that this set of policies in various combinations has driven successful development from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite its demonstrable sucess, orthodox developemt economists have largely ignored this approach and insisted instead on the importance of free trade. Reinart shows how the history of economics has long been torn between the continental Renaissance tradition on one hand and the free market theories of English and later American economies on the other. Our economies were founded on protectionism and state activism—look at China today—and could only later afford the luxury of free trade. When our leaders come to lecture poor countries on the right road to riches they do so in almost perfect ignorance of the real history of national affluence."

[alicianieto]

I had higher hopes when he mentioned that he was going to go into the anlgo-dutch victory narrative, but I'll take what I can get. Good talk. It is still kind of funny to see someone having to work so hard just to say "yeah, those powers that got their culture everywhere were strong and narratives based on religious exceptionalism should be reviewed" Kinda worrying that we are still there