Paul Horton: Free Market Education Reform -- Evidence vs. Ideology
Guest post by Paul Horton.
Law Professor and Political Scientist Bernard Harcourt published an important book in 2011 called The Illusion of Free Markets. I went to his local book talk and chatted with him a couple of times about the book before he left Chicago to travel to the Sorbonne on some fancy fellowship. So did my brother Scott at Harper's.
Bernard basically argues that markets have always been regulated, paying special attention to market regulation by guilds in early modern France.
The real question to ask is, who should do the regulating, some sort of outside governmental entity or the market itself?
As we all know a debate grew out of this argument, Adam Smith articulated the possibilities of an expanded and unregulated local and international marketplace bracketed by phrases like "nature suggests" or "nature recommends."
The thirties global depression poured sugar into the gas tank of global capitalism and governments grew to create demand by creating jobs, and reform and regulate markets.
Some of these governments turned out to be more than just scary and conservative economists