Toward a Truly Free Market
Official Book Description
"For three decades free-market leaders have tried to reverse longstanding Keynesian economic policies, but have only produced larger government, greater debt, and more centralized economic power. So how can we achieve a truly free-market system, especially at this historical moment when capitalism seems to be in crisis?
The answer, says John C. Médaille, is to stop pretending that economics is something on the order of the physical sciences; it must be a humane science, taking into account crucial social contexts. Toward a Truly Free Market argues that any attempt to divorce economic equilibrium from economic equity will lead to an unbalanced economy—one that falls either to ruin or to ruinous government attempts to redress the balance.
Médaille makes a refreshingly clear case for the economic theory—and practice—known as distributism. Unlike many of his fellow distributists, who argue primarily from moral terms, Médaille enters the economic debate on purely economic terms. Toward a Truly Free Market shows exactly how to end the bailouts, reduce government budgets, reform the tax code, fix the health-care system, and much more."
Review
Richard Aleman:
"So what is the Distributist solution? What is a genuine free market?
The author suggests certain steps are needed to achieve a free market. Corporate tax subsidies must be eradicated so that the collectivizing of production and the strong political power of corporations can be eliminated. The federal budget—which consumes approximately 20 percent of our Gross Domestic Product—will also have to be curbed and slashed and, most importantly, our economy must be transformed into a political arrangement of distributed ownership. Only a decentralized economy holds the key to a sane tax structure, material stability for the masses, and a legitimate free market.
Toward a Truly Free Market is a meticulous analysis of our economic system, its crisis, a critique of capitalism and socialism, and a brilliant look at the ideas and economic foundations of the Distributism solution. With chapters dedicated to the fictitious commodities of money, labor, and land, the proper exercise of government, taxes and economic rent, and an entire chapter devoted to the real answer to health care, Médaille has written a masterful follow-up to his impressive The Vocation of Business. But perhaps the book’s “Building an Ownership Society” will be the most appetizing chapter for Distributists. This chapter includes the trade, agrarian, banking, and industrial reforms needed to rebuild the local economy and restore subsidiarity.
John Médaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market is the book Distributists have been waiting for. The way to fix our economy begins with understanding our economy, and this book will be necessary reading for layman and academic alike. As satisfying a read as the author’s previous effort, this explicitly Distributist work is bound to present a challenge to skeptics who have doubted the viability of Distributism, educate those unfamiliar with it, and present a long-awaited opus for its supporters." (http://distributistreview.com/mag/2011/02/toward-a-truly-free-market-a-review/)