The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market - Naomi Oreskes

The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America's most tenacious-and destructive-false ideas: the myth of the "free market." Merchants of Doubt exposed the origins of climate change denial. Now, its authors unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma. Why do Americans believe in the “magic of the marketplace”? The answer, as The Big Myth reveals: a propaganda blitz. Until the early 1900s, the U.S. government's guiding role in economic life was largely accepted. But then business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies combatted regulation by building a new orthodoxy: down with “big government,” up with unfettered markets. Unearthing eye-opening archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to re