...For as long as I can remember, people on the left have complained about “unfettered capitalism.” Moderate liberals do it, and of course flat-out Marxists do it.
...Joseph Stiglitz contends that the only way we’ll be able to confront climate change is through a new social contract.
“Capitalism will be part of the story, but it can’t be the kind of capitalism that we’ve had for the last 40 years,” Stiglitz writes. “It can’t be the kind of selfish, unfettered capitalism where firms just maximize shareholder value regardless of the social consequences.”
Senator Bernie Sanders said earlier this year that “we have to talk about democratic socialism as an alternative to unfettered capitalism.”
History texts insist that the New Deal followed in the wake of the unfettered capitalism of the 1920s. The Progressive Era, we’re told, was in part a response to the unfettered capitalism of the late 19th century and the “Gilded Age.” In 1987, the Milwaukee Journal reported that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev planned “to visit Trump Tower, that glittering monument to unfettered capitalism.” In 2016, The Nation, a journal that has been at war with “unfettered capitalism” for nearly a century, ran an essay explaining that America got President Donald Trump because of “America’s brand of largely unfettered capitalism.”
...My response to this dismaying development is: What on earth are these people talking about?
...Now, if you think we don’t spend, regulate, or tax enough, fine. Make your case. If you think we should spend and tax differently, I’m right there with you. But the notion that the United States is a libertarian fantasyland is itself a fantasy. I mean, by the Hammer of Thor, every summer we get stories of kids being fined for running lemonade stands without a license.
My frustration stems from the fact that we “fetter” the market constantly. And whenever the fetters yield an undesirable result — such as, say, the financial crisis of 2008 — the blame always lands on eternally unfettered capitalism....
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