Avoiding Economic Extremes

One of the claims for which Daniel Altman argues in Outrageous Fortunes is that neither a purely capitalist nor a completely communist economic system is sustainable in the long term. Among other problems, unrestricted capitalism tends to result in market failures that create inequality and in opportunities taken by people with more resources rather than by people with more talent. And uncompromised communism tends to fail due to isolation from wider markets and the difficulty of central planning. What is needed is an appropriate balance between control and regulation on the one hand and freedom and privatization on the other.

Capitalism Then & Now

In The Worldly Philosophy, Robert Heilbroner traces the history of the discipline of economics. He looks to Adam Smith as its founder, since Smith was the first to attempt a thorough and comprehensive description and explanation of capitalism. Before Smith’s time, there had not been a free market. Instead, the material needs and wants of societies had been fulfilled (or left unmet) by systems governed by tradition or government edict. Since Smith, other theorists, such as Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Hobson, Veblen, and Keynes came along to make economic observations, prognostications, and prescriptions. What is the state of capitalism today?