Market Economy. Institutional Foundations of Prosperity

Read sample chapters online

Mankind history has revealed itself in two different instances: either as the history of the fight for freedom, or as the fight for undermining freedom in society.„The power of freedom" or „the freedom of power"? - This is the ultimate question that political philosophy and economics are both facing. The very removal of such doubt opens the way to the blessings of economic knowledge, offering the possibility to imagine a society with a just and ethical institutional order and - as a corollary - generator of the so much desired prosperity. We say „as corollary" because the very „spirit" of capitalism is one of personal freedom, and not necessarily of material prosperity and capital accumulations, which are also a result of liberty.

Emulating Tocqueville, we do not share the view that true love for freedom was born simply by cherishment of its procured material goods. For this reason, the market economy, as the completion of the individual liberty as opposed to the power of the state, is naturally transcending the material prosperity frame. The "power of liberty" springs from the love for freedom, which is love for the other. In opposition, the "freedom of power" betrays the love for power, which mirrors the love for the self.

This book was written with the belief that the teachings of economics, braided with the virtue of Christian morality would be the "complete lesson", both necessary and sufficient, for the useful use of the gift of thinking. The consequence of such a creed is precisely this intellectual quest, abundant as thematic, young and enthusiastic from the research point of view. In this we filtered - through the rigor of logic - the idea that a market economy (capitalism or the order of private property) is the natural state of human society.

All along the picture of the market economy, one we wanted complete, we showed why the good faith has to form the vital guiding principle of the scientist. That is to offer and to defend the right, correct, healthy ideas that protect life, against the incorrect ideas that would, sooner or later, destroy it. In the modern world, built by and around state policies, in the rare situations when the economist is not tempted to dress the suit of the policy-maker, he holds an extra responsibility for the destiny of the ideas he promoted.