C4SS Feed 44 presents Steve Horwitz‘s “Will Truly Free Markets be Truly Different?” read and edited by Tony Dreher.

As I have argued before, I find it a very convenient coincidence that the left-libertarian picture of a free market society just happens to line up almost exactly with the world that many on the traditional left desire. Eliminating all the influence that the state might have does not magically transform all of the stuff the left doesn’t like about really-existing capitalism into alternative arrangements that they (would) like. It is an open question how much statism it takes to conclude that the truly free market will look very little like actual capitalism. It’s my own belief that the underlying economic processes matter more for the relevant costs and benefits than do the distorting effects of the state, and along more margins, than the left-libertarians believe. I might well be wrong, but the danger for the left-libertarians is that they are making the same sort of utopian (in the bad sense) promises that have been made by the traditional left. If people are skeptical of that utopianism, it may also backfire onto more mainstream libertarians.

Feed 44:

http://www.c4ss.org/
http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

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