A common assumption among many people, included many of those who describe themselves as libertarians, is that we live in a free market world. That the market is free and dominated by freely exchanging actors seems a given. Every “market failure” is commonly seen as a market flaw that needs be corrected by the action…

Iain Levison’s A Working Stiff Manifesto (2002) reads like a less political and more sardonic version of Barbara Ehrenreich’s tale of the working poor in America, Nickel and Dimed. The subtitle, A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine that Fired me, and Three I Can’t Remember means that Levison gives a more detailed account…