Rather than distinguishing between public and private goods, as Rick Wilson does, I think a more useful distinction is between standard of living items versus quality of life. Modern economists focus almost exclusively on the former and ignore the latter almost completely.

Another book you should add to your list, nearing, is Amory Lovins "Natural Capitalism".

I wanted to bring up two ideas: "The World Is Flat" by America's free market darling TF and another interesting read (available free online) "War Is A Racket" by Smedley Butler.

First of all, the 10 technological flatteners Friedman suggests have "flattened the world" to a level playing field have not even begun to chip away at the mountain ranges of injustice that span the globe! Good God!

Free markets will save humanity from itself? How? Armageddon?

It's all a crock of crap! My father still believes that more "good" in the world comes from selfish behaviors than unselfish ones. It drives me up the wall!

Wars and injustices will continue to ratchet up worldwide hostilities as long as free market capitalism is the model for the world. I want to make a t-shirt that states ironically "Jesus Was A Free Market Capitalist!"

Smedley Butler hit the nail on the head when he suggested that the way to world peace was to make war very costly for the rich. There would never be another war! Or at least not an unnecessary one!

I believe the whole world should make all profits from war, even $1, a war crime punishable by loss of all social status. In other words, if convicted, you could still be a laborer, but you could never again hold public office or a professional license or a business license. It should be a stamp of great moral shame to have profited from such an enterprise as modern warfare. Yet America's economy would be nothing without it.

jpoverseas

I discussed the pre-capitalist market place as opposed to the capitalist market in my previous post.

It historically and theoretically describes the economic relationships you presented.

Ironically, it is the "hip" Third World young that collaborate with the market-busting activities of Western corporations.

For example, traditional popular or folk music is ignored or denigrated by the "rebellious" young because neither measures up to hip-hop, rap, heavy metal, punk, etc.

Those old songs are sooooo boring and backward. Who needs coconut milk, horchata, etc. when you can consume either Pepsi or Coke.

Ohioan,

What you're looking for is readily available in most any market--small village or big city--in that nasty dirty poor underdeveloped third world. It is truly a delight to find and buy what you need in such places. Been shopping there for years and haven't gotten sick once. But, of course, such venues are just so primitive and "inefficient" they'll disappear in the face of modern "markets" like 7-11.

Traditional markets generally fulfill Adam's conditions for free markets: "at their best when they distribute private goods in a situation which isn't dominated by any one or few industries and where sellers and buyers have adequate information." Notice that both multiple producers and adequately , i.e., not by PR and ad flaks, informed consumers are what the corporate gods and their worshipers do everything in their power to thwart. Funny how those folks selectively read poor reality based Adam the way many of the fundies read the Bible: find the bits that suit your obssessions and thump hard.

Love to see them "free market" types in their power clothes and electronic jewelry haggle with an smiling gracious older Thai woman in Mae Sai's central market. Talk about reality slaps. 'Course Thailand is working hard to eliminate such impolite behavior by its citizens: there are, by an informal if extensive survey, 7-11s on every city corner and in every miniscule village. Probably thanks largely to TV the American imports are well patronized by the younger people, but the older wiser folks shun them for the truly free markets.

Back to the future, eh?

"We'll be handing out Pulitzers for graffiti next!"

That's pretty funny.

Since no market created by the hand of man works in an ideal Bell jsr, there is no such thing as a free market. No. Such. Thing. No one even ever sets out to create one. What once had a spontaneous origin to exchange surplus crops and livestock for other surplus crops and livestock got harnessed pretty early on to some ruler's political agenda.

"Free market" works better for private goods and services than for public? Brilliant! Of course there are things the market should keeps its grasping fingers off - the commonweal!

It took three eggheads to come up with this observation? They got a Nobel for this? We'll be handing out Pulitzers for graffiti next!

The FREE market actually works best when Bush gives his friends enormous no bid contracts for Free.

Another example of free market economics is when the government Freely allows Enron to monopolize an industry and lets them Freely rape the customers depending upon a Utility company for electricity.

Free Market really works well when we eliminate competition and allow Exxon and Mobil to join forces and establish an ologopy to control oil prices.

The Free Market works best for the people when government gives out billions of American taxpayer dollars as free market incentives to giant corporations to help subsidize an industry.

I hope Milton Friedman and his conservative free market lunatics rest in peace, it would be nice if the Nobel Prize now being given to liberal economists could help put a stake thru the heart of the Reaganites Greed is good philosophy?

To me, a free market is where I go and find:

Many suppliers and their products for sale at their price they are willing to sell.

I look for what I need and choose from all the sellers.

I look at their products.

I choose which one provides what I need for the price I am willing to spend.

Then I say " I'll give you this much for that."

If they agree, I will offer less the next time.

If they will not sell at my choice price, I will look around some more.

That is what I call a free market.

If the Us/Community need some product/service for our common collective need, we must do all the above and buy or find another option for our common need. How bad do we really need what we, as a community, need for our common good. How much are we willing to contribute, and are there other options.

Just my humble opinion on free markets.

Braudel spent most of his academic career attempting to distinguish between capitalist and pre-capitalist markets.

Markets and market places have existed for millenia.

Within pre-capitalist market places, prices were dictated by face-to-face haggling skills; the dualists were many times surrounded by an appreciative and engaged audience. If one of the two parties didn't find the outcome just, a prestigious and informal market judge was appealed to.

(Many of the best hagglers tended to be older women; thus the negative term, hag.)

Pre-capitalist long-distance trade was networked through a chain of face-to-face peddler transactions. Very few institutions could financially speculate on the final pricing outcome of these intimate and ethnically relative peddler transactions.

Because no government protected long-distance traders and peddlers, they usually had to pay for personal protection or for the protection of their convoys.

No state taxes were wasted protecting them especially if they raised food prices during periods of famines or food shortages.

This lack of pre-capitalist elite protection was especially acute if money-lenders loaned monies to members of the aristocracy or court: it was easy to not repay them or,if needed, to expel them.

Why could pre-capitalist oligarchs expel them? Many peddlers were ethnic outsiders such Lombards in England, German Hansa merchants in Russ, Norway, etc. or Jews within several "Christian" militarized monarchical states or city-states.

These ethnic outsiders possessed few rights as compared to the kingdom's subjects.

Capitalist markets emerged with the rise of state-sponsered joint-stock companies protected by the sponsering nation's navy

These new East and West India, Hudson Bay, etc. Companies produced and traded in mass-marketed staple goods that combined long-distance trade with local trade. This combination of local and international markets destroyed the social boundaries that kept the genie in the bottle -the market PLACE.

The new, faceless private bureaucratic organizations were both legally birthed by their state of origin; these states-within-states become today's transnational corporation.

Within the countries these companies were headquartered, they instituted plucratic seagoing republics. External to these states, they violently reorganized the world into colonies, slave producing nations, dependencies and settler colonies.

For example, the English East India Company eventually privately ruled all of the sub-continent of India. The Hudson Bay Company privately ruled a large chunk of the future Canada.

In other words, capitalist markets emerge with state-protected monopolies or oligopolies. They were never defined by "free" markets.

In the richest capitalist states, the political norm was never particpatory democracy or freedom. It was, at best, an elite or plutocratic form of democratic republic (or constitutional monarchy).

Don't forget E.F. Schumacher and his books SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL and GOOD WORK. Also one of the most interesting intellectual but humanitarian and enjoyable economist/philosophers John Kenneth Galbraith -- all of his works display a profound study and thoughtfulness not likely to be seen again.

Economics as a "SCIENCE" is a bad joke and a huge step backwards for the human race. It is a greed-motivated delusion used to create a justification for government and academia supported resource hoarding by the wealthy.

And yeah, did we need a Nobel Prize to tell us the obvious -- markets are no substitute for societal conscience and good government. How much longer are we going to be hoodwinked by the right-wing greed machine?

Speaking of "markets", don't you look forward to the day when Republicans replace your group health plan with private insurance "choices"? So there are then as many insurance ads on TV as prescription drug ads? With all of those ads as truly informative about price and features as the AFLAC duck? And with you paying for all the "competitive" marketing, built right into your (required by law) premiums?

Then we'll get some more economists to tell us how well that did or didn't work out (AFTER the transition is done and irreversible, of course.)

It's nice to know that good work, as well as bad, can win this prize. It's like the Pulitzer, too often awarded for flawed work that supports the status quo.

TANSTAAFM: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Market. It is merely an ideal like a perpetual motion motion.

"Adam Smith's classical metaphor of the invisible hand refers to how the market, under ideal conditions, ensures an efficient allocation of scarce resources. But in practice conditions are usually not ideal; for example, competition is not completely free, consumers are not perfectly informed and privately desirable production and consumption may generate social costs and benefits."

The ideal conditions for the markets to work may be collapsed into one mega-condition. This mega-condition may be applied not only to markets but to civic affairs, and even personal affairs, i.e. it becomes the expanded golden rule to ensure the health of the society if the people will it.

The mega-condition for the markets and the entire society to work can be remembered from Jefferson's quote: "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." When the people are enlightened, consumers are informed, competition is enforced, and privately desirable exchange is limited to avoid damage to the society.

Enlightenment requires discipline and sometimes the government has to impose discipline but it's acceptable as long as the people realize the benefits of the collective sacrifice. As we see, people tend to behave like sheep. It's a helluva lot better if sheep-like behavior benefits the collective rather than benefiting an abusive destructive capitalist hierarchy.

So now we know the capitalists are completely disconnected from their foundation. Are we going to enlighten the people now? K-12 civics curriculum to start? Or do we shut down the cable/satellite channels first?

Thanks, nova! This is great.

I have applied for the "Green MBA' program at Domincan and am hungry to start reading some of these authors before school starts in January.

I am more than halfway through Klein's book - fascinating. And now have a list to go from there thanks to you all.

Nearing: You should also check out Herman Daly for ecological economics. As for Jeffrey Sachs, be sure to read journalist Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" to get another angle on his role in various neoliberal projects and for a riveting page-turner on the whole neoliberal project worldwide. Korten's "When Corporations Rule the World" is now something of a classic if you're looking for perspective. While not an economist, Frances Moore Lappe has a new book out, "Getting a Grip," which definitely addresses this issue and is a good follow-up to Klein's blockbuster if you're feeling the need to take action.

pdf -

You missed the point that the "Nobel" economics prize has up to now been awarded only to right-wing "market fundamentalists" of the type that, over the last decades, have come to dominate (with the help of private endowments and political interference) academic economics departments in the US and, increasingly, worldwide.

This award is kind of a breakthrough for economists with more "reality-based" theories of how humans behave and what is really going on in the world we live in.

We will have a real revolution when the prize goes to people who document and explain the effects of corporate power and its alliances with state power. Right now, the hot author is Naomi Klein. Economics will be a real science when nominating her for a Nobel doesn't get you laughed out of the room.

Thanks for that. I will check them all out. I knew there just had to be some good guys out there.

I like Amartya Sen, who won a Nobel in the 90s I think. Jeffrey Sachs' recent work, such as The End of Poverty, is worth a look as is work by Stiglitz. At a practical level, I like the work of the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

"But really, there are good economists–who don't use a pseudoscience to justify robbing the middle class to further enrich the rich; who don't pretend that "externalities" are legitimate; who propose more relevant standards of measuring our economy than GDP."

Who are they? I would love to read their work. Really.

We needed Nobel Prize-winning economists to tell us this?

Economics is a religion.

Ooh, economist jokes!

An economics professor and a freshman were walking around Harvard Square. The freshman notices a $50 bill lying on the ground. "Look!" he says, "A $50 bill!"

"Don't be silly," says the professor, "If there were money on the ground, it would have been picked up already."

pdf: Right, we can't have Hugo Chavez for the Nobel Prize in economics -- for using the profits from selling a country's natural resources and using it for the poor, for education, health care, housing. We can't encourage THAT -- it's just, just ... unAmerican!

There was a shipwreck and three survivors make it to a tiny island--a biologist, a physicist and an economist. The only food they have is a can of beans--but they have no way to open it.
The physicist says,"Maybe if we immerse the can in seawater it will corrode to the point where we can rip it open."
The biologist says, "I'll climb that palm tree and throw the can at the rocks from the top of the tree. It'll probably break open. We'll have to lick the beans off the rocks, but hey, at least it's food."
"You two are making this much too hard," says the economist. "First, we assume a can opener."

That's my favorite economist joke. Here's my second favorite: If you laid all the economists in the world end-to end...that would be a very good thing.

But really, there are good economists--who don't use a pseudoscience to justify robbing the middle class to further enrich the rich; who don't pretend that "externalities" are legitimate; who propose more relevant standards of measuring our economy than GDP.

Economists are in constant disagreement.

The problem is that the Nobel Prize has been relegated to near impotency by it's obvious and blatent political motivations. If only there were some substantive achievements required for it to be awarded, then people might start taking it seriously. Might as well sign up Hugo Chavez for next year's prize.

Good point--the problem is that a lot of times they don't...

Only economists get paid for stating the obvious.