‘Market rules should benefit the majority of the citizenry’: historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway

– How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market – Oreskes and Conway document the rise of what’s more politely called “market fundamentalism” over the last century, from corporate propaganda and fringe academic theory to mainstream ideology., which is about a handful of prominent scientists who obfuscated clear scientific findings to oppose climate regulation. At the heart of their beliefs, Oreskes and Conway argue, was the big myth.

The book documents the rise of what’s more politely called “market fundamentalism” over the last century.So that leads to the second part of the myth, which is the idea that markets have wisdom, that the invisible hand guides us and that if we all do our own thing, our own self-interest will somehow lead to this productive, efficient and happy outcome. And therefore, we should just trust markets, that the government distorts markets and interferes with the wisdom of the marketplace.

We saw this in Merchants of Doubt, when we talked about the tobacco industry and how it mobilized this whole argument about the freedom to smoke, that you don’t want the government telling you what to do. We actually thought the tobacco industry invented that strategy. But they didn’t. What we show in this new book is that it goes back much further.

The book covers the extensive propaganda campaign from NAM and companies like General Electric to sway the American public against government regulation of businesses. Why were these campaigns so effective?They disguised propaganda as entertainment, it was not obviously partisan or political. That was the whole idea. Propagandists need a kernel of truth in order to be successful. The best lies are ones that are built on something people already believe.

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