Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Subjugation To The Market

According to Professor Bainbridge European teaching on economics is not very market friendly. He quotes The Wall Street Journal article by Heidi Moore:

Theil, who studied French and German financial textbooks as a fellow for the German Marshall Fund, compiles a couple of quotes from the books that guide Europe’s impressionable young into what he calls a “deep anti-market bias.” One German textbook intones, “The worldwide call for…more deregulation in reality means a grab for the material lifeblood of the modern nation-state,” and a French one teaches, “Globalization implies ‘subjugation of the world to the market,’ which constitutes a true cultural danger.”
What is a market? A place to exchange what you have for what you want. So what is subjugation to the market? It is the tyranny of being able to get what you want through voluntary exchange. I could see why this might upset some people. If you look at the comments to the Wall Street Journal article it evidently upsets a lot of people.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

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