21st Century Case for a Managed Economy

'The role of disequilibrium, feedback loops and scientific method in post-crash economics.'

For decades, free-market economists have told a consistent story. Markets are rational, efficient, stable and fair, and even volatile financial markets should be left mostly to their own devices. Governments, meanwhile, should maintain basic institutions but should otherwise "stay out of the way". This is supposedly the only route to prosperity and the only system that is consistent with human freedom. From the late 1970s, one government after another was influenced by this perspective and our era of freewheeling capitalism was born. The only problem is that there has never been much evidence that this kind of economy actually works. There has been no boom in productivity, aside from that brought about by new technology based on the science of earlier decades and by the entry of China and India into the global economy.