The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society

Freedom is a core value of American life. But today, the language of freedom has been co-opted and used to justify exploitation. Pharmaceutical companies are free to overcharge for medication, big tech is free from oversight, politicians are free to incite rebellion, corporations are free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we--should we--be thinking about?' In The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, Joseph E. Stiglitz reveals why America's core political and economic systems don't offer true freedom. Taking on giants of neoliberalism and free market capitalism, such as Hayek and Friedman, Stiglitz turns these accepted ideas about our systems on their head. The Road to Freedom offers a fundamental reevaluation of democracy, economics, and what constitutes a good society, showing what kind of economic and political system is most likely to deliver a good society, including one that enhances meaningful freedoms for most individuals. Stiglitz's latest is vital reading for anyone envisioning a future led by tolerance, education, and, above all, freedom. nWe are a nation born from the conviction that people must be free. But since the middle of the last century, that idea has been co-opted. Forces on the political Right have justified exploitation by cloaking it in the rhetoric of freedom, leading to pharmaceutical companies freely overcharging for medication, a Big Tech free from oversight, politicians free to incite rebellion, corporations free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we--and should we--be thinking about? In The Road to Freedom, Nobel prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz dissects America's current economic system and the political ideology that created it, laying bare their twinned failure. Free and unfettered markets have only succeeded in delivering a series of crises: the financial crisis, the opioid crisis, and the crisis of inequality. While a small portion of the population has amassed considerable wealth, wages for most people have stagnated. Free and unfettered markets have exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Such failures have fed populist movements that believe being free means abandoning any obligations citizens have to one another. As they grow in strength, these movements now pose a real threat to true economic and political freedom. As an economic advisor to presidents and as chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz has witnessed these profound chan