Friedman’s free-market ideal rested on a pastoral myth of prelapsarian equilibrium

Evidence

Friedman’s mission, like Cameron’s, rested on a dream of reaching back to a state of ‘natural’ health, when all was in balance, before human interferences created distorting patterns. Where Cameron dreamed of returning the human mind to that pristine state, Friedman dreamed of depatterning societies, of returning them to a state of pure capitalism, cleansed of all interruptions – government regulations, trade barriers and entrenched interests. Also like Cameron, Friedman believed that when the economy is highly distorted, the only way to reach that prelapsarian state was to deliberately inflict painful shocks: only ‘bitter medicine’ could clear those distortions and bad patterns out of the way. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 85

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘prelapsarian’ framing of pure capitalism resonates against the earlier chapters’ account of self-exploitation and achievement-subjectivity; also echoes the shocked-state reading of crisis elsewhere. — connects to: Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom evaded engagement with opponents and defined away monopoly — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 794; The frontier myth of opportunity obscured capitalist capture of land and wealth — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 174

Related

• Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom evaded engagement with opponents and defined away monopoly (similarity 0.80)
• The frontier myth of opportunity obscured capitalist capture of land and wealth (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom evaded engagement with opponents and defined away monopoly #complicates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 794
• The frontier myth of opportunity obscured capitalist capture of land and wealth #corroborates (0.78) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 174