THE OTHER MODEL: Market Means to Social Democratic Ends

Professor J. Bradford DeLong urges Javier Couso not to throw out useful market mechanisms with the post-Pinochet bathwater.

As a card-carrying neoliberal the way that word is used in North America, or as we might say today, as a “progressive,” I think that market means can provide a route to social democratic ends. With this in mind, I offer a few comments on Professor Javier Couso’s article. Properly regulated and properly structured, there are wide areas of economic life in which a market economy is the regime of the public sphere in its best form. It is, or rather it can be, a better implementation of the regime of the public sphere than any mass movement choosing a maximum leader or set of wise ministers.