The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society

Summary

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?

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 exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. 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 changes firsthand. As he argues, the failures follow from the elites' unshakeable dedication to "the neoliberal experiment."

The Road to Freedom breaks new ground, showing how economics reframes how to think about freedom and the role of the state in a twenty-first century society. Stiglitz explains a deeper, more humane way to assess freedoms—one that considers what to do when one person's freedom conflicts with another's.