The Big Myth: The Civic Religion of Capitalism | Naomi Oreskes | TMR

10 months ago
102

Sam and Emma speak with Naomi Oreskes, professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, author of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market, co-authored with Erik Conway. Professor Naomi Oreskes then joins as she dives right into her work with Erik Conway exploring why intelligent people are so inclined to altogether reject hard-won, well-established scientific evidence (from global warming to the impacts of child labor), and the government regulations that would best address the issues that are discovered, first taking on the influence of market fundamentalism on denouncing any and all attempts at government regulation. Professor Oreskes then walks Sam and Emma through the ideology of market fundamentalism, exploring the ever-looming threat of communism and the myth of the free market in creating a fundamental threat to liberty juxtaposed with a utopian and organic economic system, making any restraint on the market a step towards the return to serfdom, before shifting to how market fundamentalism was able to capitalize on pre-existing elements of US culture such as hyper-individualism and the deification of property rights. Moving into the evolution of this fundamentalist ideology in the West, Naomi Oreskes parses through the debates around child labor regulation, energy provision, and labor compensation to show how the ideology of market fundamentalism was laundered from the elites through academia and the electoral system during the first half of the 20th Century, alongside a mass investment into cultural propaganda align public opinion with their aims. Wrapping up, Sam, Emma, and Naomi explore the greater ideologies behind the emergence of market fundamentalism, from the Mont Pelerin society to Friedman and Hayek, and tackle why embracing truth to combat propaganda is necessary to win the battle.

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I want to welcome Naomi Oreskes to the show Naomi Oreskes. She is a professor of History of Science at Harvard University. author of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market which she co-authored with Eric Conway. Professor welcome to the program. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. and I should say I I mean I I mentioned this a little bit earlier in the introduction of the show but you also co-authored with Eric Conway a really important book called Merchants of Doubt. which ultimately became a documentary. and outlined essentially how certainly around tobacco. but more broadly speaking the Cadre of scientists who were willing to sort of see doubt as it were about scientific things that undermined science for a long time. and this book that you've written now I think is just it, it is so important. and it has been really a theme to many respects that I've been talking about for 18 years since I've been doing this stuff. market fundamentalists. and you know actually what is interesting is that I I I had written a book that was not nearly as good as your years and years ago that was supposed to be comedic. but I remember it was Gertrude Himmelfarb who was Bill Kristol’s mom if I'm not mistaken who was big into science denial as a way to attack objectives like objectivity and facts and government. and so there is a connection there. just talk about it for a moment because and then we'll go into the sort of the details of the book. but that connection between the merchants of doubt and Market fundamentalism.

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