Theirs
was a natural religion. The market, as an agglomeration of individuals,
they thundered, was surely entitled to enjoy the rights and freedoms
accorded to each and every person. John Stuart Mill weighed against the
state's involvement in the economy in his influential and
exquisitely-timed "Principles of Political Economy", published in 1848.
Undaunted by mounting evidence of market failures - for instance to
provide affordable and plentiful public goods - this flawed theory
returned with a vengeance in the last two decades of the past century.
Privatization, deregulation, and self-regulation became faddish
buzzwords and part of a global consensus propagated by both commercial
banks and multilateral lenders.
As applied to the professions - to accountants, stock brokers, lawyers,
bankers, insurers, and so on - self-regulation was premised on the
belief in long-term self-preservation. Rational economic players and
moral agents are supposed to maximize their utility in the long-run by
observing the rules and regulations of a level playing field.
This noble propensity seemed, alas, to have been tampered by avarice
and narcissism and by the immature inability to postpone gratification.
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