

The free-market century is over
Shifting Economic Challenges
- Pre-1870 economies struggled with resource scarcity, leading to poverty and elite exploitation.
- The productivity explosion post-1870 offered a chance to solve this scarcity but created new distribution challenges.
1870: A Turning Point
- Around 1870, the Industrial Research Lab, the Corporation, and globalization led to rapid technological advancement.
- This progress quadrupled the rate of technological advancement and marked a turning point in economic history.
Hayek vs. Polanyi
- Hayek argued for free markets as crucial for wealth creation, but warned against prioritizing social justice.
- Polanyi countered that imposing pure market rule would lead to social unrest and resistance.



























Sean Illing talks with economic historian Brad DeLong about his new book Slouching Towards Utopia. In it, DeLong claims that the "long twentieth century" was the most consequential period in human history, during which the institutions of rapid technological growth and globalization were created, setting humanity on a path towards improving life, defeating scarcity, and enabling real freedom. But... this ran into some problems. Sean and Brad talk about the power of markets, how the New Deal led to something approaching real social democracy, and why the Great Recession of 2008 and its aftermath signified the end of this momentous era.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: J. Bradford DeLong (@delong), author; professor of economics, U.C. Berkeley
References:
- Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong (Basic; 2022)
- The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek (1944)
- The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi (1944)
- Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter (1942)
- "A Short History of Enclosure in Britain" by Simon Fairlie (This Land Magazine; 2009)
- "China's Great Leap Forward" by Clayton D. Brown (Association for Asian Studies; 2012)
- What Is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1840)
- The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary Gerstle (Oxford University Press; 2022)
- Apple's "1984" ad (YouTube)
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes (1936)
- "The spectacular ongoing implosion of crypto's biggest star, explained" by Emily Stewart (Vox; Nov. 18)
- "Did Greenspan Add to Subprime Woes? Gramlich Says Ex-Colleague Blocked Crackdown" by Greg Ip (Wall Street Journal; June 9, 2007)
- "Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same," from President Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address (Jan. 27, 2010)
- "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" by Karl Marx (1852)
- Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein (Simon & Schuster; 2020)
- The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing (U. Chicago; 2022)
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This episode was made by:
- Producer: Erikk Geannikis
- Editor: Amy Drozdowska
- Engineer: Patrick Boyd
- Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall
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