A global free market will shortly belong to an irrecoverable past
A global free market was a project that was destined to fail. In this, as in much else, it resembles that other twentieth century experiment in utopian social engineering, Marxian socialism. Each was convinced that human progress must have a single civilization as its goal. Each denied that a modern economy can come in many varieties. Each was ready to exact a large price in suffering from humanity in order to impose its single vision on the world. Each has run aground on vital human needs.
If we take history as our guide, we must expect that the global free market will shortly belong to an irrecoverable past. Like other twentieth-century utopias, global laissez-faire –together with its casualties – will be swallowed in to the memory hope of history.
John Gray in False Dawn, 1998
