From the welfare state to the militarized market: Losing choices, controlling losers

By the end of the twentieth century, the ideology of the free market was a powerful force pushing back against the growth of the welfare state both in the United States and around the globe. According to that ideology, welfare state policies spread neither prosperity nor security, but instead sacrificed individual freedom for government control. That story contrasts the welfare state with a free market where individuals rule by exercising the power to choose. In that storied market, decentralized voluntary exchanges based on competitive calculations of individual gain add up to maximize overall resources, so that individual self-interest benefits society as a whole. This idea helped justify a triumphant wave of neoliberal policies claiming to unleash market risk and reward from egalitarian government regulation and spending (Yergin and Stanislaw 2002).