The 1980s and 1990s have been marked by a crusade to expand market-based activity and reduce the public sector. These efforts reflect a belief that competition and the profit motive generate efficiencies in the allocation of resources and the production of goods and services, resulting in the optimal economic system. The benefits of this system are widely distributed. Any attempt by government to regulate or otherwise intervene in the free workings of the market will only reduce the general welfare. Challenging this agenda, the book chapter summarized here argues that, not only does the unfettered market produce negative externalities and failures of the sort described in many economics texts, it also curtails democracy. As the role of government is attenuated, citizens have less ability to affect economic affairs. This chapter sums up the book’s defense of the public sector and critiques Public Choice Theory which, during the last quarter of the twentieth century, has been an influential intellectual underpinning of the “everything for sale” economy.
