American politics Quote by Jonathan Taplin
““It’s important to understand that while libertarian philosophy may have been regarded as a fringe movement in American politics, epitomized by Ron Paul followers, it has become the mainstream economic philosophy for both Silicon Valley and the Republican Party, thanks to the Koch brothers. The libertarian belief that the supremacy of the free market is the natural order of things is in reality nothing more than an “imagined order,” which the historian Yuval Noah Harari defines in his book Sapiens as the shared myths we use to induce cooperation. “In order to safeguard an imagined order,” Harari writes, “continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative.” Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is no more a law of nature or physics than Moses’s Ten Commandments.””
About This Quote
Source Article: "The Rise of Libertarianism", The New Yorker, 2019
Libertarian economics became mainstream, but its free‑market supremacy is an imagined order needing active maintenance, not a natural law.
In simple terms: Free‑market ideas are myths needing upkeep.
Key Takeaway
Question the assumptions behind economic policies.
Themes
politics
economics
ideology
Mood
analytical
critical
Type
philosophical
political
When to use this quote
- policy making
- business strategy
- public discourse
Key Concepts
philosophy
history
sociology
Questions to Reflect On
- What myths shape your decisions?
- How do you sustain them?
A Different Perspective
Imagined orders can be fragile and contested.
![“[Ron Paul's politics] is just savagery, and it goes across the board; in fact, this holds for the whole libertarian ideology. I mean, it may sound nice on the surface, but when you think it through, it's just a call for corporate tyranny; takes away any barrier to corporate tyranny. Its a step…” quote by Noam Chomsky](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/632/noam-chomsky-42_business-world_ron-paul-s-politics-is-just-savagery-and_2220210.jpg)
![“[The] term 'libertarian' itself, to be sure, raises a problem, notably, the specious identification of an anti-authoritarian ideology with a straggling movement for 'pure capitalism' and 'free trade.' This movement never created the word: it appropriated it from the anarchist movement of the…” quote by Murray Bookchin](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d1e/murray-bookchin-2587_free-trade_the-term-libertarian-itself-to-be-sure-r_144681.jpg)
