In Freedom from the Market, Mike Konczal has produced a tremendously important book that all progressive policymakers and designers owe it to themselves to read. At its core, this book is an argument for reclaiming the meaning and ownership of "freedom" from recent generations of market extremists who have defined it narrowly, only through the exercise of property rights and unregulated markets. Instead, Konczal argues, the historical American understanding of freedom is much, much wider: freedom is as much or more about what we choose to place outside the fickle, unequal nature of markets as what we define within them.

To make this argument, Konczal has put together a tremendously accessible and thoughtful jaunt through a history of American public policy. It's structured in eight chapters covering topics like the free land movement, the development of the five-day/forty-hour work week, and the history of public higher education. Even in the parts that I thought I knew a reasonable bit about (the development of Social Security and Medicare, for example), Freedom from the Market offers a different perspective that brings a broader vision of freedom to the foreground. The author cites an excellent variety of historical sources to contextualize his arguments and highlights how good policy design can make people more free as, for example, the creation of Medicare both freed millions of seniors from worrying about affording healthcare and also was crucial leverage to integrate southern hospitals and massively improve healthcare for millions of Black Americans. (Seriously, the improvements in Black infant mortality following integration were equal parts stunning and horrifying; read the book!)

This book is such an important corrective and an honest effort for progressives to reclaim values they have (largely unknowingly, but devastatingly) ceded to conservatives. In that cession, progressives have fallen into a trap. Now, the public sees other important values like equity and opportunity in tension with freedom, rather than directly flowing from it. The more-expansive vision of freedom Konczal explores in Freedom from the Market rights that order and demonstrates how a public-minded definition of freedom, one where everyone is truly able to pursue the good life, free from the vicissitudes of corporate dominion, the circumstances of their birth, and pure, dumb luck.

As these efforts so often are, it's an imperfect book. Some of the chapters are stronger than others, and several fly through large chunks of history at a dizzying pace that probably would have benefited by shifting from the page count devoted to a couple issues that were less well-constructed or bogged down by a focus on some individuals who weren't essential to the larger point. A longer, more complete work might also have attempted to engage more aggressively with the likely counterarguments to what the author argues, as well. (For example, lifespans are longer and even the poorest Americans today generally are much richer than they were. I agree with Konczal and don't find these arguments very compelling given the devastating consequences of inequality and the increasing precarity many Americans face, but it would be worth taking them on more explicitly).

That said, those flaws are minor when considered alongside this work's general brilliance. While there is certainly an excellent magazine piece in the heart of this book, the "insight/page ratio" is easily high enough that I award it my seal of approval for being a book instead (a rare compliment). This work ties together so many strands of progressive thinking I've been exploring but unable to articulate coherently. Well worth a read. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC!

This is another book of only economic nonsense! If I were still teaching college-level economics this book would receive an F minus! "Freedom From the Market" is only a measure of how much drivel an author can pack into a single book. Skip this book completely.

I feel like Konczal's book is able to put into words what many people are feeling, but don't really know how to express. The view of free markets as a manifestation of liberty sounds good in theory, but has a lot of flaws. What people don't realize, that I think Konczal does a good job explaining is that many people don't want to throw out all markets, but rather "de-marketize" some aspects of our lives. Sometimes, competition is not good. Rent-seeking behavior and market manipulation puts many people ahead at the expense of others. It also leaves out a lot of morality around the issue: should people be susceptible to the whims of those who have a larger hand in controlling the market?

Konczal also does a nice job explaining the alternative view: that talking about health-care reform, for instance, is socialism and tyranny. But, he does a not job explaining the philosophical shortcomings of such a stance. Reform does not necessarily mean a revolution.