The "free market" has been a hot topic of debate for decades. Proponents tout it as a cure-all for just about everything that ails modern society, while opponents blame it for the very same ills. But the heated rhetoric obscures one very important, indeed fundamental, fact--markets don't just run themselves; we create them. Starting from this surprisingly simple, yet often ignored or misunderstood fact, Alex Marshall takes us on a fascinating tour of the fundamentals that shape markets and, through them, our daily economic lives. He debunks the myth of the "free market," showing how markets could not exist without governments to create the structures through which we assert ownership of property, real and intellectual, and conduct business of all kinds. Marshall also takes a wide-ranging look at many other structures that make markets possible, including physical infrastructure ranging from roads and railroads to water systems and power lines; mental and cultural structures such as common languages and bodies of knowledge; and the international structures that allow goods, services, cash, bytes, and bits to flow freely around the globe. Sure to stimulate a lively public conversation about the design of markets, this broadly accessible overview of how a market economy is constructed will help us create markets that are fairer, more prosperous, more creative, and more beautiful.
Introduction. The Designer Disappears: Markets and Their Makers Section One. On the Books: The Markets We Make by Law 1. Coming into Being: In Praise of Markets; 2. Me and Mine: Property, the First Market; 3. Lex Non Scripta: The Laws We Don't Make, or, the Common Law; 4. I Am My Brother's Keeper: Cooperatives; 5. Trust: How We Cooperate to Compete; 6. Staking Claims on the Mind: Intellectual Property; 7. Little Commonwealths: Corporations and the State That Creates Them; 8. The Future of Corporations Section Two. Infrastructure: The Markets We Make by Hand 9. From Highways to Health Care: Progress through Infrastructure; 10. Making Places; 11. The Great Nineteenth-Century Train Robbery; 12. A Socialist Paradise: The American Road System; 13. Waiting for a Train Station; 14. What We Did Before: Path Dependence and Markets; 15. Police and Prisons: Freedom, Security, and Democracy; 16. Why Don't You Make Me? Government and Force Section Three. Seeding the Fields: The Markets We Make in Our Minds 17. Common Tongue, Common Culture, Common Markets Section Four. The Markets We Build Abroad 18. By Your Bootstraps: Developing Countries and Markets; 19. Last Night upon the Stairs: International Law Section Five. Looking Forward: Making Better Markets Conclusion. Making Better Markets Afterword. My Own Story: A Circuitous Journey Acknowledgments; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index
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