自由之路：经济学与美好社会
https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Freedom-Economics-Good-Society/dp/132407437X
作者：约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨 – 2024 年 4 月 23 日
来自世界领先经济学家之一的关于个人和经济自由的令人信服的新愿景。
我们的国家诞生于人们必须自由的信念。 但自上世纪中叶以来，这一想法已被采纳。 政治右翼势力通过用自由的言辞来掩盖剥削行为，从而导致制药公司随意收取过高的药品费用、不受监管的大型科技公司、政客随意煽动叛乱、企业随意污染等等。 我们是怎么来到这里的？ 我们应该考虑谁的自由？
在《自由之路》中，诺贝尔奖获得者约瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨剖析了美国当前的经济体系和创造该体系的政治意识形态，揭露了它们的双重失败。 “自由”和不受约束的市场只会成功地引发一系列危机：金融危机、阿片类药物危机和不平等危机。 尽管一小部分人积累了可观的财富，但大多数人的工资却停滞不前。 自由和不受约束的市场剥削了消费者、工人和环境。 这些失败催生了民粹主义运动，这些运动相信自由意味着放弃公民彼此之间的任何义务。 随着这些运动的力量不断增强，它们现在对真正的经济和政治自由构成了真正的威胁。
作为总统经济顾问和世界银行首席经济学家，斯蒂格利茨亲眼目睹了这些深刻的变化。 正如他所说，失败源于精英们对“新自由主义实验”坚定不移的奉献。 斯蒂格利茨明确地挑战了弗里德里希·哈耶克和米尔顿·弗里德曼等巨人，揭露了我们政治和经济生活中公认的观念的本质：扭曲的愿景撕裂了社会结构，同时却让极少数人富裕起来。
《自由之路》开辟了新天地，展示了经济学——包括斯蒂格利茨在其中发挥如此重要作用的最新进展——如何重新构建了如何思考自由和国家在二十一世纪社会中的作用。 斯蒂格利茨借鉴当代哲学家的著作，解释了一种更深刻、更人道的评估自由的方法，即仔细考虑当一个人的自由与另一个人的自由发生冲突时该怎么办。 如果我们要创建一个人人都能蓬勃发展的创新社会，我们就必须重新构想现有的经济和法律体系，并采取各种形式的集体行动，包括监管和投资。 这项任务再紧迫不过了，斯蒂格利茨的最新著作对于那些致力于为所有人提供福祉、机会和有意义的自由的美国经济和政治体系理想的人来说是必读之作。
The Road To Freedom: Economics and the Good Society
https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Freedom-Economics-Good-Society/dp/132407437X
by Joseph E. Stiglitz – April 23 2024
We are a nation born from the conviction that people must be free. But since the middle of the last century, that idea has been co-opted. Forces on the political Right have justified exploitation by cloaking it in the rhetoric of freedom, leading to pharmaceutical companies freely overcharging for medication, a Big Tech free from oversight, politicians free to incite rebellion, corporations free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we—and should we—be thinking about?
In The Road to Freedom, Nobel prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz dissects America’s current economic system and the political ideology that created it, laying bare their twinned failure. “Free” and unfettered markets have only succeeded in delivering a series of crises: the financial crisis, the opioid crisis, and the crisis of inequality. While a small portion of the population has amassed considerable wealth, wages for most people have stagnated. Free and unfettered markets have exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Such failures have fed populist movements that believe being free means abandoning any obligations citizens have to one another. As they grow in strength, these movements now pose a real threat to true economic and political freedom.
As an economic advisor to presidents and as chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz has witnessed these profound changes firsthand. As he argues, the failures follow from the elites’ unshakeable dedication to “the neoliberal experiment.” Explicitly taking on giants such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Stiglitz exposes accepted ideas about our political and economic life for what they are: twisted visions that tear at the social fabric while they enrich the very few.
The Road to Freedom breaks new ground, showing how economics—including recent advances in which Stiglitz has played such an important role—reframes how to think about freedom and the role of the state in a twenty-first century society. Drawing on the work of contemporary philosophers, Stiglitz explains a deeper, more humane way to assess freedoms—one that considers with care what to do when one person’s freedom conflicts with another’s. We must reimagine our existing economic and legal systems and embrace forms of collective action, including regulation and investment, if we are to create an innovative society in which everyone can flourish. The task could not be more urgent, and Stiglitz’s latest book is essential reading for those committed to the American ideal of an economic and political system that delivers well-being, opportunity, and meaningful freedoms for all.
