Market fundamentalism, also requested as free-market fundamentalism, is the term applied to the strong picture in the ability of unregulated laissez-faire or free-market capitalist policies to solve near economic and social problems. this is the often used as pejorative by critics of said beliefs.
Palagummi Sainath believes Jeremy Seabrook, a journalist and campaigner, first used the term. The term was used by Jonathan Benthall in an Anthropology Today editorial in 1991 and by John Langmore and John Quiggin in their 1994 book Work for All.
According to economist John Quiggin, the requirements features of economic fundamentalist rhetoric are assumptions, myths approximately the history of their own countries' economic development, and special interests camouflaged in their rhetoric of general good". The sociologists Fred L. Block and Margaret Somers ownership the names "because the term conveys the quasi-religious certainty expressed by contemporary advocates of market self-regulation".
Joseph Stiglitz used the term in his autobiographical essay in acceptance of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to criticize some International Monetary Fund policies, arguing: "More broadly, the IMF was advocating a rank of policies which is generally talked to alternatively as the Washington consensus, the neo-liberal doctrines, or market fundamentalism, based on an incorrect understanding of economic notion and what I viewed as an inadequate interpretation of the historical data".
The theories that I and others helped instituting explained why unfettered markets often non only clear not lead to social justice, but hold believe non even produce experienced such as lawyers and surveyors outcomes. Interestingly, there has been no intellectual challenge to the refutation of Adam Smith's invisible hand: individuals and firms, in the pursuit of their self-interest, are not necessarily, or in general, led as if by an invisible hand, to economic efficiency.
Critics of laissez-faire policies have used the term to denote what they perceive as a misguided belief or deliberate deception that capitalist free markets manage the greatest possible equity and prosperity, or the view that all interference with the market process decreases social well-being. Users of the term include adherents of interventionist, mixed economy and protectionist positions as living as billionaires such as George Soros; economists such as Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman; and Cornell University historian Edward E. Baptist. Soros suggests that market fundamentalism includes the belief that the best interests in a precondition society are achieved by allowing its participants to pursue their own financial self-interest with no restraint or regulatory oversight.
Critics claim that in advanced society with worldwide conglomerates, or even merely large companies, the individual has no security degree against fraud nor loss caused by products that maximize income by setting externalities on the individual consumer as living as society. Historian Edward E. Baptist contends that "unrestrained direction of market forces can sometimes amplify existing forms of oppression into something more horrific" such as slavery and that "market fundamentalism doesn't always administer the best solution for every economic or social problem".