Naomi Oreskes on The Big Myth with Joseph Stiglitz & Claudia Dreifus

BPL Presents and Center for Brooklyn History present Naomi Oreskes discussing her new book, THE BIG MYTH: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. The author will be in conversation with Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and journalist Claudia Dreifus.

The Big Myth is a sweeping history of the disastrous and all-consuming belief that has had a grip on the American public for decades: “the magic of the marketplace.” How did so many Americans come to have so much faith in markets and so little faith in government? The answer, as The Big Myth reveals: a propaganda blitz. Until the early 1900s, the U.S. government's guiding role in economic life was largely accepted. But then business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies combatted regulation by building a new orthodoxy: down with “big government,” up with unfettered markets.

Unearthing eye-opening archival evidence, Oreskes and co-author Erik M. Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Hayek and Friedman into household names, recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books, and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine (and the young Ronald Reagan) to millions.

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Participants

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, co-author of the bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, and the author of nearly 200 scholarly papers and popular articles. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Times (London), and many others. Her TED talk, "Why We Should Trust Scientists" was viewed more than a million times. She was an active participant in the World Economic Forum in Davos. She lives in Carlisle, Massachusetts.  Photo by Kayana Szymczak

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. In 2011 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Known for his pioneering work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz's research focuses on income distribution, climate change, corporate governance, public policy, macroeconomics and globalization. He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, People, Power, and Profits, Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy, and Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited.

Claudia Dreifus is the author of six books and writes for the New York Review of Books, Quanta, the Nation and The New York Times. She teaches science journalism at Columbia University.

 

 

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