Message from the world, Pt. 3
Three Americans received the Nobel Prize in Economics today for their work in developing "mechanism design theory," which advances the heretical notion (at least to movement conservatives) that free markets don't always work well. They don't stop there, of course: their theory provides a way to predict how corporations will behave in the absence of a free market and determine whether government regulation (oh, the heresy!) might be needed.
To movement conservatives, the free market offers a solution to anything and everything. Most people know that's a bunch of bunk. Bought any free market health care or electricity lately? Or a copy of Microsoft Office? Thanks to the Nobel folks for sending another reality-based message to America.
Kudos to Leonid Hurwicz of the University of Minnesota, Eric S. Maskin of Princeton, and Roger B. Meyerson of the University of Chicago not for dealing with the world as it is, not as some ideological pipedream.