Business & Economics Books:

Living with the Invisible Hand

Markets, Corporations, and Human Freedom
Click to share your rating 0 ratings (0.0/5.0 average) Thanks for your vote!

Format:

Hardback
$184.00
Available from supplier

The item is brand new and in-stock with one of our preferred suppliers. The item will ship from a Mighty Ape warehouse within the timeframe shown.

Usually ships in 2-3 weeks
Free Delivery with Primate
Join Now

Free 14 day free trial, cancel anytime.

Buy Now, Pay Later with:

4 payments of $46.00 with Afterpay Learn more

6 weekly interest-free payments of $30.67 with Laybuy Learn more

Availability

Delivering to:

Estimated arrival:

  • Around 5-17 June using International Courier

Description

Markets are thought of by some as liberating the individual. Rather than a feudal system in which each is assigned a role or tasks by an authority, each is free to make decisions concerning how to use their resources and direct their productive activities in light of market prices for goods and services. These prices are not dictated but reflect the preferences of individuals, aggregated by an invisible hand. In this posthumous work, political philosopher Waheed Hussain argues that this way of thinking about markets obscures their systemic nature. He shows that a better way to think about the invisible hand is as a mechanism that drops each of us into a maze whose design is opaque to us. It liberates us from the direct bondage of a feudal system; but leaves us subordinate to an arbitrary authority, one whose character is harder to discern. Hussain locates this authority in the way the market shapes the options available to us, exercising what he calls an impersonal authority over each of us. According to Hussain, the market system is objectionable when and because it is arbitrary, governing us without giving anyone a voice concerning how the authority is exercised. This is incompatible with what Hussain takes to be fundamental to human freedom, the freedom to make choices in the face of an option set that one can make sense of as being available for good reasons, to which one can assent as a free person.

Author Biography:

Waheed Hussain (1972-2021) was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and previously taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a Doctorate from Harvard University and was a fellow at the Center for Human Values at Princeton. He wrote influential papers on consumer power, rivalry, and corporations. Arthur Ripstein is Professor of Law and Philosophy and University Professor at the University of Toronto. He received a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and has published widely, including, most recently, Kant and the Law of War and Rules for Wrongdoers. Nicholas Vrousalis is an Associate Professor in Practical Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has published in distributive ethics, the history of political thought, democratic theory, and Marxism. His most recent monograph, published by Oxford University Press, is entitled Exploitation as Domination.
Release date NZ
June 8th, 2023
Audience
  • Professional & Vocational
Contributors
  • Edited by Arthur Ripstein
  • Edited by Nicholas Vrousalis
Pages
248
Dimensions
160x242x18
ISBN-13
9780197662236
Product ID
36496339

Customer reviews

Nobody has reviewed this product yet. You could be the first!

Write a Review

Marketplace listings

There are no Marketplace listings available for this product currently.
Already own it? Create a free listing and pay just 9% commission when it sells!

Sell Yours Here

Help & options

Filed under...