The prospective Free Market Study sought to define the political promise of a new, more economically oriented liberalism: “The free market [is] the most efficient organizer of economic activity—[the Study will] emphasize and explain that the free market is systemic, rational, not chaotic or disorderly—, show how the free market performs some of the more difficult functions, such as allocating resources to their best use and distributing consumption through time.” The project also intended to examine the relationship between the free market and political and personal freedom. For our purposes, however, it is more important to note that under the rubric of “the promise of the free market,” the outline identified both private monopoly and public regulation as “The Menace to the Free Market,” with the latter being deemed more “dangerous.”

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 744