laissez-faire economics
laissez-faire economicsAn approach to economics that asserts the importance of the free, competitive market of individual suppliers and individual purchasers to the efficient production, distribution, and allocation of goods and services as well as to the maximization of individual choice, and emphasizes the need to keep state regulation to a minimum. Current laissez-faire economic theorizing has its origins in the work of the classical economists, such as David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Adam Smith at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. In The Wealth of Nations (1776) Smith, for example, argued that though individuals in the market would pursue their own self-interest, the market's ‘invisible hand’ would lead to the realization of the common good.
In the 20th century, the slump of the 1930s was followed by a...
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