John Meadowcroft - 'How Markets Solve Social Problems'

John Meadowcroft is Lecturer in Public Policy at King’s College London. He is the author of The Ethics of the Market (Palgrave, 2005), co-author with Mark Pennington of Rescuing Social Capital from Social Democracy (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2007), and editor of Prohibitions (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2008). He is also Series Editor of the twenty volume Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series published by Continuum from 2009 to 2011, to which he is contributing the volume of James M. Buchanan.

In this talk he argues that markets can, do and should solve social problems, but to allow them to do so requires the rejection of the idea that elite political actors should determine what constitutes a social problem and then select the correct solution. It will be argued that a market approach offers the prospect of genuine popular empowerment that political processes are unable to deliver.

Recorded at Christ Church, University of Oxford, 25th February 2010