David Colander and Roland Kupers — I Pencil Revisited. Beyond Market Fundamentalism

The proper role of government from a complexity science perspective.

People who believe in the free market are generally much closer to a complexity frame than are those who primarily put their faith in governmental planning and control. In fact complexity may well often be loosely equated with pure laissez-faire, but complexity includes government, seeing it not as planner or controller, but as a natural partner with existing institutions in a search for useful parameters of action. We have called this joint search an “activist laissez-faire” policy. While, the terms, activist laissez faire and laissez-faire, may look similar in the standard policy frame, they are quite different in terms of how one envisions the role of government. Hence we need to distinguish our complexity frame from the free market frame as espoused by supporters of unadulterated laissez-faire policy.

Ignores the effects of class structure and class interests and asymmetry of power and ability to influence outcomes relative to interests.

Evonomics
I Pencil Revisited. Beyond Market Fundamentalism
David Colander. professor of economics at Middlebury College. and Roland Kupers, associate fellow in the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford