Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidency by stating: Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

For many political junkies, this seems like the beginning of a new anti-government era. Economic wonks can look back further to Milton Friedman’s 1970 theory of maximizing shareholder wealth.

But Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway go back even further The great myth: How corporate America taught us to hate government and love the free market. Everything from the anti-union strikes of the early 1900s to Little House on the Prairie fall under their purview as tools in a concerted effort to support capitalism at its most extreme.

The book is a sort of sequel to the Merchants of Doubt duos, who pulled back the curtain on those minimizing the harms of tobacco, acid rain, climate change, and much more. Conway, who works for Caltech

the California Institute of Technology

and spoke on video from his home in Mammoth Lakes, is the softer of the two. Oreskes, who Zoomed from Utah but teaches at Harvard, speaks faster, louder, and sharper; she is originally from New York.

The Big Myth describes how even as the New Deal improved millions of lives, economists, writers (such as Ayn Rand), politicians and trade organizations embraced ideas that, as journalist John T. Flynn wrote, focused on building power outside the parties which were so strong that the parties would have been forced to yield to his demands.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Market fundamentalism is an extreme idea that went mainstream. Is it possible to paint it as it really is or are we too late?

Naomi

Oreskes: The purpose of the book is to show that these people take their point of view to an illogical extreme where they would defend child labor. Of course there is a spectrum of beliefs, but we tried to show how much of what is going on with Republicans today.

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arty and social security they want to eliminate are part of a family of these activities.

You say you hope the book sparks conversations. Who is your target reader?

N

Oreskes: I hope people on the left read it. There is also a lesson for them, that the solution is not always a giant federal program. The right wing has a point when they talk about overreach. I now believe that the best solution to any problem is the smallest solution.

But that’s not our main goal, which is people who consider themselves progressive but still say: Markets, markets, markets. The other audience for me is the guy who sits next to me on a plane when I get an upgrade to business class and says the market is going to solve climate change.

Do you think the Republicans’ MAGA spin has alienated some business leaders from the party, or is it still about the bottom line?

E

Conway: There are many companies that say progressive things and have progressive internal politics and yet invest heavily in Republican politics. I don’t know how to square that circle.

Blue states do better in most measures of citizen success. We’re also giving more of our tax money to red states, especially in the former Confederacy. Is it time for separation?

E

Conway: My ancestors fought for the Union, so I can’t go for that division. And the poor states would get poorer and the liberal in me doesn’t like that. I’m hoping there’s a way to structure the laws to reduce the amounts it takes to transfer payments from our tax dollars to them, but I don’t know what that is.

N

Oreskes: I’ve been thinking about a new version of state rights, we’d need a different term because it’s so loaded with power sharing. It’s crazy that the wealthy Democrat-led states give net money to states like Arkansas that just resent and hate us. An ironic side of climate change is that some of the states that have been hit the hardest, Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi have climate denial leaders. But when a hurricane hits, they demand FEMA support.

What effect

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Has Joe Biden changed the conversation?

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Oreskes: Biden made a major breakthrough with the Inflation Reduction Act. What we have to say in our book aligns with Biden’s moderate but FDR-like Democratic stances, it’s not about destroying capitalism, it’s about solving the problems the market can’t solve.

E

Conway: One thing I liked about Biden’s IRA is that it was about driving markets through grants, not taxes. We heard that a lot of that money goes to states where the political culture is climate denier

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and that could change the conversation if the populace comes to see that it really benefits them. That may help reframe the narrative and undermine the arguments of the trade groups and elite economists

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who talked about carbon trading systems that were too mysterious for ordinary citizens to understand.

Biden’s State of the Union felt more combative in tone, arguing that the government is not the only solution, but is always part of the solution. Does such a bully pulpit matter?

N

Oreskes: Liberals often think they don’t have to worry because the truth is on their side, but the truth doesn’t speak for itself. You must call out the lies and fight for the truth. We’ve been bombarded with, government is inefficient and wasteful, there’s abuse, blah, blah, blah, so it’s just ingrained in our culture.

E

Conway: Government can determine the direction of technology with its investments

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but that’s the opposite of the story people like to tell. Government investment in technology in the 20th century was huge and hugely effective. The internet, jet engines and so on benefited from government investments. The idea that everything government does is bad is just ridiculous on the face of it. And most of the things the private sector invests in don’t work.

N

Oreskes: There’s an incredible double standard about what we think about the private versus the public sector. Many companies go bankrupt, but we don’t take that as a sign that we should reject capitalism. Our book shows why that is and how it happens.

So the pro-regulation side needs to reformulate it

their

arguments and regain words like freedom.

N

Oreskes: The need to change the narrative of freedom is why I wear my American flag pin when I lecture on this topic. The right

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the forces of the wing and the free market have really manipulated the symbols of American freedom, as if free enterprise is somehow integral to American democracy. That’s an absolute fabrication, but they spent a lot of money and had talented people perpetuating the myth.

They have done enormous damage by equating freedom with the right of everyone to do whatever they want. What about my freedom not to have to worry about what you or your company literally or figuratively dumps in my backyard?

Speaking of which, it feels like people are blaming the government more than big business for the toxic chemicals disaster in eastern Palestine.

N

Oreskes: I think this is a tragic example of what we call the high cost of the free market. There is strong evidence that this tragedy could have been avoided with better government oversight, inspection and regulation. I understand there was a proposal to electronic br

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search systems, which could help prevent an accident like this. But there was strong industry pressure, and not enough constituencies pushed for it.

Is that the government’s fault or the way society has changed its expectations of government and big business over the decades?

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Oreskes: Well, the government is us.