SkiCo to host Harvard professor for book talk on love and hate for the government and free market
Credit Bloomsbury Publishing
Which is more deserving of your trust, the government or the powers of the market?
Namoi Oreskes, a Harvard professor and leading voice on the role of science in society and anthropogenic climate change, argues that history has led us to a point where markets stifle democracy, but there is a path back to public trust after crises related to housing, the opioid scourge, climate destruction, and a bungled COVID-19 response.
She traces the American public’s trust shift away from their government in favor of the “magic of the marketplace” in “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market,” co-authored by Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.
Oreskes will discuss the ideas presented in the book at the next AspenU event at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20 in the Monarch Room at the Limelight Hotel in Aspen.
The free event with her is a part of Aspen U, a series by AspenOne’s sustainability department.
The program was originally intended to give Aspen Skiing Company (SkiCo) employees access to the Sustainability Department. It has now expanded to free educational talks and events for both AspenOne employees and community members. The schedule is available on the Aspen Snowmass website.
Signed copies of “The Big Myth” will be available for purchase at the event starting at 5 p.m.
Oreskes shared some perspective on the book ahead of Wednesday’s event. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
AT: Who is responsible for the origins of the shift in trust from government to markets? In today’s political landscape, it feels highly partisan.
NO: Our book doesn’t doesn’t frame this as party politics. We show that the people who became really engaged with this were conservative business leaders, business leaders who were trying to protect the prerogatives of business people, generally businessmen, to make decisions that they thought were appropriate regarding things like child labor, workplace safety, and then later with respect to the New Deal, things like minimum wage laws. There’s an alignment with party politics, but it’s not driven by party politics. Later in the story around the time of Ronald Reagan, there becomes an extremely strong alignment of the Republican Party. By the end, you’ve got Democrats or Republicans, both arguing for deregulation, cutting taxes, and all of that.
AT: Both governments and business hold power. How does that struggle for power play out over history and in the book?
NO: It’s definitely a story about power. In the early part of the story, it’s really a story of resentment. You have these powerful political leaders, who resent the idea that labor unions or consumer groups are going to put constraints on how they operate. (Conway and I) spent a lot of time reading their letters reading their writings and there’s a very much a feeling of “who are you to tell me how to run my business.” You can see those kinds of arguments being made, even today. “I don’t want the government telling you how to live my life, I don’t want the government telling me what to do.” It’s about powerful people resenting the idea that they might have to give up some of their power and share it with labor unions, or share it with environmentalists.
AT: What kind of power do individuals have and what kind of responsibility do they have wielding their power?
NO: We all have the responsibility to pay attention, to do our homework, and not to just naively accept things we’re being told without questioning them. But that’s hard to do. Because first of all, we’re all busy. You have a job to do, you have a life to live. So what is the ordinary person supposed to do? Well, we get organized. Join a movement, join an organization, join a citizens group, join a political party. There are a lot of ways that people can become empowered, but they almost all involve collective action.
AT: Aspen is a unique community. Extraordinary wealth, and therefore power, is omnipresent here. Nearly everyone cares deeply about the environment for both its intrinsic value and the value that backs up their business, SkiCo included. What should Aspen readers focus on in the book?
NO: Aspen is a very complicated place, which is one of the reasons why I’m excited to have the opportunity to speak there. There are a lot of wealthy people in the Aspen community who are good people and who do care about the environment and people who love the outdoors, love skiing, love hiking, yet have bought into some of these arguments about the “magic of the marketplace,” the power of markets, the virtues of deregulation, which I think are not supported by the facts of history. And in some cases, very, very damaging.
AT: How does the book address the role of folks like that?NO: The last part of the book is about how these arguments spread and got taken up, even by people of goodwill, even by people who were trying to do the right thing. What we’re asking those people to do is to think again. The idea of cutting taxes to stimulate the economy, you could see how that would be attractive and appealing. But history has proven that it does not work. Not only have we proven this doesn’t work, but we’ve also proven that it creates massive income inequalities that contribute to the kind of localized poverty where people earn a good income, and they still can’t make a living and do well in their communities. There are a lot of people in positions of power and privilege. If those people can be mobilized, then we stand a real chance to make a difference in the world.
Aspen’s longest-running charity event returns on Sunday
On Sunday, March 17, from 4 to 8 p.m., St. Mary Catholic Church will hold its 138th St. Patrick’s Day Benefit Dinner at 533 E. Main Street and return to a traditional sit-down community format for the first time since 2018.
