ABSTRACT
Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations of the main benefits of the free market (Smith, 2003). He drew attention to the fact that people exercising choice in the market in pursuit of their own self-interest led to the best economic outcome for society as a whole. The concept that ‘the market knows best’ was also a central plank of the economic philosophy of the Thatcher (UK) and Reagan (USA) administrations of the 1980s and the neoliberal approach to economics. Indeed, Mrs Thatcher’s economic minister summed up this thinking as: ‘The business of government is not the government of business.’ The post-1980 period has seen free market economics gain favour in much of Europe and Australia. More significantly it witnessed the collapse of communism in Soviet Russia and its replacement with economies in transition (from central planning to free markets).
