In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
[very disorganized and the tangents need to be re-planted elsewhere but there's good stuff here]
An unabashed Milton Friedman acolyte made the point (a quotation?) that as long as exchanges are freely made between people, the net benefit has to be positive by definition.
Yes-- exactly-- but-- and there is a huge but-- there's little practical difference between a force-coerced exchange and an economic-coerced exchange. Indeed, it's the history and present of inequality to use force to back up the imposition of economic injustice.
Naomi Klein at the annual conference for the American Sociological Association broadcast by Democracy Now: