Utilitarianism Friedman

Friedman (2000) offers a view that dismisses other alternatives by legitimising and promoting free-market capitalism as being the most efficient in generating incomes. Because socialism and communism fails, he argues there is only “one road” left to follow (Freidman, 2000,p.104) and when a country realises this, it will put on the “golden straitjacket”. Even though Friedman recognises that this straitjacket might not fit everyone as it “pinches certain groups, squeezes others” (Friedman, 2000, p. 105), he still argues that it would be ignorant to resist these forces. The miracle in East Asia and in Chile is a clear example that benefitted from this model, as it generated high GDP and growth. Wade (2010) follows in similar analyses

Wade, much like Friedman can be critiqued for viewing neoliberalism as an inevitable “one way road” that all countries eventually will adapt to. The danger in this claim is that it will form resistance to other alternatives like cooperative and sociality market economies and can create a fear of state intervention and

However, the success stories of East Asia often involved state-owned enterprises, subsidies and high tariffs in China for example (Chang, 2008). This suggests that other non-neoliberal policies are embedded and part of these success stories and thus the orthodox analyses do not provide for the complexity of the reality. Furthermore, Latin America after applying neo-liberal policies has been growing at a rate of less than one third and Africa has experienced a fall in the living standard (Chang, 2008). This suggests that the model does not always promise success everywhere. The argument that a country must first generate overall wealth before distributing it properly doesn’t hold as income inequality within/between countries has increased due to neoliberal policies according to Hoffman