Justice : What's the Right Thing to Do?

Anton's Blindness is a neurological condition in which loss of sight is accompanied by an insistent belief that the patient can see. The increasingly complicated confabulations required to explain the accidents that result from the patient's blindness are one way of diagnosing the condition. In our belief in the free market and its system of pricing every aspect of our lives we seem to be suffering from that very condition. Why are we still making complicated excuses for the failure of free market capitalism, and for the gap between price and value? As we witness the continuing financial and economic crisis, economist and activist Raj Patel asks us to consider the most fundamental question -why things cost what they do? Using ideas from economics, neuroscience, and philosophy he shows why prices are so intractably at odds with value, and why neither economists nor governments are likely to bring the two into alignment. In order to end our blind compliance Patel asks us to reconsider how democracy might be the route by which we can reclaim markets so that they work for rather than against social change. In this highly engaging and inspiring call for political engagement, Patel shows how social movement in America and around the world have managed to limit the free market by exercising our democratic rights.