American business and propaganda for free markets
“The Big Myth” charts a concerted effort to shape public opinion. But did it work?
“The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated”, wrote John Maynard Keynes, “compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.” But what if those ideas were themselves the product of decades of subtle manipulation by shadowy puppeteers? That is the argument of “The Big Myth”, a study of American attitudes to markets and government by Naomi Oreskes of Harvard and Erik Conway of the California Institute of Technology.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Propaganda Inc”
Culture February 18th 2023
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