'Freedom and Financial Market Reform' by Joshua Preiss
21 May 2025, 18:00 - Rome time @ In Conversation
In conversation is organized by Phinance, the Philosophy & Finance Network
Freedom and Financial Market Reform
by
Joshua Preiss
21 may 2025, 18:00 - Rome time
18:00 Joshua Preiss (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Freedom and Financial Market Reform
18:20 Debate
Interviewer: Andrew Newton (Guest researcher, University of Gothenburg)
Chair: Emiliano Ippoliti (Roma Sapienza)
Organization: Emiliano Ippoliti (Roma Sapienza); Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut); Joakim Sandberg (University of Gothenburg)
Abstract
In this interview, Joshua advances a simple argument, but with major implications for freedom and markets and the ends of financial market reform. Drawing upon both political philosophy and economic history, he argues that economic freedom depends on the accountability of institutions that structure individual market choices. Failure to recognize this fact gives license to concentrations of political and economic power and exacerbates principal–agent problems, creating firms that are often too big to fail, and an industry whose regulation is often too complex to enforce. These trends virtually guarantee the outsourcing of one of the central tasks of government in a free society: the creation and maintenance of institutions that structure markets. Freedom-minded financial market reform should be directed at a simpler and more narrow banking and regulatory system that counters the ways in which complexity, instability, power and information asymmetries, and regulatory capture make people less free.
A debate follows the interview.
‘In Conversation: Exploring the Philosophy of Money and Finance’is a series of meetings that explore the relationship between philosophy, money, and finance. Each interview is followed by a live debate, encouraging active audience participation. The sessions (interview plus debate) is 30 minutes long.