The Commons And The New Age of Laissez Faire

The one thing new laissez faire rhetoric seldom does is find any place for broader visions of civil society, and in particular, nonprofit organizations, voluntary action, or philanthropy which have been such important parts of the American past. Laissez faire visions of the future being promoted today are dangerously limited in at least one important respect: They omit any reference to nonprofit organizations, voluntary action or philanthropy (along with sustaining reference groups like family and support and friendship groups) as operative parts of the future. Instead, they offer an altogether familiar bi-polar social universe from the past composed of “the state” (a.k.a. “big government”) and “the individual” (which appears to include such fictive “individuals” as Fortune 500 corporations). In some alternate versions, this new laissez-faire may also find a place for “state and local government” in contast to the “big” (that is, federal) government