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Laissez-faire (/ ˌ l ɛ s eɪ ˈ f ɛər / LESS-ay-FAIR, from French: laissez faire [lɛse fɛːʁ] ⓘ, lit. ' let do ' ) is a type of economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies or regulations ).
The system works best when there is a complementary relationship between one person's needs and another person's desires, and so trade restrictions place an unnatural barrier to achieving one's goals. Laissez-faire was popularized by physiocrat Vincent de Gournay who is said to have adopted the term from François Quesnay's writings on China. [10]
Laissez-faire, or free market capitalism, is an ideology that prescribes minimal public enterprise and government regulation in a capitalist economy. [51] This ideology advocates for a type of capitalism based on open competition to determine the price , production and consumption of goods through the invisible hand of supply and demand ...
[A]t the center of classical liberal theory [in Europe] was the idea of laissez-faire. To the vast majority of American classical liberals, however, laissez-faire did not mean no government intervention at all. On the contrary, they were more than willing to see government provide tariffs, railroad subsidies, and internal improvements, all of ...
The theoretical alternative to Keynesianism was more compatible with laissez-faire and emphasised individual rights and absence of government intervention. Market-oriented solutions gained increasing support in the Western world, especially under the leadership of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the UK in the 1980s.
The other was the political doctrine of laissez-faire economics, namely that all coercive government regulation of the market represents unjustified interference, and that economies would perform best with government only playing a defensive role in order to ensure the operation of free markets.
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Although laissez-faire has been commonly associated with capitalism, there is a similar economic theory associated with socialism called left-wing or socialist laissez-faire, also known as free-market anarchism, free-market anti-capitalism and free-market socialism to distinguish it from laissez-faire capitalism.