What is Laissez-Faire Economics?
Laissez-faire is a philosophy that says the government should not be involved in business and a country's economy; rather, it should instead focus on protecting the rights of the citizens. The result is a stronger economy.
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How does Laissez-Faire Economics Work?
Laissez-faire is French for 'let do.' Loosely, it means that the government should let the market run without interference or let the market to do its thing.
In such an economy, the laws of supply and demand will work efficiently. Supply involves market aspects such as capital, natural resources, and labor while demand involves buying of goods and services by consumers, the government, or other businesses.
As a rebuttal to this philosophy, a Laissez-faire economy is normally affected by monopolies, theft, graft, and fraud - aspects which interfere with the rational market theory.
The government's only role then is to protect the citizens from fraud, theft, and coercion.
From the government allowing the business world to set its own course to your babysitter who let you do whatever you wanted — if something is laissez faire, it's "hands off."
Laissez faire, typically pronounced "LAY-zay fair," was originally a French economic term meaning “allow to do,” as in: the government does not interfere in the marketplace. For example, if a product is poorly made, people won't buy it — no need for the government to step in. Parents can take a laissez faire approach — no curfews or set rules, hoping their kids will stay out of trouble by doing the right thing.
Definitions of laissez faire
noun
the doctrine that government should not interfere in commercial affairs
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Laissez-faire means "leave it alone." Usually it describes the economic policy of a government that stresses non-interference in business.
The phrase laissez faire comes from the French phrase laissez faire et laissez passer, "Let be and let pass." This phrase became popular in 18th Century France, where economists suggested the government stay out of business and industry. It might also be applied to situations outside economics where governmental interference in personal activities is avoided or when you take a "hands off" approach to something.
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A laissez-faire approach towards self-help, in consequence, will merely reinforce rather than reduce the existing socioeconomic and gender inequalities.
The original moderation technique is far from being a laissez-faire approach, it is meant to keep the discussion under strict control.
The laissez-faire view holds that there is no enforceable duty to share the costs of other people's bad option luck.
When = 0.01, a 5 percent tax increase in the laissez-faire economy finances a subsidy equal to 33 percent of the cost of public investment.
However, the contemporary outcome has not been a triumph of laissez-faire but a displacement of collective bargaining in the employment relations field.
Thus, even within cognitive and social psychology, laissez-faire attitudes and a strict enforcement of rules go hand in hand.
There were few exceptions to laissez-faire in this train of thought.
This concern for diversification became greater in the final two or three years of the porfiriato, but it was not expressed in a laissez-faire discourse.
In the laissez-faire case, consumption of private goods is highest, but, also, environmental damage is highest, which yields the lowest total utility.
A laissez-faire policy, meanwhile, which is the dominant approach at present, results in numerous negative consequences in terms of social inequalities and spatial disparities.
In a laissez-faire economy with a lump-sum pension, we have two deviations from the social optimum.
By contrast, a subsidy to private providers in a laissez-faire economy is the preferred regime when the externality is large.
The ultimate goal of economic reforms is a laissez-faire economy where the state does not intervene in the economy.
The scientific status of economics depended on the possibility of implementing free trade and laissez-faire in "real" countries and on discrediting socialist utopias.
Over time, market liberalism [or laissez-faire] and regulatory and welfare-state liberalism [or progressivism] offered rival strains of or emphases within the liberal tradition.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.