The Seismic Shift in Faith#
The global financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent European debt crisis have profoundly shaken public faith in “free-market fundamentalism”. These events revealed that unrestrained capitalism can lead to unsustainable debt, mass defaults, and systemic collapse. Criticism of neoliberalism has grown, linking its belief in unfettered markets with rising global inequality and exploitation. Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder has become a seminal text in this debate, providing a historical rebuttal to the “one-size-fits-all” orthodoxy. It argues that we must move beyond pure theory and return to “observable and measurable real-world evidence”. The future of development depends on reclaiming the very tools that were once used to build the modern world.
