laissez-faire economics
Hands-off market policy
Laissez-faire economics is a philosophy of minimal government intervention in markets.
The French phrase means "let do" or "leave alone"—the idea that economies function best when trade, pricing, and competition proceed without regulation, taxation, or subsidy.
Critics argue it enables exploitation and inequality; proponents see it as the path to prosperity through free enterprise.
Laissez-faire economics dominated policy thinking until the Great Depression.
- Adam SmithClassical economics founder
- capitalismPrivate profit-based economy
- market failuresSuboptimal economic outcomes
- freedomAbsence of constraint
- non-interventionPolicy of staying uninvolved
free trade agreements · deregulation · small government · private property · classical liberalism · invisible hand · monopolies · robber barons · Milton Friedman · John Stuart Mill · privatization · tax cuts · trickle down · Washington Consensus · individualism · monetarism · boom and bust · income inequality
laissez-faire economicscentral planning
Government directs all production
interventionism · command economy · planned economy · dirigisme · statism
laissez-faire economicscommunism
Collective ownership system
state socialism · socialism · Marxist economics · collectivism · Maoism
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