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The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about capitalism that dominate mainstream economics, policy, and public discourse—the often-unexamined assumptions that markets are efficient, that growth is good, that privatization improves services, that competition drives innovation, and that capitalism is the only viable economic system. Capitalist orthodoxy includes specific commitments: that free markets allocate resources optimally, that regulation distorts efficiency, that inequality is the natural result of differential contribution, that economic growth is the primary measure of success, and that alternatives to capitalism are either impossible or disastrous. Like all orthodoxies, it provides a framework for thinking about economics, but it can also function as ideology—making capitalist arrangements seem natural and inevitable, obscuring exploitation and harm, and delegitimizing alternatives. Capitalist orthodoxy determines what questions economists ask, what policies are considered reasonable, and who counts as a "serious" economic thinker versus a naive idealist.
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