How Europe can prevent economic crises in the future. Never before have people in Europe been doing so well. Economic output has nearly tripled in the past 45 years. However, at the same time, unemployment, precarious employment, and poverty have increased, the welfare state has been weakened, and millions of people in Europe are suffering from hardship and fear. The influential economist Stephan Schulmeister explains how this polarization occurred and makes one thing clear: markets are not a fate, as the prevailing economic theory of recent decades would have us believe. Neoliberalism has become a religion. Its followers—journalists, politicians, and many entrepreneurs—have adopted this ideology like a gospel. The 1945 work "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich A. von Hayek serves as a catechism. He postulates that freedom un.