This book has been long in the making. Its origins go back to 1995, when as a postgraduate student, I became interested in the critique of utilitarianism and welfare economics in relation to housing policy. My interest in this theme was rekindled in 2013 when I become more directly involved in the public policy debate through Policy Network and the Centre for Progressive Capitalism.

In late 2015 I decided, perhaps somewhat foolishly, to write a book exploring post-Mill developments within liberalism in an attempt to find a more robust liberal intellectual foundation for a public policy framework. As a Germanophile, the path to post- Weimar German liberal thought and ordoliberalism was a logical one. This subsequently led to a much more extended project to sketch out how the underlying ordoliberal principle of power dispersion might be applied to public policy. Whether such a project is credible remains to be seen, although I would hope that it at least encourages liberals to make more of an effort to explain why freedom and equality are still ideas of fundamental importance.

Such a book so long in the making has naturally been the product of numerous conversations, debates, arguments, support and advice over some 25 years. In particular I would like to thank the following people for their generosity, including: Philip Allott, Werner Bonefeld, Vit Bubak, Willem Buiter, David Carruthers, Tobias Caspary, Tony Curzon Price, Meghnad Desai, Patrick Diamond, Nicholas Falk, Charles Goodhart, Lawrence Hamilton, Con Keating, Eric Lonergan, Carl Mossfeldt, John Muellbauer, Christian Odendahl, Ines Parsonson, Emmanuel Saez, David Sainsbury, George Selgin, Michael Seydel, Barbora Stepankova, Viktor Vanberg, Frank Vibert, Winrich Voss and Adelbert Winkler. I would also like to thank the OECD data team who were extremely helpful in responding to my data queries. In addition I would like to thank Thomas Piketty and Edwin Black for permission to use their data as well as Refinitiv LSEG and the Conference Board. I would also like to thank Michael Kenny, without whose encouragement I would have given up long ago. Finally, I would like to thank my family: Yanina, Thea and Ethan for all their support and for putting up with me spending far too long at my computer.