Maggie's Farm

With regard to female economists. Off the top of my head, I can name only one who is supportive of free markets/Austrian viewpoints. Veronica de Rugy.

There is, of course, Deirdre McCloskey, arguably the single best economist out there at the moment, certainly in terms of economic history if not theory. But Deirdre was a man, so I'm not sure she gets to fall 100% into the category as most of her learning and adoption of the systemic beliefs was done as a man.

However, I watch and listen to my own wife and the reasons this claim is probably true (that women don't always go for free markets) follows along with her behaviors.
She believes the market works. She says this unquestioningly.
However, when the market doesn't do what she expected, if she loses, she tends to overreact. "There's something WRONG"

Unlike JP Morgan who famously, upon being asked what the market would do, replied "it will fluctuate", she instead thinks something needs to be fixed.

In reality, the market is almost ALWAYS right (assuming it isn't being rigged - and even then, it's 'right' insofar as it does what it was rigged to do until it simply can't support the rigging anymore). It's "right" for that moment in time...it is sending a signal.

Most people don't understand markets just send signals, they think there's some way to predetermine outcomes. But that's what rigging is all about.

So my wife, while she supports the market, also supports rigging it as long as we know what it's going to do and it favors a majority of people.

That rigging, of course, eventually breaks down...and a majority of people get hurt badly. Usually not the ones who benefited from the rigging in the first place, and certainly not those who DID the rigging (politicians).

Still, rigging the system is a 'feel-good' solution. Moral hazard is ignored and set aside until it rears it's ugly head, and then someone says "there was nothing wrong with what we did - there needs to be a NEW law to prevent the people who engaged the moral hazard from doing so next time. That will fix everything." Until even that new law doesn't work anymore and the rigging breaks down further.

I believe women tend to be inclined more toward a comfortable, utopian-style solution. I'd argue most people want that kind of solution, but realize it's unrealistic. Women, however, probably like it more simply because it's comfortable.

I lean on a few ideas when it comes to markets:
I prefer uncomfortable truths to comfortable lies.
I don't want to immanentize the eschaton.
I don't let my feelings get in the way of a good decision.

Finally, I lean on almost everything Bastiat wrote. Mostly
“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

Markets require a value exchange with the assumption that both sides come out ahead or somehow benefit in the exchange. Win-win tends to be the exchange outcome in most market solutions. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have progress.