Formal calculations, what can be measured in money or in kind, destroys substantive rationality, the societal values incapable of being measured in numerical terms.  Weber was right, it serves to dehumanizes those subject to it.

The fundamental distinction between "social market" economies and "liberal" economies is the degree to which they are socially embedded.  

So that we can speak of socially embedded economies on the continent in which the preservation of social relations and values antecedent to the values of the market are preserved, and socially disembedded economies of the North Atlantic and North America in which formal, economic, values are given precedence over substantive, social, values.

Economies are always socially embedded, and society as a living thing will eventually generate an autonomic response to defend against the errant economies.  Polanyi stated this most clearly, noting that the state and social order are antecedent to the development of that market.  Without the rule of law and the recognition of private property, the liberal economy can not exist. The state and normative, social values are antecedent and necessary to the continuation of the market.  As economies disembed from the society they serve to destroy it, undermining the institutions in society upon which their continuation depends.

Schumpeter recognized this in his work, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, leading him to reluctantly acknowledge the need for socialism.  What Schumpeter called socialism was essentially a form of Keynesian economics, state interevention to stabilize the social disruptions created by the feral market.  The "cycle of creative destruction" is much like a workhorse, a powerful creature, but left untamed and uncontrolled, it may kill those who attempt to exploit it.  That this favorite line of neo-liberals worldwide came from a work advocating "socialism" is an irony lost on most of them.   Apparently reading comprehension is not required in the vast majority of economics programs.

Society is a living, breathing thing.  When economies disembedd and degenerate antecedent social orders they sicken society, and they generate the autonomic response.  Nations, states, individuals, institions...  all need not neccesarily be aware that there actions consitute this response.  Structure conditions action, although the level of abstraction at which this occurs blurs its true context.  And when lower level responses are inadequate, a patter of escalation occurs.  The greater the unwillingess of the economy to reembed, the greater the destructive power of the social response.  

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

When I get home tonight I'll quote a (literally) textbook example on the price of water. If I forget, shout!

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

Would you believe that the fractious French and their communist unions made such a fuss the case got splashed all over the papers and got on TV and everything? That public-spirited postmaster held on courageously, but in the end had to give up, and I believe was quietly moved elsewhere.

That's France for you. But, with the liberalisation of postal services that will serve to make rural distribution even more wastefully expensive (because not offset by margins made on lower-cost urban operations), logic will prevail and soon the rural French will be lucky if they see a yellow van once a fortnight.

Which is as it should be.

This book is definitely within the `Liberal Tradition' that gets so many sneering references on Eurotrib

You know, it's not the liberal tradition that gets sneering references, but the version currently promoted (in steamroller fashion) by partisans that ignore the tradition. We are mostly careful to call them neolibs rather than liberals.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

We do, often, call them market worshippers and all sorts of other things. Neoconservative has a distinct and separate meaning.

This group is referred to ... as the 'Collectifs antiliberaux'  by the way.

I do think the language used here is often blinkering.