---
title: "Finland is not a free market economy | Lasse Pipinen, Tero Lundstedt | Negotiator 175"
titleOriginal: "Suomi ei ole vapaa markkinatalous | Lasse Pipinen Tero Lundstedt | Neuvottelija 175"
episodeNumber: "175"
guest: "Lasse Pipinen, Tero Lundstedt"
datePublished: 2023-02-17
duration: "47:53"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["finnish_economy_policy","free_speech_society"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and the publisher's own chapter marks, translated one for one; their spacing is irregular and matches the recording, though the marks thin out considerably in the middle third. No transcript is published here — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. Both guests run the think tank whose work the episode discusses and no opposing voice is present; the long-form write-up in the Neuvottelija AI editions states that."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/261-suomi-ei-ole-vapaa-markkinatalous-lasse-pipinen-tero-lundste"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep175-suomi-ei-ole-vapaa-markkinatalous-pipinen-lundstedt/
---
# Finland is not a free market economy | Lasse Pipinen, Tero Lundstedt | Negotiator 175

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=0s) Intro: a newspaper article, the cuts list, and why such lists are always blocked
- [00:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=45s) Libera's alumni
- [01:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=105s) How Libera changed since the Pursiainen years
- [03:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=190s) A newspaper article on the sunset of think tanks
- [05:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=340s) The strange period of restricted freedoms during Covid
- [08:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=510s) The economic left's era in Finland, and the missing cuts lists
- [13:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=828s) The government
- [31:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=1860s) Libera's operating model
- [33:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=2000s) The Atlas Network and Randian influence
- [35:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=2130s) The Austrian school and crypto
- [39:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=2356s) Libera's summer school
- [42:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=2520s) Would Wahlroos come on the channel
- [43:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko&t=2610s) What Libera is working on

## Summary

Lasse Pipinen, executive director of the liberal think tank Libera, and content director Tero Lundstedt answer the claim that the age of think tanks is over. At the centre is Libera's two-billion-euro list of spending cuts, deliberately built from easy, research-backed targets — and which nonetheless brought the interest groups out. The episode asks why value liberalism advances in Finland while economic reform stalls, and why the process consequences of political decisions are so rarely worked out. Both guests run the think tank whose work is being discussed.

## The list, and the reaction to it

Libera's two billion euros of proposed cuts were chosen for being easy and
well-evidenced rather than for being large — and the interest groups came out anyway.
That reaction, rather than the list, is the episode's actual finding: the constraint on
this kind of reform is not the quality of the evidence.

## The asymmetry

Value liberalism has advanced in Finland over the same period that economic liberalisation
has stalled. The guests treat that as a question about which coalitions can be assembled
rather than about which arguments are better, which is the more useful way to read it.


## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Suomi ei ole vapaa markkinatalous | Lasse Pipinen Tero Lundstedt | Neuvottelija 175](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1e-eCO8Ko).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/261-suomi-ei-ole-vapaa-markkinatalous-lasse-pipinen-tero-lundste).

## In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode:
[English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep175-suomi-ei-ole-vapaa-markkinatalous-pipinen-lundstedt/) · [suomeksi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/yhteiskunta/ep175-suomi-ei-ole-vapaa-markkinatalous-pipinen-lundstedt/).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Finland is not a free market economy | Lasse Pipinen, Tero Lundstedt | Negotiator 175, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep175-suomi-ei-ole-vapaa-markkinatalous-pipinen-lundstedt/, 2023-02-17. For quotes include episode 175 and timestamp.