The United States benefits from a market economy. Only, it’s not really a market economy, is it? Economist Nancy Folbre in the New York Times:
[A] large share of our economic output is now produced by large companies whose sales exceed the gross domestic product of many countries of the world. The vertically integrated supply chains of these large, often bureaucratic institutions seldom involve markets.
We value markets because of the freedom that they imply. But markets are not designed to maximize freedom, they’re designed to maximize profit. Freedom is a condition of markets but, as in all recipes, substitutions may be used.
It’s a trope on both the left and the right that we live in a world where economic powers exert great political power. Perhaps, inordinately so. But it might be interesting to expand the conversation in the other direction.
Perhaps our popular narratives could take a closer look at how companies are set up. There’s politics there, too. And there’s no greater change than change from within.
(via this MetaFilter post on employee ownership and the work of the economist Ronald Coase.)