“Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now” was the lead essay of Cato Unbound’s 2008 discussion “When Corporations Hate Markets” and later included in C4SS’s “Markets Not Capitalism.” The essay is one-half political economy, sketching out the basic ideas behind freed-market anti-capitalism, and one-half political psychology, exploring the various pitfalls leading virtually everyone, from libertarians to conservatives to socialists, to conflate freed markets with capitalism and thereby bolster the mutually reinforcing power of both capitalism on the one hand and statism on the other. The piece is ambitious in scope yet accessible to readers unfamiliar with freed-market anti-capitalist arguments (so almost everyone). It’s still one of my go-to pieces to share with people interested in these ideas and I hope you enjoy my discussion with Roderick about it.
Video version on YouTube:
Audio version:
