“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…

(Originally published at Cato Unbound on November 10, 2008) Defenders of the free market are often accused of being apologists for big business and shills for the corporate elite. Is this a fair charge? No and yes. Emphatically no—because corporate power and the free market are actually antithetical; genuine competition is big business’s worst nightmare….

Right-libertarians are routinely awful on economic issues, acting as though big business were — in Ayn Rand’s famous phrase — “a persecuted minority.” But leave it to someone at the Cato Institute to write a column attacking corporate welfare on the grounds that it victimizes the recipients! That’s literally the title: “Corporate Welfare Harms Corporations”…

Our pale blue dot has circled its star eighteen times since it lost the astronomer who gave us the perspective to see it that way — and that phrase. Carl Sagan is not usually remembered as a political prophet, aside from pioneering recognition of the dangers of nuclear war and remaining an inspiration to opponents of drug criminalization. But his…