David Ciepley in The Hedgehog Review:
Market economies, in which the key productive inputs such as land, labor, and capital are bought and sold, display a notable long-run tendency toward business concentration, high inequality, political capture, domination of the laboring classes, and ultimate economic sclerosis. Auspicious beginnings in economic and political freedom and relative equality seem ineluctably, despite periods of reprieve, to end in oligarchy, authoritarianism, and decline.
This is not just a surmise based on the current US trajectory, or on the higher returns to capital than labor.1 It is also a conclusion of the comparative study of market economies from medieval Persia through the Dutch and Italian republics down to today.2 To date, there has been no exception that would give us reason to ignore the words of caution attributed to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” The fates of political democracy and political economy have always been linked.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.