Can corporate America, and Big Tech in particular, be democratized? How can we make capitalism more accountable to the people? In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes back the OCTOPEST of Microsoft, Glen Weyl. Says Roberts, “I love capitalism. Because capitalism, profit, and loss, gives firms the incentives to discover those new techniques and new products and so on, and it works pretty well. What do we need that’s new? What do we need that’s different?”
Listen to Roberts and Weyl discuss this question and more, and then consider the further questions for thought we pose below. Share your thoughts with us today in the comments, or use them to start your own conversation offline.
1- How have the origins and traditions of antitrust changed over time, according to Weyl? What policy objectives ought antitrust law be expected to advance? How should we be thinking about antitrust and market power in a world where the firms in question often charge zero price?
2- Why does Weyl think that the greatest period of productivity growth in the United States occurred between the 1920s and 50s, and how does Roberts push back on this claim? How might social and/or state institutions play a role in allowing entrepreneurial activity to flourish?
3- What do you think Weyl means when he talks about a “democratized economy?” How does he make the case for it, and what would need to happen to help the United States get there? How does Weyl suggest we may be able to get closer to the sort of feedback loops we find in markets? (Hint: Weyl makes much of the Taiwan example…We wonder what you think of that, too.)
4- Why does Weyl think it problematic that companies such as Google had to rely on venture capital to get their start? What do you thin of his ideas for creating a big pool of (public) matching funds for things like start-ups and research and development? To what extent might such ideas really alleviate the free-rider problem Weyl is worried about?
5- How does Weyl define democracy? What sorts of values does he suggest it should uphold? How does he use the example of the French and American Revolutions to explain the proper role of legitimacy and authority in a democracy?
READER COMMENTS
Andy Gardner
Sep 25 2021 at 1:54pm
I don’t understand the OCTOPEST reference — could you please explain? Thx
[It’s explained in the opening minute of the podcast episode:
–Econlib Ed.]
Dallas Weaver Ph.D.
Oct 22 2021 at 8:41pm
It does seem that his way of thinking would democratize the institutions by giving even more people and groups veto power over everything. This will just extend the “vetocracy” (the results of his version of democracy) that the environmental activists have already created that have killed nuclear energy outside of China and Russia.
How can we have any progress with no rational costs to base decisions on and experts to do rational tradeoff calculations? My engineering economics professor in the late ’50s visited Russia and they were using his textbook with words like profit, loss, ROI, etc, just changed to Communist Woke vocabulary with the same mathematics.
The endpoint of his thinking would create a “tragedy of the anti-commons” variation where the right in question is the ability to say NO in situations where you have neither real skin in the game, expertise to understand the issues, and really know little.
The thought that he has an important position at Microsoft is a bit troubling. It is like the sloppy thinking of the social sciences with their unreproducible nonsense seems to have won. Yes, a lot of things need changing to make the system work better and some of his idea like using self-reported prices for annual property tax basis on assets could be applied to copyrights and patents, which would rapidly eliminate the worthless copyrights and patents that are just used for extortion.
Comments are closed.