The Sense That the System Is Rigged Relates Directly to Governments’ Failure to Address Inequality and Concentration

From a ProMarket interview with Anat Admati:

… Q: The World Economic Forum has called for “reimagining” and “reforming” capitalism. To what extent is this need for reform the result of disruption brought by technological change, globalization, and immigration and to what extent is it the effect of rent-seeking and regulatory capture?

The impact of technological change, globalization, and immigration on society depends on how the relevant institutions manage these developments. Capitalism has worked poorly in recent years because governments mishandled the challenges of technological change and globalization, and that failure is related to rent-seeking and regulatory capture. The elites who engage with each other through the World Economic Forum and elsewhere can become out of touch and blind to reality; you can see the problem from Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone saying in Davos in 2016 that he found public anger “astonishing.”

Acemoglu and Robinson argued in Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty that “man-made political and economic institutions… underlie economic success (or lack of it).” Technological developments have highlighted the immense power associated with controlling information. The business of investigative reporting is in a crisis. Corporations often play off governments, shopping jurisdictions and making bargains. For capitalism to work, the relevant institutions must work effectively and avoid excessive rent extraction. The governance challenge of the global economy is daunting.

Here are a few examples…

Q: Some people describe Donald Trump’s economic policies as “corporatism.” Are you more worried by Trump’s interference in the market economy or by companies’ ability to subvert markets’ rules? …