Matt Smith

clipped from yglesias.thinkprogress.org Matt Yglesias presents "An Influential Idea I Didn’t Get in a Book".  The gist - profit in perfectly competitive markets is zero (after returns for labor, capital, and presumed managerial expertise), so businessmen seek to create market imperfections: This competitive market sure looks like a horrible place! You might make a living there, but you sure as hell aren’t going to get rich. Think of the immigrant family that owns the dry cleaning shop around the corner—long hours, hard work, modest income. That’s your capitalism and it pretty much sucks. Dare I mention Adam Smith, who made that very point back in 1776? “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public Thirdly, we can scarcely wait for the day when Matt discovers (perhaps not by way of a book?) that Big Business is not automatically "conservative", but is often happy to ally itself with Big Government in the course of seeking rents.