The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Economic Growth, and Increase Inequality. By Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles. Oxford University Press, 2017. Viii + 221 pages.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Progressives claimed that the American political system was corrupt. Large financial and business interests dominated the government. What should be done to end their noxious influence and to promote the public good? Guidance from intellectuals, not wheeling and dealing by corrupt politicians, should set the political agenda. Nonpartisan scientific experts should take over much of the day-to-day work of government.
In his definitive Roots of the Modern State: The Progressive Era, Murray Rothbard had little use for these would be intellectual autocrats: Behind the Progressive program were “newly burgeoning groups of intellectuals, technocrats, and professionals: economists, writers, engineers, planners, physicians, etc., anxious for power and lucrative employment at the hands of the State.”
Brink Lindsey self-identifies as a libertarian; and Steven Teles is a modern liberal. They have together devised a new “liberaltarian” outlook. (The word combines elements of “libertarian” and “egalitarian”) It is a new name for an old way of thinking, and students of the Progressives will find little to surprise them.
The Captured Economy: …
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