radical-markets

Key Insights

  • Two root problems in capitalist markets: monopoly power and missing markets. Posner and Weyl’s diagnosis: markets fail not because they work too well but because they’re incomplete. Monopoly power — not just in tech but in property, labor, and capital — allows owners to extract rents. And many things that should be tradeable (votes, data, immigration) aren’t traded at all, creating inefficiency. Both problems have market solutions.
  • COST — Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax. The radical property reform: owners self-assess the value of their property and pay a tax (say 7%) on that value annually. The catch: anyone can buy your property at your self-assessed price at any time. This eliminates monopoly holdout — you can’t block a highway by demanding 100x market value — because you bear the cost of over-valuing. It forces honest pricing across the economy.
  • Quadratic voting — one dollar one vote, not one person one vote. In binary voting, majorities routinely impose large costs on minorities who care intensely. QV allows people to buy votes with “voice credits,” where the cost of votes rises quadratically (1 vote costs 1 credit, 4 votes costs 16, 9 votes costs 81). People spend their credits on issues they care most about; intensity of preference is expressed, not just direction. This is not plutocracy — credits are distributed equally, not by wealth.
  • Data as labor — the data economy’s missing price. Tech companies treat user data as a free resource. Posner and Weyl argue it is labor — the product of human activity that generates enormous economic value. Users should be compensated for producing it, either individually or through data labor unions that negotiate on their behalf. This reframes the data privacy debate from privacy rights to labor rights.
  • Radical immigration via visa sponsorship. The VISA (Visas Between Individuals as Sponsors) proposal: any American citizen can sponsor one migrant, who pays them a portion of their wage gain. The citizen benefits economically; the migrant gains legal status; immigration expands without requiring congressional action. Markets solve immigration where politics cannot.
  • The moral economy of markets — auctions as free markets. “Auctions as free markets — used everywhere from ads to spectrum.” The book’s implicit claim: wherever a resource is allocated by political or administrative process rather than price discovery, there is inefficiency and often corruption. Auction design is a tool for reclaiming those allocations for the public.

— Drafted from external sources; review and edit to make your own.

From earlier notes:

  • Auctions as free markets - used everywhere from ads to spectrum

  • Moral economies were the norm before — superior in many ways but do not scale past trust/gossip/community

  • Markets must be free, competitive, and open

  • Two problems — market power, and lack of markets

  • Monopoly power is everywhere — individual land owners, etc

  • Voting: you should have to pay for what your vote denies someone else Created: 2019-03-10T20:50:00 Domain: [“[[finance|finance]]”, “[[politics governance|politics governance]]”] Summary: |- The best aspect of “Radical Markets,” according to reviewers, is its innovative approach to economic theory, offering fresh perspectives on how markets can be structured to promote fairness and efficiency. Reviewers appreciate the compelling arguments for rethinking traditional market norms and the potential for radical reforms.

    Conversely, the worst aspect highlighted by some reviewers is the complexity of the ideas presented, which can be challenging to grasp for those not deeply familiar with economic concepts. Additionally, some critics argue that the proposed solutions may be impractical or overly idealistic in real-world applications. Tag: [] Genre: Understanding the World reading_status: Read rating: Great Format: Audiobook Source: Audible Finished: 2018-09-15 Published: 2018

  • Auctions as free markets- used everyhwhere from ads to spectrum
  • Moral economies were the norm before. Superior to market economy in many ways but do not scale past trust/gossip/community
  • Markets must be free, competitive, and open
  • Two problems - market power, and lack of markets
  • Monopoly power is everywhere - individual land owners, etc
    • Monopoly game was developed to share this idea
  • Corporations skirt this by owning many assets
  • Voting
    • You should have to pay for what your vote denies someone else (the way buying a good denies them that good)
    • Y