Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl

Overview

Published in 2018 by Princeton University Press, this book by University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner and Microsoft Research economist Glen Weyl proposes five radical market-based reforms designed to address inequality, promote efficiency, and reinvigorate democratic participation.

Five Proposals

1. Property Is Monopoly (COST): The Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax requires all asset owners to declare a price at which they would sell, and pay a tax on that self-assessed value. Anyone can buy the asset at the declared price. This eliminates monopoly pricing of property while maintaining market incentives.

2. Radical Democracy (Quadratic Voting): Replace one-person-one-vote with a system where citizens receive "voice credits" that they can spend on issues they care about, but with quadratic costs (1 vote costs 1 credit, 2 votes cost 4, 3 votes cost 9). This allows intensity of preference to be expressed.

3. Uniting the World's Workers (Visa Markets): Allow citizens to sponsor migrant workers, sharing the economic gains from labor mobility while addressing concerns about competition for jobs.

4. Dismembering the Octopus: Limit institutional investors from holding shares in competing firms within the same industry, addressing the problem of common ownership that reduces competitive incentives.

5. Data as Labor: Reconceptualize personal data generated by users as a form of labor that should be compensated, rather than a free resource extracted by technology companies.

Relevance to Finance

For investors, the book is particularly relevant for its analysis of institutional ownership concentration (Chapter 4) and its implications for market competition, as well as its broader vision for how market mechanisms might be redesigned to address systemic economic challenges.