Making Markets Work Summary and Analysis

This chapter opens with an explanation of the theory behind a capitalist democracy, and its working just the way it should when all of the conditions are perfect and nothing has been tainted with anything like subsidies or taxes that tilt the market toward one outcome and away from another. In the real world, however, where government tilts markets all the time, innovation introduces new competition all the time, the markets are fraught with monopolies and several other factors mean competition is never fair, some strategy for navigating the system needs to be employed. Firms struggle to allocate money for efficiencies because they are long in the habit of looking at initial cost instead of savings over time, but Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) allow entrepreneurs to be paid for increasing efficiencies, and are catching on. Allowing companies...