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Capitalism and its divided critics

Capitalism has spawned two great organising mechanisms: markets and firms. The ideas behind these mechanisms are opposed to one another. Markets involve arms-length transactions among disparate actors; the company promotes linked-arm collaboration among teams. But, somewhat curiously, these contradictory approaches are under attack simultaneously. If the assailants would only pause to note this irony, they might perhaps calm down.

The assault on markets has been especially loud, thanks to the financial bust. Now that complex securitisation appears to have been discredited, it is harder to have faith in arms-length transactions as a way of allocating capital. Collateralised debt obligations, credit default swaps and the whole paraphernalia of tradable financial promises have been called into question. Some critics appear to believe that, if only markets in derivatives had been regulated, the world would have been spared the bust.

But if markets are out of fashion, the alternative organising mechanism – the company – is equally under fire. Leaf through the management journals and you will soon learn that imprisoning capital and talent inside large organisations is an outdated way of doing things, forcing otherwise creative people into a bureaucratic arm-lock. Critics of the company complain that, time and again, incumbent corporations are caught flat-footed by the rapid technological shifts of modern life. Managers fail to anticipate Facebook and Twitter; they back cinemas in the age of the downloadable home movie. For all their fancy MBAs and spreadsheets, company bosses don’t always allocate resources where the pay-off will be highest.

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