Ezra's Bookshelf

Radical Markets

by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl

EconomicsPolitics & Government

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Eric Posner and Glen Weyl's 'Radical Markets' offers a provocative set of proposals for restructuring economic institutions to achieve both greater efficiency and equality. The authors, a law professor and an economist, argue that conventional debates between free-market capitalism and government intervention miss a crucial third option: designing markets that are genuinely competitive rather than allowing wealth to concentrate in ways that undermine competition itself. Their most striking proposal is 'quadratic voting,' which would give every citizen equal voting credits but allow them to concentrate their votes on issues they care most about, forcing them to reveal preference intensity rather than just direction. They also propose a 'Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax' on property, where owners must constantly declare a price at which they'd sell, creating incentives for efficient use rather than hoarding. Other chapters address immigration (allowing citizens to sponsor migrants), data labor (treating personal data as work deserving compensation), and institutional investment (limiting how much of a market any fund can control). While not all proposals are equally practical, the book succeeds in expanding the conversation about what markets can do. Readers open to unconventional ideas will find their assumptions about property, voting, and market design productively challenged.

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