Professor Mordecai Kurz argues that rising inequality is not simply the result of markets, but the combined effect of "technology, culture and policy" operating together over decades.
Drawing on his forthcoming book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline, Kurz explains why he believes free market capitalism, left entirely unregulated, eventually concentrates both economic and political power. His central concern is not wealth alone, but the long-term erosion of democratic agency when monopoly power becomes permanent through patents, acquisitions, and technological dominance.
A major focus of the conversation is artificial intelligence and the future of work. Kurz distinguishes between technologies that increase human productivity and technologies designed primarily to replace labor altogether. "The key," he argues, "was creating a situation of increasing the productivity of people rather than replacing them."
The discussion also explores job displacement, democratic control over technology, monopoly formation, and the responsibility societies have to preserve human dignity amid rapid technological change.
"We can have democracy and we can have free market capitalism," Kurz says, "but… we cannot have them both."
For leaders navigating the implications of AI, automation, and economic concentration, the episode offers a rigorous framework for thinking beyond short-term efficiency gains and toward the long-term relationship between innovation, power, and democracy.
Mordecai Kurz is a Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. He is the author of Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy.
Get Mordecai's book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline, here: https://tinyurl.com/4ftzph7a
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