At C4SS: Schumpeterian Liberalism

I think the liberal attitude toward big business can be summed up as Schumpeterian. Schumpeter argued that it was only large managerialist corporations run by central planner types that could afford technological innovation, because they had the market power necessary to administer prices and sell above marginal cost, and thus recoup outlays for R&D. For liberals, likewise, it’s the large, bureaucratic businesses that are most likely to be able to afford to be “progressive” because of their market power.

A certain kind of liberal, as a result, tends to distrust any alternative to conventional managerial-professional ways of doing things.