Wealth & Money Quote by David Korten

Korten’s line is a neat piece of rhetorical judo: he takes a phrase that sounds neutral, even civics-textbook bland, and swaps in one that lands like an accusation. “Market economy” evokes open exchange, dispersed power, and the comforting myth that prices are just information. “Capitalist economy” points to ownership, class leverage, and the fact that “the market” is often less an arena of fair competition than a set of rules written by people who already have assets.

The intent isn’t to nitpick definitions; it’s to reframe responsibility. If you call it a market economy, inequality and corporate dominance look like unfortunate outcomes of impersonal forces. If you call it capitalist, those outcomes look designed: the predictable result of who owns productive property, who controls investment, and who gets to shape regulation, labor rights, and monetary policy. The subtext is: stop blaming “the market” for what power does.

Contextually, Korten comes out of a late-20th-century critique of globalization and corporate governance, where “free markets” were sold as liberation while consolidation accelerated and democratic oversight thinned. His phrasing also needles mainstream politicians who praise markets while quietly protecting capital: subsidies, bailouts, intellectual property expansions, permissive antitrust.

It works because it steals the rhetorical safety blanket. “Market” flatters our sense that we’re all participants; “capitalist” reminds you there are owners and there are renters of their own time. The sentence is short, but it forces a longer argument: if the problem is capitalism, solutions shift from tweaking competition to confronting ownership, concentration, and the political power that capital reliably purchases.