Luigi Zingales: Pro-Market vs. Pro-Business
From Chrystia Freeland’s book Plutocrats, pp. 261-262:
Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, frames [a central issue for government policy] as the choice between being promarket and being pro business. Super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy, but, ironically, as their influence grows, they can become its opponents.
Here is how Zingales, an ardently patriotic immigrant to America and a passionate defender of the market economy, describes the dynamic: “True capitalism lacks a strong lobby. That assertion might appear strange in light of the billions of dollars firms spend lobbying Congress in America, but that is exactly the point. Most lobbying seeks to tilt the playing field in one direction or another, not to level it. Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition. Open competition forces established firms to prove their competence again and again; strong successful market players therefore often use their muscle to restrict such competition, and to strengthen their positions. As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.”