How is that not a centralized command economy?
It’s the opposite. We are lucky, in having survived the 20th century, to have a good list of things that don’t work. No. 1 on the list is a centralized command economy. Markets work very well, but as global warming illustrates, they don’t solve every problem by themselves. We need to start figuring out how we put real, profound limits on them. I think some of those limits are going to be geographic. What is your answer to those who would see this as a nostalgic and misguided attempt to turn back the clock? There are good things from our economic past that we’d do well to try to re-create in the present, but there are also all kinds of possibilities that we’re offered by the tools we have now. We can now imagine economies that are local without being suffocatingly parochial. The Web, for instance, allows us to trade recipes, so to speak, instead of trading commodities. But who are we, as Westerners enjoying the fruits of centuries of market capitalism, to turn around and wag our fingers
