The title of Tyler Cowen’s paean of praise for big business might strike even a pro-business reader as quixotic. Loving an abstraction is hard enough. But this particular abstraction inspires a remarkable lack of trust. According to a 2016 Gallup poll quoted by the author, an economist at George Mason University, just 6 per cent of Americans trust big business “a great deal”. Congress alone, out of a list of other US institutions, scores less.
This is, then, a courageous, contrarian book. It deserves a hearing, not least because one of the most striking economic phenomena of the past 30 years is how capitalism, with big business in the driving seat, has raised millions out of poverty. Also striking, says Cowen, is that business produces most of what we enjoy and consume, and provides us with jobs.
While admitting his discomfort in ceding so much of daily life to profit-maximising companies, Cowen feels it is a better bargain than is generally understood: at its best, he writes, business enables us to satisfy our creative desires and improve our lives.