giving free-markets a left hook

[gusl]

from Raghuram R. Rajan and Luigi Zingales - Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists:
Unleashing the power of financial markets to create wealth and spread opportunity

financial markets do seem to affect corporate mobility even in rich countries, threatening the establishment.

the tension: Inequality PREVENTS free-markets CAUSE Inequality

The greatest threat, historically, has often been the government itself:
Under the guise of protecting citizens from foreign or ideological enemies, governments used their powerful armies or police forces to prey on their own citizens. In some societies, governments changed character quite early on and became representative of the people, policing their interactions with a firm but light hand, and inspiring trust rather than fear.
In others, rulers still treat their countries as personal fiefdoms, to be looted as they please. Why were some countries fortunate while others are still damned?
While one-dimensional answers to such questions rarely satisfy, the historical
evidence suggests an intriguing pattern: In many of the fortunate countries, the
distribution of property, especially land, was typically much more egalitarian. For example, among the countries of the New World, land in Canada and Northern United States was widely distributed, with a sizeable number of “yeoman” farmers managing moderate plots of land. In the countries of the Caribbean and in Latin America, the norm was large estates, often run by owners exploiting slave labor, or reliant on feudal relationships with the docile local population.

Incumbents have the power to block the institutions necessary for finance because
they are an organized group, focused on their goal, and endowed with plentiful resources.
They have a far greater ability to sway legislators and bureaucrats to their view than the larger mass of unorganized citizens. Consider whom the U.S. Congress first sought to help after the terrible tragedy of September 11th 2001. The terrorist attacks affected the entire tourism industry. But the first legislation was not relief for the hundreds of thousands of taxi drivers or restaurant and hotel workers, but for the airlines that conducted an organized lobbying effort for taxpayer subsidies.