Elizabeth Anderson has written a fascinating post on John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness that, among other things, touches on the political theory of corporations, a subject of great interest to me. Specifically, Anderson suggests that Tomasi conflates government with the state, despite the fact that a number of organizations, including private firms, can be understood as governing institutions. The truly important distinction is thus between liberal democratic and authoritarian governments, whether public (states) or private (firms). Efforts to regulate employment practices in private firms can be understood as efforts on the part of the state to guarantee the republican character of private firms. One possible rejoinder is that a diversity of institutional forms at the firm level is actually very valuable, particularly if employees enjoy a right of exit that is less readily available in the case of public governments or states.

I would love to see a conversation between Anderson and Michael Munger, who recently coined the term “euvoluntary exchange” to draw out the intuitions behind efforts to regulate voluntary exchanges.