> Version 1 of the national economy consisted of a few big blocks whose relationships were negotiated in back rooms by a handful of executives, politicians, regulators, and labor leaders. Version 2 was higher resolution: there were more companies, of more different sizes, making more different things, and their relationships changed faster. In this world there were still plenty of back room negotiations, but more was left to market forces. Which further accelerated the fragmentation.
I find this curiously close to a description given by a late-soviet economist who was working on economic reforms in the 80s: he described soviet economy as a bunch of heavy hard rocks, incredibly powerful, but without any flexibility and connection to each other, and small new cooperative movement as a sand that should've taken all the space in between.
I find this curiously close to a description given by a late-soviet economist who was working on economic reforms in the 80s: he described soviet economy as a bunch of heavy hard rocks, incredibly powerful, but without any flexibility and connection to each other, and small new cooperative movement as a sand that should've taken all the space in between.