Re:Economics and Politics are not distinct (Score 1)

I didn't say democracy was needed, I said government was. Capitalism requires laws and enforcement to protect property and contract and to punish fraud, any despot would do fine for this. That was my point about Murdoch. If we had what you call (pure) capitalism, the owners would be, literally, King. Chances are, given recent events, they would be as committed to preserving the laws protecting capitalism as Stalin was to protecting the proletariat. (Actually, Adam Smith made that point long before Enron.)

But my larger point was that decisions about where to put the mill, what to pay the workers, whether and where to dump the waste, are political decisions in that they affect communities of people. Ultimately, a democratic government may make them or it may choose not to. But the decisions are political.