THE ATLANTIC SEPTEMBER 2019 35guarantor of employment. Corporations are freed
to pursue efficiency as they see fit; individuals none-
theless enjoy some of the security of the old corpo-
ratist era, because they have a new tool to help them.
LinkedIn thus becomes the psychological center of
the world of work—the successor to the corporation.
One of Hoffman’s books is titled, rather appropri-
ately, The Start-Up of You. Whereas Transaction
Man treated workers as costs on a spreadsheet, Net-
work Man wants to empower them.
One in four American adults says they use
Linked In, and many recruiters go to the site reg-
ularly. But LinkedIn is not a solution to worker
insecurity writ large, still less to inequality. On
the contrary, a world in which people compete to
gather connections may be even less equal than
our current one. A few high-octane networkers
will attract large followings, while a long tail of
pedestrians will have only a handful of buddies. At
one point in its evolution, LinkedIn published the
size of each user’s network as a spur to add to the
total. Later, realizing the anxiety this bred, the site
capped the number of connections it published at
500 per member.
Lemann is under no illusions that online net-
works are the answer to the search for security and
dignity, and he concludes with a different proposal.
It is a sort of anticonception conception: Rather than
buy in to a single grand vision, societies should pre-
fer a robust contest among interest groups—what
Lemann calls pluralism. Borrowing from the for-
gotten early-20th-century political scientist Arthur
Bentley, Lemann defines groups broadly. States and
cities are “locality groups,” income categories are
“wealth groups,” supporters of a particular politician
constitute “personality groups.” People inevitably
affiliate themselves with such groups; groups nat-
urally compete to influence the government; and
the resulting push and pull, not squabbles among
intellectuals about organizing concepts, consti-
tutes the proper stuff of politics. Lemann has a par-
ticular respect for the interest groups that fight for
Chicago Lawn, the struggling working-class neigh-
borhood that appears at intervals throughout his
book, mostly as the victim of some remote trans-
action. Organizing in one’s interests, he suggests,
“is the only effective way to get protection against
the inev itable lacunae in somebody else’s big idea.”
Lemann is aware of the risks in this conclusion.
He cites the obvious objection: “The flaw in the plu-
ralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with
a strong upper-class accent.” In a contest of compet-
ing interest groups, the ones with the most money
are likely to win. Rich seniors will protect their
health benefits at the expense of public housing; the
estate tax will vanish, and so will the dream of good
preschools for poor children. Appelbaum notes
in passing how the beer magnate Joseph Coors
helped found the Heritage Foundation to promote a
conservative pro-business agenda, and how another
businessman, Howard Jarvis, spearheaded the Cal-
ifornia proposition that reduced property taxes. For
those who regard inequality as a challenge, an
interest-group free-for-all is a perilous prescription.
Lemann’s pluralism also prompts a deeper res-
ervation. His vision frames politics as a zero-sum
affair, dismissing as futile the quest for “a broad,
objectively determined meliorist plan that will help
every one.” But this postmodernist pessimism goes
too far. Some policies are better than others, and
to give up on this truth is to throw away the sharp-
est sword in the fight against inequality. The gov-
ernment should bankroll good schools because,
objec tively speaking, good schools will boost both
economic growth and social equity. Likewise, com-
petition is generally a force that gets the best out
of people, whether they are public-school teachers
or tech monopolists. America’s health-care system
is ripe for reform because it is both socially unjust
and scandalously costly.
At the close of his book, Appelbaum presents
a series of persuasive recommendations, confirm-
ing that Lemann is wrong to despair of reasoned,
technocratic argument. If policy makers want ordi-
nary Americans to appreciate the benefits of open
trade, they must ensure that displaced workers
have access to training and health care. Because
some inter est groups are weaker than others, gov-
ernment should correct the double standard by
which the power of labor unions is regarded with
antipathy but the power of business monopolies is
tolerated. Well-heeled professional cartels, such
as associations of real-estate agents who extract
6 percent commissions from hapless home sell-
ers, should be eyed with suspicion. Progressives
should look for ways to be pro-competition but
anti-inequality.
Yet however reasonable Appelbaum’s argu-
ments, readers are also left with a question about
the future. Although he sets out to write the story
of the economists’ hour—an hour that he thinks
ended in 2008—it isn’t so clear that the economists
have departed. They may not have the ear of pop-
ulists, but their resilience shouldn’t be underrated.
Indeed, throughout Appelbaum’s narrative, many
of the knights who slay the dragons of bad eco-
nomic ideology are economists themselves. The
story of the past generation is more about debates
among economists than about economists pitted
against laypeople. Perhaps, with a bit of humility
and retooling, the economists will have their day
again. If they do not come up with the next set of
good ideas, it is not obvious who will.Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker Senior
Fellow for International Economics at the Council
on Foreign Relations. He is working on a book about
venture capital in Silicon Valley.TRANSACTION MAN:
THE RISE OF
THE DEAL AND THE
DECLINE OF THE
AMERICAN DREAM
NICHOLAS LEMANN
FSGTHE ECONOMISTS’
HOUR: FALSE
PROPHETS, FREE
MARKETS, AND
THE FRACTURE OF
SOCIETY
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Little, Brown