Smith des­paired of ever returning to a premercantile system precisely because of the problem of corporate capture. Thanks in no small part to his own efforts, he was wrong. But in reducing The Wealth of Nations to a polemic against tariffs, we have managed to end up exactly where he did not think we should be: allowing corporate interests to wield too much influence over government and undermining the public interest as a result. Nearly a quarter of a millennium after Smith first identified the problem, we are, in a sense, back to where he started. But just as we overcame the infamous abuse of the monopolists who prevailed in earlier times, so can we overcome them again today, as long as we recognize the true nature of the problem. It’s not tariffs: it’s power…

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