There’s an experience I have on a more regular basis than I’d like to admit. Maybe you’ve had it, too.
I’ll read a few economic blogs or listen to podcasts discussing a major trend or issue with the economy, and I’ll be nodding along in agreement, only to be hit by the realization afterwards that they were espousing some pretty different centre-left (maybe even contradictory) premises.
This has especially been the case in the American blogsphere, which is large and well-funded enough to have seen a pretty wide array of voices and ideological camps emerge within the centre-left tent. So big, in fact, that there’s a sub-genre of inter-blog conflict dedicated to people named Matt. (1)
One piece will insist that the real problem with the economy is financialization, another will argue that what really matters is building more. A third might claim the real issue is that the state no longer has the capacity to do big things. Then someone else will say that the market rules themselves are rigged, so none of the rest matters until we fix that.
They all make compelling cases, at least in part.
Over the years, I’ve found it useful to categorize these different centre-left ideological camps in my head. They’re not mutually exclusive, and most people probably identify with a few at once. But each has its own story about what’s wrong with the economy and how they’d prioritize dealing with it.
Here’s how I’ve come to think about them:
1. Anti-Extraction
The economy rewards financial engineering and short-term profit over productive investment. Corporate incentives push firms to strip assets, buy back stock and chase quarterly returns rather than build.
2. Pre-Distribution
The “rules of the game” are tilted. Labour laws, competition policy and procurement, all favour capital and incumbents. The problem isn’t just inequality; it’s that markets are designed to produce it.
3. Market Socialism
Some goods and services (think healthcare, housing, energy or even grocery) just don’t work well when run for profit. Private ownership in these sectors tends toward fragility and exploitation.
4. Anti-Monopoly
Big firms have grown too dominant, smothering competition and innovation. Whether it’s tech, grocery or telecom, concentrated market power harms consumers and suppliers alike.
5. Community / Localism
Wealth and ownership have become too detached from place. External investors extract profits from communities, leaving them hollowed out.
6. Mission-Oriented
Markets are good at incremental innovation, but bad at solving big public challenges. The state needs to set national missions (decarbonization, housing, biotech) and mobilize private effort around them.
7. Abundance
Our biggest problem isn’t greed or inequality, it’s scarcity—especially of housing, infrastructure and clean energy. We’ve made it too hard to build, thanks to endless permitting and restrictive zoning.
8. Redistribution First
Inequality is baked into capitalism. No matter how we tweak the rules, markets will generate unequal outcomes. That’s fine, but we need strong taxes and transfers to rebalance things after the fact.
Table title here
Camp |
Core Problem with Economy |
Default Policy Instinct |
Who’s the bad guy? |
Key Detractors on Left |
| Anti-Extraction | Corporate incentives and capital markets reward short-term extraction of value (financialization, asset-stripping) rather than long-term investment and value creation. | Reform corporate governance, finance, and incentive structures to reward productive, sustainable business models. | Financial engineers — Wall Street, Bay Street, private equity, hedge funds, shareholder activists — who extract short-term profits rather than build productive enterprises. They gut firms, communities, and long-term prosperity to feed financial returns. | Abundance advocates who see this as slowing necessary build-out; some mission-oriented strategists |
| Pre-Distribution | The “rules of the game” in markets are tilted toward capital over labour, incumbents over new entrants, and concentrated wealth. | Rewrite market rules to give workers and smaller players more power and share of returns (labour law, competition, procurement, ownership diversification), social wages, universal childcare and transit | Rigged market rules that privilege employers and capital over workers and communities. The villains are less individuals than the system — weak labour laws, tilted corporate governance, procurement rules that reward low-road business models. | Abundance advocates wary of heavy market rules (‘everything bagel’ liberalism) which can stifle building |
| Market Socialism | In certain essential sectors, private ownership inherently produces affordability and resilience failures—even with strong regulation. | Sovereign wealth fund, public banks, Crown corporations | Private profiteers in essential goods/services (for-profit LTC chains, telecom monopolies). Things too essential to be left to profit-seeking should be in public/communal hands, but rent-seekers keep them privatized. | Mission-oriented who want private sector partnerships; pre-distribution/anti-monopoly/anti-extraction who would say that a better way to solve problems is to heavily regulate and change the rules |
| Anti-Monopoly | Excessive market concentration lets dominant firms exploit consumers, workers, and suppliers while stifling innovation. | Break up dominant firms, block anti-competitive mergers, and regulate powerful players to restore competition. | Dominant corporations and monopolists (Big Tech, Big Grocery, Big Banks) who squash competition, exploit consumers, and bully workers. Concentrated private power is incompatible with democracy and free markets. | Redistributionists who say it’s too slow/indirect; some mission-oriented actors who worry about hindering scale and creating national champions for a strategic purpose |
| Community/Local | Wealth and ownership are too concentrated in extractive firms and external investors, leaving communities dependent, disempowered, and vulnerable. Local economies often “leak” value rather than building lasting prosperity for residents. | Redesign economic institutions so that ownership, control, and investment are rooted in communities. The goal is to “lock in” wealth locally and ensure it circulates broadly. | Extractive corporations, absentee landlords, private equity firms, and external investors who strip value from communities and displace local economic control. | Some redistribution-first advocates who argue that CWB is too slow and incremental compared to direct taxation/transfer. Certain post-growth advocates may see local economic development as still reproducing growth logics. Some abundance/mission-oriented thinkers may see CWB as parochial or insufficiently focused on national-scale innovation and scaling. |
| Mission-Oriented | Markets alone underinvest in solving big societal challenges and fail to align innovation with public needs. | Use active state leadership—investment, procurement, R&D, conditionalities—to mobilize private sector toward national missions. | Short-sighted markets and timid governments that fail to rise to big challenges (climate, health, innovation). Incumbents defend the status quo, and the real villain is a lack of ambition and direction. | Anti-monopolists who fear entrenching “national champions”. Redistribution-first who think this approach doesn’t solve the fundamental economic problems. |
| Abundance | Chronic undersupply and bottlenecks in key goods/services drive up costs and limit opportunity. | Remove barriers to production and speed up approvals/builds to rapidly scale supply in housing, energy, infrastructure, etc. | Bottleneck creators — NIMBYs, slow regulators, legacy incumbents — who block supply and keep things scarce (housing, energy, infrastructure). Red tape, restrictive zoning, and entrenched veto players drive up costs for everyone. | Redistributionists who see it as neglecting equity; anti-extractionists who fear quality/sustainability trade-offs |
| Redistribution First | Markets naturally generate large inequalities in income and wealth; these imbalances undermine fairness, opportunity, and social cohesion. | Use the tax-and-transfer system to redistribute income/wealth and fund universal public services after the fact. | The super-rich who hoard wealth and dodge taxes. They’re not playing fair, they can easily afford to pay more, and they corrupt democracy by resisting progressive taxation. | Anti-monopolists, abundance advocates who see this as ignoring supply constraints. Pre-distribution/anti-extraction/anti-monopoly who disagree on tackling problems upstream instead of downstream re: theory of change |
When the people and organizations I respect in Canada or the US disagree on how to best respond to the policy issue du jour, it’s usually because they’re prioritizing what the root economic problem is differently. Sometimes the diagnoses overlap, sometimes they clash. But each perspective offers a distinct set of tools.
And while clashes between these camps are usually entirely avoidable (preferably so), I find them fascinating when they happen: Abundance advocates finding anti-monopoly reformers to be too focused on process, not outcomes. Redistributionists thinking abundance advocates underestimate power and inequality. Mission-oriented advocates worrying that localists are too small-ball. And so on.
These frictions are what make this ecosystem intellectually rich. But in practice, progress often comes from borrowing across camps, creating coalitions and finding the best lens for the problem at hand.
I’ve shared this breakdown with a few wonk friends who found it interesting, so thought it would be worth publishing more broadly.
(1) Yglesias, Stoller, and Bruenig
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