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
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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