This chapter advances three propositions. First, it specifies how the conventional framing and language of debates over market governance, such as the governments-versus-markets dichotomy, hamper public debate, policy prescription, and scholarly analysis, and offers suggestions for how to deploy more precise language, enhance conceptual clarity, and refine analysis. Second, it demonstrates how even the most sophisticated analysts of market institutions sometimes fail to appreciate the full ramifications of their own arguments. They fall into the same linguistic traps as their intellectual adversaries, for example, or they fail to capture the extent to which market behavior is learned, not natural, and market operations are constructed, not free. And third, the chapter concludes by demonstrating how conceptual misunderstandings can beget very real policy errors, and specifying policy lessons for both market liberals and progressives.
Workers' Market Behavior and the Dual Economy