548 | Chris Hughes: Why Marketcrafting is the Key to America's Economic Future

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris Hughes, Co-Founder of Facebook, Chairman of the Economic Security Project, and author of Marketcrafters: The 100-Year Struggle to Shape the American Economy, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Chris discuss the false dichotomy of the "market" vs. "government" when it comes to developing America's economy and critical industries, the need for government to "marketcraft" the economy to achieve the country's social and political goals, the history of marketcrafting from the New Deal and World War II to the auto industry in the 1980s and semiconductors + clean energy in the 2020s,

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment.
0:05.2	Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Chris Hughes, who you may probably have heard, is famously one of the co-founders of Facebook. Now he is an economist and chair of the Economic Security Project. He last wrote a book in 2018 called Fair Shot,
0:23.0	Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, But Guaranteed Income, and Now He has a new book out,
0:28.1	Market Crafters, The Hundred Years' Struggle to Shape the American Economy. This book is all
0:32.8	about a topic near and dear to my heart, that topic being political economy. Market
0:37.1	Crafterss about this
0:37.9	idea that if we look at our traditional debates around achieving public policy-focused goals,
0:44.7	we'll kind of place things in the bucket of the free market will do it, or government will do it.
0:49.0	Chris's central point in the book and this conversation is if we look at critical industries,
0:53.0	especially in our ones focused
0:55.3	on defense and national security, and of course our efforts to resure semiconductor manufacturing
1:00.4	during the Biden administration with the Chips Act, we could see if there's actually a third
1:05.7	path outside of just government versus the market that we take, that approach is market crafting,
1:11.6	using government and industry together to shape our approaches to these topics.
1:16.1	In this conversation, we cover everything from the history of market crafting since the New
1:20.2	Deal to the ways that we should assess the success of the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction
1:25.9	Act, and the broader infrastructure package during the Biden administration, and of course, the Abundance Agenda.
1:31.3	Lots of great stuff here. I really recommend the book. I think this should be read in concert with the series I keep bringing up to folks.
1:38.3	Yoni Applebaum's Stuck. Of course, Derek and Ezra's Abundance Book and Mark Dunkelman's Why Nothing Works.
1:46.8	Marker Crafters is a great bookend to this series of four books.
1:50.5	They could really help you understand how you should approach post-20204 politics and policy.
1:56.2	Hope you all enjoy the conversation and a huge thank you to the Foundation for American Innovation.
	...

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