ROBERT H. FRANK ON OUR WINNER-TAKE-ALL-DEMOCRACY

Robert H. Frank’s prescient 1996 book The Winner-Take-All-Society accurately predicted the increasing monopolization of economic life in America. But what about the relationship between capitalism and democracy? This transcript of my How To Fix Democracy interview with Frank outlines the chilling contours of an increasingly winner-take-all-democracy in America.

Andrew Keen: Twenty-five years ago, in 1995, a Cornell University Economist wrote, what I think at least, is one of the great books on contemporary capitalism. The author was Robert H. Frank, and the book was entitled, Winner Take All Society. The message in the book I think if anything is more pronounced today than it was back in 1995. Now I have a very young-looking Robert H. Frank with me; 1995, were you a teenager back then, Robert?

Robert Frank: [Laughs] No; I was well along by then Andrew.

Andrew Keen: So, you were relatively — I mean you’re still a relatively young economist, but you were back then a particularly young economist. What were you trying to argue back in ’95 in Winner Take All?

Robert Frank: Yeah; it was a book that I co-wrote with the best man at my wedding and graduate school classmate, Philip Cook and our thesis was that technology has increasingly enabled the people who are the best at what they do to serve broader and broader swaths of…