The Market Pa Neoclassical economics appears quite correct about the power and appeal of the market. Yet political economists provide an important reminder that the market operates in conditions of unequal power. Just as well-connected individuals can command great returns on their efforts and excluded and marginal people must accept whatever they are offered, so it is also in the world of nations. World systems theorists note that great wealth does not automatically pour into places with great natural resources, such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two of the most resource-rich and income-poor countries in the world, but rather to the well-connected core cities of core countries: Tokyo, Zurich, London, Frankfurt, and New York. The problem with markets is rooted in a great paradox: Markets work best under conditions of relative equality, but they inevitably tend to produce conditions of extreme inequality. Market solutions work best when everyone has relatively equal incomes. Food and housing, perhaps even health and education, can be "marketized" if everyone has sufficient income and information to make good choices, but these markets quickly break down when some can dominate the market while others have no say at all. The same is true for power. Markets work best in a highly competitive environment with many players of equal power all competing for that equally distrib uted income. From Adam Smith onward, market proponents have argued for com- petitive marketplaces over monopolies, whether private or public. Yet markets, at least unregulated markets, continually produce monopolies. From the British East India Company to Standard Oil to Enron and Microsoft, a few key, centrally placed players can use a combination of market power and political power to control the market- place. The process is familiar to any player of Monopoly: The game begins as a com- petitive free-for-all, but early successes translate into growing dominance until one player controls it all and the others face inevitable bankruptcy. This realization led Karl Marx to believe that a replacement for capitalist mar- kets must be found. Some world systems theorists contend that, in a globalized world, this replacement can no longer be socialism at the national level; rather, it must be some form of democratic global socialism. Many others are still trying to find ways to tame and harness the market: breaking up international monopolies, encouraging local entrepreneurial alternatives, and strengthening the role of labor in the global labor market. The debate is often politically polarized between conservative free-trade advo