ABSTRACT
All the institutional factors that give market power to some individuals tend to be congealed into one explanatory factor productivity. Arguments about the neutrality or nonneutrality of price theory or about the significance of technology in economic change have been the root and branch of the controversy between conventional and institutional economists. The consumer is always sovereign when casting dollar votes in the marketplace but to be feared when casting votes in the political process. Although there are other sources of inequality, at least in the voting booth each person has roughly the same voting power as his neighbor. Their power does not exist apart from the illusions that sanctioned ideas create and, in a democracy, the susceptibility and tolerance of the population. Vested interests and mythopoetic economic theories survive because they are consonant with inherited institutional beliefs and practices.
