Vulgar Liberalism in a Nutshell

According to the Economist, one family in Sweden controls 40% of the value of companies on the Swedish stock exchange. Think managerialist liberalism is about equality and democracy?

The family quickly points to one factor that helps hold their enterprise together: "No one owns it, which means that we cannot consume it though we can certainly destroy it," says Jacob Wallenberg, chairman of Investor. Most of the family's wealth is tied up in the Wallenberg foundations, which have combined assets of some SKr45 billion ($6.2 billion). These non-profit organisations provide grants of about SKr1 billion a year to science, research and the arts in Sweden. The foundations control 46% of votes at Investor and hold 22% of its capital, as well as owning big chunks of SAS, the main Scandinavian airline, Stora Enso, a huge paper company, and SKF, a maker of bearings.

Apparently, the way to preserve the good ol' fashioned family business is to transform your family into an oligarchic bureaucracy that exerts top down control over the nation's social and cultural institutions. What an enlightened, egalitarian, democratic society Sweden is!

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.