Show Notes
LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here.
Traditional economics says the market is guided by the forces of supply and demand. Customers decide what they want to buy, and private enterprise responds to that need.
So what makes government think that it's smarter than capitalism? Why offer tax breaks to Hollywood or incentives to build silicon chip factories in Arizona? Why those industries and not others? And when does the free market fail and need government to step in?
Today, we discuss what happens when the government really wants to get its hands dirty and shape the direction of the economy, even decide which companies should prosper and which ones should fail, through industrial policy.
Check out our Summer School video cheat sheet on the origins of money at the Planet Money TikTok.
The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Eric Mennel. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Emily Crawford.
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More from Planet Money Summer School
This episode is packed with your best economic ideas from around the world and a penguin interview. It all comes together in this final session of Summer School 2026.
This week’s stop on our world tour - Korea. A country divided into two very different power structures since the end of WWII. Today South Korea is the maker of some of the world’s favorite exports – from Samsung TV’s to BTS. But 75 years ago it was a much different story. How the textile industry and a partnership with Bangladesh lifted the country out of poverty and paved the way for rapid economic growth.
Just about everyone in Argentina is an expert in inflation and whether they like it or not, economic flexibility. Can we learn from them?
Imagine a nation where, for the residents, land is for the claiming. You walk down the street, pick out a nice looking plot of land, and just plop down a marker. No rent, no taxes, no deed – just free land. That’s the communal system of property rights that governed a small Caribbean island for over a century.
Let’s call it the luxury of restraint. This is what enabled Norway to avoid the fate of so many other countries when they discovered oil and it changed the mix of their economy overnight.