Yet in the name of the market, corporate libertarians actively advocate eliminating government regulation and point to the private cost savings for consumers while ignoring the social and environmental consequences for the broader society. An unregulated market invariably encourages the externalization of costs because the resulting public costs become private gains. In the end it seems that corporate libertarians are more interested in increasing corporate profits than in defending market principles. Some call this theft. Neva Goodwin, ecological economist, head of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, and an advocate of cost internalization, puts it bluntly.
Power is largely what externalities are about.
Corporate libertarians tirelessly inform us of the benefits of trade based on the theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. What they don't mention is that the benefits the trade theories predict assume the local or national ownership of capital by persons directly engaged in its management. Indeed, these same conditions are fundamental to Adam Smith's famous assertion in The Wealth of Nations that the invisible hand of the market translates the pursuit of self-interest into a public benefit. Note that the following is the only mention of the famous invisible hand in the entire 1,000 pages of The Wealth of Nations. Smith assumed a natural preference on the part of the entrepreneur to invest at home where he could keep a close eye on his holdings.