Monopsony, or How You Get Underpaid

The podcast 'It Could Happen Here' dismantles the myth of perfect labor market competition by exposing how monopsony—the power of a single employer to suppress wages—explains why most people are underpaid. Host Bia Wong and guest Molly argue that the concept, coined by economist Joan Robinson in the 1930s, was deliberately buried by mainstream neoclassical economics, which prioritizes ideology over truth. The episode reveals that the entire field of economics is built on flawed assumptions, such as the idea that prices are set by supply and demand, when in reality, prices are set by cost-plus markup in boardrooms. The Cambridge Capital Controversy—a decades-long academic battle—proved that neoclassical models can't even calculate the value of capital goods, yet the field ignored the defeat and kept publishing flawed work. This intellectual suppression wasn't accidental: it was a coordinated purge of heterodox economists like Robinson, who were women, leftists, or challenging the status quo. The episode concludes with a bleak but urgent truth: the job market is rigged by monopsony, and the only way to escape it is not through individual hustle, but through systemic change—something Robinson herself fought for. The most radical takeaway is that economics isn't a science—it’s a propaganda machine designed to justify inequality. The Nobel Prize in Economics is a fake award created by Sweden’s central bank to lend legitimacy to a field that’s ideologically driven.