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b"Every year, Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn releases a list of the best books he read that year. Past lists have included books that shaped the Strong Towns conversation in profound ways: Chris Arnade\\u2019s Dignity (2019), Jonathan Haidt\\u2019s The Righteous Mind (2017), Cognitive Architecture, by Ann Sussmann and Justin Hollander (2017), and Tomas Sedlacek\\u2019s Economics of Good and Evil (2016), to name just a few.\\nSpoiler alert: 2020\\u2019s list will include The Myth of Capitalism, coauthored by Denise Hearn, this week\\u2019s guest on The Strong Towns Podcast. Hearn is a Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and an advisor to organizations, asset managers, and companies who want to use their resources to support a more equitable future.\\nIn the introduction to The Myth of Capitalism, Hearn and her coauthor, Jonathan Tepper, write that capitalism has been \\u201cthe greatest system in history to lift people out of poverty and create wealth.\\u201d Yet the \\u201ccapitalism\\u201d we see in the U.S. today is so misshapen it hardly qualifies. \\u201cThe battle for competition is being lost. Industries are becoming highly concentrated in the hands of very few players, with little real competition.\\u201d Capitalism without competition, they say, is not capitalism.\\n\\nIf you believe in competitive markets, you should be very concerned. If you believe in fair play and hate cronyism, you should be worried. With fake capitalism CEOs cozy up to regulators to get the kind of rules they want and donate to get the laws they desire. Larger companies get larger, while the small disappear, and the consumer and worker are left with no choice.\\n\\nIn this episode, Marohn and Hearn discuss why reduced competition\\u2014in the form of monopolies, duopolies, and oligopolies\\u2014hurts us not only as consumers and workers but as citizens and community members. They talk about the collusion (both direct and tacit) that consolidates wealth and power into fewer hands. And they discuss what our economic systems must learn from natural systems, including the role of competition and the importance of \\u201chabitat maintenance.\\u201d (Fans of Jane Jacobs' The Nature of Economies will love this part.)\\nEnding on a hopeful note, Marohn and Hearn also discuss the convergence, across industries, of new conversations about how to build stronger towns and stronger economies from the bottom-up.\\nAdditional Show Notes:\\n\\nThe Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition, by Jonathan Tepper with Denise Hearn\\n\\n\\nDenise Hearn (Twitter)\\n\\n\\nDenise Hearn (Website)\\n\\n\\n\\u201cMy Journey from Free Market Ideologue to Strong Towns Advocate,\\u201d by Charles Marohn\\n\\n\\nThe Ultimate Strong Towns Reading List"