Conjecture

Part I already answers the question I raised about captured markets, and the answer is that the attractor does not determine the outcome where rents oppose it. Between two competing dominant designs the more efficient usually wins, and the more efficient a design is the further down the gravity well it sits and the likelier its adoption. But this does not necessarily mean it will be selected, because efficiency from the standpoint of consumers often trades off against profits and rents for producers, so the dominant design that emerges is often the product of a balance between these two opposite motivations. Efficiency is one force among two. Where producer rents are large and defensible, the balance can settle away from the attractor indefinitely, which is the condition of a captured market and is exactly the healthcare case.

Capital mechanisms