CONCEPT
The Free Market Fairy Tale
The origin myth of the technology industry — the story of brilliant founders building world-changing companies in garages through pure private initiative — that erases the decades of public investment in research, infrastructure, and institutions on which the industry actually rests.
The free market fairy tale is Chang's term for the genre of origin story that presents technological success as the product of private genius operating in unfettered markets, with government appearing only as obstacle or as the well-meaning institution that should get out of the way. The narrative pattern is consistent: the visionary founder, the venture-backed startup, the scrappy team that outcompeted incumbents through pure ingenuity, the garage where it all began. The narrative serves a specific ideological function — it attributes the gains of innovation to private initiative, which legitimizes the private capture of those gains. If AI is a product of the free market, then the market's verdict on who should profit is legitimate. If AI is a product of decades of public investment that private companies subsequently commercialized, the public has a legitimate claim on the returns. The fairy tale exists to prevent the second
framing from achieving political traction.