[eru]

Exactly.

The thesis of the book I mentioned is exactly that you should very carefully economize on the amount of `cultural capital' required to run your economy. A mostly market-based economy is one way to do that, if regulation is chosen carefully.

Societies that have lots of cultural capital, like the Nordic countries, can get away with more socialism without everything becoming corrupt. (It might still be inefficient for them to go that route, but at least they can bear the costs.)