For if there is now a consensus that full equalisation of economic resources would require extreme and costly restrictions on liberty, there is also now a consensus that there is no such thing as a totally free market. To function well, markets depend on rules, norms and regulations, backed by law and the power of the state, and it is politics that determines what those rules, norms and regulations will be. Politics trumps economics, in other words ― or, at least, it sets the terms according to which the economic game is played. So discussions of economic equality cannot be contained within the economic sphere alone and need to come back around, in the end, to the political sphere.