India, April 3 -- There is a tale the American writer David Foster Wallace used to tell. Two little fish meet an older one. The older fish greets them and asks, "How's the water today?" As the young fish swim on, one asks the other, "What's water?"

Thinking of capitalism can feel like that.

But. there is another kind of narrative about capitalism, encapsulated in a clip that does the rounds on social media every so often. It's from 1979 and, in it, talk-show host Phil Donahue asks the economist Milton Friedman if he has ever had second thoughts about capitalism, given the inequalities in the world, the attendant greed and the concentration of power.

"Tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?" Friedman responds....