Companies and capital operate internationally, often beyond the economic reach of any particular nation-state. People are pretty global, too, living lives that freely cross national borders.

The economic reality is that, thanks to smart machines and global trade, the well-paying, middle-class jobs that were the backbone of Western democracies are vanishing.

Creating jobs for your country's workers is about much more than ensuring that the balance sheets of your country's companies are strong, or stimulating domestic demand. It is about figuring out how your country's workers fit into the global economy.

As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly.

In Western capitalism circa 2013, fear that the market economy has become dysfunctional is not limited to a few entrepreneurs in Boulder. It is being publicly expressed, with increasing frequency, by some of the people who occupy the commanding heights of the global economy.

Defending human rights should be an important objective of foreign policy, and that, too, will sometimes be hard to reconcile with an economic agenda, especially when it comes to dealing with rich but repressive players like China and Russia.