I wonder if it's because so many of the self-identified right wing of SF writers came in under JEP, whose grasp of and respect for the market is almost entirely theoretical. (It seems to be more about "How dare the government tax me! Yay military spending!" with a side order of: "Those awful poor people! Why can't they join and quit the Communist Party while on the GI Bill and then become a crony of the mayor of Los Angeles the way I did?")

On the other hand, Neal Stephenson does not strike me as any sort of leftist, and he's fascinated with capitalism. He doesn't write much about the small-scale stuff, although I seem to remember something about the economics of running a decent Vietnamese restaurant in Zodiac.

Carlos