Extinction Rebellion hates capitalism, but they wouldn’t exist without it
The Extinction Rebellion protesters on the streets of London seemed to consist of two disparate interest groups: pensioners and the young. Their shared connection is that most of them – certainly in the former group – seemed to be affluent. An identical alliance was observed a few months ago in the rather unlikely setting of […]
Like the myth of a flat Earth, the socialist conspiracy theory never dies
The idea that the Earth is flat is a rapidly growing trend on social media. The Flat Earth Society’s Twitter feed has the best part of 100,000 followers. The fact that the planet is a sphere has been known since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. The astronomer Eratosthenes demonstrated it with a […]
Our automated future is brighter than Karl Marx or Mark Carney would ever suggest
Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, hit the headlines at the weekend, claiming that Marxism could once again become a prominent political force in the west. Automation, it seems, may not just destroy millions of jobs. For all except a privileged minority of high-tech workers, the collapse in the demand for labour […]
Don’t believe the myths: Capitalism has performed well since the financial crisis
Ten years ago, the financial crisis began to grip the Western economies. During the course of 2007, GDP growth slowed markedly everywhere. By the end of 2008, output was in free fall. A key theme in economic commentary is the sluggishness of the subsequent recovery of the developed economies. The picture is not quite as […]
Capitalism is stable and resilient
The financial crisis did succeed in creating one dynamic new industry. Since the late 2000s, there has been a massive upsurge in op-ed pieces, books and even artistic performances offering a critique of capitalism. A founder member of the Monty Python team, Terry Jones, is the latest to get in on the act with his […]
Who will rule the 21st Century?
This is a nice big question to ponder on the holiday beach or in the rented villa. A vast amount has already been written on the rise of China and whether the US will be replaced as the global superpower. And where exactly does Europe fit into all this? It is easy to make a […]
Compulsion or Co-operation: Curbing Executive Pay
Andrew Moss, who has been in charge of Aviva since 2007, has become the third chief executive to quit amid increasing shareholder discontent in recent weeks, following David Brennan at AstraZeneca and Trinity Mirror’s Sly Bailey. Just what is going on with the public limited company, one of the great inventions of capitalism? It has […]
Co-operation and Competition
Ed Mayo, ex-head of the New Economics Foundation and now of Co-ops UK, has an interesting blog (here) on the importance of co-operation in our economic system rather than competition. This is a really challenging and difficult topic. Co-operation is extremely important to the successful functioning of the market-oriented economies of the West. But this […]
Minsky Mania: a Raincheck
The American economist Hyman Minsky is currently very fashionable, especially amongst those who are sympathetic to the idea of more government intervention in the economy. Minsky argued that financial crises were an inevitable feature of capitalism, unless governments stepped in through regulation and central bank action. He hypothesised that in prosperous times, when the corporate […]
