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Of course shareholders should control executive pay

Via the BBC: Swiss voters have overwhelmingly backed proposals to impose some of the world’s strictest controls on executive pay, final referendum results show. The measure has two important strands: shareholders will have a veto on executive remuneration and golden hellos and goodbyes will be banned. The former is a sensible, pro-market reform, the latter is not. Both are a response to what has gone wrong with capitalism. It is entirely right that the owners of firms should control the [...]

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Ending crony capitalism – how markets work

Crony capitalism — businesses capturing the state for commercial advantage, serving politicians and officials instead of the public — ought to be brought to an end. A prerequisite to that is a good understanding of how social cooperation in the market works. Israel Kirzner’s, How Markets Work: Disequilibrium, Entrepreneurship and Discovery (PDF) provides a brief and readable explanation. From the book’s page at the IEA: Human action consists of ‘grappling with an essentially unknown future’, not being confronted with clearly-specified [...]

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Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on the Moral Case for Capitalism

Via, The 15 Best Videos on Commerce and Entrepreneurship, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on the Moral Case for Capitalism: You have empathy and care and sympathy for others and you have the foundation for a great economic system. But intellectuals and economists ignored that ethical foundation for capitalism and tried to ground it on strict self-interest and that led to ethical attacks…

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Who Exploits You More: Capitalists or Cronies?

Via Learn Liberty, Who Exploits You More: Capitalists or Cronies? See also this short book on how political decisions come to be made: Public Choice – a Primer by Dr Eamonn Butler. Or watch Yes, Minister.

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Is Capitalism “Pro-Business?”

Via Learn Liberty, Is Capitalism “Pro-Business?”

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Luigi Zingales – Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity

This morning, I had breakfast with the engaging and insightful Luigi Zingales, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Chicago Booth and author of Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity. Via Amazon: A rising star in economics takes a forceful and sometimes personal look at how pro-business forces overwhelmed the pro-market principles that made American capitalism great, and how to get it back on track. Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales witnessed firsthand [...]

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Crony capitalism is so entrenched, we scarcely even spot it

The Transport Committee met today for an evidence session on low carbon vehicles. It illustrated that crony capitalism is now not merely entrenched and passed over, but borne out of the good intentions of a global regulatory elite. In the first session, we learned that “consumer demand is lagging policy”, which I translated as “people don’t want to buy these expensive vehicles” (I’ll link to the transcript later). We learned that electric vehicles are expensive and impractical: £30,000 for a [...]

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On double-dip recession, Tullett Prebon rightly ask “What’s the big idea?”

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The latest strategy note from Tullet Prebon asks, “What’s the big idea?” with the subtitle “the imperative need for a new ideology”, writing: Effective government is not simply a matter of management. Even in good times, competence is barely enough. In bad times, ideological clarity is imperative, and the lack of a clear, ideas-based strategy is the black hole at the heart of the coalition administration. This chart is particularly informative: They comment, “The centre-right is in desperate need of a [...]

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What Ha Joon Chang Doesn’t Tell You about ‘Free Market Economics’ « Pileus

Professor Ha Joon Chang has become something of a hero to those who champion heterodox economic theory and who rail against the supposed intellectual hegemony of ‘neo-liberalism’. In a number of books such as Kicking Away the Ladder Chang sets out to overturn the alleged orthodoxies of mainstream economics by questioning the case for free trade as an appropriate development strategy in poorer countries and more widely making the case for a high regulation/big government agenda. These themes are vividly [...]

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An unlikely alliance on directors’ remuneration

Via Hansard, my unlikely alliance with Labour’s John McDonnell over the need for shareholders to be able to control directors’ remuneration: Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con): As I listened to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) speak to amendment 15, I thought that my ears were deceiving me because I felt so much sympathy for what he was saying. Indeed, he put me in mind of a book by a reformed Trotskyite, James Burnham, who predicted in “The [...]

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