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 […]
Read MorePost Tagged with: "Capitalism"
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 […]
Read MoreCapitalism is untouchable for human development
The plight of the Dalits, those whom the Hindu caste system considers outcastes and hence Untouchables, was a rallying cry of Hindu reformers and Indian leftists for half a century. But today these victims of the caste system are finding that free markets and development bring advancement faster than government […]
Read MoreOn capital, international development and raising the poor out of poverty
Via The Economic Role of Saving and Capital Goods – Mises Institute (emphasis mine): What distinguishes contemporary life in the countries of Western civilization from conditions as they prevailed in earlier ages – and still exist for the greater number of those living today – is not the changes in the […]
Read MoreOn the biggest threat to our prosperity
From a superb article by Detlev Schlichter, which I recommend in full: Of course, by printing new money, expanding the central bank balance sheet and artificially lowering interest rates, – something that has been done on a vast scale for decades on end! – extra economic activity can be generated […]
Read MoreAlternatives to capitalism: Nikolai Bukharin on the division of labour
A favourite brought forward. Thinking about the pressures on capitalism — or rather, on the interventionism that passes for capitalism today — and on the alternative which was most comprehensively implemented, I discovered this recipe for chaos and failure from Bukharin: Under communism people receive a many-sided culture, and find […]
Read MoreRampant corporatism
As I read the papers online this morning and reflected on recent remarks by bankers and big business, I was struck by how dependent big firms have become on state welfare. This is not capitalism. How can it be when people expect their losses to be forced onto others? It’s […]
Read MoreComrades are confused about capitalism – they shouldn’t be.
I have written for ConservativeHome today on the problem with capitalism: I listened to Comrade Milliband’s tedious historical revisionism with interest: apparently New Old Labour are to become the party of enterprise and small business in order that wealth can be created and redistributed. With Comrade Milliband’s remarks following so closely […]
Read MoreCentreRight: Douglas Carswell leads the way on bank reform
On CentreRight, I explain that Douglas Carswell leads the way on bank reform: There is a doctrine which creates wealth and spreads it around. It is just and moral. It works. It is called capitalism and, today, in practice, there is very obviously something wrong with it. If one were to […]
Read MoreThe altruistic individual in society
In preparation for an article to be published in the Autumn, I just reread The Open Society and Its Enemies – Volume 1: The Spell of Plato. The book traces mankind’s opposition to change and the consequent rise of the myth of destiny, technically, historicism: the belief that history unfolds […]
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