road to serfdom

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pages: 494 words: 132,975

Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott

airport security, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, collective bargaining, complexity theory, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, if you build it, they will come, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, means of production, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, price mechanism, public intellectual, pushing on a string, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Yom Kippur War

Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 195, footnote. 36 F. A. Hayek, Preface to the original edition of The Road to Serfdom, in Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 37. 37 Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, pp. 148–149. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 214. 40 Hayek, Preface to the 1976 edition of The Road to Serfdom, in Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 55. 41 Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, pp. 58–59. 42 Ibid., p. 105. 43 Hayek, Preface to the 1956 American edition of The Road to Serfdom, in Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 37. 44 Letter from Keynes to Hayek, April 4, 1944, LSE Archives, London. 45 Collected Writings, vol. 17: Activities 1920–2: Treaty Revision and Reconstruction (Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society, London, 1977), pp. 385–387. 46 Chicago Round Table, quoted in Ebenstein, Friedrich Hayek, p. 126. 47 Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 148. 48 Collected Writings, vol. 17: Activities 1920–2, pp. 385–387. 49 Interview of Hayek by Thomas W.

So I changed ‘servitude’ to ‘serfdom,’ for merely phonetic reasons.” Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 256, footnote. 29 Ebenstein, Friedrich Hayek, p. 114. 30 Hayek Archive, Hoover Institution, quoted in ibid., p. 129. 31 Letter from Hayek to Lippmann, quoted in Gary Dean Best, “Introduction,” in Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (Transaction Publishers, Piscataway, N.J., 2004), p. xxxi. 32 Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 137. For a full account of how Hayek intended The Road to Serfdom to fit into his broader Abuse of Reason schema, see Collected Works, vol. 13: Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason, ed.

., p. 105. 43 Hayek, Preface to the 1956 American edition of The Road to Serfdom, in Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 37. 44 Letter from Keynes to Hayek, April 4, 1944, LSE Archives, London. 45 Collected Writings, vol. 17: Activities 1920–2: Treaty Revision and Reconstruction (Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society, London, 1977), pp. 385–387. 46 Chicago Round Table, quoted in Ebenstein, Friedrich Hayek, p. 126. 47 Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 148. 48 Collected Writings, vol. 17: Activities 1920–2, pp. 385–387. 49 Interview of Hayek by Thomas W. Hazlitt, 1977, published in Reason, July 1992, http://reason.com/archives/1992/07/01/the-road-from-serfdom. 50 Collected Works, vol. 2: Road to Serfdom, p. 118. 51 Ibid., p. 148. 52 Ibid., pp. 249–250. 53 Henry Hazlitt, “An Economist’s View of ‘Planning,’” review of The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, The New York Times, September 24, 1944, Sunday Book Review, p. 1. 54 Max Forrester Eastman (1883–1969), wide-ranging American author who condemned Soviet communism after a visit there in 1923 but remained committed to leftist views until 1941, when he began writing conservative commentaries for Reader’s Digest. 55 George Orwell, nom de plume of English author and socialist political campaigner against totalitarianism Eric Arthur Blair (1903–50). 56 George Orwell, “Grounds for Dismay,” Observer, London, April 9, 1944. 57 Barbara Wootton née Adam, Baroness Wootton of Abinger (1897–1988), British economist, sociologist, and criminologist.


pages: 483 words: 134,377

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly

air freight, Andrei Shleifer, battle of ideas, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, business process outsourcing, Carmen Reinhart, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discovery of the americas, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, fundamental attribution error, gentrification, germ theory of disease, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, income per capita, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, John Snow's cholera map, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, M-Pesa, microcredit, Monroe Doctrine, oil shock, place-making, Ponzi scheme, public intellectual, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, urban planning, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, young professional

German History in Documents and Images, Volume 7, Nazi Germany, 1933–1945, Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State (“Reichstag Fire Decree”), February 28, 1933, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English%203_5.pdf, accessed September 4, 2013. 19. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, 5974, 5991. 20. Wenar, Hayek on Hayek, 1011–14. 21. F. A. Hayek, Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason, ed. Bruce Caldwell, Volume 13, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), Kindle edition, locations 8903–8908. 22. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, 3601. 23. Ibid. 1225. 24. Ibid. 1140. 25. Clifford Geertz, “Myrdal’s Mythology,” Encounter 33, Number 1 (July 1969): 29–33; quote is from page 31. 26. Myrdal, International Economy, 201. 27. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, 1814. 28. Ibid. 1753. 29. Ibid. 1814. 30.

The author was Friedrich Hayek and the 1944 book was The Road to Serfdom. The excuse for ignoring Hayek is that he may or may not have implied a “slippery slope” in which any state intervention in the economy would start a downward spiral into totalitarianism. I do not agree with this idea. I also do not believe Hayek actually stated it (he himself said he didn’t), but even if he did it is no reason to discard all of his other ideas. If we discarded all the good ideas of any thinker who had ever had a bad idea, we would have very few good ideas left. The slippery-slope idea may have stuck to Hayek because The Road to Serfdom was alarmist about the threat to freedom in the United Kingdom that would emerge after World War II.

In truth, as we have already seen above, there is ample evidence that Hayek was not the conservative ideologue his critics claimed. The Road to Serfdom advocated such nonconservative ideas as a minimum income guaranteed by the state: “there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody.”22 In fact, Hayek condemned some of the very people he was identified with by his critics. In the pages of the 1956 version of The Road to Serfdom, he said British Conservatives were “paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring . . . traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical.”23 Hayek himself acknowledged after the fact that he had attracted some followers with whom he did not agree, at some cost to himself: “the manner in which [The Road to Serfdom] was used [in the United States] vividly brought home to me the truth of Lord Acton’s observation that ‘at all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.’”24 My argument here is not meant to address any debate on right versus left in US domestic policy.


pages: 470 words: 130,269

The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas by Janek Wasserman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Wald, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, Donald Trump, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, Internet Archive, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, New Journalism, New Urbanism, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Thank you for everything—this book is for you. INTRODUCTION Americans searching Amazon’s best-seller list in June 2010 would have encountered a surprising title at the top, above the likes of books by Stieg Larsson, George W. Bush, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Lewis: Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. The “Definitive Edition” had appeared in 2007, yet it sold only six hundred copies a month for a year and a half. Then the combined effects of the Great Recession and the election of Barack Obama quadrupled its sales. The book sold seven thousand copies in 2008, twenty-seven thousand in 2009.

Go online now and order it.”1 Beck demonstrated little knowledge of the actual contents of the book and revealed a faulty understanding of the historical context in which it appeared. While the scrolling text on Fox News referred to the “Austrian Economist” Hayek, Beck himself made no reference to Hayek’s background or his economic ideas. He repeatedly compared Road to Serfdom to Ayn Rand’s work, even though Hayek accepted progressive income taxes, public education, national health insurance, and minimum welfare provisions in Road. Beck also showed no awareness of who Ludwig von Mises was, stumbling badly over the Austrian’s name, while failing to acknowledge that Mises was also an Austrian School economist with similar political and economic views to Hayek’s.

In October 2011, Nicholas Wapshott published a best-seller, Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, which assigned world historical significance to the ideas of Hayek, even a quarter century after his death.2 This interest crested with the 2012 presidential campaign. After the Iowa caucus, Ron Paul declared, “We are all Austrians now,” while the eventual vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, admitted to distributing Road to Serfdom to staffers. A wave of new media coverage directed its gaze on Hayek and the little-known “Austrian School.” “What is Austrian Economics? And why is Ron Paul obsessed with it?” asked then Slate columnist Matthew Yglesias, and he was far from alone. Articles on Austrianism appeared in Bloomberg, the Guardian, the New York Times, Politico, Slate, and the Washington Post.


pages: 453 words: 122,586

Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market by Nicholas Wapshott

2021 United States Capitol attack, Alan Greenspan, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California gold rush, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, God and Mammon, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, lockdown, low interest rates, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market bubble, market clearing, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, seminal paper, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

A central bank that kept interest rates artificially low would promote a downward spiral of reducing interest rates, ending with an economy in disarray and a recession. MANY YEARS LATER, Hayek went further, and, in 1944, in a wartime tract—The Road to Serfdom—warned that government intervention in an economy could jeopardize democracy by transferring key choices from citizens to government officials. But in a passage that would come to haunt him, Hayek drew a line between what he thought was legitimate state activity and what he considered to be dangerous government overreach. The Road to Serfdom went on to sell millions of copies and, taken up by the Volker Foundation in the U.S., quickly became a bible for those who champion the free market.

Making Chicago Price Theory: Friedman-Stigler Correspondence 1945–1957 (Routledge, London, 2006). Harris, Kenneth. Thatcher (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1988). Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom (George Routledge, 1944). ———. Choice in Currency: A Way to Stop Inflation (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1976). ———. The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell. Vol. 2: The Road to Serfdom, Text and Documents, The Definitive Edition, ed. Caldwell (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007). Vol. 9: Contra Keynes and Cambridge: Essays and Correspondence, ed. Caldwell (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995).

Friedman was becoming well known in America. But his fame had not reached Europe, where an invitation came out of the blue from Friedrich Hayek. And not to Friedman but to his brother-in-law Director. Director was instrumental in having the University of Chicago Press publish Hayek’s highly influential The Road to Serfdom in the U.S. in September 1944 after no mainstream American publisher would take it.36 Now Hayek was inviting Director and others to a powwow in an out-of-season skiing hotel on top of a mountain in Switzerland. It was to be, literally, a summit to decide how to reinvigorate the intellectual case for the free market in the face of creeping collectivism.


pages: 453 words: 117,893

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems by Linda Yueh

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bike sharing, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, forward guidance, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, lateral thinking, life extension, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working-age population

Hayek considered it his best work, his magnum opus, and had suitably high expectations. The Road to Serfdom he described as a semi-popular book, but The Constitution of Liberty was, he hoped, to be The Wealth of Nations for the twentieth century.17 Unfortunately for Hayek, it would not come close to reaching the popularity of The Road to Serfdom. This time the book was not reviewed in Time or Life, and the Reader’s Digest did not consider it suitable for a condensed version. Perhaps The Constitution of Liberty just did not capture the mood of the time in the way that The Road to Serfdom had as people looked beyond the Second World War.

He attacked socialism when the welfare state was being formed in most major economies. In Hayek’s view, socialism would invariably lead to central planning. When it comes to technological development, no progress can be made unless people are allowed to move into unexpected areas and learn from their mistakes. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek describes how totalitarian regimes are not just unproductive but also suppress these freedoms. (The title of his best-known book comes from a phrase used by the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘the road to servitude’.2) Instead, markets create the price signals and incentives to orientate the economy most efficiently.

However, a pricing system with profit incentives could establish a market, provided it was backed with recognition of private property, contracts, laws, societal norms and the ability to exchange goods. As the Second World War started to wind down, Hayek had become an increasingly obscure academic. However, that was to change abruptly with the publication of The Road to Serfdom in 1944. It would make him one of the world’s best-known thinkers. The Great Depression before the war had shaken belief in the capitalist system and people had become used to centrally planned wartime economies. Hayek wanted to warn the British public about the dangers resulting from government control of economic decision-making through continued central planning, whether communist or fascist.


pages: 374 words: 113,126

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bike sharing, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, forward guidance, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, lateral thinking, life extension, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working-age population

Hayek considered it his best work, his magnum opus, and had suitably high expectations. The Road to Serfdom he described as a semi-popular book, but The Constitution of Liberty was, he hoped, to be The Wealth of Nations for the twentieth century.17 Unfortunately for Hayek, it would not come close to reaching the popularity of The Road to Serfdom. This time the book was not reviewed in Time or Life, and the Reader’s Digest did not consider it suitable for a condensed version. Perhaps The Constitution of Liberty just did not capture the mood of the time in the way that The Road to Serfdom had as people looked beyond the Second World War.

He attacked socialism when the welfare state was being formed in most major economies. In Hayek’s view, socialism would invariably lead to central planning. When it comes to technological development, no progress can be made unless people are allowed to move into unexpected areas and learn from their mistakes. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek describes how totalitarian regimes are not just unproductive but also suppress these freedoms. (The title of his best-known book comes from a phrase used by the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘the road to servitude’.2) Instead, markets create the price signals and incentives to orientate the economy most efficiently.

However, a pricing system with profit incentives could establish a market, provided it was backed with recognition of private property, contracts, laws, societal norms and the ability to exchange goods. As the Second World War started to wind down, Hayek had become an increasingly obscure academic. However, that was to change abruptly with the publication of The Road to Serfdom in 1944. It would make him one of the world’s best-known thinkers. The Great Depression before the war had shaken belief in the capitalist system and people had become used to centrally planned wartime economies. Hayek wanted to warn the British public about the dangers resulting from government control of economic decision-making through continued central planning, whether communist or fascist.


pages: 829 words: 187,394

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cashless society, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commodity super cycle, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Extinction Rebellion, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megaproject, meme stock, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mohammed Bouazizi, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Haywood, time value of money, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Walter Mischel, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, yield curve

But a cashless world would destroy the last vestiges of privacy, creating a ‘digital panopticon’ overseen by a single watchman, in this case the central bank (and, no doubt, intelligence agencies too), surveying all, judging whether transactions met some arbitrary notion of the public good.28 Since this threat to individual privacy and liberty was not comprehended by the monetary policymakers’ model, it could safely be ignored. THE ROAD TO SERFDOM REVISITED Hayek’s comment on money appears in his best-selling book The Road to Serfdom, a lengthy critique of central planning published in 1944. Hayek feared that the enhanced role of the state during wartime would permanently erode traditional economic and political freedoms. Although the Austrian economist wrote extensively elsewhere about monetary policy and interest rates – and, in particular, how easy money interfered with the economy’s ‘steering mechanism’ – these topics are not directly addressed in The Road to Serfdom. Nevertheless, since the setting of interest rates is just one aspect of central planning, Hayek’s concerns are relevant to our understanding of the post-Lehman world.

Prominent economists, such as Larry Summers, call for greater public investment. US Democrats propose a Green New Deal. A new generation of central planners has arisen who propose technocratic solutions for our economic and social ills. If we are to avoid progressing too far along the new road to serfdom, their assumptions and policies require greater scrutiny from politicians and from the public at large. Thirty years after the publication of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. In his prize lecture, entitled ‘The Pretence of Knowledge’, the veteran economist chastised his fellow economists for their failure to consider the complexity of human life.

Kenneth Rogoff, The Curse of Cash: How Large-Denomination Bills Aid Crime and Tax Evasion and Constrain Monetary Policy (Princeton, 2017), p. 4. 26. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, vol. II, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago, 2007), p. 125. 27. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead: A Novel in Two Parts [1860] (New York, 1915), p. 16. 28. The term ‘digital panopticon’ was used by Brett Scott, ‘The War on Cash’, The Long and Short, 19 August 2016. 29. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, in Collected Works, II, p. 29. 30. Ibid., II, p. 73. 31. Ibid., II, p. 104. 32. Ibid., II, p. 137. 33. Ibid., II, p. 154. 34.


Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Greenspan put, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mercator projection, Mont Pelerin Society, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Philip Mirowski, power law, price mechanism, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, statistical model, Suez crisis 1956, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

—­p hilip cortney, 1949 M idway through The Road to Serfdom, the book he published in 1944 that made him famous, F. A. Hayek inserted a commentary on ­human rights. His target was specifically the expansive “Declaration of Rights” published by the author and public intellectual H. G. Wells in 1939, a list of eleven articles including the right to education, food, health care, and employment.1 Hayek did not object so much to the material provisions. His own proposal included ele­ments of a basic social safety net and even countercyclical state spending.2 As libertarians l­ater lamented, The Road to Serfdom called for “the security of a minimum income” and “a comprehensive system of social insurance.”3 What galled Hayek was Wells’s combination of the language of rights with a program of centralized economic decision making.

Frederick Cooper, “Alternatives to Nationalism in French Africa, 1945–1960,” in Elites and Decolonization in the Twentieth ­Century, ed. Jost Dülffer and Marc Frey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 116. 57. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge and Sons, 1944), 238. 58. Michael A. Heilperin, “Review: World Economic Development by Eugene Staley,” American Po­liti­cal Science Review 39, no. 1 (1945): 190. 59. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 239. 60. The word “federation” does not appear in Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), in Alan O. Ebenstein, Hayek’s Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), or in Edward Feser, ed., The Cambridge companion to Hayek (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

A WORLD OF RIGHTS 1. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge and Sons, 1944), 88. See also Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi, ­Human Rights at the UN: The Po­liti­cal History of Universal Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 77. 2. See, for example, Hans-­Hermann Hoppe, who writes that “Hayek’s view regarding the role of market and state cannot systematically be distinguished from that of a social demo­crat.” Hans-­Hermann Hoppe, “F. A. Hayek on Government and Social Evolution: A Critique,” Review of Austrian Economics 7, no. 1 (1994): 67. 3. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 124–125. 4. Ibid., 88.


Phil Thornton by The Great Economists Ten Economists whose thinking changed the way we live-FT Publishing International (2014)

Alan Greenspan, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, double helix, endogenous growth, endowment effect, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, hindsight bias, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, liquidity trap, loss aversion, mass immigration, means of production, mental accounting, Myron Scholes, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Toyota Production System, trade route, transaction costs, unorthodox policies, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce

‘Future generations will read his works with the same sense of discovery and awe that inspire us today,’ the citation read. 140 The Great Economists While his admirers in the West embraced his defence of liberty as much as his strictures on economic governance, it was in Eastern Europe that Hayek’s political philosophy rang loudest. Much of his writing, and Road to Serfdom in particular, was based on his experiences of Nazi Germany and his observations of communist Russia (it is said that he only kept references to Russia out of Road to Serfdom as he was writing at a time when the Soviets were close allies against Hitler). The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s was a testament to his claims that socialist economies could not work and that the desire for personal liberty was a powerful force – an event he was able to celebrate.

The Chapter 6 • Friedrich Hayek135 enthusiasm for central planning in Britain as a way to restore economic growth after the end of the war horrified Hayek, who saw it simply as a precursor to the totalitarian systems that he witnessed in Nazi-occupied Austria and which were now dominant in the Soviet Union. He set out his thoughts in the book, The Road to Serfdom. While his previous writings had argued that free markets lead to increased economic efficiency and so greater prosperity, Hayek now extended this argument to say that they helped safeguard liberty. The book was published in the UK and the US in the final years of the Second World War and, despite paper rationing in Britain, became a best-seller.

Although Hayek had left Britain in 1949 it was in the UK that he became best known and where his influence could be most directly felt. Keynesianism suffered its nadir in 1974 when both inflation and unemployment skyrocketed and government intervention appeared powerless to stem either. The following year Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative party. Allegedly she had read Road to Serfdom while at Oxford University and within months of her accession held a private audience with Hayek at the headquarters of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free-market think tank. Chapter 6 • Friedrich Hayek139 His influence on her policymaking was clear. According to a famous story, on a visit to the Conservative Research Department she listened to a proposal by one of its staff to find a middle way between the extremes of Left and Right.


pages: 434 words: 117,327

Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America by Cass R. Sunstein

active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, anti-communist, anti-globalists, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cognitive load, David Brooks, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Isaac Newton, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, microaggression, Nate Silver, Network effects, New Journalism, night-watchman state, nudge theory, obamacare, Paris climate accords, post-truth, Potemkin village, random walk, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey

Our twenty-first-century challenge is to respond in the spirit of the founders—and adapt the principles of checks and balances so that emergency powers may be invoked when “the public safety may require it.” At that same time, we must prevent the exercise of extraordinary authority from destroying the very constitutional order the declaration of emergency purports to protect. Are we equal to the challenge? Another Road to Serfdom: Cascading Intolerance Timur Kuran In one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek warned against the dangers of state control over the economy. He was writing during World War II, a time when collectivists on the left were extinguishing private property and those on the right were empowering the state with expanding rights of ownership and management.

Sunstein Beyond Elections: Foreign Interference with American Democracy by Samantha Power Paradoxes of the Deep State by Jack Goldsmith How We Lost Constitutional Democracy by Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq On “It Can’t Happen Here” by Noah Feldman Authoritarianism Is Not a Momentary Madness, But an Eternal Dynamic Within Liberal Democracies by Karen Stenner and Jonathan Haidt States of Emergency by Bruce Ackerman Another Road to Serfdom: Cascading Intolerance by Timur Kuran The Resistible Rise of Louis Bonaparte by Jon Elster Could Mass Detentions Without Process Happen Here? by Martha Minow The Commonsense Presidency by Duncan J. Watts Law and the Slow-Motion Emergency by David A. Strauss How Democracies Perish by Stephen Holmes “It Can’t Happen Here”: The Lessons of History by Geoffrey R.

Sunstein Beyond Elections: Foreign Interference with American Democracy by Samantha Power Paradoxes of the Deep State by Jack Goldsmith How We Lost Constitutional Democracy by Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq On “It Can’t Happen Here” by Noah Feldman Authoritarianism Is Not a Momentary Madness, But an Eternal Dynamic Within Liberal Democracies by Karen Stenner and Jonathan Haidt States of Emergency by Bruce Ackerman Another Road to Serfdom: Cascading Intolerance by Timur Kuran The Resistible Rise of Louis Bonaparte by Jon Elster Could Mass Detentions Without Process Happen Here? by Martha Minow The Commonsense Presidency by Duncan J. Watts Law and the Slow-Motion Emergency by David A. Strauss How Democracies Perish by Stephen Holmes “It Can’t Happen Here”: The Lessons of History by Geoffrey R.


pages: 453 words: 111,010

Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Aldred

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, nudge unit, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spectrum auction, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

When Beveridge, as Director of the London School of Economics, offered a lectureship to a little-known Austrian economist named Friedrich Hayek, he could not have foreseen the consequences. It was Hayek who organized the Mont Pèlerin meeting in 1947. Hayek had been catapulted from obscurity to celebrity after the publication of his book The Road to Serfdom in 1944. His core argument was that the prevailing trend towards central planning and a larger role for government in the economy would set Britain on a road that ultimately led to the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany. The Road to Serfdom sold out within a few days of publication, and wartime paper shortages meant that reprints over the next year or so never kept up with demand. The book’s controversial message led it to be turned down by three US publishers, until a Chicago economist – the aptly named Aaron Director – persuaded the University of Chicago Press to take it on.

Director published relatively little under his own name but, as well as his role in The Road to Serfdom, he was a guiding hand behind the work of several key thinkers, including Milton Friedman, his brother-in-law. As an undergraduate at Yale, Director had been an anti-establishment iconoclast who, with his close friend the painter Mark Rothko, produced an underground newspaper called the Yale Saturday Evening Pest. In later life, though, Director was sufficiently conservative that he described Friedman, adviser to conservatives Reagan and Thatcher, as ‘my radical brother-in-law’.1 The Road to Serfdom was a great success in the United States.

Thatcher interrupted, pulling one of Hayek’s books from her bag and holding it up for all to see. ‘This is what we believe,’ she announced, and then slammed it down on the table.4 BATTERY CHICKENS FOR FREEDOM When a British dairy farmer named Antony Fisher read the Reader’s Digest version of The Road to Serfdom, it made a great impression on him. Hayek seemed to share Fisher’s own gut instincts about individual freedom being under threat. Fisher wrote to Hayek to ask what he could do to help, and wondered whether he should go into politics. Hayek told Fisher that he could do something more valuable, explaining that a more powerful role in the ideological battle was played by ‘second-hand dealers in ideas’ – the journalists, political advisers, commentators and intellectuals who shaped and shifted public debate and political thinking.


pages: 662 words: 180,546

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown by Philip Mirowski

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, blue-collar work, bond market vigilante , bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, constrained optimization, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt deflation, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disinformation, do-ocracy, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, loose coupling, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, night-watchman state, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, prediction markets, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, school choice, sealed-bid auction, search costs, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, working poor

., p. 3; Arnsperger, Critical Political Economy, p. 90. 144 Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 164. 145 Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 376; Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 77, 30, 290–91. What is regarded as wickedly radical in science studies, is propounded as eminently conservative by the Hayek wing of neoliberalism. 146 Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 378, my italics. This explains why neoliberals tend to diverge from their predecessors: “most nineteenth century liberals were guided by a naïve overconfidence in what mere communication of knowledge could achieve” (p. 377). 147 Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, pp. 204–5. 148 Hayek reveled in the tough-minded stance of the scholar who disparaged any recourse to the Third Way, most notoriously in his denunciation of the welfare state as just the slippery “Road to Serfdom.”

In the throes of the red-misted nightmare, it looks as if the crisis, otherwise so virulent and corrosive, didn’t manage to kill even one spurious economic notion. This is not exactly news. John Quiggin has entertainingly dubbed the phenomenon Zombie Economics, and deserves kudos for stressing this point. Incongruously, Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom has returned to best-seller lists after a long hiatus. Even Ayn Rand has apparently enjoyed a new lease on (undead) life. One can readily agree with Colin Crouch: “What remains of Neoliberalism after the financial crisis? The answer must be ‘virtually everything.’”19 Similarly, a glut of crisis books has been pouring from every possible digital delivery system of publishers.

Although it is undeniably the case that all manner of secondhand purveyors of ideas on the right would wish to crow that “market freedom” promotes their own brand of religious righteousness, or maybe even the converse, it nonetheless debases comprehension to conflate the two by disparaging both as “fundamentalism”—a sneer unfortunately becoming commonplace on the left. It seems very neat and tidy to assert that neoliberals operate in a modus operandi on a par with religious fundamentalists: just slam The Road to Serfdom (or if you are really Low-to-No Church, Atlas Shrugged) on the table along with the King James Bible, and then profess to have unmediated personal access to the original true meaning of the only (two) book(s) you’ll ever need to read in your lifetime. Counterpoising morally confused evangelicals with the reality-based community may seem tempting to some; but it dulls serious thought.


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Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by Robert A. Sirico

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, corporate governance, creative destruction, delayed gratification, demographic winter, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Ford Model T, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, happiness index / gross national happiness, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, informal economy, Internet Archive, liberation theology, means of production, moral hazard, obamacare, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Plato's cave, profit motive, road to serfdom, Tragedy of the Commons, zero-sum game

During World War II, economist Friedrich Hayek warned about “the road to serfdom,” a road marked by increasing government control of the economy. The United States has been on that road for many years now. But there is another road, a road to freedom, a road that we can reach and walk if we marshal the old virtues of fortitude and thrift and courage to make the journey. The chapters that follow will continue to limn the contours of such a journey, both its pitfalls and its promise. Suggestions for Further Reading F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 50th anniversary ed. (University of Chicago, 1994). Paul Heyne, The Economic Way of Thinking (Prentice Hall, 2005).

Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian economist who would go on to win the Nobel Prize, described the process in a book he wrote during World War II. As Hayek explained, people don’t intend to trade away their most basic freedoms. They just want more economic equality and more financial security. But the result is always the same, as Hayek made clear in the title of his book—The Road to Serfdom. Unless the relationship between “personal” and “economic” freedom is really understood, both can easily be lost. Sometimes even people who speak the same language do not understand one another. My undergraduate studies were enriched by a year I spent living and studying in England. It was particularly educational—sometimes funny, sometimes confusing, and sometimes embarrassing—to discover linguistic differences between British and American idioms.

Today, the U.S. government owns or guarantees the majority of mortgages in the United States—and more than 90 percent of new mortgages.12 Where people are free to own and use property, tyranny can never hold sway. When people begin to sacrifice the rights of property and exchange—their economic freedom—for some other perceived good such as security or equality, they take a step down Hayek’s road to serfdom. The lesson of history is plain. People who value political and religious liberty will ignore the value of economic liberty only at their peril. Suggestions for Further Reading Lord Acton, The History of Freedom, Parts I and II, available online at http://www.acton.org/research/history-freedom-antiquity and http://www.acton.org/research/history-freedom-christianity.


pages: 495 words: 144,101

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, Apollo 11, bank run, barriers to entry, centralized clearinghouse, collective bargaining, creative destruction, desegregation, feminist movement, financial independence, gentleman farmer, George Gilder, Herbert Marcuse, invisible hand, jimmy wales, Joan Didion, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, Menlo Park, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, side project, Stewart Brand, The Chicago School, The Wisdom of Crowds, union organizing, urban renewal, We are as Gods, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog

Like Rand, he warned, “The forces which have destroyed freedom in Germany are also at work here.”10 He shared her distrust of “the common good” and titled one of his chapters “Individualism and Collectivism.” The reception of their work was also similar, for Hayek was snubbed by intellectuals yet embraced by businessmen and other Americans nervous about the implications of the New Deal. Both The Fountainhead and Road to Serfdom were even made into comic books, a testimony to their wide appeal. The Road to Serfdom launched Hayek on a remarkable career as an intellectual and organizer that would culminate with his winning the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics. The book’s popularity caught the attention of the Kansas City–based Volker Fund, a newly active libertarian foundation, which eventually helped Hayek secure a position at the University of Chicago, a lone academic redoubt for libertarian ideas.

Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994). 9. “Balzar’s Hot Bargains for Cool Meals,” August 5–7, 1946, Hollywood, CA, ARP 095–49x; Ralph C. Nehls to AR, December 18, 1949, ARP 004–15A; The Houghton Line, April-May 1944, ARP 092–12x. 10. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 3. For the reception of Road to Serfdom, see Alan Ebenstein, Friedrich Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Hayek’s career and thought are described in Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 11.

A top executive at the Meeker Company, a leather goods company in Joplin, Missouri, distributed copies of Roark’s courtroom speech to his friends and business acquaintances.9 Much as Rand had always wished, capitalists were finally promoting her work of their own volition. Business conservatives were also drawn to another best-selling book attacking state control of the economy, F. A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Written for a British audience, Hayek’s book unexpectedly caught the attention of Americans, and he was mobbed by enthusiastic crowds when he toured the United States in 1944. Hayek made arguments very similar to those Rand had advanced during her post-Willkie activism. He tied his laissez-faire beliefs to the broader international situation, arguing that any movement toward state regulation of the economy would ultimately culminate in full-blown socialism and dictatorship.


pages: 164 words: 44,947

Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World by Robert Lawson, Benjamin Powell

Airbnb, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, business cycle, cognitive dissonance, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, Kickstarter, means of production, Mont Pelerin Society, profit motive, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, single-payer health, special economic zone, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

But Maduro was reelected in 2018 amid, as the New York Times put it, “widespread disillusionment,” with “more than half of voters not casting ballots,” and critics alleging that the election was “heavily rigged.”12 This shouldn’t surprise anyone, because political freedom cannot survive without a large degree of economic freedom. In his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek argued that a competitive capitalist economy is necessary to sustain democracy, and that once a country becomes “dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”13 Similarly, in 1962, Milton Friedman noted: “Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market.

Hayek was Ludwig von Mises’s student and he also wrote quite good articles on the socialist calculation debate as well. They are collected in his book Individualism and Economic Order. That book is a little tougher reading than Mises’s but is still accessible. We also highly recommend Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. In it, he explains why economic freedom is necessary to have meaningful political freedom. It’s a popular press book, and Reader’s Digest even did a shortened edition of it. We wish all young “democratic” socialists would read it. Peter Boettke is our favorite economist for understanding how the Soviet Union’s economy (dis)functioned.

Antonio Maria Delgado, “In Venezuela, inflation quadruples to 18,000 percent in two months, with no end in sight,” Miami Herald, May 2, 2018, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article210282264.html. 12. William Neuman and Nicholas Casey, “Venezuela Election Won By Maduro Amid Widespread Disillusionment,” New York Times, May 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/world/americas/venezuela-election.html. 13. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 69–70. 14. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 9. 15. Alexandra Ulmer, “Phone Calls, Dismissal Threats: Venezuela Pressures State Workers to Vote,” Reuters, https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1AE08P.


pages: 298 words: 95,668

Milton Friedman: A Biography by Lanny Ebenstein

Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, classic study, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Lao Tzu, liquidity trap, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, price stability, public intellectual, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, school choice, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, stem cell, The Chicago School, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, zero-sum game

He considers his attendance at this meeting to have been important in his growing interest in public policy from an explicitly libertarian, or classical liberal, point of view. Others from Chicago to attend this meeting were Frank Knight, Aaron Director, and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, the author of the 1944 international best-seller The Road to Serfdom, had organized the meeting. He joined the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 1950, and Friedman attended his seminar frequently; it became another source of his expanding interest in the philosophical foundations of free private property capitalism. Friedman continued to participate in national public policy issues through the 1950s, and his involvement skyrocketed in the 1960s.

It says much about Friedman that his two major popular works have “free” in their titles: Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose. Many passages in Capitalism and Freedom contain echoes of Mill, especially from On Liberty, Mill’s great classical liberal and libertarian work. Capitalism and Freedom is a linear descendent of the freedom philosophy enunciated in On Liberty. Together with On Liberty and The Road to Serfdom, Capitalism and Freedom is one of the great brief works in libertarian thought and policy. Animating all these works is their emphasis on the individual—on the importance of each individual and on the moral necessity to treat each human being as someone of utmost worth. Friedman’s focus is individual human freedom.

Friedman refers to Hayek in the text of Capitalism and Freedom: “Recognizing the implicit threat to individualism, the intellectual descendants of the Philosophical Radicals—Dicey, Mises, Hayek, and Simons, to mention only a few—feared that a continued movement toward centralized control of economic activity would prove The Road to Serfdom, as Hayek entitled his penetrating analysis of the process.” When Friedman says that “the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power,”25 he expresses an idea similar to that of Hayek, who said: “It is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.”26 From America’s founding fathers, Friedman was impressed, like so many others, by the idea of limited government.


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The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Asian financial crisis, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, cashless society, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, circulation of elites, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Corn Laws, corporate governance, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, disintermediation, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Etonian, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mobile money, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, night-watchman state, Norman Macrae, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, open economy, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, pension reform, pensions crisis, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, profit maximization, public intellectual, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Skype, special economic zone, TED Talk, the long tail, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, total factor productivity, vertical integration, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, zero-sum game

Today the sensible, law-abiding Englishman cannot pass through an hour, let alone a lifetime, without noticing the existence of the state. There have been periodic attempts to stop the supersizing of the state. In 1944 Friedrich Hayek warned that the state was in danger of crushing the society that gave it life in The Road to Serfdom. This provided an important theme for conservative politicians from then onward. In 1975 California’s current governor, Jerry Brown, in an earlier incarnation, declared an “era of limits.” This worry about “limits” profoundly reshaped thinking about the state for the next decade and a half. In the 1990s people on both the Left and the Right assumed that globalization would trim the state: Bill Clinton professed the age of big government to be over.

The founding father of “the Austrian school” was Ludwig von Mises, who told government officials, “You are not the vicars of a god called ‘the State.’ ”3 During the Second World War, Karl Popper labored away on The Open Society and Its Enemies in far-off New Zealand, while in blitzed London his friend Friedrich Hayek, a pupil of von Mises, produced The Road to Serfdom in 1944, worrying that the book would sink without a trace because of paper shortages. In fact it was an instant best seller—and eventually converted millions to the idea that the overmighty state was an oppressor. Hayek was more than just a scribbler: Like the Webbs he had a talent for organization.

In 1947 Hayek helped found the Mont Pelerin Society to bring the global vanguard together. Mont Pelerin was in the Swiss Alps, but the future of the coun­terrevolution lay across the Atlantic. America had a much stronger ­tradition of individualism than Europe—and far more money for foundations and journals. The Road to Serfdom sold better in the United States than anywhere else—indeed, the Reader’s Digest condensed and serialized it—and in 1950 Hayek moved from the London School of Economics to the University of Chicago. Oddly, he was employed there by an esoteric outfit called the Committee on Social Thought, but the real center of the counterrevolution against Keynesianism was the economics department.


pages: 261 words: 81,802

The Trouble With Billionaires by Linda McQuaig

"World Economic Forum" Davos, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, carried interest, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, John Bogle, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, laissez-faire capitalism, land tenure, lateral thinking, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, very high income, wealth creators, women in the workforce

With the stunning wartime popularity of the Beveridge report, Hayek was going against the tide in 1944 when he published The Road to Serfdom, arguing, provocatively, that the overgrown British state would ultimately lead to German-style totalitarianism. The book sparked considerable controversy and public interest, even winning qualified praise from Keynes, and brought Hayek intellectual acclaim. But its fervent market-oriented ideas were out of sync with the times. Still, the book became a bible of the libertarian movement, keeping the flame of pro-market economics alive in an era dominated by Keynesian thought. The Road to Serfdom also aroused interest among the economic conservatives at the University of Chicago, which published it and brought Hayek on a tour of the United States in April 1945.

Probably most important of all was the network of think-tanks established by British farming entrepreneur Antony Fisher, whom Milton Friedman later credited with being ‘the single most important person ‌in the development of Thatcherism’.23 Inspired by Hayek’s ideas after reading a Reader’s Digest condensation of The Road to Serfdom, Fisher had considered going into politics to promote the free-market cause. But Hayek talked him out of it, explaining, Fisher later recalled, ‘that the decisive influence in the battle of ideas and policy was wielded by intellectuals whom he characterized as the “second-hand dealers in ideas”.’

But, of course, these wealthy interests – and the economists who champion their agenda – never acknowledge self-interest as a factor in the formulation of conservative economic views. Rather, the case for embracing the marketplace and eschewing state-run social programmes is presented as intimately tied up with liberty. Hayek became the high priest of the conservative movement back in 1944 when he built the case that adopting the welfare state was nothing less than the ‘road to serfdom’. But it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that deep-down conservatives are actually just self-interested in arguing for the unleashing of market forces. As Galbraith memorably put it: ‘The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.’


pages: 525 words: 146,126

Ayn Rand Cult by Jeff Walker

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, buy and hold, credit crunch, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Doomsday Book, Elliott wave, gentleman farmer, George Gilder, Herbert Marcuse, Jane Jacobs, laissez-faire capitalism, Lewis Mumford, market fundamentalism, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, price stability, Ralph Waldo Emerson, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, Tipper Gore, Torches of Freedom

Classical liberalism may have appeared dead and socialism unstoppable by 1940 but socialism’s intellectual undoing and economic liberalism’s re-tooling were already under way. Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom made a huge splash in 1944, doubtless helping out sales of The Fountainhead. Hayek’s book moved American conservatism in a more libertarian direction. Briton Antony Fisher, inspired by Road to Serfdom, would write his own book and then go on, by means of the several influential think-tanks he founded, to become the most important architect of what would later be ideological Thatcherism. The founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1945 marked a decisive point in liberalism’s resurgence.

Rand meets and befriends Isabel Paterson. 1941 December, Rand finally finds publisher for The Fountainhead. 1943 The Fountainhead published. The God of the Machine by Isabel Paterson published. The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane published. Rand sells the film rights to The Fountainhead for $50,000. 1944 The Road To Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek published. Rand moves back to Hollywood, writes screenplays for Hal Wallis studio. 1947 Rand testifies as a friendly witness before HUAC. Rand breaks with her friend and mentor Isabel Paterson. First meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society in Switzerland. 1949 Fountainhead movie released. 1950 Nathan Blumenthal (Nathaniel Branden) and Barbara Weidman meet Rand in Los Angeles. 1951 The Brandens move from Los Angeles to New York City, and the O’Connors soon follow.

It’s a Christian precept that “poverty is somehow associated with virtue” and a millionaire has to “expiate his sin” by charitable giving. Where McCall gripes, John Galt will thunder in outrage. Saint-Simon’s Parable via Friedrich Hayek (1941) Hayek’s extraordinarily influential defense of economic liberalism against creeping socialism, The Road To Serfdom, was published in 1944. Ayn Rand was already mapping out her post-Fountainhead novel by then. Just prior to the outset of that process, a time when Rand had recently forged all kinds of contacts with free-market thinkers who would have been recommending relevant books and articles to her, a 1941 issue of Economica featured a Hayek essay that recounted the so-called parable of Henri de Saint-Simon.2 The latter was mentor to sociologist Auguste Comte, who would found a positivist sect intent on applying science to society and “in which the material benefactors of mankind replaced the hierarchy of saints.”


pages: 261 words: 64,977

Pity the Billionaire: The Unexpected Resurgence of the American Right by Thomas Frank

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, Bear Stearns, big-box store, bonus culture, business cycle, carbon tax, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, false flag, financial innovation, General Magic , Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, invisible hand, junk bonds, Kickstarter, low interest rates, money market fund, Naomi Klein, obamacare, Overton Window, payday loans, profit maximization, profit motive, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, strikebreaker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, union organizing, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration

Because they were Europeans. And Europeans, as everyone knew, have had very few glimpses of real freedom. Even when England won the Second World War, they didn’t go into freedom. That’s where the Road to Serfdom came from. Because Winston Churchill and many others all said, wait, what are you doing? We’re going the wrong direction. And it didn’t go to freedom, it went to the Road to Serfdom. Beck is correct that The Road to Serfdom, the famous 1944 book by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, was written as a critique of British politics, a warning that Labour Party socialism might lead eventually to totalitarianism.

See also deregulation; and specific agencies attack on Depression and enforcement and financial crisis and Obama and Rand and utopian capitalism vs. Republican Party elections of 1994 and elections of 2008 and elections of 2010 and expectations of, in 2008 TARP and Tea Party and revival of Return of Depression Economics, The (Krugman) Rivera, David Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek) Romer, Christina Romney, Mitt Roosevelt, Franklin Beck and “forgotten man” and Obama and RFC and Ryan and Rothenberg, Stu Rubin, Robert Rules for Radical Conservatives (“Kahane”) “ruling class” Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot (Franken) Ryan, Paul same-sex marriage Samuelson, Robert Santelli, Rick Saving Freedom (DeMint) Schlesinger, Arthur Schwarzenegger, Arnold Schweikert, David Schweitzer, Mark Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Seldes, Gilbert Sex Pistols Shane, Scott Shlaes, Amity shock therapy Slouching Towards Gomorrah (Bork) “Small Business Bill of Rights” small business.


pages: 275 words: 77,955

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", affirmative action, Berlin Wall, central bank independence, Corn Laws, Deng Xiaoping, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, liquidity trap, market friction, minimum wage unemployment, price discrimination, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing

The result of that experiment had been foreshadowed by a number of similar experiments on a smaller scale: Hong Kong and Taiwan versus mainland China; West Germany versus East Germany; South Korea versus North Korea. But it took the drama of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union to make it part of conventional wisdom, so that it is now taken for granted that central planning is indeed The Road to Serfdom, as Friedrich A. Hayek titled his brilliant 1944 polemic. What is true for the United States and Great Britain is equally true for the other Western advanced countries. In country after country, the initial postwar decades witnessed exploding socialism, followed by creeping or stagnant socialism.

The ideas in our two books are still far from being in the intellectual mainstream, but they are now, at least, respectable in the intellectual community and very likely almost conventional among the broader public. The change in the climate of opinion was not produced by this book or the many others, such as Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Constitution of Liberty, in the same philosophical tradition. For evidence of that, it is enough to point to the call for contributions to the symposium Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy issued by the editors of Commentary in 1978, which went in part: “The idea that there may be an inescapable connection between capitalism and democracy has recently begun to seem plausible to a number of intellectuals who once would have regarded such a view not only as wrong but even as politically dangerous.”

Welfare rather than freedom became the dominant note in democratic countries. Recognizing the implicit threat to individualism, the intellectual descendants of the Philosophical Radicals Dicey, Mises, Hayek, and Simons, to mention only a few—feared that a continued movement toward centralized control of economic activity would prove The Road to Serfdom, as Hayek entitled his penetrating analysis of the process. Their emphasis was on economic freedom as a means toward political freedom. Events since the end of World War II display still a different relation between economic and political freedom. Collectivist economic planning has indeed interfered with individual freedom.


pages: 545 words: 137,789

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy

Abraham Wald, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, asset-backed security, availability heuristic, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, collateralized debt obligation, Columbine, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, different worldview, diversification, Elliott wave, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Gunnar Myrdal, Haight Ashbury, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income per capita, incomplete markets, index fund, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Landlord’s Game, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, mental accounting, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, negative equity, Network effects, Nick Leeson, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, price discrimination, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rent control, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, Tax Reform Act of 1986, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Two Sigma, unorthodox policies, value at risk, Vanguard fund, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

Alvin Hansen, the dean of American Keynesians, had a point when he wrote in The New Republic, “This kind of writing is not scholarship. It is seeing hobgoblins under every bed.” In The Road to Serfdom and in his other works, Hayek neglected to account for some serious failures of the market system. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was already glaringly obvious that ordinary people needed decent medical care, breathable air, and money to retire on, and that the market had failed to provide these things. Why was that? Hayek didn’t offer an answer; he didn’t even seem particularly interested in the question. The alarmist thesis of The Road to Serfdom didn’t get much purchase in Britain, where there was widespread public support for the welfare state, but in the United States, where suspicion of government ran deep, Hayek was hailed as a visionary.

He agreed with Keynes that capitalism needed adult supervision: left untended, it had produced a worldwide slump and, ultimately, fascism. Hayek never accepted the argument that fascism was a capitalist phenomenon. He saw Stalin and Hitler as two suits in the same closet, and the closet was marked “collectivism.” He dedicated his book The Road to Serfdom “To the Socialists of All Parties,” a clear reference to National Socialism. Much of the book was devoted to central planning. Hayek repeated the arguments about prices and information that he had made in his academic papers, but his main concern was to develop their political implications. When the government has to decide how many pigs are to be raised or how many buses are to be run, these decisions cannot be deduced purely from economic principles, Hayek said.

I was very well known in the academic world—it is inconceivable that a book on the other side by someone in that same position would not have been reviewed in every publication, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune.” In many ways, Capitalism and Freedom was an American version of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Like Hayek, Friedman portrayed the choices facing democratic societies in stark and simplistic terms. “Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions,” he wrote. “One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state.


pages: 385 words: 111,807

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, antiwork, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, discovery of the americas, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, liberation theology, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, post-industrial society, precariat, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, search costs, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) extended the school’s influence beyond its homeland. It gained international attention during the so-called Calculation Debate in the 1920s and the 1930s, in which it battled the Marxists on the feasibility of central planning.14 In 1944, Hayek published an extremely influential popular book, The Road to Serfdom, which passionately warned against the danger of government intervention leading to the loss of fundamental individual liberty. The Austrian school is these days in the same laissez-faire camp with the free-market wing (today the majority) of the Neoclassical school, producing similar, if somewhat more extreme, policy conclusions.

The Austrian position against government intervention is too extreme. Their view is that any government intervention other than the provision of law and order, especially protection of private property, will launch the society on to a slippery slope down to socialism – a view most explicitly advanced in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. This is not theoretically convincing; nor has it been borne out by history. There is a huge gradation in the ways market and the state combine across countries and within countries. Chocolate bars in the US are provided in a much more market-oriented way than is primary school education. South Korea may rely more on market solutions than Britain does in the provision of health care, but the case is the reverse in water or railways.

There is no higher authority – king, pope or the planning minister – to tell individuals what they should want and produce. On this basis, many free-market economists have argued that there is an inseparable link between the freedom of individual consumers to choose and their broader political freedom. Friedrich von Hayek’s seminal critique of socialism, The Road to Serfdom, and Milton Friedman’s passionate advocacy of the free-market system, Free to Choose, are famous examples. Moreover, the individualist view provides a paradoxical but very powerful moral justification of the market mechanism. We as individuals all make choices only for ourselves, the story goes, but the result is the maximization of social welfare.


pages: 105 words: 18,832

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway

Anthropocene, anti-communist, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Great Leap Forward, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Kim Stanley Robinson, laissez-faire capitalism, Lewis Mumford, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, military-industrial complex, oil shale / tar sands, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, stochastic process, the built environment, the market place

Perhaps because of the horrible violence in the East, many Western intellectuals came to see everything associated with communism as evil, even— and crucially for our story—modest or necessary forms of intervention in the marketplace such as progressive taxation and environmental regulation, and humanitar-ian interventions such as effective and affordable regimes of health care and birth control. Neoliberalism was developed by a group of thinkers— most notably Austrian Friedrich von Hayek and American Milton Friedman—who were particularly sensitive to the issue of repressive centralized government. In two key works, von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, they developed the crucial “neo-” component of neoliberalism: the idea that free market systems were the only economic systems that did not threaten individual liberty. Neoliberalism was initially a minority view. In the 1950s and 1960s, the West experienced high overall prosperity, and individual nations developed mixed economies that suited their own national cultures and contexts.

On twentieth- and twenty-first-century subsidies for fossil fuel production, see http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0, 3746,en_2649_37465_45233017_1_1_1_37465,00.html; and John Vidal, “World Bank: Ditch Fossil Fuel Subsidies to Address Climate Change,” The Guardian, September 21, 2011, http://www.guardian. co.uk/environment/2011/sep/21/world-bank-fossil-fuel-subsidies. 12. Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Text and Documents: The Definitive Edition, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 87. Epilogue 1. For estimates of populations at or near sea level at the turn of the twenty-first century, see Don Hinrichsen, “The Coastal Population Explosion,” in The Next 25 Years: Global Issues, prepared for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Trends Workshop, 1999, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/websites/ retiredsites/natdia_pdf/3hinrichsen.pdf; and http://oceanservice.


pages: 282 words: 80,907

Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Build a better mousetrap, centralized clearinghouse, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, computer age, computerized markets, crowdsourcing, deferred acceptance, desegregation, Dutch auction, experimental economics, first-price auction, Flash crash, High speed trading, income inequality, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, law of one price, Lyft, market clearing, market design, medical residency, obamacare, PalmPilot, proxy bid, road to serfdom, school choice, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, second-price sealed-bid, Silicon Valley, spectrum auction, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, two-sided market, uber lyft, undersea cable

. [>] Nigeria: For information about kidney disease in Africa, see Saraladevi Naicker, “End-Stage Renal Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Ethnicity & Disease 19, no. 1 (2009): 13. 12. FREE MARKETS AND MARKET DESIGN [>] tablecloths: I recall discussing tablecloths as an indicator of restaurant types years ago with my late colleague Gerald Salancik, at the University of Illinois. [>] The Road to Serfdom: All the quotes in this section are from F. A. Hayek, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, vol. 2, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents—The Definitive Edition, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). [>] liberal: Hayek in fact wrote of the confusion of terms: “Indeed, what in Europe is or used to be called ‘liberal’ is in the USA today with some justification called ‘conservative’; while in recent times the term ‘liberal’ has been used there to describe what in Europe would be called socialism.

Free Markets How do we square market design with the notion of the “free market” that so many people hold dear? In chapter 1, I made the analogy between a free market with effective rules and a wheel that can rotate freely because it has an axle and well-oiled bearings. I could have been paraphrasing the iconic free-market economist Friedrich Hayek, who in his 1944 free-market manifesto The Road to Serfdom wrote, “There is, in particular, all the difference between deliberately creating a system within which competition will work as beneficially as possible and passively accepting institutions as they are.” He understood that markets need effective rules in order to work freely. Hayek also understood that there is a place for economists to help in understanding how to design markets.

See also trust eBay, 117–19 of restaurants, 220 residency programs for doctors, 7–8, 73, 134–50 couples in, 144–49 empowerment of applicants in, 76–78 gastroenterologist fellowships, 75–78 orthopedic surgeons, 78–80 rural vs. urban, 149–50 resource allocation, 4 restaurants market designs for, 217–20 reservations for, 105 safety of, 220–22 signaling by, 181 risk. See safety of market participation; simplicity; trust Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 226–27 Robertson, John, 41–42 Rose Bowl, 61, 63 Roth-Peranson algorithm, 148–49 rules, 7. See also regulation cheating and, 93–98 for college bowl games, 60–65 for judicial clerkships, 92–96 unraveling markets and, 68 Rural Hospitals Theorem, 149–50 safety of market participation, 11, 113–30 in auctions, 182–84, 186–87 clearinghouses and, 112 credit cards in, 23 early transactions and, 60–80 in gastroenterology fellowships, 76–78 information sharing and, 122–28 in Boston Public Schools, 122–28 in clearinghouses, 112 for kidney exchanges, 34, 36, 37, 47–49 market efficiency and, 119–21 for medical residencies, 137–43, 150–51 in New York City schools, 109–10, 112, 153–61 in Internet marketplaces, 105 in kidney exchanges, 34, 36, 47–49, 51–52 for medical residencies, 137–43 privacy and, 119–22 reputation and, 115–16 for restaurants, 220–22 same-sex marriage, 198–99 Scarf, Herb, 32–34 Scheibe, Peter, 38–39 Scheibe, Susan, 38–39 school matching, 8, 165–67 Boston Public Schools, 11, 122–28, 162–65 in China, 165–66 constraints in, 158–61 deferred acceptance algorithm in, 157–61 inequality of schools and, 166–67 New York City school system, 8, 106–10, 112, 122, 153–61 parent preferences in, 150–51 safety of sharing preferences in, 124–30, 153–54 unraveled markets in, 73–74 searches, 6 Securities and Exchange Commission, 85 self-control, 67–68, 74–78 judicial clerkships and, 91, 93–98 as solution to early transactions, 79–80, 135–36 self-interest, 52 sex trade, 114, 214–15 Shapley, Lloyd, 32–34, 141–43, 158 Shim, John, 86, 88, 239 Shmida, Avi, 13 shopping malls, 221 signals and signaling, 6, 169–92 in auctions, 180–89 cheap talk in, 176–77 in college admissions, 169, 170–73 costly, 177–89 of desirability, 178–79 of interest, 178–80 in Internet dating sites, 169, 175–77 in job markets, 173–75 opportunity cost of, 179–80 by restaurants, 181 simplicity, 11, 26–27 in commodity markets, 15–17 in communication, 169–92 in kidney exchanges, 51–52 in navigating the system, 124–26 slavery, 199–200, 201 slippery slope, 204 smartphones Internet market congestion and, 99–106 as marketplaces, 21–22 payment systems with, 24, 26–27 privacy and, 192 Smith, Adam, 7, 206–7 social media, 169 Sönmez, Tayfun, 8, 35, 37–38, 43–44 on Boston school choice, 126–28 Sotomayor, Marilda, 146 South Korea, 171 speed of transactions, 81–99 communication and, 99–106 congestion and, 99–112 in financial markets, 82–89 in judicial clerkships, 90–98 price-based competition vs., 85–88 telegraph and the cotton market, 89–90 Spread Networks, 83 stable outcomes, 139–43, 157–58 Standage, Tom, 89 standardization, 17–20, 22 Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPY), 82–89 Starbucks, 18, 19 Starzl, Thomas, 34 stockbrokers, 48 strategic decisions, 10–11 allowing time for, 92–93, 154 congestion and, 99–106 for judicial clerkships, 69–70, 92–98 on marriage, 70–74 in school matching, 124–30, 153–55, 161, 163–65 speed of information in, 89–90 StubHub, 104 Sugar Bowl, 62 surrogate babies, 201–2 taxi drivers, 114 telegraph, 89–90 thick markets, 8–9 Amazon, 21 for college bowl games, 63–64 for commodities, 17 congestion in, 9–10, 99–112 credit card, 23–24 differentiation in, 18–20 early transactions and, 57–80 early transactions in, 57–80 in financial markets, 82–89 for kidney transplants, 49–51 New York City school system, 107–10 platform changes and, 26–27 for restaurants, 217–20 self-reinforcing, 21 signaling in, 179 transaction speed in, 81–99 ticket re-sales, 104 timing of transactions in college bowl games, 59–65 congestion and, 80, 99–112 in Internet marketplaces, 101–6 Internet markets and, 20–26 market thickness and, 8–9 too fast, 81–99 too soon, 57–80 trading cycles, 32–41 transactions early, 57–80 monetization of, 202–5 protected, 198 time to evaluate, 9–11 timing of (See timing of transactions) trading cycles and, 32–41 trust in Boston Public Schools system, 123–28 at eBay, 117–19 gastroenterology fellowships and, 76–78 in Internet marketplaces, 105 in New York City school system, 108–10, 112 regulation and, 222–23 reliability and, 116 reputation and, 115–16 Uber, 103–4, 116 UberX, 104 United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), 50 University of Cincinnati Medical Center, 39–41 University of Oklahoma Sooners, 59 University of Pittsburgh, 34, 45, 174–75 University of Toledo Medical Center, 29–30 UNOS, 50 unraveled/unraveling markets.


pages: 461 words: 128,421

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street by Justin Fox

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Wald, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, card file, Carl Icahn, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, democratizing finance, Dennis Tito, discovery of the americas, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, Edward Thorp, endowment effect, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, floating exchange rates, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, impulse control, index arbitrage, index card, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Bogle, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, libertarian paternalism, linear programming, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, market design, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, Nikolai Kondratiev, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, power law, prediction markets, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, pushing on a string, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, stocks for the long run, tech worker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Predators' Ball, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, transaction costs, tulip mania, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, value at risk, Vanguard fund, Vilfredo Pareto, volatility smile, Yogi Berra

Chief among them were Milton Friedman, his friend George Stigler, and his brother-in-law Aaron Director. Statistics professor W. Allen Wallis played a role too, although more as an administrator than a crusader. Both Friedman and Stigler later said that the crucial turning point in their thinking came when they read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Hayek had studied economics in Vienna in the 1920s and moved in 1931 to the London School of Economics—an originally socialist institution that had become a bastion of free market thought. During the war, LSE shifted its operations to Cambridge, where Hayek and John Maynard Keynes shared air raid warden shifts, became friends, and talked politics.

During the war, LSE shifted its operations to Cambridge, where Hayek and John Maynard Keynes shared air raid warden shifts, became friends, and talked politics. Having experienced the socialist “Red Vienna” of the 1920s and watched the Nazi takeover of his homeland from afar, Hayek was appalled by the equanimity, even enthusiasm, with which Keynes and other English liberal intellectuals greeted the growth of government. Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom with a British academic audience in mind, and in Britain it did not penetrate much beyond that audience. At the urging of Director—who had gotten to know Hayek during a year spent at LSE—the University of Chicago Press published the book in the United States. It became a sensation, especially after Reader’s Digest printed a condensed version in May 1945.

It was a worldview-shifting revelation. For many others it was Ayn Rand’s 1943 bestseller The Fountainhead that had this effect, but economists understandably gravitated toward one of their own. Subsequent events did not play out quite as Hayek warned in his book. “It is a fair reading of The Road to Serfdom to say that forty years more of the march toward socialism would lead to major losses of the political and economic freedom of individuals,” Stigler wrote in 1988. “Yet in those forty years we have seen that continuous expansion of the state in Sweden and England, even in Canada and the United States, without consequences for personal freedom so dire as predicted.”4 Hayek soon put forward another argument that has held up far better—and was more directly applicable to the work of economists.


pages: 417 words: 97,577

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition by Jonathan Tepper

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, diversification, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, full employment, gentrification, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Google Chrome, Gordon Gekko, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, late capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Maslow's hierarchy, means of production, merger arbitrage, Metcalfe's law, multi-sided market, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive investing, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, prediction markets, prisoner's dilemma, proprietary trading, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech billionaire, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, undersea cable, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, very high income, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, you are the product, zero-sum game

A Year of Potsdam: German Economy Since Surrender, prepared by the Economics Division, Office of Military Government for Germany (US). United States War Department, 1946. 45. A. Pelle, The German Roots of the European Community's Cartel Regulation: From a Historical and Theoretical Perspective (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011). 46. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 93–94. 47. Simon Tilford, “Is EU Competition Policy an Obstacle to Innovation and Growth?,” http://www.cer.eu/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/pdf/2011/essay_competition_st_20nov08-1359.pdf. 48. https://www.economist.com/europe/2015/05/09/of-rules-and-order . 49.

r=US&IR=T. 12. http://uk.businessinsider.com/pearson-salary-2015-2016-4. 13. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/shkreli-not-alone-in-drug-price-spikes-as-skin-gel-soars-1-860. 14. https://qz.com/514553/massive-unexpected-drug-price-increases-are-happening-all-the-time/. 15. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/analysis-drugmakers-take-big-price-increases-on-popular-meds-in-u-s/. 16. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20171228/NEWS/171229930. 17. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/31664223/the-curse-of-blade-runners-adverts. 18. https://www.wsj.com/articles/science-affliction-are-companies-cursed-by-cameos-in-blade-runner-1506356096. 19. https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/03/hey-wheres-my-corporate-dystopia-kevin-d-williamson/. 20. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/09/science-fiction-corporations-not-omnipotent-capitalism-ensures-competition/. 21. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 2007). 22. https://www.wired.com/2012/03/march-19-1474-venice-enacts-a-patently-original-idea/. 23. http://altlawforum.org/publications/a-history-of-patent-law/. 24. https://www.mercatus.org/publication/number-patents-has-exploded-1982-and-one-court-blame. 25. https://promarket.org/intellectual-property-laws-wolves-sheeps-clothing/. 26. http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/657103.pdf. 27. https://priceonomics.com/how-mickey-mouse-evades-the-public-domain/. 28. https://hbr.org/2016/07/price-gouging-and-the-dangerous-new-breed-of-pharma-companies. 29.

Equality of Opportunity Project, http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/. 21. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/. 22. https://qz.com/711854/the-inequality-happening-now-in-san-francisco-will-impact-america-for-generations-to-come/. 23. http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/20/san-jose-san-francisco-oakland-job-losses-hammer-bay-area-employers-slash-thousands-of-jobs/. 24. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/25/google-bus-protest-swells-to-revolt-san-francisco. 25. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014. Conclusion: Economic and Political Freedom 1. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1944), p. 204. 2. http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/second-civil-war/agreement-of-the-people. 3. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Wrong Turnings: How the Left Got Lost (University of Chicago Press, January 3, 2018). 4. Elizabeth Anderson's first Tanner 2015 lecture, “When the Market Was ‘Left.’”


pages: 341 words: 98,954

Owning the Sun by Alexander Zaitchik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, business cycle, classic study, colonial rule, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donald Trump, energy transition, informal economy, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, knowledge economy, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, Philip Mirowski, placebo effect, Potemkin village, profit motive, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, The Chicago School, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Whole Earth Catalog

Priming demand with government spending, basic social insurance, macromanaging the economy in any way—these were not bulwarks against tyranny but steps on the “road to servitude,” as Hayek first titled The Road to Serfdom. The strongest guarantor of individual freedom was the minimalist state described by the classical and neoclassical economists. Only by recognizing the inherently virtuous and self-calibrating nature of market forces could the likes of Adolf Hitler be avoided in the future. The Road to Serfdom sold well in England upon its release in 1944, but it was the U.S. edition published a year later by the University of Chicago Press that changed the course of Hayek’s life and much else.

Winning the long game would require more sophisticated methods, a dedication bordering on fanaticism, and patience. “If the ideals which I believe unite us are to have any chance of revival,” the man at the center of this group declared in 1947, “a great intellectual task must be performed.” Friedrich von Hayek was already famous within the economics profession when The Road to Serfdom made him a global celebrity. In the 1930s, the Austrian-born Hayek established himself at the London School of Economics as a leading theorist of pricing, monetary policy, and business cycles. He approached these subjects with a belief that the market was fundamentally self-balancing and all-knowing.

“It follows . . . that if you privatize too much or incorrectly, knowledge could also be misallocated, blocked, or left stagnant.” Hayek believed monopolies held an even greater danger than distorting prices and competition. The patent-based industrial combines of Nazi Germany demonstrated how monopolies can feed the growth of the state. In The Road to Serfdom Hayek approvingly cites the Temporary National Economic Committee’s view that “the superior performance of large companies has not been demonstrated” and that “the monopoly is obtained by collusion and encouraged by the government.” The evils of patents was a recurring theme during ten days of meetings convened by Hayek at the Mont Pelerin mountain resort overlooking Lake Geneva in April 1947.


pages: 576 words: 105,655

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth

"there is no alternative" (TINA), accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, debt deflation, deindustrialization, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, ending welfare as we know it, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Irish property bubble, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, savings glut, short selling, structural adjustment programs, tail risk, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, Two Sigma, unorthodox policies, value at risk, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Kahn asked, “If I went out tomorrow and bought a new overcoat, that would increase unemployment?” “Yes,” said Hayek, “but … it would take a very long mathematical argument to explain why.”41 By 1944, Hayek found himself similarly ignored, in semiretirement, writing on the dangers of socialism in his epic The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s earlier Prices and Production, his Meisterwerk on business cycle theory, like Schumpeter’s 1939 Business Cycles, arrived dead at the presses. First ignored and then defeated in Europe, Austrian ideas survived in America, where their popularity has ebbed and flowed for nearly a century.

Gillian Tett, “Beware Hidden Costs as Banks Eye ‘Grexit,’” Financial Times, May 24, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/73c76b8a-a5b4–11e1-a3b4–00144feabdc0.html#axzz241THBegL. 73. Dani Rodrik, One Economics, Many Recipes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); David R. Cameron, “The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 72, 4 (December 1978): 1243–1261. 74. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 75. Paul De Grauwe, “Fighting the Wrong Enemy,” Vox, May 19’ 2010, http://new.voxeu.org/article/europe-s-private-versus-public-debt-problem-fighting-wrong-enemy. INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTERS FOUR, FIVE, AND SIX 1. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Orlando: Harcourt Brace 1964), 3. 2.

Tales of Two Small European Countries”, 169, 170, 171, 176, 209–210 Glitnir, 237 global asset bubbles, 233 fig, 7.1 Global South austerity in, 164 gold standard, 179 and a democracy, 197 and austerity, 180–205 and Germany, 196 and Japan, 197–199 United Kingdom and, 189–191, Goldman Sachs, 32, 48, 58 government intervention, 147–148, 148–152 Great Depression, 119, 128, 186 Great Moderation, 145, 149 Greece, 1, 2, 3, 4, 222 austerity in, 176–177 bailouts in, 71–73, 221 debt in, 6 Eurozone Current Account Imbalances, 78 fig. 3.1 Eurozone Ten-Year Government Bond Yields, 80 fig. 3.2 fiscal adjustment in, 173 government debt 2006–2012, 47 fig. 2.3 sovereign debt of, 62–64, 108 Greenspan, Alan, 60, 149, 150 Grossmann-Doerth, Hans, 135 Guajardo, Jamie, 214 Haldane, Andy, 37 Hamada, Koichi, 198 Hamaguchi, Prime Minister, 199 Harberler, Gottfried, 148 Harding, Warren G., 187 Hayek, Friedrich August, 90, 92, 120, 144 and the New Liberals, 118 and the Nobel Prize in economics, 145 model of credit crunches and collapses, 146–147 Prices and Production, 144 Road to Serfdom, The, 144 hedging. See risk management techniques Helferding, Rudolph, 195 Helleiner, Eric, 232 Hellwig, Christian, 160 Henderson, Hubert “Can Lloyd George Do It?” (with Keynes), 123, 124–125 Henry, James, 244 Hirschman, Albert, 39, 100, 108, 109 Holland, 4 Hoover, Herbert, 119, 187 Hubbard, Glenn, 243 Hume, David, 17, 100–101, 167 on government debt, 107, 108–109 “On Money”, 107 producing austerity, 114–115 relationship between and market and the state, 115–122, 123 Hungary and austerity, 221 hyperinflation in the 1920s, 56 Hutchinson, Martin, 207, 209 Iceland bailout in, 231 economic strategies in, 235–240 Stock Exchange, 237 inflation, 240, 241 ING, 83 Inoue, Junnosuke, 198, 200 Inside Job, (documentary), 21 interest rate swaps, 234 international capital-flow cycle, 11 International Monetary Fund, 3, 17, 45, 55 and austerity, 122, 206, 213, 221 and bailouts, 71–73, 221 and loans to Ireland, 235 and the Bretton Woods institutions, 162–163 and the consolidation in Denmark, 207 and the hidden “Treasury View”, 163–165 and the situation in Iceland, 238–239 and the success of the REBLL states, 216 and “the Washington consensus”, 102, 161–163, 164 Polak model, 163–165 World Economic Outlook, 212, 215 See also Kahn, Dominique Strauss Ireland, 3, 4, 5, 205, 222 austerity in, 17, 169–170, 179, 205, 206 expansion, 207–208, 209 bailout in, 221, 231 capital-flow cycle in, 11 economic strategies in, 235–240 Eurozone current account imbalances, 78 fig. 3.1 Eurozone Ten-Year Government Bond Yields, 80 fig. 3.2 fiscal adjustment in, 173 government debt 2006–2012, 46, 47, 53, 62, 65, 66 real estate in rise in prices, 27, 64–68 Italy, 1, 3, 4, 5, 222 Eurozone Current Account Imbalances, 78 fig. 3.1 Eurozone Ten-Year Government Bond Yields, 80 fig. 3.2 fiscal adjustment in, 173 government debt 2006–2012, 47, 53, 62 slow growth crisis, 68–71 slow-growth problem, 69 sovereign debt of, 108 Janeway, Bill, 125 Jayadev, Arjun, 212, 213 Japan and Keynesianism, 225 and the London Naval Treaty, 199, d austerity in, 17, 178–180, 197–200, 204 Bank of Japan, 197 Seiyukai party, 199 Showa Depression, 198 See also Hamaguchi, Prime Minister; Korekiyo, Takahashi Johnson, Simon, 11, 72 Kahn, Dominique Strauss, 222 Kahn, R.


Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Alan Greenspan, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, constrained optimization, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kondratiev cycle, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, law of one price, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, long and variable lags, low interest rates, market clearing, market friction, Martin Wolf, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, placebo effect, post-war consensus, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, too big to fail, trade liberalization, value at risk, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-sum game

This broadly fits Schlesinger’s notion of the ‘corruption of power’. Keynesian/social democratic policymakers succumbed to hubris, an intellectual corruption that convinced them they possessed the knowledge and the tools to manage and control the economy and society from the top. This was the malady against which Hayek had inveighed in his classic The Road to Serfdom (1944). The attempt in the 1970s to control inflation by wage and price controls led directly to a ‘crisis of governability’, as trade unions, particularly in Britain, refused to accept them. Large state subsidies to producer groups, both public and private, fed the typical corruptions of behaviour identified by the New Right: rent-seeking, moral hazard and free-riding.

The neo-liberal solution to the ills of laissez-faire was not to insert government, but to embed the market economy in a constitutional, rule-bound order (hence the German Ordoliberalismus) which guaranteed free competition and denied the state discretionary power to modify market processes. A social safety net should be provided ‘outside the market’ for victims of economic or personal misfortune. Keynes’s relationship to this defence of classical economics comes out very clearly in his response to Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (1944). Hayek’s argument, in a nutshell, was that ‘once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his controls until they become all-comprehensive’. Hayek did not attack Keynes by name. But he certainly had him in his sights as the intellectual leader of those who ‘believe that real success [in combating economic fluctuations] can be expected only from public works undertaken on a very large scale’.

The debate, as we can see, was about a fundamental question: was Keynesianism (and, more broadly, social democracy) an antidote to totalitarianism or the thin end of the wedge? Here one can say that Keynes won the major argument, but lost the minor one. Keynesianism as a policy nowhere led to serfdom, but it did lead to inflation. I V. Mon e ta r ism The Road to Serfdom was the inspiration for the Mont Pelerin Society founded by Hayek in 1947. An early member of the society was Milton Friedman. Friedman was not in the business of synthesis, but of counter-revolution. He attacked Keynes’s doctrines in order to demonstrate the futility of Keynesian policies. He recalled that: 176 t h e t h e ory a n d p r ac t ic e of mon e ta r i sm During my whole career, I have considered myself somewhat of a schizophrenic . . .


pages: 232 words: 77,956

Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else by James Meek

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, business continuity plan, call centre, clean water, Deng Xiaoping, electricity market, Etonian, Ford Model T, gentrification, HESCO bastion, housing crisis, illegal immigration, land bank, Leo Hollis, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, Mikhail Gorbachev, post-industrial society, pre–internet, price mechanism, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, working poor

For Thatcher, privatisation, in the beginning at least, was simply one of many weapons to use in her battle against the unions, which was, in turn, a single episode in her war to exterminate socialism, to be fought in one unbroken front from Orgreave Colliery to Andrei Sakharov’s place of exile in Gorky. Her great political inspiration, apart from her father, was the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, written in Cambridge during the war. Hayek was regarded as an able economist; he eventually won a Nobel Prize for it. But The Road to Serfdom isn’t an economics book. It’s a book about society, the recent past and human nature that bears the same relation to sociology, history and psychology as Atlas Shrugged bears to literature. It is devoted to the idea that Winston Churchill later nodded to, catastrophically for him, in the 1945 election campaign, when he said Labour would have to fall back on ‘some form of Gestapo’ to implement its welfare and nationalisation programme.

It is devoted to the idea that Winston Churchill later nodded to, catastrophically for him, in the 1945 election campaign, when he said Labour would have to fall back on ‘some form of Gestapo’ to implement its welfare and nationalisation programme. Churchill was thrown out of office, and Labour won a huge majority. The Road to Serfdom claims that socialism inevitably leads to communism, and that communism and Nazi-style fascism are one and the same. The tie that links Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany, in Hayek’s view, is the centrally planned economy – as he portrays it, the attempt by a single central bureaucracy to direct all human life, to determine all human needs in advance and organise provision, limiting each to their rationed dole and their allotted task.


pages: 290 words: 76,216

What's Wrong With Economics: A Primer for the Perplexed by Robert Skidelsky

additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive bias, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, full employment, George Akerlof, George Santayana, global supply chain, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, loss aversion, Mahbub ul Haq, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market friction, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, precariat, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

The Keynesian/social democratic policy-makers succumbed to hubris, an intellectual corruption which convinced them that they possessed the knowledge and the tools to manage and control the economy and society from the top. This was the malady against which Hayek inveighed in his classic The Road to Serfdom (1944). The attempt in the 1970s to control inflation by wage and price controls led directly to a ‘crisis of governability’, as trade unions, particularly in Britain, refused to accept them. Large state subsidies to producer groups, both public and private, fed the typical corruptions of behaviour identified by the new right: rent-seeking, moral hazard, free-riding.

The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives Before Us, New York: Committee for Economic Development. Finlay, Moses (1973). The Ancient Economy, Berkeley: University of California Press. Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L. (1995 [1974]). Time on the Cross, New York: W.W. Norton. Hayek, Friedrich (1944). The Road to Serfdom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kulikowski, Michael (2014). ‘The Glorious Free Market’, London Review of Books, Vol. 38 (12): 37–8. Landes, David (1998). The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Others So Poor, New York: W.W. Norton. Marshall, Alfred (1890). Principles of Economics, London: Macmillan.

Whately, Richard (1832). ‘Lecture IX’ in Introductory Lectures on Political Economy, London: B. Fellowes. Chapter 13 Davidson, Paul (1994). Post-Keynesian Macroeconomic Theory: A Foundation for Successful Economic Policies for the Twenty-first Century, Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Hayek, Friedrich (1944). The Road to Serfdom, London: Routledge. Hollis, Martin (1987). The Cunning of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keynes, John Maynard (1921) [Collected Writings of, Vol. 8, 1973]. A Treatise on Probability, London: Macmillan. (available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32625/32625-pdf.pdf) Keynes, John Maynard (1964 [1936]).


pages: 840 words: 202,245

Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present by Jeff Madrick

Abraham Maslow, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carl Icahn, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, desegregation, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, inventory management, invisible hand, John Bogle, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kitchen Debate, laissez-faire capitalism, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Mary Meeker, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, price stability, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, tail risk, Tax Reform Act of 1986, technology bubble, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, union organizing, V2 rocket, value at risk, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

Aaron found his way to London where Simons had made an introduction for him to his good friend Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist, who was teaching at the London School of Economics. Director, like many others, became a devotee. When Director returned to Chicago, he convinced the University of Chicago Press to publish the American edition of Hayek’s new British best seller, The Road to Serfdom, for which Director wrote a favorable review for a journal. Hayek, a serious academic, turned The Road to Serfdom into a fear-inspiring polemic. Its central message was that a growing welfare state in Europe would inevitably lead to totalitarianism, the rise of Nazi Germany fresh in the public’s mind. The welfare state would also weaken the nation’s economy by undermining markets, which were the only means by which to send signals to producers about the quantities and quality of goods and services.

The formation of the Mont Pelerin Society was financed by Europeans and a highly conservative tax-exempt American foundation, the William Volker Charitable Fund of Kansas City, founded by prosperous right-wing local businessmen. The fund also helped finance the Foundation for Economic Education, which published the Friedman-Sigler paper on rent control. After the remarkable success of The Road to Serfdom, the Volker Fund attempted to bring Hayek from London to an American university. The fund’s president, Harold Luhnow, was determined to underwrite an Americanized version of the Hayek book—though there was already a condensed version of it published by Reader’s Digest. But finding a suitable university position for Hayek turned out to be difficult, and he was not interested in rewriting his book for an American audience.

If America did not return to the right path, “a thousand years of darkness” lay ahead, he said, with biblical overtones. In a speech first delivered in 1952, he said, “I, in my own mind, have thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as a promised land.” Martin Anderson, a principal economic adviser during his presidency, wrote that he gave Reagan Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, and that he read these, among other books. Some claimed they saw copies of the Hayek and Friedman books dog-eared in his library. But Lou Cannon wrote that Anderson was exaggerating when he implied that Reagan read broadly. Still, he clearly took ideas from Hayek, notably the danger to individual liberty of growing government, and the inevitability of Nazi-style dictatorship under a welfare state.


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Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle by Jeff Flake

4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, cognitive dissonance, crony capitalism, David Brooks, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global supply chain, immigration reform, impulse control, invisible hand, Mark Zuckerberg, obamacare, Potemkin village, race to the bottom, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, uranium enrichment, zero-sum game

As influential as Friedman remains, perhaps the more influential economic thinker for my generation of conservatives is the Nobel Prize–winning economist Friedrich Hayek, the only major recent member of the Austrian School actually born in Austria. Hayek’s writings on government interference and government coercion—chiefly his epic The Road To Serfdom—became seminal texts for thinking conservatives from Margaret Thatcher to Paul Ryan (Speaker Ryan has said that he gives the book to new staff members to “bring them up to speed”) and everybody in between. Such devotion has cemented Hayek’s place in the conservative firmament. It was Hayek who went head to head with John Maynard Keynes, the collectivists, the socialists, and economic interventionists of all stripes during the seismic intellectual battles of the twentieth century.

Brigham Young University Press, 2000. Goldwater, Barry. The Conscience of a Conservative. Victor Publishing Company, 1960. Hayek, F. A. The Constitution of Liberty. The University of Chicago Press, 2011. ———. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. The University of Chicago Press, 1991. ———. The Road to Serfdom. The University of Chicago Press, 2007. Hutner, Gordon. Selected Speeches and Writings of Theodore Roosevelt. Vintage Books, 2014. Judis, John B. The Populist Explosion. Columbia Global Reports, 2016. ———. William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives. Simon & Schuster, 2001. Klososky, Scott, editor.


pages: 272 words: 83,798

A Little History of Economics by Niall Kishtainy

Alvin Roth, behavioural economics, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Dr. Strangelove, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, first-price auction, floating exchange rates, follow your passion, full employment, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, invisible hand, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, loss aversion, low interest rates, market clearing, market design, means of production, Minsky moment, moral hazard, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Occupy movement, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, prisoner's dilemma, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Vickrey auction, Vilfredo Pareto, washing machines reduced drudgery, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent

The idea that had to win was that of economic freedom – for the government to let people decide what to do themselves. Without economic freedom, political freedom was impossible. Without political freedom, people can’t think for themselves anymore. The government tells you what to do, what to think, how to live. Hayek made his warning towards the end of the war in his book The Road to Serfdom. He felt that he had to write it to warn people of the danger, even though he knew that it would annoy a lot of them. Hayek said that if we allowed the government to control us, we’d eventually end up rather like medieval serfs: peasants controlled by a lord, who weren’t allowed to decide anything for themselves.

But even he said that some government spending in the economy was needed: to guarantee a basic living to the unemployed and to provide goods that markets can’t. It wouldn’t threaten freedom if done sparingly. This brought ridicule from those who thought he hadn’t gone far enough. The free-market philosopher Ayn Rand scrawled rude comments about Hayek in the margin of her copy of The Road to Serfdom: he was an ‘ass’ and an ‘absurd fool’. Most economists today disagree with Hayek’s basic position that more government means less freedom. When the government provides schooling for every child, surely it increases people’s freedom? When people can read and write they can participate fully in society – they can get good jobs and understand the policies of the leaders who they vote for.

(i), (ii) Kerala (India) (i) Keynes, John Maynard (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Keynesian theory (i), (ii), (iii) Klemperer, Paul (i) Krugman, Paul (i), (ii) Kydland, Finn (i), (ii) labour (i) in ancient Greece (i) and market clearing (i) women as unpaid (i) labour theory of value (i), (ii) laissez-faire (i) landowners (i), (ii), (iii) Lange, Oskar (i) law of demand (i), (ii) leakage of spending (i) Lehman Brothers (i) leisure class (i) leisured, women as (i) Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (i), (ii) Lerner, Abba (i) Lewis, Arthur (i) Lincoln, Abraham (i) List, Friedrich (i) loss aversion (i) Lucas, Robert (i), (ii) MacKay, Charles (i) Macmillan, Harold (i) macro/microeconomics (i) Malaysia, and speculators (i) Malthus, Thomas (i), (ii), (iii) Malynes, Gerard de (i), (ii) manufacturing (i), (ii) division of labour (i) see also Industrial Revolution margin (i) marginal costs (i), (ii) marginal principle (i), (ii), (iii) marginal revenue (i) marginal utility (i), (ii) market, the (i) market clearing (i) market design (i) market failure (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) ‘Market for Lemons, The’ (Akerlof) (i) market power (i) markets, currency (i), (ii) Marshall, Alfred (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Marx, Karl (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Marxism (i) mathematics (i), (ii), (iii) means of production (i) mercantilism (i), (ii) Mesopotamia (i) Mexico, pegged currency (i) micro/macroeconomics (i) Microsoft (i) Midas fallacy (i) minimum wage (i) Minsky, Hyman (i) Minsky moment (i), (ii) Mirabeau, Marquis de (i), (ii), (iii) Mises, Ludwig von (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) mixed economies (i), (ii) Mobutu Sese Seko (i) model villages (i) models (economic) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) modern and traditional economies (i), (ii) monetarism (i) monetary policy (i), (ii) money (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also coins; currency money illusion (i) money wages (i) moneylending see usury monopolies (i), (ii) monopolistic competition (i), (ii) monopoly, theory of (i) monopoly capitalism (i), (ii), (iii) monopsony (i) moral hazard (i), (ii) multiplier (i) Mun, Thomas (i), (ii), (iii) Muth, John (i) Nash, John (i), (ii) Nash equilibrium (i) national income (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) National System of Political Economy (List) (i) Nelson, Julie (i) neoclassical economics (i) net product (i) Neumann, John von (i) New Christianity, The (Saint-Simon) (i) new classical economics (i) New Harmony (Indiana) (i) New Lanark (Scotland) (i) Nkrumah, Kwame (i), (ii) non-rival good (i) Nordhaus, William (i), (ii) normative economics (i), (ii) Obstfeld, Maurice (i) Occupy movement (i) oligopolies (i) opportunity cost (i), (ii) organ transplant (i) output per person (i) Owen, Robert (i) paper money (i), (ii) Pareto, Vilfredo (i) pareto efficiency (i), (ii) pareto improvement (i) Park Chung-hee (i) partial equilibrium (i) pegged exchange rate (i) perfect competition (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) perfect information (i) periphery (i) phalansteries (i) Phillips, Bill (i) Phillips curve (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) physiocracy (i), (ii) Pigou, Arthur Cecil (i), (ii), (iii) Piketty, Thomas (i), (ii), (iii) Plato (i), (ii), (iii) policy discretion (i) Ponzi, Charles (i) Ponzi finance (i) population and food supply (i), (ii), (iii) of women (i) positive economics (i) poverty (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) in Cuba (i) Sen on (i) and utopian thinkers (i) Prebisch, Raúl (i) predicting (i) Prescott, Edward (i), (ii) price wars (i), (ii) primary products (i) prisoners’ dilemma (i) private costs and benefits (i) privatisation (i) productivity (i), (ii), (iii) profit (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and capitalism (i), (ii) proletariat (i), (ii) property (private) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and communism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) protection (i), (ii), (iii) provisioning (i) public choice theory (i) public goods (i) quantity theory of money (i) Quesnay, François (i) Quincey, Thomas de (i), (ii) racism (i) Rand, Ayn (i) RAND Corporation (i), (ii) rate of return (i), (ii) rational economic man (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) rational expectations (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) real wages (i), (ii), (iii) recession (i) and governments (i), (ii), (iii) Great Recession (i) Keynes on (i), (ii) Mexican (i) redistribution of wealth (i) reference points (i) relative poverty (i) rent on land (i), (ii), (iii) rents/rent-seeking (i) resources (i), (ii) revolution (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Cuban (i) French (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Russian (i), (ii) Ricardo, David (i), (ii), (iii) risk aversion (i) Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek) (i) robber barons (i) Robbins, Lionel (i) Robinson, Joan (i) Roman Empire (i) Romer, Paul (i) Rosenstein-Rodan, Paul (i) Roth, Alvin (i), (ii) rule by nature (i) rules of the game (i) Sachs, Jeffrey (i) Saint-Simon, Henri de (i) Samuelson, Paul (i), (ii) savings (i), (ii) and Say’s Law (i) Say’s Law (i) scarcity (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Schumpeter, Joseph (i), (ii) sealed bid auction (i) second price auction (i) Second World War (i) securitisation (i) self-fulfilling crises (i) self-interest (i) Sen, Amartya (i), (ii) missing women (i), (ii), (iii) services (i) shading bids (i), (ii) shares (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also stock market Shiller, Robert (i), (ii) signalling (i) in auctions (i) Smith, Adam (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) social costs and benefits (i) Social Insurance and Allied Services (Beveridge) (i) social security (i), (ii) socialism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) socialist commonwealth (i) Socrates (i) Solow, Robert (i) Soros, George (i), (ii), (iii) South Africa, war with Britain (i) South Korea, and the big push (i) Soviet Union and America (i) and communism (i), (ii) speculation (i) speculative lending (i) Spence, Michael (i) spending government (fiscal policy) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and recessions (i), (ii) and Say’s Law (i) see also investment stagflation (i), (ii) Stalin, Joseph (i) standard economics (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Standard Oil (i) Stiglitz, Joseph (i) stock (i) stock market (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) stockbrokers (i) Strassmann, Diana (i), (ii) strategic interaction (i), (ii) strikes (i) subprime loans (i) subsidies (i), (ii) subsistence (i) sumptuary laws (i) supply curve (i) supply and demand (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and currencies (i) and equilibrium (i), (ii) in recession (i), (ii), (iii) supply-side economics (i) surplus value (i), (ii) Swan, Trevor (i) tariff (i) taxes/taxation (i) and budget deficit (i) carbon (i) and carbon emissions (i) and France (i) and public goods (i) redistribution of wealth (i) and rent-seeking (i) technology as endogenous/exogenous (i) and growth (i) and living standards (i) terms of trade (i) Thailand (i) Thaler, Richard (i) theory (i) Theory of the Leisure Class, The (Veblen) (i) Theory of Monopolistic Competition (Chamberlain) (i) Thompson, William Hale ‘Big Bill’ (i) threat (i) time inconsistency (i), (ii) time intensity (i) Tocqueville, Alexis de (i) totalitarianism (i) trade (i), (ii), (iii) and dependency theory (i) free (i), (ii), (iii) trading permit, carbon (i) traditional and modern economies (i), (ii) transplant, organ (i) Treatise of the Canker of England’s Common Wealth, A (Malynes) (i) Tversky, Amos (i), (ii) underdeveloped countries (i) unemployment in Britain (i) and the government (i) and the Great Depression (i) and information economics (i) and Keynes (i) and market clearing (i) and recession (i) unions (i), (ii) United States of America and free trade (i) and growth of government (i) industrialisation (i) and Latin America (i) Microsoft (i) recession (i), (ii) and the Soviet Union (i) and Standard Oil (i) stock market (i) wealth in (i) women in the labour force (i) unpaid labour, and women (i) usury (i), (ii), (iii) utility (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) utopian thinkers (i), (ii) Vanderbilt, Cornelius (i), (ii) Veblen, Thorstein (i), (ii), (iii) velocity of circulation (i), (ii) Vickrey, William (i) wage, minimum (i) Walras, Léon (i) Waring, Marilyn (i) wealth (i) and Aristotle (i), (ii) and Christianity (i) Piketty on (i) and Plato (i) Smith on (i) Wealth of Nations, The (Smith) (i), (ii) welfare benefits (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) welfare economics (i) Who Pays for the Kids?


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New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

AI winter, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boeing 747, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, congestion charging, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Eyjafjallajökull, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, fear of failure, Flash crash, fulfillment center, Google Earth, Greyball, Haber-Bosch Process, Higgs boson, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Bridle, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Leo Hollis, lone genius, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, oil shock, p-value, pattern recognition, peak oil, recommendation engine, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, social graph, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, speech recognition, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, stem cell, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, the built environment, the scientific method, Uber for X, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks

As later commentators have noted, in Hayek’s model of the mind, ‘knowledge is dispersed and distributed in the cerebral cortex much as it is in the marketplace among individuals’.3 Hayek’s argument for connectionism is an individualist, neoliberal one, and corresponds directly with his famous assertion in The Road to Serfdom (1944) that all forms of collectivism lead inexorably to totalitarianism. Today, the connectionist model of artificial intelligence reigns supreme again, and its primary proponents are those who, like Hayek, believe that there is a natural order to the world that emerges spontaneously when human bias is absent in our knowledge production.

., 72–3 Galton, Francis, 140 game developers, 130 Gates’s law, 83 GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), 167, 174, 176–9, 189 genocide, 243 ghost cars (Uber), 118–9 G-INFO, 190 global mass surveillance, 179–80 Global Positioning System (GPS), 36–7, 42–3 Global Seed Vault, 54 global warming, 73, 193, 214 Glomar response, 165, 186 Godard, Jean-Luc, 143 Google, 84, 139, 230, 242 Google Alerts, 190 Google Brain project, 139, 148, 149, 156 Google Earth, 35–6 Google Home, 128–9 Google Maps, 177 Google Translate, 147–8, 156 Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), 167, 174, 176–9, 189 GPS (Global Positioning System), 36–7, 42–3 Graves, Robert, 159 Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon), 128 gray zone, 212–4 Great Nōbi Earthquake, 145 Greenland, 57–8 Green Revolution, 53 Greyball programme, 119, 120 guardianship, 251–2 H Hankins, Thomas, 102 Haraway, Donna, 12 Harvard Mark I machine, 30 Hayek, Friedrich, 156–7 The Road to Serfdom, 139 The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology, 138–9 HealthyFoodHouse.com (website), 231–2 Heller, Joseph Catch-22, 187–8 Hermes, 134 Hersh, Seymour, 164 Hewlett-Packard, 143 hidden technological processes, 120 high-frequency trading, 14, 106–7, 108, 122, 124 high-throughput screening (HTS), 95–6 Hillingdon Hospital, 110–1, 111 Hippo programme, 32 Hofstadter, Douglas, 205–6 Hola Massacre, 170 homogenitus, 195, 196 Horn, Roni, 50, 201 How-Old.net facial recognition programme, 141 ‘How the World Wide Web Just Happened’ lecture, 78 HTS (high-throughput screening), 95–6 Hughes, Howard, 163 Hughes Glomar Explorer, 163–5 human genome project, 93 Human Interference Task Force, 251 human violence, 202 Humby, Clive, 245, 246 Hwang Woo-suk, 86–8 hyperobjects, 73, 75, 76, 194 hypertext, 79 I IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation), 68 ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas), 53–4, 55 ICT, 60–2 image recognition, 139–40 Infinite Fun Space, 149–50, 156 information networks, 62 information superhighway, 10 Infowars (Jones), 207 In Place of Fear (Bevan), 110 Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, 26 integrated circuits, 79, 80 Intel, 80 International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), 53–4, 55 International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), 68 International Cloud Atlas, 195 Internet Research Agency, 235, 237 Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, 199 The Invisibles (Morrison), 196–7 Isaksen, Ketil, 54 ISIL, 212–3 J Jameson, Fredric, 205 Jelinek, Frederick, 146–7 Jones, Alex Infowars, 207 Joshi, Manoj, 68–9 journalism, automated, 123–4 just-in-time manufacturing, 117 K K-129, 162–3 Karma Police operation, 175 Kasparov, Garry, 148–9, 157–8 Keeling Curve, 74, 74 Kennedy, John F., 169–70 Kinder Eggs, 215–6 Kiva robots, 114 Klein, Mark, 176–7 Kodak, 143 Krakatoa, eruption of, 202 Kunuk, Zacharias, 199, 200 Kuznets curve, 113 L Large Hadron Collider, 93 Lavoisier, Antoine, 78 Elements of Chemistry, 208–9 Lawson, Robert, 175–6 LD4, 104, 105 Leave Campaign, 194 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 78 Levy, David, 158, 159 Lewis, Michael Flash Boys, 111–2 LifeSphere, 125 literacy in systems, 3–4 Lockheed Ocean Systems, 163 Logan, Walt (pseudonym), 165 Lombroso, Cesare, 140 London Stock Exchange, 110–1 Lovecraft, H.P., 11, 249 ‘low-hanging fruit,’ 93–4 M Macedonia, 233–4 machine learning algorithms, 222 machine thought, 146 machine translation, 147 magnetism, 77 Malaysian Airlines, 66 manganese noodles, 163–4 Manhattan Project, 24–30, 248 Mara, Jane Muthoni, 170 Mark I Perceptron, 136–8, 137 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 128–9 Matthews, James Tilly, 208–10, 209 Mauro, Ian, 199 McCarthy, Joe, 205 McGovern, Thomas, 57–8 McKay Brothers, 107, 110 memex, 24 Mercer, Robert, 236 Merkel, Angela, 174 metalanguage, 3, 5 middens, 56 migrated archive, 170–1 Minds, 150 miniaturisation principle, 81 Mirai, 129 mobile phones, 126 The Modern Prometheus (Shelley), 201 monoculture, 55–6 Moore, Gordon, 80, 80, 83 Moore’s law, 80–3, 92–4 Mordvintsev, Alexander, 154 Morgellons, 211, 214 Morrison, Grant The Invisibles, 196–7 Morton, Timothy, 73, 194 Mount Tambora, eruption of, 201 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 169 Munch, Edvard The Scream, 202 Mutua, Ndiku, 170 N NarusInsight, 177 NASA Ames Advanced Concepts Flight Simulator, 42 Natanz Nuclear Facility, 129 National Centre for Atmospheric Science, 68–9 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 243 National Health Service (NHS), 110 National Mining Association, 64 National Reconnaissance Office, 168, 243 National Security Agency (NSA), 167, 174, 177–8, 183, 242–3, 249–50 National Security Strategy, 59 natural gas, 48 neoliberalism, 138–9 network, 5, 9 networks, 249 Newton, Isaac, 78 NewYorkTimesPolitics.com, 221 New York World’s Fair, 30–1 NHS (National Health Service), 110 9/11 terrorist attacks, 203–4, 206 ‘Nine Eyes,’ 174 1984 (Orwell), 242 NORAD (North American Air Defense Command), 33 North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), 33 ‘The Nor’ project, 104 Not Aviation, 190–1 NSA (National Security Agency), 167, 174, 177–8, 183, 242–3, 249–50 nuclear fusion, 97–8, 100 nuclear warfare, 28 Numerical Prediction (Richardson), 45 Nyingi, Wambugu Wa, 170 Nzili, Paulo Muoka, 170 O Obama, Barack, 180, 206, 231 Official Secrets Act, 189 Omori, Fusakichi, 145 Omori’s Law, 145 Operation Castle, 97 Operation Legacy, 171–2 Optic Nerve programme, 174 Optometrist Algorithm, 99–101, 160 O’Reilly, James, 185–6 Orwell, George 1984, 242 ‘Outline of Weather Proposal’ (Zworykin), 25–6 P Paglen, Trevor, 144 ‘paranoid style,’ 205–6 Patriot Act, 178 Penrose, Roger, 20 Perceptron, 136–8, 137 permafrost, 47–9, 56–7 p-hacking, 89–91 Phillippi, Harriet Ann, 165 photophone, 19–20 Pichai, Sundar, 139 Piketty, Thomas Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 112 Pincher, Chapman, 175–6 Pitt, William, 208 Plague-Cloud, 195, 202 Poitras, Laura, 175 Polaroid, 143 ‘predictive policing’ systems, 144–6 PredPol software, 144, 146 Priestley, Joseph, 78, 208, 209 prion diseases, 50, 50–1 PRISM operation, 173 product spam, 125–6 Project Echelon, 190 Prometheus, 132–4, 198 psychogeography, 103 public key cryptography, 167–8 pure language, 156 Putin, Vladimir, 235 Pynchon, Thomas Gravity’s Rainbow, 128 Q Qajaa, 56, 57 quality control failure of, 92–3 in science, 91 Quidsi, 113–4 R racial profiling, 143–4 racism, 143–4 ‘radiation cats,’ 251 raw computing, 82–3 Reagan, Ronald, 36–7 Reed, Harry, 29 refractive index of the atmosphere, 62 Regin malware, 175 replicability, 88–9 Reproducibility Project, 89 resistance, modes of, 120 Reuter, Paul, 107 Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, 181 Richardson, Lewis Fry, 20–1, 29, 68 Numerical Prediction, 45 Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, 21–3 Richardson number, 68 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 139 Robinson, Kim Stanley Aurora, 128 robots, workers vs., 116 ‘Rogeting,’ 88 Romney, Mitt, 206–7 Rosenblatt, Frank, 137 Roy, Arundhati, 250 Royal Aircraft Establishment, 188–9 Ruskin, John, 17–20, 195, 202 Rwanda, 243, 244, 245 S Sabetta, 48 SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment), 35, 38 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), 33, 34, 35 Samsung, 127 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm, 78 Schmidt, Eric, 241–5 The Scream (Munch), 202 Sedol, Lee, 149, 157–8 seed banks, 52–6 Seed Vault, 55 seismic sensors, 48 self-excitation, 145 ‘semantic analyser,’ 177 Semi-Automated Business Research Environment (SABRE), 35, 38 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 33, 34, 35 semiconductors, 82 The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (Hayek), 138–9 Shelley, Mary Frankenstein, 201 The Modern Prometheus, 201 SIGINT Seniors Europe, 174 simulation, conflating approximation with, 34–5 Singapore Exchange, 122–3 smart products, 127–8, 131 Smith, Robert Elliott, 152 smoking gun, 183–4, 186 Snowden, Edward, 173–5, 178 software about, 82–3 AlphaGo, 149, 156–8 Assistant, 152 AutoAwesome, 152 DeepFace, 140 Greyball programme, 119, 120 Hippo programme, 32 How-Old.net facial recognition programme, 141 Optic Nerve programme, 174 PredPol, 144, 146 Translate, 146 Solnit, Rebecca, 11–2 solutionism, 4 space telescopes, 168–9 speed of light, 107 Spread Networks, 107 SSEC (IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 Stapel, Diederik, 87–8 Stapledon, Olaf, 20 steam engines, 77 Stellar Wind, 176 Stewart, Elizabeth ‘Betsy,’ 30–1, 31 Steyerl, Hito, 126 stock exchanges, 108 ‘The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ lecture series, 17–9 Stratus homogenitus, 195–6 studios, 130 Stuxnet, 129–30 surveillance about, 243–4 complicity in, 185 computational excesses of, 180–1 devices for, 104 Svalbard archipelago, 51–2, 54 Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 52–3 Svalbard Treaty (1920), 52 Swiss National Bank, 123 Syed, Omar, 158–9 systemic literacy, 5–6 T Taimyr Peninsula, 47–8 Targeted Individuals, 210–1 The Task of the Translator (Benjamin), 147, 155–6 TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), 79 technology acceleration of, 2 complex, 2–3 opacity of, 119 Teletubbies, 217 television, children’s, 216–7 Tesco Clubcard, 245 thalidomide, 95 Thatcher, Margaret, 177 theory of evolution, 78 thermal power plants, 196 Three Guineas (Woolf), 12 Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov), 157 Tillmans, Wolfgang, 71 tools, 13–4 To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light exhibition, 143 totalitarianism, collectivism vs., 139 Toy Freaks, 225–6 transistors, 79, 80 Translate software, 146 translation algorithms, 84 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), 79 Tri Alpha Energy, 98–101 Trinity test, 25 trolling, 231 Trump, Donald, 169–70, 194–5, 206, 207, 236 trust, science and, 91 trusted source, 220 Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, 49 turbulence, 65–9 tyranny of techne, 132 U Uber, 117–9, 127 UberEats app, 120–1 unboxing videos, 216, 219 United Airlines, 66–7 Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act (USA FREEDOM Act), 178 USA FREEDOM Act (2015), 178 US Drug Efficacy Amendment (1962), 95 V van Helden, Albert, 102 Veles, objectification of, 235 Verizon, 173 VHF omnidirectional radio range (VOR) installations, 104 Vigilant Telecom, 110–1 Volkswagen, 119–20 von Neumann, John about, 25 ‘Can We Survive Technology?

., 11, 249 ‘low-hanging fruit,’ 93–4 M Macedonia, 233–4 machine learning algorithms, 222 machine thought, 146 machine translation, 147 magnetism, 77 Malaysian Airlines, 66 manganese noodles, 163–4 Manhattan Project, 24–30, 248 Mara, Jane Muthoni, 170 Mark I Perceptron, 136–8, 137 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 128–9 Matthews, James Tilly, 208–10, 209 Mauro, Ian, 199 McCarthy, Joe, 205 McGovern, Thomas, 57–8 McKay Brothers, 107, 110 memex, 24 Mercer, Robert, 236 Merkel, Angela, 174 metalanguage, 3, 5 middens, 56 migrated archive, 170–1 Minds, 150 miniaturisation principle, 81 Mirai, 129 mobile phones, 126 The Modern Prometheus (Shelley), 201 monoculture, 55–6 Moore, Gordon, 80, 80, 83 Moore’s law, 80–3, 92–4 Mordvintsev, Alexander, 154 Morgellons, 211, 214 Morrison, Grant The Invisibles, 196–7 Morton, Timothy, 73, 194 Mount Tambora, eruption of, 201 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 169 Munch, Edvard The Scream, 202 Mutua, Ndiku, 170 N NarusInsight, 177 NASA Ames Advanced Concepts Flight Simulator, 42 Natanz Nuclear Facility, 129 National Centre for Atmospheric Science, 68–9 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 243 National Health Service (NHS), 110 National Mining Association, 64 National Reconnaissance Office, 168, 243 National Security Agency (NSA), 167, 174, 177–8, 183, 242–3, 249–50 National Security Strategy, 59 natural gas, 48 neoliberalism, 138–9 network, 5, 9 networks, 249 Newton, Isaac, 78 NewYorkTimesPolitics.com, 221 New York World’s Fair, 30–1 NHS (National Health Service), 110 9/11 terrorist attacks, 203–4, 206 ‘Nine Eyes,’ 174 1984 (Orwell), 242 NORAD (North American Air Defense Command), 33 North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), 33 ‘The Nor’ project, 104 Not Aviation, 190–1 NSA (National Security Agency), 167, 174, 177–8, 183, 242–3, 249–50 nuclear fusion, 97–8, 100 nuclear warfare, 28 Numerical Prediction (Richardson), 45 Nyingi, Wambugu Wa, 170 Nzili, Paulo Muoka, 170 O Obama, Barack, 180, 206, 231 Official Secrets Act, 189 Omori, Fusakichi, 145 Omori’s Law, 145 Operation Castle, 97 Operation Legacy, 171–2 Optic Nerve programme, 174 Optometrist Algorithm, 99–101, 160 O’Reilly, James, 185–6 Orwell, George 1984, 242 ‘Outline of Weather Proposal’ (Zworykin), 25–6 P Paglen, Trevor, 144 ‘paranoid style,’ 205–6 Patriot Act, 178 Penrose, Roger, 20 Perceptron, 136–8, 137 permafrost, 47–9, 56–7 p-hacking, 89–91 Phillippi, Harriet Ann, 165 photophone, 19–20 Pichai, Sundar, 139 Piketty, Thomas Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 112 Pincher, Chapman, 175–6 Pitt, William, 208 Plague-Cloud, 195, 202 Poitras, Laura, 175 Polaroid, 143 ‘predictive policing’ systems, 144–6 PredPol software, 144, 146 Priestley, Joseph, 78, 208, 209 prion diseases, 50, 50–1 PRISM operation, 173 product spam, 125–6 Project Echelon, 190 Prometheus, 132–4, 198 psychogeography, 103 public key cryptography, 167–8 pure language, 156 Putin, Vladimir, 235 Pynchon, Thomas Gravity’s Rainbow, 128 Q Qajaa, 56, 57 quality control failure of, 92–3 in science, 91 Quidsi, 113–4 R racial profiling, 143–4 racism, 143–4 ‘radiation cats,’ 251 raw computing, 82–3 Reagan, Ronald, 36–7 Reed, Harry, 29 refractive index of the atmosphere, 62 Regin malware, 175 replicability, 88–9 Reproducibility Project, 89 resistance, modes of, 120 Reuter, Paul, 107 Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, 181 Richardson, Lewis Fry, 20–1, 29, 68 Numerical Prediction, 45 Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, 21–3 Richardson number, 68 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 139 Robinson, Kim Stanley Aurora, 128 robots, workers vs., 116 ‘Rogeting,’ 88 Romney, Mitt, 206–7 Rosenblatt, Frank, 137 Roy, Arundhati, 250 Royal Aircraft Establishment, 188–9 Ruskin, John, 17–20, 195, 202 Rwanda, 243, 244, 245 S Sabetta, 48 SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment), 35, 38 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), 33, 34, 35 Samsung, 127 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm, 78 Schmidt, Eric, 241–5 The Scream (Munch), 202 Sedol, Lee, 149, 157–8 seed banks, 52–6 Seed Vault, 55 seismic sensors, 48 self-excitation, 145 ‘semantic analyser,’ 177 Semi-Automated Business Research Environment (SABRE), 35, 38 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 33, 34, 35 semiconductors, 82 The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (Hayek), 138–9 Shelley, Mary Frankenstein, 201 The Modern Prometheus, 201 SIGINT Seniors Europe, 174 simulation, conflating approximation with, 34–5 Singapore Exchange, 122–3 smart products, 127–8, 131 Smith, Robert Elliott, 152 smoking gun, 183–4, 186 Snowden, Edward, 173–5, 178 software about, 82–3 AlphaGo, 149, 156–8 Assistant, 152 AutoAwesome, 152 DeepFace, 140 Greyball programme, 119, 120 Hippo programme, 32 How-Old.net facial recognition programme, 141 Optic Nerve programme, 174 PredPol, 144, 146 Translate, 146 Solnit, Rebecca, 11–2 solutionism, 4 space telescopes, 168–9 speed of light, 107 Spread Networks, 107 SSEC (IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 Stapel, Diederik, 87–8 Stapledon, Olaf, 20 steam engines, 77 Stellar Wind, 176 Stewart, Elizabeth ‘Betsy,’ 30–1, 31 Steyerl, Hito, 126 stock exchanges, 108 ‘The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ lecture series, 17–9 Stratus homogenitus, 195–6 studios, 130 Stuxnet, 129–30 surveillance about, 243–4 complicity in, 185 computational excesses of, 180–1 devices for, 104 Svalbard archipelago, 51–2, 54 Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 52–3 Svalbard Treaty (1920), 52 Swiss National Bank, 123 Syed, Omar, 158–9 systemic literacy, 5–6 T Taimyr Peninsula, 47–8 Targeted Individuals, 210–1 The Task of the Translator (Benjamin), 147, 155–6 TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), 79 technology acceleration of, 2 complex, 2–3 opacity of, 119 Teletubbies, 217 television, children’s, 216–7 Tesco Clubcard, 245 thalidomide, 95 Thatcher, Margaret, 177 theory of evolution, 78 thermal power plants, 196 Three Guineas (Woolf), 12 Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov), 157 Tillmans, Wolfgang, 71 tools, 13–4 To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light exhibition, 143 totalitarianism, collectivism vs., 139 Toy Freaks, 225–6 transistors, 79, 80 Translate software, 146 translation algorithms, 84 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), 79 Tri Alpha Energy, 98–101 Trinity test, 25 trolling, 231 Trump, Donald, 169–70, 194–5, 206, 207, 236 trust, science and, 91 trusted source, 220 Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, 49 turbulence, 65–9 tyranny of techne, 132 U Uber, 117–9, 127 UberEats app, 120–1 unboxing videos, 216, 219 United Airlines, 66–7 Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act (USA FREEDOM Act), 178 USA FREEDOM Act (2015), 178 US Drug Efficacy Amendment (1962), 95 V van Helden, Albert, 102 Veles, objectification of, 235 Verizon, 173 VHF omnidirectional radio range (VOR) installations, 104 Vigilant Telecom, 110–1 Volkswagen, 119–20 von Neumann, John about, 25 ‘Can We Survive Technology?


pages: 780 words: 168,782

Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century by Christian Caryl

Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, colonial rule, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial independence, friendly fire, full employment, Future Shock, Great Leap Forward, household responsibility system, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Mont Pelerin Society, Neil Kinnock, new economy, New Urbanism, oil shock, open borders, open economy, Pearl River Delta, plutocrats, price stability, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , single-payer health, special economic zone, The Chicago School, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Winter of Discontent, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, Yom Kippur War

Just before the 1945 election, Oxford’s student conservatives published a paper declaring that “Liberal Capitalism is as dead as Aristocratic Feudalism,” and welcoming “a state without privilege where each shall enrich himself through the enrichment of all.”16 No one can recall Margaret Roberts taking up a stand that radically differed from this stance. She later claimed to have read Friedrich von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom during her last year at Oxford. If so, it had little visible effect on her public positions. But she was eager to make her mark. Upon her graduation she got a job as a chemist with a food company, where she worked on the development of cake frostings and pie fillings. This position, however, was merely a placeholder for someone of her ambitions.

During the war, when Hayek was lecturing at Cambridge, he had shared fire-warden duties with his celebrated counterpart.) Hayek was particularly worried about the way that his academic colleagues had provided intellectual support for wartime planning that concentrated economic decision making in the state. A few years earlier he had published a book called The Road to Serfdom, an articulate polemic about the perils of liberty in a world where planners increasingly reigned. Most of those in the British establishment dismissed the book’s ideas. (That did not stop it from becoming a surprise best-seller in the United States.) Most of the men—and they were, in fact, all men—who came together to form the Mont Pèlerin Society (named after the resort where they met) drew their intellectual sustenance from three particular universities: the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, and the University of Vienna.

After earning a degree in engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had shown a knack for business by opening his own car rental company in the late 1930s. During the war he made a name for himself with inventions for the Royal Air Force, and once it was over he went back into business—this time, oddly enough, in farming, at which he became a tremendous success. Like many others, he was deeply impressed by Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and a few years after the war’s end he sought out the author for advice. Fisher wanted to contribute to the fight against socialism. Hayek advised him to forget about a career in politics. What was needed, he said, was a “scholarly research organization” that could argue the case for free-market economics and disseminate its conclusions to the broadest possible audience.9 In 1955, Fisher, with the help of some like-minded colleagues, founded the Institute for Economic Affairs.


pages: 324 words: 93,606

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, American Legislative Exchange Council, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, cashless society, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, effective altruism, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, germ theory of disease, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Hollis, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mitch Kapor, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, obamacare, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school choice, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, tacit knowledge, technological solutionism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators

CONCLUSION The Selfish Gift One of the most acute ironies concerning the size of today’s philanthropic foundations is that the emergence of well-financed, politically powerful behemoths is rooted in a political philosophy that cautioned against using the centralized power of states to plan or develop economic growth. Take the example of J. Howard Pew, who first established the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1948, not long after first reading Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. As the historian Olivier Zunz describes, Pew’s interest in philanthropy stemmed from meetings with Hayek at gatherings of the Mont Pelerin Society. In The Road to Serfdom and influential essays such as ‘On the Use of Knowledge in Society’, Hayek, inspired by Michael Polanyi’s work on tacit knowledge and Karl Popper’s work on the open society, made an argument that was then radical for its time.

Government power and preferment have been used by the rich, not shunned’.8 The conservative political theorist Michael Oakeshott is another rare voice on the right to underscore this point. In blunt criticism of Hayek’s theories, Oakeshott has suggested that, ‘This is perhaps the main significance of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom – not the cogency of his doctrine, but the fact that it is a doctrine’. As Oakeshott emphasized: ‘A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics’.9 Since the 1940s, when Hayek first brought together a group of like-minded men in Switzerland, his followers have become even more evangelically attached to a convenient interpretation of Hayek’s ideas than Hayek was himself.


The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World by Linsey McGoey

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-globalists, antiwork, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Clive Stafford Smith, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, fake news, Frances Oldham Kelsey, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, income inequality, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, joint-stock company, junk bonds, knowledge economy, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nick Leeson, p-value, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-truth, public intellectual, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Social Justice Warrior, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, wealth creators

Popper suggests that Plato’s vision of elite rule leads to the development of a ‘caste state’ where freedom of thought is spurned and knowledge degenerates, starved of the oxygen supplied by a diverse constituency of both knowers and unknowers – people who sense flaws within an existent paradigm and are able to convince ‘knowers’ of the illusion of their certainties.12 Today, Popper is sometimes seen as a critic of government interventionism by his admirers on the political right. This is justified in some ways because he was a fierce critic of Marx, and his criticism of ‘caste states’ invoke similar criticisms to George Orwell’s denouncement of socialist tyranny in Animal Farm. Popper was also a close friend of the anti-socialist economist Friedrich Hayek whose Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, came out just a year before Popper’s Open Society, and then and today, their work is seen in a similar light. In a 2005 edition of Open Society published by Routledge, the blurb on the book’s jacket praises Popper for ‘exposing the dangers inherent in centrally planned political systems.’

Viner wasn’t alone: Orwell made a similar point about Hayek.17 Hayek and his friends also cherry-picked from history when it came to the legacy of enlightenment thinkers, including one of Hayek’s great heroes: Alexis de Tocqueville. DISSERVICE TO HEROES Hayek is believed to have named his influential book, The Road to Serfdom, in honour of his hero Tocqueville’s worries about the rise of servitude in democratic societies. But much like Stigler, Hayek read copiously but with a penchant for ignoring what he didn’t like. Hayek mostly ignored Tocqueville’s worries about the rise of ‘new corporate bodies’ and the belief ‘industrial classes, more than other classes, need rules, supervision, and restraint.’18 Hayek and his friends didn’t simply ignore their heroes’ belief that government regulations were needed in many instances.

Mill’s co-authorship, 7, 60–1, 153, 157–60; progress, 166–7; Wollstonecraft’s legacy, 151–2 gender realism, 48 Geneva Conventions, 72–3, 185 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 38–9 GlaxoSmithKline, 22, 250–2, 282, 290, 291–2 globalization, 175 Goldacre, Ben, Bad Pharma, 11, 253 Goldin, Ian, 33 Goldman Sachs, 76, 87 Goodman, Clive, 104, 105, 106 Google Trends, 89 Gould, Jay, 211 governance: epistocracy, 17, 93, 93–4, 95–6, 163, 267–70; see also regulation Graham, David, 258, 261–3, 266, 267, 269–70, 293 Graves, Lisa, 237–8 Gray, John, 13, 163; Straw Dogs, 5–6 greatness, 81, 97 greats, 312–13 greats (social movements), 17–18 Greek democracy, 296–7 Greek oracles, 62–4 Green, Joshua, 87 Greenspan, Alan, 32 Grenfell Tower fire, 23–5, 59 Hamilton, Alexander, 193–4 Handlin, Mary and Oscar, 195 Harford, Tim, 30–1, 33–4, 221 Hastings, Warren, 180, 182 Hayek, Friedrich: dependence on corporate funding, 246, 300, 302; disdain for government regulation, 248, 301, 303; on fragility of expert knowledge, 298–300; Road to Serfdom, 164, 301; and social protection, 301–2 Heffernan, Margaret, Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, 230–1 Heilbroner, Robert, The Worldly Philosophers, 216 Heyer, Heather, 313 Hickel, Jason, The Divide, 137 Hillsborough disaster, 88–9 Hirschman, Albert, 35 historical amnesia, 57, 202 history: presentism, 28; sanctioned ignorance, 40–2; statue removal protests, 313–14; unintentional misunderstandings, 169 Hitler, Adolf, 50, 80 Homestead steel mill strike, 208–10 Huffington Post, 217, 236 human contingency, 6 Hume, David, 176 Hurcombe, Linda, 288–90 identity politics, 138–9 ignorance: enduring myths, 81–4; first acknowledgement, 154; greater than knowledge, 47, 49; psychology of, 38–42; rational ignorance, 46–7; snowmobile fallacy, 241–3; useful unknowns, 51–6, 257, 277; see also elite ignorance; reckless ignorance; strategic ignorance; voter ignorance; wilful ignorance ignorance alibis, 12, 56–61, 87, 210 ignorance cycles, 225–6; see also macro-ignorance; micro-ignorance ignorance doesn’t excuse principle, 231–3, 239–40 ignorance pathways, 167–8, 175–6 ignorantia legis principle, 231–3 IMF, 33–4, 137 imperialism, 68, 179; see also colonialism income, minimum income, 183 income inequality, 216, 220 India, 10, 122, 127, 131, 160–1; see also East India Company indigenous peoples, 26–9, 58 Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO): failure to pursue journalists, 109–12; hindrances to effective operation, 106–7, 108, 109; Operation Motorman, 107–8; regulatory agency, 106–7; What Price Privacy?


The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History by David Edgerton

active measures, Arthur Marwick, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blue-collar work, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, centre right, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, company town, Corn Laws, corporate governance, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, Donald Davies, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, endogenous growth, Etonian, European colonialism, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, full employment, gentrification, imperial preference, James Dyson, knowledge economy, labour mobility, land reform, land value tax, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, packet switching, Philip Mirowski, Piper Alpha, plutocrats, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, post-truth, post-war consensus, public intellectual, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, technological determinism, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, trade liberalization, union organizing, very high income, wages for housework, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor

James Connolly, 19151 If the English proletarian is entitled to an equal share of the income now derived from England’s capital resources, and of the control of their use, because they are the result of exploitation, so on the same principle all the Indians would be entitled not only to the income from but also to the use of a proportional share of the British capital. But what socialists seriously contemplate the equal division of existing capital resources among the people of the world? They all regard the capital as belonging not to humanity but to the nation. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)2 The British ruling class of the first third of the twentieth century was rich, confident and distinct. It bestrode the world, not merely the empire. It was spectacularly successful, doing far better than any excepting that of the United States. It gave the world a model for elite behaviour, whether in education or in the playing of sports, indoor and outdoor.

George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935) What socialists proclaim as a duty towards the fellow members of the existing states, they are not prepared to grant to the foreigner … That socialism so long as it remains theoretical, is internationalist, while as soon as it is put into practice, whether in Russia or in Germany, it becomes violently nationalist, is one of the reasons why ‘liberal socialism’ as most people in the Western world imagine it is purely theoretical, while the practice of socialism is everywhere totalitarian. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)1 The idea that the United Kingdom had no intellectuals was once a commonplace. It was a good thing for conservatives in that instead of intellectuals peddling dangerous advanced doctrines, in the United Kingdom, practical common sense ruled. It was a bad thing for left intellectuals in that for them the world of ideas seemed populated by old and bad ideas.

They complained that production fell way behind the USA, where output per hour worked was three times greater (they claimed).36 The post-war United Kingdom was suffering from a ‘crisis of under-production’ because labour was being allowed to drift into parasitic distribution, entertainment and similar industries which characterized British capitalism.37 By 1951 the Communist Party had adopted a deeply nationalist policy, called, appropriately enough, the British Road to Socialism.38 The left critique of British capitalism took on a distinctly nationalist hue. It is a telling but not well-known point that Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was a classical liberal attack not so much on socialism, as on planning, on scientism and on nationalism. IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM As well as providing the language of liberalism, socialism and communism, political economy was also there in imperialism and in tariff reform. However, partly through the influence of German historical economics, this political economy was not only more historical but rather more concrete and specific than liberal political economy.


pages: 349 words: 98,868

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason by William Davies

active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, citizen journalism, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, Colonization of Mars, continuation of politics by other means, creative destruction, credit crunch, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, first-past-the-post, Frank Gehry, gig economy, government statistician, housing crisis, income inequality, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, post-industrial society, post-truth, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Turing machine, Uber for X, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Valery Gerasimov, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Thatcher famously once interrupted a Conservative Party policy discussion, by slamming a copy of Hayek’s 1960 work The Constitution of Liberty down on the table, with the words “This is what we believe.” He was a hero to the American free-market thinker Milton Friedman, and spent the 1950s at the University of Chicago, where Friedman led the influential “Chicago School” of economics. Hayek’s 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom, made him a cult figure in the United States, at a time when free-market ideas were out of favor the world over, and when Hayek himself was viewed as an ideological crank by much of the economics profession, Chicago notwithstanding. But the most decisive phase of Hayek’s career happened in the interim between his association with Mises in Vienna and with Friedman in Chicago, during the 1930s and 1940s when he was employed at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Dating back to Mises’ 1920 pamphlet on economic calculation, an ideal had developed that, so long as markets were relatively unimpaired by government intervention, they could become the organizing principle of an otherwise disorganized, unplanned, even ignorant society. As long as there was a way of coordinating people peacefully, in real time, why the need for experts or facts at all? Hayek had developed an argument along these lines in The Road to Serfdom. If society harnessed the local practical knowledge of entrepreneurs and consumers, and discarded the theories and facts of “intellectuals” working for the state, the question still remained of how to coordinate a large population. If people did not recognize a scientific consensus or truth, what would ensure that they interacted peacefully at all?

., Roger, 24, 25 Piketty, Thomas, 74 Pinker, Stephen, 207 plagues, 56, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 95 pleasure principle, 70, 109, 110, 224 pneumonia, 37, 67 Podemos, 5, 202 Poland, 20, 34, 60 Polanyi, Michael, 163 political anatomy, 57 Political Arithmetick (Petty), 58, 59 political correctness, 20, 27, 145 Popper, Karl, 163, 171 populism xvii, 211–12, 214, 220, 225–6 and central banks, 33 and crowd-based politics, 12 and democracy, 202 and elites/experts, 26, 33, 50, 152, 197, 210, 215 and empathy, 118 and health, 99, 101–2, 224–5 and immediate action, 216 in Kansas (1880s), 220 and markets, 167 and private companies, 174 and promises, 221 and resentment, 145 and statistics, 90 and unemployment, 88 and war, 148, 212 Porter, Michael, 84 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 111–14, 117, 209 post-truth, 167, 224 Potsdam Conference (1945), 138 power vs. violence, 19, 219 predictive policing, 151 presidential election, US (2016), xiv and climate change, 214 and data, 190 and education, 85 and free trade, 79 and health, 92, 99 and immigration, 79, 145 and inequality, 76–7 and Internet, 190, 197, 199 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 and opinion polling, 65, 80 and promises, 221 and relative deprivation, 88 and Russia, 199 and statistics, 63 and Yellen, 33 prisoners of war, 43 promises, 25, 31, 39–42, 45–7, 51, 52, 217–18, 221–2 Propaganda (Bernays), 14–15 propaganda, 8, 14–16, 83, 124–5, 141, 142, 143 property rights, 158, 167 Protestantism, 34, 35, 45, 215 Prussia (1525–1947), 8, 127–30, 133–4, 135, 142 psychiatry, 107, 139 psychoanalysis, 107, 139 Psychology of Crowds, The (Le Bon), 9–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25 psychosomatic, 103 public-spending cuts, 100–101 punishment, 90, 92–3, 94, 95, 108 Purdue, 105 Putin, Vladimir, 145, 183 al-Qaeda, 136 quality of life, 74, 104 quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 quants, 190 radical statistics, 74 RAND Corporation, 183 RBS, 29 Reagan, Ronald, 15, 77, 154, 160, 163, 166 real-time knowledge, xvi, 112, 131, 134, 153, 154, 165–70 Reason Foundation, 158 Red Vienna, 154, 155 Rees-Mogg, Jacob, 33, 61 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 relative deprivation, 88 representative democracy, 7, 12, 14–15, 25–8, 61, 202 Republican Party, 77, 79, 85, 154, 160, 163, 166, 172 research and development (R&D), 133 Research Triangle, North Carolina, 84 resentment, 5, 226 of elites/experts, 32, 52, 61, 86, 88–9, 161, 186, 201 and nationalism/populism, 5, 144–6, 148, 197, 198 and pain, 94 Ridley, Matt, 209 right to remain silent, 44 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 160, 166 Robinson, Tommy, ix Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 52 Royal Exchange, 67 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 133, 137, 186, 208, 218 Rumsfeld, Donald, 132 Russian Empire (1721–1917), 128, 133 Russian Federation (1991–) and artificial intelligence, 183 Gerasimov Doctrine, 43, 123, 125, 126 and information war, 196 life expectancy, 100, 115 and national humiliation, 145 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 and social media, 15, 18, 199 troll farms, 199 Russian Revolution (1917), 155 Russian SFSR (1917–91), 132, 133, 135–8, 155, 177, 180, 182–3 safe spaces, 22, 208 Sands, Robert “Bobby,” 43 Saxony, 90 scarlet fever, 67 Scarry, Elaine, 102–3 scenting, 135, 180 Schneier, Bruce, 185 Schumpeter, Joseph, 156–7, 162 Scientific Revolution, 48–52, 62, 66, 95, 204, 207, 218 scientist, coining of term, 133 SCL, 175 Scotland, 64, 85, 172 search engines, xvi Second World War, see World War II securitization of loans, 218 seismology, 135 self-employment, 82 self-esteem, 88–90, 175, 212 self-harm, 44, 114–15, 117, 146, 225 self-help, 107 self-interest, 26, 41, 44, 61, 114, 141, 146 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 shell shock, 109–10 Shrecker, Ted, 226 Silicon Fen, Cambridgeshire, 84 Silicon Valley, California, xvi, 219 and data, 55, 151, 185–93, 199–201 and disruption, 149–51, 175, 226 and entrepreneurship, 149–51 and fascism, 203 and immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 and monopolies, 174, 220 and singularity, 183–4 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186, 221 and weaponization, 18, 219 singularity, 184 Siri, 187 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 slavery, 59, 224 smallpox, 67 smart cities, 190, 199 smartphone addiction, 112, 186–7 snowflakes, 22, 113 social indicators, 74 social justice warriors (SJWs), 131 social media and crowd psychology, 6 emotional artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and engagement, 7 filter bubbles, 66 and propaganda, 15, 18, 81, 124 and PTSD, 113 and sentiment analysis, 12 trolls, 18, 20–22, 27, 40, 123, 146, 148, 194–8, 199, 209 weaponization of, 18, 19, 22, 194–5 socialism, 8, 20, 154–6, 158, 160 calculation debate, 154–6, 158, 160 Socialism (Mises), 160 Society for Freedom in Science, 163 South Africa, 103 sovereignty, 34, 53 Soviet Russia (1917–91), 132, 133, 135–8, 177, 180, 182–3 Spain, 5, 34, 84, 128, 202 speed of knowledge, xvi, 112, 124, 131, 134, 136, 153, 154, 165–70 Spicer, Sean, 3, 5 spy planes, 136, 152 Stalin, Joseph, 138 Stanford University, 179 statactivism, 74 statistics, 62–91, 161, 186 status, 88–90 Stoermer, Eugene, 206 strong man leaders, 16 suicide, 100, 101, 115 suicide bombing, 44, 146 superbugs, 205 surveillance, 185–93, 219 Sweden, 34 Switzerland, 164 Sydenham, Thomas, 96 Syriza, 5 tacit knowledge, 162 talking cure, 107 taxation, 158 Tea Party, 32, 50, 61, 221 technocracy, 53–8, 59, 60, 61, 78, 87, 89, 90, 211 teenage girls, 113, 114 telepathy, 39, 176–9, 181, 185, 186 terrorism, 17–18, 151, 185 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 emergency powers, 42 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 suicide bombing, 44, 146 vehicle-ramming attacks, 17 war on terror, 131, 136, 196 Thames Valley, England, 85 Thatcher, Margaret, 154, 160, 163, 166 Thiel, Peter, 26, 149–51, 153, 156, 174, 190 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 34, 45, 53, 126 Tokyo, Japan, x torture, 92–3 total wars, 129, 142–3 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 34, 53 trends, xvi, 168 trigger warnings, 22, 113 trolls, 18, 20–22, 27, 40, 123, 146, 148, 194–8, 199, 209 Trump, Donald, xiv and Bannon, 21, 60–61 and climate change, 207 and education, 85 election campaign (2016), see under presidential election, US and free trade, 79 and health, 92, 99 and immigration, 145 inauguration (2017), 3–5, 6, 9, 10 and inequality, 76–7 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 and March for Science (2017), 23, 24, 210 and media, 27 and opinion polling, 65, 80 and Paris climate accord, 207 and promises, 221 and relative deprivation, 88 and statistics, 63 and Yellen, 33 Tsipras, Alexis, 5 Turing, Alan, 181, 183 Twitter and Corbyn’s rallies, 6 and JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x and Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x and Russia, 18 and sentiment analysis, 188 and trends, xvi and trolls, 194, 195 Uber, 49, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192 UK Independence Party, 65, 92, 202 underemployment, 82 unemployment, 61, 62, 72, 78, 81–3, 87, 88, 203 United Kingdom austerity, 100 Bank of England, 32, 33, 64 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit Cameron government (2010–16), 33, 73, 100 Center for Policy Studies, 164 Civil Service, 33 climate-gate (2009), 195 Corbyn’s rallies, 5, 6 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 education, 85 financial crisis (2007–9), 29–32, 100 first past the post, 13 general election (2015), 80, 81 general election (2017), 6, 65, 80, 81, 221 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 gross domestic product (GDP), 77, 79 immigration, 63, 65 Irish hunger strike (1981), 43 life expectancy, 100 National Audit Office (NAO), 29 National Health Service (NHS), 30, 93 Office for National Statistics, 63, 133 and opiates, 105 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 and pain, 102, 105 Palantir, 151 Potsdam Conference (1945), 138 quantitative easing, 31–2 Royal Society, 138 Scottish independence referendum (2014), 64 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 Society for Freedom in Science, 163 Thatcher government (1979–90), 154, 160, 163, 166 and torture, 92 Treasury, 61, 64 unemployment, 83 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 World War II (1939–45), 114, 119, 138, 143, 180 see also England United Nations, 72, 222 United States Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 BP oil spill (2010), 89 Bush Jr. administration (2001–9), 77, 136 Bush Sr administration (1989–93), 77 Bureau of Labor, 74 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 and climate change, 207, 214 Clinton administration (1993–2001), 77 Cold War, see Cold War Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Defense Intelligence Agency, 177 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 education, 85 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 Fifth Amendment (1789), 44 financial crisis (2007–9), 31–2, 82, 158 first past the post, 13 Government Accountability Office, 29 gross domestic product (GDP), 75–7, 82 health, 92, 99–100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 115–16, 158, 172–3 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 Kansas populists (1880s), 220 libertarianism, 15, 151, 154, 158, 164, 173 life expectancy, 100, 101 March For Our Lives (2018), 21 March for Science (2017), 23–5, 27, 28, 210 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 Million-Man March (1995), 4 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 23, 175 National Defense Research Committee, 180 National Park Service, 4 National Security Agency (NSA), 152 Obama administration (2009–17), 3, 24, 76, 77, 79, 158 Occupy Wall Street (2011), 5, 10, 61 and opiates, 105, 172–3 and pain, 103, 105, 107, 172–3 Palantir, 151, 152, 175, 190 Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Parkland attack (2018), 21 Patriot Act (2001), 137 Pentagon, 130, 132, 135, 136, 214, 216 presidential election (2016), see under presidential election, US psychiatry, 107, 111 quantitative easing, 31–2 Reagan administration (1981–9), 15, 77, 154, 160, 163, 166 Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” speech (2002), 132 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 Tea Party, 32, 50, 61, 221 and torture, 93 Trump administration (2017–), see under Trump, Donald unemployment, 83 Vietnam War (1955–75), 111, 130, 136, 138, 143, 205 World War I (1914–18), 137 World War II (1939–45), 137, 180 universal basic income, 221 universities, 151–2, 164, 169–70 University of Cambridge, 84, 151 University of Chicago, 160 University of East Anglia, 195 University of Oxford, 56, 151 University of Vienna, 160 University of Washington, 188 unknown knowns, 132, 133, 136, 138, 141, 192, 212 unknown unknowns, 132, 133, 138 “Use of Knowledge in Society, The” (Hayek), 161 V2 flying bomb, 137 vaccines, 23, 95 de Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, 73 vehicle-ramming attacks, 17 Vesalius, Andreas, 96 Vienna, Austria, 153–5, 159 Vietnam War (1955–75), 111, 130, 136, 138, 143, 205 violence vs. power, 19, 219 viral marketing, 12 virtual reality, 183 virtue signaling, 194 voice recognition, 187 Vote Leave, 50, 93 Wainright, Joel, 214 Wales, 77, 90 Wall Street, New York, 33, 190 War College, Berlin, 128 “War Economy” (Neurath), 153–4 war on drugs, 43, 131 war on terror, 131, 136, 196 Watts, Jay, 115 weaponization, 18–20, 22, 26, 75, 118, 123, 194, 219, 223 weapons of mass destruction, 132 wearable technology, 173 weather control, 204 “What Is An Emotion?”


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The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, Alvin Toffler, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bread and circuses, Brexit referendum, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, clean water, company town, content marketing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, data science, deindustrialization, demographic transition, deplatforming, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Future Shock, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, guest worker program, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job polarisation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, life extension, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Occupy movement, Parag Khanna, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-work, postindustrial economy, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Salesforce, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Satyajit Das, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, technological determinism, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, work culture , working-age population, Y Combinator

In 1975, the labor share was about 64 percent of corporate income, but it dropped to 59 percent by 2012. This pattern applied not only to wealthy markets in the West, but also to laborrich markets like China, India, and Mexico.10 Instead of a path upward, those in the global working class increasingly face economic insecurity and even a descent into a new kind of serfdom. The Road to Serfdom Serfdom emerged out of the wreckage of the Roman Empire, replacing slavery but reducing free peasants to another form of dependency and subjection. Slaves had been imported from the far ends of the empire as it expanded and were put to work in the huge estates that grew in the countryside. “Today these are large estates,” wrote a fourth-century poet; “at one time they were little villages.”

Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (New York: New American Library, 1962), 290–91. 18 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (New York: Penguin, 1996), 87. 19 Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime, 293–94; Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: New American Library, 1969), 28. 20 Frederick Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 17; Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, 57, 75, 166; F. L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 11–12. 21 Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 107. 22 “The far right’s new fascination with the Middle Ages,” Economist, January 2, 2017, https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/01/medieval-memes. 23 “Vladimir Putin embraces the Russian church,” Economist, February 3, 2018, https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/02/03/vladimir-putin-embraces-the-russian-church; Andrey Pertsev, “President and Patriarch: What Putin Wants from the Orthodox Church,” Carnegie Moscow Center, December 19, 2017, https://carnegie.ru/commentary/75058; Yaroslav Trofimov, “Russia’s Turn to Its Asian Past,” Wall Street Journal, July 7–8, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-turn-to-its-asian-past-1530889247. 24 Ya Hua, “In China, Feudal Answers to Modern Problems,” New York Times, April 10, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/opinion/yu-in-china-feudal-answers-for-modern-problems.html; Jeremy Page, “Why China Is Turning Back to Confucius,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-china-is-turning-back-to-confucius-1442754000; Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (New York: Harper, 2010), 26. 25 Lee Kwan Yew, From Third World to First (New York, Harper, 2000), 491–94; McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers, 32–33. 26 Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 93. 27 Robert Verkaik, “Just 96 months to save the world, says Prince Charles,” Independent, June 9, 2009, https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/just-96-months-to-save-world-says-prince-charles-1738049.html; “Prince Charles: Feudal Critic of Capitalism,” Socialist Party of Great Britain, February 2003, https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2003/no-1182-february-2003/prince-charles-feudal-critic-capitalism; Oscar Rickett, “What We Can Learn From Prince Charles from his Letters to Politicians,” Vice, May 15, 2015, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvxgzx/prince-charles-letters-284. 28 Michael Kimmelman, “The Kind of Thinking Cities Need,” New York Times, October 28, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/opinion/sunday/the-kind-of-thinking-cities-need.html. 29 Dominic Green, “A Philosopher on the Decline of the English Countryside, Brexit, and the European Project,” Weekly Standard, November 17, 2017, https://www.weeklystandard.com/a-philosopher-on-the-decline-of-the-english-countryside-brexit-and-the-european-project/article/2010521. 30 Karl Sharro, “Density over Sprawl,” in The Future of Community, ed.

National Interest, February 8, 2018, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/are-tech-companies-avoiding-taxes-2413; Jesse Ducker and Simon Bowers, “After a Tax Crackdown, Apple Found a New Shelter for Its Profits,” New York Times, November 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/apple-taxes-jersey.html. 7 Darel E. Paul, “The European Center Weakens,” Real Clear Politics, May 28, 2019, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2019/05/28/the_european_center_weakens_475904.html. 8 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon, 1966), 418. 9 Frederick Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 13. 10 Matthew Continetti, “Our Bankrupt Elite,” Washington Free Beacon, March 15, 2019, https://freebeacon.com/columns/our-bankrupt-elite/. 11 “Democrats: The Real Party of the Rich,” Investor’s Business Daily, April 2, 2014, https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/democrat-political-donations-outstrip-republicans/; Rupert Durwall, “Behind the Green New Deal: An elite war on the working class,” New York Post, March 26, 2019, https://nypost.com/2019/03/26/behind-the-green-new-deal-an-elite-war-on-the-working-class/. 12 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Regime and the Revolution (London: Penguin, 2008), 144. 13 John Hinderaker, “Exposing the Real Costs of ‘Green’ Energy,” Power Line, March 12, 2019, https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/03/exposing-the-real-costs-of-green-energy.php. 14 Anastasia Lin, “The Cultural Revolution Comes to North America,” Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cultural-revolution-comes-to-north-america-11554661623. 15 Rebecca Ratcliffe, “Record private jet flights into Davos as leaders arrive for climate talk,” Guardian, January 22, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jan/22/record-private-jet-flights-davos-leaders-climate-talk; Michael Shellenberger, “The Real Reason They Behave Hypocritically On Climate Change Is Because They Want To,” Forbes, August 20, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/20/the-real-reason-they-behave-hypocritically-on-climate-change-is-because-they-want-to/#5e242363185a. 16 Eliza Relman, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said billionaires shouldn’t exist as long as Americans live in abject poverty,” Business Insider, January 22, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-thinks-billionaires-shouldnt-exist-2019-1; Walter E.


pages: 209 words: 53,236

The Scandal of Money by George Gilder

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decentralized internet, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Donald Trump, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, guns versus butter model, Home mortgage interest deduction, impact investing, index fund, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, informal economy, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, OSI model, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price stability, Productivity paradox, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, secular stagnation, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, smart grid, Solyndra, South China Sea, special drawing rights, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, winner-take-all economy, yield curve, zero-sum game

Key Terms for the Information Theory of Money A Disordered Glossary of Counterintuitive Truths Monopoly money: Money issued by sovereign states that block all competitive moneys in their domains, whether by regulation or by taxes not imposed on the sovereign currency. It’s what we have in America and the rest of the world. Friedrich Hayek, the author of The Road to Serfdom, declared that “the source and root of all monetary evil [is] the government monopoly on the issue and control of money.” Like most state-run monopolies, the money monopoly serves the interests of politicians rather than entrepreneurs, power rather than knowledge, old wealth rather than new ideas.

Skousen superbly covers the canonical sources of Austrian and Chicago economic thought. See also Robert P. Murphy and Donald J. Boudreaux, Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise and Human Action (Oakland, CA: Independent Institute, 2015). For the definitive texts, see Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, and Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, both available in many editions. 6.Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). The Israeli cognitive psychologist Amos Tversky was his collaborator. CHAPTER 1: THE DREAM AND THE DOLLAR 1.Louis Simpson, “In California,” in The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940–2001 (Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2003), 173. 2.


pages: 184 words: 54,833

Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens

anti-communist, British Empire, colonial rule, deindustrialization, Etonian, hiring and firing, land reform, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, public intellectual, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, sensible shoes

It’s also why he placed great hope in the native wisdom and decency of the British, or better say the English, whose qualities he thought might resolve the problem without too much practical or theoretical difficulty. (This in turn is yet another reason why he is often despised on the Left, which abominates, or at any rate used to abominate, the simplemindedness of English empiricism.) The clearest exposition of this divided realization is contained in Orwell’s review of The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich August von Hayek. When this short book was first published in 1944, not many people could have appreciated the influence that it was to enjoy. Hayek, a political economist of the Austrian school, had settled in England, and was by a later irony to succeed George Orwell’s old foe Harold Laski in the chair at the London School of Economics.

That was out of tune with the spirit of the times, and the British Tories were to remain nervously social-democratic until the late 1970s, when Margaret Thatcher broke the political consensus. Among her chosen advisors and mentors was Hayek, who has been of incalculable influence in the revival of free-market theory in Europe and America. (I remember the surprise I felt when hearing him praised by the Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas in Belgrade in 1977.) Orwell’s review of The Road to Serfdom, which appeared in the Observer, could almost have been the crib from which Churchill derived his later speech:Shortly, Professor Hayek’s thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism, and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them: especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty.


End the Fed by Ron Paul

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, business cycle, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, fiat currency, Fractional reserve banking, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Khyber Pass, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, moral hazard, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, too big to fail, tulip mania, We are all Keynesians now, Y2K

When Bernanke was pressed to reveal further information about where the trillions of dollars were going from the Fed, the answer was quite clear: “We think that’s counterproductive,” that is, to reveal this information. 3 My first exposure to the Austrian school of economics was through reading The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek in the early 1960s. Hayek, in the middle of the financial chaos following the breakdown of Bretton Woods, won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on the economics of the business cycle. He is well known today for his work on competing currencies, developed in the market, along with the notion that a basket of currency may suffice as reserves.

He is well known today for his work on competing currencies, developed in the market, along with the notion that a basket of currency may suffice as reserves. The basket of currency idea was something I never had a great affinity for, but I always accepted the idea that if it was developed by a nongovernment entity, no fraud involved, and it worked, so be it. It certainly would be superior to government fiat money. Many years after reading The Road to Serfdom, I had the pleasure of hearing Hayek lecture in Washington, around 1980. Following that meeting, we had a private dinner together and spent several hours visiting. This dinner, which I remember well, further solidified my interest and confidence in Austrian economics. Early on, I had heard Ludwig von Mises lecture at the University of Houston.


How to Be a Liberal: The Story of Liberalism and the Fight for Its Life by Ian Dunt

4chan, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, bank run, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, bounce rate, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Brixton riot, Cambridge Analytica, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, classic study, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, experimental subject, fake news, feminist movement, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Growth in a Time of Debt, illegal immigration, invisible hand, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal world order, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Mohammed Bouazizi, Northern Rock, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, price mechanism, profit motive, quantitative easing, recommendation engine, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Steve Bannon, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, Winter of Discontent, working poor, zero-sum game

‘Once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree,’ he said, ‘the planner will be forced to extend his controls until they become all-comprehensive.’ Most of Hayek’s writing was obtuse, technical and dry. But on one occasion, he let himself go and expressed his profound fears over a slide to totalitarianism. It was called The Road to Serfdom. He thought the book would be read by a few hundred people, but an abridged version was included as a Reader’s Digest edition in the US. It exploded. A million copies were ordered. The Road to Serfdom became a gospel for right-wingers in America and Britain and Hayek developed a cult following. Keynes read it while crossing the Atlantic in summer 1944. ‘The voyage has given me the chance to read your book properly,’ he wrote to Hayek when he reached America.

The Penguin Classics Essential Keynes, also edited by Robert Skidelsky, provides a single-volume edition of Keynes’ writings on economics, philosophy, social policy. For books on Hayek, try Hayek: His Contribution to the Political and Economic Thought of Our Time, by Eamonn Butler or Friedrich Hayek: A Biography, by Alan Ebenstein. To get a sense of his own writing, read The Constitution of Liberty and The Road to Serfdom. The negotiations over the establishment of the world trading system outlined in the book were much more intense and fragile than there was space to describe. The WTO’s own resource on the talks is very useful and can be found at https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/history_e/history_e.htm. It’s worth paying particular attention to the article on the Atlantic Charter and the blogs by Roy Santana, an expert on tariffs and customs issues.

See European Union (EU) EU referendum campaign and result 1 government response and May 1 Johnson as prime minister 1 Trump and nationalism 1 euro 1 European Central Bank (ECB) 1, 2, 3, 4 European Coal and Steel Community 1 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1, 2 European Court of Justice 1, 2, 3 European Economic Community 1 European Parliament 1 European Union (EU) Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 1 EU citizens 1 EU referendum 1 Greece financial crisis 1 Hungary and Orbán 1, 2 institutions 1 migrants and refugees 1 origins 1 post-war cooperation 1, 2 Russia and Ukraine 1 Troika programmes 1, 2 UK leaves 1 eurozone 1, 2, 3 Evergreen State College 1 Exclusion Crisis 1, 2, 3, 4 executive power 1, 2, 3, 4 Exhibit B show 1 experts 1, 2, 3 Facebook 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Fairfax, Thomas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 A Remonstrance from his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax 1 fake news 1 family separation policy 1 Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) 1 Farage, Nigel 1, 2, 3, 4 far right 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 fascism Carlyle 1 emergence of 1 Germany 1, 2 identity and belonging 1 Orwell on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 post-war economics 1, 2, 3 Fawcett, Millicent 1 Federal Housing Administration 1 Federal Reserve 1, 2, 3 female genital mutilation 1 female priests 1 female suffrage 1 feminism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Ferdinand, Archduke Franz 1 feudalism 1, 2 Fidesz 1, 2, 3, 4 Figes, Orlando 1 financial crisis 1, 2, 3, 4 Financial Services Authority (FSA) 1 financial services deregulation 1 first generation rights 1, 2 First World War 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 fiscal policy 1 Five Star Movement 1 Five Year Plan 1 Flower, Eliza 1 forced marriage 1 Forster, EM 1 Maurice 1 4chan 1 Fox, Liam 1 Fox News 1, 2 France American independence 1, 2 anti-semitism 1 Austria war 1 Dreyfus Affair 1 Estates General 1 Greece financial crisis 1 Napoleon rule 1 National Convention 1 origins of revolution 1 post-war cooperation 1 revolution aftermath 1, 2 Seven Years’ War 1 the Terror 1 Franco, General Francisco 1 freedom American independence 1 Berlin on 1, 2 England history 1 French Revolution aftermath 1, 2 Levellers Agreement 1 liberalism struggle 1 Locke on 1, 2, 3, 4 Mill and Taylor on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Puritans 1, 2 Rousseau on 1, 2 freedom of conscience 1, 2 freedom to publish 1, 2 free market 1, 2, 3 free movement 1, 2, 3 free press 1, 2, 3 free speech 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 free trade 1, 2, 3 French Revolution aftermath 1, 2 anti-semitism 1 Carlyle history 1 development of liberal values 1 events of 1 Rights of Man 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Rousseau and general will 1, 2 Frenkel, Naftaly Aronovich 1 Friedman, Milton 1, 2 FSA (Financial Services Authority) 1 Fukuyama, Francis 1 full employment 1, 2 G20 1, 2 Gaddafi, Colonel Muammar 1 Galbraith, John 1, 2 Galileo 1, 2, 3, 4 gas chambers 1, 2 gatekeepers 1 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) 1, 2, 3 gay identity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Geithner, Timothy 1, 2 gender, and sex 1 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1, 2, 3 general will 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Generation Identity 1 generation snowflake 1 German Workers’ Party 1 Germany Austria-Hungary alliance 1 First World War 1 Greece financial crisis 1 interwar economy 1 migrants and refugees 1 Nazi rule 1, 2 post-war cooperation 1 Second World War 1 welfare state 1 Gestapo 1, 2 Gingrich, Newt 1, 2 Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association) 1 Girondins 1, 2, 3 Glass-Steagall Act 1, 2, 3 gleichschaltung 1 Glorious Revolution 1, 2, 3, 4 Google 1, 2, 3 Gove, Michael 1, 2, 3 government American independence 1 debt and austerity 1 financial crisis measures 1 and institutions 1 legitimate government 1 Locke on 1, 2, 3, 4 post-war Keynesianism 1, 2, 3 Smith on 1, 2 Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) 1 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act 1 Great Depression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Greater London Council 1, 2, 3 Great Terror, Russia 1 Greece 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Greenspan, Alan 1, 2 group identity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Guatemala 1 Guérin, Jules 1 guillotine 1, 2, 3, 4 gulags 1, 2, 3, 4 Gyurcsány, Ferenc 1 haircuts (finance) 1, 2 Haiti earthquake 1 half-truth 1, 2 Hall, Stuart 1 Hamilton, Gene 1 Handsworth riots 1 Hannity, Sean 1, 2 Hardenberg, Charlotte von 1 Hardy, Henry 1 harm principle 1, 2, 3, 4 Hayek, Friedrich Capital Consumption 1 on communism end 1 Constitution of Liberty 1 death of 1 economic thought 1 and Keynes 1 on Mill and Taylor 1, 2 Nobel Prize 1 post-war economics 1, 2, 3 The Road to Serfdom 1 state intervention 1, 2, 3 Hayek, Laurence 1 Heads of Proposals 1, 2, 3 health care 1, 2, 3, 4 health tourism 1 Heart of Texas 1 Hébert, Jacques 1, 2, 3 Hébertists 1, 2 Henry, Major Hubert-Joseph 1, 2 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 1 heresy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 higher and lower pleasures 1, 2 higher self 1 Himmler, Heinrich 1, 2 Hitler, Adolf 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Hobbes, Thomas 1 Leviathan 1 Holdheim, William 1 Hollander, Jacob Harry 1 Holocaust 1, 2 Holodomor 1 home ownership 1 homophobia 1, 2 homosexuality 1, 2 Hostile Environment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 House of Commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 House of Lords 1, 2, 3 House of Representatives 1 housing 1, 2, 3 Howard, Michael 1 Huber, Ernst Rudolf 1 human rights 1, 2, 3 Hume, David 1 Hungary 1, 2 hyperinflation 1, 2, 3 hypertext 1 hypotheses 1 identity cultural appropriation 1 cultural identity 1, 2 cultural relativism 1 group identity 1, 2 identity and belonging 1 national identity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 nationalism 1, 2 Orwell on patriotism 1, 2 identity cards 1 identity politics cultural appropriation 1 culture war 1 difference 1 disagreement 1 group identity 1, 2 intersectionality 1, 2 marginalised groups 1, 2 origins 1 right-wing identity politics 1 social media 1 identity war 1, 2 Ignatieff, Michael 1 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 1, 2 immigration EU referendum 1, 2 France anti-semitism 1 Hungary and Orbán 1 liberalism of the future 1 nationalism 1, 2, 3 right-wing identity politics 1, 2, 3 UK policy 1 US policy 1, 2 imperialism 1, 2, 3 incommensurable goods 1, 2 Independents (English Civil War) 1, 2 individual Berlin on 1, 2 communism and fascism 1, 2, 3, 4 Constant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Descartes 1, 2, 3, 4 identity 1, 2, 3 invention of teenager 1 Keynesianism 1 Levellers 1 liberalism 1, 2, 3 Locke 1, 2, 3 Marxism 1, 2 Mill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 nationalism 1 Orwell 1, 2 Overton 1 Puritans 1 and reason 1 Smith 1 individualism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 individual rights 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 industrial revolution 1, 2 inflation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 information flow 1, 2, 3 Instagram 1, 2, 3 institutions 1 Intellectual Dark Web 1 intellectual property 1 interest rates 1, 2, 3 internal emigration 1 International Brigades 1 international law 1 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 1, 2 international relations 1 internet 1, 2, 3 intersectionality 1 investment banks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 invisible hand 1, 2, 3, 4 Iraq 1, 2, 3 Ireland 1, 2 Ireton, Henry 1, 2, 3, 4 Islam 1 Italy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Jacobins 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 James II 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Japan 1 Javid, Sajid 1, 2 Jehovah’s Witnesses 1 Jews anti-semitism 1, 2, 3 Berlin’s identity 1, 2 Dreyfus Affair 1, 2 Germany 1, 2, 3 group identity 1 Levellers 1 right-wing identity politics 1 Second World War and Holocaust 1 St Louis ship 1 Johannot, Marie-Charlotte 1 Johnson, Boris 1, 2, 3, 4 Johnson, Lyndon 1 journalism 1, 2, 3, 4 Joyce, George 1 JP Morgan 1, 2 judiciary 1, 2 Juncker, Jean-Claude 1 justice 1, 2 Kant, Immanuel 1 Kennedy, John F 1 Keynes, John Maynard The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money 1 and Hayek 1, 2, 3 post-war economics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 state intervention 1 Time Man of the Year 1 death of 1 Keynesianism 1, 2, 3, 4 Khader, Naser 1 knowledge 1, 2 Kogon, Eugen 1 Komsomol 1 Kosinski, Michal 1 Krugman, Paul 1 Kruks, Sonia 1 Kukathas, Chandran 1 kulaks 1, 2 Kurdi, Alan 1, 2 Kymlicka, Will 1 labour 1, 2, 3 Lagarde, Christine 1, 2 laissez-faire austerity measures 1 communism 1 Constant 1, 2 financial crisis 1 Hayek 1, 2 inflation policy 1 liberalism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Mill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 post-war economics 1, 2, 3 right-wing identity politics 1 Soviet Union collapse 1 land 1, 2, 3 language 1, 2, 3 Laski, Harold 1 Latvia 1 Laud, William 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service 1 law of nature 1, 2, 3 Law of Suspects 1 League Party 1 Leave.EU 1, 2.


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Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values by Sharon Beder

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, battle of ideas, business climate, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, invisible hand, junk bonds, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, old-boy network, popular capitalism, Powell Memorandum, price mechanism, profit motive, Ralph Nader, rent control, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, shareholder value, spread of share-ownership, structural adjustment programs, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Torches of Freedom, trade liberalization, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, young professional

PETER SELF2 In 1947, a group of 37 like-minded people from the US, Britain and Europe – economists, historians and journalists – met in a fashionable resort at Mont Pèlerin in Switzerland. They had been invited there by Friedrich von Hayek, an Austrian-born economic theoretician who worked at the London School of Economics. Hayek’s 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, was said to be ‘the first intellectually respectable defense of free-market doctrine to have appeared in decades’. The book, which argued that government planning leads to dictatorship and that free markets should reign, was republished in condensed form by Reader’s Digest. The Book-of-the-Month Club distributed over a million copies.

The first was the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) which promoted a laissez-faire libertarian view, keeping the economic fundamentalism ‘alive when academic opinion had pronounced it brain-dead’.10 Lord Anthony Fisher conceived of the idea of the IEA at the prompting of Friedrich von Hayek in the early 1950s, having visited the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in the US. According to Ralph Harris, a director of the IEA and member of the Mont Pèlerin Society, ‘The institute started in 1957, you could say the direct result of the Mont Pèlerin Society, of The Road to Serfdom, of Hayek’s ideas of freedom and competitive enterprise.’ It set out to gain wide acceptance for the ‘philosophy of the market economy’ through communications directed at the opinion leaders such as intellectuals, politicians, business people and journalists. It started as a one-person operation and at its height in the 1980s reached 15 full-time employees with a half-million-pound budget provided mainly by about 250 companies, including large transnational firms.11 The IEA began by producing pamphlets based on Hayek and Friedman’s ideas, as well as analyses of various policies in the light of those ideas.

It was founded in 1974 by Keith Joseph, an active member of the IEA, and Margaret Thatcher, who had also been associated with the IEA. Joseph, a former Tory minister, who is credited with Thatcher’s conversion to economic fundamentalism, is reported to have been converted himself when he took a suitcase of IEA-recommended books and pamphlets by Friedman and Hayek on holiday with him. Margaret Thatcher had read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom while at Oxford 112 FREE MARKET MISSIONARIES and it is said to have ‘made a lasting impression on her’. Thatcher also became a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society.14 In the mid-1970s, not long after becoming Leader, she visited the Conservative Party’s research department. . . . She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a book.


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The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

There’s North Korea, there’s Venezuela, but we’re not locked tooth and nail in a proxy war and a cold war with the Soviet Union.52 That the above quote was spoken at the Heritage Foundation is further evidence of the overlap between the libertarian and New Right agendas — Peterson himself has insisted that he is a “classic British liberal” in terms of his ideological leanings.53 After all, opposition to socialism in any form has been the central rallying cry of libertarians for nearly a century, driven by an anti-statist urge that consistently glosses over the misdeeds of the corporate world solely because state coercion is by nature worse. One of the fathers of libertarianism, Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, went so far in The Road to Serfdom as to claim that the lowliest bureaucrat is somehow a greater threat than the biggest plutocrat: Who can seriously doubt that … the power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest fonctionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work?

We no longer think it is our moral duty as a species to harness the planet’s natural resources for our own service. We increasingly realize that the lost connections of our social experiences cannot be substituted by purely materialist accumulation. And at least there is now a growing critical mass of people who have stopped seeing socialist ideas as the road to serfdom but as a path towards realizing the fullest promise of democracy. The progress narrative would have it that we are simply a spoiled generation, ungrateful for the achievements made in decades and centuries past that have allowed us the privilege of taking our prosperity for granted. And yet this grievance could be levied to every previous generation which believed it had found the secret to satiating its most elementary needs, only to realize that its wants would soon be added to this ever-expanding list.

., “Jordan Peterson Explains What Draws People to Socialism”, Daily Signal, 8 Apr. 2019, https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/04/08/jordan-peterson-explains-what-draws-people-to-socialism/ 53 Gallagher, B., “What is a classical liberal?”, The Daily Dot, 29 Apr. 2019, https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/what-is-classical-liberalism 54 Hayek, F., The Road to Serfdom (Routledge, 2006), pg. 108 55 Lindsey, B. et al., “The Center can hold: Public Policy for an Age of Extremes”, Niskanen Center, Dec. 2018, https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-center-can-hold-public-policy-for-an-age-of-extremes/ 56 https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1074932509014667264 57 The infinitely quoted figure of 94% poverty in 1820 comes from Bourguignon, F., and Morrisson, C., “Inequality Among World Citizens: 1820-1992.”


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Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist by Alex Zevin

"there is no alternative" (TINA), activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, Columbine, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, desegregation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, imperial preference, income inequality, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Khartoum Gordon, land reform, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, post-war consensus, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, Socratic dialogue, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

This was followed by an immediate qualification, however, for ‘if events prove that restrictionism and monopoly are organically inseparable from Government intervention in the economic field, then it will be the duty of the Economist to that extent to swing back towards the purest individualism.’41 Hayek, a devoted reader, gently mocked the idea of such an unbroken continuity with the Victorian era, wondering in a review whether Crowther wasn’t himself a little doubtful about it.42 The Economist for its part had only praise for the outspoken emigré at the London School of Economics when his polemic against planning, The Road to Serfdom, appeared a few months later. ‘The state that is fully planned, that is democratic and that preserves the basic rights of individuals does not exist’, it agreed, adding only that returning to pure laissez-faire could prove as oppressive for individuals as a command economy. ‘The problem of this century is to find the most fruitful method of combining planning – the right kind and degree of planning – with freedom.’43 The Empire Front: Writing Blank Cheques Concessions to the working class, embodied in visions of welfare and full employment at home, had their complement abroad in ‘the commonwealth at war’ – the dominions, crown colonies and other dependencies being promised at one and the same time greater self-government and tighter economic integration, underwritten by capital investment from London.44 After the fall of France in 1940, the Economist shifted focus from European to ‘imperial defence, to see how best a world Empire can win a world war – if need be, alone’.

This great economist ‘was extremely unfortunate in the moment of his death’, observed Crowther in a review of the first full biography of Keynes by another former pupil, Roy Harrod.77 For he left implementation of theories worked out in the inter-war years of mass unemployment to disciples without ‘a readiness equal to his own to change their minds’, so that already the post-war period was ‘plagued by chronic inflation, by an excess of the wrong sort of planning and by an aversion from thrift’. Keynes was being pressed into the service of this ‘New Illiberalism’ despite having been a passionate liberal, argued Crowther, who seized on a now famous letter from Keynes praising Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom: ‘a grand book, morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it, and not only in agreement with it but deeply moved agreement.’ Dalton was the only person singled out by name for crimes against Keynesianism, with Crowther adding a knife-twist: ‘His old Cambridge friend “Daddy” Dalton scattered to the winds, in a few months of roaring boom, the American credits which he [Keynes] literally gave his life to win for Britain.’78 ‘I write to you to supplement and to correct some false impressions on Maynard Keynes, at once my teacher, my friend and my advisor at the Treasury’, Dalton replied to what he privately called the ‘Editor of the Prig’s Weekly’.

Weakest post-war in the universities, its adherents had long gathered outside of these to spread their message in think tanks and ‘thought collectives’ – nowhere more successfully than in Britain. This reflected the strength of classical liberalism in its world historic home, from which neoliberals had always derived inspiration. In the 30s, the stiffest resistance to Keynes had after all come from the LSE, where before departing for the US, Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom as a call to reject ‘foreign ideas’ about the state, and return to the classical conceptions of Smith and Mill; and the economics department had ties from its inception to the most important international association of neoliberal thinkers, the Mont Pelerin Society in Switzerland, founded in 1947.90 The launch in 1955 of the Institute for Economic Affairs further cemented these connections.


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The Euro and the Battle of Ideas by Markus K. Brunnermeier, Harold James, Jean-Pierre Landau

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, diversification, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, Future Shock, German hyperinflation, global reserve currency, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Irish property bubble, Jean Tirole, Kenneth Rogoff, Les Trente Glorieuses, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open economy, paradox of thrift, pension reform, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, principal–agent problem, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk free rate, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, short selling, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, special drawing rights, tail risk, the payments system, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, yield curve

François Perroux, Des mythes hitlériens à l’Europe allemande (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1940), 45, 291–292 (the texts quoted were written in 1935). 6. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944), 129. 7. Erinnerungen Hans Schäffers an Ernst Trendelenburg. 8. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1944), 55. 9. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, 55, 94. 10. Harold James, The German Slump: Politics and Economics 1924–1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 353. 11. Walter Eucken The Foundations of Economics: History and Theory in the Analysis of Economic Reality, translated by Terence Wilmot Hutchison (Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1992), 316. 12.

He was largely without political influence until the 1970s. Hayek accurately identified that the interventionist approach of the Weimar Republic (which had its origins in wartime planning) created a sort of path dependency, in which the answer to failure was not an abandonment of the approach but rather a more radical version. In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek asserted that Walter Rathenau, the intellectual who devised Germany’s innovative planning regime of World War I, “would have shuddered had he realised the consequences of his totalitarian economics” but nevertheless “deserves a considerable place in any fuller history of the growth of Nazi ideas.


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The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, altcoin, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Broken windows theory, carbon tax, Columbian Exchange, computer age, Corn Laws, cosmological constant, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, Donald Davies, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Eben Moglen, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, endogenous growth, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fail fast, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, George Santayana, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, imperial preference, income per capita, indoor plumbing, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, land reform, Lao Tzu, long peace, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Necker cube, obamacare, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, twin studies, uber lyft, women in the workforce

Most powerful were the voices of refugees from both Hitler and Stalin, who would insist to their Western hosts that Nazi and communist totalitarianisms were not at opposite ends of the spectrum, but were close neighbours: people like Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper. The most famous of these voices was Friedrich Hayek’s, with his prescient warning in The Road to Serfdom (1944) that socialism and fascism were not really opposites, but had ‘fundamental similarity of methods and ideas’, that economic planning and state control were at the top of an illiberal slope that led to tyranny, oppression and serfdom, and that the individualism of free markets was the true road to liberation.

How Procter & Gamble Uses External Ideas For Internal Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review 16 June 2014. On intellectual property, Tabarrok, A. 2011. Launching the Innovation Renaissance. TED Books. On knowledge, Hayek, F.A. 1945. The uses of knowledge in society. American Economic Review 4:519–530. And Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom (Condensed Version). Reader’s Digest. On the relationship between science and technology, Kealey, Terence 2013. The Case Against Public Science. Cato-unbound.org 5 August 2013. Also Kealey, T. and Ricketts, M. 2014. Modelling science as a contribution good. Research Policy 43:1014–1024. Also Pielke, R.

‘Mahatma’ 178 Garzik, Jeff 312 Gas Research Institute 136 Gassendi, Pierre 12, 13 Gates, Bill 222 Gaua 81 Gazzaniga, Michael 144, 147 GCHQ 303 genes: background 59–61; function of 65; and the genome 62–4; and junk or surplus DNA 66–72; mutation 72–5; selfish gene 66, 68 Genghis Khan 87, 223 geology 17 George III 245 Georgia Inst. of Technology 272 German Society for Racial Hygiene 198, 202 Germany 12, 29, 101, 122, 138, 231, 243, 247, 251, 253, 318 Ghana 181, 229 Giaever, Ivar 273 Gilder, George 287 Gilfillan, Colum 127 Gladstone, William Ewart 246 Glaeser, Edward 92 Glasgow University 22, 25 Glass-Steagall Act 287 global warming 271–6 Glorious Revolution (England) 243 Gobi desert 92 Goddard, Robert 138 Godkin, Ed 250 Goethe, Charles 202 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 248 Goldberg, Jonah 252; Liberal Fascism 199, 251 Goldman Sachs 3 Goldsmith, Sir Edward 211 Goodenough, Oliver 36 Google 120, 130, 132, 188 Gore, A1205, 211, 273, 274 Gosling, Raymond 121 Gottlieb, Anthony 41 Gottlieb, Richard 11 Gould, Stephen Jay 38, 53, 69 government: commerce and freedom 243–4; counterrevolution of 247–50; definition 236; free trade and free thinking 244–6; as God 254–5; and the Levellers 241–2; liberal fascism 250–2; libertarian revival 252–3; prison system 237–8; and protection rackets 238–41; and the wild west 235–6 Grant, Madison 202; The Passing of the Great Race 200–1 Graur, Dan 71, 72 Gray, Asa 44; Descent of Man 44–5 Gray, Elisha 119 Great Depression 105, 125, 318 Great Recession (2008–09) 97, 297 Greece 259 Green, David 115 Green, Paul 226 Green Revolution 208, 210 Greenblatt, Stephen 9, 11n Greenhalgh, Susan 212; Just One Child 210–11 Greenspan Put 289 Gregory, Ryan 71 Gregory VII, Pope 239 Gresham’s Law 279 Guardian (newspaper) 53 Gulf War 298 Gutenberg, Johannes 220 Hadiths 262 Haeckel, Ernst 197, 198 Hahnemann, Samuel 271 Haig, David 57 Hailey, Malcolm, Lord 231 Hailo 109 Haiti 207 Hamel, Gary 224 Hamilton, Alexander 244 Hannan, Daniel 35, 242, 315 Hannauer, Nick 107 Hansen, Alvin 105 Hanson, Earl Parker, New Worlds Emerging 209 Harford, Tim, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure 127, 255 Harriman, E.H. 200 Harris, Judith Rich 155–6, 158–65, 169; The Nurture Assumption 160–1 Harris, Sam 147, 148, 149–50, 151, 152 Harvard Business Review 224 Harvard University 9, 28, 57, 155, 159, 300 Hayek, Friedrich 35, 102, 128, 133, 230, 232, 243; The Constitution of Liberty 300; The Road to Serfdom 253 Haynes, John Dylan 146–7 Hazlett, Tom 223 Heidegger, Martin 201 Helsinki 211, 212 Henrich, Joe 89 Henry II 34 Henry VII 240 Henry the Navigator, Prince 134 Heraclius 262 Heritage Foundation 241 Higgs, Robert 240 Hill, P.J. 235–6 Hines, Melissa 169 Hitler, Adolf 198, 201, 217, 251, 252, 253; Mein Kampf 252 Hobbes, Thomas 8, 12, 197–8, 243 Holdren, John 208 Holland 142 Holland, Tom, In the Shadow of the Sword 261–2 Holocaust 214 Hong Kong 31, 92, 97, 101, 190, 191, 233–4 Hood, Bruce 148; The Self Illusion 145 Horgan, John 60 Hortlund, Per 284 ‘How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia’ (2010) 232 Howard, John 273 Hu Yaobang 212 Human Genome Project 64 Human Rights Watch 232 Hume, David 20, 21–2, 40–1, 54, 276; Concerning Natural Religion 39–40; Natural History of Religion 257 Humphrey, Nick 144, 154 Hussein, Saddam 298 Hutcheson, Francis 22, 25 Hutchinson, Allan 33 Hutton, James 17 Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World 167 Huxley, Julian 205, 211 Hyderabad 181 Ibsen, Henrik 249 Iceland 32 Iliad 87 Immigration Act (US, 1924) 201 Incas 86, 259 India 34, 87, 108, 125, 177–8, 181, 183, 196, 204, 206, 213, 214, 258, 259 Industrial (R)evolution 63, 104, 108,109–10, 135, 220, 248, 254–5, 277 Infoseek (search engine) 120 Intel 223 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 273–4 International Code of Conduct for Information Security 305 International Federation of Eugenics Organisations 202 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 286 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) 305 internet: balkanisation of the web 302–6; and bitcoin 308–12; and blockchains 306–9, 313–14; central committee of 305–6; complexity of 300–1; emergence of 299–300; individuals associated with 301–2; and politics 314–16 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 305–6 Iraq 32, 255 Ireland 213, 246 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 240 Islam 259, 260, 262–3 Islamabad 92 Islamic State 240 Israel, Paul 119 Italian city states 101 Italy 34, 247, 251 Ive, Sir Jonathan 319 Jablonka, Eva 56, 57 Jackson, Doug 309 Jacobs, Jane 92 Jagger, Bianca 211 Jainism 260 Japan, Japanese 32, 122, 125, 231, 232, 288 Jefferson, Thomas 15, 20, 114, 244 Jehovah 13, 276 Jerome, St 11 Jesus Christ 8, 9, 88, 257, 258, 263, 266 Jevons, William Stanley 63, 106 Jews 29, 142, 197, 202–3, 257 Jobs, Steve 119, 222 Johnson, Boris 166; The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History 217 Johnson, Lyndon B. 206, 207, 289 Johnson, Steven Berlin 220; Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation 127 Jones, Judge John 49, 50, 51 Jonson, Ben 15 J.P.


pages: 573 words: 115,489

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

These crystallised particularly clearly in the long-running dispute between the followers of the Austrian philosopher Friedrich Hayek and those of the British economist John Maynard Keynes.3 A vociferous defender of individual freedom of choice, Hayek warned of the lure of collectivism. He observed candidly the abuses of power that prevailed in the early communist countries and railed against central planning as a form of tyranny. For Hayek, government intervention was the first step on The Road to Serfdom.4 Keynes, for his part, was far from blind to the limitations of government. He was profoundly aware of the dystopian incarnations of communism (and of fascism) and wrote extensively about them. He would even complain privately about the short-sightedness of Western politicians. But he saw nonetheless an absolutely fundamental role for government in maintaining economic and indeed social stability.

Harvey, David 2014. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. London: Profile Books. Harvey, David 2010. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. London: Verso. Hayden, Anders 1999. Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet – Work Time, Consumption and Ecology. London: Zed Books. Hayek, Friedrich 1944. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge. Hayward, Bronwyn and Karen O’Brien 2010. ‘Security of What for Whom? Rethinking social contracts in a changing climate’, in K. L. O’Brien, A. St. Clair and B. Kristoffersen (eds), Climate Change, Ethics, and Human Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Helliwell, John 2003.

INDEX Locators in italic refer to figures absolute decoupling 84–6; historical perspectives 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; mathematical relationship with relative decoupling 96–101, 111 abundance see opulence accounting errors, decoupling 84, 91 acquisition, instinctive 68 see also symbolic role of goods adaptation: diminishing marginal utility 51, 68; environmental 169; evolutionary 226 advertising, power of 140, 203–4 Africa 73, 75–7; life-expectancy 74; philosophy 227; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; growth 99; relative income effect 58, 75; schooling 78 The Age of Turbulence (Greenspan) 35 ageing populations 44, 81 agriculture 12, 148, 152, 220 Aids/HIV 77 algebra of inequality see inequality; mathematical models alienation: future visions 212, 218–19; geographical community 122–3; role of the state 205; selfishness vs. altruism 137; signals sent by society 131 alternatives: economic 101–2, 139–40, 157–8; hedonism 125–6 see also future visions; post-growth macroeconomics; reform altruism 133–8, 196, 207 amenities see public services/amenities Amish community, North America 128 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith) 123, 132 angelised growth see green growth animal welfare 220 anonymity/loneliness see alienation anthropological perspectives, consumption 70, 115 anti-consumerism 131 see also intrinsic values anxiety: fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; novelty 116–17, 124, 211 Argentina 58, 78, 78, 80 Aristotle 48, 61 The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama) 49 arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 assets, stranded 167–8 see also ownership austerity policies xxxiii–xxxv, 189; and financial crisis 24, 42–3; mathematical models 181 Australia 58, 78, 128, 206 authoritarianism 199 autonomy see freedom/autonomy Ayres, Robert 143 backfire effects 111 balance: private interests/common good 208; tradition/innovation 226 Bank for International Settlements 46 bank runs 157 banking system 29–30, 39, 153–7, 208; bonuses 37–8 see also financial crisis; financial system basic entitlements: enterprise as service 142; income 67, 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; limits to growth 63–4 see also education; food; health Basu, Sanjay 43 Baumol, William 112, 147, 222, 223; cost disease 170, 171, 172, 173 BBC survey, geographical community 122–3 Becker, Ernest 69 Belk, Russ 70, 114 belonging 212, 219 see also alienation; community; intrinsic values Bentham, Jeremy 55 bereavement, material possessions 114, 214–15 Berger, Peter 70, 214 Berry, Wendell 8 Better Growth, Better Climate (New Climate Economy report) 18 big business/corporations 106–7 biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 biological perspectives see evolutionary theory; human nature/psyche biophysical boundaries see limits (ecological) Black Monday 46 The Body Economic (Stuckler and Basu) 43 bond markets 30, 157 bonuses, banking 37–8 Bookchin, Murray 122 boom-and-bust cycles 157, 181 Booth, Douglas 117 borrowing behaviour 34, 118–21, 119 see also credit; debt Boulding, Elise 118 Boulding, Kenneth 1, 5, 7 boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) bounded capabilities for flourishing 61–5 see also limits (flourishing within) Bowen, William 147 Bowling Alone (Putnam) 122 Brazil 58, 88 breakdown of community see alienation; social stability bubbles, economic 29, 33, 36 Buddhist monasteries, Thailand 128 buen vivir concept, Ecuador xxxi, 6 built-in obsolescence 113, 204, 220 Bush, George 121 business-as-usual model 22, 211; carbon dioxide emissions 101; crisis of commitment 195; financial crisis 32–8; growth 79–83, 99; human nature 131, 136–7; need for reform 55, 57, 59, 101–2, 162, 207–8, 227; throwaway society 113; wellbeing 124 see also financial systems Canada 75, 206, 207 capabilities for flourishing 61–5; circular flow of the economy 113; future visions 218, 219; and income 77; progress measures 50–5, 54; role of material abundance 67–72; and prosperity 49; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; role of shame 123–4; role of the state 200 see also limits (flourishing within); wellbeing capital 105, 107–10 see also investment Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty) 33, 176, 177 Capital Institute, USA 155 capitalism 68–9, 80; structures 107–13, 175; types 105–7, 222, 223 car industry, financial crisis 40 carbon dioxide emissions see greenhouse gas emissions caring professions, valuing 130, 147, 207 see also social care Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 213 causal path analysis, subjective wellbeing 59 Central Bank 154 central human capabilities 64 see also capabilities for flourishing The Challenge of Affluence (Offer) 194 change see alternatives; future visions; novelty/innovation; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Chicago school of economics 36, 156 children: advertising to 204; labour 62, 154; mortality 74–5, 75, 206 Chile xxxiii, xxxvii, 58, 74, 74, 75, 76 China: decoupling 88; GDP per capita 75; greenhouse gas emissions 91; growth 99; life expectancy 74; philosophy 7; post-financial crisis 45–6; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; relative income effect 58; resource use 94; savings 27; schooling 76 choice, moving beyond consumerism 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy Christian doctrine see religious perspectives chromium, commodity price 13 Cinderella economy 219–21, 224 circular economy 144, 220 circular flow of the economy 107, 113 see also engine of growth citizen’s income 207 see also universal basic income civil unrest see social stability Clean City Law, São Paulo 204 climate change xxxv, 22, 47; critical boundaries 17–20; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 98; fatalism 186; investment needs 152; role of the state 192, 198, 201–2 see also greenhouse gas emissions Climate Change Act (2008), UK 198 clothing see basic entitlements Club of Rome, Limits to Growth report xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16, Cobb, John 54 collectivism 191 commercial bond markets 30, 157 commitment devices/crisis of 192–5, 197 commodity prices: decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; fluctuation/volatility 14, 21; resource constraints 13–14 common good: future visions 218, 219; vs. freedom and autonomy 193–4; vs. private interests 208; role of the state 209 common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199 see also public services/amenities communism 187, 191 community: future visions of 219–20; geographical 122–3; investment 155–6, 204 see also alienation; intrinsic values comparison, social 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect competition 27, 112; positional 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also struggle for existence complexity, economic systems 14, 32, 108, 153, 203 compulsive shopping 116 see also consumerism Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP21) 19 conflicted state 197, 201, 209 connectedness, global 91, 227 conspicuous consumption 115 see also language of goods consumer goods see language of goods; material goods consumer sovereignty 196, 198 consumerism 4, 21, 22, 103–4, 113–16; capitalism 105–13, 196; choice 196; engine of growth 104, 108, 120, 161; existential fear of death 69, 212–15; financial crisis 24, 28, 39, 103; moving beyond 216–18; novelty and anxiety 116–17; post-growth economy 166–7; role of the state 192–3, 196, 199, 202–5; status 211; tragedy of 140 see also demand; materialism contemplative dimensions, simplicity 127 contraction and convergence model 206–7 coordinated market economies 27, 106 Copenhagen Accord (2009) 19 copper, commodity prices 13 corporations/big business 106–7 corruption 9, 131, 186, 187, 189 The Cost Disease: Why Computers get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t (Baumol) 171, 172 Costa Rica 74, 74, 76 countercyclical spending 181–2, 182, 188 crafts/craft economies 147, 149, 170, 171 creative destruction 104, 112, 113, 116–17 creativity 8, 79; and consumerism 113, 116; future visions 142, 144, 147, 158, 171, 200, 220 see also novelty/innovation credit, private: deflationary forces 44; deregulation 36; financial crisis 26, 27, 27–31, 34, 36, 41; financial system weaknesses 32–3, 37; growth imperative hypothesis 178–80; mortgage loans 28–9; reforms in financial system 157; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–19; and stimulation of growth 36 see also debt (public) credit unions 155–6 crises: of commitment 192–5; financial see financial crisis critical boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi 127 Cuba: child mortality 75; life expectancy 74, 77, 78, 78; response to economic hardship 79–80; revolution 56; schooling 76 Cushman, Philip 116 Dalai Lama 49, 52 Daly, Herman xxxii, 54, 55, 160, 163, 165 Darwin, Charles 132–3 Das Kapital (Marx) 225 Davidson, Richard 49 Davos World Economic Forum 46 Dawkins, Richard 134–5 de Mandeville, Bernard 131–2, 157 death, denial of 69, 104, 115, 212–15 debt, public-sector 81; deflationary forces 44; economic stability 81; financial crisis 24, 26–32, 27, 37, 41, 42, 81; financial systems 28–32, 153–7; money creation 178–9; post-growth economy 178–9, 223 Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (Graeber) 28 decoupling xix, xx, xxxvii, 21, 84–7; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 84, 86, 87, 88, 95, 104; green growth 163, 163–5; historical perspectives 87–96, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95; need for new economic model 101–2; relationship between relative and absolute 96–101 deep emission and resource cuts 99, 102 deficit spending 41, 43 deflationary forces, post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 degrowth movement 161–3, 177 demand 104, 113–16, 166–7; post-financial crisis 44–5; post-growth economy 162, 164, 166–9, 171–2, 174–5 dematerialisation 102, 143 democratisation, and wellbeing 59 deposit guarantees 35 deregulation 27, 34, 36, 196 desire, role in consumer behaviour 68, 69, 70, 114 destructive materialism 104, 112, 113, 116–17 Deutsche Bank 41 devaluation of currency 30, 45 Dichter, Ernest 114 digital economy 44, 219–20 dilemma of growth xxxi, 66–7, 104, 210; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; decoupling 85, 87, 164; degrowth movement 160–3; economic stability 79–83, 174–6; material abundance 67–72; moving beyond 165, 166, 183–4; role of the state 198 diminishing marginal utility: alternative hedonism 125, 126; wellbeing 51–2, 57, 60, 73, 75–6, 79 disposable incomes 27, 67, 118 distributed ownership 223 Dittmar, Helga 126 domestic debt see credit dopamine 68 Dordogne, mindfulness community 128 double movement of society 198 Douglas, Mary 70 Douthwaite, Richard 178 downshifting 128 driving analogy, managing change 16–17 durability, consumer goods 113, 204, 220 dynamic systems, managing change 16–17 Eastern Europe 76, 122 Easterlin, Richard 56, 57, 59; paradox 56, 58 eco-villages, Findhorn community 128 ecological investment 101, 166–70, 220 see also investment ecological limits see limits (ecological) ecological (ecosystem) services 152, 169, 223 The Ecology of Money (Douthwaite) 178 economic growth see growth economic models see alternatives; business-as-usual model; financial systems; future visions; mathematical models; post-growth macroeconomics economic output see efficiency; productivity ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’ (Keynes) 145 economic stability 22, 154, 157, 161; financial system weaknesses 34, 35, 36, 180; growth 21, 24, 67, 79–83, 174–6, 210; post-growth economy 161–3, 165, 174–6, 208, 219; role of the state 181–3, 195, 198, 199 economic structures: post-growth economy 227; financial system reforms 224; role of the state 205; selfishness 137 see also business-as-usual model; financial systems ecosystem functioning 62–3 see also limits (ecological) ecosystem services 152, 169, 223 Ecuador xxxi, 6 education: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; and income 67, 76, 76; investment in 150–1; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements efficiency measures 84, 86–8, 95, 104, 109–11, 142–3; energy 41, 109–11; growth 111, 211; investment 109, 151; of scale 104 see also labour productivity; relative decoupling Ehrlich, Paul 13, 96 elasticity of substitution, labour and capital 177–8 electricity grid 41, 151, 156 see also energy Elgin, Duane 127 Ellen MacArthur Foundation 144 emissions see greenhouse gas emissions employee ownership 223 employment intensity vs. carbon dioxide emissions 148 see also labour productivity empty self 116, 117 see also consumerism ends above means 159 energy return on investment (EROI) 12, 169 energy services/systems 142: efficiency 41, 109–11; inputs/intensity 87–8, 151; investment 41, 109–10, 151–2; renewable xxxv, 41, 168–9 engine of growth 145; consumerism 104, 108, 161; services 143, 170–4 see also circular flow of the economy enough is enough see limits enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 158 see also novelty/innovation entitlements see basic entitlements entrepreneur as visionary 112 entrepreneurial state 220 Environmental Assessment Agency, Netherlands 62 environmental quality 12 see also pollution environmentalism 9 EROI (energy return on investment) 12, 169 Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus) 9–11, 132–3 evolutionary map, human heart 136, 136 evolutionary theory 132–3; common good 193; post-growth economy 226; psychology 133–5; selfishness and altruism 196 exchange values 55, 61 see also gross domestic product existential fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15 exponential expansion 1, 11, 20–1, 210 see also growth external debt 32, 42 extinctions/biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 Eyres, Harry 215 Fable of the Bees (de Mandeville) 131–2 factor inputs 109–10 see also capital; labour; resource use fast food 128 fatalism 186 FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change) 92 fear of death, existential 69, 104, 115, 212–15 feedback loops 16–17 financial crisis (2008) 6, 23–5, 32, 77, 103; causes and culpability 25–8; financial system weaknesses 32–7, 108; Keynesianism 37–43, 188; nationalisation of financial sector 188; need for financial reforms 175; role of debt 24, 26–32, 27, 81, 179; role of state 191; slowing of growth 43–7, 45; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–21, 119; types/definitions of capitalism 106; youth unemployment 144–5 financial systems: common pool resources 192; debt-based/role of debt 28–32, 153–7; post-growth economy 179, 208; systemic weaknesses 32–7; and wellbeing 47 see also banking system; business-as-usual model; financial crisis; reform Findhorn community 128 finite limits of planet see limits (ecological) Fisher, Irving 156, 157 fishing rights 22 flourishing see capabilities for flourishing; limits; wellbeing flow states 127 Flynt, Larry 40 food 67 see also basic entitlements Ford, Henry 154 forestry/forests 22, 192 Forrester, Jay 11 fossil fuels 11, 20 see also oil Foucault, Michel 197 fracking 14, 15 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) 92 France: GDP per capita 58, 75, 76; inequality 206; life-expectancy 74; mindfulness community 128; working hours 145 free market 106: financial crisis 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; ideological controversy/conflict 186–7, 188 freedom/autonomy: vs. common good 193–4; consumer 22, 68–9; language of goods 212; personal choices for improvement 216–18; wellbeing 49, 59, 62 see also individualism Friedman, Benjamin 176 Friedman, Milton 36, 156, 157 frugality 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 fun (more fun with less stuff) 129, 217 future visions 2, 158, 217–21; community banking 155–6; dilemma of growth 211; enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 147–8, 158; entrepreneur as visionary 112; financial crisis as opportunity 25; and growth 165–6; investment 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208; money as social good 140, 153–7, 158; processes of change 185; role of the state 198, 199, 203; timescales for change 16–17; work as participation 140, 144–9, 148, 158 see also alternatives; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Gandhi, Mahatma 127 GDP see gross domestic product gene, selfish 134–5 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) 54, 54 geographical community 122–3 Germany xxxi; Federal Ministry of Finance 224–5; inequality 206; relative income effect 58; trade balance 31; work as participation 146 Glass Steagal Act 35 Global Commodity Price Index (1992–2015) 13 global corporations 106–7 global economy 98: culture 70; decoupling 86–8, 91, 93–5, 95, 97, 98, 100; exponential expansion 20–1; inequality 4, 5–6; interconnectedness 91, 227; post-financial crisis slowing of growth 45 Global Research report (HSBC) 41 global warming see climate change Godley, Wynne 179 Goldman Sachs 37 good life 3, 6; moral dimension 63, 104; wellbeing 48, 50 goods see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods Gordon, Robert 44 governance 22, 185–6; commons 190–2; crisis of commitment 192–5, 197; economic stability 34, 35; establishing limits 200–8, 206; growth 195–9; ideological controversy/conflict 186–9; moving towards change 197–200, 220–1; post-growth economy 181–3, 182; power of corporations 106; for prosperity 209; signals 130 government as household metaphor 30, 42 governmentality 197, 198 GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) 54, 54 Graeber, David 28 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 35 Great Depression 39–40 Greece: austerity xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvii, 43; energy inputs 88; financial crisis 28, 30, 31, 77; life expectancy 74; schooling 76; relative income effect 58; youth unemployment 144 Green Economy initiative 41 green: growth xxxvii, 18, 85, 153, 166, 170; investment 41 Green New Deal, UNEP 40–1, 152, 188 greenhouse gas emissions 18, 85, 86, 91, 92; absolute decoupling 89–92, 90, 92, 98–101, 100; dilemma of growth 210–11; vs. employment intensity 148; future visions 142, 151, 201–2, 220; Kyoto Protocol 18, 90; reduction targets 19–20; relative decoupling 87, 88, 89, 93, 98–101, 100 see also climate change Greenspan, Alan 35 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita 3–5, 15, 54; climate change 18; decoupling 85, 93, 94; financial crisis 27, 28, 32; green growth 163–5; life expectancy 74, 75, 78; as measure of prosperity 3–4, 5, 53–5, 54, 60–1; post-financial crisis 43, 44; post-growth economy 207; schooling 76; wellbeing 55–61, 58 see also income growth xxxvii; capitalism 105; credit 36, 178–80; decoupling 85, 96–101; economic stability 21, 24, 67, 80, 210; financial crisis 37, 38; future visions 209, 223, 224; inequality 177; labour productivity 111; moving beyond 165, 166; novelty 112; ownership 105; post-financial crisis slowing 43–7, 45; prosperity as 3–7, 23, 66; role of the state 195–9; sustainable investment 166–70; wellbeing 59–60; as zero sum game 57 see also dilemma of growth; engine of growth; green growth; limits to growth; post-growth macroeconomy growth imperative hypothesis 37, 174, 175, 177–80, 183 habit formation, acquisition as 68 Hall, Peter 106, 188 Hamilton, William 134 Hansen, James 17 happiness see wellbeing/happiness Happiness (Layard) 55 Hardin, Garrett 190–1 Harvey, David 189, 192 Hayek, Friedrich 187, 189, 191 health: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; inequality 72–3, 205–6, 206; investment 150–1; and material abundance 67, 68; personal choices for improvement 217; response to economic hardship 80; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements Heath, Edward 66, 82 hedonism 120, 137, 196; alternatives 125–6 Hirsch, Fred xxxii–xxxiii historical perspectives: absolute decoupling 86, 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; relative decoupling 86, 87–9, 89 Holdren, John 96 holistic solutions, post-growth economy 175 household finances: house purchases 28–9; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–20, 119 see also credit household metaphor, government as 30, 42 HSBC Global Research report 41 human capabilities see capabilities for flourishing human happiness see wellbeing/happiness human nature/psyche 3, 132–5, 138; acquisition 68; alternative hedonism 125; evolutionary map of human heart 136, 136; intrinsic values 131; meaning/purpose 49–50; novelty/innovation 116; selfishness vs. altruism 133–8; short-termism/living for today 194; spending vs. saving behaviour 34, 118–21, 119; symbolic role of goods 69 see also intrinsic values human rights see basic entitlements humanitarian perspectives: financial crisis 24; growth 79; inequality 5, 52, 53 see also intrinsic values hyperbolic discounting 194 hyperindividualism 226 see also individualism hyper-materialisation 140, 157 I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes) 7 Iceland: financial crisis 28; life expectancy 74, 75; relative income effect 56; response to economic hardship 79–80; schooling 76; sovereign money system 157 identity construction 52, 69, 115, 116, 212, 219 IEA (International Energy Agency) 14, 152 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 45, 156–7 immaterial goods 139–40 see also intrinsic values; meaning/purpose immortality, symbolic role of goods 69, 104, 115, 212–14 inclusive growth see inequality; smart growth income 3, 4, 5, 66, 124; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; child mortality 74–5, 75; decoupling 96; economic stability 82; education 76; life expectancy 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; poor nations 67; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; tax revenues 81 see also gross domestic product INDCs (intended nationally determined commitments) 19 India: decoupling 99; growth 99; life expectancy 74, 75; philosophy 127; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; savings 27; schooling 76 indicators of environmental quality 96 see also biodiversity; greenhouse gas emissions; pollution; resource use individualism 136, 226; progressive state 194–7, 199, 200, 203, 207 see also freedom/autonomy industrial development 12 see also technological advances inequality 22, 67; basic entitlements 72; child mortality 75, 75; credible alternatives 219, 224; deflationary forces 44; fatalism 186; financial crisis 24; global 4, 5–6, 99, 100; financial system weaknesses 32–3; post-growth economy 174, 176–8; role of the state 198, 205–7, 206; selfishness vs. altruism 137; symbolic role of goods 71; wellbeing 47, 104 see also poverty infant mortality rates 72, 75 inflation 26, 30, 110, 157, 167 infrastructure, civic 150–1 Inglehart, Ronald 58, 59 innovation see novelty/innovation; technological advances inputs 80–1 see also capital; labour productivity; resource use Inside Job documentary film 26 instant gratification 50, 61 instinctive acquisition 68 Institute for Fiscal Studies 81 Institute for Local Self-Reliance 204 institutional structures 130 see also economic structures; governance intended nationally determined commitments (INDCs) 19 intensity factor, technological 96, 97 see also technological advances intentional communities 127–9 interconnectedness, global 91, 227 interest payments/rates 39, 43, 110; financial crisis 29, 30, 33, 39; post-growth economy 178–80 see also credit; debt Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 18, 19, 201–2 International Energy Agency (IEA) 14, 152 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 45, 156–7 intrinsic values 126–31, 135–6, 212; role of the state 199, 200 see also belonging; community; meaning/purpose; simplicity/frugality investment 107–10, 108; ecological/sustainable 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; and innovation 112; loans 29; future visions 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208, 220; and savings 108; social 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 invisible hand metaphor 132, 133, 187 IPAT equation, relative and absolute decoupling 96 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 18, 19, 201–2 Ireland 28; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75; schooling 76; wellbeing 58 iron cage of consumerism see consumerism iron ore 94 James, Oliver 205 James, William 68 Japan: equality 206; financial crisis 27, 45; life expectancy 74, 76, 79; relative income effect 56, 58; resource use 93; response to economic hardship 79–80 Jefferson, Thomas 185 Jobs, Steve 210 Johnson, Boris 120–1 Kahneman, Daniel 60 Kasser, Tim 126 keeping up with the Joneses 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect Kennedy, Robert 48, 53 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesianism 23, 34, 120, 174, 181–3, 187–8; financial crisis 37–43; financial system reforms 157; part-time working 145; steady state economy 159, 162 King, Alexander 11 Krugman, Paul 39, 85, 86, 102 Kyoto Protocol (1992) 18, 90 labour: child 62, 154; costs 110; division of 158; elasticity of substitution 177, 178; intensity 109, 148, 208; mobility 123; production inputs 80, 109; structures of capitalism 107 labour productivity 80–1, 109–11; Baumol’s cost disease 170–2; and economic growth 111; future visions 220, 224; investment as commitment 150; need for investment 109; post-growth economy 175, 208; services as engine of growth 170; sustainable investment 166, 170; trade off with resource use 110; work-sharing 145, 146, 147, 148, 148, 149 Lahr, Christin 224–5 laissez-faire capitalism 187, 195, 196 see also free market Lakoff, George 30 language of goods 212; material footprint of 139–40; signalling of social status 71; and wellbeing 124 see also consumerism; material goods; symbolic role of goods Layard, Richard 55 leadership, political 199 see also governance Lebow, Victor 120 Lehman Brothers, bankruptcy 23, 25, 26, 118 leisure economy 204 liberal market economies 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6 life expectancy: and income 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; inequality 206; response to economic hardship 80 see also basic entitlements life-satisfaction 73; inequality 205; relative income effect 55–61, 58 see also wellbeing/happiness limits, ecological 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 20–2; climate change 17–20; decoupling 86; financial crisis 23–4; growth 21, 165, 210; post-growth economy 201–2, 226–7; role of the state 198, 200–2, 206–7; and social boundaries 141; wellbeing 62–63, 185 limits, flourishing within 61–5, 185; alternative hedonism 125–6; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 215, 218, 219, 221; paradox of materialism 121–23; prosperity 67–72, 113, 212; role of the state 201–2, 205; selfishness 131–8; shame 123–4; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–21, 119 see also sustainable prosperity limits to growth: confronting 7–8; exceeding 20–2; wellbeing 62–3 Limits to Growth report (Club of Rome) xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16 ‘The Living Standard’ essay (Sen) 50, 123–4 living standards 82 see also prosperity Lloyd, William Forster 190 loans 154; community investment 155–6; financial system weaknesses 34 see also credit; debt London School of Economics 25 loneliness 123, 137 see also alienation long-term: investments 222; social good 219 long-term wellbeing vs. short-term pleasures 194, 197 longevity see life expectancy love 212 see also intrinsic values low-carbon transition 19, 220 LowGrow model for the Canadian economy 175 MacArthur Foundation 144 McCracken, Grant 115 Malthus, Thomas Robert 9–11, 132–3, 190 market economies: coordinated 27, 106; liberal 27, 35–6, 106, 107 market liberalism 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6; wellbeing 47 marketing 140, 203–4 Marmot review, health inequality in the UK 72 Marx, Karl/Marxism 9, 189, 192, 225 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 11, 12, 15 material abundance see opulence material goods 68–9; identity 52; language of 139–40; and wellbeing 47, 48, 49, 51, 65, 126 see also symbolic role of goods material inputs see resource use materialism: and fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; and intrinsic values 127–31; paradox of 121–3; price of 126; and religion 115; values 126, 135–6 see also consumerism mathematical models/simulations 132; austerity policies 181; countercyclical spending 181–2, 182; decoupling 84, 91, 96–101; inequality 176–8; post-growth economy 164; stock-flow consistent 179–80 Mawdsley, Emma 70 Mazzucato, Mariana 193, 220 MDG (Millennium Development Goals) 74–5 Meadows, Dennis and Donella 11, 12, 15, 16 meaning/purpose 2, 8, 22; beyond material goods 212–16; consumerism 69, 203, 215; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 218–20; wellbeing 49, 52, 60, 121–2; work 144, 146 see also intrinsic values means and ends 159 mental health: inequality 206; meaning/purpose 213 metaphors: government as household 30, 42; invisible hand 132, 133, 187 Middle East, energy inputs 88 Miliband, Ed 199 Mill, John Stuart 125, 159, 160, 174 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 74–5 mindfulness 128 Minsky, Hyman 34, 35, 40, 182, 208 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 11, 12, 15 mixed economies 106 mobility of labour, loneliness index 123 Monbiot, George 84, 85, 86, 91 money: creation 154, 157, 178–9; and prosperity 5; as social good 140, 153–7, 158 see also financial systems monopoly power, corporations 106–7 The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Friedman) 82, 176 moral dimensions, good life 63 see also intrinsic values moral hazards, separation of risk from reward 35 ‘more fun with less stuff’ 129, 217 mortality fears 69, 104, 115, 212–15 mortality rates, and income 74, 74–6, 75 mortgage loans 28–9, 35 multinational corporations 106–7 national debt see debt, public-sector nationalisation 191; financial crisis 38, 188 natural selection 132–3 see also struggle for existence nature, rights of 6–7 negative emissions 98–9 negative feedback loops 16–17 Netherlands 58, 62, 206, 207 neuroscientific perspectives: flourishing 68, 69; human behaviour 134 New Climate Economy report Better Growth, Better Climate 18 New Deal, USA 39 New Economics Foundation 175 nickel, commodity prices 13 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001) 121 Nordhaus, William 171, 172–3 North America 128, 155 see also Canada; United States Norway: advertising 204; inequality 206; investment as commitment 151–2; life expectancy 74; relative income effect 58; schooling 76 novelty/innovation 104, 108, 113; and anxiety 116–17, 124, 211; crisis of commitment 195; dilemma of growth 211; human psyche 135–6, 136, 137; investment 150, 166, 168; post-growth economy 226; role of the state 196, 197, 199; as service 140, 141–4, 158; symbolic role of goods 114–16, 213 see also technological advances Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler and Sunstein) 194–5 Nussbaum, Martha 64 nutrient loading, critical boundaries 17 nutrition 67 see also basic entitlements obesity 72, 78, 206 obsolescence, built in 113, 204, 220 oceans: acidification 17; common pool resources 192 Offer, Avner 57, 61, 71, 194, 195 oil prices 14, 21; decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; resource constraints 15 oligarchic capitalism 106, 107 opulence 50–1, 52, 67–72 original sin 9, 131 Ostrom, Elinor and Vincent 190, 191 output see efficiency; gross domestic product; productivity ownership: and expansion 105; private vs. public 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; new models 223–4; types/definitions of capitalism 105–7 Oxfam 141 paradoxes: materialism 121–3; thrift 120 Paris Agreement 19, 101, 201 participation in society 61, 114, 122, 129, 137; future visions 200, 205, 218, 219, 225; work as 140–9, 148, 157, 158 see also social inclusion part-time working 145, 146, 149, 175 Peccei, Aurelio 11 Perez, Carlota 112 performing arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 personal choice 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy personal property 189, 191 Pickett, Kate 71, 205–6 Piketty, Thomas 33, 176, 177 planetary boundaries see limits (ecological) planning for change 17 pleasure 60–1 see also wellbeing/happiness Plum Village mindfulness community 128 Polanyi, Karl 198 policy see governance political leadership 199 see also governance Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts 41 pollution 12, 21, 53, 95–6, 143 polycentric governance 191, 192 Poor Laws 10 poor nations see poverty population increase 3, 12, 63, 96, 97, 190; Malthus on 9–11, 132–3 porn industry 40 Portugal 28, 58, 88, 206 positional competition 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison positive feedback loops 16–17 post-growth capitalism 224 post-growth macroeconomics 159–60, 183–4, 221; credit 178–80; degrowth movement 161–3; economic stability 174–6; green growth 163–5; inequality 176–8; role of state 181–3, 182, 200–8, 206; services 170–4; sustainable investment 166–70 see also alternatives; future visions; reform poverty 4, 5–6, 216; basic entitlements 72; flourishing within limits 212; life expectancy 74, 74; need for new economic model 101; symbolic role of goods 70; wellbeing 48, 59–60, 61, 67 see also inequality; relative income effect power politics 200 predator–prey analogy 103–4, 117 private credit see credit private vs. public: common good 208; ownership 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; salaries 130 privatisation 191, 219 product lifetimes, obsolescence 113, 204, 220 production: inputs 80–1; ownership 191, 219, 223 productivity: investment 109, 167, 168, 169; post-growth economy 224; services as engine of growth 171, 172, 173; targets 147; trap 175 see also efficiency measures; labour productivity; resource productivity profits: definitions of capitalism 105; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 87; investment 109; motive 104; post-growth economy 224; and wages 175–8 progress 2, 50–5, 54 see also novelty/innovation; technological advances progressive sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 progressive state 185, 220–2; contested 186–9; countering consumerism 202–5; equality measures 205–7, 206; governance of the commons 190–2; governance as commitment device 192–5; governmentality of growth 195–7; limit-setting 201–2; moving towards 197–200; post-growth macroeconomics 207–8, 224; prosperity 209 prosocial behaviour 198 see also social contract prosperity 1–3, 22, 121; capabilities for flourishing 61–5; and growth 3–7, 23, 66, 80, 160; and income 3–4, 5, 66–7; limits of 67–72, 113, 212; materialistic vision 137; progress measures 50–5, 54; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; social perspectives 2, 22, 48–9; state roles 209 see also capabilities for flourishing; post-growth macroeconomics; sustainable prosperity; wellbeing prudence, financial 120, 195, 221; financial crisis 33, 34, 35 public sector spending: austerity policies 189; countercyclical spending strategy 181–2, 182; welfare economy 169 public services/amenities: common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199; future visions 204, 218–20; investment 155–6, 204; ownership 223 see also private vs. public; service-based economies public transport 41, 129, 193, 217 purpose see meaning/purpose Putnam, Robert 122 psyche, human see human nature/psyche quality, environmental 12 see also pollution quality of life: enterprise as service 142; inequality 206; sustainable 128 quality to throughput ratios 113 quantitative easing 43 Queen Elizabeth II 25, 32, 34, 37 quiet revolution 127–31 Raworth, Kate 141 Reagan, Ronald 8 rebound phenomenon 111 recession 23–4, 28, 81, 161–3 see also financial crisis recreation/leisure industries 143 recycling 129 redistribution of wealth 52 see also inequality reforms 182–3, 222; economic structures 224; and financial crisis 103; financial systems 156–8, 180 see also alternatives; future visions; post-growth economy relative decoupling 84–5, 86; historical perspectives 87–9, 89; relationship with absolute decoupling 96–101, 111 relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison religious perspectives 9–10, 214–15; materialism as alternative to religion 115; original sin 9, 131; wellbeing 48, 49 see also existential fear of death renewable energy xxxv, 41, 168–169 repair/renovation 172, 220 resource constraints 3, 7, 8, 11–15, 47 resource productivity 110, 151, 168, 169, 220 resource use: conflicts 22; credible alternatives 101, 220; decoupling 84–9, 92–5, 94, 95; and economic output 142–4; investment 151, 153, 168, 169; trade off with labour costs 110 retail therapy 115 see also consumerism; shopping revenues, state 222–3 see also taxation revolution 186 see also social stability rights: environment/nature 6–7; human see basic entitlements risk, financial 24, 25, 33, 35 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) 187 Robinson, Edward 132 Robinson, Joan 159 Rockström, Johan 17, 165 romantic movement 9–10 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 35, 39 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 9, 131 Russia 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 sacred canopy 214, 215 salaries: private vs. public sector 130, 171; and profits 175–8 Sandel, Michael 150, 164, 218 São Paulo, Clean City Law 204 Sardar, Zia 49, 50 Sarkozy, Nicolas xxxi, 53 savage state, romantic movement 9–10 savings 26–7, 28, 107–9, 108; investment 149; ratios 34, 118–20, 119 scale, efficiencies of 104 Scandinavia 27, 122, 204 scarcity, managing change 16–17 Schumpeter, Joseph 112 Schwartz, Shalom 135–6, 136 schooling see education The Science of Desire (Dichter) 114 secular stagnation 43–7, 45, 173 securitisation, mortgage loans 35 security: moving towards 219; and wellbeing 48, 61 self-development 204 self-expression see identity construction self-transcending behaviours see transcendence The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 134–5 selfishness 133–8, 196 Sen, Amartya 50, 52, 61–2, 123–4 service concept/servicization 140–4, 147–8, 148, 158 service-based economies 219; engine of growth 170–4; substitution between labour and capital 178; sustainable investment 169–70 see also public services SFC (stock-flow consistent) economic models 179–80 shame 123–4 shared endeavours, post-growth economy 227 Sheldon, Solomon 214 shelter see basic entitlements shopping 115, 116, 130 see also consumerism short-termism/living for today 194, 197, 200 signals: sent out by society 130, 193, 198, 203, 207; social status 71 see also language of goods Simon, Julian 13 simplicity/simple life 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 simulations see mathematical models/simulations slow: capital 170; movement 128 smart growth 85, 163–5 see also green growth Smith, Adam 51, 106–7, 123, 132, 187 social assets 220 social boundaries (minimum standards) 141 see also basic entitlements social care 150–1 see also caring professions social comparison 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect social contract 194, 198, 199, 200 social inclusion 48, 69–71, 114, 212 see also participation in society social investment 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 social justice 198 see also inequality social logic of consumerism 114–16, 204 social stability 24, 26, 80, 145, 186, 196, 205 see also alienation social status see status social structures 80, 129, 130, 137, 196, 200, 203 social tolerance, and wellbeing 59, 60 social unrest see social stability social wage 40 social welfare: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 socialism 223 Sociobiology (Wilson) 134 soil integrity 220 Solon, quotation 47, 49, 71 Soper, Kate 125–6 Soros, George 36 Soskice, David 106 Soviet Union, former 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 Spain 28, 58, 144, 206 SPEAR organization, responsible investment 155 species loss/extinctions 17, 47, 62, 101 speculation 93, 99, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170; economic stability 180; financial crisis 26, 33, 35; short-term profiteering 150; spending: behaviour of ordinary people 34, 119, 120–1; countercyclical 181–2, 182, 188; economic stability 81; as way out of recession 41, 44, 119, 120–1; and work cycle 125 The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett) 71, 205–6 spiritual perspectives 117, 127, 128, 214 stability see economic stability; social stability stagflation 26 stagnant sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 stagnation: economic stability 81–2; labour productivity 145; post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 see also recession state capitalism, types/definitions of capitalism 106 state revenues, from social investment 222–3 see also taxation state roles see governance status 207, 209, 211; and possessions 69, 71, 114, 115, 117 see also language of goods; symbolic role of goods Steady State Economics (Daly) xxxii steady state economies 82, 159, 160, 174, 180 see also post-growth macroeconomics Stern, Nicholas 17–18 stewardship: role of the state 200; sustainable investment 168 Stiglitz, Joseph 53 stock-flow consistent (SFC) economic models 179–80 Stockholm Resilience Centre 17, 201 stranded assets 167–8 see also ownership structures of capitalism see economic structures struggle for existence 8–11, 125, 132–3 Stuckler, David 43 stuff see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods subjective wellbeing (SWB) 49, 58, 58–9, 71, 122, 129 see also wellbeing/happiness subprime lending 26 substitution, between labour and capital 177–178 suffering, struggle for existence 10 suicide 43, 52, 77 Sukdhev, Pavan 41 sulphur dioxide pollution 95–6 Summers, Larry 36 Sunstein, Cass 194 sustainability xxv–xxvi, 102, 104, 126; financial systems 154–5; innovation 226; investment 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; resource constraints 12; role of the state 198, 203, 207 see also sustainable prosperity Sustainable Development Strategy, UK 198 sustainable growth see green growth sustainable prosperity 210–12; creating credible alternatives 219–21; finding meaning beyond material commodities 212–16; implications for capitalism 222–5; personal choices for improvement 216–18; and utopianism 225–7 see also limits (flourishing within) SWB see subjective wellbeing; wellbeing/happiness Switzerland 11, 46, 157; citizen’s income 207; income relative to wellbeing 58; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75 symbolic role of goods 69, 70–1; existential fear of death 212–16; governance 203; innovation/novelty 114–16; material footprints 139–40; paradox of materialism 121–2 see also language of goods; material goods system dynamics model 11–12, 15 tar sands/oil shales 15 taxation: capital 177; income 81; inequality 206; post-growth economy 222 technological advances 12–13, 15; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 96–8, 100–3, 164–5; dilemma of growth 211; economic stability 80; population increase 10–11; role of state 193, 220 see also novelty/innovation Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 8 terror management, and consumption 69, 104, 115, 212–15 terrorist attacks (9/11) 121 Thailand, Buddhist monasteries 128 Thaler, Richard 194 theatre, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 theology see religious perspectives theory of evolution 132–3 thermodynamics, laws of 112, 164 Thich Nhat Hanh 128 thrift 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 throwaway society 113, 172, 204 timescales for change 16–17 tin, commodity prices 13 Today programme interview xxix, xxviii Totnes, transition movement 128–9 Towards a Green Economy report (UNEP) 152–3 Townsend, Peter 48, 61 trade balance 31 trading standards 204 tradition 135–6, 136, 226 ‘Tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin) 190–1 transcendence 214 see also altruism; meaning/purpose; spiritual perspectives transition movement, Totnes 128–9 Triodos Bank 156, 165 Trumpf (machine-tool makers) Germany 146 trust, loss of see alienation tungsten, commodity prices 13 Turkey 58, 88 Turner, Adair 157 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015) 19 UBS (Swiss bank) 46 Ubuntu, African philosophy 227 unemployment 77; consumer goods 215; degrowth movement 162; financial crisis 24, 40, 41, 43; Great Depression 39–40; and growth 38; labour productivity 80–1; post-growth economy 174, 175, 183, 208, 219; work as participation 144–6 United Kingdom: Green New Deal group 152; greenhouse gas emissions 92; labour productivity 173; resource inputs 93; Sustainable Development Strategy 198 United Nations: Development Programme 6; Environment Programme 18, 152–3; Green Economy initiative 41 United States: credit unions 155–6; debt 27, 31–32; decoupling 88; greenhouse gas emissions 90–1; subprime lending 26; Works Progress Administration 39 universal basic income 221 see also citizen’s income University of Massachusetts, Political Economy Research Institute 41 utilitarianism/utility, wellbeing 50, 52–3, 55, 60 utopianism 8, 38, 125, 179; post-growth economy 225–7 values, materialistic 126, 135–6 see also intrinsic values Veblen, Thorstein 115 Victor, Peter xxxviii, 146, 175, 177, 180 vision of progress see future visions; post-growth economy volatility, commodity prices 14, 21 wages: and profits 175–8; private vs. public sector 130, 171 walking, personal choices for improvement 217 water use 22 Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (Smith) 123, 132 wealth redistribution 52 see also inequality Weber, Axel 46 welfare policies: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 welfare of livestock 220 wellbeing/happiness 47–50, 53, 121–2, 124; collective 209; consumer goods 4, 21, 22, 126; growth 6, 165, 211; intrinsic values 126, 129; investment 150; novelty/innovation 117; opulence 50–2, 67–72; personal choices for improvement 217; planetary boundaries 141; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; simplicity 129; utilitarianism 50, 52–3, 55, 60 see also capabilities for flourishing western lifestyles 70, 210 White, William 46 Whybrow, Peter 68 Wilhelm, Richard 7 Wilkinson, Richard 71, 205–6 Williams, Tennessee 213 Wilson, Edward 134 wisdom traditions 48, 49, 63, 128, 213–14 work: as participation 140–9, 148, 157, 158; and spend cycle 125; sharing 145, 146, 149, 175 Works Progress Administration, USA 39 World Bank 160 World Values Survey 58 youth unemployment, financial crisis 144–5 zero sum game, growth as 57, 71


pages: 451 words: 115,720

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex by Rupert Darwall

1960s counterculture, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Bakken shale, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, gigafactory, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, market design, means of production, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Murray Bookchin, Neil Armstrong, nuclear winter, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, Paris climate accords, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, precautionary principle, pre–internet, recommendation engine, renewable energy transition, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Solyndra, Strategic Defense Initiative, subprime mortgage crisis, tech baron, tech billionaire, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, women in the workforce, young professional

What was Ostwald’s logic in singling out the sun? In coming close to the Aristotelian notion of the “prime mover,” which medieval theologians adduced as proof for the existence of God, Ostwald’s solar philosophy teeters on the brink of paganism. Ostwald makes an appearance in the chapter on the socialist roots of Nazism in The Road to Serfdom. Hayek argued that it had been the union of the anticapitalist forces of the right and the left, “the fusion of radical and conservative socialism,” that had driven everything that was liberal out of Germany.38 In Ostwald’s system, his energy ideas form the basis for the collectivist organization of society.

Cooperation on Climate Change,” June 10, 2009, http://www.brookings.edu/research/speeches/2009/06/10-climate-antholis. 35Derived from illustrative annual yield of 1 kW solar PV array using standard polycrystalline modules fixed at optimal tilt, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, PV Watts Calculator. 36Friedrich Nietzsche (tr. R. J. Hollingdale), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (London, 1969), p. 39. 37Hermann Scheer, A Solar Manifesto (1993, 2nd edition, 2001, London), p. 8. 38F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944; Abingdon and New York, reprinted 2006), pp. 172–173. 39Ibid., p. 178. 40Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels: The Life of Joseph Goebbels, the Mephistophelean Genius of Nazi Propaganda (London, 1995), p. 41. 41Sean O’Hagan, “Man of Mystery” The Observer, January 30, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/jan/30/art2 (accessed September 8, 2015); and Ulrike Knöfel, “Beuys Biography: Book Accuses Artist of Close Ties to Nazis,” Spiegelonline, May 17, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-joseph-beuys-biography-discloses-ties-to-nazis-a-900509.html (accessed September 9, 2015). 13.

Habsburg Empire Hambler, Clive Hamilton, Alexander Federalist Papers, The Hampton, Keith Hardin, Garrett Living within Limits (1993) “Tragedy of the Commons, The” (1968) Harich, Wolfgang Communism Without Growth (1975) Hart, H.L.A. Hartkopf, Günter Hartnett-White, Kathleen Fueling Freedom Harvard University Haussleiter, August Hayden, Tom Hayek, Friedrich von Road to Serfdom, The Heidegger, Martin Held, David Helsinki Agreement on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975) Hertgaard, Mark Hess, Rudolf Hicks, Stephen Explaining Post-Modernism Himmler, Heinrich Hirth, Lion Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf rise to power (1933) Hockenos, Paul Hodel, Donald US Energy Secretary Hollande, François energy policies of Holliday, Steve Honnef, Hermann Hoover Institution Horkheimer, Max Horner, Christopher Huber, Peter Bottomless Well, The (2005) Hueper, Wilhelm Hume, David Humphrey, Herbert Hungary government of Hunter, Robert Huntford, Roland New Totalitarians, The (1971) Hüssy, Daniel Hustedt, Michaele Huxley, Aldous Brave New World hydro power hydrocarbons pricing of IG Farben Leuna facility IG Metall Industrial Revolution Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) Institute of Global Environment and Society Intel Corporation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) establishment of Fifth Assessment Report First Assessment Report Working Group III Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (1987) signing of International Council for Science (ICSU) International Energy Agency International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) International Meteorological Institute International Peace Coordination and Cooperation Network establishment of (1983) International Union for the Conservation of Nature Iraq Baghdad Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003–2011) al-Islam, Saif Islamic State (ISIS) Israel Tel Aviv Israel, Joachim Italy Bellagio Florence Milan Rome Ivanpah Solar Project Jackson, Lisa Japan Fukushima nuclear plant disaster (2011) Jay, Martin Jesuits John D. and Catherine T.


pages: 809 words: 237,921

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, AltaVista, Andrei Shleifer, bank run, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, central bank independence, centre right, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, export processing zone, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Kula ring, labor-force participation, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, openstreetmap, out of africa, PageRank, pattern recognition, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Skype, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, the market place, transcontinental railway, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks

Hayek was particularly concerned about “socialist” state planning and administrative regulation of the economy morphing into a type of totalitarianism. He first expressed his ideas about the dangers of growing state administration in the economy in a memo written to William Beveridge. This memo grew into a magazine article, and then into a book, The Road to Serfdom, that has since become one of the most influential works of social science of the twentieth century. Hayek was not against all government intervention or social insurance. He wrote, “Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire,” and added “there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody.”

But there are many ways in which we can work toward the same goal, and in the present state of opinion there is some danger that our impatience for quick results may lead us to choose instruments which, though perhaps more efficient for achieving the particular ends, are not compatible with the preservation of a free society. He continued: Of course, six years of socialist government in England have not produced anything resembling a totalitarian state. But those who argue that this has disproved the thesis of The Road to Serfdom have really missed one of its main points: that the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations.

Critically, government intervention is also needed for social insurance or redistribution to limit inequality. An important tenet of the textbook approach is that when working to influence the distribution of income in the economy, the state should minimize its impact on market prices and instead rely on taxes and transfers to achieve its objectives. This is consistent with The Road to Serfdom, where Hayek advocated limits on the scope of the state in the economy because markets are more efficient at allocating resources. But critically, Hayek went further and also argued that the increase in the power and involvement of the state can have adverse political implications. Even if some of Hayek’s conclusions were neither fully compelling nor have been borne out by the political developments of the intervening decades, the way he approached the problem broke considerable new ground.


pages: 288 words: 16,556

Finance and the Good Society by Robert J. Shiller

Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, computer age, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, full employment, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market design, means of production, microcredit, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, profit maximization, quantitative easing, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, social contagion, Steven Pinker, tail risk, telemarketer, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Market for Lemons, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Vanguard fund, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Political scientist Benedict Anderson has asserted that the modern nation-state is an “imagined community,” standing in place of family.5 But it is only an imagined community, since the people in it have never met most of the other people in it and have no relationship whatsoever with them. Those who advocate sharing with others face a problem: generosity seems to require a sense of community. Friedrich Hayek, in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, discerned a “universal tendency of collectivist policy to become nationalistic.”6 The imagined community has to be elevated to people’s constant attention to encourage their sympathy with or acquiescence in the collectivist policy. Of course, when Hayek wrote in 1944 his prime example was the German National Socialists, the Nazis.

Roosevelt’s New Deal: Roosevelt nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1939. The New Deal was a relatively humanizing social force, even as it retained the real strength and integrity that characterize the best financial solutions. This loss of a sense of individual participation in society was the concern that occupied Friedrich Hayek in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom. He tended to focus on excessive government intervention as the source of the problem, rather than the practices of big business, but he also spoke of government being captured by big business.2 Excessive reliance on such large controlling entities, Hayek believed, leads to a defeated attitude, the attitude of serfs.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harbough, William T. 1998. “The Prestige Motive for Making Charitable Transfers.” American Economic Review 88(2):277–88. Harriss, C. Lowell. 1951. History and Policies of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. Hayek, F. A. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge. ———. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review 35(4):519– 30. Heckman, James J., and Pedro Carneiro. 2003. “Human Capital Policy.” In James J. Heckman and Alan B. Krueger, Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?, 77–239. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.


pages: 388 words: 125,472

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, autism spectrum disorder, bank run, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, citizen journalism, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, disinformation, don't be evil, Edward Snowden, Etonian, eurozone crisis, falling living standards, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, glass ceiling, hiring and firing, housing crisis, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, James Dyson, Jon Ronson, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, light touch regulation, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, night-watchman state, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, open borders, Overton Window, plutocrats, popular capitalism, post-war consensus, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stakhanovite, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transfer pricing, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent

Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History 1750–2011, 3rd edn (London, 2012), p. 12. 7. http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/structure/churchcommissioners/assets/property-investments/rural.aspx. 8. http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/files/files/Reports/Voting%20and%20Values%20in%20Britain%2011%20FINAL%20 (2).pdf. 9. www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01250.pdf. 10. http://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/49/15/Record-number-of-BME-MPS.html. 11. http://www.boardsforum.co.uk/boardwatch.html. 12. http://raceforopportunity.bitc.org.uk/about-race-opportunity/campaign-aims. 13. http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/resources/monitoring-diversity. 14. Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry (London, 2012). 1. THE OUTRIDERS 1. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London, 1944), p. 10. 2. Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983 (London, 1995), p. 100. 3. George J. Stigler, Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (New York, 1988), pp. 144–5. 4. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, p. 9. 5. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, 1962), p. 5. 6. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London, 1996), p. 140. 7.

The abandonment of laissez-faire economics – or the belief that the state withdrawing itself from economic life was a guarantee of prosperity and freedom – had, he claimed, threatened the very foundations of liberty: ‘We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.’1 Published towards the end of World War II, Hayek’s seminal book The Road to Serfdom was a sensational success. Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold in Britain and other Western countries, and a condensed version was published in Reader’s Digest in April 1945.2 The book’s popularity was of little comfort to Hayek. Despite the huge interest in his work, he wrote to a co-thinker, ‘I am by no means optimistic about the immediate future.


pages: 378 words: 121,495

The Abandonment of the West by Michael Kimmage

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, City Beautiful movement, classic study, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, European colonialism, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gunnar Myrdal, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, Paris climate accords, Peace of Westphalia, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, transatlantic slave trade, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus

Several members of the Vienna school emigrated to Britain in the late 1930s, and over time their ideas and several of the school’s most gifted exponents emigrated to the United States. One of these refugees from Vienna, Friedrich Hayek, published the Road to Serfdom in 1944, its title true to Hayek’s alarming argument. Hayek worried about the “entire abandonment of the individualist tradition which has created Western civilization.” His manifesto on Western liberty captivated conservative readers in the United States, merging the global problem of communism with its local manifestations, the Sino-Soviet bloc abroad with the welfare state at home. How was the United States to get off the road to serfdom and get back on the road to freedom? That was the question. Hardly mainstream in the 1950s, even on the Right, libertarianism was destined to have a profound influence on American foreign policy and on American norms of globalization in the 1990s and the early twenty-first century.

., 1954–1961 (New York: Putnam, 1969), 67. Whittaker Chambers, “vapors,” Duncan Norton-Taylor, ed., Cold Friday (New York: Random House, 1964), 7. 4. Russell Kirk, “he is a golfer,” quoted in James Person, “A Portrait of Chairman Bill,” National Review, April 29, 2010. 5. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Texts and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007), 73. 6. See Jesse Curtis, “‘Will the Jungle Take Over?’ National Review and the Defense of Western Civilization in the Era of Civil Rights and African Decolonization,” Journal of American Studies, May 9, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875818000488 (the original National Review editorials were published August 24, 1957, and April 23, 1960).


pages: 330 words: 77,729

Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes by Mark Skousen

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, delayed gratification, experimental economics, financial independence, Financial Instability Hypothesis, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, liberation theology, liquidity trap, low interest rates, means of production, Meghnad Desai, microcredit, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, pushing on a string, rent control, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school choice, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, Tragedy of the Commons, unorthodox policies, Vilfredo Pareto, zero-sum game

Friedrich Hayek, the leading anti-Keynesian in the 1930s, made the strategic error of ignoring The General Theory when it came out in 1936, a decision he later regretted. During World War II, Hayek lost interest in economics and went on to write about political philosophy in works such as The Road to Serfdom (1944) and The Constitution of Liberty (1960). Other free-market economists, such as Henry Hazlitt and Murray Rothbard, wrote largely from outside the profession and had marginal influence. How did Friedman almost single-handedly change the intellectual climate back from the Keynesian model to the neoclassical model of Adam Smith?

Hayek, Friedrich. 1935 [1931]. Prices and Production. 2d ed. London: George Routledge and Sons. , ed. 1935. Collectivist Economic Planning. London: George Routledge and Sons. . 1939 [1929]. "The 'Paradox' of Thrift." In Profits, Interest and Investment. London: Routledge, 199-263. . 1944. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1976. "Introduction: Carl Menger." In Principles of Economics, ed. Carl Menger. New York: New York University Press. . 1984. The Essence of Hayek, ed. Chiaki Nishiyama and Kurt R.


pages: 305 words: 75,697

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be by Diane Coyle

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Al Roth, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic management, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, call centre, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, choice architecture, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, conceptual framework, congestion charging, constrained optimization, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, data science, DeepMind, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, endowment effect, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, framing effect, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Google bus, haute cuisine, High speed trading, hockey-stick growth, Ida Tarbell, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jean Tirole, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Les Trente Glorieuses, libertarian paternalism, linear programming, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low earth orbit, lump of labour, machine readable, market bubble, market design, Menlo Park, millennium bug, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, multi-sided market, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, Network effects, Occupy movement, Pareto efficiency, payday loans, payment for order flow, Phillips curve, post-industrial society, price mechanism, Productivity paradox, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, savings glut, school vouchers, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, statistical model, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber for X, urban planning, winner-take-all economy, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, Y2K

Hicks’s synthesis (1937) and Samuelson’s canonical textbook Economics (1948) codified Keynesianism for the post-war generation of economists. In this climate even the most ardent free market economists, including Hayek and other founding members of the Mont Pèlerin Society (formed in 1947), accepted a major economic role for the state—although in his famous book The Road to Serfdom (1944) Hayek bemoaned the ‘entire abandonment of the individualist tradition’. This new society of pro-market economists explicitly rejected the pure laissez-faire of the Victorian era, hoping to carve out in the statist mid-twentieth century a mixed model, with the modest ambition of more space for market forces (Burgin 2012).

Hausman, Jerry, 2012, ‘Contingent Valuation: From Dubious to Hopeless’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26 (4), 43–56. Hayek, F. A., 1935, ‘Socialist Calculation I: The Nature and History of the Problem’, reprinted in Individualism and Economic Order, 121–147, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Hayek, F., 1944, The Road to Serfdom, London: Routledge. Hayek, F. A., 1945, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, The American Economic Review, 35 (4), 519–530. Head, M. L., L. Holman, R. Lanfear, A. T. Kahn, and M. D. Jennions, 2015, ‘The Extent and Consequences of P-Hacking in Science’, PLoS Biol, 13 (3), e1002106, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002106.


Virtual Competition by Ariel Ezrachi, Maurice E. Stucke

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Arthur D. Levinson, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, cloud computing, collaborative economy, commoditize, confounding variable, corporate governance, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, deep learning, demand response, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, electricity market, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, experimental economics, Firefox, framing effect, Google Chrome, independent contractor, index arbitrage, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, light touch regulation, linked data, loss aversion, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market friction, Milgram experiment, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, nowcasting, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, power law, prediction markets, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search costs, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, yield management

If so, then surely the dynamics of competition would radically change. Increasingly one may wonder, what is left of competition as we know it? In asking what power the invisible hand still possesses in digitalized markets, we must consider Friedrich A. Hayek’s seminal work on knowledge, competition, and society. In his book The Road to Serfdom, the economist did not condemn governments’ intrusion into the marketplace. He was careful to distinguish his opposition to central planning from a dogmatic laissez-faire attitude.2 Recall that in Hayek’s time, collectivism was on the rise, with fascism, nationalist autarky, and later communism spreading.

fileID = 60931FDE-A2D2-F568-B041B58C5EA591A4 (finding that the U.K. was the only country in the G7 to have recorded rising inequality in the twenty-first century); Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All (Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264235120-en (suggesting the gap between the rich and poor “keeps growing”). 2. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 85. 3. Jeff ry A. Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 204. 4. Ibid., 215. 5. F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (September 1945): 519–530. 6.

See also Enforcement issues Resale price maintenance (RPM), 40, 269n10 Reselling. See Arbitrage Reservation price, of customers, 88, 99; behav ior and difficulty of estimating, 97–99; differential pricing and, 85–86; insufficient data for perfect price discrimination, 96–97 Ride-sharing apps, 6–7, 8. See also Uber Technologies, Inc. Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 206–208 Robinson-Patman Act, 119, 127–128, 300n47, 301nn48,50 Rosetta Stone, 90 Royal Bank of Scotland plc, 40, 47, 269n7 Rubicon Project, 259n47 “Rule of Reason” standard, 54–55, 246, 279n31, 343n73 Index Salem, Enrique, 149 Sample size, and insufficient data for perfect price discrimination, 99 San Francisco parking regulation, 217, 328nn32–37; SFpark program, 214, 328nn32–37 Scarcity marketing, 110 Schmidt, Eric, 147 Schumpeter, Joseph, 295–296n6 Search costs, reduced by online markets, 5–6, 50 Search engines, as “information gatekeepers,” 136, 304n9 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 68–69 Self-learning algorithms, 11, 14, 15–18; “almost perfect” behavioral discrimination and, 101–103; autonomous pricing and tacit collusion, 74–77, 78; emerging trends and, 21; enforcement issues, 223; hub and spoke collusion scenario, 49 Seller’s power, reduced by online markets, 8–9 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, 67 Sheffi, Yossi, 89 Sherman Act, 221, 267n5, 271n20, 330–331n11, 331n13 “Sleepers,” 67, 114 Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), behavioral discrimination and, 115–116 Smartphones.


pages: 505 words: 138,917

Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg

Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, carbon tax, citizen journalism, classic study, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, green new deal, humanitarian revolution, illegal immigration, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, negative emissions, Network effects, open borders, open economy, Pax Mongolica, place-making, profit motive, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, spice trade, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, ultimatum game, universal basic income, World Values Survey, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

This dissatisfaction with slow and unwieldy decision-making, with checks and balances and many different interests represented, has historically threatened liberal democracy – especially in times of crisis when it seems immediate action is required. In his classic book on the rise of totalitarianism, The Road to Serfdom from 1944, Friedrich Hayek wrote about this kind of moment, characterized by a general: dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which makes action for action’s sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough ‘to get things done’ who exercises the greatest appeal.62 This is far from an exclusive right-wing desire.

London, Bloomsbury Sigma, 2015, p. 110. 61 S. Pinker, ‘Enlightenment wars: Some reflections on “Enlightenment Now,” one year later’, Quilette, 14 January 2009, https://quillette.com/2019/01/14/enlightenment-wars-somereflections-on-enlightenment-now-one-year-later/(accessed 9 March 2020). 62 F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 150. 63 T. Friedman, ‘Our one-party democracy’, New York Times, 8 September 2009. 64 M. Svensson, ‘Det viktigaste för klimatet är att avskaffa demokratin’, Neo, 10 December 2009. 65 H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Second Series. Timeless Wisdom Collection, 2015, p. 216 66 ‘2018 Environmental Performance Index: Air quality top public health threat’, Yale News, 23 January 2018, https://news.yale.edu/2018/01/23/2018-environmental-performance-index-air-quality-top-public-health-threat (accessed 9 March 2020). 67 Interview, 28 April 2014. 68 Interview, 27 March 2014. 69 This description is based on J.

(Fukuyama), 362–5 End of Work, The (Rifkin), 312 Engels, Friedrich, 33, 36, 162, 206, 247, 256 English Civil War (1642–1651), 148, 183, 184, 201 Enigma machine, 124–6 Enlightenment, 4, 5, 6, 13, 103, 154–60, 165–6, 195–6 Environmental Performance Index, 327 Ephesus, 45 Epic of Gilgamesh, The, 38 Epicurus, 134–5 Epstein, Richard, 320 equality matching, 262–6, 267 Erasmus, 152 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 354 Ethiopia, 72, 130 ethnocentrism, 219, 271 Etruscan civilization (c. 900–27 BC), 43 Eubulus, 47 eugenics, 109 Euphrates river, 37 Euripides, 132 European Organization for Nuclear Research, 306 European Parliament, 325 European Union (EU) Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 common currency, 280–81 freedom of movement, 118, 343 migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 342–3, 358 subsidies in, 280 trade and, 272 United States, trade with, 19 Evans, Oliver, 203 Evolution of God, The (Wright), 249 evolutionary psychology, 14, 23, 225 exoticism, 84 Expressionism, 198 Facebook, 239, 309 Falwell, Jerry, 113–14 Farage, Nigel, 241 farming, see agriculture Fascist Italy (1922–1943), 105, 219 FedEx, 319 Feifer, Jason, 290–92 Fenway Park, Boston, 223 Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, 97, 98, 106 Ferguson, Charles, 314 Fermi, Enrico, 105 Ferney, France, 153 feudalism, 92, 194, 202, 208 fight-or-flight instinct, 15, 346, 348–9 filter bubbles, 239 financial crisis (2008), 10, 15, 62, 254, 333, 358, 359–60 fire, control of, 32–3, 76 Flanders, 208 fluyts, 100 Flynn effect, 109 Fogel, Robert, 276 folk economics, 258–62 football, 223–4, 245–6 Forbes, 274 Ford, Henry, 203 Fortune 500 companies, 82 Fox News, 82, 302, 354 France, 151 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 201 automation in, 313 Cathars, 94, 142 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (1860), 53–4 corruption in, 345 Dutch War (1672–8), 101 Encyclopédie, 154 free zones in, 180–81 Huguenots, persecution of, 97, 99, 101, 158, 193 immigration in, 115 Jews, persecution of, 96, 97, 254 languages in, 289 Minitel, 313 Revolution (1789–99), 201, 292 Royal Academy of Sciences, 156 ruin follies, 287 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), 97 Thököly Uprising (1678–85), 137 Uber in, 320 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 Francis I, Emperor of Austria-Hungary, 178 Franciscans, 144 Franklin, Benjamin, 107 Franks, 92 free speech, 127, 131–2, 160, 163–5, 343 Chicago principles, 164–5 emigration for, 152–3 university campuses, 163–5 free trade, see under trade Fried, Dan, 289 Friedman, Benjamin, 253 Friedman, David, 284 Friedman, Thomas, 325 Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, 153 Fukuyama, Francis, 362–5 Fulda, Germany, 179, 180 Future and Its Enemies, The (Postrel), 300 Future of Nostalgia, The (Boym), 288 Galatia, 90 Galaxy Zoo, 80 Galilei, Galileo, 146, 150 Gallup, 164 game theory, 26 Gandhi, Indira, 326 gas lighting, 297 Gates, William ‘Bill’, 274, 277, 309 Gauls, 90, 91, 92 gay rights, 113, 336 Geary, Patrick, 288–9 gender equality, 113, 114 General Motors, 64 generations baby-boom generation (1946–64), 294, 340 generation X (1965–80), 340 immigration and, 106, 110–11, 113–14 interwar generation (1928–45), 340 millennial generation (1981–96), 340 nostalgia and, 291, 293–4, 296 genetically modified organisms (GMO), 299, 301 Geneva, Switzerland, 152, 153 Genghis Khan, 94–5, 96, 174 Genoa, Republic of (1005–1797), 73, 178 George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, 193 George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, 103, 193 George Mason University, 257, 258 Georgia, 365 Georgia, United States, 349 German Conservative Party, 254 Germany automatic looms, 179 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 10, 340, 341, 363, 364 Bronze Age migration, 75 budget deficits, 60 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 12 guilds in, 190 immigration in, 114, 115 Jews, persecution of, 99, 104–6, 109, 220, 233 migration crisis (2015–), 342–3 Nazi period (1933–45), 104–6, 109, 124, 220, 233, 353 Neolithic migration, 74 protectionism in, 314 Reichstag fire (1933), 353 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 150 United States, migration to, 104, 107–8, 111 Weimar period (1918–33), 353 al-Ghazali, 139 Gholia, 89 Gibbon, Edward, 90 Gilder, George, 314 Gilgamesh, 38 Gillis, John, 291 Gingrich, Newton, 313 Gini coefficient, 273 Gintis, Herbert, 36 global history, 13 global price crisis (2010–11), 11 global warming, 75, 323, 325, 326–34 globalization, 4, 55, 270 backlashes against, 9, 14, 54, 57 cities and, 35 classical world, 43–50 conspiracy theories on, 323 disease and, 11, 77–9 United States and, 19 Westernization, 4 Glorious Revolution (1688), 101, 185–8, 190, 193 Goa, India, 146–7 golden nugget theory, 5 Golden Rule, 251–2 Golding, William, 219, 243, 244 Goldstone, Jack, 5, 133, 353 Goodness Paradox, The (Wrangham), 227 Google, 309, 311 Gordon, Thomas, 201 Göring, Hermann, 106 gossip, 229 Goths, 92 Gottlieb, Anthony, 135 Great Awakening (1730–55), 102 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5, 56, 254 Great Enrichment, 167, 204 Great Recession (2007–9), 254–5, 358, 359–60 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi), 37 Great Vanishing, 134–5 Great Wall of China, 178 Greece, ancient, 127–32, 169 Athens, 47, 53, 89, 90, 131–2, 134 Axial Age, 129 cosmopolitanism, 87–8 golden nugget theory, 5 Ionian enlightenment, 127–9 Mycenae, 88 philosophy, 13, 70, 127–32, 134–5, 136 Phoenicians, relations with, 43, 44, 45, 46 science, 127–32, 136 Sparta, 47, 54, 90, 132 trade, attitudes towards, 47, 54 xenophobia in, 90 Green New Deal, 302 Greene, Joshua, 216, 259 Greenland, 51 Gregorian calendar, 137, 152 Gregory IX, Pope, 142 Gregory XIII, Pope, 152 gross domestic product (GDP), 68–9, 257, 278–9 Grotius, Hugo, 147, 152–3 groupthink, 83 Guangzhou, Guangdong, 352 guilds, 190 Gutenberg, Johannes, 146 Haber, Fritz, 105 Habsburg Empire (1282–1918) anti-Semitism in, 254 Austria, 151, 179, 190 refugees, 99 Spain, 98–9, 208 Hadrian, Roman Emperor, 91 Hadrian’s Wall, 47 Hagley Park, West Midlands, 286–7 Haidt, Jonathan, 163, 229, 344, 348, 357 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, 72 Hamas, 365 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 173 Hanseatic League (1358–1862), 53 Hanson, Robin, 282 Hanway, Jonas, 298 Happy Days, 294 Harari, Yuval Noah, 38 Harriot, Thomas, 150 Hartsoeker, Nicolaas, 159 Harvard Business Review, 313 Harvard University, 116, 122, 137, 253, 309, 313 Haskell, Thomas, 206 Hässelby, Stockholm, 217–18, 245 Hayashi, Stuart, 370 Hayek, Friedrich, 1, 7, 29, 300, 325 Hebrew Bible, 248–50 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 288, 365 Helm, Dieter, 328, 331 Henrich, Joseph, 36 Hercules, 87 Herodotus, 132 Hewlett-Packard, 304 Higgs, Robert, 337 Hill, Christopher, 182 Hinduism, 136, 149, 354 von Hippel, William, 24, 25, 262, 284 Hippocrates, 128 Hispanic people, 110–11 Hitler, Adolf, 104–5, 353 Hobbes, Thomas, 9, 152, 226 Hofer, Johannes, 288 Holmgren, Pär, 325 Holocaust (1941–5), 109, 220 Holy Roman Empire (800–1806), 155, 181, 288 Homestead Acts, 171 Homo economicus, 34, 36 Homo erectus, 76, 267 Homo sapiens, 3, 21, 23, 30–33, 76, 259–62, 282, 371 homosexuality, 79, 113–14, 336 Homs, Syria, 82 Honeywell, 303 Hong Kong, 53, 235, 316 Hoover, Herbert, 55 horseshoes, 203 House of Wisdom, Baghdad, 136 Household Narrative, The, 297 housing, 375–6 Huguenots, 97, 99, 101, 158, 193 human rights, 87, 147, 213 humanitarianism, 204–7 Hume, David, 151, 154, 194 Hungary, 105, 190, 235, 237, 354, 357 hunkering down, 121, 165 Huns, 93 hunter-gatherer societies death rate, 9 disease and, 78 division of labour and, 29, 32, 40–41, 57 equality matching, 262–3, 265 inbreeding and, 78 isolation and, 52 migration, 73–4, 78–9 physical fallacy, 268 race and, 232 trade, 265 tyranny of cousins, 230 Huntington, Samuel, 110, 362–3, 365–6 Hussein, Saddam, 345 Hussey, Edward, 287 Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 165 Hutus, 230–31 Hypatia, 134 hyper-fast stars, 80 IBM, 305, 307, 319 Ibn al-Haytham, 156 Ibn Hayyan, Jabir, 156 Ibn Rushd, 137–8, 143, 144, 145 ice core drilling, 49 Identity & Violence (Sen), 231 identity politics, 241 al-Idrisi, Muhammad, 137 immigration birth rates and, 115 crime and, 110, 119 culture and, 69–73, 116, 119, 120–23 disgust and, 336, 371 division of labour and, 117 empires and, 84–106 European migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 118, 342–3 exoticism, 84 GDP and, 68 innovation and, 81–4 Islam and, 112–14, 255 labour market and, 115, 116–19 opposition to, 69, 70, 114–23, 223, 254–5 productivity and, 68, 81, 117, 204 protectionism and, 66–7 self-selection and, 107, 112 skilled vs unskilled, 66, 82, 102, 116, 117 trade and, 35, 66–7, 234–5 tribalism and, 223, 235–6, 240, 243 urban vs rural areas, 114 welfare and, 118, 281 zero-sum thinking and, 254–5, 259 immigration in United States, 102–14 crime and, 110, 119 innovation and, 81–2, 202 overestimation of, 115, 223 tribalism and, 223, 240 zero-sum thinking and, 254–5, 259 In Defence of Global Capitalism (Norberg), 270 in vitro fertilization, 298–9 inbreeding, 78 India, 42, 45, 46, 56, 75, 129, 136, 140, 146, 270 Arabic numerals, 70, 137 engineering in, 269 Hindu nationalism, 354 industrialization, 207 Maurya Empire (323–184 BC), 53 Mughal Empire (1526–1857), 98, 148, 149, 215 national stereotypes, 235 Pakistan, relations with, 366 pollution in, 326 poverty in, 276, 326 Indo-European language, 75 Indonesia, 41 Industrial Revolution; industrialization, 5, 6, 13, 54, 132, 180, 339 in Britain, 182, 188–99, 202 in China, 169, 172–3, 207 climate change and, 326 in Dutch Republic, 101 in India, 207 in Japan, 71 in United States, 202, 291–2 in Vietnam, 207 inequality, 273, 349 Inglehart, Ronald, 339 ingroups and outgroups, 217–47 fluidity, 230–38 political, 224–5, 238–42 zero-sum relationships and, 252–5 Innocent III, Pope, 233 InnoCentive, 126–7 innovation, 4, 6, 10, 27, 80 ancient world, 32, 42, 44, 46 authoritarianism and, 318 bureaucratic inertia and, 318–21 canon and, 195 cities and, 40, 53, 79 creative destruction, 57, 179, 182, 190 cultural evolution, 28 immigration and 81–4 patent systems, 189–90 population and, 27, 51, 53 Schumpeterian profits, 273–5 resistance to, 10, 179–81 zero-sum thinking and, 266–9 Inquisition, 150 France, 94, 143 Portugal, 100 Spain, 97, 98 intellectual property, 58 Intergalactic Computer Network, 307 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 117 Internet, 57, 275, 278, 306–11, 312, 313 interwar generation (1928–45), 340 Inuit, 22, 51 Ionian enlightenment, 127–9 IQ (intelligence quotient), 109 Iran, 365 Ireland, 104, 108–9, 111, 112, 379 iron, 172 Isabella I, Queen of Castile, 97 Isaiah, 46 Isaura Palaia, Galatia, 90 Isenberg, Daniel, 296 Isis, 89 Islam; Islamic world Arab Spring (2011), 10, 342 clash of civilizations narrative, 237, 365 conflict within, 365 efflorescence, 6, 53, 136–41 fundamentalism, 112, 134, 139, 351 Koran, 137, 250–51 migration from, 112–14 orthodox backlash, 148–9 philosophy, 5, 13 science, 70, 132, 136–41 values in, 112, 113 Islamic State, 351, 365–6 Islamic world, 5, 6, 13, 53, 70 Israel, 111, 365 Italy, 6, 151, 169 anti-Semitism in, 254 Fascist period (1922–1943), 105 Genoa, Republic of (1005–1797), 73, 178 guilds in, 190 Lombard League (1167–1250), 181 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 Padua, 144, 146 Papacy in, 155, 181 Renaissance, 6, 150, 153, 169 United States, migration to, 104, 109 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 53, 144, 152, 174, 181 Jacobs, Jane, 39–40, 79, 264 James II and VII, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 185–6 Jamestown, Virginia, 200 Japan housing in, 376 kimonos, 73 Meiji Restoration (1868), 53, 70–71 protectionism, 314 Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), 54 United States, migration to, 104, 236, 335 Japanning, 156 JavaScript, 310 jealous emulation, 154–7 jeans, 73 Jefferson, Thomas, 103, 184, 201, 205 Jenner, Edward, 296 Jerusalem, 87, 251 Jesus, 250 Jews in Abbasid Caliphate, 136 anti-Semitism, 254–5, 356 Ashkenazim, 99 Babylonian captivity, 87, 249 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50 Black Death and, 355–6 in Britain, 101, 193 in Dutch Republic, 99, 100, 150 in Germany, 99, 104–6, 109, 111, 254 Inquisition and, 97, 98 in Israel, 111 Mongol invasion and, 95 Muhammed and, 251 Nazirites, 72 in Ottoman Empire, 98 persecution of, 11, 95–7, 109, 220, 233, 251, 355–6 in Poland, 111, 220 in Roman Empire, 90, 93, 94 Sephardim, 99 in Song Empire, 170 in Spain, 97, 98, 99, 140 in United States, 102, 109 Jim Crow laws (1877–1965), 106, 254 Job Buddy, 375 Jobless Future, The (Aronowitz), 312 Jobs, Steven, 82, 304 John Chrysostom, 135 John III Sobieski, King of Poland, 237, 238 Johnson, Samuel, 191, 197 Johnson, Steven, 306 Jones, Rhys, 51 Joule, James Prescott, 196 Judaism, 46, 72, 93, 94, 96, 97 Jupiter, 145 Jurchen people, 172 Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor, 134, 224 Kahn, Robert, 307 Kandinsky, Wassily, 220–21, 289 Kant, Immanuel, 154 Karakorum, Mongol Empire, 96 al-Karaouine, Morocco, 137 Kearney, Denis, 109 keels, 44 Kenya, 21–2 Khayyam, Omar, 137 al-Khwarizmi, 137 Kiesling, Lynne, 328 Kim Jong-il, 314–15 kimonos, 73 King, Martin Luther, 19 King, Steven, 111 Kipling, Rudyard, 70 Klee, Paul, 220–21, 289 Know-Nothings, 108–9 Kodak, 319 Koran, 137, 250–51 Kramer, Samuel Noah, 37, 292 Krastev, Ivan, 342–3 Krugman, Paul, 309 Ku Klux Klan, 254 Kublai Khan, 174 Kurds, 136 Kushim, 37–8 labour mobility, 69, 374–7 lacquerware, 156 lactose, 75 Lao Tzu, 129 lapis lazuli, 70 Late Bronze-Age Collapse (1200–1150 BC), 44, 49, 54 Lebanon, 43, 236 Lee, William, 179 leisure, 199 Lenin, Vladimir, 256 Lesbos, 141 Levellers, 183–4, 186 Leviathan (Hobbes), 152 Levinovitz, Alan Jay, 290 Levy, David, 205 Lewis, David Levering, 140 Libanius, 49 liberalism, 14, 183, 334–40 colonialism and, 214 disgust and, 335, 336 dynamism and, 301 economic, 185, 336 Islam and, 112–14 security and, 334–40, 378 slave trade and, 205 universities and, 163 Libya, 48, 89, 366 Licklider, Joseph Carl Robnett, 307 life expectancy, 4, 169, 339 light bulbs, 297 Lilburne, John, 183 Lincoln, Abraham, 203 Lind, Amanda, 72 Lindsey, Brink, 301 literacy, 15, 57, 168 in Britain, 188, 198 in China, 148 in Dark Ages, 50 empathy and, 246–7 in Greece, 128–9 in Renaissance, 146, 148 Lithuania, 238 Little Ice Age, 148 lobbying, 280, 329 Locke, John, 100, 152, 185, 186, 201 Lombard League, 181 London, England, 190, 193–4, 197 7/7 bombings (2005), 341 London Bridge stabbings (2019), 120 Long Depression (1873–86), 253–4 Lord of the Flies (Golding), 219, 243, 244 Lord’s Resistance Army, 365 Louis IX, King of France, 96 Louis XIV, King of France, 237 Louis XVI, King of France, 201 love, 199 Lucas, Robert, 167 Lucy, 24–5 Lugh, 89 Lul, 111 Luther, Martin, 150, 356 Lutheranism, 99, 356 Lüthi, Max, 351 Lysenko, Trofim, 162 Lyttelton family, 286 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Macedonian Empire (808–148 BC), 84, 87–9 Madison, James, 337 madrasas, 138 Madrid train bombings (2004), 341 Maduro, Nicolás, 354, 380 Magna Carta (1215), 5 Magris, Claudio, 219 Malacca, 100 Maltesholm School, Hässelby, 217–18, 245 mammoths, 76 Manchester United, 246 Manichaeism, 93 Mann, Thomas, 79 Mansfield, Edward, 271 Mao Zedong, 53, 162, 315, 316, 317, 355 Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, 91 Marduk, 87 de Mariana, Juan, 147 markets, 37 humanitarianism and, 204, 206 immigration and, 68 tribalism, 247 ultimatum game, 34–5 Marley, Robert ‘Bob’, 72 marriage, 199 Marshall, Thurgood, 335 Marx, Karl, 33, 36, 162, 169, 247, 255–6 Marxism, 33, 36, 162, 182, 256, 268 Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, 186, 193 Maryland, United States, 349 Maslow, Abraham, 339, 341 al-Masudi, 136 mathematics, 70, 134, 135, 137, 156 Maurya Empire (323–184 BC), 53 Mauss, Marcel, 71 McCarthy, Joseph, 335 McCarthy, Kevin, 108 McCloskey, Deirdre, 167, 189, 191–2, 198 McConnell, Addison Mitchell ‘Mitch’, 108 McKinsey, 313 measles, 77 media, 346–9, 370 Medicaid, 119 Medina, 251 Medusa, 88 Meiji Restoration (1868), 53, 70–71 Mencken, Henry Louis, 325, 353 Mercury, 89 Merkel, Angela, 343 Mesopotamia, 37–43, 45, 70, 292–3 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 142 Mexico, 73, 77, 257 United States, migration to, 110, 122, 223, 240, 255 Miami, Florida, 120 Micro-80 computers, 304 Microsoft, 305–6, 309 middle class, 60–61 Migration Advisory Committee, UK, 118 Miletus, 127 militarism, 214 Mill, John Stuart, 124, 160, 164, 176, 319 millennial generation (1981–96), 340 Milton, John, 150 Ming Empire (1368–1644), 54, 148, 175, 177–8, 179, 215 minimal group paradigm, 220–22 Minitel, 313 Mobutu Sese Seko, 187 Mokyr, Joel, 157, 195, 196–7 Molyneux, Stefan, 84 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 53, 84, 94–7, 138, 139, 173–4, 352–3 monopolies, 182, 189 Monte Testaccio, 48 Montesquieu, 89, 94 Moral Consequences of Growth, The (Friedman), 253 Moral Man and Immoral Society (Niebuhr), 253 Moriscos, 97 mortgages, 375 Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering, 304 most-favoured-nations clause, 53–4 Mughal Empire (1526–1857), 98, 148, 149, 215 Muhammed, Prophet of Islam, 251 Murray, William Vans, 104 Muslims migration of, 112–14, 170, 255 persecution of, 97, 106, 233, 355 Mutz, Diana, 271 Mycenae, 88 Myth of Nations, The (Geary), 288–9 Myth of the Rational Voter, The (Caplan), 258 Naipaul, Vidiadhar Surajprasad, 167 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), 288 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 126, 127 National Library of Medicine, US, 12 National Science Foundation, US, 313 National Security Agency, US, 313 national stereotypes, 235 nationalism, 9, 11, 13, 16 civic nationalism, 377–8 clash of civilizations narrative, 237 cultural purity and, 69, 70, 71, 352 immigration and, 69, 70, 82 nostalgia and, 287–8, 351 World War I (1914–18), 214 zero-sum thinking, 253, 254, 259, 272 nativism, 14, 122, 176, 223, 254, 349–51, 358 Natural History Museum, London, 124, 125 Naturalism, 198 Nazi Germany (1933–45), 104–6, 109, 124, 220, 233, 353 Nazirites, 72 Neanderthals, 30–33, 75, 76 Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian Emperor, 46 neckties, 72 negative income tax, 374–5 Neilson, James Beaumont, 194 Nemeth, Charlan, 83 Neo-Classicism, 198 Neolithic period (c. 10,000–4500 BC), 74 Netflix, 309, 310 Netherlands, 99 von Neumann, John, 105 neurasthenia, 291 New Atlantis (Bacon), 147 New Guinea, 41 New Testament, 250 New York, United States crime in, 246, 334 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42 New York Times, 291, 297, 325 New York University, 223 New York Yankees, 223 Newcomen, Thomas, 196 Newton, Isaac, 158–9, 201 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 131 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 253 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 365 Nîmes, France, 73 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), 230, 368 Nineveh, Assyria, 248–9 Nixey, Catherine, 134 Nobel Prize, 82, 105, 276 non-market societies, 34, 35 Nordhaus, William, 273–4 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 63, 64 North Carolina, United States, 102 North Korea, 54, 314–15, 366 North Star, 44 nostalgia, 14, 286–95, 313, 351 Not Fit for Our Society (Schrag), 107 novels, 188–9, 246–7 nuclear power, 301, 327, 328, 329, 332 nuclear weapons, 105, 290, 306 O’Rourke, Patrick Jake, 280 Oannes, 267 Obama, Barack, 66, 240, 329 obsidian, 22, 29 occupational licensing, 376–7 Ögedei Khan, 96 Ogilvie, Sheilagh, 179 Oklahoma, United States, 218–19 Old Testament, 46, 72, 248–50 olive oil, 48 Olorgesailie, 21–2 omnivores, 299 On Liberty (Mill), 160 one-year-old children, 26 open society, 6 open-mindedness, 35, 112 Opening of the mouth’ rite, 70 Orbán, Viktor, 354, 380 de Orta, Garcia, 146–7 Orwell, George, 230, 368 Osman II, Ottoman Sultan, 148 Ottoman Empire (1299–1923), 84, 94, 98, 148, 215, 220, 237, 353 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 overpopulation, 81, 160 Overton, Richard, 183 Pacific islands, 52 Paine, Thomas, 56, 158, 247 Pakistan, 70, 366 Pallas Athena, 89 Pallavicino, Ferrante, 150 Palmer, Tom Gordon, 15 Panthers and Pythons, 243–4 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178 Papin, Denis, 179, 180 Paris, France exiles in, 152, 153 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 parochialism, 216 patent systems, 58, 82, 189–90, 203, 314 in Britain, 179, 189–90, 203, 314 in China, 58 in France, 189 immigrants and, 82 in Netherlands, 189 in United States, 203 PayPal, 310 Peasants’ Revolt (1381), 208 peer review, 127 Pence, Michael, 108 penny universities, 166 Pericles, 131 Permissionless Innovation (Thierer), 299 Perry, Gina, 243 Perseus, 87–8 Persia, ancient, 84, 86–7, 88, 95, 129, 215 Abbasid period (750–1258), 136 Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), 86–7, 88 Greeks, influence on, 129 Mongols, influence on, 95 Safavid Empire (1501–1736), 149 Sasanian Empire (224–651), 134 personality traits, 7 Pertinax, Roman Emperor, 91 Pessimists Archive, 290, 297, 298 Pessinuntia, 89 Peters, Margaret, 66 Peterson Institute for International Economics, 60 Petty, William, 296 Philip II King of Spain, 98 Phoenicia (2500–539 BC), 43–6, 49, 70, 128–9 Phoenicia dye, 44 Phrygians, 89 physical fallacy, 267–8 Physics (Aristotle), 142 Pietists, 153 Pinker, Steven, 23, 243, 266, 324 Plague of Justinian (541–750), 77 Plato, 130, 131, 132, 134, 352 pluralism, 85, 129, 357 Plutarch, 45–6 Poland Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Dutch Republic, migration to, 99 Holocaust (1941–5), 220 immigration, 116 Israel, migration to, 111 United Kingdom, migration to, 120 United States, migration to, 108, 109 Polanyi, Karl, 37 polio, 293 pollution, 326, 347 Polo, Marco, 174 Popper, Karl, 6, 26, 127, 129, 130, 182–3, 237, 362 population density, 28 populism, 9, 13, 14, 16, 324, 379–82 authoritarianism and, 325, 350–51 complexity and, 324 nostalgia and, 295, 324, 351 trade and, 19 zero-sum thinking and, 254, 259, 274 pornography, 113, 336 Portugal Empire (1415–1999), 100, 146–7, 178 guilds in, 190 Inquisition, 100 Postrel, Virginia, 300, 312, 326 pound locks, 172 poverty, 4, 168, 213, 270 in Britain, 256 in China, 4, 316 immigration and, 66, 69, 81, 121 in Japan, 71 Jeff Bezos test, 275–9 Preston, Lancashire, 190 priests, 41, 128 printing, 146, 153, 171 Pritchard, James Bennett, 43 productivity cities and, 40 foreign trade and, 57, 59, 63 free goods and, 278 immigration and, 68, 81, 117, 204 programming, 8 Progress (Norberg), 12–13 progressives, 286, 300–302 Proserpina, 89 protectionism, 13, 15, 16, 54–5 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 immigration and, 66–7 Internet and, 314 Trump administration (2017–), 19, 57–8 Protestantism, 99, 104, 148, 149, 153, 169, 178, 237 Prussia (1701–1918), 153, 288 Psychological Science, 335 Puerto Rico, 80 Pufendorf, Samuel, 147 purchasing power, 59, 61, 63, 66, 198 Puritanism, 99, 102 Putin, Vladimir, 14, 353–4 Putnam, Robert, 121, 165 Pythagoras, 137 Pythons and Panthers, 243–4 al-Qaeda, 351 Qianlong, Qing Emperor, 153 Qing Empire (1644–1912), 148, 149, 151, 153, 175–7, 179 Quakers, 99, 102, 206 Quarantelli, Enrico, 338 Quarterly Journal of Economics, The, 63 race; racism, 76–7, 206, 231–4, 358–9 railways, 53, 179, 202, 296, 297 Rammstein, 274 RAND Corporation, 307 Raphael, 137 Rastafari, 72 Rattlers and Eagles, 218–19, 236, 243, 252 reactive aggression, 227–8 Reagan, Ronald, 63, 111 Realism, 198 realistic conflict theory, 222 Reconquista (711–1492), 139 Red Genies, 236 Red Sea, 75 Reformation, 148, 155 refugees crime and, 119 European migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 281, 342–3 integration of, 117–18 German Jews (1933–45), 104–6, 109 Rembrandt, 99 reminiscence bump, 294 Renaissance, 5, 6, 132, 143, 145–6, 149–50, 215 Republic of Letters, 157–9, 165, 195 Republic, The (Plato), 352 Republican Party, 164, 225, 238, 240, 301 Reynell, Carew, 184 Reynolds, Glenn, 308 Ridley, Matthew, 20–21, 80 right to work laws, 65 Rizzo, Frank, 334 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 325 Robbers Cave experiment (1954), 218–19, 236, 243, 252, 371 Robbins, Caroline, 200–201 Robertson, Marion Gordon ‘Pat’, 114 Robinson, James, 185, 187, 200 rock paper scissors, 26 Rogers, Will, 282 Roman Law, 5 Romanticism, 198, 287, 296–7 Rome, ancient, 47–50, 89–94, 132 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 assimilation, 91–2 chariot racing, 224 Christianity in, 90, 93–4, 133–4 citizenship, 91 cosmopolitanism, 89–91 fall of, 54, 94 gods in, 89–90 golden nugget theory, 5 globalization, 45–6, 47–50 haircuts, 72 Latin alphabet, 45 philosophy, 70, 136 Phoenicians, relations with, 43, 44 Sabines, relations with, 89 Social War (91–88 BC), 91 trousers, attitudes towards, 92 Romulus, 89, 90 Rotterdam, Holland, 158 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 226 Royal Navy, 205 Royal Society, 156, 157, 158, 196 Rubin, Paul, 258 ruin follies, 286–7 rule of law, 68, 189, 269, 334, 343, 358, 379 Rumbold, Richard, 183–4 Rushdie, Salman, 73 Ruskin, John, 206, 297 Russia Imperial period (1721–1917), 154, 289–90 Israel, migration to, 111 Mongol period (1237–1368), 95, 352 Orthodox Christianity, 155 Putin period (1999–), 14, 15, 347, 353–4, 365, 367 Soviet period (1917–91), 162, 302–5, 315, 317 United States, relations with, 236 Yamnaya people, 74–5 Rust Belt, 58, 62, 64–6, 349 Rwandan Genocide (1994), 230–31 Sabines, 89 Safavid Empire (1501–1736), 149 safety of wings, 374 Saint-Sever, France, 180 Salamanca school, 147, 150 Sanders, Bernard, 302 Santa Fe Institute, 216 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), 3, 162 Saudi Arabia, 365 Scandinavia Bronze Age migration, 75 Neolithic migration, 74 United States, migration to, 104, 108 see also Sweden scapegoats, 11, 83, 253, 268, 349, 355–61 Black Death (1346–53), 352, 355–6 Great Recession (2007–9), 255 Mongol invasion (1241), 95 Schmandt-Besserat, Denise, 38 School of Athens, The (Raphael), 137 School of Salamanca, 147, 150 Schrag, Peter, 107 Schrödinger, Erwin, 105, 128, 129, 132 Schumpeter, Joseph, 277 Schumpeterian profits, 273–5 science, 127–66 in China, 4, 13, 70, 153, 156, 162–3, 169–73 Christianity and, 133–5, 141–6, 149–50 Enlightenment, 154–9 experiments, 156–7 Great Vanishing, 134–5 in Greece, 127–32 jealous emulation and, 154–7 in Islamic world, 70, 132, 136–41 Renaissance, 145–6 Republic of Letters, 157–9, 165, 195 sclera, 25 Scotland, 101, 194 Scotney Castle, Kent, 287 Sculley, John, 304 sea peoples, 43 sea snails, 44 Seinfeld, Jerry, 224 Seleucid Empire (312–63 BC), 88 self-esteem, 372, 379 Sen, Amartya, 231 Seneca, 49, 91 Sephardic Jews, 99 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42, 363 Septimius Severus, Roman Emperor, 91 Servius, Publius, 90 Seven Wonders of the World, 45 Seville, Spain, 91, 139 sex bonobos and, 226 encoding and, 233 inbreeding, 78 views on, 113, 336 SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), 307 Shaftesbury, Lord, see Cooper, Anthony Ashley Sherif, Muzafer, 219, 220, 222, 243, 252 Shia Islam, 149 Shining, The, 335 shirts, 72 Siberia, 76 Sicily, 89 Sierra Leone, 365 Siger of Brabant, 143, 144 Sikhism, 149 Silicon Valley, 311 Silk Road, 171, 174, 352 silver processing, 49 Simler, Kevin, 282 Simmel, Georg, 266 Simon, Julian, 81 Simple Rules for a Complex World (Epstein), 320 Singapore, 53 skilled workers, 36, 45, 66, 95, 97, 101, 117 Slater, Samuel, 202 slavery, 86, 156, 205–6, 232 in British Empire, 182, 199, 200, 205 in Mesopotamia, 40, 41, 43 in Rome, 47, 48 in Sparta, 54 in United States, 103, 106, 205, 232 smallpox, 77, 197, 293, 296 Smith, Adam, 21, 59, 192, 194, 205, 280 Smith, Fred, 319 smoke detectors, 234 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 55 snack boxes, 20 Snow, Charles Percy, 105 social media, 239, 347, 370 social status, 281–5 Social War (91–88 BC), 91 Socrates, 130, 131–2, 330 solar power, 328, 329, 331, 332 Solomon, King of Israel, 38, 45 Solyndra, 329 Song Empire (960–1279), 53, 169–75 Sony, 319 Soros, George, 323 South Korea, 314, 366 South Sudan, 365 Soviet Union (1922–91), 162, 302–5, 315, 317 Sovu, Rwanda, 231 Sowell, Thomas, 267–8 Spain, 97–101, 184, 207 Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269), 137–8 amphorae production, 48 al-Andalus (711–1492), 97, 137–9, 140 Columbus’ voyages (1492–1503), 178 Dutch Revolt (1568–1648), 98–9, 101 Empire (1492–1976), 147, 178, 182 guilds in, 190 Inquisition (1478–1834), 97, 98 Jews, persecution of, 97–8, 106, 140 Madrid train bombings (2004), 341 Muslims, persecution of, 97, 106 Reconquista (711–1492), 97, 138–9, 140 regional authorities, 152 Roman period (c.218 BC–472 AD), 48, 91 Salamanca school, 147, 150 sombreros, 73 Uber in, 320 vaqueros, 73 Spanish flu (1918–19), 77 Sparta, 47, 54, 90, 132 Spencer, Herbert, 165, 214 Spinoza, Baruch, 100, 150, 153 Spitalfields, London, 190 sports, 199, 223–4, 232–3, 245–6 Sri Lanka, 100, 365 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), 97 St Louis, SS, 109 Standage, Tom, 166 Stanford University, 307, 311 Star Trek, 246, 259 stasists, 301–2 Statute of Labourers (1351), 208 steam engine, 179, 180, 189, 194, 203, 296 steamships, 53, 202 Stenner, Karen, 242, 343, 348, 350, 357 Stockholm, Sweden, 217–18 Stranger Things, 294 Strasbourg, France, 153 strategic tolerance, 86–96 Strindberg, August, 239 Suarez, Francisco, 147 suits, 72 Sumer (4500–1900 BC), 37–43, 45, 55, 292–3 Summers, Larry, 329 Sunni Islam, 148, 149, 238, 365 superpowers, 338–9 supply chains, 11, 62, 66 Sweden DNA in, 73 Green Party, 325 Lind dreadlocks affair (2019), 72 immigration in, 114, 115, 118, 281 manufacturing in, 65 Muslim community, 114 Neolithic migration, 74 refugees in, 118, 281, 342 United States, migration to, 107 Sweden Democrats, 281 swine flu, 3 Switzerland, 152, 153 Sylvester II, Pope, 137 Symbolism, 198 Syria, 42, 82, 342, 365, 366 tabula rasa, 225 Tacitus, 91 Taiwan, 316, 366 Taizu, Song Emperor, 170 Tajfel, Henri, 220, 221–2 Tandy, Geoffrey, 124–6 Tang Empire (618–907), 84, 170, 177, 352 Tanzania, 257 Taoism, 129, 149 tariffs, 15, 56, 373 Anglo–French Treaty (1860), 53–4 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 Obama’s tyre tariffs (2009), 66 Trump’s steel tariffs (2018), 272 Tasmania, 50–53, 54 Tatars, 238 taxation in Britain, 72, 187, 188, 189 carbon tax, 330–31 crony capitalism and, 279–80 immigration and, 69 negative income tax, 374–5 in Song Empire, 172 in Spanish Netherlands, 98 Taylor, Robert, 306 TCP/IP protocol, 307 technology, 296–9 automation, 63, 312–13 computers, 302–14 decline, 51–2 Internet, 57, 275, 278, 306–11, 312 nostalgia and, 296–9, 313 technocrats, 299–300, 312, 313–14, 326–9 technological decline, 51–2 telescopes, 145–6 Teller, Edward, 105 Temple of Artemis, Ephesus, 45 Temple of Serapis, Alexandria, 134 Tencent, 311 terrorism, 10, 114, 229, 340–41, 363 Tetlock, Philip, 160 textiles, 172–3 Thales, 127 Thierer, Adam, 299 third-party punishment game, 35 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 72, 97, 148, 150 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 142–3, 144–5 Thoreau, Henry David, 203 Thracians, 130 Thucydides, 131, 132 Tiangong Kaiwu, 153 Tibetans, 85 Tierra del Fuego, 52–3 Tigris river, 37, 139 Timurid Empire (1370–1507), 139 tin, 42 Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), 54 Toledo, Spain, 140 tolerance, 86–114, 129 Tomasello, Michael, 25 ‘too big to fail’, 280 Tower of Babel, 39 Toynbee, Arnold, 382 trade, 13, 19–23, 28–9, 129, 140, 363, 373 backlashes against, 19, 54–67, 254 benefit–cost ratio, 60, 61, 62 Britain, 181–99 competitive advantage, 28–9 division of labour and, 28, 31, 57 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 Greece, ancient, 47 humanitarianism and, 204–7 Mesopotania, 37–43 migration and, 35, 66–7, 234–5 morality of, 33–6 Phoenicia, 43–6 Rome, ancient, 47–50 snack boxes, 20 United States, 19, 57–8, 202–3 zero-sum thinking and, 248, 252–66, 270–72 trade unions, 64, 65, 272, 374 Trajan, Roman Emperor, 91 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 58 Transparency International, 381 Treaty of Trianon (1920), 354 Treaty of Versailles (1919), 353 Trenchard, John, 201 Treschow, Michael, 65 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 215, 356 tribalism, 14, 217–47, 362, 368–72 fluid, 230–38 political, 224–5, 238–42, 378, 379 media and, 348, 370 threats and, 241, 350, 370 Trollboda School, Hässelby, 218 Trump, Donald, 9, 14, 240, 313, 321, 322, 354, 365, 367, 380 immigration, views on, 223 presidential election (2016), 238, 241, 242, 349, 350 stasism, 301, 302 steel tariffs (2018), 272 trade, views on, 19, 57–8 zero-sum attitude, 248 Tunisia, 45, 48 Turing, Alan, 124 Turkey; Turks, 70, 74, 136, 156, 354, 357, 365 turtle theory, 121–2 Tutsis, 230–31 Twilight Zone, The, 260–61 Twitter, 84, 239, 245 Two Treatises of Government (Locke), 186, 201 tyranny of cousins, 229, 230 tyre tariffs, 66 Tyre, 45 Uber, 319–20 Uganda, 365 Ukraine, 75, 116, 365 ultimatum game, 34–6 umbrellas, 298 uncertainty, 321–6 unemployment, 62, 373–4, 376, 377 ‘unicorns’, 82 United Auto Workers, 64 United Kingdom, see Britain United Nations, 327 United States, 199–203 Afghanistan War (2001–14), 345 America First, 19, 272 automation in, 313 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 65 California Gold Rush (1848–1855), 104 China, trade with, 19, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 64 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 254 citizenship, 103 Civil War (1861–5), 109 climate change polices in, 328 Constitution (1789), 102, 202 consumer price index, 277 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 12 crime in, 110, 119, 120, 346 Declaration of Independence (1776), 103, 201, 202 dynamism in, 301–2 Federalist Party, 103 free trade gains, 60, 61 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5, 254 gross domestic product (GDP), 257 Homestead Acts, 171 housing in, 376 immigration, see immigration in United States Industrial Revolution, 202, 291–2 innovation in, 53, 203, 298–9 intellectual property in, 58 Internet in, 306–14 Iraq War (2003–11), 345 Jim Crow laws (1877–1965), 106, 254 Know-Nothings, 108–9 Ku Klux Klan, 254 labour mobility in, 374, 376–7 lobbying in, 280, 329 Manhattan Project (1942–6), 105 manufacturing, 62–6 McCarthy era (1947–57), 335 Medicaid, 119 middle class, 60–61 NAFTA, 63, 64 National Library of Medicine, 12 national stereotypes, 235, 236 nostalgia in, 290–92, 294 open society, 169, 199–203 patent system, 203 political tribalism in, 224–5, 238, 240 populist movement, 254 presidential election (2016), 238, 241, 242, 349, 350 railways, 202 Revolutionary War (1775–83), 102–3, 200–201 Robbers Cave experiment (1954), 218–19, 236, 243, 252, 371 Rust Belt, 58, 62, 64–6, 349 Saudi Arabia, relations with, 365 Senate, 108 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42, 363 slavery in, 103, 106, 205 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 55 Supreme Court, 108, 335 tariffs, 66, 272 trade deficits, 60, 270 Trump administration (2017–), see Trump, Donald unemployment in, 373, 376 universities, 163–5, 241 Vietnam War (1955–75), 345 Watergate scandal (1972–4), 345 World War II (1939–45), 56, 64, 335 Yankees, 58 United Steelworkers, 64, 272 universal basic income (UBI), 374, 375 universities, 140 University Bologna, 140 University of California, Berkeley, 311 University of Cambridge, 140 University of Chicago, 165 University of Leeds, 357 University of London, 201 University of Marburg, 153 University of Oxford, 140, 144, 145, 328 University of Padua, 144, 146 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 University of Pennsylvania, 271 University of Salamanca, 140 University of Toulouse, 144 unskilled workers, 36, 66, 102, 117 untranslatable words, 288 Ur, 55 urbanization, see cities Uruk, Sumer, 39 US Steel, 64 Usher, Abbott Payson, 196 Uyghurs, 85, 174 vaccines, 12, 296, 299 Vandals, 92 Vanini, Lucilio, 150 vaqueros, 73 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 213, 261 Vatican Palace, 137 Vavilov, Nikolai, 162 Venezuela, 354 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 53, 144, 152, 174, 181 Vermeer, Johannes, 99 Vespucci, Amerigo, 146 Vienna, Austria, 95, 237, 238 Vienna Congress (1815), 288 Vietnam, 171, 207, 270, 345 Virgil, 91 Virginia Company, 200 vitamin D, 74 de Vitoria, Francisco, 147 Vladimir’s choice, 221, 252, 271 Voltaire, 153, 193 Walton, Sam, 277 Wang, Nina, 315 War of the Polish Succession (1733–8), 289–90 Ward-Perkins, Bryan, 50 warfare, 216–17, 243 Warren, Elizabeth, 302 washing of hands, 10, 335 Washington, George, 103, 205 Washington, DC, United States, 280 Watergate scandal (1972–4), 345 Watson, John, 291 Watson, Peter, 79 Watt, James, 172, 189, 194, 274 Weatherford, Jack, 95 Web of Science, 159 Weber, Maximilian, 204 WeChat, 311 Weekly Standard, 312 welfare systems, 118, 281, 374 Wengrow, David, 42 West Africa Squadron, 205 Western Roman Empire (395–480), 94, 135 Westernization, 4–5 Wheelan, Charles, 20 Whig Party, 185, 201 White House Science Council, 313 white supremacists, 84, 351, 367 Whitechapel, London, 190 Who Are We?


pages: 636 words: 202,284

Piracy : The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns

active measures, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, commoditize, Computer Lib, Corn Laws, demand response, distributed generation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edmond Halley, Ernest Rutherford, Fellow of the Royal Society, full employment, Hacker Ethic, Howard Rheingold, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, pirate software, radical decentralization, Republic of Letters, Richard Stallman, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, software patent, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, Ted Nelson, The Home Computer Revolution, the scientific method, traveling salesman, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog

As it became clear that the war would be won, realization dawned among opponents of state intervention like Plant that the “threat” loomed of a Labour government in Britain. Clement Attlee’s party was committed to nationalizing key industries and creating a socialized health service. Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Karl Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies became the two bestknown statements of the position against such policies, Hayek in particular warning of a slippery slope from state planning to totalitarianism. The Road to Serfdom backfired at the time, being widely read as hyperbolic. When Labour did take power, Hayek and his allies retreated and formed themselves into the Mont Pèlerin Society, a group dedicated to economic liberalism in what they perceived to be a hostile world.

Bernal’s camp, he concluded, had “surrendered” to a philosophy that would destroy science. He was as opposed to science with a social purpose as Hayek and Popper were to industry with a social purpose. Polanyi’s assault on patenting was all the more remarkable in this context. “Patent Reform” appeared in the Review of Economic Studies in autumn 1944, shortly after The Road to Serfdom. It seemed to mark a sharp departure from everything he and they defended. Polanyi certainly contended that patents misrepresented creativity and corrupted research – that was unsurprising. But he argued that the distortions were so great that they outweighed even the dangers of state intervention.

Elements of this then reappeared in what might seem a radically different text, on Economic Planning. Finally, Polanyi turned the book on planning into a volume named Full Employment in Theory and Practice. And this last did appear in print, as Full Employment and Free Trade, in 1945 – constituting the third part of a triptych with Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Popper’s Open Society. Only much later would fragments of the other projects resurface, most notably in Personal Knowledge. Throughout these pivotal years arguments about patents formed one of the few common threads, linking each new project to the last. Even the fullemployment work culminated with them: their abolition was central to creating a moral form of free trade that it claimed was essential to sustaining low unemployment.


pages: 273 words: 87,159

The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy by Peter Temin

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, clean water, corporate raider, Corrections Corporation of America, crack epidemic, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, full employment, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, invisible hand, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mandatory minimum, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, mortgage debt, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, plutocrats, Powell Memorandum, price stability, race to the bottom, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, the scientific method, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, white flight, working poor

There is an implicit political theory there that will be described in more detail in part II.19 This conservative philosophy represented a change in the intellectual legacy of the preceding thirty years of war and depression from John Maynard Keynes to Hayek. Keynes championed the role of government in achieving prosperity and well-being for the citizens of a democracy. Hayek focused on individual activity as the source of prosperity, and he rejected government in his most popular book, The Road to Serfdom. American economists rejected Keynes in the turbulent 1970s in favor of individual initiatives, and Keynesian macroeconomics was relegated to undergraduate courses. Professional publications amplified Hayek, while economic policymakers still rely on Keynes.20 As noted in the introduction, Ronald Reagan announced his 1980 presidential candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three young civil-rights workers were murdered in 1964.

Yonkers and, 131 voting and, 115 women and, 115–116, 118, 120 World War I era and, 133 Putin, Vladimir, 93 Putnam, Robert, 11–12, 39, 165 Race African Americans and, 50 (see also American Americans) Asian, 6, 9, 32, 144 capital and, 52 civil rights and, 15, 20, 22, 27, 53, 56–59, 67, 72, 94, 104, 113, 133, 142 Civil War and, ix, 15, 17–18, 51, 65, 88, 94, 107, 180n13 class and, xii college and, 52, 119–121 conservatives and, 56, 58–59 Democrats and, 51, 58–59 discrimination and, 15, 20–21, 38, 51–54, 56, 58, 66, 89, 105, 117, 153, 171n29 diversity and, 49, 51, 128, 156 equal protection clause and, 58, 67, 102 farmers and, 50, 52 Fifteenth Amendment and, 15, 56 FTE (finance, technology, and electronics) sector and, 10, 49, 55 full citizenship and, 15, 22, 159 Great Migration and, xii, xiv, 20, 27–29, 34–35, 52–55, 104, 116–117, 125 immigrants and, 50–55 industry and, 53 inequality and, 49–60 integration and, 13, 34, 80, 82, 106, 115–117, 120, 122, 128, 142, 157, 159 Irish, 54 Jews, 54, 120 Jim Crow policies and, 27, 49, 51–53, 58, 65–66, 104, 107, 154 jury duty and, 59 labor and, 50, 55 Latinos, 9–10 (see also Latinos) Lewis and, 49 low-wage sector and, 49, 55, 153–154 mortgages and, 117 North and, 51–53, 55, 59 police shootings and, 56–58, 60, 102–103, 179n7 public education and, 115–128 racecraft and, 50–55, 61, 66, 82–83, 88, 91, 101, 109, 115, 153, 155, 176n12 Republicans and, 56, 59 scientific evidence and, 49–50 segregation and, ix, 27, 34, 53, 80, 117–121, 131, 153–154, 171n16 slavery and, xii, 17 (see also Slavery) South and, 50–59 supremacist organizations and, 169n9 unemployment and, 52–53 universities and, 52 voting and, 51, 56–59, 170n1 wages and, 49, 55, 60 white flight and, 34, 38, 117, 125, 179n7 witchcraft analogy and, 50 Race between Education and Technology, The (Goldin and Katz), xiii Rail, 133–134, 158 Rand, Ayn, 21, 81 Rankine, Claudia, 56 Rape, 56–57, 108–109 Rawls, John, 92 Reagan, Ronald, xii, 44, 83, 95 debt and, 142–143 federal grants and, 35, 129 full citizenship of African Americans and, 22 mass incarceration and, 104 neoliberalism of, 22 one-percenters and, 22–23 taxes and, 22 unions and, 22 War on Drugs and, 53 Welfare Queens and, 38, 171n27 Real wages, 3–4, 21, 32–33 Reconstruction, 27, 51, 65, 67, 159 Redlining, 34, 53 REDMAP, 96 Reform debt and, 156, 158 Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act and, 18 Dodd-Street Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and, 93 infrastructure issues and, 129–137, 156–158, 163 labor law and, 19 low-wage sector and, 156–159 mass incarceration and, 156 mentally ill and, 107 police and, 102 prison and, 110–113 public education and, 118–119, 122, 125–127, 130, 135, 156–160 Social Security and, 69–70 tax and, 22 Rehnquist, William, 27, 95, 116, 142 Republicans ALEC and, 19 control of state legislatures by, 95–96 Investment Theory of Politics and, 61, 66 low-wage sector and, 154, 170n1 packing attempts by, 96 race and, 56, 59 REDMAP and, 96 very rich and, 80, 95–97 Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), 95 Retirement, 11, 25, 29, 33–34, 45, 90, 141, 156, 172n14 Rice, Condoleezza, 71 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 21 Roberts, John, 142 Roe v. Wade, 58 Romney, Mitt, 24 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 21, 52, 65, 80–81, 101, 141 Rubin, Robert, 113 Rural Renaissance, 20 Russakoff, Dale, 123 Russell Sage Foundation, xvii Russia, 58, 93 Rust Belt, 20 Salaries, 8, 24–25, 45, 116, 118, 121 Savings, 7, 12, 17, 105–106, 161–163 Savings and Loan Associations (S&Ls), 17 Scaife, Richard Mellon, 17 Scalia, Antonin, 96 Schorr, Lisbeth, 115 Seawright, Jason, 78–79 Second Reconstruction, 159 Securities and Exchange Commission, 93 Segregation African Americans and, ix, 27, 34, 53, 80, 117–121, 131, 153–154, 171n16 Brown v.


pages: 287 words: 81,970

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Coming Currency Crisis With Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments by Charles Goyette

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Elliott wave, fiat currency, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, housing crisis, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, index fund, junk bonds, Lao Tzu, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, McMansion, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, oil shock, peak oil, pushing on a string, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, short selling, Silicon Valley, transaction costs

Industrial production soared by 25 percent in 1950 alone, and by 18 percent the next year. Germany was rebuilt; prosperity was restored. Truly it was an economic miracle. During the postwar occupation of Germany, the American and British authorities banned F. A. Hayek’s seminal 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, for fear it would offend the Soviets. Hayek’s work described the way in which a central economic authority’s planning put a government at war with its own citizens, how it must become increasingly coercive in order to prevail, and how the coercive machinery of the central plan, once erected, can be employed to any coercive end.

New York: PublicAffairs, 2008. Fleckenstein, William A., with Frederick Sheehan. Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve. New York: McGraw Hill, 2008. Grant, James. Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond. Mount Jack-son, VA: Axios Press, 2008. Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. Hazlitt, Henry. The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1978. Jastrom, Roy W. The Golden Constant. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977. Johnson, Chalmers. Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. ———.


pages: 482 words: 149,351

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, forensic accounting, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Global Witness, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land value tax, late capitalism, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, two and twenty, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, wealth creators, white picket fence, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

The simplest example of this is privatisation, where you sell off state assets to the private sector in the hope that they will compete and become more efficient. If you can achieve this, Hayek argued, then the market can become a tool for finally taming government, the handmaiden of tyranny. (If this has got you thinking about today’s NHS, you’re on the right track.) Hayek’s most famous book, The Road to Serfdom, laid this all out. Competition and the price system were the only legitimate arbiters of what was good and true, he said. And this soon became a neoliberal mantra. Cut taxes, deregulate, privatise and launch all these pieces into competition with each other, then let it all rip. Not just banks or companies, but also health services, universities, school playing fields, environmental protection bodies, sexual abuse referral services, regulators, lawyers, shell companies and the kitchen sink: all of it could be, should be, must be, shoehorned into the same competitive framework, to be sorted and judged by the one true test of virtue: the test of the market.

Hayek’s thrilling ideas enraptured growing numbers of people, including Margaret Roberts, the president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. Half a century later, long after she had married, taken the surname Thatcher and become Britain’s first female prime minister, she would call Hayek’s Road to Serfdom the book ‘to which I have returned so often’.15 And many other politicians have come to love neoliberalism because the ‘verdict of the market’ absolves them of responsibility for making hard choices, helping them sidestep troublesome notions like fairness or justice. They can simply sit back, watching as the laissez-faire machinery of the market sorts out all that noisy, sweaty, difficult kerfuffle.

122, 136–7 Cadbury’s 113 Cameron, David 48 Capital Group 84 capital requirements 148–63 Careline Homecare Limited 190–3, 202–5, 206, 216, 220 care sector 4, 190–4, 202–9, 216–17, 220, 228, 229, 234 Carillion 46, 231, 237 Carlyle Group 214 Carvalho, Arnaldo Lago de 233 Cassano, Joe 161 Cayman Islands 1, 2, 3, 59–60, 62, 63–7, 93, 125, 136, 140, 141, 145, 150, 151, 152, 153–4, 157, 162, 179, 188, 200, 211, 228, 242 Cayman Trust Law (1967) 62 Celtic Tiger (Ireland economy) 4, 115, 116–39 Central Bank of Ireland 129, 136 Cheney, Dick 244 Cherwell, Lord 53 Chicago School 28, 29, 30, 46, 71, 74, 98, 110, 197, 209, 253 China 13, 23, 50, 55, 84, 85, 87, 92, 104, 108, 110, 117, 138, 200, 258, 262–7, 272, 274 China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) 262–3 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 258, 264, 265, 266, 267, 272 Christensen, John 5, 11, 48, 67–8 Christensen, Professor Clayton 197, 198 Citibank/Citigroup 11, 59, 83, 129, 140, 159 City of London 37, 38, 84, 92–3, 183, 185, 252, 271, 272, 273; Big Bang 104, 143–4; capture of British establishment 13, 142, 166–7, 257–60, 265, 266; Chinese influence upon 262–7; evidence machine/lobbying and 257–60; financial brain drain and 6, 108, 259; global financial crisis and see global financial crisis; monopolies and 84; neoliberalism and 37, 38; organised crime and other abusive activities linked to 11–12, 93, 97, 141–6, 154, 166, 167, 168; penetrated and captured by reckless global finance (London loophole) 140–68; rebirth as global financial centre after fall of British empire 4, 10, 50–69; tax havens and see tax havens; Third Way and 92–3, 97, 98, 102, 104, 108, 109, 113; UK economy and growth in size of 5–14, 108, 218–40, 257–61, 262–74 City of London Corporation 257–8 Clearing House Group 130–1 Clinton, Bill 91, 97, 101, 114, 115, 122, 159 Clinton, Hillary 91, 100 Coase, Ronald: The Problem of Social Cost 72–4, 79 Coelho, Tony 98–9 Cohen, Benjamin J. 57 Cohen, Sheldon 254 collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) 165, 235 collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) 165, 200 Commodity Futures Modernisation Act (CFMA) (2000) 159–60 Community Mental Health Fund, Missouri 44 comparative advantage concept 105, 108 Competition and Markets Authority 70 competitiveness of nations/competitiveness agenda 8–9, 13–14, 23, 28–49, 62, 68, 70–1, 73, 80, 95, 97–8, 100–15, 130, 131, 132–3, 136, 142, 143, 149, 159, 160, 161, 164, 165, 180–1, 184–5, 207, 218, 241–3, 246–7, 250, 252–3, 258, 266, 267, 270, 271, 273 Conservative Party 37, 53, 71, 78, 102, 157, 165, 168, 220, 229 consultants 40, 41, 42–3, 66, 117, 230, 232, 233 controlled foreign company (CFC) reforms, U.K. 249–50 Cook Islands 177, 186, 272 Cornfield, Bernie 93 corporation: complexity of 3, 205–6; concept of 196–7 credit, control of 21 credit default swap (CDS) 128, 141, 147, 155–9, 165 Credit Suisse 11, 180, 183 crime/criminal money 12, 56, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64–5, 93–4, 142–3, 144, 145, 153, 154, 167–8, 175, 180, 187, 223, 264, 272, 273 Cromwell, William 22 Daily Mail 113, 251, 252 Darling, Alistair 257 Davidson, Charles 182, 189 Davidson, Kenneth 81, 252 Davies, Will 36, 39, 102 Deaton, Angus 181 debt 7, 34, 58, 69, 121, 152, 160, 165, 169, 186, 190, 193–6, 198–201, 205, 206–7, 208, 210, 215, 221, 234, 235, 244, 248, 262 Delaware, U.S. 181 Deloitte 235, 237 Delors, Jacques 100 Democratic Party, U.S. 39, 97, 98–100, 102, 141, 245 Deng Xiaoping 117 Depfa 133 deregulation, financial 13, 31, 35, 64–5, 68–9, 91, 97, 104, 107, 109, 117–18, 138, 142, 143, 146, 152, 159–60, 164, 165, 260 derivatives 12, 140–1, 142, 144, 146–7, 149, 151, 155, 158–60, 161, 164, 193 Desmond, Dermot 129–30 de Tocqueville, Alexis 75–6 Deutsche Bank 83, 95, 111, 160 Devereux, Professor Mike 243 Director, Aaron 71–2, 78, 79 DIRT (Deposit Interest Retention Tax) 136 Down’s Syndrome North East Association (UK) (DNSE) 169–70, 174 Drexel Burnham Lambert 161, 195 drugs: gangs/money 12, 61, 64–5, 92, 142–3, 145, 167, 185–6; pharmaceutical/Big Pharma 85–6, 126, 247 Dunbar, Nicholas 152, 161 dynamic scoring/dynamic modeling 253–4 East India Company 50, 75 Eddy, Bruce 44 Efficient Markets Hypothesis 150 Elf Affair 94, 187 Enron 46, 141, 165, 235–6 Epstein, Professor Gerald 10–11, 259; Overcharged: The High Costs of Finance 10– 11 Ernst & Young 163, 235, 238 Espino, Ovidio Diaz: How Wall Street Created a Nation 23 Essilor 82; EssilorLuxottica 82 Eurodollar markets/Euromarkets 55–9, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 77, 91, 93, 104, 142 European Central Bank (ECB) 137 European Commission (EC) 84, 94, 100, 111, 137; Liikanen Report (2012) 135 European Economic Community (EEC) 77, 98, 118, 123, 124–5 European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) 100 European Union (EU) 98, 109–10, 111, 124, 132, 147, 238 Export Profits Tax Relief 118 Facebook 23, 71, 84, 88, 171, 173, 185, 226, 271, 274 fallacy of composition 107–8, 247 Fallon, Padraic 124 Fanning, John 126 Fantus Factory Location Service 40 Farm Aid 87–8 Federal Reserve Bank of New York 57 Ferguson, Niall: The Ascent of Money 242 Fiat 250 Finance Acts, Ireland: (1968) 120; (1987) 131 finance curse, concept of 3–14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 31, 37, 48, 68, 71, 103, 108, 111, 132, 136, 174, 184–5, 193, 198, 216, 228, 239, 257, 261, 265, 267, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274 financial capture 13, 68, 96, 153, 257, 259, 265, 266 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) 25–6, 246 financial crisis, global (2007–8) 4, 6, 25, 83, 90, 99, 109, 113, 114, 116, 128, 130, 133–4, 135–6, 140–68, 169, 195, 202, 224–5, 233, 235, 236, 240, 257 financialisation 2–4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 37, 68–9, 71, 88, 90, 174, 180, 185, 190, 191, 194, 198, 205, 217, 224, 225, 226, 228, 232, 259, 267, 274 Financial Services Authority (FSA) 104, 160, 161, 166, 167 Financial Stability Board (FSB) 83 Financial Times 68, 84, 94, 107, 146, 214, 218, 226, 232, 243, 256 Finger, Bernd 168 Fischel, William 38 Fordism 80 foreign direct investment (FDI) 110, 118–19, 123, 124, 132, 250 Fox News 71, 253 Franks, Oliver 52 Fraser, Ian: Shredded 227 free markets 18–19, 71–2, 99, 126, 128, 241 free-rider problem 30–1, 43, 47, 38 free trade 31, 50–1 Friedman, Milton 28, 30, 37, 59, 72, 73–4; ‘The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits’ 196–7, 198, 209 Friedmaniacs 28, 30 FTSE 100 228, 238 Gapper, John 232–3 Gash, Tom 230 Gates, Bill 127, 185 Gauke, David 249 Gaydamak, Arkady 186 Gazprom 84 GDP (gross domestic product) 6, 8, 111, 112, 123, 147, 153, 174, 241, 245, 254, 256, 260, 266 General Electric (GE) 86–7 Gensler, Gary 140–1 Gibraltar 60, 63 Giddens, Anthony: The Third Way 105 Gilbert, Martin 83 Gilead 85–6 Giles, Chris 218 Glasman, Baron 258 Glass-Steagall Act (1933) 76, 147, 158–9 globalisation 10, 35, 59, 93, 94–5, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 109, 165, 177, 251, 254 Golden Age of Capitalism 34, 69, 91, 92, 118, 196, 251, 254–5 Goldman Sachs 113, 159, 160, 183, 213, 235, 242 Google 71, 88, 226, 271 Graphite Capital Partners VIII A LP 191–2, 205, 206 Great Depression (1929–39) 31, 98 Greenspan, Alan 75, 159, 160 gross national income (GNI) 112, 119, 122–3, 134 Guernsey 60, 181, 191, 220, 222 Hahneman, Daniel 181 Haldane, Andrew 225 Hands, Guy 181 Hansen, Lee 28 happiness, wealth and 181–3, 189 Harlech, Lord 34 Harrington, Brooke 186, 188 Hartnett, Dave 113 Harvard Business School 101, 196, 197 Harvie, Alicia 87–8 Harvoni 86 Haughey, Charles 114–15, 120–3, 129–30, 136 Hayek, Friedrich 35–6, 37, 59, 76; The Road to Serfdom 36, 37 Hayes, Jerry 229 Heaton, David 234 hedge funds 6, 13, 83, 104, 108, 128, 130–1, 140–1, 154, 164, 177, 178, 189, 193, 200, 209, 213, 214–15, 217, 233 Henry, James 166, 260 Hewlett-Packard 39–40 Hinkley C 262–3 HMRC 62, 104, 113, 168, 173, 234, 241, 242, 245, 246, 249, 252–4; Computable General Equilibrium model 241, 252–4 HNWI (high net worth individuals) 180; ultra-HNWI 180 Hodge, Margaret 168, 239 Hofri-Windogradow, Adam 180 Hong Kong 50, 130, 138, 171–2, 266 HSBC 12, 54, 83, 107–8, 167, 266 Hundred Group 242 Hunt Companies 221 HypoVereinsbank 133 Industrial Development Authority (IDA), Ireland 118, 124–5, 126, 129, 131, 135 inequality 4, 11, 31, 34, 36, 47, 48, 59, 90, 109, 138, 179, 187, 225, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259, 267–8, 270, 272, 274 inflation 34, 80, 107, 129 Innes, Abby 229 Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) 247 Intel 125 internal rate of return (IRR) 198, 211 International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), Dublin 128–35, 251 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 137, 164, 219, 250, 251, 257 International Public Partnerships Limited (INPP) 220–1 International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) 158 Intruders 113 Investec Wealth & Investment Limited 220 investment funds 2, 88, 110, 140 Investors Overseas Services (IOS) 93 Iran 53–4 Ireland: Celtic Tiger economy in 4, 114–15, 116–39 Isle of Man 60, 136 Jackson County, Missouri, U.S. 44 Jenkins, Robert 11 Jensen, Professor Michael 196, 197, 198, 209, 215 Jersey 1, 2, 3, 5, 60, 63, 67–8, 131, 136, 169, 171, 173, 174, 202, 221, 222, 223, 228, 258 Jiang Zemin 117 Johnson, Boris 218, 219, 222 Johnson County, Kansas, U.S. 41–4 Johnson, Paul 247 Johnson, Simon 257 Joly, Eva 187 Journal of Political Economy 29, 46 JP Morgan Chase 83, 95, 141, 146, 147, 155, 158, 160, 214 Juncker, Jean-Claude 94–5, 97, 102, 103, 104, 111, 114, 122 Kansas, U.S. 41–4, 244–5, 255–6 Kay, John 9 Kennedy, Edward 78–9 Keynes, John Maynard 31–2, 34, 37, 38, 52, 59, 68, 251 KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) 2, 3, 195, 214 Koch, Charles 74 Kohlberg Junior, Jerome 194, 195, 199 Kohl, Marius 95 KPMG 114, 235, 237, 238–9 Kraft Heinz 81, 113 Kravis, Henry 2, 195 Kroes, Neelie 110 Krugman, Paul: ‘Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession’ 105 Labour Party 77, 97, 102–5, 132, 192, 220, 247, 257 Lack, Simon 214; The Hedge Fund Mirage 214 Laffer, Arthur/Laffer curve 244–5, 254 Lazonick, Bill 225, 226 Leaver, Professor Adam 207, 224–5, 234 Lehman Brothers 140, 162–4 Leigh-Pemberton, Robin 145 LeRoy, Greg 40–1 leveraged buyout (LBO) 195–6 Levin, Carl 134 Liberty Global 250 Libor (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate), manipulation of 12, 85, 109, 166 Linares, Adolfo 185, 188 Linklaters 163 Lloyds Bank 52 Local Government Association (LCA) 224 Loch Alpine Economics 253 London School of Economics (LSE) 37, 105, 229 London Stock Exchange (LSE) 167, 220 London Whale 141 Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) 140–1 Luxembourg 1, 2, 3, 13, 55–6, 92, 93–7, 98, 111–13, 125, 130, 138, 142, 166, 201, 211, 221, 222, 228, 243 Luxleaks scandal (2014) 95, 109 Luxottica 82 Lycamobile 168 Lydian Capital Partnership 202 Lynn, Barry 87, 88 Macdonald, Ken 168 Macmillan, Harold 34, 53–4 MacSharry, Ray: The Making of the Celtic Tiger 118, 127 Madoff, Bernie 94, 96 Madrid, Miguel de la 58 Major, John 220 Maloney, Carolyn 141 Manafort, Paul 183 Manne, Henry 74 Marchant, David 157 Marx, Karl 15, 18 Masters, Blythe 158 Maugham, Jolyon 156 Maurer, Ueli 45–6 Mazerov, Michael 255 McAlpin, Clovis 62 McCarthy, Joseph 29 McCarthy, Justine 119 McCreevy, Charlie 132 McDonald, Duff 197 Mellon, Tamara 208 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) 26, 71, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 99, 110, 155, 225, 226, 251 Metcalf, Stephen 36 Microsoft 125, 185 Midland Bank 34, 54–5 Milken, Michael 195 Missouri, U.S. 41, 43, 44, 244–5, 255 money laundering 12, 145–6, 167, 168, 183 Money Trust Investigation, U.S.


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Capitalism in America: A History by Adrian Wooldridge, Alan Greenspan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Blitzscaling, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land bank, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, plutocrats, pneumatic tube, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, price stability, Productivity paradox, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, refrigerator car, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, savings glut, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, supply-chain management, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transcontinental railway, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, War on Poverty, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, white flight, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Liberal activists have repeatedly been followed by more conservative successors—FDR by Dwight Eisenhower (by way of Truman), Lyndon Johnson by Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter by Ronald Reagan. America’s powerful tradition of laissez-faire liberalism also reasserted itself after the Second World War. Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was condensed in Reader’s Digest and read by millions. Milton Friedman became a television star. Ronald Reagan campaigned on the idea that government was the problem rather than the solution. But can America continue to preserve its comparative advantage in the art of creative destruction?

European countries were all dragged to the left by vibrant socialist movements: Communists got 26 percent of the vote in France, 23.5 percent in Finland, 19.5 percent in Iceland, and 19 percent in Italy.6 America alone was dragged to the right by a conservative movement that loathed government. Millions of Americans read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944), or at least the Reader’s Digest condensed version. Businessmen clubbed together to support the American Enterprise Institute, which moved from New York City to Washington, D.C., in 1943. Ayn Rand won a mass audience for her celebration of unfettered individualism in The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).

., 154, 199–200, 251 post–World War II economic expansion, 270–72, 273–98 potholes vs. progress, 394–98 Potter, David, 295 Pratt, Francis, 72 presidential passivity, 157–59 Prince, Charles, 382 prison labor, 87–88 Procter & Gamble, 118–19, 263, 288, 391 productivity, 12–13, 122, 195, 269, 290–93, 453–54 sources of, 14–21 productivity growth, 4, 273–75, 301, 301, 387, 387, 403 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), 327–28 professional managers, 207–9 Progressive Era, 25, 165, 176–79, 182, 188, 189, 240–41, 251 Prohibition, 192, 197, 263 property rights, 8, 159–60 protectionism, 7, 194, 230–31, 232, 343–44 Protestant Reformation, 7, 69 Protestant work ethic, 44 Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, 303 Public Works Administration (PWA), 244 Pujo, Arsène, 185 Pullman Company, 144 Pullman Strike of 1894, 154, 173 Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, 182–83 Puritans, 7, 60 “pursuit of happiness,” 8 pursuit of self-interest, 6–7 Quaker Oats, 92, 320 Quakers, 60 quants, 381–82 racism, 89, 295 radio, 202–4, 316 Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 203–4, 316, 320 “railroaded,” 172 railroads, 53–55, 96–98, 112–15, 121, 136–38, 139, 166–67, 197–98, 265 first refrigerated cars, 119 first transcontinental, 16, 18, 90, 114 miles of railroad built, 96–97, 97 Rand, Ayn, 277–78 Rand, Remington, 350–51 Random House, 320 Ransom, Roger, 85 Raskob, John, 221, 222–23 ratio analysis, 340 Ratzel, Friedrich, 88–89 Raytheon, 283, 349 Reagan, Ronald, 26, 248, 324, 325, 326–31, 344, 391, 406 Reaganomics, 330–31 regulations, 255–58, 328–29, 411–15, 412, 416, 425 resource constraints, 10–11 resource revolution, 48–49 retirement age, 404, 441, 442–43 Revolutionary War, 5–6, 31, 34–35, 38–40, 62, 69, 266, 266 Revson, Charles, 264–65 Riesman, David, 295, 296 Riggio, Leonard, 341 “Rip Van Winkle” (Irving), 40 risk management paradigm, 383–84 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 26, 277 robber barons, 124–33, 167–68, 170–71, 356 Roberts, George, 341 Rockefeller, John D., 17, 103, 124, 125–26, 128–30, 136, 142–43, 164, 167–68, 187, 190 Rockefeller University, 126 Rockoff, Hugh, 186, 187 Roebuck, Alvah, 141–42 Rogers, Will, 239, 243 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 234–35, 237, 239–62 fireside chats, 204, 240, 243, 252 New Deal, 25–26, 225–26, 242–62, 415 wartime renaissance, 266, 268–70 Roosevelt, Theodore, 110, 124, 153, 179, 181–85, 268, 427 “Rosie the Riveter,” 363 rubber, 47, 110, 198–99 Rubin, Robert, 332 Rumsfeld, Donald, 306, 368 russet potato, 118 Rust Belt, 321–23, 366 Sanders, Harland, 197, 443 San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, 90 Santa Clara County v.


The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History by Derek S. Hoff

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, British Empire, business cycle, classic study, clean water, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, feminist movement, full employment, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, George Gilder, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Lewis Mumford, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, New Economic Geography, new economy, old age dependency ratio, open immigration, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, pensions crisis, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois, wage slave, War on Poverty, white flight, zero-sum game

Robert Cook of the Population Reference Bureau wrote in Parents’ magazine: “How long it will be possible to maintain the American tradition of liberty for the individual in an increasingly crowded economy is another basic question—one for all Americans to ponder. Some social scientists note an inverse relationship between crowding and liberty.”153 Spengler, too, remarked that human freedom decreased as population increased. A favorable reviewer of Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1945),154 a foundational book of modern American libertarianism, Spengler averred that larger populations would induce greater centralization and planning. “When the business community puts so much stress on population growth,” he told U.S. News & World Report, “it overlooks . . . that, when the United States numbers 600 million, as it well might 90 years from now, a heavily planned and quite regimented way of life will probably become necessary, and many of the values we presently prize will have to be given up.”155 population unbound 133 The Population Council championed the new aesthetic critique.

Boulding, “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” in Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy: Essays from the Sixth RFF Forum, ed. Henry Jarrett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, 1966), 3–14. 153. Robert C. Cook, “It’s Going to be a Crowded Planet,” Parents’ Magazine and Home Guide, October 1957, 131. 154. Joseph J. Spengler, review of The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich A. Hayek, Southern Economic Journal 12 (July 1945): 48–55. 155. Spengler, “ ‘Standing Room Only’ in the World?” 87. 156. “Ad Hoc Meeting—April 4, 1957, Concluding Statement by the Chairman [Frederick Osborn],” Population Council Records, Box 2, Folder 12, “Ad Hoc Philosophy Committee, Meeting 7, Correspondence and Discussion Papers, 1956– 1957,” 2. 157.

See also Keynes-Hansen (mature-economy) doctrine Hansen, Clifford, 185 Harberger, Arnold, 125, 126 Hardin, Garrett, 177, 181, 187, 189, 190, 322n105; “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 177–78, 319n71 Harkavy, Oscar, 111 Harrod, Roy, 122 Harrod-Domar model of savings and investment, 122, 295n90, 295n92 Hart, Philip A., 159 Hartnett, Caroline, 2 Hauser, Philip, 132, 309n106 Hayek, Friedrich, 228; The Constitution of Liberty, 208; The Road to Serfdom, 132 366 Hays, Samuel, 56, 299n139 Heller, Walter, 142, 302n19 Hess, Ralph, 27, 69, 70–71 Hietala, Thomas, 41 Higher Education Act of 1965, 140 Hispanic Americans: fertility rate, 2; higher birthrates than non-Hispanic whites in 1970s, 348n29 Hodgson, Dennis, 50, 59 Home Building and Loan Association v.


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Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy by Alex Moazed, Nicholas L. Johnson

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, commoditize, connected car, disintermediation, driverless car, fake it until you make it, future of work, gig economy, hockey-stick growth, if you build it, they will come, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, jimmy wales, John Gruber, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, money market fund, multi-sided market, Network effects, PalmPilot, patent troll, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pets.com, platform as a service, power law, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, source of truth, Startup school, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, the medium is the message, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, white flight, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator

Kantorovich wasn’t the first person to notice something wrong with the idea of perfect information. Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek posed this same question decades earlier. Hayek was most influential in the mid-twentieth century, but he remains popular today with many political libertarians and conservatives. He is best known for his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, which warned of the dangers of government control of economic decision making through central planning. As you would expect, Hayek was a strong proponent of free markets. However, he also recognized that the conventional argument for “perfect markets” was flawed. In his essay titled “The Meaning of Competition,” he lampooned the idea of perfect competition that was championed by most economists at the time.

Morgan, 23, 234 Kalanick, Travis, 102, 134, 230 Kantorovich, Leonid, 52–53 Keynes, John Maynard, 107 Kickstarter, 30, 77–78, 114, 183 Kozmo.com, 64, 175 Krugman, Paul, 64, 67 LakePlace.com, 130 Lange, Oskar, 61, 63, 71, 73 Lazaridis, Mike, 7–11 Lean Startup movement, 175 Lending Club, 46, 77–78, 113–14, 215, 231 Lenovo, 23, 210 Lessin, Sam, 122–23 linear business model: competition and, 68, 74–75; connection and, 112, 114; data and, 100; defined, 240; explained, 22–24; investment and, 81–82; legal issues and, 213; market size and, 93; monopolies and, 103; platforms and, 29, 31–33, 109–11, 116, 192, 215; privacy and, 108; Samsung and, 212; supply chain, 24–25; transactions and, 116–17; U-shaped economies of scale curve for, 60; value and, 39, 84–85, 152, 231; zero-marginal-cost and, 85–89 LinkedIn, 17–18, 30, 46, 82, 87, 118, 120–21, 155, 190, 206, 224 Linux, 33–35, 139, 234 liquidity, 121, 130, 132, 135, 181, 192, 199, 240 local knowledge, 54–55, 59, 70, 73 Lyft, 30, 45, 121, 127, 152, 181, 186, 194, 199, 205–6, 216 Ma, Jack, 96–98, 227 margins, 89–90, 93, 95 market size, 87–88, 93 matching intention, 41–42, 47, 241 matchmaking: collaborative filtering, 134–35; commoditization and, 46; core transactions and, 47, 126; creating rules and standards, 136–38; explained, 126; measuring success, 135–36; overview, 132–33; preventing unintended consequences, 143–46; Twitter and, 138–43; Uber and, 133–34; Yahoo and, 135–36 McLuhan, Marshall, 51 MDLIVE, 80 “Meaning of Competition, The” (Hayek), 53 Medium, 41–42, 116, 125, 181 MeeGo, 1–2 Mehta, Apoorva, 147–49 Metcalfe’s Law, 168–70, 175, 183, 241 Metromile, 206 Microsoft, 1, 3, 15, 18, 29–31, 35, 62, 68, 99, 106–7, 180–81, 196 MIT, 62, 165 mobile technology, 65, 67 monetary subsidies: attracting high-value users, 199–200; cooperating with industry incumbents, 196–97; providing security through large, up-front investment, 196; providing single-user utility, 201; targeting user groups, 200–1 monopolies: business model and, 97–99; competition and, 105–8; government-sponsored, 74–75; old vs. new, 100–3; overview, 95–97; platform capitalism, 99–100 Moore, Gordon, 61 Moore’s Law, 61, 174 Motorola, 10, 210–12 MySpace, 144, 162–65, 167, 169, 172–76, 179–80, 183 Navani, Girish, 79–80 Net neutrality, 18 Netflix, 100 network ecosystem, 69 network effects ladder: collaboration, 184–85; communication, 183; community, 185–86; connection, 183; curation, 183–84; diagram, 182; overview, 182–83 Nokia, 1–8, 11, 14–15, 81, 106 Nosek, Luke, 131 Obama, Barack, 130–31 Omidyar, Pierre, 21–22, 27 on-demand, 29, 32, 45, 80, 90, 147, 150, 194, 220, 222, 228 Open Handset Alliance (OHA), 10 open source, 10, 33–36, 38, 78, 107, 220, 234 OpenTable, 89–90, 201, 222 opt-ins: double, 43, 118–19, 122, 152–53, 165, 241; single, 118–20 Oracle, 23, 79 PayPal, 18, 37, 74, 131–32, 149, 159, 194, 214 perfect information, 36, 52–54 Pets.com, 20–22, 27, 29, 32, 64, 175 Pinterest, 30, 82, 106, 181–82 Pishevar, Shervin, 160 platforms: anatomy of, 39–41; competition between, 99–100, 103, 106, 222; computing, 32; costs, 36–37; definition, 29; design, 46–47; examples, 29–31; exchange, 41, 43–44; expansion of markets, 103–5; industry, 32; maker, 41, 44; matching intention and, 41–43; monopolies, 99–101; platform capitalism, 99–100; product, 32; as service, 32; types, 43–46 Porter, Michael, 57–60, 69, 72, 86, 97–98, 110, 112, 131, 242 Preston, Dan, 206 Preston-Warner, Tom, 35 privacy, 108, 155, 174, 179, 229 processing power, 29, 61–63, 65–67, 70, 233 product features: acting as producer, 197–98; attracting high-value users, 199–200; providing single-user utility, 201; tapping into existing network, 198; targeting user groups, 200–1 profitability, 22, 29, 107, 211 ProGit, 36 QQ, 19, 154, 218 QWERTY keyboards, 8, 11 Rakuten, 30 recommendations, 100, 116 Red Cross, 132 Red Hat, 33–34 Redpoint Ventures, 120, 138 Reidman, Hoff, 78 repeat business, 91–92 reputation, 96, 100, 107, 116, 129, 144–45, 154, 160, 164, 174, 177–78, 180, 183–84 Research in Motion (RIM), 7–15; see also BlackBerry restaurants, 89–90, 201, 225; see also GrubHub; OpenTable rewards, 115–16 Riedel, Josh, 144 Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 53 Roberts, Matthew, 90 Rubin, Andy, 10 rules and standards, 136–38 Salesforce, 79 Samsung, 10, 84, 94, 211–12, 231 Sandberg, Sheryl, 139 SAP, 79 Sarver, Ryan, 138–41, 145 Scoble, Robert, 191 search, 6, 18, 37, 45–46, 73, 95, 97–99, 105–7, 116, 130, 133, 135–36, 154, 196, 206, 208, 219–22, 233; see also Alibaba; Baidu; Google showrooming, 50 simplicity, 122–23, 147 Skype, 18, 42, 114 smartphones Snapchat, 30, 38, 81–82, 114, 191, 201 Social Finance (SoFi), 30, 231 social networking, 18, 35, 43, 46, 67, 74, 81, 118–22, 142, 153, 161, 163–67, 170, 172–74, 176, 189–90, 194, 198, 200–1, 213, 221, 224, 235 software as a service (SaaS), 23, 33, 79, 85, 227 software development kit (SDK), 13–14 SoundCloud, 77 Spotify, 184, 203–4 Square, 18, 30 Standard Oil, 22, 100–2, 107 startups, 15, 22, 30–31, 46, 74, 77, 80, 83–85, 97, 107, 120–21, 129–30, 147, 156, 172, 175, 177, 184–85, 190–92, 195, 197, 205, 219, 223, 231, 235 Steel, Anna, 151–52 storage, 66, 68, 79 Super Bowl ads, 20 supply chain, 4, 18, 22–26, 29, 69, 89 Symbian, 1–2, 4, 32 Taobao.


pages: 420 words: 94,064

The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors by Spencer Jakab

4chan, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, buy and hold, classic study, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, democratizing finance, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, fake news, family office, financial innovation, gamification, global macro, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, John Bogle, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, meme stock, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, passive investing, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Vision Fund, WeWork, zero-sum game

A $10,000 investment in a typical equity index fund will cost you about $9 a year compared with $63 a year for the typical actively managed stock fund.[14] The fund research firm Morningstar reported that in 2019 the average US mutual fund’s cost had dropped over a decade by 0.42 percentage points of the amount invested annually largely because so many Americans had bought index funds. That saves investors about $100 billion a year.[15] Naturally, some in the investment business are alarmed. A 2016 report by analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company sounds almost made up: The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing Is Worse Than Marxism.[16] “A supposedly capitalist economy where the only investment is passive is worse than either a centrally planned economy or an economy with active market led capital management,” wrote the authors. “Showered with Compensation” Don’t fret too much about Wall Street.

., 233–34, 247, 258 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 30, 34, 42, 61, 66, 83, 84, 90, 117, 120, 139, 153, 163, 167–68, 192–93, 206–8, 230, 231, 246 Robinhood’s hiring of regulators from, 239–40 Seides, Ted, 245 SentimenTrader, 227 Senvest Management, 221 Sherman, George, 224 short selling, xi, xii, 12, 72–73, 74–86, 93, 95, 106–7, 115, 119–20, 125–26, 164, 181, 217, 225, 246–47 activist, 119 bans on, 83 benefits to others from, 84–85 interest and, 76, 92, 93, 106, 108, 113, 121, 132, 133, 140, 164, 169 long-term strategies and, 81 misunderstandings about, 80–81 naked, 80 rehypothecation and, 80, 92 Tesla and, 81–82, 106, 107 short squeezes, xii, 5, 23, 39, 40, 72, 73, 75–77, 81, 107–8, 113, 126, 139, 184, 221, 247 corner in, 75 GameStop, see GameStop, GameStop short squeeze gamma, 108, 109, 132, 141, 216, 227–28 history of, 77–80 silver, 229–30 Volkswagen, 77–78, 81 see also meme stocks Shkreli, Martin, 38–39 Siegel, Robert, 50 SigFig, 257 Signal Advance, 60 Silent Road to Serfdom, The: Why Passive Investing Is Worse Than Marxism, 244 Silicon Valley, 24–26, 40–41, 154, 156, 157, 160, 168 silver, 229–30 Silverblatt, Howard, 70 Silver Lake, 225 Simons, Jim, 237 Skilling, Jeffrey, 85 Skinner, B.


pages: 558 words: 168,179

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

Adam Curtis, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Bakken shale, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carried interest, centre right, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, collective bargaining, company town, corporate raider, crony capitalism, David Brooks, desegregation, disinformation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, energy security, estate planning, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, George Gilder, high-speed rail, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job automation, low skilled workers, mandatory minimum, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, More Guns, Less Crime, multilevel marketing, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, plutocrats, Powell Memorandum, Ralph Nader, Renaissance Technologies, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Solyndra, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, War on Poverty, working poor

“It was a stew pot of ideas,” recalled diZerega, who later became a liberal academic, “but if you grew up with more money than God, and felt weird about it, this version of history, where the robber barons were heroes, would certainly make you feel a lot better about it.” At the Freedom School, Charles became particularly enamored of the work of two laissez-faire economists, the Austrian theorist Ludwig von Mises and his star pupil, Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian exile, who visited the Freedom School. Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom had become an improbable best seller in 1944, after Reader’s Digest published a condensed version. It offered a withering critique of “collectivism” and argued that centralized government planning, in which liberals were then engaged, would lead, inexorably, to dictatorship. In many respects, Hayek was a throwback, romanticizing a lost golden age of idealized unfettered capitalism that arguably never existed for much of the population.

Eric Wanner, the former president of the Russell Sage Foundation, summed it up, saying, “The AEIs and the Heritages of the world represent the inversion of the progressive faith that social science should shape social policy.” According to one account, it was Hayek who spawned the idea of the think tank as disguised political weapon. As Adam Curtis, a documentary filmmaker with the BBC, tells the story, around 1950, after reading the Reader’s Digest version of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, an eccentric British libertarian named Antony Fisher, an Eton and Cambridge graduate who believed socialism and Communism were overtaking the democratic West, sought Hayek’s advice about what could be done. Should he run for office? Hayek, who was then teaching at the London School of Economics, told him that for people of their beliefs getting into politics was futile.

Joining Noble on the panel was Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, who unveiled his group’s plan to spend an unheard-of $45 million on a few targeted midterm races. In the evening, conference goers were treated to a rousing dinner speech from the Fox News host Glenn Beck titled, in homage to Hayek, “Is America on the Road to Serfdom?” Finally, topping off the night was a “cocktails and dessert reception,” hosted by DonorsTrust. Whitney Ball, the head of the organization that offered donors a politically safe way to give big and anonymously, later explained her attendance at the event succinctly: It’s a “target-rich environment.”


pages: 308 words: 99,298

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe by Denis MacShane

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, fixed income, Gini coefficient, greed is good, illegal immigration, information security, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low cost airline, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, post-truth, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reshoring, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Thales and the olive presses, trade liberalization, transaction costs, women in the workforce

There seem to be no editors or intellectuals, no business leaders, no writers who can articulate any vision that commands support. Putin, Trump and Erdoğan represent all that is worst in the idea of political leadership, but without leadership, followers cannot follow. One man who saw what Europe could and should be was Friedrich Hayek. His short book The Road to Serfdom (published in 1944) is often hailed as the founding charter of postwar economic liberalism. It was seen as an assault on the collectivist, statist, social democratic and socialist ideas that were emerging as the response to both Nazism and communism. Margaret Thatcher venerated the Austrian-born economist and gave him one of Britain’s top honours in 1984.

‘If international economic relations, instead of being relations between individuals become increasingly relations between whole nations organised as trading bodies, they inevitably become the source of friction and envy between whole nations.’ These insights are contained in the last chapter of Hayek’s book. It is probable that Mrs Thatcher and all the other Hayekians did not bother to examine closely the arguments advanced in the final pages of The Road to Serfdom. Hayek, however, makes a better case for the European Union as it has developed than many a more overt Europhile. As he wrote: ‘We cannot hope for order or lasting peace after this war if states, large and small, regain unfettered sovereignty in the economic sphere.’ Contrary to the belief that the EU should simply be a free-trade economic sphere, Hayek argued that: Far from its being true that, as is now widely believed, we need an international economic authority while the states can at the same time retain their unrestricted political sovereignty, almost exactly the opposite is the case.


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Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

Free markets and free men—economic freedom and political freedom—were also inextricably linked. It was no accident that the two economic gurus of Thatcher and Reagan—Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman—were deeply concerned with human liberty. Hayek’s most famous work was an attack on the power of the state called The Road to Serfdom. A collection of Friedman’s most important lectures was given the title Capitalism and Freedom. Even for the likes of Clinton and Blair, neither of whom was a devotee of Hayek or Friedman, globalization served moral ends. For Bill Clinton in particular it was a force for greater global peace and prosperity.

China as interest of, 25 Thatcher compared with, 25, 31, 36, 38, 39–43, 45 recession, 16, 32, 34, 40, 77, 149 see also Great Recession regulation, financial, 111–12, 113, 200–201, 220 Reid, Michael, 73, 78, 299n Republicans, 103, 108, 126, 157, 161, 242–43 resource shortages, 204–7, 262, 263, 272 “responsibility to protect” (R2P), 131, 230, 231 Rice, Susan, 197–98, 289 Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The (Kennedy), 88 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 118 Rogers, Mike, 266 Rohatyn, Felix, 111 Romania, 67, 68 Roosevelt, Franklin, 38, 282 Rubin, Robert, 112, 117–18 Rudd, Kevin, 218 Rumsfeld, Donald, 104, 125, 209 rupee, Indian, 83 Russia, 35, 59, 60, 96, 117, 165, 199, 240, 243, 255, 273, 274, 275, 290 antiglobalization in, 160 authoritarianism of, 174, 175, 176, 234–38, 240–41, 248, 249 in BRICs, 76–77, 196 democracy in, 130, 146, 168, 237–38, 283 financial crisis in (1998), 107–8, 159, 237 global government and, 217, 218, 223 global problems and, 205, 206, 280 NATO and, 235, 236, 312n–13n as nuclear power, 224, 287, 288 UN and, 225–26, 245 win-win world and, 129–30 Rwanda, 131, 132, 208, 231 Saakashvili, Mikheil (Misha), 233–35 Sachs, Jeffrey, 209, 213, 217 Sakharov, Andrei, 58 Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 74, 116 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 2, 8, 191, 194, 219, 269–70 Saudi Arabia, 204, 217, 221, 241, 272 savings and loan scandal, 296n Schlesinger, James, 204 Schroeder, Gerhard, 115 Schuman Declaration (1950), 219 Scowcroft, Brent, 180–81, 305n Seattle, Wash., antiglobalization in, 155–56 Senate, U.S., 90, 222 Siberia, 240, 274 Sinatra Doctrine, 64–65 Singapore, 60, 137–40, 143, 213 Singh, Manmohan, 15, 54, 79–83, 102–3, 116, 225, 243 Single European Act (1986), 49–51 Smith, Adam, 2, 17, 82, 113, 192 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, 267 socialism, 15–16, 30, 64, 81 British, 35, 36, 38, 49 in France, 46–49 Solana, Javier, 151 Solidarity, 66, 67 Somalia, 132, 209, 210, 256–57, 273 South Africa, 69–70, 176, 193, 244–45, 246, 262 South Korea, 6, 18, 60, 82, 142, 143, 159, 186, 187, 195, 273 sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), 193, 247 Soviet bloc, 6, 102 collapse of, 17, 18, 35–36, 58–59, 63–71, 76, 128 Soviet Union, 7, 34, 41, 87, 88, 167, 183, 233, 279, 285 Brezhnev Doctrine and, 64, 67 China compared with, 59–61 collapse of, 4, 11, 15, 19, 21, 43, 54, 69–70, 84, 85, 88, 90, 93, 100, 102, 105, 164, 261, 282 Fukuyama’s study of, 99–100 Gorbachev’s reforms in, 15, 16, 25, 27, 42, 53–61, 68, 100, 297n Nehru’s visit to, 81 Soviet bloc collapse and, 58–59, 61, 65–66 U.S. competition with, 131, 282, 284, 291 Spain, Spanish, 8, 72, 147, 165, 188, 235, 270 global government and, 219, 221, 226, 228 Spence, Jonathan, 23–24 Sri Lanka, 223, 231, 274 Stalin, Joseph, 27, 236, 237 Starbucks, 155, 261 State Department, U.S., 99, 100, 117, 188 State of Emergency (Buchanan), 260 Steinberg, James, 5, 129 Stiglitz, Joseph, 157, 159, 160, 314n stock market, 83, 218 in Japan, 18–19, 88–89 U.S., 2–3, 4, 40, 96–97, 107, 110, 165 Strauss-Kahn, Dominique, 152, 219 Sudan, 195, 205, 223, 226, 227, 231, 246, 247, 248, 275, 289 Sullivan, Andrew, 280 Summers, Larry, 7, 117–18, 156, 184 Suskind, Ron, 168 Sweden, 150, 156 Switzerland, 96, 101, 269 Taiwan, 60, 82, 136–37, 143, 186, 237, 249 Talbott, Strobe, 126, 217, 304n Taliban, 167, 239, 252 tariffs, 74, 75, 77, 83, 265, 266, 267 taxes, 49, 94, 109, 115, 216, 236, 267 cuts in, 17, 32, 35, 38, 39, 74, 75, 83, 116 Tax Reform Act (1986), 38 Tbilisi, 233, 234 Tea Party movement, 268 technology, 27, 56, 87, 111, 118–28, 131, 174, 203, 271 climate change and, 203, 204, 286–87 global warming and, 125–26 gloomy predictions and, 125, 204, 206 India and, 6, 81, 84–85, 141 peace and, 5–6, 126 U.S., 93, 95, 118–26, 165, 167, 184, 187, 261 see also information technology television, 119, 124, 135, 234–37, 285 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 225 Tequila crisis (1994), 77 terror, war on, 96, 165, 198, 199, 211, 212, 244, 245 terrorism, 36, 161–62, 166, 174, 198, 199, 210, 220, 257, 258, 259, 280 nuclear proliferation and, 211–12 in Pakistan, 211, 212, 251, 252, 256, 313n see also 9/11 Tett, Gillian, 123 Texas A&M, 179–81 Thailand, 6, 60, 142, 143, 159–60 Thatcher, Margaret, 16–17, 29–36, 39–52, 54, 69, 74, 89, 114, 136, 191, 279 Falklands War and, 34, 43, 76 France and, 45–46, 48, 49 Hayek and, 118 as “iron lady,” 34, 42, 45 M.


pages: 463 words: 105,197

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society by Eric Posner, E. Weyl

3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-communist, augmented reality, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Branko Milanovic, business process, buy and hold, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, commoditize, congestion pricing, Corn Laws, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, endowment effect, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, feminist movement, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gamification, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, global macro, global supply chain, guest worker program, hydraulic fracturing, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jean Tirole, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, Landlord’s Game, liberal capitalism, low skilled workers, Lyft, market bubble, market design, market friction, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, negative equity, Network effects, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open borders, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, plutocrats, pre–internet, radical decentralization, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Rory Sutherland, search costs, Second Machine Age, second-price auction, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, special economic zone, spectrum auction, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, telepresence, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, women in the workforce, Zipcar

Central planning, in contrast, results in massive misallocation of resources—the production of goods no one wanted—that was characteristic of real-world socialist economies like that of the Soviet Union.24 Moreover, centralization of the economy opened the way to political abuse, which Hayek memorably called the “road to serfdom.”25 Reacting to these horrors of central planning, Western liberals concluded that capitalism, whatever its limitations, was the superior method of economic organization. The best approach to monopoly was antitrust law (see chapter 4), regulation, and limited state ownership in the most important industries.

These critiques would eventually lead modern socialist thinkers to advocate various hybrid economic relationships like workers’ cooperatives, which would have placed production under greater democratic control, and stronger economic rights, which would make workers less dependent on their employers. See Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought (Basic Books, 1986); Alec Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited (Routledge, 2d ed., 1991). 25. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Routledge, 1944). 26. Some limited empirical work confirms the lawyer’s intuition that bargaining can be extremely difficult, especially in the sorts of examples that Coase preferred. See Hoyt Bleakley & Joseph Ferrie, Land Openings on the Georgia Frontier and the Coase Theorem in the Short and Long-Run (2014) at http://wwwpersonal.umich.edu/~hoytb/Bleakley_Ferrie_Farmsize.pdf and Ward Farnsworth, Do Parties to Nuisance Cases Bargain after Judgment?


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How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy) by Benjamin Peters

Albert Einstein, American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Anthropocene, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commons-based peer production, computer age, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Davies, double helix, Drosophila, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gabriella Coleman, hive mind, index card, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, power law, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, scientific mainstream, scientific management, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the strength of weak ties, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, transaction costs, Turing machine, work culture , Yochai Benkler

David Remnick, “Soviet Union’s Shadow Economy: Bribery, Barter, and Black Market,” Seattle Times, September 22, 1990, accessed April 15, 2015, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19900922&slug=1094485. 66. Seth Benedict Graham, “A Cultural Analysis of the Russo-Soviet ‘Anekdot,’” Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2003; Remnick, “Soviet Union’s Shadow Economy.” 67. Two of the most classic cold war critics in the West include Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1944), 4, 9–11, 28–29, 103–112, 143–145, and Milton Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (New York: Harcourt Books, 1980). My comments here intend to both draw on and cut orthogonally across the conventional defense of free markets. 68. A sampling of popular literature on the informal economic activities in the late Soviet Union includes Yuri Brokhin, Hustling on Gorky Street (London: W.

New York: Routledge, 1991. Haraway, Donna, ed. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Harrison, Mark. “Soviet Economic Growth since 1928: The Alternative Statistics of G. I. Khanin.” Europe-Asis Studies 45 (1) (1993): 141–167. Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Hazard, John N. Communists and Their Law: A Search for the Common Core of the Legal Systems of the Marxian Socialist States.


pages: 300 words: 106,520

The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It by Stuart Maconie

"there is no alternative" (TINA), banking crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, Desert Island Discs, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, Etonian, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, gentrification, Golden age of television, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, North Sea oil, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, post-truth, post-war consensus, rent control, retail therapy, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, Stephen Fry, surveillance capitalism, The Chicago School, universal basic income, Winter of Discontent

Here she developed her core beliefs: the virtue of self-reliance, the sanctity of private profit and enterprise, a loathing and mistrust of the state and the public sector. These were the deep tribal roots of what became Thatcherism overlaid on which was an intellectual and theoretical framework taken from Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and the Chicago School of Economics as developed by Milton Friedman. Essentially, Friedman espoused that the free market should be allowed to operate as it sees fit with minimal or no government interference. His doctrine was called ‘monetarism’ and meant strict control of the money supply and inflation even if this brought hardship, job losses and cuts in public spending.

Keith Joseph was a baronet who’d inherited his wealth and title (without lifting a finger) from his father, the head of Bovis construction. For many years under Macmillan and Heath, he had been merely a jobbing right-wing cabinet stooge. But, unfortunately for Britain, at some point in the early 1970s he read a couple of books. One was Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, which is, depending on point of view again, a bracing anti-socialist tract or an opiniated screed of guff masquerading as analysis. Joseph was of the former persuasion. In the cartoon version of Joseph’s life (not currently in production, I imagine), after reading Hayek he’ll be seen wobbling around goofily with twittering birdies and hearts circling his austere head.


pages: 432 words: 106,612

Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever by Robin Wigglesworth

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Brownian motion, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, cloud computing, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, index fund, industrial robot, invention of the wheel, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, lockdown, Louis Bachelier, machine readable, money market fund, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, RAND corporation, random walk, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, rolodex, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, transaction costs, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund

In other words, beyond the impact on markets or other investors, is the growth of index investing having a deleterious impact on economic dynamism? The most cutting, colorful illustration of this conundrum is from Inigo Fraser-Jenkins, the Bernstein analyst who penned the sarcastic homage to a fictional indexer attempting to build the Ultimate Index. In 2016, Fraser-Jenkins published an even punchier report entitled “The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investment Is Worse Than Marxism.” His argument was that at least communist countries attempted to allocate resources to the most important areas. This may be less efficient than the decentralized, markets-oriented allocation method of capitalism, but it is still better than blindly allocating money according to the vagaries of an arbitrary index.

Johnson & Son, 128 Schioldager, Amy, 196–97, 233 Schlosstein, Ralph, xiii, 208–9 at BlackRock, 213–19 BGI acquisition, 223 founding, 209–12 IPO, 214–15 Schmalz, Martin, 295 Scholes, Myron, 70–71, 74–75, 147 Black-Scholes model, 71, 147, 152–53 Schroders, 145, 160, 234 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 138, 160 Schwarzman, Steve, 210, 213–14 Schwed, Fred, 3, 26 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 30, 101, 108, 245, 262, 295 ETFs and, 171, 173, 177, 179–80 Seides, Ted, ix on investor career, 16 wager with Buffett, 1–2, 3–4, 6, 9–11, 15–17, 267n semi-transparent ETFs, 245 Shareholder Equity Alliance, 293 Sharpe, William, x, 37, 41–45, 70 “The Arithmetic of Active Management,” 276–77 background of, 42–43 capital asset pricing model, 44–45, 74, 152, 153 Markowitz and, 41–42, 43–45 at Stanford, 68, 185, 187 Shearson Lehman Hutton, 208–9 Sherrerd, Jay, 93–94 Shiller, Robert, 29 Shopkorn, Stanley, 78n “short,” 74 Shteyngart, Gary, 283 Shwayder, Keith, 75–77 “Silent Road to Serfdom, The” (Fraser-Jenkins), 279 Simplify Asset Management, 266 Sinclair, Upton, 82 Singer, Paul, 18–19, 287–88, 290 Sinquefield, Jeanne, xii, 63, 147–48, 150 Sinquefield, Rex, x, 53, 62–65 at American National Bank, 53, 63–65, 78–81, 110, 144 S&P 500 index fund, 64–65, 78 background of, 62–63 at Chicago, 35, 63, 64, 140 CRSP data, 35, 53 at DFA, 146–48, 150, 159–60, 162–63 Klotz’s departure, 156–59 size begets size, 267, 269–70 skunk works, 58, 61 small-cap funds, 142–44, 154, 156, 159–60 smart beta, 151, 155 154, 159–60 Smith, Richard, 101 Smith Barney, 53, 55, 58 Smuckers, 148 socially responsible investing, 237 Société Générale, 253n Sony Pictures Entertainment, 241 Sorbonne (University of Paris), 22–23 Soros, George, 2, 219 South Korea, 42–43, 258 SPDRs (Standard & Poor’s Depositary Receipts), 176–77, 179–83, 195, 196–97, 240 SPDR S&P Dividend ETF, 263–64 Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, 180 Spieth, Lawrence, 150n Standard and Poor’s Index Receipts (SPIRs), 176n Standard and Poor’s 500.


Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality by Vito Tanzi

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Andrew Keen, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, crony capitalism, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, experimental economics, financial engineering, financial repression, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Gunnar Myrdal, high net worth, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, libertarian paternalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, means of production, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open economy, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, synthetic biology, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, urban planning, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

The planners would presumably focus on producing essential, basic goods, using the resources that had previously gone toward the production of “luxury” or “nonessential” goods. In the process they would aim at satisfying the basic needs of citizens and at generating a society with more economic equality and social justice. As Hayek would point out some years later, in his important and influential book The Road to Serfdom ([1944] 2007), the idea of economic planning became popular in the 1920s and especially in the 1930s in major European universities, including in the prestigious Cambridge University in England, where it received the endorsement of several influential Economic Role of State between World Wars 27 economists.

Hasanov, Fuad and Oded Izraeli, 2012, “How Much Inequality Is Necessary for Growth?” Harvard Business Review, January–February, 518–539. 410 Bibliography Hawley, Ellis W., 1966, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Hayek, F. A. [1944] 2007, The Road to Serfdom, edited by Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). [1960] 2011, The Constitution of Liberty, edited by Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). 1988, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, edited by W. W. Bartley III (The University of Chicago Press).

See also specific country overview, 144 abuse of, 124 adaptation to change, 282 banks and, 126 civic associations and, 130, 154 complexity of, 170–72, 278 conservative opposition to, 160, 278 consumer protection regulations, 148–50 correcting or reducing externalities through, 147 corruption and, 124, 280 creation of, 277 debates regarding, 154, 170 demand, effect on, 128–29 democracy and, 134 dependent workers and, 23 deregulation overview, 87–88 economic freedom and, 86 income redistribution and, 197 potential for future crises and, 108, 109 in US, 82 discretion and, 151–52 economic freedom, effect on, 130–31 economic impact of, 276–77 essential regulations, 280–81 evolution of, 123, 124 excessive regulations, 279 externalities and, 164, 281–82 failure of, 171–73 federalism and, 125, 126, 173, 284–85 financial institutions and, 126, 155, 157 fundamental law of, 278–79 growth, effect on, 158–59, 228 implementing regulations, 333 income redistribution and, 278 institutional reforms, 173–74 liberals and, 160 libertarian opposition to, 153–54, 278 lobbyists and, 171, 173, 280 mandated disclosures, 127–28 market-enhancing regulations, 150–51 market fundamentalism and, 158, 160 as mercantilism, 123 Musgrave on, 278 natural monopolies and, 147 negative effects of, 124, 128 “nirvana error,” 151 nuisance regulations, 144–45 occupational licensing and, 124–26 opposition to, 123, 129, 153–55, 160, 170, 278, 282–83 as policy tool, 141 politics and, 278–80 productivity, effect on, 158–59 public interest and, 131 quasi-fiscal regulations, 151 recommendations regarding, 283 “red tape,” 124, 228 rents and, 124–25 review of, 172, 284 safety-related regulations, 146–47 scientific studies and, 281 second-best regulations, 145–46 “single window” system, 284–85 social costs of, 282 social regulations, 146 urbanization, effect of, 130 Regulatory budget, 284 Regulatory capture, 129, 172–73 Relative income hypothesis, 319 Relative poverty, 216, 226–27 Religious trust in market, 37, 78, 396 Rent control, 145–46 Rents “crony capitalism” and, 112 financial institutions and, 119 financial sector and, 330 intellectual property and, 353 regulations and, 124–25 Reputational motive, 374–75 Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII), 20 Research income redistribution and, 194–97 as public good, 179–80 in US, 194–97 Rezoning, 136 441 442 Index Ricardian equivalence hypothesis, 62–64, 86–87, 394–95 Ricardo, David, 63 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 26–27 Rockefeller, Jay, 335 Role of government overview, 1–11 allocation of resources, 187–88, 211–12. See also Allocation of resources Burke on, 160, 189 employment and, 189–90 growth and, 7, 189–90 income inequality and, 317 income redistribution, 187, 189, 190, 202. See also Income redistribution intellectual property and, 354 legal rules, changes in, 258–59 limited role.


pages: 741 words: 179,454

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, carbon credits, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discrete time, diversification, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Goodhart's law, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Bogle, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, load shedding, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, negative equity, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon shock, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Satyajit Das, savings glut, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, tail risk, Teledyne, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the market place, the medium is the message, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Turing test, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Keynesian economics would not solve the problems but would create inflation. Keynes was equally critical of Hayek’s work, commenting that one article started “with a mistake” and then moved on to “bedlam.” Another article constituted “a farrago of nonsense.” Although he got on well with the Austrian personally, and thought Hayek’s 1944 The Road to Serfdom was “a grand book,” Keynes was unpersuaded, concluding: “what rubbish his theory is.”5 Joseph Schumpeter’s worldview was shaped by his role as Austria’s minister of finance, paying off debts incurred in the collapse of central European financial institutions. Intending to be the world’s greatest economist, lover, and horseman, the colorful, thrice-married Austrian acknowledged only having to work at his horsemanship.

Jacob Viner attacked Keynes’ lack of objectivity and judiciousness, dismissing him as a prophet and a politician. Henry Simons, another protégé of Knight, saw Keynes as “the academic idol of...cranks and charlatans...and [the General Theory] as the economic bible of a fascist movement.”13 Frederick Hayek proved a key figure in discrediting Keynes and in the resurgence of free markets. His Road to Serfdom attacked government intervention in the economy. His 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty argued that the power and role of government should be limited to maintaining individual liberty. Hayek criticized the welfare state and the role of unions. His influence on Chicago was strengthened through the Mont Pelerin Society, a collaboration of 36 like-minded scholars seeking to revive the liberal tradition.

See Zimbabwe Richard, Cliff, 157 Richistan, 41 Rio Tinto, 58 Rise and Decline of Nation, The, 294 Rishengchang as a financial center, 84 risk, 35 Bank of International Settlement (BIS), 74-75 banks, 67-70 basis, 213 capital asset pricing model (CAPM), 117 catastrophe, 232 central banks, 281-282, 300-302 concentrations, 273 converting, 270 derivatives, 208-209, 218-219 AIG, 230-234 design of, 225 Fiat, 222-223 first-to-default (FtD) swaps, 220-221 Greece, 223, 225 Harvard case studies, 214-215 hedging, 216-217 Italy, 215-216 LTOBs (tender option bonds), 222 municipal bonds, 211-214 price movements, 210-211 sovereign debt, 236-238 TARDIS trades, 217-218 economic growth, 295-296 exotic products, 73-74 financial groupthink, 296-297 hedge funds, 246 of individual securities and portfolios, 117 insurance, 124 management, 126, 130, 274 reduction, 122-124 risk-free portfolios, 121 securitization, 170-172 taming, 120-122 tranches, 175 unification of, 130 riyals, 21 RJR Nabisco, 139, 149-150, 155 Ro, Arundhati, 365 Road to Serfdom, The, 103 roads, 158 Roark, Howard, 294 Robbins, Larry, 259 Robeldo, Alfredo, 215 Roberston, Julian, 243 Roberts, George, 157 robo signing, 272 Rochefoucauld, François Duc de La, 349 Rockefeller, John D., 338 Rockne, Knute, 97 Rogers, Will, 42-43, 332, 348 rogue traders, 227 Rohatyn, Felix, 148 Rolling Stone magazine, 364 Rolling Stones, the, 164 Rolls Royce jet engines, 24 Rome, 295 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 279, 290, 365 Ropes & Gray, 244 Roseman, Joel, 255 Rosenbaum, Alisa.


pages: 603 words: 182,826

Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership by Andro Linklater

agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, business cycle, colonial rule, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, electricity market, facts on the ground, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, light touch regulation, market clearing, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, Northern Rock, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, refrigerator car, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, three-masted sailing ship, too big to fail, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, ultimatum game, wage slave, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, working poor

It was, therefore, incumbent on owners to be ready to defend rights that they alone had created by force, and any action by government must represent the first step toward a Socialist usurpation of their independence. The most articulate of von Mises’s students, Friederich von Hayek—in later life he dropped the “von”—wholeheartedly adopted his mentor’s suspicion of government. His bestselling book, The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, was a savage hymn to the belief that economic freedom could be equated to individual liberty. There was no difference between Fascism and Communism, Hayek warned, or for that matter between Nazi Germany and the democratic governments who were attempting to defeat it by managing their economies to maximize wartime production.

the idea originated with his mentor: For Carl Menger in particular and the context of the Austrian School, see The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 by William M. Johnston (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 77–82. economic freedom could be equated to individual liberty: The Road to Serfdom appeared in a shortened, best-selling Reader’s Digest version, but the original is definitive (London: Routledge, 1944). “This is what we believe in.”: Story cited in Margaret Thatcher: Portrait of the Iron Lady by John Blundell (London: Algora, 2008), 41. It was a revealing admission: The Constitution of Liberty by Friederich Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

G. A. Pocock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Harrison, Rev. William. Description of Britain and England, originally part of Chronicles of England by Raphael Hollinshed. 1578. Hayek, Friederich. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. ———. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge, 1944. Hayes, Edward. Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voyage to Newfoundland in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1589. www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3338. Hening, William Waller. Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia.


pages: 593 words: 183,240

An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford Delong

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, ASML, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, ending welfare as we know it, endogenous growth, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial repression, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, general purpose technology, George Gilder, German hyperinflation, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, industrial research laboratory, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, It's morning again in America, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, land reform, late capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, means of production, megacity, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, occupational segregation, oil shock, open borders, open economy, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Phillips curve, plutocrats, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, restrictive zoning, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social intelligence, Stanislav Petrov, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, Suez canal 1869, surveillance capitalism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, TSMC, union organizing, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, Yom Kippur War

Any attempts to reorder the market distribution of income in order to reward the deserving at the expense of the undeserving would erode market capitalism: “The idea [that] you can arrange for distributions of incomes… correspond[ing] to… merit or need,” he said, does not fit with your “need [for] prices, including the prices of labor, to direct people to go where they are needed.” And once you start top-down planning, you are on what he called “the road to serfdom,” and “the detailed scale of values which must guide the planning makes it impossible that it should be determined by anything like democratic means.”9 Hayek’s was a “this-is-as-good-as-it-is-ever-going-to-get” sort of utopianism. Hayek understood, however, that this better method of organizing society that cared not a whit for fairness and justice was unlikely to be accepted with universal cries of “huzzah!”

At the start of the 1980s, libertarian darling Friedrich von Hayek wrote a letter to Margaret Thatcher suggesting that the British hew more closely to the methods of fascistic Augusto Pinochet, whose 1973 Cold War coup overthrowing and murdering President Salvador Allende Hayek had greatly applauded as rescuing Chile from the road to serfdom. We catch his urged sympathies in her politely worded reply. Thatcher wrote, “Some of the measures adopted in Chile are quite unacceptable.… We shall achieve our reforms in our own way and in our own time.”17 All of these—save Thatcher—at least flirted with a temporary and tactical alliance with and allegiance to fascism, and some of them did much, much more: believing that representative democracy could not summon the strength to resist really-existing socialism, and believing that that disastrous threat to civilization called for desperate measures and alliances in response.

Dean, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, New York: Free Press, 2001, 160, 312. 7. Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, 148. 8. Hayek, Constitution, 286. 9. Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, London: Routledge, 1944, 124. 10. Friedrich A. von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: The Political Order of a Free People, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979, 172. 11. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953, 1. 12.


pages: 128 words: 38,847

The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age by Tim Wu

AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Big Tech, collective bargaining, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, Donald Trump, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, move fast and break things, new economy, open economy, Peter Thiel, Plato's cave, price discrimination, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, The Chicago School

Given this baseline, the fact that mainstream antitrust economics would come to tolerate and even celebrate monopoly makes for an extraordinary tale. By the postwar period, when antitrust reached its heights, there remained strong intellectual backing for antitrust laws among both conservative and liberal economists.* Liberal economists tended to support antitrust as a counter to the domination of big business. Conservatives feared “a road to serfdom,” in Friedrich Hayek’s phrase, resulting from central planning accomplished through a union of monopolies and the state. Some thought of monopolies as a threat to economic freedom by themselves; others feared that private monopolies provided an excuse for nationalization or at least extensive regulation.


pages: 414 words: 119,116

The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World by Michael Marmot

active measures, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Atul Gawande, Bonfire of the Vanities, Broken windows theory, cakes and ale, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, centre right, clean water, cognitive load, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Doha Development Round, epigenetics, financial independence, future of work, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, illegal immigration, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Kenneth Rogoff, Kibera, labour market flexibility, longitudinal study, lump of labour, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, New Urbanism, obamacare, paradox of thrift, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Simon Kuznets, Socratic dialogue, structural adjustment programs, the built environment, The Spirit Level, trickle-down economics, twin studies, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working poor

Commentators of the political ‘right’ prize the freedom of the individual over the controls of the state. The economist Milton Friedman called his influential book calling for free markets and freedom from state intervention Free to Choose. Putting a more negative slant on a similar idea, Friedrich von Hayek called his book The Road to Serfdom. Once the state gets involved in economic decision-making, individual liberty is eroded and we are on the road to serfdom. When neoliberalism is looking for intellectual flag-bearers these two fit the bill. Libertarians, articulately represented by Robert Nozick in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, argue that only a minimal state limited to protecting people against force and fraud and enforcing contracts is justified.


pages: 464 words: 116,945

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alvin Toffler, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, call centre, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, drone strike, end world poverty, falling living standards, fiat currency, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Food sovereignty, Frank Gehry, future of work, gentrification, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wages for housework, Wall-E, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery … This means the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the owners of property.’6 Thus does Polanyi construct a telling rebuttal to the central theses of Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, written in 1942–3 but to this day a bible of the libertarian right and a mightily influential text (having sold more than 2 million copies). Clearly at the root of the dilemma lies the meaning of freedom itself. The utopianism of liberal political economy ‘gave a false direction to our ideals,’ notes Polanyi.

., Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism, New York, Routledge, 2006 Index Numbers in italics indicate Figures. 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) 271 A Abu Ghraib, Iraq 202 acid deposition 255, 256 advertising 50, 121, 140, 141, 187, 197, 236, 237, 275, 276 Aeschylus 291 Afghanistan 202, 290 Africa and global financial crisis 170 growth 232 indigenous population and property rights 39 labour 107, 108, 174 ‘land grabs’ 39, 58, 77, 252 population growth 230 Agamben, Giorgio 283–4 agglomeration 149, 150 economies 149 aggregate demand 20, 80, 81, 104, 173 aggregate effective demand 235 agribusiness 95, 133, 136, 206, 247, 258 agriculture ix, 39, 61, 104, 113, 117, 148, 229, 239, 257–8, 261 Alabama 148 Algerian War (1954–62) 288, 290 alienation 57, 69, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 198, 213, 214, 215, 263, 266–70, 272, 275–6, 279–80, 281, 286, 287 Allende, Salvador 201 Althusser, Louis 286 Amazon 131, 132 Americas colonisation of 229 indigenous populations 283 Amnesty International 202 anti-capitalist movements 11, 14, 65, 110, 111, 162 anti-capitalist struggle 14, 110, 145, 193, 269, 294 anti-globalisation 125 anti-terrorism xiii apartheid 169, 202, 203 Apple 84, 123, 131 apprenticeships 117 Arab Spring movement 280 Arbenz, Jacobo 201 Argentina 59, 107, 152, 160, 232 Aristotelianism 283, 289 Aristotle 1, 4, 200, 215 arms races 93 arms traffickers 54 Arrighi, Giovanni 136 Adam Smith in Beijing 142 Arthur, Brian: The Nature of Technology 89, 95–9, 101–4, 110 artificial intelligence xii, 104, 108, 120, 139, 188, 208, 295 Asia ‘land grabs’ 58 urbanisation 254 assembly lines 119 asset values and the credit system 83 defined 240 devalued 257 housing market 19, 20, 21, 58, 133 and predatory lending 133 property 76 recovery of 234 speculation 83, 101, 179 associationism 281 AT&T 131 austerity xi, 84, 177, 191, 223 Australia 152 autodidacts 183 automation xii, 103, 105, 106, 108, 138, 208, 215, 295 B Babbage, Charles 119 Bangkok riots, Thailand (1968) x Bangladesh dismantlement of old ships 250 factories 129, 174, 292 industrialisation 123 labour 108, 123, 129 protests against unsafe labour conditions 280 textile mill tragedies 249 Bank of England 45, 46 banking bonuses 164 electronic 92, 100, 277 excessive charges 84 interbank lending 233 and monopoly power 143 national banks supplant local banking in Britain and France 158 net transfers between banks 28 power of bankers 75 private banks 233 profits 54 regional banks 158 shell games 54–5 systematic banking malfeasance 54, 61 Baran, Paul and Sweezy, Paul: Monopoly Capitalism 136 Barcelona 141, 160 barrios pobres ix barter 24, 25, 29 Battersea Power Station, London 255 Battle of Algiers, The (film) 288 Bavaria, Germany 143, 150 Becker, Gary 186 Bernanke, Ben 47 Bhutan 171 billionaires xi, 165, 169, 170 biodiversity 246, 254, 255, 260 biofuels 3 biomedical engineering xii Birmingham 149 Bitcoin 36, 109 Black Panthers 291 Blade Runner (film) 271 Blankfein, Lloyd 239–40 Bohr, Niels 70 Bolivia 257, 260, 284 bondholders xii, 32, 51, 152, 158, 223, 240, 244, 245 bonuses 54, 77, 164, 178 Bourdieu, Pierre 186, 187 bourgeois morality 195 bourgeois reformism 167, 211 ‘Brady Bonds’ 240 Braudel, Fernand 193 Braverman, Harry: Labor and Monopoly Capital 119 Brazil a BRIC country 170, 228 coffee growers 257 poverty grants 107 unrest in (2013) 171, 243, 293 Brecht, Bertolt 265, 293 Bretton Woods (1944) 46 brewing trade 138 BRIC countries 10, 170, 174, 228 Britain alliance between state and London merchant capitalists 44–5 banking 158 enclosure movement 58 lends to United States (nineteenth century) 153 suppression of Mau Mau 291 surpluses of capital and labour sent to colonies 152–3 welfare state 165 see also United Kingdom British Empire 115, 174 British Museum Library, London 4 British Petroleum (BP) 61, 128 Buffett, Peter 211–12, 245, 283, 285 Buffett, Warren 211 bureaucracy 121–2, 165, 203, 251 Bush, George, Jr 201, 202 C Cabet, Étienne 183 Cabral, Amilcar 291 cadastral mapping 41 Cadbury 18 Cairo uprising (2011) 99 Calhoun, Craig 178 California 29, 196, 254 Canada 152 Cape Canaveral, Florida 196 capital abolition of monopolisable skills 119–20 aim of 92, 96–7, 232 alternatives to 36, 69, 89, 162 annihilation of space through time 138, 147, 178 capital-labour contradiction 65, 66, 68–9 and capitalism 7, 57, 68, 115, 166, 218 centralisation of 135, 142 circulation of 5, 7, 8, 53, 63, 67, 73, 74, 75, 79, 88, 99, 147, 168, 172, 177, 234, 247, 251, 276 commodity 74, 81 control over labour 102–3, 116–17, 166, 171–2, 274, 291–2 creation of 57 cultural 186 destruction of 154, 196, 233–4 and division of labour 112 economic engine of 8, 10, 97, 168, 172, 200, 253, 265, 268 evolution of 54, 151, 171, 270 exploitation by 156, 195 fictitious 32–3, 34, 76, 101, 110–11, 239–42 fixed 75–8, 155, 234 importance of uneven geographical development to 161 inequality foundational for 171–2 investment in fixed capital 75 innovations 4 legal-illegal duality 72 limitless growth of 37 new form of 4, 14 parasitic forms of 245 power of xii, 36, 47 private capital accumulation 23 privatisation of 61 process-thing duality 70–78 profitability of 184, 191–2 purpose of 92 realisation of 88, 173, 192, 212, 231, 235, 242, 268, 273 relation to nature 246–63 reproduction of 4, 47, 55, 63, 64, 88, 97, 108, 130, 146, 161, 168, 171, 172, 180, 181, 182, 189, 194, 219, 233, 252 spatiality of 99 and surplus value 63 surpluses of 151, 152, 153 temporality of 99 tension between fixed and circulating capital 75–8, 88, 89 turnover time of 73, 99, 147 and wage rates 173 capital accumulation, exponential growth of 229 capital gains 85, 179 capital accumulation 7, 8, 75, 76, 78, 102, 149, 151–5, 159, 172, 173, 179, 192, 209, 223, 228–32, 238, 241, 243, 244, 247, 273, 274, 276 basic architecture for 88 and capital’s aim 92, 96 collapse of 106 compound rate of 228–9 and the credit system 83 and democratisation 43 and demographic growth 231 and household consumerism 192 and lack of aggregate effective demand in the market 81 and the land market 59 and Marx 5 maximising 98 models of 53 in a new territories 152–3 perpetual 92, 110, 146, 162, 233, 265 private 23 promotion of 34 and the property market 50 recent problems of 10 and the state 48 capitalism ailing 58 an alternative to 36 and capital 7, 57, 68, 115, 166, 218 city landscape of 160 consumerist 197 contagious predatory lawlessness within 109 crises essential to its reproduction ix; defined 7 and demand-side management 85 and democracy 43 disaster 254–5, 255 economic engine of xiii, 7–8, 11, 110, 220, 221, 252, 279 evolution of 218 geographical landscape of 146, 159 global xi–xii, 108, 124 history of 7 ‘knowledge-based’ xii, 238 and money power 33 and a moneyless economy 36 neoliberal 266 political economy of xiv; and private property rights 41 and racialisation 8 reproduction of ix; revivified xi; vulture 162 capitalist markets 33, 53 capitalo-centric studies 10 car industry 121, 138, 148, 158, 188 carbon trading 235, 250 Caribbean migrants 115 Cartesian thinking 247 Cato Institute 143 Central America 136 central banks/bankers xi–xii, 37, 45, 46, 48, 51, 109, 142, 156, 161, 173, 233, 245 centralisation 135, 142, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 219 Césaire, Aimé 291 CFCs (chloro-fluorocarbons) 248, 254, 256, 259 chambers of commerce 168 Chandler, Alfred 141 Chaplin, Charlie 103 Charles I, King 199 Chartism 184 Chávez, Hugo 123, 201 cheating 57, 61, 63 Cheney, Dick 289 Chicago riots (1968) x chicanery 60, 72 children 174 exploitation of 195 raising 188, 190 trading of 26 violence and abuse of 193 Chile 136, 194, 280 coup of 1973 165, 201 China air quality 250, 258 becomes dynamic centre of a global capitalism 124 a BRIC country 170, 228 capital in (after 2000) 154 class struggles 233 and competition 150, 161 consumerism 194–5, 236 decentralisation 49 dirigiste governmentality 48 dismantlement of old ships 250 dispossessions in 58 education 184, 187 factories 123, 129, 174, 182 famine in 124–5 ‘great leap forward’ 125 growth of 170, 227, 232 income inequalities 169 industrialisation 232 Keynesian demand-side and debt-financed expansion xi; labour 80, 82, 107, 108, 123, 174, 230 life expectancy 259 personal debt 194 remittances 175 special economic zones 41, 144 speculative booms and bubbles in housing markets 21 suburbanisation 253 and technology 101 toxic batteries 249–50 unstable lurches forward 10 urban and infrastructural projects 151 urbanisation 232 Chinese Communist Party 108, 142 Church, the 185, 189, 199 circular cumulative causation 150 CitiBank 61 citizenship rights 168 civil rights 202, 205 class affluent classes 205 alliances 143, 149 class analysis xiii; conflict 85, 159 domination 91, 110 plutocratic capitalist xiii; power 55, 61, 88, 89, 92, 97, 99, 110, 134, 135, 221, 279 and race 166, 291 rule 91 structure 91 class struggle 34, 54, 67, 68, 85, 99, 103, 110, 116, 120, 135, 159, 172, 175, 183, 214, 233 climate change 4, 253–6, 259 Clinton, President Bill 176 Cloud Atlas (film) 271 CNN 285 coal 3, 255 coercion x, 41–4, 53, 60–63, 79, 95, 201, 286 Cold War 153, 165 collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) 78 Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games 264 Colombia 280 colonialism 257 the colonised 289–90 indigenous populations 39, 40 liberation from colonial rule 202 philanthropic 208, 285 colonisation 229, 262 ‘combinatorial evolution’ 96, 102, 104, 146, 147, 248 commercialisation 262, 263, 266 commodification 24, 55, 57, 59–63, 88, 115, 140, 141, 192, 193, 235, 243, 251, 253, 260, 262, 263, 273 commodities advertising 275 asking price 31 and barter 24 commodity exchange 39, 64 compared with products 25–6 defective or dangerous 72 definition 39 devaluation of 234 exchange value 15, 25 falling costs of 117 importance of workers as buyers 80–81 international trade in 256 labour power as a commodity 62 low-value 29 mobility of 147–8 obsolescence 236 single metric of value 24 unique 140–41 use value 15, 26, 35 commodity markets 49 ‘common capital of the class’ 142, 143 common wealth created by social labour 53 private appropriation of 53, 54, 55, 61, 88, 89 reproduction of 61 use values 53 commons collective management of 50 crucial 295 enclosure of 41, 235 natural 250 privatised 250 communications 99, 147, 148, 177 communism 196 collapse of (1989) xii, 165 communist parties 136 during Cold War 165 scientific 269 socialism/communism 91, 269 comparative advantage 122 competition and alienated workers 125 avoiding 31 between capitals 172 between energy and food production 3 decentralised 145 and deflationary crisis (1930s) 136 foreign 148, 155 geopolitical 219 inter-capitalist 110 international 154, 175 interstate 110 interterritorial 219 in labour market 116 and monopoly 131–45, 146, 218 and technology 92–3 and turnover time of capital 73, 99 and wages 135 competitive advantage 73, 93, 96, 112, 161 competitive market 131, 132 competitiveness 184 complementarity principle of 70 compounding growth 37, 49, 222, 227, 228, 233, 234, 235, 243, 244 perpetual 222–45, 296 computerisation 100, 120, 222 computers 92, 100, 105, 119 hardware 92, 101 organisational forms 92, 93, 99, 101 programming 120 software 92, 99, 101, 115, 116 conscience laundering 211, 245, 284, 286 Conscious Capitalism 284 constitutional rights 58 constitutionality 60, 61 constitutions progressive 284 and social bond between human rights and private property 40 US Constitution 284 and usurpation of power 45 consumerism 89, 106, 160, 192–5, 197, 198, 236, 274–7 containerisation 138, 148, 158 contracts 71, 72, 93, 207 contradictions Aristotelian conception of 4 between money and the social labour money represents 83 between reality and appearance 4–6 between use and exchange value 83 of capital and capitalism 68 contagious intensification of 14 creative use of 3 dialectical conception of 4 differing reactions to 2–3 and general crises 14 and innovation 3 moved around rather than resolved 3–4 multiple 33, 42 resolution of 3, 4 two modes of usage 1–2 unstable 89 Controller of the Currency 120 corporations and common wealth 54 corporate management 98–9 power of 57–8, 136 and private property 39–40 ‘visible hand’ 141–2 corruption 53, 197, 266 cosmopolitanism 285 cost of living 164, 175 credit cards 67, 133, 277 credit card companies 54, 84, 278 credit financing 152 credit system 83, 92, 101, 111, 239 crises changes in mental conceptions of the world ix-x; crisis of capital 4 defined 4 essential to the reproduction of capitalism ix; general crisis ensuing from contagions 14 housing markets crisis (2007–9) 18, 20, 22 reconfiguration of physical landscapes ix; slow resolution of x; sovereign debt crisis (after 2012) 37 currency markets, turbulence of (late 1960s) x customary rights 41, 59, 198 D Davos conferences 169 DDT 259 Debord, Guy: The Society of the Spectacle 236 debt creation 236 debt encumbrancy 212 debt peonage 62, 212 decentralisation 49, 142, 143, 144, 146, 148, 219, 281, 295 Declaration of Independence (US) 284 decolonisation 282, 288, 290 decommodification 85 deindustrialisation xii, 77–8, 98, 110, 148, 153, 159, 234 DeLong, Bradford 228 demand management 81, 82, 106, 176 demand-side management 85 democracy 47, 215 bourgeois 43, 49 governance within capitalism 43 social 190 totalitarian 220, 292 democratic governance 220, 266 democratisation 43 Deng Xiaoping x depressions 49, 227 1930s x, 108, 136, 169, 227, 232, 234 Descartes, René 247 Detroit 77, 136, 138, 148, 150, 152, 155, 159, 160 devaluation 153, 155, 162 of capital 233 of commodities 234 crises 150–51, 152, 154 localised 154 regional 154 developing countries 16, 240 Dhaka, Bangladesh 77 dialectics 70 Dickens, Charles 126, 169 Bleak House 226 Dombey and Son 184 digital revolution 144 disabled, the 202 see also handicapped discrimination 7, 8, 68, 116, 297 diseases 10, 211, 246, 254, 260 disempowerment 81, 103, 116, 119, 198, 270 disinvestment 78 Disneyfication 276 dispossession accumulation by 60, 67, 68, 84, 101, 111, 133, 141, 212 and capital 54, 55, 57 economies of 162 of indigenous populations 40, 59, 207 ‘land grabs’ 58 of land rights of the Irish 40 of the marginalised 198 political economy of 58 distributional equality 172 distributional shares 164–5, 166 division of labour 24, 71, 112–30, 154, 184, 268, 270 and Adam Smith 98, 118 defined 112 ‘the detail division of labour’ 118, 121 distinctions and oppositions 113–14 evolution of 112, 120, 121, 126 and gender 114–15 increasing complexity of 124, 125, 126 industrial proletariat 114 and innovation 96 ‘new international division of labour’ 122–3 organisation of 98 proliferating 121 relation between the parts and the whole 112 social 113, 118, 121, 125 technical 113, 295 uneven geographical developments in 130 dot-com bubble (1990s) 222–3, 241 ‘double coincidence of wants and needs’ 24 drugs 32, 193, 248 cartels 54 Durkheim, Emile 122, 125 Dust Bowl (United States, 1930s) 257 dynamism 92, 104, 146, 219 dystopia 229, 232, 264 E Eagleton , Terry: Why Marx Was Right 1, 21, 200, 214–15 East Asia crisis of 1997–98 154 dirigiste governmentality 48 education 184 rise of 170 Eastern Europe 115, 230 ecological offsets 250 economic rationality 211, 250, 252, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279 economies 48 advanced capitalist 228, 236 agglomeration 149 of dispossession 162 domination of industrial cartels and finance capital 135 household 192 informal 175 knowledge-based 188 mature 227–8 regional 149 reoriented to demand-side management 85 of scale 75 solidarity 66, 180 stagnant xii ecosystems 207, 247, 248, 251–6, 258, 261, 263, 296 Ecuador 46, 152, 284 education 23, 58, 60, 67–8, 84, 110, 127–8, 129, 134, 150, 156, 168, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 223, 235, 296 efficiency 71, 92, 93, 98, 103, 117, 118, 119, 122, 126, 272, 273, 284 efficient market hypothesis 118 Egypt 107, 280, 293 Ehrlich, Paul 246 electronics 120, 121, 129, 236, 292 emerging markets 170–71, 242 employment 37 capital in command of job creation 172, 174 conditions of 128 full-time 274 opportunities for xii, 108, 168 regional crises of 151 of women 108, 114, 115, 127 see also labour enclosure movement 58 Engels, Friedrich 70 The Condition of the English Working Class in England 292 English Civil War (1642–9) 199 Enlightenment 247 Enron 133, 241 environmental damage 49, 61, 110, 111, 113, 232, 249–50, 255, 257, 258, 259, 265, 286, 293 environmental movement 249, 252 environmentalism 249, 252–3 Epicurus 283 equal rights 64 Erasmus, Desiderius 283 ethnic hatreds and discriminations 8, 165 ethnic minorities 168 ethnicisation 62 ethnicity 7, 68, 116 euro, the 15, 37, 46 Europe deindustrialisation in 234 economic development in 10 fascist parties 280 low population growth rate 230 social democratic era 18 unemployment 108 women in labour force 230 European Central Bank 37, 46, 51 European Commission 51 European Union (EU) 95, 159 exchange values commodities 15, 25, 64 dominance of 266 and housing 14–23, 43 and money 28, 35, 38 uniform and qualitatively identical 15 and use values 15, 35, 42, 44, 50, 60, 65, 88 exclusionary permanent ownership rights 39 experts 122 exploitation 49, 54, 57, 62, 68, 75, 83, 107, 108, 124, 126, 128, 129, 150, 156, 159, 166, 175, 176, 182, 185, 193, 195, 208, 246, 257 exponential growth 224, 240, 254 capacity for 230 of capital 246 of capital accumulation 223, 229 of capitalist activity 253 and capital’s ecosystem 255 in computer power 105 and environmental resources 260 in human affairs 229 and innovations in finance and banking 100 potential dangers of 222, 223 of sophisticated technologies 100 expropriation 207 externality effects 43–4 Exxon 128 F Facebook 236, 278, 279 factories ix, 123, 129, 160, 174, 182, 247, 292 Factory Act (1864) 127, 183 famine 124–5, 229, 246 Fannie Mae 50 Fanon, Frantz 287 The Wretched of the Earth 288–90, 293 fascist parties 280 favelas ix, 16, 84, 175 feminisation 115 feminists 189, 192, 283 fertilisers 255 fetishes, fetishism 4–7, 31, 36–7, 61, 103, 111, 179, 198, 243, 245, 269, 278 feudalism 41 financial markets 60, 133 financialisation 238 FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sections 113 fishing 59, 113, 148, 249, 250 fixity and motion 75–8, 88, 89, 146, 155 Food and Drug Administration 120 food production/supply 3, 229, 246, 248, 252 security 253, 294, 296 stamp aid 206, 292 Ford, Martin 104–8, 111, 273 foreclosure 21, 22, 24, 54, 58, 241, 268 forestry 113, 148, 257 fossil fuels 3–4 Foucault, Michel xiii, 204, 209, 280–81 Fourier, François Marie Charles 183 Fourierists 18 Fourteen Points 201 France banking 158 dirigiste governmentality under de Gaulle 48 and European Central Bank 46 fascist parties 280 Francis, Pope 293 Apostolic Exhortation 275–6 Frankfurt School 261 Freddie Mac 50 free trade 138, 157 freedom 47, 48, 142, 143, 218, 219, 220, 265, 267–270, 276, 279–82, 285, 288, 296 and centralised power 142 cultural 168 freedom and domination 199–215, 219, 268, 285 and the good life 215 and money creation 51 popular desire for 43 religious 168 and state finances 48 under the rule of capital 64 see also liberty and freedom freedom of movement 47, 296 freedom of thought 200 freedom of the press 213 French Revolution 203, 213, 284 G G7 159 G20 159 Gallup survey of work 271–2 Gandhi, Mahatma 284, 291 Gaulle, Charles de 48 gay rights 166 GDP 194, 195, 223 Gehry, Frank 141 gender discriminations 7, 8, 68, 165 gene sequences 60 General Motors xii genetic engineering xii, 101, 247 genetic materials 235, 241, 251, 261 genetically modified foods 101 genocide 8 gentrification 19, 84, 141, 276 geocentric model 5 geographical landscape building a new 151, 155 of capitalism 159 evolution of 146–7 instability of 146 soulless, rationalised 157 geopolitical struggles 8, 154 Germany and austerity 223 autobahns built 151 and European Central Bank 46 inflation during 1920s 30 wage repression 158–9 Gesell, Silvio 35 Ghana 291 global economic crisis (2007–9) 22, 23, 47, 118, 124, 132, 151, 170, 228, 232, 234, 235, 241 global financialisation x, 177–8 global warming 260 globalisation 136, 174, 176, 179, 223, 293 gold 27–31, 33, 37, 57, 227, 233, 238, 240 Golden Dawn 280 Goldman Sachs 75, 239 Google 131, 136, 195, 279 Gordon, Robert 222, 223, 230, 239, 304n2 Gore, Al 249 Gorz, André 104–5, 107, 242, 270–77, 279 government 60 democratic 48 planning 48 and social bond between human rights and private property 40 spending power 48 governmentality 43, 48, 157, 209, 280–81, 285 Gramsci, Antonio 286, 293 Greco, Thomas 48–9 Greece 160, 161, 162, 171, 235 austerity 223 degradation of the well-being of the masses xi; fascist parties 280 the power of the bondholders 51, 152 greenwashing 249 Guantanamo Bay, Cuba 202, 284 Guatemala 201 Guevara, Che 291 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao 141 guild system 117 Guinea-Bissau 291 Gulf Oil Spill (2010) 61 H Habermas, Jürgen 192 habitat 246, 249, 252, 253, 255 handicapped, the 218 see also disabled Harvey, David The Enigma of Capital 265 Rebel Cities 282 Hayek, Friedrich 42 Road to Serfdom 206 health care 23, 58, 60, 67–8, 84, 110, 134, 156, 167, 189, 190, 235, 296 hedge funds 101, 162, 239, 241, 249 managers 164, 178 Heidegger, Martin 59, 250 Heritage Foundation 143 heterotopic spaces 219 Hill, Christopher 199 Ho Chi Minh 291 holocausts 8 homelessness 58 Hong Kong 150, 160 housing 156, 296 asset values 19, 20, 21, 58 ‘built to order’ 17 construction 67 controlling externalities 19–20 exchange values 14–23, 43 gated communities ix, 160, 208, 264 high costs 84 home ownership 49–50 investing in improvements 20, 43 mortgages 19, 21, 28, 50, 67, 82 predatory practices 67, 133 production costs 17 rental markets 22 renting or leasing 18–19, 67 self-built 84 self-help 16, 160 slum ix, 16, 175 social 18, 235 speculating in exchange value 20–22 speculative builds 17, 28, 78, 82 tenement 17, 160 terraced 17 tract ix, 17, 82 use values 14–19, 21–2, 23, 67 housing markets 18, 19, 21, 22, 28, 32, 49, 58, 60, 67, 68, 77, 83, 133, 192 crisis (2007–9) 18, 20, 22, 82–3 HSBC 61 Hudson, Michael 222 human capital theory 185, 186 human evolution 229–30 human nature 97, 198, 213, 261, 262, 263 revolt of 263, 264–81 human rights 40, 200, 202 humanism 269 capitalist 212 defined 283 education 128 excesses and dark side 283 and freedom 200, 208, 210 liberal 210, 287, 289 Marxist 284, 286 religious 283 Renaissance 283 revolutionary 212, 221, 282–93 secular 283, 285–6 types of 284 Hungary: fascist parties 280 Husserl, Edmund 192 Huygens, Christiaan 70 I IBM 128 Iceland: banking 55 identity politics xiii illegal aliens (‘sans-papiers’) 156 illegality 61, 72 immigrants, housing 160 imperialism 135, 136, 143, 201, 257, 258 income bourgeois disposable 235 disparities of 164–81 levelling up of 171 redistribution to the lower classes xi; see also wages indebtedness 152, 194, 222 India billionaires in 170 a BRIC country 170, 228 call centres 139 consumerism 236 dismantlement of old ships 250 labour 107, 230 ‘land grabs’ 77 moneylenders 210 social reproduction in 194 software engineers 196 special economic zones 144 unstable lurches forward 10 indigenous populations 193, 202, 257, 283 dispossession of 40, 59, 207 and exclusionary ownership rights 39 individualism 42, 197, 214, 281 Indonesia 129, 160 industrial cartels 135 Industrial Revolution 127 industrialisation 123, 189, 229, 232 inflation 30, 36, 37, 40, 49, 136, 228, 233 inheritance 40 Inner Asia, labour in 108 innovation 132 centres of 96 and the class struggle 103 competitive 219 as a double-edged sword xii; improving the qualities of daily life 4 labour-saving 104, 106, 107, 108 logistical 147 organisational 147 political 219 product 93 technological 94–5, 105, 147, 219 as a way out of a contradiction 3 insurance companies 278 intellectual property rights xii, 41, 123, 133, 139, 187, 207, 235, 241–2, 251 interest compound 5, 222, 224, 225, 226–7 interest-rate manipulations 54 interest rates 54, 186 living off 179, 186 on loans 17 money capital 28, 32 and mortgages 19, 67 on repayment of loans to the state 32 simple 225, 227 usury 49 Internal Revenue Service income tax returns 164 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 49, 51, 100, 143, 161, 169, 186, 234, 240 internet 158, 220, 278 investment: in fixed capital 75 investment pension funds 35–6 IOUs 30 Iran 232, 289 Iranian Revolution 289 Iraq war 201, 290 Ireland dispossession of land rights 40 housing market crash (2007–9) 82–3 Istanbul 141 uprising (2013) 99, 129, 171, 243 Italy 51,161, 223, 235 ITT 136 J Jacobs, Jane 96 James, C.L.R. 291 Japan 1980s economic boom 18 capital in (1980s) 154 economic development in 10 factories 123 growth rate 227 land market crash (1990) 18 low population growth rate 230 and Marshall Plan 153 post-war recovery 161 Jewish Question 213 JPMorgan 61 Judaeo-Christian tradition 283 K Kant, Immanuel 285 Katz, Cindi 189, 195, 197 Kenya 291 Kerala, India 171 Keynes, John Maynard xi, 46, 76, 244, 266 ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ 33–4 General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 35 Keynesianism demand management 82, 105, 176 demand-side and debt-financed expansion xi King, Martin Luther 284, 291 knowledge xii, 26, 41, 95, 96, 100, 105, 113, 122, 123, 127, 144, 184, 188, 196, 238, 242, 295 Koch brothers 292 Kohl, Helmut x L labour agitating and fighting for more 64 alienated workers 125, 126, 128, 129, 130 artisan 117, 182–3 and automation 105 capital/labour contradiction 65, 66, 68–9, 146 collective 117 commodification of 57 contracts 71, 72 control over 74, 102–11, 119, 166, 171–2, 274, 291–2 deskilling 111, 119 discipline 65, 79 disempowering workers 81, 103, 116, 119, 270 division of see division of labour; domestic 196 education 127–8, 129, 183, 187 exploitation of 54, 57, 62, 68, 75, 83, 107, 108, 126, 128, 129, 150, 156, 166, 175, 176, 182, 185, 195 factory 122, 123, 237 fair market value 63, 64 Gallup survey 271–2 house building 17 housework 114–15, 192 huge increase in the global wage labour force 107–8 importance of workers as buyers of commodities 80–81 ‘industrial reserve army’ 79–80, 173–4 migrations of 118 non-unionised xii; power of 61–4, 71, 73, 74, 79, 81, 88, 99, 108, 118–19, 127, 173, 175, 183, 189, 207, 233, 267 privatisation of 61 in service 117 skills 116, 118–19, 123, 149, 182–3, 185, 231 social see social labour; surplus 151, 152, 173–4, 175, 195, 233 symbolic 123 and trade unions 116 trading in labour services 62–3 unalienated 66, 89 unionised xii; unpaid 189 unskilled 114, 185 women in workforce see under women; worked to exhaustion or death 61, 182 see also employment labour markets 47, 62, 64, 66–9, 71, 102, 114, 116, 118, 166 labour-saving devices 104, 106, 107, 173, 174, 277 labour power commodification of 61, 88 exploitation of 62, 175 generation of surplus value 63 mobility of 99 monetisation of 61 private property character of 64 privatisation of 61 reserves of 108 Lagos, Nigeria, social reproduction in 195 laissez-faire 118, 205, 207, 281 land commodification 260–61 concept of 76–7 division of 59 and enclosure movement 58 establishing as private property 41 exhausting its fertility 61 privatisation 59, 61 scarcity 77 urban 251 ‘land grabs’ 39, 58, 77, 252 land market 18, 59 land price 17 land registry 41 land rents 78, 85 land rights 40, 93 land-use zoning 43 landlords 54, 67, 83, 140, 179, 251, 261 Latin America ’1and grabs’ 58, 77 labour 107 reductions in social inequality 171 two ‘lost decades’ of development 234 lawyers 22, 26, 67, 82, 245 leasing 16, 17, 18 Lebed, Jonathan 195 Lee Kuan-Yew 48 Leeds 149 Lefebvre, Henri 157, 192 Critique of Everyday Life 197–8 left, the defence of jobs and skills under threat 110 and the factory worker 68 incapable of mounting opposition to the power of capital xii; remains of the radical left xii–xiii Lehman Brothers investment bank, fall of (2008) x–xi, 47, 241 ‘leisure’ industries 115 Lenin, Vladimir 135 Leninism 91 Lewis, Michael: The Big Short 20–21 LGBT groups 168, 202, 218 liberation struggle 288, 290 liberty, liberties 44, 48–51, 142, 143, 212, 276, 284, 289 and bourgeois democracy 49 and centralised power 142 and money creation 51 non-coercive individual liberty 42 popular desire for 43 and state finances 48 liberty and freedom 199–215 coercion and violence in pursuit of 201 government surveillance and cracking of encrypted codes 201–2 human rights abuses 202 popular desire for 203 rhetoric on 200–201, 202 life expectancy 250, 258, 259 light, corpuscular theory of 70 living standards xii, 63, 64, 84, 89, 134, 175, 230 loans fictitious capital 32 housing 19 interest on 17 Locke, John 40, 201, 204 logos 31 London smog of 1952 255 unrest in (2011) 243 Los Angeles 150, 292 Louis XIV, King of France 245 Lovelace, Richard 199, 200, 203 Luddites 101 M McCarthyite scourge 56 MacKinnon, Catherine: Are Women Human?


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Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream by Nicholas Lemann

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Black-Scholes formula, Blitzscaling, buy and hold, capital controls, Carl Icahn, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, dematerialisation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Irwin Jacobs, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norman Mailer, obamacare, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, public intellectual, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snow Crash, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transaction costs, universal basic income, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

People like Drucker and Polanyi had witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and the rise of the Soviet Communists, the Nazis, and the Fascists (not to mention the advent of the corporation), and they had seen the thriving societies where they had been born fall into ruin. In the space of only a few years in the early 1940s Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, and Joseph Schumpeter published Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy; both authors were also from Vienna, and Drucker and Polanyi knew them. James Burnham, an American ex-communist, published The Managerial Revolution, a dire warning that professional business bureaucrats, comfortable with government regulation, were becoming the ruling class in modern society (Burnham devoted several pages to summarizing The Modern Corporation and Private Property).

Boone Pincus, Mark; political goals of Pioneers of Finance (video) Pizzo, Tony planned economies Plepler, Andrew pluralism; Bentley on; conception of politics in; critiques of; faux; humility and plutocracy Polanyi, Karl police; conservative empowerment of; racism of Polish Americans politics: economics and; pluralistic conception of; Silicon Valley and; suspicion of; Transaction Man mentality in; violence in; see also community organizing; Congress; federal government; specific administrations; political parties Pontiacs Port Huron Statement (Hayden) positive, as economic term Positive Theory of the Normative Virtues, A (Jensen and Erhard) Power (Berle) predatory lending price setting: by corporations; by government; by unions prime brokerage Prime Reserve Fund Princeton principal-agent problem Priorities USA private equity; GM and; gone public; Morgan Stanley competing with; mortgaged-backed securities and; takeovers by Process of Government, The (Bentley) Procter & Gamble Promise of American Life, The (Croly) prudent man rule public schools Pujo, Arsène Purcell, Philip Putney School, The “Putting Integrity into Finance” (Jensen and Erhard) racism; in housing; in policing railroads; regulation and Ranieri, Lewis Rattner, Steven Reagan, Ronald Reardon, Mike Reed, John regulation: of corporations; of finance; of Internet; post-2008; as Socialist; see also specific agencies Reich, Charles Reich, Robert Republicans: Clinton and; deregulation and; donors and; liberal repurchase market research labs, corporate retirement benefits, see pension funds; Social Security Administration Reuther, Walter Rheem Riesman, David Riggs, Austen Ripley, William Z. RJR Nabisco Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek) robber barons; see also specific people Robert Taylor Homes Rock, Arthur Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, Nelson Rockwell, George Lincoln Rogers, Carl Romney, Mitt Roosevelt, Franklin; Brain Trust of; campaign of; inauguration of; Morgan Stanley and; Supreme Court and; unknown views of Roosevelt, Sara Roosevelt, Theodore Rosenberg, John Paul, see Erhard, Werner Rothman, Simon Rubin, Robert; at Goldman Sachs; on National Economic Council; as secretary of the Treasury passim Rule 415 Rush, Bobby Russell, Bertrand Russia Rutter, Deanna Ruth St.


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The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

It became accepted wisdom that, in times of recession, substantial government spending would kick-start consumption and cause businesses to expand, thereby reducing unemployment. The governmental bailouts during the 2007–2008 financial crisis in the U.S. were an example of Keynesian interventions. Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom had been the bible of conservative economists since its publication in 1944, in the midst of the civilizational struggle between democracy and fascism. His thesis is that government control of the economy inevitably crushes individual freedom and leads to tyranny. Hayek’s political influence reached its peak with the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and the neoliberals.

Hayek, on the other hand, would have argued that trying to return to the status quo would block the opportunity to create the economy of the future, leading to long-term stagnation. “The more we try to protect particular jobs and firms today, we may be slowing down an adaptation to a world that may be,” Hubbard suggested. He nudged his students “to see paths forward in the middle.” He added: “While I suspect members of Congress don’t have The Road to Serfdom or The General Theory on their bedside table, those ideas about centralization and decentralization are probably front and center in their minds.” * * * — Hubbard was involved in that discussion in Washington. As policymakers addressed the greatest economic crisis in nearly a century, Hubbard warned them that it was more dire than they imagined.


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What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Simultaneously, the business community was transformed into a victim needing to be set free from government regulation. As Reagan said many times, “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” An important economic debate on the role of government regulation in the early twentieth century involved the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom, who famously wanted dangerous government constrained.58 His opponent was John Maynard Keynes, who was in “deeply moved agreement” with Hayek’s concern, argues economic historian Sylvia Nasar, although much more willing to endorse careful government initiatives and regulation of business.59 Hayek’s concern was not targeted just at the collectivists, among them Karl Marx, but more broadly at the dangers posed by regulatory capture of the sort which emerged later in the Reagan era.

Not President Reagan; his philosophy of pursuing deficits of choice created enormous heartburn for the fiscally prudent of all political persuasions, especially among economists. One of the greatest economic rivalries of the twentieth century, for example, pitted the Englishman John Maynard Keynes against Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian school. Hayek not only authored The Road to Serfdom, cautioning against overbearing and irresponsible government, he gained fame for predicting the great crash of 1929.13 Like Smith, Keynes believed that markets serving careless mankind require oversight by careful and prudent regulators. Hayek distrusted central regulation of any sort, preferring a government bound by strict rules.14 The Keynes viewpoint was explained this way by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius: “It wasn’t that he liked government spending, but that he recognized that markets sometimes overreact—amplifying the fears and preferences of individual behavior that makes everyone worse off.”15 For that and other insights, Keynes became the greatest economist of the twentieth century, even acknowledged by conservatives like N.

., 156, 157 (chart), Haskins, Ron (Brookings), 133, 263, 301, 402 Hastings, Max (historian), 344–45, 371–72 Hatton, Erin (sociologist), 453 Haunhorst, Charlotte (Der Spiegel reporter), 357 Hausman, Jerry A. (economist), 352 Havnes, Tarjei (University of Oslo), 299, 415 Hayek, Friedrich (economist) about, 12, 37, 73, 79, 202–3, 219–20 The Road to Serfdom, 37, 202 Hayward, Tony (former CEO, British Petroleum), 110 Hazlitt, Henry (economist), 219, 260 Heckman, James (Nobel Laureate), 447, 448 Heron, Randall (University of Iowa), 141 Hetherington, Marc J. (author), 183 Hilton, Andrew (Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation), 219 Hindery, Leo (former chief executive, AT&T Broadband), 100 Hlatshwayo, Sandile (economist), 229 Hobbes, Thomas, 26, 92, 148 Hoffman, David E.


State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Francis Fukuyama

Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, centre right, corporate governance, demand response, Doha Development Round, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Akerlof, Hernando de Soto, information asymmetry, liberal world order, Live Aid, Nick Leeson, Pareto efficiency, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, price stability, principal–agent problem, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, tacit knowledge, technology bubble, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system

Harriss, John, and Hunter, Janet, et al. 1995. The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development (London: Routledge). Hartcher, Peter. 1998. The Ministry (Boston: Harvard Business School Press). Hassner, Pierre 2002. “Definitions, Doctrines, Divergences,” National Interest No. 69 (fall): 30–34. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1956. The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). ——. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge,” American Economic Review 35(4): 519–30. Heiberg, Marianne, 1994. Subduing Sovereignty: Sovereignty and the Right to Intervene (London: Pinter Publishers). Herbst, Jeffery. 2000. States and Power in Africa (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).


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The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

Admiral Zheng, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, defund the police, Deng Xiaoping, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, George Floyd, global pandemic, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeremy Corbyn, Jones Act, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, McMansion, military-industrial complex, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parkinson's law, pensions crisis, QR code, rent control, Rishi Sunak, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, trade route, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Washington Consensus

There was racism, snobbery, and absurd amounts of hypocrisy in this: the leafy suburbs never complained about the public subsidies for their mortgages, their children’s free university education, or the local theater group. But bourgeois frustration with Leviathan rekindled the intellectual heirs of John Stuart Mill. The free-market right had never actually disappeared. Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, published in wartime London in 1944, was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1947, the so-called Austrian school of free marketeers met at Mont Pelerin to lay the foundations of a reverse Fabian Society. In the 1950s, the movement’s center of gravity moved from Europe to Hayek’s new home, the University of Chicago, where a group of economists explained how bureaucrats, even if they were well intentioned (which they often weren’t), could do more harm than good.


pages: 478 words: 126,416

Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People? by John Kay

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, call centre, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, currency risk, dematerialisation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, Irish property bubble, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, loose coupling, low cost airline, M-Pesa, market design, Mary Meeker, megaproject, Michael Milken, millennium bug, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, NetJets, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Thiel, Piper Alpha, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, rent control, risk free rate, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, Yom Kippur War

., et al., 2011, Tax by Design, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 5. I have written such a book, but a long time ago; Kay, J.A., and King, M.A., 1979, The British Tax System, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 5th edn, 1992. 6. Von Mises, L., 1927, Liberalismus, Jena, Gustav Fischer. Hayek, F.A., 1944, The Road to Serfdom, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. 7. This argument is developed powerfully in Bhidé, A., 2011, A Call for Judgment, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 8. Attributed to Clifford Stoll and Gary Schubert in Keeler, M.R., 2006, Nothing to Hide, Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, Inc., p.112. 9. Though the authorities have discretion not to prosecute, which it is to be hoped they would have exercised.

., 2010, ‘Patience and Finance’, Oxford China Business Forum, Beijing, 2 September. Haldane, A., Brennan, S., and Madouras, V., 2010, ‘What is the Contribution of the Financial Sector?’, in The Future of Finance, ed. Turner, A., et al., London, London School of Economics. Harris, R., 2012, The Fear Index, London, Arrow Books. Hayek, F.A., 1944, The Road to Serfdom, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Henderson, P.D., 1977, ‘Two British Errors: Their Probable Size and Some Possible Lessons’, Oxford Economic Papers, 29 (2), July, pp. 159–205. Herndon, T., Ash, M., and Pollin, R., 2013, ‘Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff’, University of Amherst, Political Economic Research Institute Working Paper 322.


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What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way by Nick Cohen

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boycotts of Israel, British Empire, centre right, critical race theory, DeepMind, disinformation, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Farzad Bazoft, feminist movement, government statistician, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, kremlinology, liberal world order, light touch regulation, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, no-fly zone, plutocrats, post-industrial society, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, sensible shoes, the scientific method, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Yom Kippur War

In the name of acting in the interests of the working class, academics and civil servants designed vast programmes of social relief and planners ordered the destruction of Victorian cities. The elite of the time held the public service ethos to be far superior to the grubby struggle for profit, and so did many others. In 1944 when Friedrich Hayek published what was to be the bible of the free-market right of the Seventies, The Road to Serfdom, hardly anyone took him seriously. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the Thirties had made capitalism obsolescent. Everyone, including conservatives, believed central planners should fight the Second World War. George Orwell sympathized with Hayek’s fears that centralized regulation would strangle liberty but thought his ‘able defence of capitalism’ was a waste of time.

Scott 98–9 Armstrong, Sir William 56 Ash, Lucy 121 al-Askari, Abdel-Qadir 51 Astor, Lord and Lady 217 asylum seekers 7 Atta, Mohamed 83, 255–7, 260, 269, 273 Auden, W.H. 122, 219, 220, 223, 224–5, 238, 335, 358–9 Australia 258 Axelrod, Pavel 103 al-Ayyeri, Yussuf 270 Aziz, Hind 34 Aziz, Tariq 292 Baath Party (Iraq) 24, 25, 33–4, 352, 365 alliance with Islamists after war to form ‘insurgency’ 8, 32, 286–7 and conspiracy theory 35–6 ideology 33, 35 and indoctrination 33–5, 41 and Iraqi communists 37–8 killings by 4–5, 31–2, 37 program against Iraqi Jews 36–7 purges of by Saddam 35, 42–4 seizure of power 22 and Soviet Union 37–8, 40 tyrannizing of Iraqis and forces of oppression 7, 33, 37, 41–2 Baath Party (Syria) 31 backlash politics 196–7 Bad Writing Contest 99–100 Bagehot, Walter English Constitution 189–90 al-Bakr, Ahmad Hasan 36 Baldwin, Stanley 220 Bali bar bombings (2002) 258 al-Banna, Hassan 265–6 al-Barak, Fadhil 35, 36 Barruel, L’Abbé Augustin 340, 341, 343, 345, 346 Memoirs to Serve for a History of Jacobinism 340 Battle of Britain 225 Baudrillard, Jean 110 Bazoft, Farzad 5, 53 BBC 159, 244, 304, 367, 368, 369, 379 Beard, Mary 274–5 Bell, Clive 228, 235 Bellow, Saul Ravelstein 80 Benaissa, Mohamed 352 Benenson, Peter 322 Benn, Hilary 367 Benson, Ophelia 101 Berman, Paul 249, 250, 312 Beslan school hostage crisis (2004) 259–60 Betjeman, John 221 Bevin, Ernie 231, 232, 233, 246 bin Laden, Osama 257, 258, 261, 267–8, 276, 365, 367 Birthler, Marianne 331 Blair, Cherie 205 Blair, Tony 54, 114, 185, 201, 277, 290, 297, 359, 364, 379 and Amnesty 322–3 and Iraq war 8, 202, 203, 280, 284, 285, 297, 300 and Kosovo war 151 and 9/11 257 Blakeney, Kate 63, 66 Bleasdale, Alan 184 blogosphere 270–1 Bloomsbury Group 192, 227, 228, 229, 235 Blum, Leon 249, 251 Blythe, Ronald The Age of Illusion 230 Boggan, Steve 40–1 Bosnian war 10, 127–51, 153–4, 168, 172, 370 atrocities committed 128, 129, 130, 131–2, 134 denial of crimes committed 171–8 ending of 151 lack of international help 135 Omarska prison camp 129, 130–1, 174 photograph of ‘emaciated men behind barbed wire’ 134, 174–5 pressure on Major government from Americans to intervene 145–9 prevention of action in by Major government 139–43, 144–5, 153–5, 168 siege of Sarajevo 153–4 Srebrenica massacre (1995) 130–1, 149–50, 171, 177–8 Trnopolje camp 131–4, 171, 174, 175–6 Bridget Jones’s Diary 313 Britain 138–9 and Euroscepticism 139 possibility of Bolshevik revolution in 1970s 55–7 prevention of action in Bosnian War by Major government 139–41, 144–5, 153–5, 168 radicalism in 58 trade unions 298–9 British Empire 162 British Muslims 369–72, 378 British National Party (BNP) 294, 310–11 British People’s Party 235–6 Brittain, Vera 248–9 Brown, Gordon 201, 297 Buchan, James High Latitudes 95 Burchill, Julie 207 Buruma, Ian and Margalit, Avishai Occidentalism 268 Bush, George (senior) 169 Bush, George W. 8, 9, 83, 85, 201, 209, 274, 284, 320, 321, 358, 359, 365, 373 Butler inquiry 285 Butler, Judith 100, 111 Butt, Hassan 371–2 Caldwell, Christopher 336–7 Cambodia 93, 166–7 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 230–1 Campbell, Professor David 176 Campbell, Sir Menzies 74 Camus, Albert 29 capitalism 22, 119–20, 195 Carey, Professor John 189 Castro, Fidel 93, 293 ‘Cato’ 225 Celebrity Big Brother 288–90 centralized regulation 194–5 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 227, 266–7 Chamberlain, Neville 144, 217–18, 220, 227, 233 Chamcha, Saladin 184 Chechnya 259–60 Chemical Ali see al-Majid, Ali Hassan China 93, 94, 117 Chirac, Jacques 150 Chomsky, Noam 14, 155–62, 164–8, 170, 179–80, 258, 376 American Power and the New Mandarins 156–7 anti-Americanism 156–7 background 155–6 and Bosnian War atrocities denial 178–9 condemning of Kosovo War 170–1 and Hiroshima 156, 157 and Holocaust denial theory 164–6 and Khmer rouge killings in Cambodia 167–8 and media propaganda 157–8, 160–1 support of Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade 178, 179 Christian Democrats 14 Churchill, Caryl 184 Churchill, Winston 2, 33, 218, 219, 245, 246 Clearances (Scottish Highlands) 118 Cliff, Tony 54 Clinton, Bill 83, 87, 145, 150, 201, 211, 273 Clwyd, Ann Saddam’s Iraq 40 Cockburn, Alexander 73 Coe, Jonathan 184 Cohn, Norman 345 Cohn, Professor Werner 174 Cold War 4, 88, 97, 143 Collard, Dudley 242 Collins, Michael 205–6 Columbia Journalism Review 159–60 communalism 309 communism 3–4, 89, 373–4 collapse of 87–8 and fascism 89, 237 killing of by communists 248 Communist Party (Britain) 238 attempt to rally support for Hitler after Soviet-Germany pact 239–46 People’s Convention 239, 242–6, 247 support of war effort after invasion of Soviet Union by Germany 246 Communist Party (Iraq) 37–8 Conquest, Robert 29, 103 Conservatives 2–3, 10, 53, 113 conspiracy theory 339–40 and Freemasons 35, 340–2, 345–6 and Jews 35–6, 65, 77, 343–6, 350–1 consumer leftism 373–6 consumerism 12, 221 Cook, Robin 285, 313 Cooper, Robert 136 council house waiting lists 200, 201 Critical Terms for Literary Study 100 Croatia 127 Crusaders 340 cults, political 60–3 Daily Mail 197 Daily Worker 240–1 Dalrymple, Theodore 229 Darfur 50, 117, 381 Dawkins, Richard 318 Dawson, Geoffrey 217 de Beauvoir, Simone 103 de Pauw, Cornelius 262–3 Declaration of Independence 317, 343 Deichmann, Thomas 174–5, 176, 177 democracy 193–4, 268, 342, 362, 365, 379, 380 fascism’s case against 268–70 Democrats 14, 211 Dench, Geoff 199 denial 162–3 and Bosnian war 171–8 and fascists 163–4 Holocaust 163–5, 179 Denmark 212 al-Din, Salah 33 Disneyland 110 Dole, Bob 145, 147, 150 Domvile, Admiral Sir Barry 235, 236 Dorfman, Ariel 283 Dostoevsky 67 dowry-murders 101, 102, 121–3 Drabble, Margaret 263 Dutton, Denis 99–100 Dzandarova, Zalina 259 East End/East Enders 198–201 East Timor 161, 170, 258, 275, 283 economists 114 education 204–5 Egypt 349, 350 Eliot, George 333 Eliot, T.S. 219 Empire (Hardt and Negri) 109–10 Engels, Friedrich 158 ‘Englishness’ 206 Enlightenment 35, 106, 109, 343, 355, 357 environment movement 356–7 epistemic relativism 105–6 Equity 57–8 Estikhbarat 40 ethnic cleansing 128, 365 ethnic minorities 11 eugenics 198 European Court of Human Rights 136, 212 European Exchange Rate Mechanism 3, 139 European Social Forum (2003) 115, 119–20, 301 European Union 10, 127, 135–8, 212, 214, 365, 379 Euroscepticism 139 Euston Manifesto 361–3 Fabians 190, 192, 193, 198 Fahrenheit 9/11 321–2 Fallacy of the Superior Virtue of the Oppressed 78–9 false consciousness, theory of 158–9, 374–5 Falwell, Jerry 261 family attempt to weaken influence of by political cults 61 fascism/fascists 3–4, 10, 268 case against democracy 268–70 and communism 89, 237 and denial 163–4 Faurisson, Robert 163–5 feminism/feminists 12, 90–1, 111, 112 in India 120 Ferguson, Euan 282–3 First World War 220 Fischer, Joschka 332 Fisk, Robert 271–2 ‘fisking’ 271 Foot, Michael 225, 232–3 Forster, E.M. 244 Foucault, Michel 107–8, 109, 377, 379 Fox, Dr Myron L. 97–8 Fox, John 146–7 France 47, 206, 212, 218, 281 Franco, General Francisco 1, 35, 50, 346 Frank, Thomas 209, 210–11, 212 Franks, General Tommy 72 Frayn, Michael 182–3 Freemasons 35, 38, 269, 340–2, 345–6, 350, 351 French left 249, 327 French Revolution 42, 355 French socialists and Hitler 249–52 Gaddafi, Colonel 68 Galbraith, Peter 50, 52 Galloway, George 74, 290–3, 300–1, 302, 310 game theory 97 Gaullists 14 Gavron, Kate 199 genocide against Iraqi Kurds 5, 7, 24, 48–9, 50–2, 127 defined by United Nations 129 Geras, Norman 325 Germany anti-war demonstrations 281 and Iraq war 329 see also Nazi Germany Globalise Resistance 296 globalization 141, 374, 376 see also anti-globalization movement Gold Standard 219 Gollancz, Victor 240–1 Goodlad, Alistair 153 Gorazde (Bosnia) 154 Gore, Al 273 Gorst, Irene 59–60 Gourlay, Walter 215 grammar schools 205 Grant, Ted 54 Great Depression 195, 218, 220–1, 356 Great Leap Forward 49 Greece anti-war demonstrations 281 Green movement 119, 356 Griffiths, James 234 Griffiths, Richard 236 Griffiths, Trevor 55 The Party 55–6, 57 Guantanamo Bay 324 Guardian 117, 179–80, 294, 304, 337–8 Guevara, Che 93 Guilty Men 225–7, 240 Gulf War (1991) 71, 89 Halabja 50–2, 292 Hamas 259 constitution 348–9 Hamza, Abu 351 Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio Empire 109–10 Hare, Sir David 184, 206 Harrington, Michael 82 Hawley, Caroline 46 Hayek, Friedrich 294 The Road to Serfdom 194–5 Healy, Gerry 53–5, 57–9, 61, 63–4, 66–8, 301 hegemonic 110–12 Heidegger, Martin 263–4 heroes/heroines 19–20 Herman, Edward S. 166, 168, 170, 176 Hezbollah 293–4, 366 Hiroshima 156, 157 Hitchens, Christopher 247, 253 Hitler, Adolf 4, 35, 49, 50, 246, 248, 250 appeasement of by Chamberlain 217–18, 220, 227, 233, 233–4, 276 and France 251 and Jews 30, 346 meeting with Lansbury 234 Mein Kampf 345, 346 pact with Stalin 358 rise of 231 seen as a bulwark against communism 217 Hizb-ut-Tahir 370 Ho Chi Minh 93 Hoare, Marko Attila 169–70, 171 Hobsbawm, Eric 103, 185, 241–2 Hoggart, Simon 299–300 Hollinghurst, Alan The Line of Beauty 184 Holocaust 336 denial of 163–5, 179 homosexuality 11, 105, 111 ‘honour killings’ 378 Horta, Hose Ramos 283–4 Houellebecq, Michel 213 Howard, Peter 225 human rights 39–40, 88, 106, 143, 312, 313, 316, 324–5, 362 Human Rights Watch 52, 312, 325–6 Hume, Mick 176 Hurd, Douglas 140–1, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 169, 370 Husain, Ed The Islamist 369–70 Hussain, Azfar 101–2, 104 Hussein, Saddam see Saddam Hussein el-Husseini, Haj Amin 347–8 Huxley, Aldous 235 identity politics 376–7 Independence Party 294 Independent 304, 320, 335, 366 Index on Censorship 335 India 75, 120–1, 162 dowry-murders and persecution of women 101, 102, 121–3 feminist movement 120 partition of 143 Indict 292 individualism 356 Indochina 166 Indonesia 81 Information Research Bureau 246 Institute for Public Policy Research 207 international criminal states 313 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 130 International Monetary Fund 117 Internet 270–1 Iran 22, 25–6, 81, 82, 374, 377, 379 revolution (1979) 26–7, 107–8, 380 war against Iraq 28, 32, 44, 47–8 women in 357–8 Iraq 4–6, 7, 20–6, 40, 72–3 alliance between Baathists and Islamists after war to form ‘insurgency’ 8, 32, 286–7 American assistance in war with Iran 46–8 Baath Party regime see Baath Party genocide of Kurds 5, 7, 24, 48–9, 50–2, 127 invasion of Kuwait 6, 70, 72–3 ‘oil-for-food’ programme 72 pull back by America in (1991) 71, 72, 80, 81, 87 sanctions issue 74–5 seen as only country to take on Israel 76–7 shift in attitude towards by left 30, 74–5, 89–91 and Soviet Union 37–8 terrorizing of Shia majority by Sunni Islamists 287 trade union movement 297–8, 301, 302–3 war against Iran 28, 32, 44, 47–8 weapons sales to 47 and Workers’ Revolutionary Party 65–6, 67, 68 see also Saddam Hussein Iraq Memory Foundation 330 Iraq war (2003) 4, 7–9, 84, 299–300, 357, 364–5, 381 aftermath 285–6, 381 anti-war movement/ demonstrations 169–70, 280–311, 313–14, 357 and Blair 8, 202, 203, 280, 284, 285, 297, 300 liberal opposition to 46, 202, 312–32 Iraqi Communist Party 334 Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions 298, 302 Ireland 212 anti-war demonstrations 281 Irvin, Jeremy 129, 133 Isherwood, Christopher 219, 224, 233 Islam 9, 107, 367 Islamic Combatant Group 258–9 Islamism/Islamists 260, 261–2, 264–6, 267, 269–70, 273, 343–4, 347, 352, 360, 365–6, 368, 371–2, 374, 381 Israel 21, 76, 77, 170, 335, 336, 338–9, 346, 347, 351–2, 353 Italy anti-war demonstration 280 Izetbegovic, Alija 154 jahilyya 265, 267 Jamaat-i-Islaami party 266, 351, 369, 371, 377 Jarman, Derek 184 Jarrow hunger marches 218 Jehovah Witnesses 296 Jelacic, Nerma 172–3 Jewish Chronicle 65 Jews 10, 35, 36, 269 attack on by Iraq’s Baath Party 36–7 conspiracy theory involving 35–6, 65, 77, 343–6, 350–1 and Hitler 30, 346 and Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion 36, 344, 345, 346, 349 and tsarist Russia 344–5 see also antisemitism Johnson, Hewlett 243 Johnstone, Diana Fools’ Crusade 176–7, 178 Jong-Il, Kim 39 journalists 159–60 July bombings (London) 10, 257–8 Kagan, Robert 136, 315–16, 317 Kanaan, Jean-Sélim 326 Kansas 209, 209–10 Karadzic, Radovan 128, 129, 131, 169 Kelikian, Dr Hampar 148 Kenneth, John 50 Keynes, John Maynard 114, 228, 377 Economic Consequences of the Peace 228 Khan, Irene 324 Khan, Mohammad Sidique 258 Khmer Rouge 167, 167–8 Khomeini, Ayatollah 27, 28, 70, 107, 108, 184 Kianouri, Noureddin 27 Kirwan, Celia 246 Kissinger, Henry 47 Klein, Naomi No Logo109 Knights Templars 340–1, 342 Kosovo war 10, 151, 168, 170–1 Kouchner, Bernard 326 Kumari, Ranjana 121 Kurds 36 attempts to rally international support for 50 genocide against by Saddam Hussein 5, 7, 24, 48–9, 50–2, 127 use of poison gas against at Halabja 50–2, 292 Kuwait invasion of by Iraq (1990) 6, 70 Labour Party 93, 182, 220, 231–3 see also Blair, Tony; New Labour Labour Party conference (2004) 297, 299–300 Lader, Philip 367 Lansbury, George 199, 229–32, 233–4 Laski, Harold 21, 240 Lawrence, D.H. 219 League of Nations 231 Left Book Club 219, 240, 243 Leigh, Mike 184 Lenin, Vladimir 50, 54 Leslie, Ann 333 Lewis, C.


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Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs

agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business process, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, digital divide, Edward Glaeser, energy security, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Global Witness, Haber-Bosch Process, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mass immigration, microcredit, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, unemployed young men, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, zoonotic diseases

The argument goes that without social insurance, the public would be likely to demand protectionism and nonmarket guarantees of employment. Another major criticism of the social welfare state from the right is that it represents a direct threat to personal freedoms. Economist Friedrich Hayek argued in his influential work The Road to Serfdom that large-scale involvement of the state in the economy would lead to the collapse of individual freedoms. Although he first aimed those criticisms at the centrally planned communist economies and their controls on industry, he later extended them to the so-called social democracies with their expensive welfare policies.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365 (May 2007): 1925–54. Hansen, James, et al. “Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate: a GISS ModelE Study.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2007): 2287–312. Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48. Hayek, Friedrich A. von. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. Hiro, Dilip. Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources. New York: Nation Books, 2006. Hirschman, Albert. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.


pages: 418 words: 128,965

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alfred Russel Wallace, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, barriers to entry, British Empire, Burning Man, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, corporate raider, creative destruction, disinformation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Eben Moglen, Ford Model T, Howard Rheingold, Hush-A-Phone, informal economy, intermodal, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Menlo Park, open economy, packet switching, PageRank, profit motive, radical decentralization, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, scientific management, search costs, seminal paper, sexual politics, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the market place, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, vertical integration, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

The same ideas that had inspired Henry Ford and Theodore Vail had, in the realm of politics, led to Hitler and Stalin. And so a general repudiation of the whole logic of centralization was a natural fact of the Cold War era. It was an Austrian economist who would provide the most powerful critique not just of central planning but of the Taylorist fallacies underlying it. Friedrich Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom, is a patron saint of libertarians for having assailed not only big government, in the form of socialism, but also central planning in general.8 For what he found dangerous about the centralizing tendencies of socialism applies equally well to the overbearing powers of the corporate monopolist.

., From Gutenberg to the Internet: A Sourcebook on the History of Information Technology (Novato, CA: historyofscience.com, 2005) 871–90. 7. As quoted in Alfred L. Malabre, Jr., Lost Prophets: An Insider’s History of the Modern Economists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 1994), 220. 8. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1944). 9. This quote comes from Friedrich A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 77. 10. Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations (London: Routledge & Paul, 1957), ix. 11. Schumacher’s idea of “enoughness” stemmed from his studies of what he called “Buddhist economics.”


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Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-globalists, AOL-Time Warner, banks create money, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, big-box store, Bretton Woods, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, computer age, congestion pricing, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death of newspapers, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, easy for humans, difficult for computers, financial innovation, Firefox, full employment, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Google Earth, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, income per capita, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, loss aversion, market bubble, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, negative equity, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, peak oil, peer-to-peer, place-making, placebo effect, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, private military company, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, RFID, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social software, Steve Jobs, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, union organizing, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

It was a leap, but one supported by the decade’s leading psychologists, and one that provided the leaders of the free world with a social model capable of confronting the financial and ideological challenges of managing the postwar industrial economy. While the Soviets struggled to build a centralized bureaucracy that could administrate the needs of all people, free economies turned to the market. In 1944, an Austrian economist named Friedrich Hayek had just finished his seminal work, The Road to Serfdom, in which he argued to his British and American colleagues that all forms of collectivism lead to tyranny. According to Hayek, any central planner will prove incapable of managing resources without resorting to coercive means. The people, desperate for leadership capable of putting bread on the table, would welcome dictatorship and voluntarily surrender their personal and economic freedoms to the promise of greater efficiency.

Bentley Macleod, and Daniel Parent, “Performance Pay and Wage Inequality,” Departmental Working Papers from McGill University, Department of Economics, at http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/mclmclwop/2006-08.htm (accessed May 1, 2008); and, most important to my own argument, Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992). 149 In 1944, an Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947). 151 A Paranoid Schizophrenic’s Legacy Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, “Solving the Puzzle of Human Cooperation,” in Evolution and Culture, ed. Stephen C. Levinson and Pierre Jaisson, 105-32 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005). 151 The think-tank logicians at Rand Rand corporation, or Research and Development Corporation, is a global policy think tank created originally for the U.S.


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Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, anti-bias training, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, defund the police, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, fulfillment center, full employment, George Floyd, ghettoisation, gig economy, glass ceiling, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, liberal capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meritocracy, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Norman Mailer, obamacare, off-the-grid, postindustrial economy, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QAnon, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, too big to fail, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, white flight, working poor, young professional

Some of them interpreted the Constitution as a libertarian document for individual and states rights under a limited federal government, not as a framework for the strengthened nation that the authors of The Federalist Papers thought they were creating. They had their favorite presidents, just not the usual ones. Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge came in for high praise. Oddly, the most influential libertarians were Europeans, especially the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, whose polemic against collectivism, The Road to Serfdom, was a publishing sensation in America in 1944, during the most dramatic mobilization of economic resources by state power in history. What distinguished libertarians from mainstream pro-business Republicans—Mailer’s parade of delegates in Miami Beach—was their pure and uncompromising idea. What was it?


Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government by Robert Higgs, Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.

Alistair Cooke, American ideology, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, creative destruction, credit crunch, declining real wages, endowment effect, fiat currency, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, manufacturing employment, means of production, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, plutocrats, post-industrial society, power law, price discrimination, profit motive, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, Works Progress Administration

Every major industrial economy has relatively more government ownership of industry than the United States; and the extent of government ownership has not changed markedly during the post-World War II era in the United States. 11. Charlotte Twight, America's Emerging Fascist Economy (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1975), Chap. 1; Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 4. 12. Richard Gillam, "The Peacetime Draft: Voluntarism to Coercion," Yale RetView 57 Oune 1968), reprinted in The Military Draft: Selected Readings on Conscription, ed. Martin Anderson (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), p. 113. 13. Alonzo L.

Greer, Douglas F. Business, Government, and Society. New York: Macmillan, 1983. Hansen, john Mark. "The Political Economy of Group Membership." American Politic,;# Science Review 79 (March 1985). Hardin, Russell. Collective Action. Baltimore: johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. - - . The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Hechter, Michael. "A Theory of Group Solidarity." In The Micro-foundations of Macrosociology, ed. Michael Hechter. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983. Heertje, Arnold, ed.


pages: 790 words: 150,875

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, Atahualpa, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Dean Kamen, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Easter island, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, guns versus butter model, Hans Lippershey, haute couture, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, invention of movable type, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, land reform, land tenure, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, Pearl River Delta, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, retail therapy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, the market place, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, wage slave, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , World Values Survey

The planner is best able to devise and deliver the ultimate weapon to a single client, the state. But the planner can never hope to meet the desires of millions of individual consumers, whose tastes are in any case in a state of constant flux. This was one of the many insights of Keynes’s arch-rival, the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, whose Road to Serfdom (1945) had warned Western Europe to resist the chimera of peacetime planning. It was in meeting (and creating) consumer demands that the American market model, revitalized during the war by the biggest fiscal and monetary stimulus of all time, and sheltered by geography from the depredations of total war, proved to be unbeatable.

H. 103–4 empires see imperialism; individual empires Encümen-i Daniş (Assembly of Knowledge), Ottoman empire 89 Engels, Friedrich 207, 209, 210–11, 228 England 4, 18, 37 China and 47–9 exploration, voyages of 36 France and 23, 24, 39 Industrial Revolution 10, 13, 21, 28–9, 70 Ireland and 24, 105, 203n London see London slavery (chattel slavery) in 130, 132 see also Britain; British empire English Civil Wars 104, 105, 106, 107, 115, 150, 152 the Enlightenment 76–9, 81 environmental issues 17, 293–4, 299 Epp, Franz Xavier Ritter von 188–9 Erasmus, Desiderius xxiii Erdely, Eugene 190 Eugene of Savoy, Prince 56 eugenics 176–7 in Germany 176–81, 189–90, 191; in German Namibia 176–81; genocide in 179–80, 188 Euler, Leonard 84 Euphrates river/valley 17 Europe competition between states 36–42 geography 36–7 Islamic envoys to 86–7 US and 16 see also individual countries European integration 14–15, 239 Everett, Edward 137 exploration, voyages of 9, 23, 38 Chinese 28–33, 48 English 36 marine chronometers for 70 as missionary endeavours 39 Portuguese 33–5, 39, 53, 130 Spanish 35–6 Faidherbe, Louis, governor of Senegal 164, 165, 166 fashion/clothing 197–8, 219–20, 225, 237, 246, 255 communist attitude to 249–50 in Japan 220–21, 222, 223, 225 jeans 240–44, 246–9, 250 machine made 217–18, 237 for men 216, 220–21, 230 military uniforms 215–16, 229, 233, 234, 237 for women 216, 220, 246; Islamic 253–5, 253n see also consumerism Fashoda incident, Sudan (1898) 173 Feng Youlan: History of Chinese Philosophy 27 Feraios, Rigas 213 Fermat, Pierre de 66 Ferrier, Thomas 121, 122 Ferry, Jules, Prime Minister of France 172 Fertile Crescent concept 17 film industry 230, 231 Filmer, Sir Robert: Patriarcha 108 financial systems 7, 14, 139 in Asia 7, 252–3, 277–8 banking 230–31 capitalism see capitalism cash nexus concept 206–7 consumer credit 238 in Europe 106–7, 161 markets/market economy 205–6, 276–7 money supply 38 monopolies 38 taxation 38, 44, 106, 107, 117, 210–11, 288 see also economic …; Great Depression First World War (1914–18) 16, 92, 148–9, 181, 182, 227 African colonial troops in 181–9; French 183–7; German 182 casualty figures 181, 183, 186, 187 Dardanelles 85 Gallipoli 91, 182 Rudyard Kipling on 187–8 Fischer, Eugen 180–81, 189 Human Heredity … 189 food see diet food supplies 22, 200–201 famine 44, 46 see also agriculture foreign aid, to Africa 145–6 France 4, 16, 36, 37, 83, 85 American Revolution and 117 Britain and 140, 160, 161, 173 economic crises 149–50, 161 England and 23, 24, 39 the Enlightenment 77–8 in First World War 182–3, 185–7 Huguenots 39, 41, 76 Italy and 159 literacy rates 77 living standards 24–5 the Marseillaise 156, 156n under Napoleon Bonaparte 119, 142, 156–61 Paris 5, 77, 215 property rights 152 Russia and 160 Spain and 119 student unrest 245 see also French … Frauenfeld, Alfred 193 Frederick the Great of Prussia 73–4 The Anti-Machiavel 75, 79–80 as an intellectual 79–80 Political Testaments 73, 80 as a scientific patron 71, 79–80, 84 French army, in First World War 182–3, 185–7 mutiny in 186–7 French empire 148, 159, 160, 195 in Africa 163–75, 176, 188, 190–91; segregation in 174–5 colonial armies 164; in First World War 183–7 Ecole Coloniale 165, 166–7, 172 extent of 144 institutional structure 172–3 legal system 165–6 male suffrage in 163 in North America (Louisiana Purchase) 163, 160–61 slavery, abolition of 163–4 unrest in 163, 175 French Revolution 119, 142, 149–57, 161–2 Edmund Burke on 149, 150–52, 152n, 155, 156 causes of 149–50, 153 Declaration of the Rights of Man 150, 151 executions during 152–3 political system during 152–3 as a religious conflict 151, 152, 153, 154 Rousseau and 151–2 the Terror 153, 155–6 Alexis de Tocqueville on 153–4 see also France … French West Africa 170–71, 174, 191 Freud, Sigmund 16 on civilization 272–3 on religion 270–71, 272 Frisch, Otto 235 Galileo Galilei 65, 66, 83, 84 Galton, Francis 176–7 Kantsaywhere 177n Gandhi, Mahatma 217 on Western civilization 141, 144, 171, 195 on Western medicine 146, 149 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 229 Le Gazetier Cuirassé 79 genocide 179–80, 188, 193, 194, 234 see also eugenics German army, in First World War 182–3, 185–7 colonial troops 182 German empire 144 in Africa 176–81, 188–90, 191; legal system 177, racial issues 176, 177–81; rebellion in 178–9 Nazi, in Eastern Europe 189–90, 191–5 German nationalism 213, 214 Germany 11, 16, 38, 159 division of, post-1945 243; Berlin Wall 249, 251 economic growth/output 231, 232–3 eugenics in 176–81 living standards 232–3 Nazi regime 189–90, 191–5, 231–4; see also Hitler, Adolf as a printing centre 61 Reformation 38 Russia and 192, 194, 231–2 as a scientific centre 175–6 Gibbon, Edward 78 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 257–9, 291–2 Gide, André 174 Gilbert, William 65 Ginsburg, Allen 247 globalization 239 gold, from South America 99, 101–2, 130 golf 28 Goltz, Colmar Freiherr von de (Goltz Pasha) 91 Gorbachev, Mikhail 250 Göring, Heinrich (father of Hermann Göring) 176, 189 Göring, Hermann 176, 189, 193 Graham, Billy 273–4 Great Britain see Britain Great Depression 229–31 Greece 15, 17, 21 Greek nationalism 213, 228 Greer, Germaine 246 Gregory VII, Pope 60 Grijns, Gerrit 170 Grimm, Hans: People without Space 189 Grosseteste, Robert 60 Guettard, Jean-Etienne 66 Guizot, François xxvii Gutenberg, Johann 60–61 Habsburg empire 8–9, 53, 144 Ottoman empire’s invasion of (1683) 52, 54–7 Vienna, siege of (1683) 52, 53, 55, 57 see also Austria Haiti 120, 128, 160 Hamakari, battle of (1904) 179 Hammond, Mac 275 Hardy, Georges 166 Hargreaves, James 200 Harrison, John 70 Harvey, William 66 Haussmann, Baron Georges 215 Havel, Václav 248–9 Hawaii 144 Hayek, Friedrich von 301 Road to Serfdom 237 health issues 7, 12, 14, 44, 68, 175–6 antibiotics 148 Black Death/plague 4, 23, 25, 54, 169, 175 death 25–6 definition 13 diet and 170 eugenics see eugenics European diseases, spread of 99, 101 hospitals: Islamic 51 medical schools 53 native medicine/healers 171–2 public health 147, 148, 171–2, 177, 205 sanitation 23, 147, 179 tropical diseases 148, 168–70, 173; mortality rate from 168; research on 169–70, 174 vaccination 14, 147, 148, 170, 173, 175 Western medicine, benefits of 146–8, 168–75, 191 witch doctors 171, 172 health transition concept 147–8 Heck, Walter 233 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 159, 207, 212 Helvétius, Adrien 78 Hempel, Carl xx Hendel, Ann Katrin 250 Henry V, King of England 23, 24, 39 Henry VIII, King of England 72, 103–4 Henry the Navigator, King of Portugal 39 Himmler, Heinrich 190, 192, 193–4 Hirohito, Crown Prince of Japan 220, 225–6 Hispaniola (island) 101–2 history teaching of xviii–xx limitations of xx–xxii Hitler, Adolf 189–90, 194, 231 Hossbach memorandum 233 see also Germany, Nazi regime Ho Chi Minh 167 Hobbes, Thomas 24, 73 on liberty 107–8 Hoffmann, Erich 175–6 Hogg, James xxvi Holbach, baron Paul-Henri Thiry d’ 79 homicide rates 24, 25, 105 Hong Kong 105, 169 Hong Xiuquan 279–80 Hooke, Thomas 67, 70 Micrographia 64 How, Millicent (English migrant to South Carolina) 103, 106, 111–12 Hu Jintao 287–8 Huguenots 39, 41, 76 human rights 8 Hume, David 77, 78 Hungary 251 Huntington, Samuel, on Western civilization 15, 16, 312–13 Hus, Jan 61 Hussein, Saddam xvi Hutton, James 66 Ibrahim, Muktar Said 288–9 illiteracy see literacy rates imperialism 8–10, 13, 14, 15, 142–95, 302–3 in Africa 14, 139, 145, 146, 148, 163–75; see also individual countries in America see America … colonial armies/troops 164, 181–9 communications, difficulty of 170–71, 181–2 as conquest 99–102 European diseases spread by 99, 101 growth/decline of 3, 4, 5, 13, 38, 142, 144–5 impact of 8, 45, 46, 144–6, 173–4, 190–95 institutional structures and 103–5 Lenin on 144 as a term of abuse 144, 145 Mark Twain on 144 Western 14, 15, 96–140, 142–95 Western medicine, benefits of to overseas colonies 146–8, 168–75, 191 see also individual empires Inca empire, Spanish conquest of 98, 99–102 income levels see living standards; wages India 5, 9, 17, 36 as British colony 144, 264 China and 29, 32 as independent state 224–5 Portugal and 34, 35, 39 science/technology 11 textile industry 2245 Indian Medical Service 169–70 Indian Ocean 29, 32, 33 Indo-China, as a French colony 167, 191 Indonesia 240 Industrial Revolution 13, 21, 28–9, 70, 198–205 in Britain 10, 13, 21, 28–9, 70, 199–200, 203–5 consumerism, increase caused by 201–2 definition 198–9 spread of 204–5, 225, 264 industrialization 10, 14, 216–18 in China 225, 284, 285 inequality see living standards infant mortality see life expectancy Inoue Kaoru 226 institutional structures 11–14 cultural 77 financial/economic see financial systems imperialism and 103–5, 112, 172–3, 287 of Islamic fundamentalism 288, 289, 290n Islamic 289, 290, 290n Iran 94–5, 255 Ireland 11, 227, 203n England and 24, 105 iron/steel industry 200–201 Islam 3, 8, 9, 16, 60 calligraphy, importance of 68 Europe, envoys sent to 86–7 health issues: hospitals 51; medical schools 53 the Koran 63 population figures 290 printing, attitude to 68, 86 religious conflict 71 in Turkey 253–5 the West and 39, 50–57, 63, 85–90, 255 women’s clothing 253–5, 254n see also Ottoman empire; religious issues Islamic education 51 Islamic fundamentalism 93–5, 93n, 255, 258, 288–91 institutional structure 288, 289, 290n Islamic migration 290, 290n Islamic science/technology 51–7, 264 astronomy 68–9 attitudes to 67–9 Roger Bacon on 52 modernization of 88–9, 92, 94–5 optics 51–2 Israel 92–5, 246–7 Jerusalem 93, 93n, 94 science/technology in 93–4 see also Jews Italian city-states/Italy 4, 25, 28, 159, 182 France and 159 Under Mussolini 228 Naples 26, 159 as a printing centre 63 Rome 17; March on (1922) 228–9 in Second World War 233–4 Venice 38–9 see also Roman empire Italian colonies 144 Italian unification 212–13, 214–15, 228 Iwakura Tomomi 221 Jamaica 120, 123 as a British colony 148 Jansen, Zacharias 65 Japan 5, 9, 42 China and 226, 233, 234 fashion/clothing 220–21, 222, 223, 225 living standards 45–6 modernization of 90, 218, 221–5, 226, 239, 257; internal opposition to 222 Russia and 226 textile industry 223–4 US and 221; in Second World War 233–5 Western influence on 5, 7, 15, 221–5 women in 222 Japanese armed forces 226, 234 Java 170 jeans, as a symbol of consumerism 240–49, 250 Jefferson, Thomas 134 Jerusalem 93, 93n, 94 Jews 3, 76 as entrepreneurs 216–17, 217n, 262n as intellectuals 235, 235n in Palestine 92–3 persecution of 38–9; in Germany 92, 214, 234, 235 Max Weber on 262 see also Israel Jiang Zemin 287 Jiao Yu and Liu Ji: Huolongjing 28 Jirous, Ivan 248 John Paul II, Pope 252 Johnson, Blind Willie 18 Johnson, Samuel 2, 10 Kahn, Albert 196, 196n Kamen, Dean 145n Kant, Immanuel 76, 79, 80–81 Critique of Pure Reason 76 Kara Mustafa Köprülü (‘the black’), Grand Vizier 52, 54–5, 56, 71, 86 Karaca, Nihal Bengisu 254 Kaufman, Henry xvi Kemal, Mustafa see Atatürk, Kemal Kennedy, Paul: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers 298 Keynes, John Maynard 7, 230, 231, 237 Khan, Dr A.


pages: 391 words: 22,799

To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise by Bethany Moreton

affirmative action, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, collective bargaining, company town, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, emotional labour, estate planning, eternal september, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Gilder, global village, Great Leap Forward, informal economy, invisible hand, liberation theology, longitudinal study, market fundamentalism, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, new economy, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, price anchoring, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Nader, RFID, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, walkable city, Washington Consensus, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , Works Progress Administration

Even at schools that taught economics as a theoretical discipline, SIFE invariably entered through the business departments. A small number of committed ideologues provided some of the fire in SIFE’s belly, but only at a remove from the core theories they represented. SIFE students read “I, Pencil,” not The Wealth of Nations nor even The Road to Serfdom. Sometimes, however, the students veered toward contradictions between their ideological models and conÂ�flicting economic values. In the midst of the intense focus on entrepreneurial heroism and government profligacy, Malone College’s 1987 projÂ�ect stood out for its explicit reference to the basis of the postindustrial economy.

See also Migrants IndeÂ�penÂ�dent Retail Grocers Association, 26 IndeÂ�penÂ�dent stores, 18, 21–23, 30, 45, 53, 143–144 Individualism, 44, 51–53, 99, 103–104, 209, 246 Industrial economy, 5, 50, 54, 57, 65, 67, 73, 84, 87 Industrial capÂ�italism, 14, 124 Industrialism, 7–17, 21, 39–40, 46, 50–52, 54, 60, 65, 136, 153, 220, 268–269, 308n59 Industrial work, 80–81, 84, 87, 99, 108–109, 113, 121, 125, 136 Inflation, 2, 125–126, 142, 145, 165, 183, 343n23 Innovation, 7, 12, 147, 155–159, 190–191 Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas, 243 Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, 219 Insurance: unemployment, 54, 184; health, 71, 297n29; life, 71 International Conference on World Evangelization, 239–240, 250, 340n69 International Mass Retailers Association, 257–259 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, 87–88, 97 Hallmark Cards, 174, 200, 216 Halt the Deficit campaign, 202–205 Hard/soft management, 109, 111, 271 Harding University (formerly Harding College), 163–168, 174, 182, 193–195, 199, 208–209, 211, 217, 228, 231–232, 234–235, 243–245 Hargis, Billy James, 166 Harvey, Paul, 222, 248 Hatch, Orrin, 185 Hayek, Friedrich von, 175, 195; The Road to Serfdom, 211 Health care/insurance, 1, 4, 30, 71–72, 115, 297n29 Helms, Jesse, 185 Heritage Foundation, 199, 214–215, 330n27 High schools, 145–148, 167, 174, 194, 196, 211, 217 Hillbillies, 11, 42 Hobbs, NM, 173–175 Homosexuality, 3, 9, 112, 118–121 Honduras, 50, 235, 252–253 Hoover Institute, 169, 214 Household labor, 50–54, 80, 84, 114–116, 123, 183, 292n6, 309n67 Housing, 2, 115, 264–266 Houston, TX, 31–33, 39 Human relations.


pages: 524 words: 143,993

The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned--And Have Still to Learn--From the Financial Crisis by Martin Wolf

air freight, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bonus culture, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market fragmentation, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, vertical integration, very high income, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

In a splendid book, Economics After the Crisis: Ends and Means (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2012), p. 72, Lord (Adair) Turner argues that ‘Economic freedom on both the consumption side and the production side – not only the right to choose what to consume but also the right to set up a new company, to work for oneself, and to compete with new ideas – should be recognized as a desirable objective in and of itself, not because of any prosperity dividend it delivers.’ 18. Friedrich Hayek put this point in the opposite way: ‘whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served’. See Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1944), pp. 68–9. INTRODUCTION: ‘WE’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANY MORE’ 1. A version of this chapter’s discussion of the legacy of the financial crisis appears in ‘Afterword: How the Financial Crises Have Changed the World’, in Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor, eds, Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 2.

‘What is the Contribution of the Financial Sector: Miracle or Mirage?’, in Adair Turner et al., The Future of Finance: The LSE Report (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 2010). http://harr123et.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/futureoffinance-chapter21.pdf, Figure 19. Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1944). Herndon, Thomas, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin. ‘Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff’, 15 April 2013. http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf. Hicks, John R.


pages: 214 words: 57,614

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy by Francis Fukuyama

affirmative action, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, European colonialism, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, information security, Internet Archive, John Perry Barlow, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, no-fly zone, oil-for-food scandal, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus

This is why the Straussian wing of the neoconservative movement always had a problem with libertarian conservatives. Libertarians understand freedom only negatively, as freedom The Neoco?iservative Legacy from government power. In the words of Adam Wolfson, "Libertarians rise to the defense of every conceivable freedom but that of self-government. ... To the neoconservative, the true road to serfdom lies in the efforts of libertarian and left-wing elites to mandate an anti-democratic social policy all in the name of liberty. But it is a narrow, privatized liberty that is secured. An active and lively interest in public affairs is discouraged as a result. Everything is permitted except a say in the shaping of the public ethos." 14 Thus, while Straussians and neoconservatives more broadly were tactically allied with traditional conservatives and libertarians on issues like welfare reform, they understood the problem very differently.


pages: 710 words: 164,527

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order by Benn Steil

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, banks create money, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, deindustrialization, European colonialism, facts on the ground, fiat currency, financial independence, floating exchange rates, full employment, global reserve currency, imperial preference, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, lateral thinking, low interest rates, margin call, means of production, Michael Milken, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, open economy, Paul Samuelson, Potemkin village, price mechanism, price stability, psychological pricing, public intellectual, reserve currency, road to serfdom, seigniorage, South China Sea, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, the market place, trade liberalization, Works Progress Administration

On the voyage over, Keynes and the British team, which included Eady, Robbins, and several Bank of England and Foreign Office officials, produced two “boat drafts” dealing with the fund and the bank. Keynes also found time for some leisure reading, which included Friedrich Hayek’s newly published The Road to Serfdom. Keynes penned a response to Hayek, in which he, surely to the chagrin of many of his disciples, called it “a grand book.… Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement, but in a deeply moved agreement.” Keeping to form, however, Keynes then launched a critique, devoting several paragraphs to defending his “middle course” against Hayek’s argument that substituting government planning for markets inevitably led to the loss of individual freedom, as well as declining prosperity.

Treasury and, 4; White Plan and, 6, 126, 143, 158–59, 164–66, 169–70, 177, 184 (see also White Plan) renminbi, 343, 345 Republican Party, 10, 19, 105–6, 176, 188, 206–7, 258, 260, 271, 307–8, 311, 319, 321, 361, 363, 367, 369 Reserve City Bankers Association, 253–54 Richard (aka Jurist, Lawyer), 291 River Ammonoosuc, 11–12 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 192 Robbins, Lionel: on American delegation, 214, 221, 225; Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and, 227–28; free trade and, 365; Keynes and, 12, 31, 82–83, 140, 170, 192–93, 203, 205, 218–19, 224, 279, 282–83, 392n6; Lend-Lease and, 225; quotas and, 229, 233–34, 242–43, 247; Mount Washington Hotel and, 9; on Norwegian delegation, 226; Vinson and, 242 Robertson, Dennis, 86, 170, 187, 203, 205, 215–16, 251–52, 365, 393n53 Rockefellers, 11, 27 Ronald, Nigel, 226–28, 366 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (FDR) 365; bankers and, 27; Berle and, 293, 356; Blum and, 32; blunt monetary tactics of, 26–27; Bretton Woods speech of, 13; British war debts and, 102–8; Chamberlain and, 26; Chambers’ confession and, 293; Churchill and, 102–3, 114, 118–23, 129, 201, 261–65, 268, 270–72, 281; death of, 276; devaluation and, 30; distrust of Britain, 25–27; domestic affairs and, 47; espionage and, 295; exchange rate and, 26; federal spending and, 47; Fireside Chats of, 172; global military aggression and, 47; gold-buying operation of, 27–28; Gold Reserve Act and, 28, 33–34; gold standard and, 25, 27, 33; Hull and, 30; Hyde Park estate of, 32; internationalism and, 25–26; isolationism and, 47; Japanese invasions and, 55; Keynes and, 26, 96–97; League of Nations and, 25–26; Lend-Lease and, 108 (see also Lend-Lease Act); lingering Bretton Woods issues and, 253, 259–72, 276, 293–94; London Economic Conference and, 26, 29, 33; macroeconomics and, 262; The Means to Prosperity and, 86–87; Morgenthau Plan and, 267, 269–70; National Recovery Administration and, 87; New Deal and, 21, 87, 206; Octagon and, 261; Pearl Harbor attack and, 53; postwar policy and, 267, 269–70; “Quarantine the Aggressors” speech and, 47; Quebec Agreement and, 261–65, 268, 270–72, 281; questionable legal maneuvering by, 101–2; Sherwood and, 99–100; Ten-Point Note and, 55; Tobey and, 10; ultimatum to Japan and, 55–56; undervalued currencies and, 25–26; U.S. dollar and, 26–28, 108; U.S.


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The Economists' Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society by Binyamin Appelbaum

90 percent rule, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, clean water, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, ending welfare as we know it, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, flag carrier, floating exchange rates, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, greed is good, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Jean Tirole, John Markoff, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, means of production, Menlo Park, minimum wage unemployment, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, Network effects, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, plutocrats, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, starchitect, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now

Taylor said on a BBC radio broadcast in 1945.24 In the early years after World War II, it was also hard to find Americans who believed in that version of the American way of life. Hayek, who was born in Austria in 1899, and whose career took root before the Great Depression, was raised in the free-market faith and never abandoned it. In his most famous book, The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek attacked the interventionist brand of economics associated with John Maynard Keynes. Hayek argued that socialism was bad and that the expansion of government’s role in managing the economy was a slippery slope that would end in socialism. Hayek’s attack on the logic of socialism was powerful and enduring.

Director graduated and, after dabbling in socialism for a few years, enrolled as a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago in 1927. He never completed a doctorate, but he left Chicago in 1934 with a convert’s fervent faith in the cause of free-market economics. During World War II, Director persuaded the University of Chicago Press to publish an American edition of Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom. In 1946, Hayek returned the favor by persuading his friends at the Volker Fund — the Kansas City nonprofit devoted to libertarian causes — to cover the cost of a position for Director at Chicago’s law school.35 Thus began an unusual academic career. During his two decades on the Chicago faculty, Director published almost nothing, yet the mark he left on a generation of Chicago-trained lawyers made him one of the most important legal thinkers of his time.


pages: 678 words: 160,676

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Arthur Marwick, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, financial deregulation, gender pay gap, ghettoisation, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, income inequality, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, MITM: man-in-the-middle, obamacare, occupational segregation, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, plutocrats, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, trade liberalization, Travis Kalanick, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism

On the Right the challenge had originated with Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek and eventually included orthodox economists like Milton Friedman. These “libertarians,” as they began to be called, appealed to younger conservatives because their ideas seemed fresh and attractive in an era of flatness and tired “big government.” Hayek (Road to Serfdom, 1944) and Rand (The Fountainhead, 1943; Atlas Shrugged, 1957) reacted against “collectivism” gone wrong under communism and Nazism. Hayek was the better thinker, but Rand was a better novelist. Atlas Shrugged is sometimes said to be the most widely read book of the twentieth century, trailing only the Bible.54 Rand had a genius for quotable, controversial aphorisms: “Nobody has ever given a reason why man should be his brother’s keeper” and “Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights.”55 Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is good” from the 1987 film Wall Street simply echoed Rand.

Philip, 230 Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer, 165 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 130–31, 328 Rayburn, Sam, 81 Reagan, Ronald/Reagan Revolution, 46–47, 52, 65, 84, 85, 92, 102–4, 299, 383n109 Rebel Without a Cause (film), 182 Reconstruction, 73, 77, 166, 201–2, 209, 217–18, 356n16 Red Cross, 118 Red Scare (1920s), 66 Red Scare (1950s), 81, 180 regional equality/inequality: Great Convergence (1913–70) and, 44 Great Divergence (mid-1970s–) and, 44 politics and, 71–73, 95–96 Reich, Charles, 305 religion: Catholics/Catholicism, 128, 132–34, 137, 168 generational differences and, 134, 137–38, 141 “Great Awakenings,” 128 I-we-I curves, 133–35, 139–42 Jews/Judaism, 115, 118, 119, 121, 134, 178, 186, 230, 323 “nones” and, 129, 139–41, 146, 393nn82–84 philanthropy based in, 127–28, 142 political parties and, 85, 94, 97 Protestants/Protestantism, 128–34, 136–37, 168 religious institutions and social solidarity vs. isolation, 116–17, 120, 127–42 sexual norms and, 138–39, 141 Social Gospel movement, 130, 168–70, 175, 327–28 World War II and, 133–36 Republican Party: Civil War and, 71 divisions within, 74 Equal Rights Amendment and, 78, 268 in Great Convergence, 76–84, 90–91 in Great Divergence, 6, 16–17, 84–108 and New Right of the 1950s, 190 Northern Republicans, 79, 201, 375n38 Reagan Revolution, 46–47, 52, 65, 84, 85, 92, 102–4, 299, 383n109 RINOs (“Republicans in Name Only”), 89, 188 “Southern strategy,” 84, 238 see also politics/political polarization and entries beginning “election of…” Rerum Novarum (1891), 132, 168 Reshef, Ariell, 62 Riesman, David, 182, 185, 186 Riis, Jacob, 167 Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 186–87 Roaring Twenties, 37–39, 46, 67, 70, 173–74, 288, 334 Robenalt, Jim, 304 Robert, Henry Martyn, 112 Robert’s Rules of Order, 112 Rockefeller, John D., 57, 142–43, 325 Rockwell, Norman, 177 Roe v. Wade (1973), 85, 279, 304 Romney, George, 66, 83 Romney, Mitt, 66–67, 83, 187 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 175, 268 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 75, 299 Executive Order 8802 (banning racial discrimination), 230 GI Bill (1944), 31–32, 252, 357–58n22 New Deal, see New Deal Roosevelt, Theodore: Anthracite Coal Commission, 49–50 Bull Moose Party, 73–74, 172–73 election of 1912 and, 132, 334 Progressivism, 73–75, 132, 171–73, 318, 327, 331, 333, 334–35, 341 Square Deal, 318 Roper Social and Political Trends archive, 124, 125–26 Rorty, Richard, 312 Rosenthal, Howard, 100 Rosenwald Foundation, 225 Rosenwald schools, 225 Rosie the Riveter, 262 Rossman, Gabriel, 195 Rotary, 114, 117, 118, 321–23 Rudolph, Thomas J., 103 Ryan, Paul, 187, 188 Saez, Emmanuel, 37–38, 39, 58–59, 60, 65–66 Salinger, J.


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Freedom Without Borders by Hoyt L. Barber

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, diversification, El Camino Real, estate planning, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial independence, fixed income, high net worth, illegal immigration, interest rate swap, money market fund, obamacare, offshore financial centre, passive income, quantitative easing, reserve currency, road to serfdom, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail

The Virtues of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, by Ayn Rand. A Signet Book, New American Library, New York, 1964. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by Harry Browne. Avon Books, New York, 1974. The New Approach to Freedom, by E. C. Riegel. The Heather Foundation, San Pedro, CA, 1976. The Road to Serfdom: A Classic Warning against the Dangers to Freedom Inherent in Social Planning, by F. A. Hayek. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976. Flight from Inflation: The Monetary Alternative, by E. C. Riegel. The Heather Foundation, Los Angeles, 1978. Mark Skousen’s Complete Guide to Financial Privacy.


Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein

8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Alistair Cooke, Alvin Toffler, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Apollo 13, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 747, Brewster Kahle, business climate, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, death of newspapers, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, equal pay for equal work, facts on the ground, feminist movement, financial deregulation, full employment, global village, Golden Gate Park, guns versus butter model, illegal immigration, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, index card, indoor plumbing, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Julian Assange, Kitchen Debate, kremlinology, land reform, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, oil shock, open borders, Peoples Temple, Phillips curve, Potemkin village, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Suez crisis 1956, three-martini lunch, traveling salesman, unemployed young men, union organizing, unpaid internship, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, wages for housework, walking around money, War on Poverty, white flight, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, yellow journalism, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

General Electric distributed millions of copies of a cartoon version of the laissez-faire economist Friedrich Hayek’s best-selling 1944 polemic The Road to Serfdom, which argued that when government told businesses what to do, the inevitable result was slavery for everyone. (One drawing depicted a government commissar breaking a golf club over his knee as workers performed soul-killing calisthenics—“It is no coincidence that sports and amusements have been carefully ‘planned’ in all regimented nations.” The last panel depicted a firing squad: “What used to be an error has now become a crime against the state. Thus ends the road to serfdom!”) By 1954, companies including International Harvester and Coca-Cola and trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute were spending $50 million a year on pro-laissez-faire curriculum materials—half of what was spent nationally on regular textbooks.

All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress,” and complained, “The public has been taught to assume—almost instinctively—that conflicts between labor and management are generally traceable to greed and intransigence on the part of management.” His pitch yielded practically no donations. Older businessmen had lost hope the New Deal could ever be unhorsed. Younger ones didn’t find anything to complain about: that year, after all, America’s gross domestic product grew 7.1 percent. Conservatives might call this the road to serfdom. But to both ordinary and elite Americans, this kind of economic liberalism had come to seem part of the national DNA. In 1960, a conservative polling firm surveyed thousands of high school students. The majority agreed with Karl Marx: “The fairest economic system is one that ‘takes from each according to his ability’ and ‘gives to each according to his needs.’ ” Conservative views on economics were seen as the province of the sort of irrelevant cranks who voted for Barry Goldwater—who lost in a historic 1964 landslide defeat against a liberal president who got more support from corporate executives than any Democrat in the twentieth century: in a speech that year before the U.S.

“Treaty of Detroit” Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 279–80. next GM contract Ibid., 284. Advertising Council Robert Griffith, “The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960,” Business History Review, autumn 1983, 401. General Electric distributed Jesse Walker, “Suspicious Minds,” Reason, December 2014. Download Road to Serfdom comic at Mises.org, accessed April 22, 2020. By 1954 Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,1995), 204. only legitimate role William F. Buckley, “National Review: Statement of Intentions (1955),” in Gregory Schneider, ed., Conservatism Since 1930: A Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 195–200.


Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy by Philippe van Parijs, Yannick Vanderborght

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, carbon tax, centre right, collective bargaining, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, declining real wages, degrowth, diversified portfolio, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, income per capita, informal economy, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, Money creation, open borders, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, price mechanism, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, selection bias, sharing economy, sovereign wealth fund, systematic bias, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty, working poor

Restriction of access in the first sense [licenses, minimum wage, and so forth], plus ill-Â�conceived welfare meaÂ�sures, have made millions of Â�people dependent on government for their most elementary needs.â•‹.â•‹.â•‹.╋╉I support a negative income tax not Â�because I believe anyone has a “right” to be fed, clothed, and Â�housed at someone Â�else’s expense but Â�because I want to join my fellow taxpayers in relieving distress and feel a special compulsion to do so Â�because governmental policies have been responsible for putting so many of our fellow citizens in the demeaning position in which they now find themselves.70 Or again: “I see the negative income tax as the only device yet suggested by anybody that would bring us out of the current welfare mess and still meet our responsibilities to the Â�people whom the program has got in trouÂ�ble.” 71 Thus, what justifies a guaranteed income, in Friedman’s view, is only a damage-Â�control argument. This is not the case, it is worth noting at this point, for the other founding Â�father of “neoliberalism,” Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992), Friedman’s colleague at the University of Chicago and fellow Nobel Memorial Prize winner. From The Road to Serfdom (1944) to Law, Legislation and Liberty (1979), Hayek unambiguously supported a minimum-Â� income scheme as a permanent feature of a Â�free society. He does reject “the security of the parÂ�ticÂ�uÂ�lar income a person is thought to deserve” Â�because “it can be provided only for some and only by controlling or abolishing the market.”

A Consideration of the PrinciÂ�ple and Proposals of the Social Credit Movement. Excerpt in J. Cunliffe and G. Erreygers, eds., The Origins of Universal Grants, 141–148. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Haveman, Robert H. 1988. “The Changed Face of Poverty: A Call for New Policies.” Focus 11(2): 10–14. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1944/1986. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ARK ed. —Â� —Â� —. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review 35(4): 519–530. —Â�—Â�—. 1949/1967. “The Intellectuals and Socialism.” In Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, 178–194. London: Routledge. —Â�—Â�—. 1979. Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 3.


pages: 225 words: 11,355

Financial Market Meltdown: Everything You Need to Know to Understand and Survive the Global Credit Crisis by Kevin Mellyn

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business cycle, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cuban missile crisis, deal flow, disintermediation, diversification, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Santayana, global reserve currency, Greenspan put, Home mortgage interest deduction, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, long peace, low interest rates, margin call, market clearing, mass immigration, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, pattern recognition, pension reform, pets.com, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Suez canal 1869, systems thinking, tail risk, The Great Moderation, the long tail, the new new thing, the payments system, too big to fail, value at risk, very high income, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Y2K, yield curve

Capital markets and capital itself are then in for a long hard siege that could last a generation. At the very least, the financial markets might need to weather a lost decade like the New Deal era. If you wait for financial markets to bounce back, you are discounting the political risk, something that real history suggests is always unwise. One radical budget can set a country on the road to serfdom as the Austro-American economist von Hayek dubbed the drift towards democratic socialism. We have just passed such a budget and heard proposed a blueprint for federal government control of healthcare, energy, transportation, including the auto industry, and, above all, the commanding heights of finance.


pages: 250 words: 75,151

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place by Felix Marquardt

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, digital nomad, Donald Trump, George Floyd, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joi Ito, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, out of africa, phenotype, place-making, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sustainable-tourism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Yogi Berra, young professional

Debt: The First 5000 Years. Melville House (2012). Graeber, D. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Joys of Bureaucracy. Melville House (2016). Gramsci, A. Prison Notebooks. Lawrence and Wishart (1973). Gros, F. A Philosophy of Walking. Translated by John Howe. Verso (2014). Hayek, F. von. The Road to Serfdom. Routledge & Kegan Paul (1962). Hedges, C. America: The Farewell Tour. Simon & Schuster (2019). Hedges, C., Sacco, J., and Peters, J. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Bold Type Books (2014). Hedges, C. Death of the Liberal Class. Nation Books (2010). Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt.


pages: 317 words: 87,566

The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being by William Davies

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business logic, corporate governance, data science, dematerialisation, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Gini coefficient, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Leo Hollis, lifelogging, market bubble, mental accounting, military-industrial complex, nudge unit, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Philip Mirowski, power law, profit maximization, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, social contagion, social intelligence, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, theory of mind, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, you are the product

Work by Carles Muntaner explores this issue further. 13Gallup, State of the Global Workplace Report 2013, 2013 14Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory and Jeffrey Hancock, ‘Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks’, Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences 111: 24, 2014. 15F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, London: Routledge, 1944. 1 Knowing How You Feel 1‘Hume was in all his glory, the phrase was consequently familiar to everybody. The difference between me and Hume was this: the use he made of it was to account for that which is, I to show what ought to be.’ Quoted in Charles Milner Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham: His Life and Work, Lenox, Mass.: Hard Press, 2012, 30. 2See Philip Schofield, Catherine Pease-Watkin and Michael Quinn, eds., Of Sexual Irregularities, and Other Writings on Sexual Morality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 3Quoted in Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham: His Life and Work, 109. 4Ibid., 222. 5Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988, 20. 6Ibid., 70. 7Joanna Bourke, The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 8Junichi Chikazoe, Daniel Lee, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte and Adam Anderson, ‘Population Coding of Affect Across Stimuli, Modalities and Individuals’, Nature Neuroscience, 17: 8, 2014. 9This is not undisputed, but for a convincing argument for Bentham’s monistic philosophy, see Michael Quinn, ‘Bentham on Mensuration: Calculation and Moral Reasoning’, Utilitas 26: 1, 2014. 10Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, 9. 11Ibid., 29–30. 12Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question “What is Enlightenment?”’


pages: 261 words: 86,905

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means by John Lanchester

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, asset allocation, Basel III, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Swan, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, forward guidance, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, High speed trading, hindsight bias, hype cycle, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kodak vs Instagram, Kondratiev cycle, Large Hadron Collider, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, McJob, means of production, microcredit, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Nikolai Kondratiev, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working poor, yield curve

An inflation hawk is someone who is sharply on the lookout for signs of inflation, and is at any moment likely to announce that interest rates should be raised to keep inflation down. Quantitative easing gives inflation hawks the conniptions. The opposite of a hawk is a dove. Hayek, Friedrich (1899–1992) An Austrian-born philosopher and economist who was one of the driving forces behind the rise of neoliberal economics in Britain and America. His book The Road to Serfdom, first published during the Second World War, had a strong impact: it argued that state planning and intervention in the economy had over time an inevitably negative effect on individual liberties. Central planning, in Hayek’s view, led inexorably towards totalitarianism. Hayek was an interesting thinker whose works are still readable today, and are more subtle and inflected than one might think from the cartoon version that was adopted by the political right.


pages: 263 words: 80,594

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation by Grace Blakeley

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, decarbonisation, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, emotional labour, eurozone crisis, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, G4S, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeremy Corbyn, job polarisation, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land value tax, light touch regulation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, payday loans, pensions crisis, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, post-war consensus, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Right to Buy, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, the built environment, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, transfer pricing, universal basic income, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, yield curve, zero-sum game

Duke University Press Books. 24 This account draws on: Fine, B. (2009) “Neoliberalism as Financialisation” https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/5616/1/brooksgalip.pdf; Fine, B. and Saad-Filho, A. (2016) “Thirteen Things You Need to Know About Neoliberalism”, Critical Sociology, vol. 43; Palley (2007) 25 Hayek, F (1944) The Road to Serfdom; von Mises, L. (1949) Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 26 Tribe, K. (2009) “Liberalism and Neoliberalism in Britain, 1930-1980”, in Mirowski (2009). 27 Evans, G. and Tilley, J. (2017) The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class, Oxford: Oxford University Press 28 Gamble (1994) Chapter Two Vulture Capitalism: The Financialisation of the Corporation 1 This account draws on: Gavett, G. (2013) “Has Maximizing Shareholder Value Gone Too Far?”


pages: 357 words: 95,986

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams

3D printing, additive manufacturing, air freight, algorithmic trading, anti-work, antiwork, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, basic income, battle of ideas, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deep learning, deindustrialization, deskilling, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, housing crisis, housing justice, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, intermodal, Internet Archive, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, liberation theology, Live Aid, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Bookchin, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Overton Window, patent troll, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Slavoj Žižek, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, surplus humans, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wages for housework, warehouse automation, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

., p. 356. 27.Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful; Carl Honoré, In Praise of Slow: Challenging the Cult of Speed (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). 28.Rosa Luxemburg, The Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution and the Mass Strike, ed. Helen Scott (Chicago: Haymarket, 2008), p. 68. 29.Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1962); and ‘The Theory of Complex Phenomena’, in Michael Martin and Lee McIntyre, eds, Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964). 30.This is the question at the heart of the socialist calculation debate. See Oskar Lange and Fred M. Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Socialism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine, ‘The Economics Calculation Debate: Lessons for Socialists’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 20: 5 (September 1996); Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott, ‘Calculation, Complexity and Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Once Again’, Review of Political Economy 5: 1 (1993). 31.It is important to note here that ‘the left’ is an ultimately artificial if useful term, used to describe an incredibly diverse and potentially contradictory set of political and social forces.


pages: 332 words: 89,668

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America by Jamie Bronstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labor-force participation, land reform, land tenure, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, obamacare, occupational segregation, Occupy movement, oil shock, plutocrats, price discrimination, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, scientific management, Scientific racism, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Strategic Defense Initiative, strikebreaker, the long tail, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois, wage slave, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Williamson and Peter Lindert, American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 94. 3. Dale W. Jorgenson, “Productivity and Postwar U.S. Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives vol. 2 no. 4 (Fall 1988): 23–41, at 24. 4. Theodore Rosenof, “Freedom, Planning, and Totalitarianism: The Reception of F.A. Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom,’ ” Canadian Review of American Studies vol. 5 no. 2 (1974): 149–165. 5. Michael K. Brown, “Bargaining for Social Rights: Unions and the Reemergence of Welfare Capitalism, 1945–1952,” Political Science Quarterly vol. 112 no. 4 (1997): 645–672. 6. Leslie Lenkowsky, “Welfare Reform and the Liberals,” Commentary vol. 67 no. 3 (1979): 56–61, at 58. 7.


pages: 293 words: 91,412

World Economy Since the Wars: A Personal View by John Kenneth Galbraith

business cycle, central bank independence, classic study, flying shuttle, full employment, income inequality, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, low interest rates, means of production, planned obsolescence, price discrimination, price stability, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, spinning jenny, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, War on Poverty

However, as compared with the pervasive effects of emulation in extending the demand for privately produced consumer's goods, there will be agreement, I think, that this intercommunity effect is probably small. [back] *** 4 Arthur F. Burns, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, U.S. News and World Report, May 6, 1955. [back] *** 5 F. A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1944), p. 98. As a retrospective reward for this and similar if more technical thought, Professor von Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. [back] *** 1 I have argued in The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967) and in Economics and the Public Purpose (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973) that it is not a reflection of freely operating market forces responding exclusively to the prospect for profit.


pages: 336 words: 90,749

How to Fix Copyright by William Patry

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, barriers to entry, big-box store, borderless world, bread and circuses, business cycle, business intelligence, citizen journalism, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, haute cuisine, informal economy, invisible hand, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lone genius, means of production, moral panic, new economy, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, search costs, semantic web, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

For a more liberal approach to the three-step test, see the July 17, 2008 “A Balanced Interpretation of the Three-Step Test in Copyright Law,” available at: http://www.ip.mpg.de/ww/de/pub/ aktuelles/declaration_on_the_three_step_.cfm. 11. C/508, July 16, 2009 (ECJ) [2009] ECDR 16, ably discussed in Jonathan Griffiths, Unsticking the centre-piece—the liberation of European copyright law?, 1 (2010) JIPITEC 87, paragraph 1. 12. See Article 5 of the Directive. 13. The reference is to Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. 14. The general distinction between an exemption and a privilege is that with an exemption if you fall into a class of people covered by the exemption you are entitled to its benefits. With privileges, there is no class-based entitlement; rather each person must, on an ad hoc basis, prove their entitlement.


pages: 328 words: 92,317

Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism by David Friedman

Apollo 11, back-to-the-land, Fractional reserve banking, hiring and firing, jitney, laissez-faire capitalism, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, means of production, Money creation, radical decentralization, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, urban renewal, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog

Paul Goodman, People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System (New York: Random House, 1965). Hard to classify. Paul Goodman was not the leftist some leftists think he was; he was a libertarian and an anarchist. His books are variable, with a lot of good ideas. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944). Hayek argues that a centrally planned economy must lead to totalitarianism. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968). Orwell is my favorite political essayist.


pages: 372 words: 94,153

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next by Andrew McAfee

back-to-the-land, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, congestion pricing, Corn Laws, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, DeepMind, degrowth, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, humanitarian revolution, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, Landlord’s Game, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, market fundamentalism, means of production, Michael Shellenberger, Mikhail Gorbachev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, precision agriculture, price elasticity of demand, profit maximization, profit motive, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, telepresence, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Veblen good, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, World Values Survey

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society”: “Taxes Are What We Pay for Civilized Society,” Quote Investigator, April 13, 2012, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/13/taxes-civilize/. “I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”: “Grover Norquist,” Wikiquote, accessed January 6, 2018, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist. Hayek used this insight to shoot down the idea of socialism in 1977: Interview with Thomas W. Hazlett, May 1977, in “The Road to Serfdom, Foreseeing the Fall,” Reason, July 1992. South America’s richest country as recently as 2001: “Report for Selected Countries and Subjects,” International Monetary Fund, accessed March 25, 2019, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2016/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=2001&ey=2001&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.


pages: 920 words: 233,102

Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State by Paul Tucker

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, conceptual framework, corporate governance, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, forensic accounting, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, Greenspan put, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, means of production, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Northern Rock, operational security, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, public intellectual, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, seigniorage, short selling, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stochastic process, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Constitutional democracy requires us to contemplate what democracy is and means, and whether its distinctive values can accommodate insulated policy making. 1 Lowi, End of Liberalism, pp. 93 and 97. 2 My thanks to Kevin Stack for pressing me to cover the rule of law before the values of democracy. He is not to blame for the substance. 3 Waldron, “Rule of Law.” 4 Fuller, Morality of Law. 5 Barro, “Rule of Law.” 6 Hayek, Road to Serfdom, p. 80. 7 Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 235. 8 Dicey, Law of the Constitution (and discussion in Bingham, Rule of Law, pp. 3–4). 9 Tyler, Why People Obey. 10 For example, “Rule of Law and Its Virtues,” included in Raz, Essays on Law. 11 Perhaps the most significant such account in recent years is Bingham, Rule of Law, with eight precepts that include respect for substantive human rights. 12 Scalia, “Law of Rules.” 13 Hayek, Political Ideal, quoted in Tamanaha, Rule of Law. 14 For its relevance to antitrust policy, see Crane, “Rules versus Standards.”

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. ________. “Liberalism.” In New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. ________. Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined. 3rd ed. London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1990. ________. The Road to Serfdom, edited by Bruce Caldwell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Hegel, G.W.F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Herbert Smith Freehills. “Advocate General Wahl in Intel Appeal Opts for More Effects-Based Approach on Rebates and Proposes Annulment of General Court’s Intel Judgment.”


pages: 736 words: 233,366

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw

airport security, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, centre right, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, fixed income, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, labour market flexibility, land reform, late capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, post-war consensus, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sinatra Doctrine, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, trade liberalization, union organizing, upwardly mobile, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, young professional

The Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were among its early proponents. The influence of Hayek, especially, was considerable. Hayek had been born in Austria in 1899, but had emigrated to England in 1938 and eventually taken British citizenship. He belatedly acquired guru status, largely because of the book he had published in 1944, The Road to Serfdom. This linked socialism (which he saw as inseparable from coercive intervention aimed at creating equality) and state-planning with servitude. Only the competitiveness of the free market liberated from state controls, argued Hayek, was compatible with democratic freedom. Hayek wrote in forceful language, understandable not just by other economists.

Harrison, Joseph, The Spanish Economy: From the Civil War to the European Community, Cambridge, 1995. Haslam, Jonathan, Russia’s Cold War, New Haven, CT, and London, 2011. Havel, Václav et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, London, 1985. Hayek, F. A. The Road to Serfdom, Abingdon (1944), 2001. Hayman, Ronald, Brecht: A Biography, London, 1983. *Heffer, Simon, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell, London, 1998. *Heimann, Mary, Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed, New Haven, CT, and London, 2009. *Hennessy, Peter, Never Again: Britain 1945–1951, New York, 1993.


pages: 326 words: 103,170

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo

air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, British Empire, cloud computing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data science, deep learning, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Firefox, Google Chrome, growth hacking, Herman Kahn, income inequality, information security, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joi Ito, Laura Poitras, machine translation, market bubble, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, packet switching, paperclip maximiser, Paul Graham, power law, price stability, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Sand Hill Road, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social web, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Vernor Vinge, zero day

“When you decide what infrastructure to use”: Paul Graham, “Great Hackers” (July 2004), on paulgraham.com, http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html. “Contrary to the popular belief”: Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957). “Is there a greater tragedy”: F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge Classics, 2001), 5. Churchill’s famous line: Winston Churchill, speech to House of Commons, November 11, 1947, at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill. Chapter 3. WAR, PEACE, NETWORKS “The war you prepare for”: Victor H. Krulak, “A New Kind of War,” in First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S.


pages: 370 words: 102,823

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth by Michael Jacobs, Mariana Mazzucato

Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, circular economy, collaborative economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Detroit bankruptcy, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, endogenous growth, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, facts on the ground, fiat currency, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, planned obsolescence, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, systems thinking, the built environment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, vertical integration, very high income

Merkel, ‘Is capitalism compatible with democracy?’, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, vol. 8, no. 2, 2014, pp. 109–28; W. Streeck, ‘Comment on Wolfgang Merkel, “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?”’, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, vol. 9, no. 1, 2015, pp. 49–60. 24 F. A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, London, Routledge, 1944; Individualism and Economic Order, London, Routledge, 1948; The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago, IL, Chicago University Press, 1960. For detailed analyses of the anti-democratic tendencies in Hayek’s thought, see Mirowski, Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste, and W. Streeck, Gekaufte Zeit, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2013. 25 C.


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Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Alan Greenspan, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, availability heuristic, backtesting, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Swan, commoditize, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate raider, currency peg, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, endowment effect, equity premium, financial engineering, fixed income, global village, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, Paul Samuelson, power law, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, Richard Feynman, risk free rate, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, selection bias, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, survivorship bias, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, Yogi Berra

.: Cambridge University Press. Hacohen, Malachi Haim, 2001, Karl Popper, The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. Hayek, F. A., 1945, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review, 35(4), 519–530. Hayek, F. A., 1994, The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hilton, Denis, 2003, “Psychology and the Financial Markets: Applications to Understanding and Remedying Irrational Decision-making.” In Brocas and Carillo. Hirshleifer, J., and J. G. Riley, 1992, The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.


pages: 305 words: 98,072

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely by Andrew Craig

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, bonus culture, book value, BRICs, business cycle, collaborative consumption, diversification, endowment effect, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Future Shock, index fund, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, passive income, pensions crisis, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, smart cities, stocks for the long run, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Yogi Berra, Zipcar

Rubino. The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It: Make a Fortune by Investing in Gold and Other Hard Assets. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Vaitilingam, Romesh. Financial Times Guide to Using the Financial Pages. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2006. von Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007. ———. A Tiger by the Tail: A 40-years’ Running Commentary on Keynesianism by Hayek. London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1972. Vonnegut, Kurt. A Man Without a Country. New York: Random House, 2007. Wapshott, Nicholas. Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics.


pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

The Austrian School, long ignored in favor of Keynes, gained prominence in the 1980s during the time of the anti-big-government Reagan administration and Thatcherite Britain. It became fashionable on Wall Street, the beating heart and home of free-market capitalism. Traders influenced by the Russian-American free-market champion Ayn Rand and Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, the core economic text of the movement, came to despise Alan Greenspan (who ironically loved Rand and praised the Austrian School) and his surprise interest-rate moves that roiled markets. Spitznagel’s diagnosis of Keynes and central bank interventions is far more nuanced than the typical trader’s fuck the Fed attitude.


pages: 437 words: 105,934

#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media by Cass R. Sunstein

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, digital divide, Donald Trump, drone strike, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, friendly fire, global village, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, John Perry Barlow, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, obamacare, Oklahoma City bombing, prediction markets, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, stem cell, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Twitter Arab Spring, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

A PLEA 1.John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, February 8, 1996, http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html (accessed July 31, 2016). 2.Richard Posner, Catastrophe: Risk and Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 85. 3.See Internet Security Threat Report 21 (2016), https://www.symantec.com/content/dam/symantec/docs/reports/istr-21-2016-en.pdf (accessed September 8, 2016). 4.Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Robert C. Ellickson, Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 5.Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 38–39. 8. FREEDOM OF SPEECH 1.Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 435 U.S. 748 (1976). 2.See 44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484 (1996) (Justice Thomas, concurring). 3.Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). 4.See Buckley v.


pages: 382 words: 107,150

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages by Annelise Orleck

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, card file, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, export processing zone, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, food desert, Food sovereignty, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, immigration reform, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McJob, means of production, new economy, payday loans, precariat, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, special economic zone, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013); David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944). 3. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); George Monbiot, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature (London: Verso, 2016); Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Penguin, 2017); Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016). 4.


The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations by Christopher Lasch

Abraham Maslow, classic study, cuban missile crisis, delayed gratification, desegregation, feminist movement, full employment, Future Shock, George Santayana, Herman Kahn, impulse control, Induced demand, invisible hand, Kitchen Debate, Marshall McLuhan, Maslow's hierarchy, mass immigration, means of production, Norman Mailer, planned obsolescence, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, road to serfdom, scientific management, Scientific racism, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, yellow journalism

TTieodor \\ : on psychology and sociology . . 230 233 [1944]), pp. vi ("two hostile camps"); 4 ("government control for free en" terprise ); 9 ("implacable hatred"), 10, ("no compromise possible"), 11-12 " 38 ("makes the wager earner free"), 39 ("cool rationality"), 48 ("cannot be checked by economic calculation"), " ( trend toward bureaucratic rigidity ) , 100 ("architect of his own fortune"; "not achievement but the-favor of the su" periors ); 125 ("empty catchwords"). For a similar critique of bureaucracy, see Frederick Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944). 234 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "Social Policy: From the Utilitarian Ethic to the Therapeutic Ethic," in Commission on Critical Choices, Qualities of Lift Bahh, John: quoted . . 56-7 97 Banhelme, Donald 19-20: quoted, 18 97,151-2 basic education. 138-9 142-3, 144 151 BayofPigs,79 80 .


pages: 332 words: 106,197

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions by Jason Hickel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, David Attenborough, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, degrowth, dematerialisation, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, European colonialism, falling living standards, financial deregulation, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, James Watt: steam engine, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, Money creation, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration

His father was vehemently against unions and state regulations – anything that might compromise his business profits – and Friedman grew to share his views. Since the 1930s, Friedman had openly called for the destruction of the New Deal, particularly its price- and wage-fixing mechanisms. His chief inspiration was Hayek, the Austrian-born economist at the London School of Economics who had become known for his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, in which he argued that any intervention in the economy would inevitably lead to the kind of totalitarianism that characterised fascist Germany and Communist Russia. But there was virtually no audience for these views at the time. Everyone was Keynesian, and the memory of the Great Depression meant that people were reluctant to return to the dangerous days of laissez-faire capitalism.


pages: 374 words: 111,284

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age by Roger Bootle

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, anti-work, antiwork, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, blockchain, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Chris Urmson, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, facts on the ground, fake news, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, low interest rates, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mega-rich, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Ocado, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, positional goods, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Simon Kuznets, Skype, social intelligence, spinning jenny, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, synthetic biology, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra

Some of these names are associated with the liberal Left, and, in general, that is indeed where most support for UBI has come from. Accordingly, it may come as a surprise to learn that, among economists, some of the keenest advocates of capitalism have also supported the idea of UBI. For instance, it has been advocated by none other than the Anglo-Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom and the opponent of Keynes and Keynesianism, and Milton Friedman, the high priest of monetarism, author of Free to Choose and Capitalism and Freedom and a strong advocate of the market economy. (Friedman advocated the negative income tax variant of the UBI idea.) And there have been some surprises in the world of politicians, too.


pages: 419 words: 109,241

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond by Daniel Susskind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, blue-collar work, Boston Dynamics, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computer age, computer vision, computerized trading, creative destruction, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Google Glasses, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacques de Vaucanson, James Hargreaves, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, low skilled workers, lump of labour, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, precariat, purchasing power parity, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social intelligence, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, tacit knowledge, technological solutionism, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, wealth creators, working poor, working-age population, Y Combinator

It was a deep intellectual conflict, a violent clash of ideas regarding the theoretical merits of two very different ways of organizing economic life: central planning on the one hand, and the free market on the other. Friedrich Hayek, perhaps the best-known champion of markets, thought that planning was “the road to serfdom,” a path not only to economic catastrophe, but to totalitarianism and political tyranny. Then there were others, like Hayek’s student Abba Lerner, who felt quite differently: defecting from his teacher’s thinking, Lerner wrote what his biographer described as a “user’s manual” for central planners, The Economics of Control.1 The disagreement divided the world.


pages: 870 words: 259,362

Austerity Britain: 1945-51 by David Kynaston

Alistair Cooke, anti-communist, Arthur Marwick, British Empire, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, continuous integration, deindustrialization, deskilling, Etonian, full employment, garden city movement, hiring and firing, industrial cluster, invisible hand, job satisfaction, labour mobility, Lewis Mumford, light touch regulation, mass immigration, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, occupational segregation, price mechanism, public intellectual, rent control, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, stakhanovite, strikebreaker, the market place, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, very high income, wage slave, washing machines reduced drudgery, wealth creators, women in the workforce, young professional

Indeed, such was the temper of the times that even most Keynesians had, in a visceral sense, little real faith in, or any great intellectual curiosity about, the possible economic merits of the market or of supply-side reforms. Hence the largely stony academic-cum-intellectual reception accorded in 1944 to The Road to Serfdom (dedicated ‘To the Socialists of All Parties’) by the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek, who was based at the London School of Economics (LSE). ‘His central argument was that a modern economy was a vast system of information flows which signal to everyone indispensable facts about scarcity and opportunity,’ a latter-day follower, Kenneth Minogue, has helpfully summarised.

Among the many phrases that stand out is ‘the brutality of a Stalin’ – language not yet much heard (as George Orwell had already lamented) on the left. In 1944, by this time seconded to Whitehall and contemplating standing as a candidate in the next general election, Durbin locked horns with Hayek after the latter’s The Road to Serfdom was published. Planning, Durbin insisted, was used by socialists to ‘indicate a principle of administration and not an inflexible budget of production’; and he emphasised anew that ‘the centrally directed economy can be, and should be, instructed to adapt its programme to the changing wishes of the consuming public and the changing conditions of technical efficiency.’18It was the characteristically assured, with-the-grain response of a man seemingly poised for the most glittering prizes.


pages: 872 words: 259,208

A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr

air freight, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Beeching cuts, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bletchley Park, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brixton riot, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, congestion charging, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Etonian, falling living standards, fear of failure, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, floating exchange rates, full employment, gentleman farmer, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, illegal immigration, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, loadsamoney, market design, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open borders, out of africa, Parkinson's law, Piper Alpha, post-war consensus, Red Clydeside, reserve currency, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, strikebreaker, upwardly mobile, Winter of Discontent, working poor, Yom Kippur War

Hayek had arrived in London to teach economics in 1931 and developed a close rapport with another economist Lionel Robbins, the son of a London market gardener who had been taken up by that creator of the Welfare State, William Beveridge. Hayek and Robbins formed a crucial partnership at the London School of Economics, a subversive friendship which would help, eventually, to change the intellectual climate of Britain. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, was one of the most influential books of the age, a full-throated attack on socialism which was received with contempt by many but admired – with reservations – by both George Orwell and Keynes himself. But a book is not a movement. Liberal economists did begin to meet regularly in Switzerland from 1947 but for Britain the key moment came with the arrival on the scene of Fisher, now an almost entirely forgotten man.

Penguin Books ref1 Reid, John ref1, ref2 Reid, Richard ref1 religion ref1 Rent Act ref1 Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) ref1 Resolution 1441 ref1 retail ref1 revolution ref1 Revolutionary Socialist League ref1 Reynolds, Albert ref1 Rhodes, Cecil John ref1 Rhodesia ref1 Rice-Davies, Mandy ref1 Richards, Keith ref1 Ridealgh, Mabel ref1 Ridley, Nicholas ref1 Riley, Bridget ref1 Rimmer, Victoria ref1 riots ref1 ‘rivers of blood’ speech (Powell) ref1 roads ref1 Road Safety Act ref1 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek) ref1 Robbins, Lionel ref1, ref2 Robbins Report ref1 Roberts, Alfred ref1 Roberts, Frank ref1 Robinson, Geoffrey ref1 ROBOT ref1 Rock Against Racism ref1 Rodgers, Bill ref1, ref2 Rolling Stones ref1 Rolls-Royce ref1, ref2 Rooke, Dennis ref1 Rooke, Pamela ref1 Rosen, Tubby ref1 Ross, Willie ref1, ref2 Rothermere, Lord ref1 Rothschilds Bank ref1 Roxy Music ref1 Royal Navy ref1, ref2 Royal Ulster Constabulary ref1 royal wedding (1947) ref1 RPM (Resale Price Maintenance) ref1 rubber see Malaya Rupert Bear ref1 Rumsfeld, Donald ref1 Rushton, Willie ref1 Russell, Bertrand ref1, ref2 Russia see Soviet Union Said, Nuri El ref1 Sainsbury’s ref1 Salisbury, Lord ref1 Salmond, Alex ref1 Saltley ref1 Sampson, Anthony ref1, ref2 Sanderson, Paul ref1 Sands, Bobby ref1 Sandys, Duncan ref1 Sangatte ref1 satire ref1 Saved (Bond) ref1 scandals, New Labour ref1 Scanlon, Hugh ref1 Scargill, Arthur ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and Kinnock ref1 Schmidt, Helmut ref1 Schuman, Robert ref1 science ref1 Scotland devolution ref1, ref2 folk music in ref1 nationalism in ref1 poll tax ref1 see also North Sea oil Scott, Derek ref1 Scottish Labour Party ref1 Scottish National Party see SNP SDP (Social Democratic Party) ref1, ref2, ref3 and Jenkins ref1 Liberal Alliance ref1 SEAQ ref1 Secombe, Harry ref1 security ref1, ref2 Seldon, Anthony ref1 Sellers, Peter ref1 Semphill, Master of ref1 Serbia ref1, ref2 SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension) ref1 services, public ref1, ref2, ref3 regulation of ref1 Sex Pistols ref1, ref2 Sexual Offences Act ref1 Sexual Offences Bill ref1 Shakespeare, William ref1 shareholding ref1 Sherman, Alfred ref1 Shinwell, Manny ref1 Short, Clare ref1, ref2 Shrewsbury School ref1 Shrimpton, Jean ref1 ‘Sid’ campaign ref1 Sikorsky ref1 Sillars, Jim ref1, ref2 Simon, Lord ref1 Single European Act ref1 Silverman, Sydney ref1, ref2 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ref1 ‘Situationists’ ref1 sixties, the ref1 see also celebrity; drugs; music Skegness ref1 skiffle ref1 Skybolt, missiles ref1 sleaze ref1 ‘slim’ see AIDS Smith, Ian ref1 Smith, John ref1, ref2 Smith, T.


pages: 376 words: 118,542

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, air freight, back-to-the-land, bank run, banking crisis, business cycle, Corn Laws, foreign exchange controls, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, invisible hand, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, road to serfdom, Sam Peltzman, school vouchers, Simon Kuznets, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban renewal, War on Poverty, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Sooner or later—and perhaps sooner than many of us expect—an ever bigger government would destroy both the prosperity that we owe to the free market and the human freedom proclaimed so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence. We have not yet reached the point of no return. We are still free as a people to choose whether we shall continue speeding down the "road to serfdom," as Friedrich Hayek entitled his profound and influential book, or whether we shall set tighter limits on government and rely more heavily on voluntary cooperation among free individuals to achieve our several objectives. Will our golden age come to an end in a relapse into the tyranny and misery that has always been, and remains today, the state of most of mankind?


pages: 446 words: 117,660

Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, antiwork, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, employer provided health coverage, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, frictionless, frictionless market, fudge factor, full employment, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, index fund, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, large denomination, liquidity trap, London Whale, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, New Urbanism, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Seymour Hersh, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, universal basic income, very high income, We are all Keynesians now, working-age population

What about the slippery slope from liberalism to totalitarianism? There’s absolutely no evidence that it exists. Medicare didn’t destroy freedom. Stalinist Russia and Maoist China didn’t evolve out of social democracies. Venezuela was a corrupt petrostate long before Hugo Chávez came along. If there’s a road to serfdom, I can’t think of any nation that took it. So scare-mongering over socialism is both silly and dishonest. But will it be politically effective? Probably not. After all, voters overwhelmingly support most of the policies proposed by American “socialists,” including higher taxes on the wealthy and making Medicare available to everyone (although they don’t support plans that would force people to give up private insurance—a warning to Democrats not to make single-payer purity a litmus test).


pages: 476 words: 125,219

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy by Robert W. McChesney

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, access to a mobile phone, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, AOL-Time Warner, Automated Insights, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, company town, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, death of newspapers, declining real wages, digital capitalism, digital divide, disinformation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dr. Strangelove, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, fulfillment center, full employment, future of journalism, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Google Earth, income inequality, informal economy, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, single-payer health, Skype, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Spirit Level, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler

Since then the number of industries leveled off at approximately 472 (in 1997 and 2002, 473; in 2007, 471). 41. Simon Johnson, “The Bill Daley Problem,” Huffington Post, Jan. 11, 2011, huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/bill-daley-obama-chief-of-staff_b_806341.html. 42. Stiglitz, Price of Inequality, 35. 43. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 49. 44. Andrew Frye and Dakin Campbell, “Buffett Says Pricing Power More Important Than Good Management,” Bloomberg, Feb. 18, 2011, bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-18/buffett-says-pricing-power-more-important-than-good-management.html. 45. I take up the manner in which mainstream economics has danced around the monopoly question in more detail with Duke Foster in Foster and McChesney, Endless Crisis. 46.


pages: 482 words: 122,497

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule by Thomas Frank

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, business cycle, classic study, collective bargaining, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, disinformation, edge city, financial deregulation, full employment, George Gilder, guest worker program, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, P = NP, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Ralph Nader, rent control, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, stem cell, stock buybacks, Strategic Defense Initiative, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the scientific method, too big to fail, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, War on Poverty

The issue of terra nova dedicated to Hayek was vol. 1, no. 3 (Spring 1992). See especially the Hayek memorial (p. 3) written by John Blundell, then president of the Charles G. Koch Foundation and today the vice president of the Mont Pelerin Society. The lucky South African politician who got the autographed copy of The Road to Serfdom was Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a perennial IFF favorite. The presentation is depicted in Freedom Bulletin 5, no. 5 (May 1991), p. 5. The presentation of the “Freedom Award” to Vaclav Klaus is described in Freedom Bulletin 5, no. 1 (January 1991), p. 1. 25. Or, more accurately, advocating “a return to market hunting” of deer.


pages: 550 words: 124,073

Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century by Torben Iversen, David Soskice

Andrei Shleifer, assortative mating, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, centre right, clean tech, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, confounding variable, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, full employment, general purpose technology, gentrification, Gini coefficient, hiring and firing, implied volatility, income inequality, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, invisible hand, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, means of production, middle-income trap, mirror neurons, mittelstand, Network effects, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, passive investing, precariat, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, rent-seeking, RFID, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Silicon Valley, smart cities, speech recognition, tacit knowledge, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the strength of weak ties, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban decay, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, World Values Survey, young professional, zero-sum game

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanushek, Eric A., and Ludger Woessmann. 2006. “Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences-in-Differences Evidence across Countries.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, No. 11124: C63–C76. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge. ———. 1966. “The Principles of a Liberal Social Order.” Il Politico 31 (4): 601–18. Hassel, Anke. 2010. “Twenty Years after German Unification: The Restructuring of the German Welfare and Employment Regime.” German Politics and Society 28 (2): 102–115. Häusermann, Silja. 2010.


pages: 377 words: 121,996

Live and Let Spy: BRIXMIS - the Last Cold War Mission by Steve Gibson

Adam Curtis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, British Empire, corporate social responsibility, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, John Nash: game theory, libertarian paternalism, long peace, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, unbiased observer, WikiLeaks

The Real Cold War Legacy Adam Curtis, in The Trap, describes how the 1950s presented an opportunity for Western governments to release their societies, not only from the tyrannical spectre of fascism abroad, but also from the greedy self-interest of capitalism at home. Political elites, in those early years of the Cold War, determined that this vision – individual freedom for all – could be delivered through the central regulation and management of the economy. The economist Friedrich von Hayek disagreed and, in his The Road to Serfdom, argued forcefully that, however bad you imagine self-interested capitalism to be, an economy regulated by governments would be far worse. He argued that self-interested individuals maximising gain for themselves, absent of altruism, would ultimately deliver the greatest good for society as a whole.


pages: 516 words: 116,875

Greater: Britain After the Storm by Penny Mordaunt, Chris Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, accelerated depreciation, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, failed state, fake news, Firefox, fixed income, full employment, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, impact investing, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lateral thinking, Live Aid, lockdown, loss aversion, low skilled workers, microaggression, mittelstand, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Ocado, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, quantitative easing, remote working, road to serfdom, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, transaction costs, transcontinental railway

NOTES 1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prisoners-Geography-Everything-Global-Politics/dp/1783961414 2 https://www.brookings.edu/research/trends-in-the-information-technology-sector/ 3 https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/nine-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-science-museum/ 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Raffles 5 https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-06/Shaviro-D-Whatareminimumtaxesandwhyonemightfavorordisfavorthem.pdf 6 The nation thanks Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton for their genius. 7 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/keynes-hayek-nicholas-wapshott/ 8 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/prof_friedrichvonhayek.html 9 https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2018/04/the-common-insights-of-economics-and-judaism/ 10 https://medium.com/newco/what-do-economists-know-199bf5793ae6#.gqky9w6dw 11 https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2018/04/the-common-insights-of-economics-and-judaism/ 12 https://www.amazon.com/equality-material-position-government-totalitarian/dp/B08LNJLKRY 13 https://www.citatum.org/book/The_Road_to_Serfdom?r=6 14 Op. cit. 15 https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-118/wit-and-wisdom-10/ 16 https://itep.org/60-fortune-500-companies-avoided-all-federal-income-tax-in-2018-under-new-tax-law/ 17 https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2013/africa-loses-50-billion-every-year 18 https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9178 19 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tax-competition-works-for-europe-1416511643 20 https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth 21 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/digital-globalization-the-new-era-of-global-flows 22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?


pages: 1,037 words: 294,916

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein

"there is no alternative" (TINA), affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, anti-work, antiwork, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, business climate, card file, collective bargaining, company town, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, distributed generation, Dr. Strangelove, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, ending welfare as we know it, George Gilder, haute couture, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Herman Kahn, index card, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, Joan Didion, liberal capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, plutocrats, Project Plowshare, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school vouchers, the medium is the message, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

The conservative group’s founders were convinced that the nation’s enthusiasm for the socialistic schemes of the New Deal and after was traceable to the propaganda efforts of ISS alumni who had graduated to positions of power and influence—youthful socialists like Walter Lippmann, whose recollection of his ISS days at Harvard they never tired of quoting: “Our object was to make reactionaries stand-patters; stand-patters, conservative liberals; conservatives, liberals, and liberals, radicals; and radicals, Socialists.” ISI sought to work the operation in reverse. College students were sent books like Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, Friedrich A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and Frank Chodorov’s The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, along with postcards asking if they wished to continue receiving literature. The group sent out one million pamphlets and books in 1953 alone. Buckley loved sparring with the liberals on his campus recruiting trips for ISI (if the liberals hadn’t already convinced administrators to bar the incendiary speaker from the campus outright).

Philip Rat Pack Rauh, Joseph Rayburn, Sam RCA Reader’s Digest Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reconstruction Red Nightmare (film) Reed, Donna Reedy, George Reeves, Rosser Regnery, Henry Rehnquist, William Reid, Ogden Reinsch, Leonard Republican National Committee (RNC), Burch as chair of, campaign literature distributed by; Johnson Anti-Campaign spies in; and 1964 Convention; Operation Dixie of; Operation Eagle Eye of; purge of; and Scranton candidacy; Southern strategy dispute in; and television use in campaign, (Clif) White’s ambition to chair; youth support organized by Republican Party , in Alabama, and announcement of Rockefeller’s candidacy; in Arizona, Buckley’s denunciations of; in California, and civil rights, in Colorado; Congressional Committee; Dixiecrats and, Esquire articles on; in Florida, founding of; fund-raising by, in Georgia; and Goldwater’s national campaign, government spending and; Governors’ Conference; Hofstadter on; in House of Representatives, ix; in Illinois; and Jenkins affair; in Kansas; and Kennedy assassination; liberals in; Lippmann on, and local election codes; in Louisiana; in Maine; in Massachusetts; on McClellan “Rackets” Committee, in Michigan; Middle American piety and; in Mississippi, National Committee of, see Republican National Committee; and National Draft Goldwater Committee; newspaper endorsements of; in New York, 1952 Convention of, 1960 Convention of; 1964 Convention of, in 1956 election; in 1958 election; in 1960 election, in 1962 election, in North Carolina; “old money“ and; as party of rich, in Pennsylvania; positioning for 1964 nomination of, in post-Civil War South; primaries of, see specific states; Reagan and, religious groups opposed to; in Rhode Island; right-wing Democrats and; Rockefeller’s attack on right wing of; and Rockefeller’s divorce and remarriage, in Senate; Senatorial Campaign Committee, in South Carolina, Southern success of; split in, “stop Goldwater” movement in; support for Johnson in, in Tennessee; in Texas; (Clif) White and; Willkie and, during World War I; in Wyoming; youth and (see also Young Republicans) Republican Party, The (Mayer) Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) “Responsible Republicans” Reston, James “Scotty” Reuther, Victor Reuther, Walter Rexall Drug and Chemical Company Reynolds, John Rhee, Syngman Rhode Island Republican Party Rhodes, James Rhodes, John J. Ribicoff, Abraham Richardson Foundation Richfield Oil Corporation Richmond News Leader Rickenbacker, Eddie Riesman, David Ripon Society Road to Salesmanship, The (Welch) Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek) Roberts Dairy Robert’s Rules of Order Robinson, Jackie Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, John D., Jr. Rockefeller, John D., Sr. Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, Margaretta Fitler Murphy “Happy” Rockefeller, Mary Todhunter Clark “Tod” Rockefeller, Nelson A. , and announcement of Goldwater’s candidacy; Bastille Day declaration of; birth and childhood of; breakfasts with Goldwater; in California primary, Rockefeller, Nelson A.


pages: 1,073 words: 314,528

Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, British Empire, business process, butterfly effect, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circulation of elites, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, collective bargaining, complexity theory, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, defense in depth, desegregation, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, endowment effect, escalation ladder, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Ida Tarbell, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, lateral thinking, linear programming, loose coupling, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mental accounting, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Nelson Mandela, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, scientific management, seminal paper, shareholder value, social contagion, social intelligence, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Torches of Freedom, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, ultimatum game, unemployed young men, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Friedman and his colleagues were methodologically pragmatic, although dogmatic in their conviction that the market worked best when left alone by government. In this they were influenced by Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian who had acquired British citizenship in 1938 and had been teaching at the London School of Economics until he was recruited to Chicago, though not by the economics department, in 1950. His most famous book, The Road to Serfdom, was published during the war and warned against the inclination to central planning that was gathering momentum under the combined influence of socialism and the wartime experience. Meanwhile, the Cowles Commission, influenced by John von Neumann and sponsored by RAND, was up for new methodological challenges and was more inclined to believe that robust models could support enlightened policy.

See also Atwater, Lee; individual politicians Reveille for Radicals (Alinksy), 381 revolution in military affairs (RMA) Afghanistan war (2001) and, 222 cognitive dimension of, 217–219 compared to fourth-generation warfare, 226 definition of, 216 Gulf War and, 214–215, 217, 219 information warfare and, 215, 217, 222 land warfare and, 216 long-range missiles and, 219–220 precision warfare and, 219 “shock and awe” and, 217 United States and, 214–215, 218–219, 222–223 Revolution in the Revolution (Debray), 402, 404 Revolutions of 1848, 253–261 Richard III (Shakespeare), 49–50 Rid, Thomas, 229–230 Ries, Al, 507–508 Riesman, David, 369 Riker, William on coalitions, 581–583 game theory and, 577–578, 580, 587 heresthetics and, 588 political science discipline and, 577, 579, 587 quantitative analysis emphasis of, 579 rational choice theory and, 589–590 University of Rochester and, 579 Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, The (Mintzberg), 504 Rizzi, Bruno, 334 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 516 Roberts, Wess, 506 Robertson, Pat, 452 Robeson, Paul, 430 Rochester (New York), 382–384 Rockefeller, John D. business strategies of, 475–478 Sherman Antitrust Act and, 477 Tarbell and, 477 University of Chicago and, 312 use of trusts by, 476, 565 Rockefeller, Nelson, 441–442 Roe v.


pages: 431 words: 129,071

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us by Will Storr

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, bitcoin, classic study, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, gamification, gig economy, greed is good, intentional community, invisible hand, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, Mother of all demos, Nixon shock, Peter Thiel, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QWERTY keyboard, Rainbow Mansion, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, tech bro, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, twin studies, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

From his position as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, and subsequently at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, Hayek excoriated the Great Compression projects of Britain and America as being a betrayal of their Ancient Greek inheritance. Central planning was incompatible with the individual freedom on which these great nations had been founded. It had put us on a ‘road to serfdom’. What troubled him, in particular, was state interference in the activity of the markets. Hayek argued that those who put themselves in charge of the money put themselves in charge of everything. ‘Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest,’ he wrote.


pages: 483 words: 141,836

Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street by Aaron Brown, Eric Kim

Abraham Wald, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, Atul Gawande, backtesting, Basel III, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, book value, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon tax, central bank independence, Checklist Manifesto, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, disintermediation, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental subject, fail fast, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, global macro, illegal immigration, implied volatility, independent contractor, index fund, John Bogle, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market clearing, market fundamentalism, market microstructure, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, open economy, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, pre–internet, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, special drawing rights, statistical arbitrage, stochastic volatility, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, tail risk, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Bayes, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve

Yet this consideration is in fact the rationale of the great liberal principle of the Rule of Law. And the apparent paradox dissolves rapidly when we follow the argument a little further. To be impartial means to have no answer to certain questions which, if we have to decide them, we decide by tossing a coin. Friedrich A. Von Hayek. The Road to Serfdom, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1945 In other words, a legislator or judge can do a better job if she deals only with general principles without knowing in advance the precise effects of laws or decisions. That is why justice is blind: she hears only the facts of the case; she does not see anything else to make her prefer plaintiff or defendant.


pages: 454 words: 139,350

Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy by Benjamin Barber

airport security, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, classic study, computer age, Corn Laws, Corrections Corporation of America, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Gilder, global village, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Joan Didion, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, late capitalism, Live Aid, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Norbert Wiener, North Sea oil, off-the-grid, pirate software, Plato's cave, postnationalism / post nation state, profit motive, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, undersea cable, vertical integration, young professional, zero-sum game

I discuss the impact of these institutions on the new Russia below. Chapter 16. Wild Capitalism vs. Democracy 1. J. G. A. Pocock, “The Ideal of Citizenship Since Classical Times,” Queen’s Quarterly, Spring 1992, p. 55. 2. Milton Friedman, in his introduction to the new edition of Friedrich von Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 3. Stephen Holmes calls negative constitutionalism “the political equivalent to libertarianism in economics” and believes it is “very likely to produce a new autocracy in the not so long run” since it refuses to act positively to contain the abuses of a market society.”


pages: 436 words: 76

Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor by John Kay

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bletchley Park, business cycle, California gold rush, Charles Babbage, complexity theory, computer age, constrained optimization, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, electricity market, equity premium, equity risk premium, Ernest Rutherford, European colonialism, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, haute couture, Helicobacter pylori, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, means of production, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Phillips curve, popular electronics, price discrimination, price mechanism, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, rent-seeking, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, second-price auction, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, transaction costs, tulip mania, urban decay, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , yield curve, yield management

Friedrich von Hayekn was largely neglected in modern economic thought until he was an unexpected recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1974. In the last years ofhis life, he was lionized by business and politicalleaders. It is hard to imagine many of them had read his works. Hayek's most cited work in this context is the extravagantly titled The Road to Serfdom) a denunciation of planning and social welfare systems. Culture and Prosperity { 199} Hayek's style is at once Delphic and dogmatic. In Hayek's mind his opponents are usually not just wrong, but mentally and morally defective. But Hayek articulated more clearly than any other twentiethcentury economist the concept of spontaneous order.


pages: 495 words: 138,188

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, borderless world, business cycle, central bank independence, Corn Laws, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, inflation targeting, joint-stock company, Kula ring, land reform, land tenure, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, price mechanism, profit motive, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, working poor, Works Progress Administration

For an account of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek from the 1920s through the 1990s, see Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983 (London: Fontana Press, 1995). Cockett stresses the irony that England, who invented market liberalism, had to reimport it from Vienna. 3. By coincidence, Polanyi’s book was first published in the same year that Hayek published his most famous book, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944). While Polanyi’s work celebrated the New Deal in the United States precisely because it placed limits on the influence of market forces, Hayek’s book insisted that the New Deal reforms placed the United States on a slippery slope that would lead both to economic ruin and a totalitarian regime. 4.


pages: 515 words: 143,055

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

1960s counterculture, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bob Geldof, borderless world, Brownian motion, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, colonial rule, content marketing, cotton gin, data science, do well by doing good, East Village, future of journalism, George Gilder, Golden age of television, Golden Gate Park, Googley, Gordon Gekko, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, informal economy, Internet Archive, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Live Aid, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, mirror neurons, Nate Silver, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, Pepsi Challenge, placebo effect, Plato's cave, post scarcity, race to the bottom, road to serfdom, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, slashdot, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, the built environment, The Chicago School, the scientific method, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Tim Cook: Apple, Torches of Freedom, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, white flight, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Then 11 steps to make me a “smarter Black Friday shopper,” an oxymoron if I ever saw one. This is life now: one constant, never-ending stream of non sequiturs and self-referential garbage that passes in through our eyes and out of our brains at the speed of a touchscreen.6 Within twenty years of having been declared king, content seemed to be on the road to serfdom. Once a commons that fostered the amateur eccentric in every area of interest, the web, by 2015, was thoroughly overrun by commercial junk, much of it directed at the very basest human impulses of voyeurism and titillation. To be sure, there were exceptions, like Wikipedia, a healthy nonprofit; Reddit, still a haven for some of the spirit of the old Internet; small magazines like Verge, Vox, Quartz, and the Awl; even some efforts to reboot blogging, like the Medium.


pages: 582 words: 160,693

The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State by James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, borderless world, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, Columbine, compound rate of return, creative destruction, Danny Hillis, debt deflation, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Gilder, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Isaac Newton, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Macrae, offshore financial centre, Parkinson's law, pattern recognition, phenotype, price mechanism, profit maximization, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, school vouchers, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, spice trade, statistical model, telepresence, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transaction costs, Turing machine, union organizing, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto

Some of the shrewdest observers of the mid-twentieth century became convinced on the evidence of the day that the tendency of the nationstate to centralize power would lead to totalitarian domination over all aspects of life. In George Orwell's 1984 (1949), Big Brother was watching the individual vainly struggle to maintain a margin of autonomy and self-respect. It appeared to be a losing cause. Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) took a more scholarly view in arguing that freedom was being lost to a new form of economic control that left the state as the master of everything. These works were written before the advent of microprocessing, which has incubated a whole range of technologies that enhance the capacity of small groups and even individuals to function independently of central authority.


pages: 498 words: 145,708

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, addicted to oil, AltaVista, American ideology, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Berlin Wall, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bread and circuses, business cycle, Celebration, Florida, collective bargaining, creative destruction, David Brooks, delayed gratification, digital divide, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Dr. Strangelove, G4S, game design, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, informal economy, invisible hand, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, McJob, microcredit, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, presumed consent, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, retail therapy, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, SimCity, spice trade, Steve Jobs, telemarketer, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the market place, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize

National defense and social security were the twin public goods that emerged from the war as defining traits of the old and the new democracies and, in Europe, of the new European Community. These goods were left intact until recently when, in the story told here, they have been subjected to the antipolitics of privatization. The seeds of this antagonism were planted earlier when in 1944 Friedrich Hayek published his influential The Road to Serfdom. One could have wondered then whether that dark road about which he worried was more likely to wind its way to doom through the newly intrusive impediments of the regulatory welfare state or through the market’s frenzied anarchy. In any case, by the 1950s the New Deal and the war economy along with the counterparadigm of Soviet communism (and its vanquished totalitarian cousin fascism) had begun to spur laissez-faire liberals, long dormant, to reassert their penchant for markets.


pages: 475 words: 156,046

When They Go Low, We Go High: Speeches That Shape the World – and Why We Need Them by Philip Collins

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, classic study, collective bargaining, Copley Medal, Corn Laws, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, F. W. de Klerk, fear of failure, Fellow of the Royal Society, full employment, Great Leap Forward, invention of the printing press, Jeremy Corbyn, late capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Neil Armstrong, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, plutocrats, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rosa Parks, stakhanovite, Ted Sorensen, Thomas Malthus, Torches of Freedom, World Values Survey

‘Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel’s mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution.’ The emergence of modern populism is not the same as egregious tyranny. It is not necessarily the first step on the road to serfdom. But the institutions of liberal democracies are more fragile than we might suppose. President Trump does not appear to understand or respect their norms. Across Europe there are political movements that want to turn back the progress they do not acknowledge. In Africa those democracies that do exist are, as yet, young and vulnerable.


pages: 524 words: 155,947

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Apollo 11, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Boeing 747, bond market vigilante , Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, Columbine, Corn Laws, cotton gin, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, driverless car, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global value chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydroponic farming, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Jon Ronson, Kenneth Arrow, Kula ring, labour market flexibility, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Blériot, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, M-Pesa, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, Murano, Venice glass, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, popular capitalism, popular electronics, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, TaskRabbit, techlash, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, Veblen good, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, world market for maybe five computers, Yom Kippur War, you are the product, zero-sum game

The clearest example of that was the passage in 1978 (via referendum) of Proposition 13, which aimed at capping property taxes in California, traditionally a left-leaning state. This conservative renaissance took its inspiration from a variety of sources. Back in 1944, Friedrich Hayek had argued, in The Road to Serfdom, that the amount of planning required by socialism, and indeed by social democracy, would lead eventually to tyranny. No central planning authority could possibly assess all the needs and wants of millions of individuals. Instead, it would force people to work in government-approved industries and to accept government-approved goods.


pages: 486 words: 150,849

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, airport security, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, American ideology, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, Burning Man, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer age, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, Erik Brynjolfsson, feminist movement, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Future Shock, game design, General Motors Futurama, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, High speed trading, hive mind, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, Joan Didion, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, Naomi Klein, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Overton Window, Peter Thiel, Picturephone, plutocrats, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Seaside, Florida, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, tech billionaire, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, very high income, wage slave, Wall-E, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional, éminence grise

At age thirty-five, after morphing from sincere left-winger to sincere anti-Communist liberal, he continued making political ads decrying corporations’ “bigger and bigger profits” and Republican tax cuts for “the higher income brackets alone,” and he repeatedly got reelected president of his show business union, the Screen Actors Guild. But before he was fifty, after reading books like Hayek’s libertarian manifesto The Road to Serfdom and giving hundreds of speeches a year as GE’s $1 million–a–year traveling ambassador, he’d turned into a sincere right-winger. Way before the liberal 1960s, Reagan was a Milton Friedmanite giving speeches about the “stultifying hand of government regulation and interference,” the “little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital” that presumed to “plan our lives for us,” and—remarkably right-wing—“the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax.”


pages: 533

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech by Jamie Susskind

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, Andrew Keen, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, computer vision, continuation of politics by other means, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, Future Shock, Gabriella Coleman, Google bus, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine translation, Metcalfe’s law, mittelstand, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, night-watchman state, Oculus Rift, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philippa Foot, post-truth, power law, price discrimination, price mechanism, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selection bias, self-driving car, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, tech bro, technological determinism, technological singularity, technological solutionism, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, universal basic income, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture , working-age population, Yochai Benkler

ocid=ww.social.link.twitter> (accessed 1 Dec. 2017). Hay, Colin, Michael Lister, and David Marsh, eds. The State: Theories and Issues. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Hayek, Friedrich. ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’. The American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (Sep. 1945): 519–30. Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. Hayek, Friedrich. The Constitution of Liberty. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Heater, Brian. ‘Wilson’s Connected Football is a $200 Piece of Smart Pigskin’. TechCrunch, 8 Aug. 2016 <https://techcrunch.com/2016/ 08/08/wilson-x-football/?ncid=rss> (accessed 29 Nov. 2017).


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The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Ada Lovelace, AltaVista, Apple Newton, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, book value, business logic, butterfly effect, call centre, Carl Icahn, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, COVID-19, crack epidemic, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, digital map, disinformation, disintermediation, drop ship, dumpster diving, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, fixed income, General Magic , general-purpose programming language, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global pandemic, income inequality, index card, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet Archive, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Kwajalein Atoll, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, money market fund, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Potemkin village, public intellectual, publish or perish, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, SoftBank, software as a service, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, technoutopianism, the payments system, transaction costs, Turing test, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Y2K

As they got to know one another, Nosek and Banister gave Levchin a crash course on libertarianism. The two had cofounded a libertarian student group, and Banister coded the group’s website. Together they tried to indoctrinate Levchin, encouraging him to attend various libertarian events and read books like Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. “[Nosek and Banister] were the subversives of our group,” Levchin said. “They were burning libertarian love. And I was just like, ‘Guys I just want to write some code.’ I always felt a little bit like the dumb Beatle.” Levchin’s domain was software engineering. Banister would, on occasion, try to write his own code in Perl, a functional but inelegant programming language, half-jokingly referred to as “the internet’s duct tape.”


pages: 607 words: 185,487

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

agricultural Revolution, Boeing 747, business cycle, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, commoditize, company town, deskilling, facts on the ground, germ theory of disease, Great Leap Forward, informal economy, invention of writing, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Kenneth Arrow, land reform, land tenure, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, megaproject, new economy, New Urbanism, post-Fordism, Potemkin village, price mechanism, profit maximization, Recombinant DNA, road to serfdom, scientific management, Silicon Valley, stochastic process, Suez canal 1869, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, vertical integration, working poor

Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault (London: Wheatsheaf, 1991), p. 106. 51. This point has been made forcefully and polemically in the twentieth century by Friedrich Hayek, the darling of those opposed to postwar planning and the welfare state. See, especially, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). Chapter 4: The High-Modernist City 1. 1 am particularly grateful to Talja Potters for her perceptive comments on a first draft of this chapter. 2. Le Corbusier's entry in the 1927 design competition for the palace of the League of Nations won first prize, but his design was never built. 3.


pages: 717 words: 196,908

The Idea of Decline in Western History by Arthur Herman

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, bread and circuses, British Empire, David Attenborough, Dr. Strangelove, European colonialism, Future Shock, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Herbert Marcuse, hiring and firing, Joan Didion, laissez-faire capitalism, late capitalism, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Murray Bookchin, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Suez canal 1869, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois

Muller’s The Idea of Freedom and The Uses of the Past gave readers a strongly positive view of Western man’s artistic and intellectual heritage, while William O’Neill’s The Rise of the West rewrote Toynbee’s world history in a new, more optimistic key. Ernst Cassirer’s The Myth of the State, Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Frederich von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom all tried to show how modern Europeans had veered away from their nineteenth-century liberal roots and toward political tyranny. In The Vital Center, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., pointed out the virtues of a liberal Western society and culture that was now under assault from another form of totalitarianism, Soviet Communism, while Lionel Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination revealed how much “the open society” depends on a delicate balance between conventional moral certainties and creative doubt.


pages: 775 words: 208,604

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel

agricultural Revolution, assortative mating, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, confounding variable, corporate governance, cosmological principle, CRISPR, crony capitalism, dark matter, declining real wages, democratizing finance, demographic transition, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, fixed income, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, land tenure, low skilled workers, means of production, mega-rich, Network effects, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, synthetic biology, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, very high income, working-age population, zero-sum game

Leitner, Ulrich. 2011. Imperium: Geschichte und Theories eines politischen Systems. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus Verlag. Lemieux, Thomas. 2006. “Post-secondary education and increasing wage inequality.” American Economic Review 96: 195–199. Leonard, Carol S. 2011. Agrarian reform in Russia: the road to serfdom. New York: Cambridge University Press. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. 1966. Les paysans de Languedoc. 2 vols. Paris: Mouton. Levy, Frank, and Temin, Peter. 2007. “Inequality and institutions in 20th century America.” NBER Working Paper No. 13106. Lewis, Joanna. 2000. Empire state-building: war and welfare in Kenya 1925–52.


Ellul, Jacques-The Technological Society-Vintage Books (1964) by Unknown

Bretton Woods, conceptual framework, do-ocracy, double entry bookkeeping, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, Mars Society, means of production, Norbert Wiener, price mechanism, profit motive, rising living standards, road to serfdom, spinning jenny, technological determinism, Thorstein Veblen, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto

They seek to set three kinds of limits to its power, represented by: (a) flexible planning, (b ) the system of limited planning, and (c) the separation of the planning agency from the state (in short, what is usually called the reconciliation of liberty and socialism). No one accepts Friedrich August von Hayek’s proposition (in his Road to Serfdom) that planning is essentially evil. Conscientious economists are unable to renounce technical discovery. They seek a middle term.1 Is it to be a limited plan? But 1 See a compendium of ideological illusions concerning planning and liberty con* tained in a recent special number devoted to this question in the IndianJournal of Political Science.


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Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 by Anne Applebaum

active measures, affirmative action, anti-communist, Arthur Marwick, Berlin Wall, centre right, deindustrialization, disinformation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, Internet Archive, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, land reform, language of flowers, means of production, New Urbanism, Potemkin village, price mechanism, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, Slavoj Žižek, stakhanovite, strikebreaker, union organizing, urban planning, work culture

Mussolini and his favorite philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, once wrote of a “conception of the State” that is “all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.”4 From Italian, the word “totalitarianism” spread into all the languages of Europe and the world. After Mussolini’s demise the concept had few open advocates, however, and the word eventually came to be defined by its critics, many of whom number among the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.5 Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is a philosophical response to the challenge of totalitarianism, as is Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four is a dystopian vision of a world entirely dominated by totalitarian regimes. Probably the greatest student of totalitarian politics was Hannah Arendt, who defined totalitarianism in her 1949 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, as a “novel form of government” made possible by the onset of modernity.


pages: 828 words: 232,188

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, British Empire, centre right, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, crony capitalism, Day of the Dead, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, household responsibility system, income inequality, information asymmetry, invention of the printing press, iterative process, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labour management system, land reform, land tenure, life extension, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, means of production, Menlo Park, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, open economy, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, Port of Oakland, post-industrial society, post-materialism, price discrimination, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, stem cell, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, work culture , World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt. ______. 1964. The Founding of New Societies. New York: Harcourt. Hausmann, Ricardo, Lant Pritchett, and Dani Rodrik. 2005. “Growth Accelerations.” Journal of Economic Growth 10(4):303–29. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ______. 1976. Law, Legislation and Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ______. 2011. The Constitution of Liberty. Definitive edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heady, Ferrel. 2001. Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective. 6th ed.


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Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

And they have translated the observation that tax rates can be too high into a hysterical rhetoric of “liberty” in which raising the marginal tax rate for income above $400,000 from 35 to 39.6 percent means turning the country over to jackbooted storm troopers. Often the refusal to seek the optimum level of government is justified by an appeal to Friedrich Hayek’s argument in The Road to Serfdom that regulation and welfare lay out a slippery slope along which a country will slide into penury and tyranny. The facts of human progress strike me as having been as unkind to right-wing libertarianism as to right-wing conservatism and left-wing Marxism. The totalitarian governments of the 20th century did not emerge from democratic welfare states sliding down a slippery slope, but were imposed by fanatical ideologues and gangs of thugs.41 And countries that combine free markets with more taxation, social spending, and regulation than the United States (such as Canada, New Zealand, and Western Europe) turn out to be not grim dystopias but rather pleasant places to live, and they trounce the United States in every measure of human flourishing, including crime, life expectancy, infant mortality, education, and happiness.42 As we saw, no developed country runs on right-wing libertarian principles, nor has any realistic vision of such a country ever been laid out.


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Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

affirmative action, air freight, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, bank run, barriers to entry, big-box store, British Empire, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, cross-subsidies, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversified portfolio, European colonialism, fixed income, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, late fees, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, payday loans, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, rent control, rent stabilization, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, surplus humans, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, transcontinental railway, Tyler Cowen, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now

Heller, New Dimensions of Political Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 1, 2, 3. {1030} Milton Friedman, “Have Monetary Policies Failed?” American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1/2 (March 1, 1972), pp. 12, 17–18. Chapter 27: Parting Thoughts {1031} Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 239. {1032} Paul Johnson, The Quotable Paul Johnson: A Topical Compilation of His Wit, Wisdom and Satire, edited by George J. Marlin, et al (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1994), p. 138.


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Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World by Deirdre N. McCloskey

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, Akira Okazaki, antiwork, behavioural economics, big-box store, Black Swan, book scanning, British Empire, business cycle, buy low sell high, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, Costa Concordia, creative destruction, critique of consumerism, crony capitalism, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental economics, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, Ford Model T, fundamental attribution error, Garrett Hardin, Georg Cantor, George Akerlof, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, God and Mammon, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Hernando de Soto, immigration reform, income inequality, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, John Harrison: Longitude, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, lake wobegon effect, land reform, liberation theology, lone genius, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, middle-income trap, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nick Bostrom, North Sea oil, Occupy movement, open economy, out of africa, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Pax Mongolica, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Philip Mirowski, Pier Paolo Pasolini, pink-collar, plutocrats, positional goods, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, refrigerator car, rent control, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, seminal paper, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spinning jenny, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, the rule of 72, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, union organizing, very high income, wage slave, Washington Consensus, working poor, Yogi Berra

Unsurprisingly, the regulators, well paid with your tax dollars, and many of them proud to be protecting consumers, were concerned that the electronic revolution would disturb the profits of conventional taxis, of banks with credit cards, of hotels, and of copyright holders of TV programs.5 The regulators did not ask whether creative destruction was better for the mass of people, or whether as regulators they were, sometimes unintentionally, carrying water for monopolies of taxis, credit cards, hotels, and TV stations. The point is that nonetheless, and despite the shrill warning of a Road to Serfdom from the right, Norway and the United States let the zooming pretty much happen, and are as a result now among the highest-income countries in the world, and are pretty happy about it. The per-person incomes of high-income countries cluster at historically bizarre levels—the Washing Line or even the Drying Line.


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Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism by Peter Marshall

agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, anti-globalists, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, David Graeber, different worldview, do-ocracy, feminist movement, garden city movement, gentleman farmer, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, Howard Zinn, intentional community, invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, open borders, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, public intellectual, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rewilding, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, the market place, union organizing, wage slave, washing machines reduced drudgery

A conservative of the laissez-faire school, he foresaw ‘a steady progress in collectivism running into a military despotism of a severe type’.3 It would involve steadily-increasing centralization, bureaucracy, and political control of the market. The resulting State-managed economy would be so inefficient and corrupt that it would need forced labour to keep it going. Nock’s warning did not go unheeded. Friedrich A. Hayek spelt out in The Road to Serfdom (1944) the dangers of collectivism. In his restatement of classic liberalism in The Constitution of Liberty (1960), he rejected the notion of social justice and argued that the market creates spontaneous social order. But while he wished to reduce coercion to a minimum, he accepted the need for the coercion of a minimal State to prohibit coercive acts by private parties through law enforcement.


Europe: A History by Norman Davies

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, centre right, charter city, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, Corn Laws, cuban missile crisis, Defenestration of Prague, discovery of DNA, disinformation, double entry bookkeeping, Dr. Strangelove, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, equal pay for equal work, Eratosthenes, Etonian, European colonialism, experimental economics, financial independence, finite state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, gentleman farmer, global village, Gregor Mendel, Honoré de Balzac, Index librorum prohibitorum, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, land reform, liberation theology, long peace, Louis Blériot, Louis Daguerre, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Murano, Venice glass, music of the spheres, New Urbanism, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, Peace of Westphalia, Plato's cave, popular capitalism, Potemkin village, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, road to serfdom, sceptred isle, Scramble for Africa, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, Thales of Miletus, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Transnistria, urban planning, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois

Even in democratic states, bloated government bureaucracies often oppressed those whom they were created to serve. The neo-liberal response gathered pace in the ‘Vienna School’ of the 1920s. Its leaders—Karl Popper (b. 1902), Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), and Friedrich von Hayek (b. 1899)—all emigrated. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (1944) and Individualism and the Economic Order (1949) educated the postwar neo-conservatives. A fervent disciple once indignantly proclaimed: ‘There is no such thing as society.’3 Such excesses tended to present the citizen as a mere consumer of goods, services, and rights. Politics threatened to degenerate into a ‘culture of complaint’.