Tag Archives: markets

A short history of the market

As world conquests go, this was pretty impressive. While there were dark muttering about Islam taking over the world, neo-liberalism went ahead and did it in less than 50 years. It used the tools of an organised religion. If you wanted to be part of it, you had to forswear all others and commit yourself to a belief in the mystical powers of the Market. You could not question the powers of the Market, despite any evidence to the contrary, and discussion could only take place if both parties took the magical powers that flow from the Market as fact. …

Posted in Humour | 39 Comments

Opinion: the state should harness the power of markets

The story of Adam being enticed to take the apple by Eve is not merely an amusing insight into the human condition, its an example of the very first market at work.

Markets work on the principal that people respond to stimuli, economics tries to ascertain what those stimuli are, and what the impact of those stimuli on the wider community are.

The idea that the government, can or should, protect certain sectors of the economy from the market is a fallacy.

While I don’t agree with the Coalition’s (or indeed Labour’s) policy on University funding, the argument occasionally made, that charging fees …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 27 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Chris Webb
    1 State procurement teams being outwitted / outhought by sector experts (paid more and with greater specialist knowledge) is not exclusive to MoD - i only have ...
  • cim
    @David Allen Absolutely agreed. Incremental changes, fully-costed policies, a focus on "competence" as opposed to "ideology". It's not necessarily a bad offe...
  • Alex Macfie
    "stopping the tech companies harming their users" which should mean regulating the tech companies not the users, i.e. forcing the companies to change their busi...
  • Edward
    A PhD is really the most meaningless qualification that there is, you really can't judge the worth of a PhD without reading the thesis. For some subjects you h...
  • Chris Cory
    While I agree with every word, I am at the same time, more than a little discombobulated. If we believe all this fine "power to the people" stuff, then isn't...