John Kay

The inability of democratic politics to handle the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has threatened to undermine the apparent consensus on liberal democracy and lightly regulated capitalism that emerged following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When the Chinese ask how to establish the institutions to support a stable, prosperous economy, it is not enough to mumble: “Property rights and rule of law – go to Denmark and see.”

Restriction of business on moral grounds is not always unsuccessful but measures have to be applied with great care.

The objective of monetisation has not been to put money in the hands of consumers and businesses but to put money in the vaults of banks.

Should there be markets for sperm, surrogate motherhood or transplant organs?

Social policy would, in the long run, owe far more to Eleanor Roosevelt’s claim that “everyone has the right to a standard of living” than to Beveridge’s assertion that “management of one’s income is an essential element of a citizen’s freedom”.

The activities of Shah Jahan epitomise rent-seeking – the accumulation of a fortune not by creating wealth through serving customers better but by the appropriation of such wealth after it has already been created by other people.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if poor people in work were just paid more in the first place? That is, apparently, predistribution.

The only bread fit to eat is bread baked today: but why should today’s bakers feed the retired bakers of yesteryear?

We deal with that world by constructing simplifying narratives. We do this not because we are stupid, or irrational, or have forgotten probability 101, but because storytelling is the best means of making sense of complexity.