Tag: Markets
The left is still searching for a practical philosophy
Was there a “third way”, a politics which reconciled the market economy with the values of compassion and fairness that had traditionally motivated the political left? When was government interference with the operation of free markets justified, even necessary, and when did such intervention reduce choice and welfare?
Of cows, communities and credit default swaps
Insurance is partly a market in securities, partly a mechanism for collective action; a means by which risks are traded, but also a means by which risks are socialised.
Tailgaters blight markets and motorways
Tailgaters think the view that their behaviour is dumb is based on a purely theoretical analysis, which is refuted by the tailgater’s practical experience. And so the culture of self-confident, self-congratulatory tailgaters perpetuates itself.
The cause of our crises has not gone away
In the name of free markets, we created a monster that threatens to destroy the very free markets we extol.
Labour’s digital plan gets in the way of real progress
All our experience of the development of information technology starts from what the customer might want rather than what the technology might do.
Powerful interests are trying to control the market
A stance which is pro-business must be distinguished from a stance which is pro-market. In the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, that distinction has not been appreciated well enough.
Chaotic evolution defines the market economy
Markets are not a well-oiled machine: they are a constantly changing, adaptive biological system.
‘Too big to fail’ is too dumb an idea to keep
When the next crisis hits, and it will, the frustrated public is likely to turn, not just on politicians who have been negligently lavish with public funds, or on bankers, but on the market system. What is at stake now may not just be the future of finance, but the future of capitalism.
The Future of Markets
Markets are not a well oiled physical machine: they are a constantly changing, adaptive biological system. Pluralism is their motive force, their essence chaotic, their development inherently uncertain. If we could predict the evolution of markets, we would not need markets in the first place.
Markets after the age of efficiency
Economics is not so much the queen of the social sciences but the servant, and needs to base itself on anthropology, psychology – and the sociology of ideologies.
