Classical liberalism, as the economist Deirdre McCloskey argued in her trilogy The Bourgeois Era, was chiefly responsible for the Great Enrichment in Western Europe and North America. However its main tenets – including limited government, equality before the law, free trade and fiscal probity – are not the exclusive preserve of the West. Just look […]
Earlier this month Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian MEP and Brexit coordinator, tweeted that the European Parliament “will never accept the UK can have all the advantage of free trade, and not aligning with our ecological, health & social standards. We are not stupid! We will not kill our own companies, economy, single market. We will […]
Scan the newspapers or watch the evening news, and you’ll quickly realise that environmental concerns are most keenly felt in rich countries, the citizens of which typically enjoy the best quality environment. The epicentre of apocalyptic sentiments about the state of the planet is Western Europe, with North America coming in a close second. Some […]
“We can’t go on like this.” Thus began a newsletter written on August 19 by Eddie Cross, a member of Zimbabwe’s parliament and one of the founders of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Cross is a trained economist and a very brave man. He remained in Zimbabwe throughout its 20 year-long descent from one […]
Interviewing the British primatologist and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall in Vogue magazine (where else?), Prince Harry noted his love for nature and his determination to ensure that the planet is left in a decent state for his children. It was at that point that Goodall laughed and said, “Not too many!” The amiable Prince responded, […]
With the support of the Atlas Network, CapX is publishing a new series of essays, podcasts and interviews on the theme of Illiberalism in Europe, looking at the different threats to liberal economies and societies across the continent, from populism to protectionism and corruption. The recent election of Zuzana Caputova to the Slovak Presidency was […]
On March 7, 2009, Prince Charles warned that humanity had just 100 months to save the planet from irreversible damage caused by climate change. By my count, Charles’ deadline expired on March 7, 2017. Undeterred by his previous wayward prediction, HRH declared yesterday that we have 18 months “to solve climate change and restore the balance […]
Back in May, a young American called Akki caused a minor Twitterstorm by seemingly showing what many pundits in the US media frequently assert – that ordinary Americans are worse off today than they were in the late 1970s. A number of better educated Twitterati soon pointed out that Akki, a self-declared member of #TheResistance, […]
On his immensely popular HBO show last Friday, the host of Real Time with Bill Maher observed, “Not every movie set in the future has to be a super clean utopia or a smouldering post apocalypse.” “Isn’t there something in between,” he asked. “It’s always either the earth is a giant Apple store or burning […]
“Is it OK to still have children?” That’s a question that bothers the environmental consciousness of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Comedian Bill Maher thinks that he has the answer. “The great under-discussed factor in the climate crisis is there are just too many of us and we use too much s*#t. Climate deniers like to say, […]
Earlier this month South Africa held its sixth parliamentary election since the birth of multi-racial democracy in 1994. Together with its two satellite organisations, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the African National Congress has won yet another term in office and will extend its rule over South Africa […]
We are entering dangerous territory. The radicalisation of the environmentalist movement, as seen on the streets of London over the past week, is accelerating and is increasingly acquiring a darker aspect. The anti-humanist strand of environmentalism is best exemplified by the renewed push to reduce the world’s population. Unlike in the past, when some governments, […]
For centuries, economics has been known as the “dismal science”. The term was supposedly coined by the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle in response to Thomas Malthus’ gloomy prediction that population growth would result in starvation and misery. Yet, there is another possibility. According to some scholars, Carlyle was reacting to the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, “who argued that institutions, […]
The story of humanity over the course of the last two centuries is nothing short of remarkable. As late as 1870, life expectancy in Europe and the world was 36 and 30 years, respectively. Today, it is 81 and 72 years respectively. In 1820, 90 per cent of humanity lived in extreme poverty. Today, less […]
Last week, I wrote about the cost of food in the United States between 1919 and 2019. Using historical data, I showed that, on average, basic food items have become much cheaper relative to the wages of unskilled laborers. I focused on unskilled wage earners, because they represent the workers at the bottom of the […]
Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at the South by Southwest conference in Texas on March 9, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated that “Capitalism is an ideology of capital – the most important thing is the concentration of capital and to seek and maximise profit … we’re reckoning with the consequences of putting profit above everything […]
On March 6, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube announced his government’s intention to scrap legislation requiring local investors to have a controlling stakes in his country’s gold and platinum mines: “We are removing that indigenisation rule, which is discouraging foreign direct investment … We say Zimbabwe is open for business” Eleven years after Zimbabwe introduced […]
In my last two pieces for CapX, I sketched out the miserable existence of our ancestors in the pre-industrial era. My focus was on life in the city, a task made easier by the fact that urban folk, thanks to higher literacy rates, have left us more detailed accounts of their lives. This week I […]
Last week, I wrote about Jason Hickel’s romantic idea that people in the past “lived well” with little or no monetary income. I noted that prior to the Industrial Revolution, clothing was immensely expensive and uncomfortable. The cotton mills changed all that. As a French historian noted in 1846, “Machine production…brings within the reach of […]
On January 29, the Guardian ran a column that sparked an interesting debate on two continents. Anthropologist Jason Hickel from the University of London rejected the generally-accepted estimate of reduction in absolute poverty “from 94 percent in 1820 to only 10 percent today.” In “Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong,” […]
