Innovation

Ideas

Ignore the doomsayers, sustainable growth is possible

Energy is the great enabler. It comforts us by cooling our offices in summer and heating our homes in winter; it nourishes us by synthesising fertilisers and purifying water; it raises our infrastructure by forging steel and melting silicon into glass; it connects the world by mobilising cars, trains, and aeroplanes; it generates electricity, that […]

Technology

Send our mayors to Coventry: to witness a tram revolution

People say nothing works in Britain. That we cannot build anything any more. We hear about a decade of form filling before a spade is in the ground. Then, when we finally get going, only our grandchildren have a hope of seeing it actually built. But that’s not true everywhere. On March 14, digging started […]

Economics

Fishing with chips: How economic growth really works

Isn’t The Guardian just delightful at times? Take this recent piece, seemingly about fishing. Look beneath the surface, and the reporting actually manages to both diss the Left’s new favourite economist Mariana Mazzucato, and also show that central, let alone state, planning isn’t how productivity and economic growth happen. Of course, being The Guardian, they’ve […]

Technology

Imagine a Britain where ‘you can just do things’

Last week, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 jet became the first civilian aircraft to break the sound barrier since Concorde when the US company’s demonstrator aircraft achieved supersonic flight over a Californian desert. The aircraft, which accelerated to 10% faster than the speed of sound, is the company’s trailblazer product, leading the way to the development of […]

Ideas

The Capitalist: Trump, tariffs and tech titans

Can Britain strike a deal with President Trump and avoid the looming tariff trap? Why are leaders in the UK and the US falling short of the so-called “Reagan test”? And, could the UK be on the cusp of creating its own billion-pound tech titan? Join Douglas Carswell from the Mississippi Centre for Public Policy, […]

Ideas

British ideas built Hong Kong – let’s bring them home

If you watched Peaky Blinders on Netflix, you might remember the charming Victorian village where Aunt Polly’s house was set. Those scenes were filmed in Port Sunlight, an iconic community near Liverpool inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. Built by Lever Brothers, the precursor to Unilever, it offered vernacular-style housing to soap factory workers. […]

Energy & Environment

Thanos was wrong about resources; Sen. Mike Lee was right

The following story contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War. Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame is anticipated to be one of the biggest cinematic events in film history. The film is yet to be released, yet it has already shattered numerous box office records. The movie will follow up on the beloved group of superheroes and their […]

Ideas

The science is in: GM crops will save the world

Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here. The battle of genetically modified foods is being waged in a mire of confusion and bad science. Scare stories over “frankenfoods” and “mutant crops” have insidiously manipulated the framing of the debate into a […]

Ideas

Why are we determined to deny that things are getting better?

Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here.  A couple of years ago, I commissioned a study in which 1,000 Swedes were asked eight questions about global development. On average, every age group and every income group was wrong on all eight […]

Ideas

We are still proving Malthus and the social Darwinists wrong

Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here. You can now walk into a supermarket in every developed country in the world and expect shelves to be full and prices to be low. In the developing world, malnutrition has halved since 1990 […]

Listen to the latest episode.

Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.

FOLLOW US