Earlier this month the inventor of the worldwide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee called for an online bill of rights. That’s not a bad idea. But the devil is in the detail – or rather, the lack of it. The wide-ranging Contract for the Web, published by Sir Tim’s Web Foundation, is big on principles but […]
Art is not a traditional commodity. It does not follow the normal rules of economics and it does not behave like a stock you buy and trade. For every Banksy, whose ‘Devolved Parliament’ oil painting sold at Sotheby’s for £9.8m in October, there are a thousand artists who will struggle to make a living wage […]
Counterpoint: To read the case against banning private jets, click here Last week, 11,000 scientists warned that the planet is facing a climate emergency, and approximately 2000 private jets took off from British airports. The scientists said that without deep, urgent and lasting change we are on course for “untold human suffering” via irreversible impacts […]
With the support of the Atlas Network, CapX is publishing a new series of essays 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. Thirty years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Empire had […]
With the support of the Atlas Network, CapX is publishing a new series of essays and podcasts on the theme of Illiberalism in Europe, looking at the different threats to liberal economies and societies across the continent, from populism to protectionism, fake news and corruption. This week we were delighted to welcome Peter Pomerantsev to […]
https://media.acast.com/capx/freeexchange-timkaneonthedeclineofgreatpowers/media.mp3 Our guest this week is entrepreneur, economist, air force veteran and latterly candidate for the US Congress, Tim Kane. Tim is also the co-author with Glenn Hubbard of the acclaimed book Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America – I started by asking him about the thesis behind the […]
Introduction: Too much information A while back, I was talking with an archaeologist friend about our very different professions. For an excavator of the past a basic intellectual skill is extrapolation, of guessing in an educated way as to how past civilisations lived based on the tiniest shards of evidence. Conversely, for a political risk […]
The international media have put Chile’s current unrest down to global inter-generational injustice, or as the natural result of Chile’s stark economic inequality. This may be true in part, but it’s far from the whole picture. Rather, the events in Chile are symptomatic of a larger phenomenon—one that affects, to different extents, most Western democracies: […]
On Tuesday morning the Corbynite campaign group Momentum tweeted out a three raised fist emoji salute to the re-election of Evo Morales in Bolivia. “Congratulations to Evo Morales who looks set to win his reelection bid outright in the first round of voting!”, they wrote. In prematurely claiming victory for Morales, Momentum echoed the presidents […]
Last week, back-of-a-fag-packet calculations disclosed that I’ve written about thirty thousand words on Brexit for various outlets — locally, in the US, and in Australia. Quite apart from revealing that the definition of Hell is re-fighting 2016’s referendum for all eternity, writing this much made it clear that Brexit is hard. Not only to achieve […]
Back in 2014, when the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and aid to pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine, it anticipated that the resulting economic pressure would eventually force Moscow to stand down. Well, it’s late into 2019 and the opposite has happened. Now, it appears the West wants to […]
What is the future of capitalism? This week’s Free Exchange exchange, recorded live at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, debates just that. Our Editor John Ashmore chaired an expert panel including the RSA’s Alan Lockey, digital policy expert Casey Calista and fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and self-declared inventor of neoliberalism, Sam Bowman, […]
This week is a special episode of Free Exchange, recorded live at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. The director of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colvile, was joined by some of the leading lights on the right to discuss what conservatism actually means, in principal and in practise, and why it’s the best route […]
A team stares intently at grainy CCTV footage on a computer screen. They lean in towards the operator. Then they utter a single word: “Enhance.” Suddenly a pixelated blob turns into a high-definition image. This is perhaps one of the worst Hollywood tropes, but thankfully one that is set to die out. The reason? With […]
Gisela Stuart is a rare figure in British politics – a Labour politician who campaigned wholeheartedly for Brexit. As an MP from 1997-2017, Gisela is perhaps best known for her role in the 2016 referendum, where she chaired the Vote Leave campaign and appeared in the TV debates. But her deep interest in constitutional and foreign […]
After the 1980s, it was thought that the battle for free enterprise and free people had been won. We had Thatcher and Reagan, followed by market-sympathetic leaders on the left like Blair and Clinton. But if the rise of the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders tell us anything, it is that the fight […]
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