Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition when it can.
Adam Smith (1776) Book I, Chapter 10, para 82
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
This is not “the most aggressive assault on the excesses of capitalism by a minister since the 1970s” as the Mail squeals it is a paraphrase of the founder of modern economics.
It is a bit depressing that a fundamental truths of modern capitalism cannot be expressed without the CBI, Mail and Express going into meltdown.
Modern capitalism and governments has fawned over the financial sector since the 1980s, cuddled it, kissed it, told it could do no wrong, picked it up when it fell over and refused to punished it when it helped create the biggest financial crisis in the last 70 years because you know, it was just youthful irrational exuberance.
Cable is suggesting that this was and is a bad thing. Who is arguing with him?
Filed under: Economics
This is the same hymnbook as the no logoists, only Cable is at least honest: “I’m no kind of socialist”. His “radicalism” passes for radical every day; philanthrocapitalism; green capitalism; compassionate capitalism. This is poking at the perception of markets, not altering the operation of capital, a difference too osubtle for the Mail – obviously.
Very true,
This isn’t radical in the slightest, but it is presented as such.
I’m not a big fan of the “I don’t shop at chain stores” style of anti-capitalist. In fact I detest them, do they really think that the working conditions for the people who make their clothes for M&S or Topshop or Primark are any different? Pfft, they’ve probably never seen a value added chain in their life.
[...] lengths today to show that if Cable is really “Red Vince” then he has many unsuspecting allies. Left Outside contributes Adam Smith, while Sunder Katwala throws out a myriad of characters including Red Ted [...]