It is becoming increasingly clear that, at some time before AD 5,000 humanity will enter another Dark Age, in which life will be “nasty, brutish and short,” living standards will be abysmal, and both human potential and human knowledge will be very limited. If we are very lucky, we will eventually emerge from that dark age. Looking back from the new era, using the best archaeological, historical and economic tools available, what year do we think will be seen as the absolute apogee of our current civilization, our “Age of the Antonines”: 2019, 1999, 1928 or 1825? Continue reading →

Charles Mackay’s 1841 classic “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds” established the truth that crowds communicating with one another through the media can make “mad” decisions, in investment and other areas. Modern social media have immeasurably increased the amount and intensity of such communication; there are clear signs that it has also increased the irrationality of investment and other decisions. Continue reading →

This planet is becoming dangerous and unpleasant. The Covid-19 pandemic appears very likely to have been the result of biological warfare experimentation (albeit possibly released by accident.) Nuclear proliferation is becoming increasingly a threat, as too many nuclear powers come to have lunatic allies. While global warming is only a minor threat at most, the policies to combat it proposed by ever more overweening governments are existentially threatening, as are governments’ intrusions on free speech through the tech giants. Humanity needs a new home where it can hide from this world’s multifarious perils – and fast! Continue reading →

In my researches into the Industrial Revolution, I have been looking at British canal building. There were three “canal manias” in 1766-75, 1786-93 and 1816-25, but only the first yielded truly attractive investments and economic gains, while the last wave lost money in general. This decline in returns for the later investments has lessons for us today: over-investing in infrastructure density is a huge waste of money, especially if undertaken by the government, and a rocket to Mars is almost certainly a better investment than yet another high-speed train. Continue reading →

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Physical Science report AR6, released August 9, raised the usual calls for panic and draconian action from that majority of the media and the left for whom this is a religion. Yet on examination, its statistics were decidedly unalarming, and suggest we can easily address the modest long-term problem of global warming. A Coolidge-era approach, with minimal government, maximum market involvement and an absolute refusal to panic seems most likely to keep us prosperous and cool. Continue reading →

Several times this column has wished for a sharp decline in global population, which with the advent of superior robotics could lead all of us to live like 18th Century Whig lords, in lavish parklands manned by robot servitors. Yet I have now learned that the original Whig Supremacy of 1714-60 led to a half century of pause in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution, and today economic and intellectual progress is similarly slowed by wokery generated by a Whig-like elite class. I therefore propose a new and better Utopia for 2200: we should live like Whigs yet think like Tories! Continue reading →

The chilling in relations with China since 2017 and the discovery that China may well have been responsible for the release of the COVID-19 virus is forcing the world to accept that the globalization and free trade world of 1991-2015 is no more. Instead, with China an authoritarian Communist society that seeks domination and does not play by the rules of international trade, we are back in a Cold War like that of 1945-91. From the last Cold War, we can learn important lessons to win this one and prosper while doing so. Continue reading →

Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, yet its atmosphere is that of the late 1930s (when much of it may have been in first draft). Trains are the overwhelmingly dominant means of transportation and coal the main source of energy; everywhere outside the United States is run by dictatorships and the overall impression is of Art Deco rather than the brutalism of the 50s. Moreover, her businessmen are impossibly noble, with even the largest companies (run by good guys) dealing fairly with suppliers, competitors, employees and the public. Yet the overall zeitgeist of the book, with a mighty economic power running down slowly and inexorably until it comes to a standstill, feels remarkably appropriate today. Continue reading →

The world’s central banks are working on issuing digital currencies, where through the “blockchain” they will have knowledge of all transactions. This idea is clearly a gross affront to civil liberties, but it raises the question: why do governments and central banks have the sole right to issue bank notes? Over the last 30 years, they have proved that they will abuse this right whenever they get the chance. Since bank notes, in their origins, were issued by commercial banks, why do we not go back to that system and prohibit any institution other than a licensed privately-owned commercial bank from issuing bank notes? Such a provision would have major economic advantages, as I will explain. Continue reading →

Oxfordshire, beautiful rolling land of small villages before 1900, may seem (outside the eponymous University itself) an unlikely seedbed for an economic theory. Yet in its idyllic villages and modest country houses, a theory of political economy developed, quite distinct from the Whiggish view of Adam Smith and William Gladstone that became known as “classical” economics. Its principal exponent was Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, prime minister 1812-27. However its origins can be traced in an Oxfordshire line via Liverpool’s father Charles Jenkinson, the North family, (both Frederick, Lord North the 1770-82 prime minister and his great grand-uncle the statesman/merchant/economist Sir Dudley North (1640-91)) and the great Earl of Clarendon (1608-74) to the quiet cloisters of Great Tew, home of Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland (1610-43). This political-economic theory deserves a name, beyond the Toryism of the party that most of its proponents represented which is now thoroughly ambiguous; I therefore propose to christen it the “Oxfordshire School.” Continue reading →