free markets

Hackonomics: Market Forces and Unethical Behaviour

With the recent hacking attacks at Twitter and Garmin, Nic explains the detail behind another attack on a company called Blackbaud.

They claim to have stopped a cyberattack, but they are explicit that they paid the ransom demand.

Can companies really guarantee their data is not going to be released or sold after paying the ransom?  Why did Blackbaud admit to paying it?

Will this behaviour encourage more cybercriminality, and do market forces actually mean that it’s in the interests of cybercriminals to not release the data?


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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Thought Experiment: Privatising the Public Sector

What if everything the government does was privatised? Not the law making, but all of the other functions and agencies and quangos.

Could it be done quickly? What would be the consequences, and should we start with something small first… like the NHS.

As we discuss going the whole hog, we realise we never started the podcast wanting to talk about any of this, but ended up having what we think is an interesting discussion.

But were we always on the same page? We also analyse our thought processes around the conversation, and how we constructed our arguments in order to communicate with each other effectively. We are always interested in improving how we think critically, so this was a revealing retrospective on the conversation, that wouldn’t normally be aired.

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Dr Kristian Niemietz Interview: Socialism, Capitalism and Liberalism

We are joined by the Head of Political Economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Dr Kristian Niemietz, for a conversation on the phenomenon of modern support for socialism, whether apologists for capitalism help their cause, and whether we’ll see a new classical liberal revolution in our lifetimes.

You can find Kristian on Twitter as @K_Niemietz

And you can buy his latest book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies here on Amazon.

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The Problems With The Centre Ground

Is centrism really the answer to any political question?

Is the centre ground really the safe area furthest from the two dominant authoritarian ideologies of the 20th century, or merely a cherry picked, statist mix of the two; dressed up to sound reasonable and measured?

From critiquing Rory Stewart’s centrist “bow” to whether or not people have abandoned ideologies, we discuss if political centrism is really that benign and perhaps the modern, accepted forms of statism can be countered without being branded an extremist.

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Does Capitalism Need A Reboot… Into Valueism?

This week we talk about capitalism in an unapologetic way. We talk not about the ethics, but the morality of capitalism. Something we feel isn’t talked about enough these days, if ever.

We consider what capitalism means, we try to define it in a moral, meaningful way, before finally asking ourselves if it needs a new term altogether. One not created by its enemies. Valueism?

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Steel Manning Steel, Supermarket Nukes and Chlorinated Chickens

This week, we try to steel man the arguments against freeing up the steel industry. Steel is always sold as a strategic industry. We’re often told that we cannot free the market, that we must have tariffs on foreign steel, and that we must protect (subsidise or nationalise) our own steel industry. We conduct a thought experiment on what would actually happen if the steel market was given a little (and a lot)more freedom before moving on to freeing up other industries like nuclear power. And chicken.

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

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Please visit our website to download or stream all our previous episodes and to read our articles.
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