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Nov 13, 2024 | 
perspectivemedia.com | Peter Lawlor |Toby Green
A little while ago, I was invited to a small private dinner at a well-known academic institution in London. During the course of the evening, a prominent political journalist said: “The problem democracy faces is finding ways to make the working classes like better things.” I often hear variations on this theme and it’s worth identifying the presuppositions behind it.
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Jul 31, 2024 | 
perspectivemedia.com | Peter Lawlor
In 2015, when interviewing Jonathan Sumption, Matt Stadlen asked a deceptively simple question: “Why does history matter?” Sumption replied: “It matters because it’s a tremendous source of vicarious experience.” This made my ears prick up. Learning from experience – including vicarious experience – sits at the very heart of economic theory.
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Jun 1, 2024 | 
perspectivemedia.com | Peter Lawlor
In this class-themed issue I want to touch on an important social distinction in the UK: the one between property owners and renters. It isn’t easy being a renter these days. According to the London Evening Standard, anyone renting in London will see about 85 per cent of their income swallowed up by rent. This is beyond uncomfortable. Why is rent so high? And is there anything that can be done about it?
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Mar 31, 2024 | 
perspectivemedia.com | Peter Lawlor
According to a quip once made by Peter Ustinov, “Just before the world blows itself to bits, the last audible voice will be that of an expert saying it can’t be done.” Yes, it’s standard for experts to fail to see the end coming. Of course, you won’t find many experts who express doubts that the physical world will eventually end, but I have something else in mind. There are always worlds entering death spirals, pushed into non-existence as new worlds emerge to take their place.
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Dec 4, 2023 | 
perspectivemag.co.uk | Peter Lawlor
We are fast approaching the Tory government’s final Christmas. A government whose ministerial flux would have made Heraclitus blush. A government whose only constant has been virtuosic incompetence. What, one wonders, have the present government’s motives been? At the heart of economic theory sits the idea that behaviour can be explained by underlying desires. Of course, desires and motives can’t directly be observed; you can’t peer into another person’s mind to see what makes them tick.
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Nov 7, 2023 | 
perspectivemag.co.uk | Peter Lawlor |Kamin Mohammadi
When asked his opinion of Wren’s newly completed St Paul’s Cathedral, James II described it as: “Awful, artificial, and amusing.” From this, it’s pretty easy to imagine an historical retrospective with the headline: “James II, architectural philistine.” Or, in a place with differing aesthetic sympathies: “Was James II an early champion of brutalism?”However, this points to a trap into which comparisons often fall: definitions aren’t set in stone. What do I mean?
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Oct 7, 2023 | 
perspectivemag.co.uk | Peter Lawlor
At the 1992 Earth Summit, world leaders signed a document known as Agenda 21. It wasn’t, as conspiracy theorists now suspect, a blueprint for the New World Order, but rather a manifesto on combating poverty, protecting the environment, and empowering children, women, and indigenous peoples. In 2015, after little progress on any front, the UN set out a more detailed agenda for 2030, promising to “free the human race from the tyranny of poverty”, and to “heal and secure our planet”.
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Oct 7, 2023 | 
perspectivemag.co.uk | Peter Lawlor |Sonia Sodha
Capitalism: a system containing “…systemically satanic features” (Karl Polanyi), based on private property which, in the words of the Khmer Rouge is: “the source of egoist feelings and consequently social injustices.” Furthermore, Jonathan Portes tells us: “In a capitalist economy, things that do not have a price are not valued.”Not looking too good is it? And if that weren’t enough, “Capitalists take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.” Or so says the Communist Manifesto.
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Jul 26, 2023 | 
perspectivemag.co.uk | Peter Lawlor |Polly Morland
I once had the good fortune to spend time with the great behavioural economist, Daniel Kahneman. In passing, he mentioned that at least 98 per cent of the things we believe, we believe for no other reason than someone has told us they are true. Of course, there simply isn’t time for us to verify everything for ourselves. Furthermore, our competencies are limited, so aren’t we better off listening to experts? It seems pretty reasonable, but I think danger lurks here.
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Jun 13, 2023 | 
perspectivemag.co.uk | Peter Lawlor
Like a drunkard walking home from the pub, the world’s monetary authorities stumble from blunder to blunder, making one ill-advised statement after another. You know the kind of thing… “This inflation is transitory. It will be back down to two per cent by the end of the year.” And one of my personal favourites: “We’re not thinking about raising rates, we’re not even thinking about thinking about raising rates.”And still they come.
