Nonsense commentary: Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams

This timely and important study of investment zones exposes the limitations of the experiments favoured by free-market fanatics

Nonsense commentary: Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams 5360

Nonsense commentary: Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams 5360

Remember Liz Truss’s plan last summer to carpet-bomb Britain with investment zones? These were not just freeports – these would be zones modelled on the most anarchic capitalist zones in the world. There would be no tiresome planning laws, no irksome regulations, minimal labour laws, little taxation and only the lightest veneer of democracy. For Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, these would be the ultra-libertarian battering rams to ignite the capitalism flame – covering almost every city and town in the country.

The idea did not survive their passing: Truss wanted an uncapped number, while even Kwarteng accepted the Treasury argument that the loss of tax revenue – estimated to be £12bn – if the government went full Truss was unacceptable. There had to be some limit, otherwise there would simply be a mass diversion of economic activity into the “investment zones” and little extra investment. It was a fool’s mission. The present chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, laid the whole plan quietly to rest, while persevering with a softer and mildly less mad version of the same idea – freeports.

But as Crack-Up Capitalism explains, there is nothing original in any of this. Anarcho-capitalist investment zones, along with a range of less extreme ideas, have been marketed on the wilder shores of the right as the pure milk of capitalism for some decades. And increasingly, in this eye-opening account, made real. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, free marketeers extolling the Hong Kong model have been trying to create jurisdictions within jurisdictions that maximise economic freedom as they characterise it – and downplay all the adjuncts of political freedom, which include trade unions, obligations to the poor, opposition parties and regulation to promote the public good.

.https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/25/crack-up-capitalism-by-quinn-slobodian-review-market-radicals-and-dream-of-world-without-demoracy-the-economic-anarchy-of-liz-truss-dreams

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Nonsense commentary: Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams

Nonsense commentary: Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

AnCaps' Laissez-faire Free Trade Zone