rentier capitalism

description: capitalism featuring rent-seeking without wealth creation

24 results

pages: 443 words: 98,113

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay
by Guy Standing
Published 13 Jul 2016

W. 1 Phillips curve 1 ‘pig cycle’ effects 1 Piketty, Thomas 1, 2 Pinochet, Augusto 1, 2, 3 platform debt 1 Plato 1 plutocracy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Polanyi, Karl 1 policing 1 political consultancy 1 Politico magazine 1 Ponzi schemes 1 Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) 1 POPS (privately owned public spaces) 1 Portfolio Recovery Associates 1 ‘postcapitalism’ 1 poverty traps 1, 2, 3 precariat and commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and debt 1, 2 and democracy 1, 2 emergence of 1 growth of 1, 2 and rentier platforms 1, 2, 3 revolt of see revolt of precariat predatory creditors 1 ‘primitive rebel’ phase 1 Private Landlords Survey (2010) 1 privatisation and commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and debt 1, 2 and democracy 1 and neo-liberalism 1 and rentier platforms 1 and revolt of precariat 1 and shaping of rentier capitalism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 professionalism 1 ‘profit shifting’ 1 Property Law Act (1925) 1 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 1 Public and Commercial Services Union 1 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 1, 2, 3. 4, 5, 6 QE (quantitative easing) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Quayle, Dan 1 QuickQuid 1 Reagan, Ronald 1, 2 reCAPTCHA security system 1 ‘recognition’ phase 1 ‘redistribution’ phase 1 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals 1 rentier platforms and automation 1 and cloud labour 1 and commodification 1 and ‘concierge’ economy 1 ecological and safety costs 1 and occupational dismantling 1 and on-call employees 1 and precariat 1, 2, 3 and revolt of precariat 1, 2 and ‘sharing economy’ 1, 2, 3, 4 and underpaid labour 1 and venture capital 1 rentiers ascendency of 1, 2 and British Disease 1 classical images of 1 and commons see commons and debt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and democracy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 digital/tasking platforms see rentier platforms ‘euthanasia’ of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 lies of rentier capitalism 1, 2, 3 revolt of precariat see revolt of precariat shaping of see shaping of rentier capitalism subsidies for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ‘representation’ phase 1 ‘repression effect’ 1 Research of Gartner 1 revolt of precariat and basic income systems 1 and commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ‘euthanasia’ of rentiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 inequality of rentier capitalism 1, 2, 3 and intellectual property 1, 2, 3 and neo-liberalism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 organisational forms 1 potential growth of movement 1 progressive political reengagement 1, 2 and rentier platforms 1, 2 rights as demands 1 sovereign wealth funds 1 wage and labour regulation 1, 2 ‘right to buy’ schemes 1, 2, 3, 4 Robbins, Lionel 1 Rockefeller, David 1 Rockefeller, John D. 1 Rolling Stone 1 Romney, Mitt 1 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 1 Ross, Andrew 1 Ross, Michael 1 Rothermere, Viscount 1, 2 Royal Bank of Scotland 1, 2 Royal Mail 1 Royal Parks 1 Rubin, Robert 1, 2 Rudd, Amber 1 Ruralec 1 Ryan, Conor 1 Sainsbury, Lord 1 Samsung 1, 2, 3 Sanders, Bernie 1, 2, 3 Sassen, Saskia 1 school–business partnerships 1 Schröder, Gerhard 1 Schwab Holdings 1 Schwarz, Dieter 1 Scottish Water 1 Second Gilded Age 1, 2, 3 Securitas 1 securitisation 1, 2, 3 selective tax rates 1 Selma 1 shaping of rentier capitalism branding 1 Bretton Woods system 1, 2, 3 and copyright 1 and ‘crony capitalism’ 1, 2, 3 dispute settlement systems 1, 2, 3 global architecture of rentier capitalism 1 lies of rentier capitalism 1 and neo-liberalism 1, 2 patents 1 and privatisation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and ‘shock therapy’ 1, 2 trade and investment treaties 1 ‘sharing economy’ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Shelter 1 ‘shock therapy’ 1, 2, 3, 4 Shore Capital 1 Sierakowski, Slawomir 1, 2, 3, 4 silicon revolution 1 Simon, Herbert 1 Sirius Minerals 1 Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship 1 Sky UK 1, 2 SLABS (student loan asset-backed securities) 1, 2 Slim, Carlos 1, 2 Smith, Adam 1 Snow, John 1 Social Care Act (2012) 1 social commons 1, 2, 3 social dividend systems 1, 2 social housing 1 ‘social income’ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 social strike 1 SoFi (Social Finance) 1 Solidarność (Solidarity) movement 1 South West Water 1 sovereign wealth funds 1 spatial commons 1, 2 Speenhamland system 1, 2, 3 Spielberg, Steven 1 Springer 1 ‘squeezed state’ 1 Statute of Anne (1710) 1 Statute of Monopolies (1624) 1 StepChange 1 Stevens, Simon 1 ‘strategic’ debt 1 strike action/demonstrations 1, 2, 3 student debt 1, 2 subsidies 1 and austerity 1, 2 and bank ‘bailouts’ 1 and charities 1 and ‘competitiveness’ 1 direct subsidies 1 and moral hazards 1 and ‘non-dom’ status 1 and quantitative easing 1, 2 for rentiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 selective tax rates 1 and sovereign wealth funds 1 subsidised landlordism 1 tax avoidance and evasion 1 tax breaks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tax credits 1 Summers, Larry 1, 2 Sun, The 1, 2 Sunday Telegraph 1 Sunday Times 1 Sutton Trust 1 ‘sweetheart deals’ 1 tasking platforms see rentier platforms TaskRabbit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Tatler magazine 1 tax avoidance/evasion 1 tax breaks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tax credits 1, 2, 3 Tax Justice Network 1 Tax Research UK 1 Taylor & Francis 1 Tennessee Valley Authority 1 ‘tertiary time’ regime 1 Tesco 1 Texas Permanent School Fund 1 Textor, Mark 1 Thames Water 1 Thatcher, Margaret 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 The Bonfire of the Vanities 1 The Constitution of Liberty 1 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money 1 The Innovator’s Dilemma 1 think tanks 1 ‘thinner’ democracy 1 ‘Third-Way’ thinking 1, 2, 3 Times, The 1 TISA (Trade in Services Agreement) 1 Tottenham Court Road underground station 1 TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) 1, 2, 3 Trades Union Congress 1, 2 ‘tragedy of the commons’ 1 ‘tranching’ of loans 1 Treaty of Detroit (1950) 1, 2 Treuhand 1 TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) 1, 2, 3, 4 trolling (of patents) 1 Trump, Donald 1, 2 TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) 1, 2, 3, 4 Turnbull, Malcolm 1 Turner, Adair 1 Twain, Mark 1 Uber 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ‘ultra-loose’ monetary policy 1 underpaid labour 1 UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 1 UNHCR (UN refugee agency) 1 Unison 1 Unite 1 UnitedHealth Group 1 universal credit scheme 1 universal justice 1 UpCounsel 1 Upwork 1, 2 Uruguay Round 1, 2, 3 USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) 1 Vattenfall 1 Veblen, Thorstein 1 venture capital 1 Veolia 1 Vero Group 1 Victoria, Queen 1 Villeroy de Galhau, François 1 Vlieghe, Gertjan 1 Warner Chappell Music 1 Watt, James 1 welfare abuse/fraud 1 Wilde, Oscar 1 Wilson, Fergus 1 Wilson, Judith 1 WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Wolf, Martin 1, 2 Wolfe, Tom 1 Wonga 1, 2 Work Capability Assessment 1 Work Programme 1 World Bank 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 World Economic Forum 1 world heritage sites 1 Wriglesworth Consultancy 1 WTO (World Trade Organization) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Y Combinator 1 Yanukovych, Viktor 1 Yukos 1 de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice 1 van Zeeland, Marcel 1 Zell, Sam 1 zero-hours contracts 1, 2, 3 Zipcar 1 Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Biteback Publishing Ltd Westminster Tower 3 Albert Embankment London SE1 7SP Copyright © Guy Standing 2016 Guy Standing has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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Chapter 7 looks at how the corruption of the free market system has gone in tandem with the corruption and thinning of democracy. The question that hovers in the background is stark: do we have a democracy at all today? Finally, Chapter 8 poses the biggest question of all: can the corruption that rentier capitalism represents be overcome by normal democratic means? Should we continue to play by its rules? In sum, this book considers the rise of rentier capitalism and its inherent corruption. While many of the examples are from the UK, the context is the construction of a global architecture facilitating rentiers and the enthronement of property rights over citizenship rights.

pages: 614 words: 168,545

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
by Brett Christophers
Published 17 Nov 2020

In any event, both land and financial rentierism among households are important phenomena in the country where my examination of rentier capitalism is focused: the United Kingdom. This is the final factor that sets this book apart from previous studies of rentier capitalism. Unlike the accounts referred to above, it is a case study of rentier capitalism in a particular place and time. Nonetheless, Rentier Capitalism strives – as its title suggests – to be substantively more than that. In examining rentier capitalism in the UK, it explores a mode of economic organization that, by all accounts, is increasingly dominant across advanced capitalist economies more generally. Rentier capitalism may not – indeed almost certainly does not – look the same from place to place.

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While rents and rentiers are key concerns of this book, its primary concern is with the system of economic production and reproduction in which incomes are dominated by rents and economic life is dominated by rentiers. Following many others, I refer to such a system as rentier capitalism. Rentier capitalism is an economic system not just dominated by rents and rentiers but, in a much more profound sense, substantially scaffolded by and organized around the assets that generate those rents and sustain those rentiers. Assets, for instance, like those of Arqiva – a quintessential rentier. Pervaded by a proprietorial rather than entrepreneurial ethos, rentier capitalism can be usefully understood as a kind of ‘balance-sheet capitalism’. Alongside the income statement (which details a business’s revenues, costs and profits) and the statement of cash flows (which shows the flow of cash in and out of a business), the balance sheet is one of the three main types of financial statements used to document the financial activities and position of a business – or indeed a household.

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When you hear corporate executives wax lyrical about the ‘strength’ and ‘health’ of a company’s balance sheet, about ‘leveraging’ it, using it ‘efficiently’ and ‘putting it to work’, it is as sure a sign as any that that company is a rentier capitalist, a balance-sheet capitalist. Rentier capitalism is not a mere theoretical construct, existing only in the imaginations of economists and within the covers of books like this one. Rentier capitalism is real. It exists widely – but, I will argue, is manifest in an especially advanced and stark form in Arqiva’s territory of operation, the United Kingdom, where it has taken shape over the course of the past four decades, during the era of what is commonly described as ‘neoliberalism’. Using the neoliberal UK as its primary focus, this book explores the forms that Western rentier capitalism takes, the factors accounting for its materialization, and the consequences of its ascendancy.

Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now
by Guy Standing
Published 19 Mar 2020

Indeed, if more of the lowest income earners have slipped into homelessness, which has grown enormously, they could have drifted out of the household survey altogether, lowering measured inequality artificially.18 In sum, the most-cited official figures exclude not only the superrich (the top 0.1%) and the very rich (the top 3%) but also the homeless and the poorest 3% of households, conveniently excluded on the grounds that the data are unreliable. Since we know the incomes of the rich have raced ahead, while many of the poorest are Slaying Giants with Basic Income 13 excluded from the figures, it follows that the income gap between rich and poor has been widening. The rise of rentier capitalism There is a structural reason for the rise of the inequality giant: the income distribution system that prevailed in the post-1945 era has broken down irretrievably. This is a global phenomenon, not restricted just to Britain, even though it has been worsened in Britain by the inequalities of austerity.

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But, though preaching belief in free markets, neoliberalism actually ushered in an era dominated by finance with the most unfree market system ever envisaged, regulated in favour of corporations and rentiers. Ostensibly to attract capital, successive governments have cut taxes on profits and high incomes, and have increased subsidies to corporations and property owners, while cutting benefits and subsidies for lower-income groups. The global economy has moved into what is best described as ‘rentier capitalism’, in which the economic returns to property – physical, financial and ‘intellectual’ – have jumped dramatically, while the returns to labour have dropped.19 Rentier income is rising relative to both profits from production and income from labour. And workers are being deprived of the rental income gained by Battling Eight Giants 14 monopolistic firms – the extra profits they make from charging higher prices in an uncompetitive market.

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And workers are being deprived of the rental income gained by Battling Eight Giants 14 monopolistic firms – the extra profits they make from charging higher prices in an uncompetitive market. A recent study concluded that in the past three decades, the top 300 publicly quoted British companies reduced the extent to which they shared rental income with their workers.20 Rentier capitalism has produced the most defining feature of current income distribution. For much of the twentieth century, the share of national income going to profits and the share going to workers in the form of wages and benefits were roughly constant. In the post-1945 era, wages on average rose steadily and wage and salary differentials were modest.

pages: 504 words: 126,835

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard
by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel
Published 3 Oct 2016

(i)n43 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (Douglas Adams) (i) Hobbes, Thomas (i) Hobijn, Bart (i) Hoenig, Thomas (i) home-market firms, vs. multinationals (i) Honeywell (i) hospitals, performance measurements (i) Hudson Institute (i) Huebner, Jonathan (i) human capital, and innovation (i) Hungary, and EU GM potato regulation (i) hydrocarbon reserves, and sovereign wealth funds (i) IBM (i), (ii), (iii) ICT (information and communications technology) ICT intensity and productivity (i), (ii) investment expenditure on software (i) investment in hardware as share of GDP (i), (ii) US ICT sector (i), (ii) see also information technology (IT) Idestam, Fredrik (i) IMD Business School (Switzerland), attitudes to globalization survey (i) immigration, and aging populations (i), (ii) Inc 500 ranking (i) incomes and benefits/taxes (i) income inequality (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and productivity (decoupling thesis) (i), (ii) and robots (i) working-age households vs. pensioners (i) incremental development and corporate managerialism (i), (ii) and deregulation (i) vs. radical innovation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and regulatory complexity/uncertainty (i), (ii), (iii) and specialization (i), (ii) incumbency advantages (i), (ii) index of complicatedness (Boston Consulting Group) (i) India and BRIC concept (i), (ii) and globalization (i) License Raj (i), (ii) indirect land-use effects (i) individualism, culture of (i) see also dissent; eccentricity; freedom industrial organization (i), (ii) industrial policy, and regulation (i), (ii) industrial revolution (i), (ii), (iii) information technology (IT) business IT services (i) and capitalism (i) IT companies and globalization (i) and second unbundling of production (i) see also ICT (information and communications technology) Innocent III, Pope, and barber profession (i) innovation and cancer research (i), (ii) and capitalism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and compliance officers (i) and corporate destruction (i) and corporate investment (i), (ii) and corporate managerialism (i), (ii) and corporate medical research (i) and deregulation (i) and digitalization (i) and dual class stock structures (i) and economic dynamism (i), (ii), (iii) and entrepreneurship (i), (ii) and failure (i) and financial regulation (i) and firm boundaries (i), (ii), (iii) and globalization (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and gray capitalism (i) and healthcare (i) historical perspective (i) Huebner on (i) and human capital (i) and market contestability (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) market vs. social values of (i) and Middle Ages (i) and multinationals (i) and occupational licenses (i) “offshore” pattern of (i) permissionless innovation (i) and planning machines (i) and precautionary regulations (i), (ii) and productivity downward trend (i), (ii) and quantitative valuation methods (i) and R&D (i) and regulation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and regulatory complexity/uncertainty (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Schumpeterian innovation (i), (ii), (iii) and “scientific civilization” thinking (i) and specialization (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and strategy (i) and technological creation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) value innovation (i) and verticalization (i) see also creative destruction; diffusion; dissent; eccentricity; incremental development; New Machine Age thesis; R&D; technology INSEAD business school (i) institutional investors (i) total assets by types of investors (OECD, 2001–13) (i), (ii) see also asset managers; professional investment/investors institutional owners and rentier capitalism (i) see also insurance companies/funds; pensions insurance companies/funds and asset management industry (i) and financial regulation (i) and rentier capitalism (i) total assets (OECD, 2001–13) (i), (ii) intangibles and business investment data (i) knowledge as intangible (i) and withering (i) Intel (NM Electronics) (i), (ii), (iii) intelligent vehicles see driverless vehicles interest rates (i), (ii), (iii) interfirm trade (i) International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) (i) international trade see global trade internet relative impact of (i), (ii) start-ups (i) and Swedish economy (i) see also online services intertemporal choice/allocation (i) intrafirm trade (i) investment actuarial investment code (i) and diversification (i), (ii) foreign direct investment (FDI) (i), (ii), (iii) institutional investors (i) modern portfolio theory (i) private investment (US) (i) professionalized investment (i), (ii), (iii) stockholding periods (i), (ii), (iii) total assets by types of institutional investors (OECD, 2001–13) (i), (ii) see also asset managers; business investment; pensions IT (information technology) see information technology (IT) Italy and globalization (i) income inequality and generations (i) “Italian disease” and diffusion of innovations (i) lesser dependence on larger enterprises (i) profit margins (i) public debt (i) regulation: index of regulatory freedom (i), (ii); index of regulatory trade barriers (i), (ii); medical devices (i); taxi services (i) retirement savings (i) Japan car industry and lean production (i) cash hoarding (corporate savings) (i) population decline (i) R&D spending (i) retirement savings (i) Jawbone bracelets (i) job dissatisfaction (i) see also incomes; labor; unemployment Jobs, Steve (i) Johnson, Lyndon B.

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True, they are not typical media material because they cannot be recognized by their extravagant living or conspicuous consumption. They are not jet-setting members of the Billionaires’ Club, trawling the world looking for happiness or escaping boredom. Nor are they the villains of Thomas Piketty’s history of rentier capitalism and its return in modern times.3 Big capitalists do belong to the “one percent.” But they neither are cousins of the cold-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge nor do they come with the pedigree of greedy “big swinging dicks,” the sharks of financial capitalism memorably portrayed by Michael Lewis in Liar’s Poker.

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In most cases, gray capital does not invest in companies for the long term; nor is it common that gray capital comes with a clearly defined business agenda for the investee. In fact, gray capital is more often than not invested on the premise that a company should largely follow the market trend. That is not a capitalist characteristic; it is rather a characteristic of rentier capitalism. Finally, capitalism has turned gray because a growing part of savings and shareholding is linked to the aging of Western societies and, as part of that, the growing role of retirement savings – in one form or another. “I say age ain’t nothin’ but a number,” sings Saffire in “Middle Aged Blues Boogie.”

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain
by Brett Christophers
Published 6 Nov 2018

One Dutch developer nominally keen to buy UK land decided that ‘direct land purchase and development posed too many risks due to knowledge and information barriers’.1 ‘The [British] land market’, the Observer remarks succinctly, ‘is opaque.’2 This is the market, then, into which the government has delivered vast amounts of new stock, expecting it – against all reason – to be allocated and used efficiently. Land Banking, Rentier Capitalism and Social Dislocation We now know what the privatization of public land has not done for Britain and Britons. So what has it done? What have been the main effects of the privatization programme, beyond simply transferring land from public to private hands, and besides largely failing to deliver the things that the government said it would deliver?

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Only in November 2017, long after it had become apparent to all market observers that something was awry, did the government finally concede that there might indeed be a problem, with the chancellor of the exchequer using his budget speech to announce an ‘urgent’ review into ‘the gap between planning permissions and housing starts’ – a review to be chaired by Sir Oliver Letwin, in process at the time of this writing, and one being widely interpreted and referred to as a review of land banking.2 ‘There is’, admitted the then housing secretary Sajid Javid in January 2018, better late than never but nonetheless in something of an understatement, ‘definitely some hoarding of land by developers’.3 Rentier capitalism You will recall this passage from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, cited in Chapter 1: As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them.

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Although he did not have a name for it, he was gesturing at a type of capitalism where rent becomes unusually, and indeed problematically, material. In the centuries since Smith was writing, economic commentators, drawing as much on Marx as on Smith, have alighted on a term that captures well what Smith was getting at: ‘rentier capitalism’.2 The privatization of public land in Britain under neoliberalism has, I suggest, helped turn it into a rentier-capitalist economy. As more and more of the land has become private property, the landlords, as Smith would have predicted, have demanded more and more rent for its produce, ‘natural’ or otherwise.

pages: 375 words: 105,586

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth
by Chris Smaje
Published 14 Aug 2020

This is why increasingly few young adults in Britain today can afford to buy a house, and few farmers can service debt on the purchase of agricultural land just by growing food on it. And it’s not only land. As we’ve seen, the logic of capital isn’t fundamentally about production, but about earning as much money as possible on investment. With the M → Mʹ loop fully unleashed by financial deregulation, nowadays we have a global rentier capitalism concerned with branding, intellectual property rights, data mining and financial speculation as much or more than delivering goods and services. One way or another, freeing people from the grip of Ricardian rent seems necessary to create a fair and genuinely productive economy. It’s certainly a necessary step for creating a congenial small farm future.

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This is the claim of some reformist economic thinkers, but it seems unlikely without wider system change in view of the expansionary logic of the M → Mʹ loop which now has few options but to abstract itself from bounded territory and ‘de-materialise’ from sites of actual production like farms and factories in favour of ‘virtual’ connections like computerised financial markets or distribution platforms – what’s sometimes called a capitalist ‘Empire’ where the symbolic economy is further freed to overrun physical reality.126 In that sense, many of the crises outlined earlier might be seen as warnings from the non-symbolic world not to get too dazzled by our symbolic goods. In summary, I’ve traced the history of capitalism in seven broad and overlapping trends, all of which persist in the present world, or parts of it: The formation of local agrarian capital, with an ambiguous relation to capitalism as such. The emergence of rentier capitalism based on Ricardian landlordism, and then other forms of non-landed rent. The formation of a capitalist world system through the connection of trading empires. The emergence of entrepreneurial industrial capitalism. The transformation of industrial capitalism into monopolistic corporate capitalism.

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Capitalism is about gaining the best return on capital invested, and since poor people and poor countries don’t have much capital to invest, they don’t get much of a return. Indeed, according to UN data there was a net transfer of US$500 billion out of ‘developing’ countries in 2016.136 The basic geography of the global economy seems to be a footloose, extractive, rentier capitalism in most of the poorer countries, augmented by a rise in poorly paid manufacturing jobs serving corporations based in the wealthy countries, and a more grounded, monopolistic, skills-based capitalism of global corporations in the wealthier countries, albeit one that bestows its riches on increasingly few and is locked into a compounding spiral of debt, financialisation, industrial over-capacity, poorly paid service jobs and sluggish economic growth.137 So while there remain plenty of poor people who would undoubtedly love to have more buying capacity within the global industrial economy, that economy seems to have reached its limits.

pages: 371 words: 122,273

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency
by Vicky Spratt
Published 18 May 2022

Some of that relief has since been clawed back in an attempt to even things out. This has stalled the growth of the private rented sector, but the impact on British society and our economy is deep set. We have witnessed what the French economist Thomas Piketty describes in his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century as the return of rentier capitalism. This is a system in which one class monopolises access to any kind of property and resources and gains significant amounts of profit from that without properly contributing to society. It’s a lot like feudalism. In Britain, it has given birth to a new wealth-based class system in which the ownership of housing is a key decider of someone’s freedom: their social status, their spending power and their social mobility.

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‘year zero’: See Gavriel Hollander, ‘Thirty years on: how the Housing Act changed everything’, Inside Housing, 24 January 2019, www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/thirty-years-on-how-the-housing-act-changed-everything-59821 banks tend to give mortgages more readily: This is evidenced in the fact that in the boom years of 1996–2006 first-time buyers were entering the market in large numbers, putting homeownership close to an all-time high. But when the financial crisis hit, lending to them was cut in half and landlords were seen as a less risky bet by lenders. 20.3 per cent of households: www.statista.com/statistics/286444/england-number-of-private-rented-households the return of rentier capitalism: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (2013; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) is an important work though, of course, not everyone agrees with its contents. A key claim made by Piketty is that income inequality has increased sharply since the late 1970s, with a particularly dramatic rise in the share of total income going to the very highest earners in the US and Europe.

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Antrim 1 banking regulations 1 Banksy 1, 2 Barbour, Mary 1 Barr, Robert 1 Bates, Justin 1 Bath, Somerset 1 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 1, 2 Beadle, Ben 1 ‘beds in sheds’ 1 Belgium 1 bell hooks 1, 2 ‘belonging’, see location/place benefit cap 1, 2 Benefits Street (TV documentary series) 1 Berlin, Germany 1 Berry, Siân 1 Best, Richard 1 Bevan, Aneurin ‘Nye’ 1, 2, 3 Beveridge, William 1, 2, 3, 4 Beveridge Report (1942) 1 Bexhill, East Sussex 1 ‘Big Bang’ (financial markets) 1 biomarkers, 1 Blackpool 1 Blackstone (corporate landlord) 1 Blair, Tony 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bolsover, Derbyshire 1 Boughton, John 1 Bourdieu, Pierre 1 Bourne, Nick, Baron Bourne of Aberystwyth 1 Bradford, West Yorkshire 1, 2, 3, 4 Bradford Council 1 Brake, Tom 1 Brazil 1 Brexit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Brighton, Sussex 1, 2, 3 Brighton and Hove, 1 Bristol 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bristol Cable 1 Bristol Community Land Trust 1 British Future (think tank) 1 British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) 1, 2, 3 Brixton, London 1 Brokenshire, James 1, 2 Bromley, south London 1, 2 Brown, Gordon 1, 2, 3 Bryant, John 1 Buck, Karen 1, 2, 3, 4 Buckinghamshire County Council 1 ‘build-to-rent’ sector 1 Building Research Establishment Trust 1, 2 C C-reactive protein (CRP) 1 Callaghan, James 1 Cambridge House centre 1, 2 Camelot Guardian Management Ltd 1, 2, 3, 4 Cameron, David 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Canterbury, Kent 1 capital gains tax (CGT) 1 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) 1 capitalism 1, 2, 3, 4 rentier capitalism 1 Care Quality Commission (CQC) 1, 2 Cathy Come Home (TV drama) 1 Central Heating Evaluation programme (Scotland) 1 Centre For Towns think tank 1 Centre Point, London 1 Ceredigion, Wales 1 Chadwick, Duncan and Edwin 1 Chartered Institute of Building 1 Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) 1 Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) 1, 2 Chartist movement 1 Chatham, Kent 1 Cheshire West and Chester, 1 children 1, 2 childcare 1 health 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 homelessness 1, 2 housing displacement and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 poverty 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Churchill, Winston 1 City A.M. 1 cladding crisis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Clair, Amy 1 class, see social class Clegg, Nick 1 climate change 1, 2 Cloward, Richard 1 Coggeshall, Essex 1, 2 Colchester, Essex 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Colchester Renters campaign group 1, 2, 3 Cold Weather Fund 1 Colombia 1 Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) 1 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx & Engels) 1 Communist Party 1 community land trusts 1 Comte, Auguste 1 Condition of the Working Class in England, The (Engels) 1 Conservative Party 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Constitution of Liberty (Hayek), 1 Copenhagen, Denmark 1 Corby, Northamptonshire 1 Corbyn, Jeremy 1, 2, 3 Cornwall 1, 2 coronavirus pandemic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 eviction ban 1 homelessness and 1, 2, 3 impact on housing 1, 2, 3, 4 overcrowding and 1, 2 poor housing and 1, 2 private renters and 1 corporate landlords 1 Costa Rica 1 council housing, see social housing Covid-19, see coronavirus Cowan, Dave 1 Craw, Dan Wilson 1 Crisis (homeless charity) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Croydon 1, 2, 3 Cutler, Horace 1 D Daily Mail 1, 2 Daily Telegraph 1 David Plaister Ltd 1 Dawson, Gloria 1 Dawson’s Heights estate, East Dulwich 1 Decent Homes Standard 1, 2, 3 Delingpole, James 1 Denmark 1, 2 Denton, Greater Manchester 1 Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) 1 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) 1 Department of Social Security (DSS) 1 Derry, Northern Ireland 1 Desmond, Matthew 1 Dickens, Charles 1 disability 1, 2, 3 Discus Housing First, Amsterdam 1 Dismaland (Banksy) 1 DnR Vinyl, 1 domestic abuse 1, 2 Dorling, Danny 1 Dorrington Court, Croydon 1, 2, 3 Douglas-Home, Alec 1 Duffy, Bobby 1 Duncan, William 1 E East Ayrshire, Scotland 1 Economic Journal 1 Eden, Anthony 1, 2 education 1, 2, 3 Education Act (1870) 1 Einstein, Albert 1 Elephant and Castle, London 1, 2, 3 Elsworth, Linda 1, 2 emergency B&Bs 1, 2 ‘emerging adulthood’, 1 energy efficient homes 1 energy price caps 1 Engels, Friedrich 1, 2 English Housing Survey 1, 2, 3 2017/18: 1 2018/19: 1 2019/20: 1 2020/21: 1 Equality Act (2010) 1 Escape to the Country (TV series) 1 estate agents 1, 2 Evening Standard 1 ‘Everyone In’ scheme 1, 2 Evicted (Desmond) 1 evictions 1, 2, 3, 4 children and 1, 2, 3 guardianship and 1 illegal evictions 1 legal aid 1 mental health and 1, 2, 3, 4 physical health and 1 Section 1, 2 Section 1 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 ‘Eviction’s Fallout: Housing, Hardship, and Health’ (Desmond) 1 ‘excluded occupiers’ 1 F Farage, Nigel 1 Ferreri, Mara 1 Field, Hazell 1, 2 Financial Times 1 Finland 1, 2, 3 Flat Justice 1 free market forces 1, 2 Friedman, Sam 1 ‘friendlords’ 1 Frome, Somerset 1 Fullilove, Mindy 1, 2, 3, 4 G Gabor, Daniela 1 Gallik, Tomas 1 Gandhi, Mohandas 1 garden cities 1, 2 Garden City Association 1 gardening 1 gender housing gap 1 Generation Rent (lobby group) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Generation Rent (term) 1, 2, 3 generations 1 Baby Boomers 1, 2 Generation X 1 Generation Z 1 intergenerational inequality 1 millennials 1, 2, 3 Generations: Does When You’re Born Shape Who You Are?

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Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism
by Wendy Liu
Published 22 Mar 2020

For a first-person account of Yale University’s attempts to prevent graduate students from unionising, see “Spadework” by Alyssa Battistoni in the Spring 2019 issue of n+1, published at https://nplusonemag.com/issue-34/politics/spadework/. 9 See, for example, “Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, files for bankruptcy” by German Lopez for Vox, published September 16, 2019 at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/16/20868487/purdue-pharma-oxycontin-bankruptcy-opioid-epidemic. 10 See, for example, Emily Guendelsberger’s book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane (Little, Brown and Co., 2019). 11 For commentary on corporation expansion in the era of digital Capitalism, see “Landlord 2.0: Tech’s New Rentier Capitalism” by Jathan Sadowski for OneZero, published April 4, 2019, at https://onezero.medium.com/landlord-2-0-techs-new-rentier-capitalism-a0bfe491b463. 12 There’s a concept called “elite projection” that neatly summarises this phenomenon. Public transit consultant Jarrett Walker explains it in a blog post called “The Dangers of Elite Projection”, published July 31, 2017, at https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html. 13 See, for instance, Uber’s introduction of its opaque “Safe Rides Fee” on every trip, which brought in nearly half a billion dollars of extra revenue for the company that was never specifically set aside for safety measures, as Mike Isaac reports in his book Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (W.

pages: 334 words: 103,106

Inheritance
by Leo Hollis

It seems the definition of improvement was expansive enough to include the development of techniques in husbandry to increase crop yields, the enclosure of rural commons into fenced property, the transformation of fields into streets and squares, or the reaping of rents from tenants. This form of rentier capitalism was only just germinating, and as a result the relationship between Crown, Parliament, landlord and tenant was working itself out anew. When first inherited by Alexander Davies in 1663, many of the farms within the estate were discovered to be on extant long leases, sold when the land was owned by the Crown.

…

A. 137–8 Hubert, Robert 55 Huguenots 48 Hyde Manor (London) 31 Hyde Park (London) 66–7 Innocent XII, Pope 152, 153 insane, see madness Ireland 23, 74, 75, 100, 102 Ireton, Henry 185 Jacobites 148, 149, 150, 151, 189 and rebellion 229, 230, 231, 249 Jacobs, Jane 257 James I of England, King 20, 21, 22, 36, 48 James II of England, King 2, 72, 73, 101, 108, 109–11 and Catholic Church 153 and death 178 and the law 188 and Paris 148, 149–50 and Rye House Plot 116 James Francis Edward Stuart 150, 178, 230, 249 James, John 232 Jenkins, Simon 8, 259 Landlords to London 252 Jennings, Will 146, 152, 198 Jerman, Edward 69 Jermyn, Henry 68, 115 Jones, Inigo 67, 82, 92 Jonson, Ben 14 Kensington (London) 10, 55 Kent, William 235 Kip, Johannes and Knyff, Leonard: Britannia Illustrata 225–6, 227 Lammas Ground 19 land 7, 8, 10–11, 138, 258–60 and America 77–8 and aristocracy 252–3 and Audley 21 and common 18–19 and compound fine 23–4 and control 16–18 and Davies 32–3 and Grosvenors 112–13 and London 113–14, 115–16 and suburbs 68, 69 and women 45–7 see also property law, the 17, 18, 209–10, 212–14 and women 45, 46, 90 Lawe’s Resolutions of Women’s Rights, The 90 Le Brun, Charles 149 Le Cleve, Thomas 178 Le Vau, Louis 149 Leicester Square (London) 30 Lely, Sir Peter 83–4, 147 Leoni, Giacomo 235 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor 150 Lewis, Mr 4–5, 164–5 Lilly, William 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (London) 34, 35 Livingston, Elizabeth 91 Lloyd, Nathaniel 171, 172 Locke, John 255 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 62 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina 77–8 Lockwood, Marie 25 Lodge, Tom 146, 154, 155–6, 163–4, 165 and trial 199–200, 204 Londinum London (map) 28, 29 London 6–8, 10–11, 65–70 and anti-Catholicism 102 and Audley 15–16 and Barbon 117–19 and Bloomsbury 115–17 and Burlington Estate 234–5 and Davies 32–4 and Evelyn 29–30 and expansion 113–14, 115–16, 231–2 and Great Fire 50–8 and Grosvenor Estate 235–8, 240–7, 256–8 and housing 119–20 and maps 27–9, 30–2 and Mayfair 251–2 and ownership 252–4 and Pepys 13–14 and plague 36–43, 47 and property prices 259 and South Sea Bubble 238, 240 and speculators 121–3 and squares 232–3 Louis XIV of France, King 148, 149, 150, 151, 178 Luttrell, Narcissus 206 Lyon 155–6, 176, 177 Macclesfield, Earl of 105 Mackay, John 239, 240 Macky, John: Journey through England 235 Mad House Act (1774) 217, 221 Maddison, Charles 138, 139, 198 madness 132–3, 134–8, 216–18, 220–1 Magna Carta 17 Mainwaringe, Dr Everard 32 Manchester, Lady 150 Mandeville, Geoffrey de 22 Manor of Ebury (Westminster) 9, 10, 19, 31–2, 48, 56 and Audley 21, 22, 26–7 and Fenwick 181–2, 208 and Grosvenor, Dame Mary 123–4 and Grosvenor, Richard 222 and Parliament 229–30 and tenants 173–4, 211–12 maps 27–9, 30–2, 97, 157, 239, 240 Market Meadows 32, 33, 35, 44 Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of 108 marriage 70–2, 76, 90–1, 209, 213–14 Marriage Acts: 1653: 70 1753: 214 Mary II of England, Queen 111, 131 Massey, Edward 100, 103 Massey, William 103, 104, 106 May, Hugh 73–4, 82 May Fair 114–15 Mayfair (London) 8, 10, 251–2 melancholy 135–7 Mercator, Nicholas 82 Middleton, George 171, 172, 173, 176–7, 178–9, 180 and imprisonment 191 Miège, Guy 232 Millbank (London) 5, 28, 29, 40, 44, 235–6 and Great Fire 55 Miller, Tom 146, 152, 154, 155, 167, 213 and Hôtel Castile 161, 162, 165 and trial 192, 195, 199–200, 204 Mills, Peter 57 Misson, Henri 141, 142 Monbiot, George 260 moneylending 15–16 Monmouth, James, Duke of 104–5, 108, 109 Monument (London) 69, 102 Moore, Francis 150 More, Thomas: Utopia 19 Morris, Dr 62–4 Myddleton, Sir Richard 143, 221, 237–8 Myddleton, Robert 248 Myddleton, Thomas 85 Neate House (London) 31, 32 neoclassicism 226, 234, 244 New World, see America Newton, Sir Isaac 238 Nicholls, Dr John 138, 167, 197 Nicolson, William 212 Norman Conquest 16, 22, 79 North, Roger 118 Oates, Titus 101, 102, 185 Orton, John 181–2, 183, 208 Osbourne, Thomas 40 Oxford 23, 39 Oxford, Edward Harley, Earl of 238 Palladio, Andrea 226 Panton, Thomas 30 Papists, see Catholic Church Paris 8, 148–50, 154–5; see also Hôtel Castile; Versailles Parliament 17, 18, 22–3, 24, 99 and churches 232 and James II 109–10 and land 48 and Manor of Ebury 229–30 and power 111 and property 78–9 Parry, Henry 177 Pepys, Samuel 13–14, 50, 66, 68, 73 and Great Fire 51, 52 Perrault, Claude 149 Peterborough, Earl of 34 Peterborough, Henry Mordaunt, Lord 72 Peterborough, Lady 168, 173 Peterborough House (London) 41, 168, 236 Pevet, Margaret 155 Philip V of Spain, King 150, 151, 167, 178 Phipps, Edward 181–2, 183, 208 Piccadilly (London) 30 Piggot, Mr 169, 170, 198, 230–1 Piketty, Thomas: Capital in the Twenty-First Century 259 Pimlico (London) 10 place-making 255–7 plague 36–43, 47 Plessington, John 103–4, 106 Poole, James 103 poor, the 18–19, 37, 40, 42 Powell, Sir John 212 Powys, Sir Thomas 189–90, 194, 197, 202–3 Pratt, Roger 57, 82 Certain Heads to be Largely Treated Concerning the Undertaking of Any Building 67 pregnancy 125–7 Price, Thomas 153–4 primogeniture 17, 247 Private Eye (magazine) 252 private property 8–9, 10–11, 24, 55–7, 259 property 16–18, 138, 117–20, 181–3, 225–6 and investment 258 and London 252–4 and marriage 71 and ownership 77–9 and women 45–7, 89 see also housing; private property Property Week (magazine) 253 Protestantism 107 psychiatry 132–3, 134–7, 216 public land 259–60 Purcell, Dr John 136 Qatar 253 Queen’s Bench 180–1, 182, 188 Queen’s House (London) 92–3 Questel, Robert 213 Radcliffe, Francis 4, 154, 164, 165, 213 and trial 180, 204 Raleigh, Sir Walter 185 Ralph, James 245 rape 201, 203 Rea, John 24, 27 Rebuilding Act (1667) 57 rentier capitalism 78 Restoration 24, 29, 44, 49 Ridley, Mrs 204 Rippon, William 133, 197 Roberts, Hugh 80–1 Rolfe, Samuel 69 Rome 144, 151, 152–5 Roxburghe, Duke of 233 Royal Exchange (London) 69 Royal Society 136 Royalists 24, 26, 47, 49, 72–3 and Chester 80 and Cromwell 23, 32 Rue Saint-Dominique, see Hôtel Castile Russell, Lady Rachel 116, 117, 215, 232 Russell, William, Lord 116 Rye House Plot 116 St James’s Park (London) 50 St James’s Square (London) 68 St Paul’s Cathedral (London) 13, 25, 69–70, 89 and Great Fire 53, 54, 55 Samwell, William 82–3, 92–3 sanitation 242 Scarborough, Richard Lumley, Earl of 232–3, 237 Schlarman, Julie 246 Second Anglo-Dutch War 50 Sedgemoor, Battle of (1685) 108 Selby, Mrs 146, 152, 154, 167, 213 and Hôtel Castile 159, 160, 161–2, 163–4, 165 and trial 192–5, 199–200, 204, 205 Shaftesbury, Earl of 77, 101, 109–10 Shakespeare, William 70 Shepherd, Edward 245 Sherrington, Grace 63 Shireburn, Sir Richard 102 Showalter, Elaine 137 Shrewsbury, Earl of 124 Simmons, John 244–5 slavery 108, 188–9, 238 Sloane, Daniel 191, 194, 203 Smith, Judge John 212 South Sea Bubble 238, 240 Spain 150–1 Spanish Succession, War of the 178, 231 Sprat, Thomas 212 squares 232–3, 240–7 Stanley, Rowland 103 Stawker, Robert 33, 34 Strype, John 116–17, 123–4 Stukeley, Dr William 136 suburbs 38, 56, 68, 69, 119 Summerson, Sir John 245 Sydenham, Thomas 37 syndicates 121–3 Taswell, William 50, 52–3, 54 Tate, Francis 141 Temple, Sir William 71, 75 Test Act (1678) 101, 103 Thomas, Cadogan 122, 123 Thornton, Alice 127–8 Tonkin Liu 257 trade 13–14, 16, 100, 113 Tregonwell, John (stepfather) 47–8, 49–50, 64, 74, 78–9, 85 Tregonwell, Mary (mother) 6, 43–5, 47–8, 169, 180, 222 and daughter 144, 145, 166–7, 168, 218–19 and death 236 and Manor of Ebury 123–4 and motherhood 59–61, 63, 64, 70, 71 Trelawney, Charles 124 Trial of the Seven Bishops, The (Herbert) 187, 188 true mile 18 Turnour, Mr 139, 146, 147, 191–2 Turnour, Mrs 129–30, 139, 145, 147, 151 and trial 174, 189 urban planning 57 usury 15–16 Utrecht, Treaty of (1713) 231 Versailles 82, 149, 150, 151 Vincent, Thomas 37, 52, 53 Vitruvius Britannicus (Campbell) 234 Ward, Sir Edward 212 Ward, Ned 65–6 Watts, William 35 wealth 252 Weights and Measures Act (1593) 18 West End (London) 115–16 Westminster, Dukes of 10, 249 Westminster Abbey (London) 22, 32 Westminster Diocese 170–1 Westminster Hall (London) 5–6, 184–8 Whigs 101, 105, 109–10, 124 widows 43, 44–5 William II of England, King 185–6 William III of England, King 111, 131, 150, 153, 178 Willis, Thomas 136–7 women 43, 44–7, 88–9 and childbirth 125–9 and education 63–4 and Grosvenor Estate 246–7 and marriage 71, 90–1 and mental health 137–8, 217 and religion 106–7 Wood, Ellen Meiksins 19–20 Wood, Ralph 19 Worcester, Battle of (1651) 32 Wren, Christopher 56, 57, 68, 69–70 Wright, Nathan 173 Wyndham, Jane 229 Wyndham, William 229, 230 Wynne Rees, Peter 254 York, James, Duke of, see James II of England, King York, Robert 191 A Oneworld Book First published by Oneworld Publications in 2021 This ebook published 2021 Copyright © Leo Hollis 2021 The moral right of Leo Hollis to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78607-995-4 eISBN 978-1-78607-996-1 Illustration credits: All images author’s own or Creative Commons unless otherwise stated.

pages: 363 words: 109,077

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future
by Alec Ross
Published 13 Sep 2021

When you zoom out, Google—and its peers such as Apple and Amazon—have set themselves up as tax collectors on the traffic that runs through their online fiefdoms. It’s virtually impossible to operate a business in the 21st century without making regular payments to at least one of the tech giants. Smaller businesses have been pushing back against this form of rentier capitalism and making noise about the monopoly power that comes with owning an online marketplace like the App Store or Google’s “Search” pages. Others argue that this is just the inevitable cost of doing business online. But whatever your position, fishier than the cut that Google takes out of Marco’s purchase and billions of other daily purchases is what Google pays in taxes.

…

If we want to build a more equitable, inclusive, and just society in the 2020s and beyond, we need to start with tax reform, so that wealthy companies can no longer transcend national tax authorities, wealthy individuals can no longer bank with anonymity, and wealthy countries can no longer siphon off resources from the developing world. A fair and just tax system would ensure that each group pays its fair share and each country receives its rightful slice of the pie. It is also the best way to avoid raising tax rates for existing taxpayers and to make sure the gods of rentier capitalism actually pay taxes on the rents they collect. It is said death and taxes are the only certainties in life. For more and more of the world’s largest corporations and richest people, the latter no longer applies. Without more cohesive tax laws and the resources to enforce them, the cost of building a better society will fall not on the people and institutions with the greatest means to effect change, but on those who need change the most. 5 FOREIGN POLICY: DOES EVERY COMPANY NEED ITS OWN STATE DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON, AND CIA?

Paint Your Town Red
by Matthew Brown
Published 14 Jun 2021

Intergenerational transfer of housing and landed wealth has emerged as a main driver of continuing inequality. The Conservative government’s 2020 proposal to grant blanket planning permission over wide swathes of England to private landowners and developers is likely to further exacerbate these problems. The housing crisis has been building for years as rentier capital replaces industrial capital, and cannot be quickly or easily remedied. Indeed, it has become something of a zero-sum game: if prices come down to increase affordability, then existing homeowners — many of whom have drawn down equity on their houses in the expectation of repaying it later when the house is sold, or have used it as an investment vehicle in place of a pension — will lose out.

pages: 572 words: 134,335

The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class
by Kees Van der Pijl
Published 2 Jun 2014

Meanwhile, the economic basis supporting the Atlantic extrapolation of the New Deal class compromise was provided by the government-supported expansion of fixed industrial capacity, notably in the three years 1941–43, and the resulting industrial emphasis in the profit-distribution process. Bank and rentier capital were temporarily disenfranchised by the emphasis on real accumulation: banks ‘were occupied principally as fiscal agents of the Federal Government … interest rates were kept low, yet the banks had no recourse but to buy war bonds and help distribute part of the load to the public as a means of enforced savings’.20 Cooptation of the trade-union bureaucracy into the administrative apparatus now proved functional in preventing labour strife from upsetting industrial production.

…

For 1957, Belgium heads the list with 30.4%, followed by Britain, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. For 1963, the percentages have fallen, but the rank order was only changed for Germany, now third instead of France, which is fourth.86 With due caution, then, it can be argued that in periods of prominence of rentier capital in the United States, the portfolio investors in Europe were part of the critical mass of interests willing to accommodate German ambitions and tendencies towards continental European unification and autarky. In the offensive periods characterized by corporate and industrial reinforcement in the United States, on the other hand, the activist perspective of the direct investors contributed to the orientation towards Great Britain and towards offensive Atlantic unity in American foreign policy.

pages: 182 words: 53,802

The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks
by Ann Pettifor
Published 27 Mar 2017

The interests of both would be served by subordinating finance to its proper role as servant not master of the real, productive economy. Some argue that the financialisation of industry makes such an alliance impossible. I am not so sure. There are makers and creators out there who resent the bullying of financiers and the costs of rentier capitalism as much as any trade unionist or activist. As to the policies needed to subdue finance capital, these are known, and have been briefly outlined in the previous chapter. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We do not need a social revolution. We simply have to reclaim knowledge and understanding of money and finance – knowledge that has been available to society for many centuries.

pages: 504 words: 143,303

Why We Can't Afford the Rich
by Andrew Sayer
Published 6 Nov 2014

It strengthened the whip hand of the financial sector and weakened the power of governments to control interest rates and credit creation, including their power to encourage real investment and full employment. As hosts to the dominant centres of financialisation, the US and British governments backed this shift to a rentier capitalism.20 In 1973 the oil-producing countries restricted oil supply in retaliation for US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. This resulted in a rise in energy costs that led to a major crisis, with soaring inflation and declining profits. Inflation reduced the real rate of interest, favouring debtors; debt payments become less onerous if the currency you have to pay them in is losing value fast.

…

As is abundantly clear in the European debt crisis, many of the same major financial institutions that have promoted asset bubbles and the crisis are now, as bondholders, extracting, via governments, unearned income from taxpayers, particularly those who are the victims of the crisis. As the ancient critiques said, usury allows the strong – and nowadays, the too-big-to-fail – to take advantage of the weak. But in addition, in contemporary rentier capitalism, our dependence on banks makes many of us have a stake in the success of the rentiers. Shuffling ownership: the market for companies Over the past twenty five years, giant companies in the UK and USA have spent as much or more on buying other companies as on fixed capital investment … (Savage and Williams, 2008)77 For firms struggling to increase their sales revenue in the face of sluggish demand, taking over other companies provides a way of buying revenue.

pages: 210 words: 65,833

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain
by William Davies
Published 28 Sep 2020

The upheavals of 2020 rendered that project utterly impossible, offering the most public and undeniable demonstration that poverty and dependence are not simply a ‘choic’. This triggered the surreal spectacle of conservative politicians and newspapers debating the merits of unconditional cash transfers. In the context of rentier capitalism and what Jodi Dean terms ‘neo-feudalism’, the credibility of the labour market was already in decline, as the middle classes turned increasingly to assets in search of security and income.3 The coronavirus ensured that, however the crisis of liberalism was to be resolved, it would not be built upon the familiar bedrock of the wage relation.

pages: 234 words: 67,589

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
by Ben Tarnoff
Published 13 Jun 2022

“Despite its initial …”: Ibid., 16. 83, These three elements … My analysis is informed by Nick Srnicek, who identifies four characteristics of “platforms”: they are intermediaries, they “produce and are reliant on ‘network effects,’” they often use “cross-subsidisation” to reduce the price of a good or service, and they have “a designed core architecture that governs the interaction possibilities”; see Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 36–48. 6. Online Malls 85, Back in 1993 … “A virtual …”: Quoted in John Markoff, “The Media Business; New Coalition to Seek a Public Data Highway,” New York Times, October 26, 1993. Shopping malls metaphor: Jathan Sadowski, “The Internet of Landlords: Digital Platforms and New Mechanisms of Rentier Capitalism,” Antipode 52, no. 2 (2020): 562–80. For an earlier analysis of online commodification that uses the shopping mall metaphor, see Jennifer S. Light, “Developing the Virtual Landscape,” E nvironment and Planning D: Society and Space 14 (1996): 127–31. 85, The first modern shopping mall … “Rich public …”: Quoted in M.

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The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
by Ross Douthat
Published 25 Feb 2020

S., 209 Napster, 105 NASA, 5 National Geographic, 38 nationalism, 86, 172–73 as escape from sclerosis, 217–18 National Security Agency (NSA), 144 Internet companies and, 146, 147 neoliberalism, 24 left-wing critique of, 30–31 libertarian critique of, 30, 31 limits of, 28–32, 219 neo-Marxism, 219–21 neo-paganism, see paganism Netanyahu, Benjamin, 218 New Age spiritualism, 101, 103, 224, 225, 226 New Deal, 68, 74 New Frontier, 181 New Journalism, 109–10 New Republic, 114 New York, 127 New Yorker, 109, 134 New York Review of Books, 6 New York Times, 60, 62, 137 Nisbet, Robert, 108–9, 110 Nixon, Richard, 24, 77 North Africa, political turbulence in, 194 nostalgia, 181, 206 “Nothing to Hide” (Twitter account), 147 nuclear war, 191 Nye, David, 36, 37 Obama, Barack, 67 and management of decadence, 181 presidential unilateralism and, 60 Obamacare, 68, 69–70, 73–74, 76 Obama presidency: foreign policy of, 70–71 political sclerosis and, 67–72, 74 Occupy Wall Street, 113 offshoring, 28, 29 Oliver, Kendrick, 231–32 opioid epidemic, 126–27 Orban, Viktor, 85, 164 Oumuamua (cosmic object), 233, 237 paganism, as path to renaissance, 224–26 Panopticon, 144, 152, 153, 154 see also pink police state pantheism, 224, 225, 226 parents, older, children of, 60–61 Paris climate accords, 71 Paris Statement (2016), 217, 219 Parsons, Jack, 231 Pascal, Blaise, 235–36 Perot, Ross, 78–79 Peterson, Jordan, 97, 224 pharmaceutical industry, 44 Phillips, Todd, 94 Piketty, Thomas, 12, 30, 57–58 Pinker, Steven, 165 pink police state, 140–54 civil liberties and, 141–42 in Europe, 143–44 marginalization of dissent in, 151–52, 153–54 playacting and performance in, 152 political discourse in, 147 soft pressure vs. hard enforcement in, 148 see also surveillance state Pizarro, Francisco, 189 plagues, impact on civilization of, 190 Poland, 85–86 polarization, 154 sclerosis and, 76–81 political discourse, in pink police state, 147 politically correct speech, 143 political parties, polarization of, 77–81 politics: declining birthrate and, 62–66 as entertainment, 153–54 historical norms of, 68–69 of sustainable decadence, 129–36 Politico, 198 polytheism, 225 popular music, decline of originality in, 91 populations, aging of, see aging populations populism, resurgence of, 12–13, 22, 27, 28, 63, 64, 78–80, 85, 86, 152, 153–54, 181, 193 immigration and, 196 as threat to liberal order, 171–73 pornography, 107, 149 addiction to, 119 Internet culture and, 120–21 in Japan, 88 sexual violence and, 119–22 and sixties-seventies social revolution, 119 virtual entertainments and, 125 postcolonial world, cultural synthesis of West and, 208–9 postmodernism, 97, 98, 135 Poulos, James, 140–41, 146, 151 pre-Columbian America, European conquest of, 189–90 Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Nisbet), 108–9, 110 prescription drugs, social upheaval repressed by, 149 privacy, right to: Internet and, 145, 146–47 lack of public concern about, 147, 148 productivity: aging workforce and, 57 education and, 34–35 Internet and, 41 stagnation in, 44 progress: promise vs. reality of, 1–2, 4–5, 10–11, 28, 42–46 technological, see technology see also change progressives, progressivism, cultural repetition and, 98 Protestants, Protestantism: churchgoing by, 100 evangelical, 53, 101, 119, 222 psychics, 225 publishing industry, decline of originality in, 91, 105 Putin, Vladimir, traditionalism of, 162–63 Quinones, Sam, 127 race: identity and, 205, 221 new configurations of, 208 wage gap and, 99 racism, 63, 80, 97, 205 Rahner, Karl, 110 rape, see sexual violence Rauch, Jonathan, 72, 73 Ready Player One (film), 94 Reagan, Ronald, 24, 71 Reagan Revolution, 68, 77, 90, 100 recessions, 192, 193, 194 Reeves, Richard, 31 Reformation, 222, 227, 230 regulation, proliferation of, 72 Reign of Terror, 206 religion: belief in immanent divine in, 224 birthrate and, 53, 54 communitarianism in, 216 declining formal affiliation in, 99–100 demographic change and, 222–23 Eastern forms of, 225 as path to renaissance, 221–23 post-Christian, 224 public rituals in, 225, 226 repetition in, 99–100, 180 sects in, 101–2; see also specific sects secularism’s relationship with, 221 self-help versions of, 224 unforeseen revolutions in, 223 see also paganism religious debates, repetition in, 101–4 renaissance, 205–32 as combination of scientific programs and religious revival, 230–32 as concurrence of forces, 229–32 Eurafrican scenario for, 206–10, 218, 228–29 Islam as path to, 226–28 meaningfulness as core issue in, 221 paganism as scenario for, 224–26 political scenarios for, 215–21 religious scenarios for, 221–23 technological acceleration and, 210–15 renewable energy, 35, 43 rentier class, 26, 30–31, 46 repetition, 10, 11, 66, 89–115, 236 baby boomers and, 109, 111–12 in ideological debates, 100–101 innovation vs., 9 in intellectual realm, 96–101, 180 in Internet culture, 104–7 in movies, 91, 93–95 in music, 91 in publishing, 91 in religion, 99–100, 180 in religious debates, 101–4 in television, 95 Republicans, Republican Party: as interest-group protection racket, 76 polarization blamed on, 79 populism and, 79–80 sclerosis of, 80–81 tax policies of, 29 see also conservatives, conservatism research and development, stagnation in, 44–45 right: attention seeking by, 153 media-entertainment complex of, 80 political renaissance scenario of, 217–18 see also conservatives, conservatism Rise and Fall of American Growth, The (Gordon), 33 Rise of the Meritocracy, The (Young), 170–71, 172 rituals, public, 225, 226 robots, robotics revolution, 44, 210–11 Roman Empire, 13, 157 early Christianity and, 222, 223, 237 impact of plagues on, 190 Roosevelt, Franklin, 74 Russia, czarist, 162–63 Russia, modern: traditionalist ideology of, 162–63 Ukraine interventions of, 162 and US 2016 election, 162 Salvini, Matteo, 85, 114 Sanders, Bernie, populism of, 181 Sarah, Robert Cardinal, 206–8, 209, 228 Saudi Arabia, 160, 163 Scandinavia, 85 Schmidt, Eric, 146 Schneier, Bruce, 144 school shootings, 123–24 sclerosis, political, 9, 10, 11–12, 25, 67–88 centrist view of, 76–79 conservative-friendly explanations of, 72–76 in EU, 82–86 in Japan, 86 as kludgeocracy, 75 left’s view of, 79–80 mass immigration and, 64–65 nationalism as escape from, 217–18 Obama presidency and, 67–72, 74 polarization and, 76–81 and public expectations of government action, 74–75 of Republican Party, 80–81 as result of multiple trends, 81 virtuous communities as escape from, 215–17 Scorsese, Martin, 94, 95 Second Vatican Council, 100 secularism, 222–23, 227 birthrates and, 51, 53, 54 religion’s relationship with, 221 repetition in, 102–3 sterility of, 207 self-driving cars, 21 Senate, US, 67 Senegal, 208, 209 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 208–9 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 114, 159 Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Jacques, 42 sex, virtual entertainments and, 128 sex bureaucracy, 142–43 sexually transmitted diseases, increased rate of, 152 sexual relations: decline in, 55, 87, 125 among teenagers, 122–23 sexual revolution, 90 birthrate and, 50, 55 sexual violence: falling rates of, 120–22 pornography and, 119–22 Shallows, The (Carr), 107 Shawn, William, 109–10 Shinto, 225 Shulevitz, Judith, 61 Silicon Valley, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 42, 143, 146, 201 foreign investment in, 193–94 space race and, 43, 213 Simon, David, 95 Simon, Julian, 43 Singapore, 216 birthrate in, 50 pronatalist policies of, 52 Singularity, 24 sixties-seventies: promise of, 1–2 sociological and cultural change in, 99, 108–9, 119 see also baby boomers Slaughter, Anne-Marie, 97 “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (Didion), 131 Smith, Adam, 179 Smithsonian Museum, 38 Snow family, 59–60 social credit systems, 138–40 social democrats, 73 socialism, resurgence of, 27, 28 social media, 106 “soma,” 127 Sopranos, The (TV show), 95 Soumission (Submission) (Houellebecq), 155–57, 159, 160–61, 172 South Africa, economic growth in, 166–67 South Asia, migration from, 199 South Korea, 164 birthrate in, 50 pronatalist policies of, 52 space race, 181 Silicon Valley and, 43, 213 space travel: critiques of, 5–6 expectations of, 2 physical limits on, 235 revolution in, 211 as scenario for end of decadence, 236, 239–40 unfulfilled promise of, 1–3, 5–6 Spain, 84, 85 Spanish conquest, 189–90 Specter, Arlen, 67 speech, politically correct rules of, 143 Spielberg, Steven, 94 Sputnik, 2 stagflation, 24, 28 stagnation, economic, 11, 17–46, 57, 193, 236 climate change and, 180 decadence as, 8–10 demographics and, 57 in Europe, 25 in Japan, 86, 125 let’s-pretendism and, 21 and limits on growth, 32–36 mass immigration and, 64–65 median US income and, 22–23 neoliberalism and, 28–32 unemployment and, 23 stagnation, technological, 36–42, 91, 103, 104, 165–66, 180, 201, 203, 214 stalemate, 66 see also sclerosis, political Stanford University, 44–45 Star Trek (TV show), 2, 38, 214 Star Wars movies, 89, 90, 111 Stephenson, Neal, 37 Steyn, Mark, 38–40, 41, 100 stimulus package, 67, 68 Suk, Jeannie, 142 Sullivan, Andrew, 127 Summers, Larry, 33 superrich, 31 surveillance state, 201 criminality and violence discouraged by, 148–49 Internet as, 144–47 Sweden, 52 Syria, 85, 199 civil war in, 70–71 Syrian refugee crisis, 85, 161, 196 tax rates, low, 28, 29 tax reform, 70 technocrats, 192, 202–3 sustainable decadence and, 181–83 technological acceleration: renaissance and, 210–15 social and political institutions and, 213–15 technological sublime, 36–37 technology: backlash against, 229 stagnation in, 36–42, 91, 103, 104, 165–66, 180, 201, 203, 214 unanticipated consequences of, 179, 191 teenagers: anxiety and depression among, 123 sexual relations among, 122–23 Teles, Steven, 30, 31, 75, 78 television: creativity in movies vs., 94–95 decline of originality in, 95 golden age of cable on, 95–96 terrorism, 114, 150, 159 in age of sustainable decadence, 131–33 Theranos, 18–19, 21 Thiel, Peter, 12, 41, 42, 102, 168 Thompson, Hunter S., 110 Thurber, James, 109 To Touch the Face of God (Oliver), 231–32 traditionalism: cultural/political, 48, 98, 162–63, 206 religious, 101, 103, 206–7, 208 Trump, Donald, 48–49, 79, 89, 132, 154 attention as primary need of, 152–53 election of, 99, 101, 114, 182 Great Recession and, 193 immigration and, 196 incipient authoritarianism of, 80, 130 populist appeal of, 78–79, 101, 181 as product of decadence, 12, 13 transgressive behavior of, 152 Twitter use by, 130 “Western civilization” speech of, 205–7 Trump presidency, 65 policy failures of, 71, 172 Trump voters, 63–64, 171, 217 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 3–4 “Twilight City,” 56, 57, 65 Twitter, 148, 194 Trump’s use of, 130 2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 2 Uber, 19–21, 22 UFOs: theories about, 237 videos of, 233–34 Ukraine, 162 Unconditional Surrender (Waugh), 183 unemployment, stagnation and, 23 Uninhabitable Earth, The (Wallace-Wells), 195–96 United States: aging population of, 60, 193 birthrate in, 50, 54 European governmental system vs., 82, 83 impact of climate change in, 197 Mexican immigration to, 198, 199 upper class: accumulation of advantage by, 31–32 rentier capitalism and, 26, 30–31, 46 U.S. News & World Report, 98 utopianism, 210–13 Vanity Fair, 91–93 Varoufakis, Yanis, 219 Vendée, the, martyrs of, 206–7 Venezuela, 33 venture capital, 19 video games, 88 see also virtual entertainments Vietnam War, 70, 90 Villeneuve, Denis, 94 “Violent Passion Surrogate,” 128, 130, 132, 135 virtual entertainments, 122–26, 128–29, 149 and decline in risky social behaviors, 122–23, 148 in Japan, 88, 125 pornography and, 125 sex and, 128 violence in, 122 worktime participation and, 124 virtual realities, 236 Virtue of Nationalism, The (Hazony), 218 virtuous communities, 215–17 Vollrath, Dietrich, 182 wages: black-white gap in, 99 gender gap in, 99 “Waiting for the Barbarians” (Cavafy), 157–58 Walgreens, 19 Wallace-Wells, David, 195–96 Wall Street, government symbiosis with, 69 warfare, surgical precision in, 150, 151 Waugh, Evelyn, 183 Weglarz, Geoffrey, 137–38, 148 welfare programs, 34 welfare state, 76 birthrates and, 51, 52 West: cultural synthesis of postcolonial world and, 208–9 decadence of, 10 Western frontier, 3–5 WeWork, 21 White, E.

pages: 263 words: 80,594

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation
by Grace Blakeley
Published 9 Sep 2019

In this sense, 2008 wasn’t simply a transatlantic banking crisis, it was the structural crisis of financial capitalism, emerging from the inherent contradictions of finance-led growth itself. The political regime of privatised Keynesianism, necessary to mitigate the fall in demand associated with low-wage, rentier capitalism, was always inherently unstable. Bank deregulation had created a one-off rush of cheap money that had inflated a bubble in housing and asset markets. The state allowed this bubble to grow for reasons of political expediency, rather than deflating it in the interests of financial stability. An economy that is creating billions of pounds worth of debt used for speculation rather than productive investment is an economy living on borrowed time.

pages: 307 words: 82,680

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income
by Guy Standing
Published 3 May 2017

It is the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes and to accept that people have the right to live as they wish, as long as they do no intentional or careless harm to others. Defending those values in the face of lurches to authoritarianism and paternalism may be very difficult in current circumstances. And we must recognize that this means a fundamental reform of ‘rentier capitalism’ arising from the policies and underlying ideology that have held sway since the 1980s. In that context, one of the biggest challenges confronting any major social reform is identifying a feasible way of moving from the current situation to something very different. It requires a leap of imagination to postulate a better future.

pages: 334 words: 82,041

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
by George Monbiot
Published 14 Apr 2016

‘We believe the publisher adds relatively little value to the publishing process … if the process really were as complex, costly and value-added as the publishers protest that it is, 40 per cent margins wouldn’t be available.’8 Far from assisting the dissemination of research, the big publishers impede it, as their long turnaround times can delay the release of findings by a year or more.9 What we see here is pure rentier capitalism: monopolising a public resource then charging exorbitant fees to use it. Another term for it is economic parasitism. To obtain the knowledge for which we have already paid, we must surrender our feu to the lairds of learning. It’s bad enough for academics; it’s worse for the laity. I refer readers to peer-reviewed papers, on the principle that claims should be followed to their sources.

pages: 397 words: 102,910

The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
by Justin Peters
Published 11 Feb 2013

In March 2008, Swartz traveled to Calgary to address a group of young Canadian leaders at the Banff Forum, an annual festival of conventional wisdom for the middlebrow elite attended by people with expensive business cards that suggested nothing whatsoever about emergent cultural anarchy. The topic of Swartz’s panel was “The Internet and Mass Collaboration,” and the discussion focused on their implications for politics, business, and rentier capitalism. Swartz stated what he believed. Free culture wasn’t a business model in disguise. It was a revolution: The rhetoric often suggests that some magical force of “peer production” or “mass collaboration” has written an encyclopedia or created a video library. Such forces do not exist; instead there are only individual people, the same kind of people who drive everything else.

pages: 404 words: 106,233

Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World
by Brett Chistophers
Published 25 Apr 2023

Schwarzman, What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019). 31 D. Carey and J. E. Morris, King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone (New York: Crown Business, 2010), pp. 70–1. 32 For more on this, see B. Christophers, ‘The Risk Myth: Blackstone, Housing, and Rentier Capitalism’, in M. Hyötyläinen and R. Beauregard, eds, The Political Economy of Land: Rent, Financialization and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2022). 33 O’Neill, ‘Financialisation of Urban Infrastructure’, p. 1321. 34 Ibid. 35 Farmer, ‘Cities as Risk Managers’, p. 2168. 36 Ibid., p. 2169. 37 Ibid., p. 2170. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., pp. 2168, 2170. 40 BlackRock, Inc., Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2019, pp. 2, 20. 41 Blackstone Group Inc., Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2019, p. 142. 42 M.

pages: 554 words: 158,687

Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All
by Costas Lapavitsas
Published 14 Aug 2013

Chesnais was one of the first to study financialization in conjunction with globalization and international capital flows, stressing the advancing integration of national financial systems.30 Chesnais draws his analytical categories directly from Marx’s analysis, but has also paid particular attention to the role of rentiers in mature capitalist economies. Thus, he has emphasized the dominance of financial interests – the ‘dictatorship of creditors’ – over industrial and other capital which has given to globalization the character of ‘rentier capitalism’.31 The influence of Chesnais’s work on the analysis of financialization in this book can be easily detected; however, it is argued below that relations between industrial and financial capital are not permeated by rentier processes, and the dominant role of finance does not amount to the ‘dictatorship of creditors’.

pages: 475 words: 155,554

The Default Line: The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on the Edge
by Faisal Islam
Published 28 Aug 2013

And, in effect, Deng Zhi works for you. Or at least he did work for you, up until around 2008. Then he started to moonlight for the Chinese government, filling the coffers of its massive sovereign piggy bank. So right now he wants to work mainly for himself. Factory labour whose surplus value has been expropriated by rentier capital, just as Marx and Engels said of Europe’s rapid industrialisation. Except in China the ultimate rentier capitalist is the Chinese Communist Party. From farm to factory to sovereign wealth fund and back to free spirit, Deng Zhi’s story is also the story of how China kept the West rich, and itself became richer.