Lights out, prices up
Plus: Richard Hanania on populism, and how to spot a robot writer
It’s almost time for the solar eclipse. Are you ready with your colander?
Of course, colanders wouldn’t be necessary if London’s supply of eclipse viewing goggles hadn’t sold out so fast, due to a regrettable lack of price-gouging on the part of suppliers. More than a century and a half since Frédéric Bastiat used eclipses to teach an economic moral, we still have a lot to learn about the power of markets.
Meanwhile, in another case of learning the same lessons all over again, nationalising South Western Railways has seen a surge in late-running trains. What happened to the efficiency of a system that doesn’t have to worry about profit?
Below you’ll find all the latest pieces from CapX, plus what we’re reading from around the web.
Marc Sidwell
Editor, CapX
Today’s Takes
Fresh thinking from CapX
Biodiversity rules are strangling small housebuilders
Bruce Buckland
‘Our planning system is gummed up by dozens of requirements that are individually justifiable but collectively unbearable.’
More biodiversity is a wonderful thing. But the rules created to encourage its flourishing are making life impossible for smaller developers and preventing projects that would be good for nature. Under the Biodiversity Net Gain system, any habitat in new private gardens can’t be counted as a positive, while the removal of old garden habitat gets a black mark. Read More
An editor's guide to spotting AI writing
Alys Denby
‘I do not publish AI-generated content for the very simple reason that if no one has been bothered to work on it no one should be expected to read it.’
How do you know this wasn’t written by an AI? If you’re reading CapX, you should care that what you’re reading was written by a person with a mind. AI writing is inhuman: lazy, incurious and cautious. This is how to tell the real thing from the robot fakes. Read More
The Capitalist: Richard Hanania on populism
Richard Hanania had a ringside seat for the rise of MAGA, as his essays on anti-woke issues gained traction at the highest level of the new American Right. He had great hopes for Donald Trump’s second term, and coined the term ‘Tech Right’, hoping for an administration that worked productively alongside some of the smartest people in Silicon Valley. In practice, the second Trump presidency has proved, he says, ‘a nightmare scenario’.
Hanania’s new book ‘Kakistocracy’ is an attempt to understand what went wrong. He argues that populists, for all their promises of overthrowing corrupt elites, often end up replacing a flawed system with something far more damaging.
But what about the pro-market successes of a populist like Javier Milei? And what are the risks for the UK, where Reform UK have a real prospect of forming the next government? This week on The Capitalist, I asked Hanania for his take. He doesn’t rule out the prospect that a party like Reform could be good for Britain. But it is a strategy with a big warning label: once these forces are loose, nobody controls where they end up.
Best of the Web
Britain's probation service is broken
Alexander Baker, The Spectator
‘Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has found that probation staff are only adequately assessing the risk of harm in 28% of cases, compared to 60% of cases back in 2018-19.’
As alarm mounts over the early release scheme for our prisons, there has been little mention of the probation service that will supervise offenders out on licence. The situation is dire: the service is understaffed and struggles to assess the risk of offenders to the public. Onto this blazing fire, the Government is now dumping gallons of gasoline. Read More
How the Tories can win back young women
Isabella Link, ConservativeHome
‘Over the last decade, it has been the Conservative Party that has championed campaigns to protect women and girls, creating legal protections against domestic abuse, sexual harassment and voyeuristic offences, whilst fighting for the right to single-sex spaces.’
Young women don’t vote Right any more. Instead they are flocking to the Greens: not because of Zack Polanski’s brilliant policies, but because of the social pressure to join what’s seen as the virtuous side. The Conservatives actually have policies designed to help women but aren’t cutting through. It’s time to fight back on social media. Read More
Every disease is a policy failure
Saloni Dattani
Stat of the day
And if you want more...
– When and where to watch the eclipse (NASA)
– Mike Munger: Milton Friedman lives! (Civitas Outlook)
– The economist who’d buy your kidney (The Free Press 🔒)
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