Capitalisn't
Is capitalism the engine of destruction or the engine of prosperity? On this podcast we talk about the ways capitalism is—or more often isn’t—working in our world today. Hosted by author and journalist Bethany McLean and world renowned economist Luigi Zingales, we explain how capitalism can go wrong, and what we can do to fix it. Cover photo attributions: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/about/capitalisnt. If you would like to send us feedback, suggestions for guests we should bring on, or connect with Bethany and Luigi, please email: contact at capitalisnt dot com. If you like o...
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Are Betting Apps Engineered for Addiction? - ft. Jonathan Cohen
<p>If a sports betting app has the data to know exactly when a user is struggling financially, should it have a legal duty to cut that person off?</p><p>On this episode of Capitalisn't, we dive into the murky waters of the American sports betting explosion. We are often told that legalization simply moves an existing black market into the light, but guest Jonathan Cohen argues that the issue isn’t that we legalized the industry—it’s that we did it "recklessly."</p><p>Cohen, the Policy Lead at the American Institute for Boys and Men and author...
Can We Build a Middle Class Without Factories? - ft. Dani Rodrik
<p>Is the era of manufacturing-led growth officially over? For decades, the path to a stable middle class was paved through industrialization, but today, even manufacturing giants like China are losing millions of factory jobs to automation.</p><p>In this episode, Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit down with Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard and author of Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World. Rodrik argues that we have "no other choice" but to look toward the service sector to anchor our future economy.</p><p>But there’s a problem: we still treat th...
Who Should The Fed Answer To? - ft. Sir Paul Tucker
<p>Is the Federal Reserve’s independence a pillar of democracy or a convenient shield that allows elected officials to duck their responsibilities? This week on Capitalisn’t, we confront a shift in Washington after the Justice Department served subpoenas on the Fed. </p><p>Joining the conversation is Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Paul Tucker, who complicates the definition of central bank autonomy. If monetary policy is a "latent instrument of taxation," should it be shielded from the King—the executive branch—and reclaimed by the legislature? We explore the provocative argument that the Fed has becom...
How To Fix The American Tax System - ft. Ray Madoff
<p>Is the American tax code a fair engine for growth, or a "second estate" where the rich choose whether or not to pay? </p><p>We are often told that the top 1% of earners already pay 40% of all taxes, while nearly half of Americans pay nothing at all. Legal scholar Ray Madoff argues that this statistic is a deliberate "bait-and-switch" designed to confuse the public. The reality is that the truly rich often have little to no income to tax, living instead on borrowed gains and tax-free inheritances.</p><p>In this episode, Madoff joins Luigi Zingales and Bethany M...
How Capitalism Became Global ft. Sven Beckert
<p>Is capitalism a force of nature, or a human-made order that we have the power to shape? In this episode, Luigi and Bethany sit down with Sven Beckert, a Harvard historian and author of the new book A Global History of Capitalism, to tackle a question that seems basic but remains surprisingly difficult to answer: what exactly is capitalism?</p><p>Beckert argues that capitalism is not defined simply by the existence of markets—which are found in all human societies—but rather by a specific economic logic of privately owned capital productively invested to produce more capital. He chal...
How to Stop “Ensh*ttification” Before It Kills the Internet - ft. Cory Doctorow
<p>There’s a word that’s gained a lot of popularity in the last year: “ensh*ttification”. It refers to a trajectory many see with digital platforms: they initially offer immense value to users, only to systematically degrade that quality over time in order to extract maximum surplus for shareholders. </p><p>We invited the coiner of this term, science fiction author and activist Cory Doctorow, on the podcast to discuss whether he thinks this decline is an inevitable feature of digital markets or a consequence of specific policy failures. And, most importantly, how he thinks it could be reversed...
Why Matthew Yglesias Is Skeptical Of Anti-Monopoly Policies
<p>A recent proposal by Lina Khan, co-chair of Zohran Mamdani's mayoral transition team, to cap the price of beer at stadiums in New York City sparked a debate on X last month. At the center of that debate was Matthew Yglesias, editor and author of the Slow Boring newsletter, who argued that the modern antitrust movement has become "slipshod" and is ignoring basic economic trade-offs in favor of political wins.</p><p>In this episode, Yglesias joins Luigi and Bethany to discuss his views on the theoretical and practical limitations of the "Neo-Brandeisian" approach to antitrust. He contends that...
Are Big Tech’s Regulators “Cowards”? ft. Tim Wu
<p>Did you know Amazon makes $37 billion a year—more than double the revenue of all the newspapers in the world combined—from its sponsored results alone? Yes, the same, spammy, sponsored results at the top of a search that bilk shoppers with fake or low-quality items and can starve legitimate businesses of traffic and revenue.</p><p>This is one of the many insights shared by our guest this week, Tim Wu, in his new book, “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.” He argues that the defining story of the modern i...
Why Economists Should Care About Inequality, with Branko Milanovic
<p>Recently, Bethany and Luigi joined economist and wealth inequality expert Branko Milanovic in front of a live audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival to explore how capitalism, democracy, and income inequality interact. Together, the three discussed the pervasiveness of income inequality around the world, its connections with democracy and political stability, if the inequality that really matters is that between countries, and if capitalism and democracy aren't as intricately connected as we thought. </p><p>As a scholar of China’s economic system, Milanovic discussed how much of the country’s success can even be attributed to capitalism. In the p...
Nobel Economist Reveals Why Economic Models Keep Failing Us, ft. Richard Thaler
<p>Standard economic theory informs how we think about business strategy and the economy and presumes that people are selfish, have well-defined preferences, and consistently make welfare-maximizing choices. In other words, we are rational. But what if that is not the case?</p><p>Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler is out with an updated edition of his bestselling 1991 book, "The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life." In the new edition, he and his co-author Alex Imas (both professors at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) reflect on the last thirty years of behavioral economics and how...
