In this episode of Meet the Renegades we speak to the economist John Kay. He is the author of (amongst others) ‘Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly’ – a book which has inspired the making of Four Horsemen.
John untangles the shifts economics has been exposed to in the last decades, the market economy and various business strategies. He unpicks the motivations behind the destructive nature of ‘rentseeking’ – a key term we should all be au fait with. He also shares his insight into the widespread misunderstandings of our increasingly dysfunctional financial system.
“For the last 20 years, we’ve been failing to get as it were a good centre left story about the market economy, really failing to understand how it is how market economies function”.
He believes economics should be a pluralist subject, and it should be inductive as well as deductive. The essence of this, as he recalls, is the need for current economists to be more ad hoc.
“The big gap we have in Europe at the moment is really traditional venture capital type funding for small-ish start-up businesses”.
Author of Medici Money, Tim Parks, discusses the Medici banking dynasty and its legacy.
Has the pernicious creation of hero or saviour complexes derailed the collective good?
What are the consequences of immunity or vaccine passports and will these proposed temporary measures become the norm?
