23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism by Professor Ha-Joon Chang is a book well worth reading!

Some people may argue that there is no social-democratic alternative to neo-liberal ideas. However the question should be could you define a free market world? Most markets are propped up by regulations – who can buy what, at what price.

The process of getting a company’s shares onto the stock market is bound by countless regulations. So even though many proponents would claim we have a free market, we actually do not. As we support the regulations, we therefore do not notice the things holding up the market.

There is no such thing as a free market and companies should not be run in the interests of their owners.

Free-floating shareholders have become more powerful than the general managers of the companies. They don’t invest, train workers or do any research and development. Their main concern is to maximise dividends over profits also maximising shareholder profit. Shareholder value maximisation has crippled many companies around the world.

Protectionism and immigration control, if they were lifted then those immigrants would take over from their counterparts in the US and UK. Free trade and the free movement of people, most people are not realising the contradiction. Essentially the markets are being defined as free and open but only allowing certain people to benefit from that ‘freeness’.

The most important point to take away from this piece is to remember that bankers do not create wealth, rather regulation and de-regulation creates the infrastructure for bankers to flourish! Despite the fall of Communism, we are still living in planned economies.

Growth in our economies is not making us rich; it is making rich people rich and does not make the rest of us any richer.  The argument that people use is that wealth has to be created before it can be shared out. We should remember that investment and growth has fallen in the last three decades even though the rich have become far wealthier.

Who are the entrepreneurs? There are more self-employed people in developing countries than there are in the developed world.

-        Equality of opportunity is unequal

-        More education in itself is not going to make a country richer

-        We are not smart enough to leave things to the market

-        Capital has a nationality

-        Free-market policies rarely make poor countries richer

-        Assume the worst about people and you get the worst

The balances between state and market – finance and services. Our great centres of finance should become more service centred and not just pursuing money for its own sake. Financers are now financing finance, which has created a detachment from production.

Our politicians seem to not be any better as we should be asking in whose interest are we developing policies for?

The bankers created the crisis not certain governments throwing money around. The banking levy was so small that bankers would not have proposed that figure.

Days do not have any meaning in economies, as time is irrelevant. All that matters is maximisation of profit 24 hours of the day.

We need to have more economic training to fully understand what the bankers are doing to our society.

As a note, I am not suggesting that all bankers are bad as many are working within a system that was not set-up with their own hands. Most bankers are too close to the industry to see the problems with it, which is why wider society needs to join the conversation around what our financial centres should really be used for.

Unless we make our voices heard, business will continue as usual.