How Criminals Built Capitalism

Generali

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-05/how-criminals-built-capitalism

Written by Clive Crook natch.

Whenever buyers and sellers get together, opportunities to fleece the other guy arise. The history of markets is, in part, the history of lying, cheating and stealing -- and of the effort down the years to fight commercial crime.


In fact, the evolution of the modern economy owes more than you might think to these outlaws. That's the theme of "Forging Capitalism: Rogues, Swindlers, Frauds, and the Rise of Modern Finance" by Ian Klaus. It's a history of financial crimes in the 19th and early 20th centuries that traces a recurring sequence: new markets, new ways to cheat, new ways to transact and secure trust. As Klaus says, criminals helped build modern capitalism.

purch

It's good that in the 21st century we have managed to rise above such activiities :eek:

vivatifosi

It's interesting Gen that you have started this thread the same day that two stories are leading the news, which I presume, being in Australia, you won't know.

The first is Labour's pledge to tax non-doms as they are not playing fair. The non-dom system was apparently introduced in the 1790s. A bit of an anachronism?

The second is the raid on a series of safe deposit boxes in Hatton Garden, where it is expected that many of the victims will not be coming forward as they had been used to stash ill-gotten gains.

In any system I guess people will fail to play by the rules, or at very least seek to bend them a little, or mould them in their own self-interest.

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

It's interesting Gen that you have started this thread the same day that two stories are leading the news, which I presume, being in Australia, you won't know.

The first is Labour's pledge to tax non-doms as they are not playing fair. The non-dom system was apparently introduced in the 1790s. A bit of an anachronism?

The second is the raid on a series of safe deposit boxes in Hatton Garden, where it is expected that many of the victims will not be coming forward as they had been used to stash ill-gotten gains.

In any system I guess people will fail to play by the rules, or at very least seek to bend them a little, or mould them in their own self-interest.

The same thing is still happening of course.

Uber is just a massive illegal minicab service with an app to summon and pay the driver.

Air BnB (which I have used very successfully) is thriving by breaking licencing, zoning and planning laws.

It looks likely that the NSW Government are going to change the cab laws in NSW in order to legalise Uber at the expense of owners of taxi licence plates. A cab licence plate for Sydney is currently worth in the region of $400,000 I believe or at least it was before Uber started up here.

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michaels

Taxing Nom Doms is likely to take money out of the UK economy. Do we choose fairer but poorer?

Generali

michaels wrote: »

Taxing Nom Doms is likely to take money out of the UK economy. Do we choose fairer but poorer?

A quick visit to the money tree should resolve matters.

Anyway, is it fairer to tax non doms more?

System

I would think it very likely that all political systems are initially built by criminals. Some gradually become more civilised over time.
(Or not - the Bolshevics seized power on the proceeds of organised bank raids and extorsion, but communist regimes even at their best never became what we would recognise as civilised)

tincans6

michaels wrote: »

Taxing Nom Doms is likely to take money out of the UK economy. Do we choose fairer but poorer?

There were 67k non-domiciles in 1997.

Labour introduced a charge that at the time was going to have various adverse consequences and starve the country of highly skilled people and investment, according to most Tories.

By 2007 there were 137k non-doms.

So now we have people born, educated, lived all their life in the UK, have children educated here and hold a British passport yet have a preferential tax system than others.

I wondered which forelock tugging posters will be defending the status quo on non domiciles ?

I think I can guess.

antrobus

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

I would think it very likely that all political systems are initially built by criminals. Some gradually become more civilised over time.....

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?

St Augustine of Hippo

Is this the MPLA
Or is this the UDA
Or is this the IRA
I thought it was the U.K.
Or just another country

Sex Pistols

kabayiri

It's come to something when recent UK governments have been harping on about morality and not criminality. Companies and individuals may not be breaking the law but are abusing the spirit.

'Do the right thing' is their buzz word, for heavens sake. What a convoluted mess.

At least !!!!!! Turpin wore a mask and funny hat so you could be easily identified.

The crims played fair in them days. (Nostalgia mode ON)

antrobus

tincans6 wrote: »

...I wondered which forelock tugging posters will be defending the status quo on non domiciles ?

I think I can guess.

According to Ed Balls; "I think if you abolish the whole status, then probably it ends up costing Britain money because there will be some people who then leave the country."

Did you guess right?