Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

Wed 26 December 2018 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Raghuram Rajan (former governor of RBI) and Liugi Zingales, a professor from Chicago's Booth School of Business have written this book to drive home the point that most capitalistic societies around the world are mostly crony capitalism; where the incumbents make use of a nascent market and capture it and then work their political connections to build a regulatory moat to protect their fief from upstarts.

The authors lay down the ideal form of capitalism and how financial markets need to be mature enough for it to succeed. As a part of the prerequisites for capitalism to succeed:

  1. A government must play an active role in setting up the infrastructure.
  2. A government must honour the right to property.
  3. A government must allow open borders and exercise transparency in flow of information.
  4. A government must invest in retraining and providing safety to the disincentivized (not corporations but workers).

The book might sound technical but isn't. They use a lot of historical events as case studies to explain and use jargon minimally.