Karl Marx, notes Robert Bellafiore at Commonplace, once admitted that capitalism had built wonders greater than the Egyptian pyramids. This sheer power to get things done and make life better, writes Bellafiore in his review of John Cassidy’s Capitalism and its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, helps explain its uncanny ability to shrug off continuous attacks and recover from its recurring crises.
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.
