Categories
News

Britons face 20,000 digital pound cap under Bank of England plan – Reuters

Britons would be limited to 20,000 digital pounds ($24,000) each if the country goes ahead with a digital currency, Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Tuesday.

…Money above the cap would be “swept” into a customer’s commercial bank account given that a digital pound would not be a means for storing wealth, he told members of UK Finance, a banking industry body.

https://archive.today/2023.02.07-202104/https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/consumers-face-20000-pound-limit-digital-pound-bank-england-says-2023-02-07/

Categories
Opinion

Why it isn’t mad to oppose the World Economic Forum – The Spectator

It isn’t mad, however, to regard the WEF as a dangerous force in global politics. The WEF is a dangerous force in global politics. To adapt Joseph Heller, just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean the WEF isn’t after you. A shared distrust of the WEF brings together anti-capitalists on the left and culture-warriors on the right. But that distrust is based on a misunderstanding of what the WEF is these days really all about.

For many WEF critics, the vileness of the organisation can be encapsulated in one word: ‘neoliberalism.’ It’s a term that conjures up images of plutocrats and untrammelled markets ravaging the planet and exploiting blue-collar folk in the name of profit. Funnily enough, Chairman Schwab agrees with that assessment of the world’s ills. Once upon a time, the WEF prioritised the necessity and benefits of economic globalisation. That has not been the case for many years, however. In October 2020, Schwab stated that:

[S]hibboleths of our global economic system will need to be re-evaluated with an open mind. Chief among these is the neoliberal ideology. Free-market fundamentalism has eroded worker rights and economic security, triggered a deregulatory race to the bottom and ruinous tax competition.

http://archive.today/2023.01.02-193731/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-davos-man-cometh/

Categories
Opinion

The nationalised NHS model was doomed from the very start – The Telegraph

If demand for health care is nearly unlimited and cannot be rationed by price, it must be rationed in some other way. The NHS rations through shortages – of staff – and waiting lists. Additional rationing is achieved by those who “do not want to bother the doctor”, often at cost to their health, while large numbers go private, so creating the two-tier health system Bevan hoped to avoid – though he did not use an NHS GP but rather Sir Daniel Davies, physician to George VI.

http://archive.today/2022.11.29-042954/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/28/nationalised-nhs-model-doomed-start/

Categories
Publications

COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria – MDPI

In this article, we aim to develop a political economy of mass hysteria. Using the background of COVID-19, we study past mass hysteria. Negative information which is spread through mass media repetitively can affect public health negatively in the form of nocebo effects and mass hysteria. We argue that mass and digital media in connection with the state may have had adverse consequences during the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting collective hysteria may have contributed to policy errors by governments not in line with health recommendations. While mass hysteria can occur in societies with a minimal state, we show that there exist certain self-corrective mechanisms and limits to the harm inflicted, such as sacrosanct private property rights. However, mass hysteria can be exacerbated and self-reinforcing when the negative information comes from an authoritative source, when the media are politicized, and social networks make the negative information omnipresent. We conclude that the negative long-term effects of mass hysteria are exacerbated by the size of the state.

http://archive.today/2021.02.09-004023/https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1376/htm