In this Institute of Economic Affairs briefing, IEA managing editor Daniel Freeman is joined by his colleague Dr Christopher Snowdon to discuss his new paper, The Capitalist Command Economy, out today. They examine how the Government increasingly directs private companies to meet political targets, on heat pumps, electric vehicles, and food reformulation, while leaving them nominally in private hands.
Snowdon explains how so-called “voluntary agreements” with industry are backed by the implicit threat of regulation, pointing to the ZEV mandate’s fines on car manufacturers and the food reformulation scheme’s sugar and calorie targets. He discusses the Government’s growing suspicion of the price mechanism, from energy bills to rent controls, and cites IEA polling showing the public wildly overestimates supermarket profit margins. The conversation also compares this system to Nazi Germany’s economic model and the FDR-era United States, before turning to post-Brexit farm subsidies and closing on why consumers, not politicians, ultimately decide what succeeds.
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