Attention Economy


Friday, April 30, 2021

A New Battle of Ideas

The new battle of ideas: How an intellectual revolution will reshape society
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/04/new-battle-ideas-how-intellectual-revolution-will-reshape-society
Oxford economist Paul Collier notes:
Just as the Tories are overweight in bankers, Labour is overweight in lawyers, and they seem to regard the main function of the law as protecting minorities from majorities. But the law’s main function is the opposite: to enforce adherence to those common purposes that have been widely agreed by a democratic process, protecting them from free-riding by small but recalcitrant minorities – whether it’s employers that won’t pay the minimum wage, “influencers” peddling hate speech or crooks peddling drugs. Sometimes the law needs to protect people from the state, but again primarily this is about protecting the majority from state capture by well- connected insiders trying to impose their own agenda on everyone else. The law should be restraining the power of lobbies”.