Power in Marketing:

A Broadly Dimensional Approach

© John Desmond

First published, October, 2025

Grianan Publishing,

John’s Brae,

Shrove, ROI, F93E7R9

Cover design, “Feeding Frenzy” © Jean Hall

Chapter Five: Some Consequences of Neoliberalism

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to open up discussion of some important issues arising from the last chapter. One question concerns the extent to which the market has been the engine for prosperity, as the veritable goose that lays the golden eggs? This can seem obvious, for instance, if one takes the crude measure that the world population has grown eightfold under its provenance. On the other hand, it is impossible to separate out capitalism from modernism as innovations such as the “green revolution” have been enabled as much, if not more, by rapid developments in science and technology, as by the market. While liberals argue that the twin engines of the market and the business corporation have produced unprecedented growth and prosperity, one can delve further to reveal a more complex and troubling story, particularly relating to the extent to which the relative historical prosperity enjoyed by Europe and the USA relative to the rest of the world been due to the market. Additionally, given the huge increase in financial markets, the question arises as to what value is produced by them?

Other questions discussed relate to,

the ‘trickle-down’ theory used as the basis to justify the accumulation of vast wealth on the basis that as the rich become ever richer, a proportion of their wealth will be transferred to the poor.

the unbridled growth of the mega-corporation, which is one of the most important developments of the past sixty years. While the existence of these behemoths is now a given, the question arises as to how this was allowed to happen and also if things might have turned out differently?

the gap between political rhetoric, policy and implementation. A brief look at some events of the past fifty years in the UK reveals a typical pattern of saying one thing whilst doing another and of the sometimes beneficial, sometimes negative role, of unintended consequences.

the effects on social reproduction and equality of living in a world that continues to be informed by rhetorics of choice and meritocracy. For instance, what are the practical consequences for people where freedom of choice is a mantra and where Gary Becker’s revised notion of rationality as a consistent set of preferences has been realised?

A movement from corruption in the neoliberal era to kleptocracy today.

The Market as Engine of Prosperity?

It is germane in light of current calls to ‘Make (America, Britain, India, Hungary, Russia ..and so on ad nauseum) Great Again’, to enquire whether any of these entities apart from the first, ever actually achieved greatness off their own bat in the first place, or whether such stories are myths. While in England this call is often associated with jingoistic nativism, colonialism and nostalgia for an imperial past, it is also tied up with the idea that progress and riches developed from the “free” market principles that enabled an enthusiastic class of strivers to devote themselves to industry and accumulation on this earth as a sign of their heavenly dispensation and grace, which had the unintended spillover effect of benefiting all.

The Liberal Era

Norman (2018) claims that the linked developments of the market system and the corporation led to an upsurge in economic development, wealth and social progress unparalleled in human history, increasing real per capita income in Europe, North America and the Far-East by a factor of thirty since the seventeenth century.¹ Deirdre McCloskey (2010) argues along similar lines that entirely too much attention has been paid by critics to capitalist accumulation, instead summoning attention to what he calls the “Great Enrichment” that occurred from 1500-1800, driven by the rising bourgeoisie class which effectively undermined the highly stratified class system and unleashed the wave of creativity and innovation that drove progress. Renata Salecl (2011) supplements the argument by Max Weber, that the Calvinist ideal of self-mastery acted as the dynamic motor that drove the progress of early capitalism, adding that this was further popularized in the Victorian era by avid consumption of “rags to riches” stories featuring Horatio Alger, a shadow of which persists in the neoliberal description of the “responsibilized’ individual as manager of their own capital.²

Related to the above it has been argued that changes in the direction of the free market and rising prosperity motivated the development of a gradually more enlightened sensibility that eventually saw legislation banning the slave trade in Britain in 1807, the emancipation of slaves in 1833, abolition of the protectionist Corn Laws in 1846 and the Navigation Acts that protected the mercantilist system, in 1849. That these developments cannot be put down to market forces is, “contrary to popular belief’, as free-market policies have only occasionally followed in Western economies since Smith’s death over two hundred years ago.³ Norman’s account accords with findings by Thomas Piketty (2021) who found that free trade was only taken seriously as a subject for discussion in Britain (and in other European countries) after the point when its dominant position in the market was unassailable. Piketty explains that the origin of Europe’s wealth and power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not based on the “free” market but rather on a regime of high taxes, colonial exploitation, slavery, and protectionism.

While Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) had argued for low taxes, balanced budgets, respect for property rights and the development of unified and competitive markets, Piketty reminds us that it was many years before his ideas took hold and the situation of exploitation and protectionism remained largely unchanged until the mid-nineteenth century. For instance, throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British Parliament imposed massive tariffs on textiles from India in order to protect its indigenous cotton industry built on the back of slave colonies located in the West Indies, Brazil and the American South. It has thus been argued that the system of enslavement provided the capital for the Industrial Revolution and moreover, that its abolition had more to do with economic calculation than morality (Williams, 1944; Scanlan, 2011). Against the general current of thought in his day, Adam Smith had criticised slavery on moral grounds, at broadly the same time when luminaries such as John Locke, known by some as the father of human rights, himself held enslaved people.⁴ Given that at the time slaves were understood as commodities equivalent to sacks of coal or bags of potatoes, Smith contended that there was a calculative edge to supposedly moral decisions. For instance he caustically commented that, ‘The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property, such a resolution could never have been agreed to.’⁵ Smith offered brutally hard-headed reasons for the abolition of slavery, arguing for instance, that, the, “wear and tear” of a slave costs much more than a free servant so all in all, free servants are cheaper than are slaves.⁶ Allen (2021) agrees with Smith’s contention that slave owners were motivated by a purely economic logic in giving up their slaves, for which they were richly compensated, at a time when it was cheaper to hire free indentured labour, a hard-headed reality dressed up in the clothes of high moral sensibility.

In case the foregoing might induce a feeling of smug superiority in today’s reader Scanlan (2011, 2016) points out that the tentacles of the slave society continued to reach far into society in Victorian Britain, long after Smith wrote. He draws a striking parallel with the situation of the investor today, providing a cautionary tale for those who criticize the likes of John Locke, perhaps a critical academic enrolled into a well-diversified University pension portfolio, by noting that many slave-owners never visited their plantations and simply checked reports of their balances and returns from their holdings. Crude estimates suggest that there are more slaves today than at any other time in history, a fact we surely must be aware of but perhaps choose to forget or ignore as something that is beyond our capability to address.⁷ Or perhaps we just don’t care!

While Piketty explains that it was only by the mid-nineteenth century that Britain began to adopt a less protectionist policy, Peel’s move to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws in 1846 was motivated by the need to relieve the fallout from the appalling potato famine in Ireland that threatened to destabilize the entire Union. Fraser describes the nineteenth century as the period of liberal capitalism during which economies were constructed and where production and exchange began to appear to operate autonomously through the balancing of supply with demand. A better name, she suggests, is free trade imperialism, as this was gained at the price of the large-scale exploitation of wage labour at home, and of the plunder of colonial dependencies overseas.⁸

The situation in the USA was little different to that which prevailed in Britain. Norman quotes Robert Chandler that in the century leading up to 1965 that, ‘there were ten years of competition and ninety years of oligopoly”⁹. Indeed, it was only after the Second World War that the USA, now clearly in the driving seat as the global hegemon, began cautiously to lower trade barriers. Moreover, writing before the imposition of tariffs by the regime of Trump 47¹⁰, he argues that to describe the USA as a free market even then was ‘distinctly quaint’ given the complex regime of tariffs on manufacturing and agriculture, laws on investment. Fraser (2018) describes the period after the establishment of the Bretton-Woods system of capital controls at the end of the Second World War, as state-managed capitalism, involving investment in infrastructure and education. In her account the end of state-managed capitalism was presaged in 1971, with the ending of Bretton-Woods, which left nation states open to the discipline of finance capital. This started a period of transition to the era of finance capitalism we live under today, which is a zombie institution, in that it is theoretically dead but for all practical purposes, very much alive.

That capitalism is a dynamic and sinuous system, forming a complex web of relations with contemporaneous movements in thought and action is possibly most evident in its accommodation what today is known as communism. While the Chinese Communist Party’s view is that given its overarching control, the country is not capitalist, it can be hard to tell the difference. According to one commentator the consumer goods market in China is now larger than that in the USA and there are more billionaires, but no capital gains tax, no social security net and higher levels of inequality.¹¹ Added to which, it seems that through organizations such as China Sonangol, the regime has been neither reticent nor slow in digging into what Burgis refers to as the “looting machine” of African resources.¹²

The Neoliberal Era

From the 1980s onwards, neo-conservative governments reversed policies of progressive taxation and redefined relationships with the global South. Large multinational corporations and affluent minorities took this change in policy as a vehicle to cut costs by hiring cheap labour, avoiding tax and evading regulations. Neoliberal ideas were promoted and indeed enforced by the IMF and World Bank through “structural adjustment programmes” informed by the Washington Consensus. Consequently, governments across large swathes of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa were subjected to disciplines of shrinking the state, budget austerity and deregulation. In the UK, a nascent “shareholder democracy”, was created through privatisation of nationalised industries to citizens who applied for shares. This reached its zenith in in the notorious and ultimately scandalous foray by Harvard University into the post-Soviet economy.¹³

Opening up to global competition had winners and losers. There is little doubt that the expansion of the global market has raised the living standards for millions. One of the key Millennium Development Goals devised by the United Nations was to eradicate world poverty by 2015.¹⁴ Although this goal was not reached, definite progress had been made between 1990 and 2015, when an estimated two billion people were removed from the category of low human development and one billion from crushing poverty. This impressive figure was tempered by the related fact that half of workers and their families in developing countries continued to survive on less than four dollars a day and eight-hundred million on less than two dollars a day. Trentmann (2016) contends that Indian peasants were glad to be referred to as customers as this afforded them a sense of recognition they would otherwise have lacked. Moreover, he points to the success of consumer politics that developed in the context of weak state control and how consumer groups organized to challenge the state when basic services such as electricity failed¹⁵. He suggests that the effects of neoliberalism on India have been double-edged in that choice and competition have superseded Gandhi’s values self-sufficiency and ascetism, yet that Gandhi’s spirit persists in calls for social inclusion and the call of the poor in 2007 to stand up for their rights as consumers.¹⁶

During the same period once prosperous areas in the UK and Europe were reduced to rustbelts. Steel production in the USA and the UK hit a peak in 1970 and gradually softening relations with China led to the transfer of production overseas, with no plan put in place to soften the blow to local communities. Consequently, in 2016 China produced eight times more steel than Japan, India and the USA and one hundred times more than the UK.¹⁷ The decline of the UK textile and clothing industry began from 1945 when it became subjected to competition from abroad. The industry later enjoyed a measure of protection through the Multifibre Arrangement signed in 1973, which established quotas that were subsequently deemed contrary to the principles laid down by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This led to an interim phase allowing some protections to remain in place from 1995, “to allow exporters and importers to adjust’, with full integration to GATT rules in 2005. The industry had been sheltered by the presence of Marks and Spencer, a dominant retailer that prided itself on its relationships with UK manufacturers. Overall, with the exception of Italy, the industry declined sharply across Europe from the 1990s.¹⁸

Middle-class wealth also in fell in Western Europe with the temporary drop in the value of housing, whilst the value of stocks flatlined. Additionally, although productivity in developed countries rose consistently from the 1980s, this was not met by corresponding increases in real wages, which stagnated. Poverty rates remained high in the USA, averaging 14% but rising to 18% for children and 30% for blacks.¹⁹ Median wealth in the USA “plummeted over the years such that by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969” (Wolf, 2012), while in contrast, the financial crash benefitted rich stockholders, with one percent of the population taking 95% of the growth in the US economy.²⁰

It can be hard to believe statements that in the UK hunger is a bigger problem than it has been for the past fifty years²¹. Before the Millennium you could count the number of food banks on the fingers of one hand, while now there are thousands. Launched in the UK in 2010, the food bank is now a fixture in every local community, involving thousands of volunteers collecting, storing and distributing over three million food bags annually. A recent claim that seven million people live with food insecurity which has been exacerbated as inflation exceeds rises in benefit allowances. The food bank ‘industry’ has since expanded to include ‘clothes banks’, ‘hygiene banks’, ‘heating banks’ and seemingly inevitably, ‘multi-banks’.

At least one group must have been thriving under capitalism and indeed it seems that investors have had it good. The market has generated extraordinary returns for investors, with one dollar invested in 1900 worth in 2024 terms in the USA, $107,409 ($2,911 in real terms) or in the UK, $53, 980 ($690 in real terms).²² Laying aside questions pertaining to the environmental and social damage done in its name, such growth has been anything but smooth. While since 2000, the average return on equities was 3.5%, this has masked huge volatility, swinging from returns of over 10% in fourteen years to negative growth over eleven years. Indeed the dotcom crash of March 2000 led to a real term loss of 49 percent such that it took until October 2006 for investors to recoup losses and between March 2007 and March 2009 equities fell by 47% in real terms. The authors of the report note drily that “good investment decisions based on sensible criteria sometimes can have disappointing outcomes”²³ and that given volatility, the much vaunted “long-run” can be a very long time indeed.²⁴ As John Plender²⁵ argues the cycle of boom and bust is repeating itself as I write as the crazy market bubble that has built up through 2025 makes a nonsense of the efficient market hypothesis that the market is always correctly priced. In years to come people may scratch their heads over the feverish race propelled by FOMO that developed around Nvidia and crypto “assets”, just as they recently did over historic examples such as the South Sea Bubble and Tulip Fever.

There’s Many A Slip: When (Neoliberal) ideas hit the (Policy) road.

In what will be cold comfort for those involved, according to Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (2025), the Thacher government neither intended to “accidentally” destroy the British manufacturing base through the imposition of crippling interest rates, nor to unleash the financial power of private home ownership, of which more later. There is no doubt about the deep and lasting influence exerted by neoliberal ideas on politicians of all stripes as reflected in the policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank. Milton Friedman was adviser to Nixon and Reagan, Robert Lucas’s ideas were promulgated widely amongst central bankers, Gary Becker was on the advisory board of the CATO Institute, a right-wing think tank, and Patrick Minford was a close adviser of Margaret Thatcher. That said, it is worth noting that few academic theories survive the passage to policy formation, legislative approval and implementation unscathed, given they are subject to scrutiny and are appropriated to fit the vision of whomsoever seeks to promote them. Most are radically changed and even following legislation when policy levers are pulled, there may be little traction as they may not be linked to real engagement on the ground. To determine in retrospect whether or not a particular policy was successful or not is difficult, not least because words may live long on the lips of the politicians long after the policies they signify have failed.

The aims of the Thatcher government in the UK that came to power in 1979 were to reduce the size of the state and to privatize nationalised industries; to create a culture of self-reliant individuals based on small business enterprise and responsibility; to ensure ‘sound money’; promote home-ownership; and to cultivate a ‘shareholder democracy. In the UK the justification for the introduction of market principles by privatising public services was that overmanned, loss-making industries would be transformed into customer-centred enterprises and overall, the system would become leaner and more efficient.²⁶ According to Parker (2004), it was ‘far from clear’ that UK politicians at the time understood the economic arguments for privatisation, and a subsequent review found little evidence that performance had improved and indeed in some industries it had declined (Martin & Parker, 1997). The authors argue that each industry is structurally different and additional factors include the effectiveness of regulation and the intensity of competition. While generally prices in utilities such as the electricity market declined in real terms these rose substantially in the less competitive water industry. The labour force shrank and although service quality was generally maintained, a widening gap opened up between the pay of skilled and unskilled workers as industries de-unionised. Profits rose, leading to huge rises in renumeration packages for senior management. Parker offers two main reasons as to why some of the aims of privatization failed to materialize. Firstly, quasi-markets are not real markets and companies unsurprisingly focused more on hitting targets than on satisfying their customers. Secondly, whether mindful of Friedman’s argument that the sole responsibility of business is to its shareholders, under a benign regime of lax regulation, customers lost out as utilities paid out billions in dividends to their shareholders whilst neglecting their core responsibilities.²⁷ In relation to the water industry this became clear to when those swimming in the once pristine waters of Lake Windermere or surfed the beaches of the south coast of England discovered that they were up to their necks in a sea of effluent.

In relation to ‘sound’ money, the UK Thatcher government and the incoming Reagan administration in the USA were committed to monetarism. The policy advocated by Milton Friedeman was informed by the quantity theory of money, one of the oldest economic doctrines that once undergirded arguments for the preservation of the gold standard.²⁸ For conservatives this offered a compelling alternative to Keynesian-style interventions that had failed to curb rapidly rising inflation in the 1970s. The solution seemed simple, neatly summed in Irving Fisher’s equation of exchange MV = PT which posits that if money is made scarce, then purchasing power will rise and inflation will fall. In the USA, monetarist policy was initiated by the Carter administration in 1979 through the appointment of the monetarist Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Later, under the auspices of the Reagan regime, Volcker abruptly switched horses from controlling the growth of money, to ruthlessly squashing inflation and investment by raising interest rates to 22%. In the UK, the monetarist experiment was similarly brief, described by Margaret Thatcher’s private secretary for economic affairs as, “one of the most unsatisfactory episodes of economic policy-making of modern times’, a fact to which the ‘iron lady’ stubbornly refused to admit.²⁹

Following the failure of monetarism, despite massive government spending on defence, rather than giving way to Keynesian, the fortunes of neoliberalism were revived in the US by the wide dissemination of Lucas’s argument that the market alone can reach an optimum solution if firms and consumers are allowed to get on with acting rationally in their self-interest without outside interference from the state. That markets are always in equilibrium because individuals maximise their lifetime utility, seemed persuasive to policy makers given it was based on complex mathematics and thus carried an aura of scientific rigour. It also constituted a clear warning to government, to laisser-faire, or steer clear. This potent myth avers that intervention in markets is dangerous as when left to itself the market will self-correct. Proponents cite Adam Smith as the originator of this idea on the grounds that he argued that markets are dynamic, as they are responsive to the price mechanism which incentivizes producers to make no more than consumers’ demand. In this view, when left to its own, the market should re-balance and gravitate towards a “natural price”. In such conditions, competition is supposed to act as the spur to keep profits to a minimum, which is desirable in a rich country, although the equilibrium or balancing point will constantly change as the market shifts. Norman argues that Smith recognized ‘of course markets are often not free, calm or competitive’, attacking the behaviour of the large merchants of his day who connived to conspire against their customers and to keep wages low for labourers.³⁰ Thus Smith was alive to the fact that the market will only sometimes be in equilibrium and additionally, he was well aware of the pernicious influence of producers on the government of his day.

According to Alan Blinder, once vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, it would be a step too far to conflate neoliberal rhetoric such as the above with the conduct of actual policy on the ground.³¹ Blinder, who was involved in policy formation for years, argues that despite their enthusiastic espousal of neoliberal ideas, policy makers often chose to ignore them and there were large swings in policy from one administration to the next. For instance, he describes how Alan Greenspan who was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank during the Clinton era and an acolyte of Ayn Rand, tolerated the administration’s use of fiscal policy over a period of almost twenty years. Blinder blamed the “grotesque” Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007/8 - which Robert Lucas had once argued could never happen - on two causes; the egregious misbehaviour of individuals and firms in the financial markets; and the disastrous failure of successive governments to regulate the sector, pointing to the continuing influence of Lucas’s argument for ‘laissez-faire’.³²

Blinder concludes from the massive bailout of financial institutions that happened after 2008, that when the chips are down it is Keynesianism that will ride to the rescue. According to Geoff Mann, this underestimates the extent to which “new” Keynesian thinking has incorporated neoliberal ideas such as the rational expectations hypothesis .³³ There has since been a distinctive “chop and change” approach to policy as a consequence of ideological divisions between different parties and because governments are riven by internal disputes between free marketers and technocrats. For instance, while the ideas of Kahneman and Thaler cut through to the highest levels with the establishment of “nudge” units in the US and the UK,³⁴ the US nudge unit was disbanded by Trump-45 and the UK Cameron government partially privatised the UK behavioural insights team it had established.

A second strand of the Thatcher vision was the creation of a ‘shareholder democracy’ comprising ‘investor citizens’, acting as mini-capitalists who would build and maximise their portfolios. The policy succeeded to the extent that millions of citizens availed of lucrative inducements to purchase shares in telecommunications, water and electricity at knock-down rates. However, this was a far cry from those involved starting to build portfolios and actively trading in the market. As one author described the outcome, rather than creating a society of ‘investor citizens’ consisting of small business entrepreneurs and investors, these individuals became ‘investor consumers’ of products offered by major financial services and insurance companies thus increasing the size and power of these institutions.³⁵

While home ownership was another ideal shared by the Thatcher administration in 1979, the government initially had no intention of stimulating the market by allowing banks to move into the mortgage market. Recognising that banks might try to enter the lucrative mortgage market which had up until then been a cartel, if it abolished exchange controls, the Chancellor urged the banks to refrain from doing so. The government abolished exchange controls - and the banks promptly ignored his plea and pressed ahead to enter the market. An insider commented that at the time Thatcher, ‘discovered to her surprise, that the rapid expansion of mortgage credit, and house price inflation, was a solution and not a problem’.³⁶ Those in the fortunate position to buy felt rich using equity release to engage on a spending spree on furnishings, home-improvements and durables, thus relieving the government from the need to borrow to stimulate the economy, “Keynesianism had been privatised’.³⁷ However it might be argued that this act along with the 1980 Right to Buy scheme, which allowed tenants of social housing to purchase the homes they lived in at low prices, formed the foundation for the property based rentier capitalism of today, when almost three million individuals are landlords.

Finance Capital

The finance sector played a central role in the development of markets in the twentieth century. Stuart Ewen (1976) writes of the allure of consumer credit for early consumers who were promised that they could realize their dreams right now, only to be subjected to the disciplinary power of constant indebtedness. Dholakia (2012) provides an overview of the growth of finance capital in the USA from the instalment plans of the early 1900s to the maxed-out credit cards today. Yet as noted by Mazzucato (2018), until the 1970s, the financial sector was not included in estimates of GDP as it was considered unproductive, because it acted merely as a distributor of funds and not as a creator of value. Karl Marx located finance in the circulation sector as a catalyst that transforms money capital into production capital. In his scheme, because all value is created by productive labour, financiers do not create value but take a portion of the surplus value created by producers. Although marginal economists disagreed with Marx on just about everything else, they broadly shared the idea that financial services are unproductive. However, following extensive lobbying by the industry, deregulation in the early 1970s ensured that where they once counted for nothing, the activities of banks came to be included in national accounts.

One thing that Margaret Thatcher did intend to do, according to Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (2025), was to “unleash the entrepreneurial spirit” of the City of London following “Big Bang” in 1986. This decision is best understood in the context of changes in the international context which ended, ‘an elaborate network of exchange controls, withholding taxes, barriers to foreign entry, restrictions on novel forms of financial instruments and direct controls on overseas investment.’³⁸ What value does finance capital create? In January 2024, one year before Donald Trump was elected for a second term, the Bretton Woods Committee reported two pieces of related news. On the one hand financial markets were “euphoric”, boosted by prospects for AI and the profits of some US companies which had grown by 8.6%, while on the other, they noted a “negative output gap” in relation to the real economy which grew by just 1.2% in January.³⁹ According to one estimate the global markets in 2024 amounted to over one quadrillion dollars of which commodities such as tea and pork bellies, amounted to $3.7 trillion dollars. Put it another way, the total value was over $1000,000,000,000,000 of which commodities were 3,700,000,000,000.⁴⁰ I must admit that I am more or less completely stumped, not only by such incomprehensible figures that like the concept of light years, are beyond my ken, but also by exotic products such as Synthetic Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs), Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLOs) and Credit Default Swaps (CDS’s). Fears of my stupidity were somewhat mollified but my anxiety increased when I learned from reading Liar’s Poker (1989) and The Big Short (2010) that most of those people who actually deal in these products tend to be vain, inglorious and rather stupid. This does not make one sleep easier in one’s bed, especially given the news that the value of the world crypto market had reached $3 trillion in November 2023, rising to $4 trillion by mid-July, 2025.

What is it about financialization? Since the mid-1980s there has been a move away by those in financial services from a personal understanding of their customers and the bricks and mortar of their businesses towards abstraction, technological innovation, quantitative modelling and increasing intermediation. The economist John Kay mentions that even back in 1995 when he attended a Board meeting of the Halifax building society, then the world’s largest mortgage lender, it was proposed that the Treasury function should not just serve the needs of the business by taking deposits from savers and lending to home-buyers but should expand its activities by trading in the money markets. Given that the aggregate value of debt securities and currencies is fixed, lending this activity the quality of a zero-sum game, Kay asked bluntly who would lose the money the Halifax would make? A master of understatement, Kay described the reaction of the Board as “not quite polite” and how he was “re-educated” that Halifax would make more money because its traders were smarter!⁴¹ Kay was of course right, presaging the doom spiral that Halifax was subsequently caught up in following its merger with the Bank of Scotland.

Mazzucato (2018) argues that the financialization of modern capitalism is dysfunctional. As a consequence of de-regulation, trade in financial instruments is many times today greater than the trade in products. She argues that finance capitalists act as rent seekers, using their position as intermediaries to extract a significant share of revenue without playing an active role in production or job creation. Rent is extracted in the difference between the fees of asset managers and the actual risks they face, in the activities of private equity funds that load their acquisitions with debt, and through the proliferation of hedge funds and credit default swaps.

The next two diagrammes aim to illustrate some of the complexities involved. In the following, (A) depicts the situation where producers and consumers transact in a local marketplace while (B) illustrates the more abstract situation where wholesalers play a key role, adding value by sorting, storing, packaging and distributing produce to retailers.

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The diagram on the left-hand-side shows the simplest situation where farmers and customers transact in local markets whereas that on the right-hand-side describes the more remote situation where the customer visits a supermarket. As discussed in chapter three academics from the Wisconsin School were particularly concerned to study the power in the retail sector, particularly that which enabled large intermediaries to dictate terms to farmers and consumers.

The next diagramme illustrates part of the complex web of financial transactions that can be involved which themselves create zero value.⁴²

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For Perry Anderson (2025), the neoliberal order has had its day and is irredeemably broken; “Everywhere the scene is one of instability, insecurity, unpredictability… All is disorder under the heavens.⁴³ In response to the 2008 financial crash and Covid, government resorted with policies “that were anathema to its doctrine.” Since then, excepting China, GDP has fallen and incomes have remained flat as economies float precariously on a surging sea of debt . Anderson notes that since then debt-fuelled GFC of 2008 public debt in the United States tripled, rising by seventeen trillion dollars in the period to 2024, “an increase equivalent to that in the past 240 years”, while in the OECD, total sovereign debt that stood at $28 trillion in 2008 had risen to $56 trillion in 2024. Moreover, the international regime that inn 2008 had almost drowned in the sea of debt it had created, ‘is drenching itself with a still larger flood of debt, with no end in sight’. Sooner rather than later there will be a momentous shock to the system.

The Rise and Rise of the Mega-Corporation

As mentioned in chapter one, the paradox at the heart of consumer power is that while as an individual one may feel isolated and disempowered, millions of people making independent choices can unknowingly exert power over any corporation, no matter how large. That is the logic of the market. On the other hand, if the choice is between Amazon or Amazon, what kind of choice is that? Given the influence and the animosity expressed by anarcho-liberals and neo-libertarians towards ‘bigness’ mentioned in the last chapter, how was it that these corporations managed to reach the size they have attained today which is preposterous, even by the standards of the early twentieth century? Robert Dahl (1989) who expressed concern thirty and more years ago over the threat posed to democracy by the growing power of multinational corporations would no doubt be extremely concerned today. There has been much talk of “Bigness” in the media in recent years, about the power of Big Tobacco, Big Tech, Big Sugar, Big Pharma and so on. “Bigness” is of social concern today, not only for anti-capitalists but for liberals who fear the pernicious threat of these unaccountable and undemocratic entities to the basis of our fragile democracy. Reading through papers by critical marketing academics I have been struck that participants can seem to be bothered more by the size and remoteness of corporations than by the more abstract notion of capitalism.⁴⁴

Dahl argued that the growing size and lack of accountability of business poses a direct threat to democratic institutions arguing that the corporate leviathans of his time and the individuals who managed and owned them were beyond the legal jurisdiction and reach of the nation-state. He argued for the introduction of industrial democracy in order to make them more accountable, with the bonus that this would also bolster equality within society by distributing profits more widely and helping to flatten the otherwise huge differentials in income between those best and worst paid in the corporation (Dahl, 1985: 106). Moreover, as is discussed further in the next chapter, he argued that property rights should be subservient to the protection of the integrity of the democratic process on the grounds that that large corporations are in principle public because they have social goals, questions about which are matters for discussion and collective determination in the public forum by processes that satisfy the criteria of procedural democracy.⁴⁵

The size and scale of firms within industries today such as FAANG dwarf those of Dahl’s time with assets larger than the GDP of many countries, a concentration wealth of such vast proportions that contemporary authors concur with Dahl that they threaten the democratic basis of society (Zuboff, 2019). It is common to believe that no matter how diverse their locations, nor how many thousands of individuals they employ, these MNCs are discrete organizations. However, as Gucci (2022) points out, despite that these corporations act as unitary entities informed by a central guiding mission, objectives and strategy, they do not exist as entities in law. As discussed more fully in the next chapter there is a fundamental difference between corporate and legal entities (Robé, 2016). Some, such as Coca Cola engage in supplier-dealer franchises in each of the territories in which the operate, enabling the corporation to transfer blame for negative issues that arise onto locals.⁴⁶ Amazon, which is owned by a number of entities, including its founder Jeff Bezos employs one million five-hundred thousand employees and has over one hundred subsidiaries. Even an integrated firm such as the oil giant Total has nine hundred subsidiaries and affiliates each of which is a separate legal entity and so subject to the specific laws of the jurisdiction in which it is incorporated. Such is the legal complexity, that even laying aside the massive resources commanded by these organizations which include entire teams of legal experts that can be deployed against those whom they deem a threat, it is incredibly difficult for others to take these corporations to task.

In light of the above, given the size and lack of accountability of these massive corporations, it is pertinent to ask how, if liberals such as Adam Smith held free market competition between a plurality of firms in such high regard, have such behemoths came into being? The accumulation of the power of large corporations and industries strikes as odd given Adam Smith’s scathing criticism of the corrupt, self-serving mercantilist system of his time, for which he prescribed the antidote of free-market competition. Given this, one might have thought that a robust system of law was quickly enacted to regulate national and cross-national markets to ensure a robust and fair competitive arena, comprising many players. Yet over one hundred years after publication of Wealth of Nations, the US regulatory system was so lax that oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller was able to gain control of the entire oil and railroad industries. Driven by a ruthless quest for efficiency, Rockefeller was accused of ruining competitors by engaging in predatory pricing through reducing the price of kerosene below the average industry cost. A difficulty for regulators, which many will recognize today, was that the corporate structure of Standard Oil was so complex that it was almost impossible for investigators to understand its operation. Following years of litigation, the courts ordered Standard Oil to dissolve in 1882, but continued trading regardless, forcing Congress to legislate to curb its activities. A demonstration of Rockefeller’s command of resources was that while The Sherman Antitrust Act came into force in 1890, it was only in 1910 that Standard Oil was finally broken up.

One might argue that the Sherman Act fell short of Adam Smith’s aim in that it did not ban monopolies outright but rather introduced the “rule of reason” according to which it is permissible for a firm to dominate a market so long as its actions are considered to be fair and in the public interest. The US position on competition law is influential, not only on account of its considerable economic power, but because it was the first to legislate. It was only in the 1990s that antitrust laws became widespread around the world such that today around half of its countries have established a regulatory institution. In the country of Smith’s birth, competition was regulated by common law until 1948 and only became codified in 1998. While there are few studies of the effectiveness of regulation, that by Petersen (2011) of 154 countries, spanning the period from 1964 to 2007, found that the presence of an anti-trust institution in a given country improves that country’s economic growth, although it has no effect on democracy.

Robert Bork: Influence on the Regulatory Environment

The following discussion refers to some fairly detailed legal references which provide context for a complex series of arguments. In the USA, the Sherman Act (1890) classified antitrust offences into two categories. Horizontal antitrust offences involve two or more competitors who collude to set the market price of a product that each company produces. Vertical antitrust actions on the other hand, involve price-fixing within a supply-chain, between manufacturers, suppliers and distributors. For instance, in a US vertical antitrust case conducted in 1947, the lessor of patented salt-dispensing machines agreed to lease its machines so long as lessees used the lessor’s salt. The Supreme Court followed the principle established by the Sherman Act to find that tying sales of salt to those of the machines was illegal and effectively created a monopoly (Carlton & Waldman, 2014: S123). Until the 1960s the prevailing view of the US courts was of inhospitality to vertical and horizontal arrangement, that ‘Big is Bad”.

While it is unusual to single out one individual as the main influence for the creation of the vast concentration of economic power we see around us today, the jurist Robert Bork stands out as a candidate. Bork, a graduate of the Chicago School criticized US court judgements on competition law in the 1960s, by arguing that the law should be based on knowledge of market principles. Bork believed that markets are always efficient and argued that interpretations of the Sherman Act by the courts had led to judgements that protected inefficient business and thus damaged the interests of consumers. In this he had an unlikely ally in the figure of Ralph Nader, who was a champion for consumer rights.

Bork’s arguments were summarised in The Antitrust Paradox (Bork, 1978). In relation to the case of the salt machine manufacturer discussed above, Bork insisted that this was not a monopoly and that it was more likely that by tying sales of salt machines to salt, the market would become more efficient. He further argued that in the case of such complementary products, even if there is market power in the tying product, the tie should not be regarded as an antitrust violation because it creates no additional market power in the tied-goods market.

In 1979, the US Supreme Court accepted Bork’s argument that the Sherman Act is centrally about protecting the consumer. The focus then shifted from that of protecting a multiplicity of small business competitors to one of operational efficiency. Bork agreed that horizontal agreements should generally be regarded as anti-competitive, but that most vertical agreements are likely to act in the interests of efficiency. This effectively reversed the longstanding practice since the Sherman Act of “Big is Bad”, under which vertical agreements were illegal. From the 1970s onwards, the US courts adopted the perspective that tying is never anticompetitive and should never be regarded as an antitrust violation Practices engaged in by a number of businesses from Seely mattresses to car manufacturers which tied regional dealerships to the company and would once have been illegal, were now regarded as legitimate.

Bork exerted enormous influence on judgements made in competition law in the USA and beyond. Matthews (2012), argues that without Bork the old rule of inhospitality to big business would still be in force and so there would be no Dotcom and so no FAANG, as the World Wide Web as we know it is dominated by economies of scale. As an example of his influence, from the 1990s, judgements allowed agreements on resale price maintenance between a manufacturer and its authorized dealers, a practice that had been banned since 1911. In later years Bork shifted the basis of his argument. He had earlier argued against the view that tying can leverage a monopoly position in the tying market into the market for the tied good and that tying can reduce production and distribution costs, such that if it raised efficiency, there could be no antitrust violation. However, in United States vs. Microsoft Corporation (2001) he contended that Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system did not create a monopoly of the browser market but rather acted to preserve Microsoft’s Windows monopoly. His argument rested on his belief that Netscape, when coupled with Sun Microsystems Java language could be developed as a substitute for Windows, thus constituting a threat to the Windows monopoly. He thus argued that Microsoft acted to preserve and not extend a monopoly position and so it had acted illegally as it constituted an attempt to preserve an existing monopoly position. For those interested I next provide a summary of the background to the case.

United States vs. Microsoft Corporation (2001)

At a time when many markets, not least that of IT are dominated by a few huge players, it is understandable for individuals to believe that antitrust laws are not working. The cases taken by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and then the Department of Justice (DOJ) against the Microsoft Corporation are illustrative. Although Tim Berners Lee had released the World Wide Web onto the internet in 1991, it was only in 1993 that Microsoft got its own internet server. The launch of the Netscape Navigator browser came as a shock to Microsoft, as Netscape quickly achieved a 90% share of the market. Microsoft responded in 1995 by developing its inhouse browser, Internet Explorer (IE) which was bundled with Windows, so that it became the default option for all PC users. By 2000, IE had a 95% market share and Netscape had gone. Microsoft succeeded in ruining Netscape but in the process it almost caused its own demise, as its actions precipitated a series of anti-trust actions.

Microsoft became the target for American regulators in the early 1990s for operating a monopoly, (the company had a 95% share of the INTEL based PC market) by tying a diverse range of software into its Windows operating system. Microsoft refused to release information to other software developers enabling them to develop software to run on Windows. The FTC investigation was dropped after a couple of years but was replaced by a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation that resulted in a major legal battle, the upshot of which was that in 2000 AD, a court ruling held that Microsoft should be split into an operating system business and an application business. However, this was subsequently rejected on appeal and “shortly thereafter, the Department of Justice, recently restaffed with appointments made by the Bush administration announced that it would not pursue its original aim of breaking up Microsoft and also decided to abandon the claim that Microsoft had engaged in illegal tying”.

Despite a broadly similar antitrust policy, the European Commission’s investigation of Microsoft took a different turn. Where the US investigation accused Microsoft of tying its browser to its operating system, the EU investigation, which began in 2000 focused on its tie of the media player. Microsoft was fined €497,196,304. An appeal by Microsoft failed and in 2017 the company was fined an additional €899,000,000 million for failing to comply. Microsoft was also fined €561,000,000 in March 2013 for tying its web browser to its operating system and not acting to remedy this. While these fines may seem huge, they should be weighed against Microsoft’s revenue. Sales in 2017 were reported at 89,950,000,000 and net income at $12,193,000,000, so the $899,000,000 million fine amounted to 1% of turnover and just over 7% of net income for that year. This did little to dent Microsoft’s growth, with reported sales revenue in 2021 of $168,000,000,000 and net income of $61,270,000,000.

Since the Microsoft case, mergers have been allowed to progress with minimal interference from regulators. As a consequence it is argued that in many markets companies have grown so large that they can keep prices high and wages low.⁴⁷ A consequence of the dominant narrative inspired by Bork and others from Harvard, that it is sufficient for the courts to focus on a narrow conception of “consumer welfare” based solely on consumer prices and the internal efficiency of corporations which has enabled them to amass unprecedented power.⁴⁸ According to one critic, “Despite occasional setbacks dominant firms enjoy considerably more freedom to choose pricing, marketing and product development strategies as they wish, without incurring antitrust liability”.⁴⁹

Consequences

Hathaway (2020) argues in a more general sense that central aspects of neoliberal policy such as deregulation, non-intervention, free markets and free trade have augmented the power of corporations at the expense of that of citizens and consumers. For instance, environmental, health, and consumer protection laws that impose costs on corporations have been opposed by politicians who seek to ‘free the wealth creators’, while other regulations that support corporate profitability concerning, for example, bankruptcy law, data trading or corporate confidentiality are left alone or even expanded. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 was the fruit of a successful music industry campaign that put an end to “peer to peer” sharing through sites such as Napster, enabling the launch of products such as the DVD and streaming services such as Youtube and Spotify, which are now accused of making outrageously low payouts to artists.⁵⁰

Section 230 of the US Communication Decency Act, 1996 is a good example of the ability of the legislature ultimately to shape the corporate landscape. Sometimes referred to as the ‘legal backbone of the internet’ this enabled tech companies to grow at an unprecedented rate whilst protecting them from legal action. Together with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, Section 230 rules that with some exceptions, Internet Service Providers hosting content from third parties are not liable for what third-parties post on their platforms. Originally designed to protect a nascent industry, the situation today is quite different as technology corporations are amongst the biggest and most powerful on the planet. A related issue has been the development of a business model that while “free’ at the point of use is driven by selling ‘data exhaust’ to advertisers and maximising advertising revenue while by employing engagement-based rankings and complex algorithms, where content is prioritized based on how users interact with it. Coupled with the spread of harmful and malicious content by third parties, this has become particularly worrisome, particularly with respect to its effect on children and young adults. At time of writing Section 230 protection was upheld with respect to Google and Twitter (X) by the US Supreme Court. While the parents of children driven to suicide by harmful content might think otherwise, the decision was praised by others for upholding the principle of free speech.⁵¹

Superabundant Choice

Milton Friedman became the public face of neoliberalism following the publication of Free to Choose (Friedman & Friedman, 1980), the year after the election of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and that in which Ronald Reagan was elected President of the USA. Friedman’s book and accompanying television series popularised the neoliberal project in an accessible manner, elevating individual freedom and choice as the supreme values given the presumption that the consumer is rational and knows what she wants, so that she should be considered responsible as the one best placed to serve her own interests and left in peace to do so, so long she does no harm to others. Friedman argued that while selfishness cannot be got rid of, it can be curtailed through the full operation of the market mechanism. He explained that while a selfish seller may deceive a buyer once and get away with it, with active and lively competition between sellers, the duped party, having learnt their lesson, can and will go elsewhere next time. Freedom of choice has since become a mantra, defining what today seems to be perceived as a universal right. What was once reserved as a luxury for the few is now regarded as a natural expectation in virtually every sphere of life from the economy, to one’s relationships and even one’s personal identity, sexuality and even the choice to legally to determine the time of one’s death.

Given diversity of tastes and preferences it was long assumed that it is better for consumers to have a variety of offerings to choose from. In their television programme the Friedmans illustrated this when on location in a Hong-Kong hot-food market, suggesting that with such a variety of cheap, nutritious food on offer, why would anyone need to cook! Given this assumption it came as something of a surprise when research found that in some situations increasing the diversity of choice can put consumers off while decreasing the assortment can increase the chance they might buy.⁵² One strand of research focused on alignment between offerings.⁵³ In an aligned assortment it is relatively easy to judge between a number of alternatives because they differ on just one important attribute. For example, if one is concerned about the costs of running a motor car, knowing that one car will do 50 mpg while an alternative does 30 mpg will help considerably. Non-alignable differences, where an attribute is possessed by one alternative but not the other, are much more difficult to decide on; for instance where one car has a sunroof and the other has no sunroof but a plush interior. These can lead to information overload and “overchoice”.⁵⁴

Individual consumer choice is today unquestioned in areas of social life that in years gone by were governed by social convention, ranging from women’s right to work, to questions of health sexuality, and even the determination of the time and place of one’s death. Given how large these areas are it is impossible to do justice to the available research. For Elizabeth Salecl, ‘the tyranny of choice’ can be traumatic rather than resulting in happiness as those she describes are plagued by anxiety as to whether they ought to be given a choice in the first place, and when they do make a choice, whether this is in relation to choosing a partner, to have a child, or opt for a particular treatment regime, they have made the correct choice.⁵⁵ With respect to healthcare studies of patients in different countries offer a mixed picture, with some indicating that they would rather leave the choice to the experts, particularly when it comes to serious conditions, whereas others seem to be relatively comfortable with being given a choice.⁵⁶

In the study by Clarke (2007), of the extent to which consumption of public services can be compared to shopping, one of the main differences he discovered was that in the context of social services such as health, social care, tax collection and police services, the user often has no choice but to use the service and does not see themselves as a customer; people need these services because they are usually in need of help of some kind. As an example, a staff member in social care said that by comparison to working in a large supermarket, “I don’t stand by a till giving them a wash-down”.⁵⁷ Users of health care did not like the appellation of “customer”, for example because this implied a “take it or leave it” relationship, like going into a shop and choosing and because the relationship with their doctor is different to that of a shop. Clarke (2007) and Bevir and Trentmann (2007, 8) are critical of those who in their view too readily apply Foucault’s arguments on governmentality to the context of social service consumption, by arguing the need to take into account the role of culture and of individual agency and beliefs in these different contexts. The following case illustrates some of the complexities involved.

“Sammy’s Choice”

Choice has also been extended to those whom the system judges as vulnerable. The following example drawn from the real-life experience of Jim who has been working for ten years as a community support officer, living in sheltered housing with a group of four individuals who have learning disabilities, one of whom is Sammy. He also monitors individuals who live in the community,

Every Monday I sit down with my clients and we work through a shopping list of what to order for the next week. Each client receives money from the State, notionally £300, from which about £100 goes into a communal kitty to support living expenses. Clients have it drummed into them that it is their choice as to what to order, but even those clients with relatively high mental ability have little understanding of the worth of things or what’s in their best interest. One client – lets call him Sammy, insists that he just wants to eat biscuits or crisps and I’ve no right to disagree or intervene, “because it’s my choice”…. It’s hardly a surprise is it that diabetes brought on by obesity is a problem for Sammy.

The allocation of funds to clients is a mystery to Jim, as some have too little while others have far too much. If the sum in a client’s account reaches a ceiling, Jim is told to spend it. Again this is left to client choice. He ruminates that his clients have the feeling that they do have choice,

…but they have bugger all choice anyway, because otherwise they’d be institutionalised. This is all they have known. They couldn’t survive without support from family and state. They get paid benefits but the brother might get them, or the parents will use the mobility car paid for by the state or use the money to decorate the house. Some will run their clients, even the high ability ones to the bank terminal the moment their money arrives. But the notion that, “it’s my choice, my right”, is drummed into them. Sammy gets all his money from PIPs and it builds in his account until he is ineligible for payments and we are told he has to spend the money. He didn’t understand this but as carers we had to get his money down. He then decided it was his choice he was buying a telephone every week. Then he started buying electric toothbrushes, then TVs and then a sitting-up chair, then a big imitation jukebox. How it works is a mystery.

To what extent can Sammy’s behaviour be described as rational? It is worthwhile revisiting Gary Becker’s definition of rationality as consisting of logical coherence, whether or not a person’s beliefs and preferences are reasonable. Becker cites as an example that an individual who prefers to be hated rather than loved might not be reasonable, but can be considered rational so long as their preferences are consistent with this. So, one conjectures that whenever possible this obnoxious individual will go out of their way consistently to provoke and annoy others in as many ways as possible. Kahneman considers Becker’s definition of rationality as logical coherence “impossibly restrictive”, because it presumes an omniscient consciousness of logical rules that is well beyond the capacity of the finite human mind (Kahneman, 2011: 411). He contends that while reasonable people cannot be considered rational by that definition, neither should they be thought of as irrational. Rather, while humans are not irrational, they are not well described by the rationality model and often need help to make good judgements. However, returning to Becker’s example of the individual who prefers to be hated, does this really presume omniscience?

Although Sammy’s preferences for biscuits and crisps have led to him being morbidly obese, given that these form a pattern over time, they can be argued to be logically coherent and so to approximate to the definition of rationality described by Gary Becker. While his other behaviours involving buying and then throwing away brand new phones and toothbrushes may be more difficult to account for, Becker might retort that his theory does not try to explain the behaviour of one individual but applies to the market as a whole.

More generally the idea that the parties to a transaction are informed assumes that they each have the requisite literacy and numerate skills required to become so. While to be knowledgeable does not require one to be literate and numerate, nevertheless, the growing complexity of products, particularly financial services products, requires high levels of both, if one is to detect what is contained in the ‘fine print’ or to discern the meaning of precise technical terms such as ‘AER’ for example. A UK study conducted in 1999 found that one in five of all U.K. adults, seven million in all, were functionally illiterate - when given the alphabetical index to the Yellow Pages, they could not locate the page reference for plumbers.⁵⁸ This finding was broadly in line with those for Ireland and the USA although it was slightly higher than some other European countries.⁵⁹ Problems with numeracy were more common than with literacy with almost half of all UK adults possessing skills below the level expected of an 11-year old, while a quarter could not perform the simplest calculations. The lack of the requisite skills of literacy and numeracy was borne out by the massive scandal involving the ‘miss-selling’ of pensions in the U.K. during the 1980’s and 1990’s, when millions of people were persuaded to abandon relatively secure and rewarding company schemes for personal pensions. While the research sparked a national campaign to improve literacy and numeracy, a follow-up report fifteen years later found that nothing had changed.⁶⁰

While the above is concerning, Ozanne , Adkins & Sandlin (2005) who conducted a rare study into how US consumers with low levels of functional literacy negotiate the marketplace contend that simple measures of functional literacy are not very useful in understanding the realities of negotiating the marketplace, as agents develop a range of practices that they apply in specific social contexts. The authors identified four distinct groupings of which those then named Alienated Consumers, accepted the stigma of low literacy, saying that they felt ashamed and stressed in their dealings in the marketplace, which included instances of being exploited and cheated by sales staff. At the other end of the spectrum ‘Savvy Consumers’ were unashamed of their low literary skills, being socially skilled and forceful. Although poor in book reading, they were able to get by through memorising labels and highway signs.

Research conducted in the wake of the 2008 ‘Credit Crunch’ has been less sanguine, confirming that consumers lacking in basic numeric skills were the most vulnerable. Gerardi, Lorenz & Meier (2010) hypothesised that US ‘sub-prime’ mortgage borrowers who defaulted on their loans would possess lower numerical skills than those who did not. They investigated this by surveying sub-prime mortgage borrowers from three States. Their findings indicated that borrowers with the lowest numerical ability were delinquent 24% of the time compared to 12% of those with the highest numerical ability. Borrowers with the lowest numerical ability had a 21% chance of foreclosure compared to about 7% for the highest ability group. What questions did Gerardi et al. (2010) ask? The easiest question asked is shown below.⁶¹

Q1. In a sale, a shop is selling all items at half price. Before the sale, a sofa costs $300. How much will it cost in the sale?

Q2. If the chance of getting a disease is 10%, how many people out of 1,000 would be expected to get the disease?

Q3. A second hand car dealer is selling a car for $6,000. This is two-thirds of what it cost new. How much did the car cost new?

Q4. If 5 people all have the winning numbers in the lottery and the prize is $2 million, how much will each of them get.

Q5. Let’s say you have $200 in a savings account. The account earns ten percent interest per year. How much will you have in the account at the end of two years?

The above provides a mere flavour of a continuing debate about rational choice theory in economics, psychology, philosophy and consumer research.⁶² However global institutions such as the UN are now much more circumspect on the topic of rationality. For instance, the authors of the Human Development Report (2022) state that;

“(b)ecause of the large influence of economists, much of the formal analysis remains confined to individually rational behaviour. We try to explain all forms of cooperation by reference to self-interest. This often leads to exciting mathematical models, but one consequence of this obsession is we forget that universal self-interested behaviour is one of those assumptions in the woodwork, which we take for granted but is not true.”⁶³

Or to put it another way, economists who stick to linear models because they are more tractable are compared to drunks who look for their car keys under the street-lamp because the light is better there.⁶⁴

Robert Dahl made his position clear in a late interview when he mentioned that while rational choice theory can play a part in theorising the subject, “to see that as a dominant way of thinking would be a terrible blunder”, as to do so ignores the richness and diversity of human experience.⁶⁵ In Norman’s view, from Malthus, to Ricardo, Jevons and Walras to Arrow, the study of how markets work became progressively more abstract and formalistic, concerning itself with abstraction and the discovery of immutable laws. In so doing Smith’s “cautious, empirical and qualified ‘system of natural liberty’ becomes transformed into a system of perfectly free commerce.⁶⁶

William Davies detects a curious twist in the landscape of choice, such that what ought to be an active process is turned into passivity and reaction.⁶⁷ The social media landscape is populated by trolls who go out of their way to trigger a reaction; and the carefully curated images circulated on WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, likewise feed off reactions. There are also those endless emails requesting feedback that follow in the wake of a purchase, often involving the supplication of an employee for whom a perfect score is the only one that counts. As Davies notes, whether one is an Instagrammer on holiday, constantly vigilant for opportunities to choreograph an event who constantly monitors follower reactions, or the delivery company that surveils its drivers, the feedback loop demands constant vigilance and work and fuels anxiety from the nagging possibility that this will be negative, or worse, that there will be no response at all. Davies wonders whether the anxiety provoked by today’s reaction economy allows us to be steered in directions we did not consent to, where we are “drawn towards controversy”.⁶⁸ As he sees it the reaction economy resonates with reactionary political rhetoric, which, far from offering choice elevates certain individuals “who have the strength to remain autonomous in an age of obedience and conformity” and a large body of followers.⁶⁹

Rank and Yank

Meritocracy is valued by neoliberals by rewarding individual talent rather than group patronage. Harking back to Spencer’s formulation of social Darwinism, grotesque differences between the “compensation” paid to CEOs compared to the “pay” of their “fellow employees” are characterised as “just rewards for talent”. This view presumes that humans are fundamentally competitive and that life is a zero-sum game such that if granted equality of opportunity, the most talented and industrious individuals will “naturally” rise to the top. Mentioned in the last chapter, was a more hard-edged view of meritocracy that is based on dubious research that claims that some “races” are more deserving than others. This idea of ‘natural’ differences is Spencerist by recycling long discredited assumptions of the superiority of men over women and of white men, to men of other “races”. Modern genetics has since exploded the entire basis of “race theory”. The racism inherent in some neoliberal and Neo-libertarian arguments is not so hidden through arguments that some “cultures” are better fitted to living in market societies than are others. For the employee working on a zero-hours contract under continuous ‘365’ observation life is fraught with anxiety at the prospect that today’s success may turn into tomorrow’s failure and the dreaded scrapheap the day after.⁷⁰

Equality

While the issues raised above in relation to social reproduction are linked to equality this is of little concern to neoliberals of all stripes from Thatcherites to anarcho-liberals. As an instance, Braithwaite quotes Alfred Sherman, one of Thatcher’s closest advisers, ‘who wrote in 1977 that inequality created ‘prizes for the aspiring’ and delivered ‘efficiency and justice’.⁷¹ While neoliberals espouse a radical conception of freedom, berating those who do not conform to their narrow conception of this, Robert Dahl was by no means the only theorist to raise concerns about the growing threat to democracy posed by rising social inequality. Similar misgivings were voiced over the years by the prominent management theorist Paul Drucker (1939) and the economists J.K. Galbraith (1967) and Thomas Piketty (2014; 2021). On the other hand for neoliberals for whom equality is repugnant, social inequality is natural and indeed necessary, as the motivating force that drives forward progress. In their view the rich are wealth creators whose wealth is the product of their own hard work, who thus should be allowed to increase it, as to do so will benefit society as a whole.

Drucker (1939) had argued that the principles behind homo economicus threatens the social equality that is essential for democracy as it fails to diffuse ownership throughout society. The Thatcher government in the UK sought to provide some semblance of equality in the 1980s through the attempt to create a ‘shareholding democracy’ through privatising nationalised utilities. This failed with long-term disastrous results.⁷² In Britain just two million individuals took up the offer to buy British Telecom shares at knock down rates following privatisation, which although large, given around thirty million were in work at the time, constituted a small proportion of the overall number of those eligible.⁷³

While the data informing the Figure below is rather dated, it provides an indication of the huge global imbalance between rich and poor.

￼A graph of a chart Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Despite progress referred to above, the simple, stark picture is that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. In 2023 the UN produced a much more sober report, that due to the climate crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the number of those living in extreme poverty had risen for the first time in thirty years, such that if the trend persists by 2030, 575 million people will remain trapped in extreme poverty.⁷⁴ One of the ways in which OXFAM, which produces annual reports on equality, seeks to hammer home this key message is to quote the number of super-rich individuals who own the same proportion of wealth as the bottom 50% of the world population. The number varies from year to year; in 2016 it was 62, while in 2022, just 81 billionaires owned the same proportion of wealth as four billion of their fellow human beings.⁷⁵

Thomas Piketty (2014) offers two broad reasons for the increase in disparity between the rich and the rest, giving the lie to neoliberal assumptions that increased capital and lower taxes on wealth and reduced regulations will increase growth and provide higher wages. Based on an analysis of his home country France over two hundred years, he found that sustained periods of economic growth occurred only in those periods following the massive destruction of capital that occurred during the First and Second World Wars. Since then, growth has been sluggish and the return on capital, or wealth, which is in the hands of a few, has grown faster than the economy. He notes that a different dynamic is at play in the USA, citing data to argue that super-managers comprise 60% of the 0.1% of the population at the top of the income distribution. More recently, a longitudinal report by the Economic Policy Institute found that in the USA, CEO earnings adjusted for inflation, rose by 1,460% in the period from 1978 to 2021, 37% more than stock market growth during the same period. Most startling was that their average earning increased by 30.3% during the pandemic. The startling consequences of this huge rise is that CEO-to-worker compensation which stood at 20-1 in 2000, rose to 372-1 prior to the pandemic and is now 399-1.⁷⁶ 

The picture for those on average or low earnings has been quite different. Falling returns from wages compared to those from capital led a number of relatively poor individuals to take on enormous mortgages on low interest rates in order to gain a foothold in the property market. The result was the “sub-prime” that sparked the credit crunch (Stiglitz, 2010; Koechlin, 2013). As compared with the vast increase in earnings for CEOs, the median US family income scarcely changed between 1977 and 2007 while that of the poorest 20% declined (Koechlin, 2013: 19). The fall in earnings in western countries was partly due to the fall in unionization of labour and a concomitant increase in the casualization of work, or the ‘gig’ economy, as it is more widely known. In some developing countries the precarity associated with informal labour has been a fact of life for some time. According to the ILO (2018) more than two billion people work in the informal economy, ranging from 85% in Africa to just over 25% in Europe and Central Asia. The authors note that as the level of education increases, that of working in the informal economy decreases.

In Europe, social disquiet about the effects of neoliberal policies has since given rise to two populist movements from Right and Left which are shadows of their fascist and communist predecessors. The Left has been primarily motivated to campaign against inequality through the formation of movements such as Five Star, Podemos, Syriza, and the Labour Party under Corbyn, whereas the Right, which had been slowly building its base from the 1970s onwards, has successfully leveraged increasing xenophobia and racism in every European country in relation to immigration.⁷⁷ By comparison, in the USA, which Perry Anderson aptly describes as an immigrant society “as no European society has ever been …of “selective welcome and solidarity for newcomers,”⁷⁸ the Right has resorted to a tactic of labelling the Mexican government and more recently even a previous ally, Canada, as drug-dealers and criminals.⁷⁹

Paul Verhaeghe argues that today anxiety and depressive disorders in adults and ADHD and autism in the young have replaced the hysterical neuroses characteristic of the rigid conformism of the Victorian era. His claim seems to be borne out by the evidence. Increasing prescriptions of antidepressants such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). According to one source published prior to Covid, large-scale surveys conducted in European countries indicated that almost 34% of individuals experience an anxiety disorder at some point. The incidence of anxiety disorders is since thought to have risen by a further 25%. A UK study of trends found that from 1998 to 2018 there was an almost eightfold (787%) increase in the diagnosis of autism from 1998 to 2018. A US study found a more modest increase for diagnosis ADHD, from 6% to just over 10% in the 20-year period from 1997 to 2016 (Xu et al., 2018). Verhaeghe links the growth in anxiety disorders to the neoliberal vision of a self that is perpetually on show and exposed to the harsh light of social judgement through audits,

What about inequality in the world? The Washington Consensus extended and deepened this relation to developing countries which had to abide by the “ten commandments” of free market doctrine and their accompanying “disciplines” if they were to receive international support. The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 extended from GATT to cover trade in services, and in intellectual property. As applied by the IMF and World Bank, countries were now instructed to “set their house in order” by initialising a regime of fiscal discipline with low deficits, redirecting economic policies from providing subsidies to growth, infrastructure development, education and healthcare, and allowing the market to determine interest-rates. Other stipulations concerned recognition of private property rights together with related policies of de-regulation and privatization. Two of the most important, comprising numbers six and seven respectively enabled foreign investors to control any sector of the domestic economy and to eliminate trade barriers.

World Bank and IMF reports equated free competition and free exchange with economic welfare and democracy coupled to, “a myth of virtually unlimited social progress” (Gill 1995). Privileges accorded to the powerful have been reinforced in OECD nations to the vast detriment of the majority of the population. Referring to Galbraith’s technostructure, Gill describes today’s elite as a self-perpetuating and self-serving group that lives in enclaves remote from the everyday lives of the majority of citizens (Gill, 1995: 407). While it is commonplace to contrast the secure well-paid jobs of knowledge workers to their precarious colleagues who are treated as service drones, there are commonalities. The US Justice Department complained in 2010 that senior executives at Apple, Google, Intel, Pixar, and two other corporations had “formed and actively managed” an agreement that “deprived” the engineers and scientists who work for them of “access to better job opportunities.” One employee, from Apple called Steve says, “They treat us like dirt”, then unleashing a string of curses. “Market capitalism should be a two-way street, no? If they get to make us compete against one another, then they too should have to compete”. ⁸⁰

The overall conclusion of Piketty’s (2021), argument is that in the absence of another round of mass destruction of capital, the economic scene will be characterised by slow growth, declining incomes for the majority and widening inequality. He dismisses narratives around “trickle down”, to argue that “(h)istorically, it is the battle for equality and education that has made economic development possible, and not the veneration of property, stability and inequality” (Piketty, 2021: 139). The reduction in inequality stalled from the time of the election of neoliberal governments in 1980 and has since gone into reverse, with the introduction of regressive taxes that favour the rich. He calls the period from 1914 to 1980 “the great redistribution”, when the fiscal and social state was tripled or quadrupled in all Western countries, providing a large contribution to economic development, particularly through financing expenditure on education and health (Ibid.:122). Education was vital as the second industrial revolution between 1880 and 1940 required a numerate and literate workforce (ibid.: 123).

Social Reproduction

Statistics are a necessary evil; necessary in that the sense that they support or refute our hunches and enable us to consider trends and make comparisons; evil, in the sense that they quickly make our eyes glaze over. So the following aims to provide no more than a snapshot of important issues. If one takes “neoliberal” in its broadest sense to refer to the widest possible extension of choice, then this can encompass choice by an adult, to save to buy a property of their own, to eat, drink or smoke what they want, to marry, divorce, have an abortion, or die at the time of their choosing. While the visible and invisible forces involved may be complex, all of these choices have had a societal effect.

Taking the composition of families in the (dis)United Kingdom as an example, in 2023 lone parents accounted for16% of families with 66% either married or living in civil partnerships.⁸¹ Given that 13% of the population living alone comprise 30% of all households, a Vogon might observe that the UK does not have a housing problem but rather a people crisis, where the obvious solution is to allocate more people to the available properties. Life is of course not quite so simple, although young men seem to be pulling their weight, as one-third aged between 20 and 34 are reported to be living at home with their parents. Only half of those described as ‘families’ had one or more children, and of those that did, just less than half had one child. Between 2012 and 2022 the number of annual abortions rose from 185,000 to 250,000 mainly from those in their early twenties, with a drop in those under eighteen but a steady rise in those aged over thirty-five.⁸² In 2023, the Total Fertility Rate in England and Wales had dropped to 1.44 children per woman, the lowest on record, with potentially drastic implications for population replacement.⁸³

A notable feature of life for many has been the decline in real wages, which like a comet has a long tail that stretches back over decades. Taking the United States as an example, there from 1979, there was a growing gap between real wages and productivity.⁸⁴ When the financial crisis of 2007-2008 hit, the banks were quickly bailed out and to the chagrin of many, few were imprisoned⁸⁵. Real wages were also largely stagnant in the UK, the same in 2022 as they had been in 2005.⁸⁶ While the US government response to the financial crisis was to stimulate the economy, in the UK, the incoming conservative government implemented a harsh austerity programme, involving cuts to welfare, including the reassessment of those on disability benefits which greatly increased anxiety levels for those affected. Meanwhile, under the influence of German ordoliberals⁸⁷, the European Central Bank subjected governments of the ‘PIGS’ that had been thrown into crisis by the crash, to an unremitting regime of harsh financial discipline.⁸⁸

Poverty|: From the preceding discussion of equality it is clear that overty has a major effect on an individual’s life chances and indeed on their life expectancy. Poverty disproportionately affects the young. In the USA poverty amongst those aged eighteen or less was 16%, or almost 4% higher than the overall rate.⁸⁹ In the UK which has a slightly different measure of poverty well over 45% of children living in families with three or more children were in poverty.⁹⁰

Precarity of employment can harm those directly involved and also their dependents as it is insecure and not unionised and poorly regulated. One longitudinal study of trends in the USA between 1988 and 2016 found that this disproportionately affects women and racialised minorities, while noting recent increases in precarity for men and higher income groups, which they explained as the result of declining union membership.⁹¹

Obesity: Obesity caused in large part by a sick food industry can present problems for physical and psychological health and is a rising problem in the USA and UK. Accordingto one estimate obesity in adults in the USA accounted for 40% of the population, with severe obesity hovering at just below 10% of the population. However the authors also reported that the incidence of obesity had remained relatively steady since 2014.⁹² Obesity is more prevalent in older adults, some racial minorities and members of lower socio-economic groups, while women have a propensity to suffer from severe obesity. Authors have expressed most concern about what they describe as an epidemic of obesity amongst the young, with one study citing the doubling of obesity in young children and tripling amongst teenagers between 2010 and 2019⁹³, with another study finding an eightfold-increase in those aged 5-19 in developed countries between 1975 and 2016.⁹⁴

Noise: Noise today is not just a nuisance but can have profound affects on mental wellbeing by causing annoyance and sleep disturbance and can to physical effects such as heart disease which is life-shortening.⁹⁵ The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that at least 1.6 million healthy life years are lost every year in western European countries alone due to the environmental noise⁹⁶ and another report by the European Environmental Agency found more than 100 million people in Europe were exposed to harmful levels of environmental noise pollution.⁹⁷

Psychological Issues: Anxiety is the watchword of the times, given that today’s individual is churned up by thinking about global concerns such as the experience of global heating and its public denial, rapid global realignment, jingoistic language, reports of not-so-distant wars, the prospect of coming war, and an economy on the slide amid oft-repeated tales of a country swamped by immigrants, coupled with the daily challenges presented by accelerated time pressure, precarious employment, constant evaluation, over-choice and invidious comparison. Below I touch briefly on another topic that is a source of anxiety, which is the paradox involving the perception of a rapid increase in crime when overall crime has never been lower.

Newspaper reports mention surveys where members of the public express opinions such as, “our cities are descending into hellholes” due to increasing crime.⁹⁸ This was questioned in an article on “the great crime paradox”, which noted that while crime rates, particularly those involving violence have never been lower, in the USA, the UK or in Ireland, a growing number of people believe that crime is rising. A putative answer to this question might be that as the population ages so individuals feel more vulnerable about their security and may tend to magnify the risks. A more likely explanation to my mind is linked to Gary Becker’s arguments in relation to crime. This views crime amorally as a cost-benefit calculation which holds that the aim of the police should be to raise the costs of crime above the potential benefit gained by the criminal. This has led to a focus of police resource away from certain categories of crime considered either as too expensive to be worthwhile, such as prosecuting corporate fraud, or as relatively trivial, involving crimes such as shoplifting, petty theft, personal fraud and anti-social behaviour. However as McWilliams argues, many of these are “in your face” crimes can have a profound psychological effect on the victim whose house has been burgled, witnessed a fist-fight or been the victim of anti-social behaviour⁹⁹. The perceptions of an increase in crime is accentuated when crimes such as shoplifting actually do increase¹⁰⁰ – and currently in the UK, this is at a ten-year high – and also when video clips of an assault are widely shared on social media.

A spotlight into Becker’s psychology was shone in a speech at an award ceremony when he stated that “In the early stages of my work on crime, I was puzzled by why theft is socially harmful since it appears merely to redistribute resources, usually from wealthier to poorer individuals”¹⁰¹ This statement might be thought jaw-dropping in its cold-blooded rationality and his concomitant failure to recognize the psychological importance of goods as key to a person’s sense of self-identity and security, which have been extensively writing about by consumer researchers.¹⁰²

Governance Inc.

The chaos and fragmentation induced in the international governance arena by the policies of Trump-47 was foreshadowed in 2017, when the United States refused to appoint judges to the arbitration panel of the WTO, blocking the enforcement of trade rules.¹⁰³ In response to this almost sixty countries created the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement to resolve disputes amongst themselves. Just fifty-one nations ratified the Oceans Treaty to establish protected areas in international waters. Then in 2025 the attempts by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to cement an agreement on plastic pollution involving 183 nations foundered, principally over a dispute between oil producers and others over whether to tackle production or pollution.¹⁰⁴ There were clear signs that the much-vaunted emergence a “multi-polar” world was now taking shape.

As cracks appear in the global order, In Crack-Up Capitalism Quinn Slobodian (2023) describes how countries today are not uniform spaces within which all have the right to travel freely subject to the law of the land, but are riddled with anomalous jurisdictions, enclaves, gated communities and zones such as EPZs, innovation hubs, tax havens and even city-states, where the rules governing freedom of movement, labour rights, earnings and taxation no longer apply. He contends that these spaces have proliferated for two reasons; from the drive of capital to extract more profit by paying lower wages and reduced taxes, and that by billionaire holders of legitimate and illegitimate wealth, for whom the concept of liberty translates into the freedom to move their wealth wherever and whenever they want, no questions asked, untrammelled by state taxes or by other interference. Their aspirations are met in the social structure imprinted into the design of places as diverse as Singapore, Liechtenstein, the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai, the London Shard, New Songdo City in South Korea which collectively impose a social order that is more characteristic of the medieval period than the cosmopolitan metropolis envisaged in the modernist imagination.

From Corruption to Globalised Kleptocracy

As neoliberalism mutates into a new form that is gathering definition, it seems clear from research by the International Confederation of Independent Journalists (ICIJ) and authors such as Anne Applebaum and Quinn Slobodian, that a large part of that order will be corrupt. Liberal critics of neoliberalism have argued that the vast assemblage of monopoly power is one strand, albeit important, of a much wider web of corruption that has infected the polity and which compromises the democratic functioning of the state. They warn against the perceived inequities resulting from the neoliberal system of governance, including the growing gap between rich and poor, the increasing precarity of work for the ordinary citizen and the relative impunity of the rich.¹⁰⁵ These critics link growing economic concentration to lax regulation and lack of reform which enables elites and MNCs to act with impunity to corrupt the system by rigging the market and rigging the rules. A growing number of legal scholars describe the Chicago School as “ideological extremists, cult-like fanatics, or carriers of a disease”, who have exerted a pernicious effect on competition policy, leaving in its wake a “vast wreckage” ¹⁰⁶, featuring high and growing economic concentration and democratic institutions threatened by corporate leviathans.

A key difference between Thomas Piketty and many liberals is that liberals value negative freedom of the individual above all else, while he links social progress and prosperity to equality. Piketty, like Robert Dahl, regards equality as the central principle that underpins democratic consent and views inequality as a social, historical and political construction.¹⁰⁷ In a similar vein to Dahl, Piketty argues that wealth and prosperity are not created by individuals but emanate from a collective process and so there is a need to institute participatory democracy in business, a change that requires massive public support if it is to be realised.¹⁰⁸ He thus questions the current state of affairs which accords power to stockholders who are accorded, “a quasi-sacred right to enrich themselves… and then, with the click of a mouse, to move their assets to a new jurisdiction”.¹⁰⁹

In a theme that will be taken up again towards the end of chapter six, Piketty also questions why stockholders in joint-stock companies should legally have all the power, when employees, for whom employment constitutes a major part of their lives might be regarded as the “first long-term investors”.¹¹⁰ As he sees it there are other ways of organizing a property or a fiscal system and in this regard his prescription for change is more radical and thoroughgoing than that proposed by Dahl (1993), aiming towards a systemic transformation of capitalism. His plan involves the institution of a democratic, self-managing socialism that will involve the wholesale de-commercialization of the economy, the redistribution of inherited wealth and the re-introduction of a progressive tax regime. While some might argue that this is fanciful, Pikkety points out the very real danger that unless something is done to address inequality by means of a tax on inherited wealth, capital will concentrate to levels incompatible with democracy, let alone social justice. He is also concerned that there is no protection for democracy or equality in states that are close to being captured by big money, which controls ownership of the media and political think-tanks.¹¹¹ Moreover, while some argue that since Great Financial Crash of 2008 the Washington Consensus no longer exists, in the absence of an alternative, this continues to exert its malign influence.¹¹² With others, he points out the massive damage done to the global South by the free circulation of capital and the proliferation of tax havens which undermines the very basis of democracy, and which stokes massive public anger.

Piketty (2013), ascribes a portion of the blame for the current dire state of inequality to marginal rates of tax for top income earners and corporations which have fallen sharply since the mid 1970s across much of the world. Despite these low rates many of the wealthiest corporations and individuals seek to avoid tax entirely. At time of writing Elon Musk paid a real tax rate of 3.2%, while half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax.¹¹³ In contrast, Shaxson (2019) locates the core of the problem not on the market but rather the accumulation of capital, which in a similar vein to Karl Marx, he argues is parasitic on society. Whether constituted as a Multinational Corporation (MNC) or a private individual, capital tries its best to evade the rules that ordinary citizens are bound to live by in a democratic system. A complex international parasitic apparatus of specialists has developed to enable the sequestration of funds from tax, consisting of a panoply of “corporate service providers”, from accountants to financial advisers, lawyers and property agents shield the beneficial owners of property and other assets from scrutiny by channelling funds through a thicket of shell companies fronted by sham directors. The system is lubricated by a lucrative “revolving door” whereby government officials and regulators on relatively low salaries transfer their loyalty to the other side advising those who hold dirty money as how to avoid loopholes. The system of lax regulation is enabled and perpetuated through donations to political parties.

Capitalists, whether MNCs or individuals, evade the rules that bind everyone else by diverting funds, amounting to many trillions of dollars, through so-called tax-havens. The use of tax havens to dodge tax increases inequality; the rich become richer and monopolies become stronger, thus corrupting markets. For Shaxson (ibid.) tax havens provide the link between monopolization and financialization. Although the tax haven conjures an exotic image of the Bahamas Bermuda, or Jersey, the biggest corporate tax havens are in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong. Every MNC has subsidiaries in tax havens; many have hundreds, added to which complexity an MNC might route its structure through several tax havens. The tax-avoidance system is enabled by a number of devices such as loopholes in tax policy, competition between tax havens for their lucrative clients and a global system of secrecy; For instance, the British Virgin Islands specializes in offshore trusts that ensure secrecy.

Although British politicians have preached the importance of transparency and fairness to those in the third world, they forgot to mention that the UK provides a safe haven for some of the most corrupt companies and individuals on the planet. The City of London is the base for a network of high-paid fixers, tax advisers and lawyers that lubricates the machinery of the dirty money laundry which is channelled through Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) that act as “brass plates” for shell companies established in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands.¹¹⁴ The hybrid LLP has limited liability and is not a taxable entity in the UK. For example, an Italian fraudster Gianfranco Lande established Vector Aerospace Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) at a prestigious Mayfair address in London, as a vehicle to siphon over €80 million from the €1.5 billion order made by the Austrian government from EADS, the manufacturer of the Eurofighter. The money was funnelled offshore through the Royal Bank of Scotland in the Isle of Man to companies controlled by Lande and others, although its final destination could not be identified. Not only were the payments made by Vector impossible to trace, so was the firm’s ownership, which was traced to a chain of Belgian, British Virgin Islands and Maltese companies, behind which sat a mysterious Isle of Man trust. Thus the Mayfair address conveyed the aura of respectability whilst the LLP structure provided the maximum obscurity from which to perpetrate the fraud. It is thus not surprising that Private Eye describes the LLP, as the “international criminal’s corruption vehicle of choice” to launder the ill-gotten gains of dictators, drug money and other proceeds of crime. According to the prestigious Chatham House, perhaps even more insidious is the influence gained by foreign kleptocrats now resident in the UK, not only to influence the nexus of professionals who facilitate their shady transactions, but also to compromise politicians at the highest level and to intimidate journalists and researchers from delving too closely into their affairs.¹¹⁵

Anne Applebaum and Quinn Slobodian have focused attention on the rise of states that are not just tax havens but also “bridging jurisdictions’ or hybrid states such as the United Arab Emirates and Krygyzstan that are on the one hand part of the legitimate system of trade and finance while on the other hand they launder the proceeds of theft or drug-sales, enable “rogue” countries and individuals to evade sanctions and for foreigners under those sanctions to become citizens. At the same time and with no hint of irony, market libertarians herald “statelets” such as Liechtenstein, Monaco and Singapore as “Davids fighting a globalist regulatory Goliath”. Slobodian writes that Liechtenstein, a place tailor-made for wealth is cast by market radicals as a victim of “financial capitalism”.¹¹⁶ In addition to the alliances struck between Venezuela, Iran and Cuba mentioned by Applebaum (2024), a growing network of states facilitate money laundering, including shipments of gold through Hong Kong, and the transport of indentured labour and environmental crime involving the UAE.¹¹⁷ Since the second Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 Russia has been facilitated in evading sanctions on military technology and trade, most obviously by North Korea and China, but also by Hungary, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where “Special Economic Zones” enable relabelling and re-export of electronic components and through “flag-switching” as when in 2022, 300,000 tonnes of Kazakh crude oil were channelled through the Druzhba pipeline into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, thus obscuring the origin of Russian oil. “In short, Budapest is helping Moscow hide in the shadows of collective trade.”¹¹⁸ It should also be mentioned that European countries such as Scotland continue to enable exports of Russian gas as can be testified to by the operations of Seapeak based in Glasgow.

Conclusion

This chapter has roamed widely and variously across topics that in my view are deserving of further attention. Globally, this is a time of transition from the ‘rules based order’ that prevailed under US hegemony since the Second World War, to what is likely to become an intensifying struggle between rival blocs for dominance. As the virtual revolution gathers pace this will be most evident in the construction of rival platforms, robotics, AI and drone technologies and in competition to secure the resources from which to produce these. As the rules-based order gives way to one based on raw power, small countries will effectively lose any independence they once enjoyed and will effectively become client states of one bloc or another.

Until the election of Trump-47, it had been thought that the youthful owners of FAANG wielded unlimited power. Now the president deploys the levers of state power in an autocratic manner by restricting the issuance of visas amongst other means to let them know that he is boss and they are his supplicants. At the same time he bullies erstwhile allies in Europe and Asia to water down or drop their regulations on these behemoths. Meanwhile graduate jobs availability has dropped by 30 percent in June this year, with the lowest success rate in thirty years, raising fears of the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence into white collar jobs.¹¹⁹

As the challenges presented by global heating become more acute, water and food security are becoming pressing issues, as is the growing challenge presented to host country governments by many millions of displaced migrants. Pressure on treasuries will mount due to demands from rapidly aging populations and decreasing fertility rates amongst the young. If Piketty is correct in his assessment, then a tipping point may be reached when the young demand their fair share of resources. Paradoxically, at the same time as the hardening of different blocs, the counter-trend described by Slobodian (2023) towards ‘crack-up’ capitalism is likely to intensify, as capital seeks more spaces free of state regulation and control. Indeed we are already living in an era where capital is welcomed by despots in jurisdictions where manyl relations are contractual.

Before finishing I ought to offer an extremely brief reflection on developments in marketing practice and the marketing academy over the past fifty years. In the UK the academic discipline took on a more professional gloss in the 1990s, at a time when the number of journals expanded.¹²⁰ While the role of the marketing practitioner has changed dramatically with the advent of social media, consultants still fret about the tussle between the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Finance Officer (CFO) in the ‘C’-Suite. In a telling comment from one report,

Some CEOs think CMOs aren’t measuring the appropriate markers and are overly focused on the metrics that matter only to them. Others in the C-suite view marketing as tangential to a company’s real business. As one CMO at a consumer company tells us, “CFOs often view marketing as a cost center rather than an investment.”¹²¹

Back to the Future! While, if the above has any substance, traditional marketing may be on something like an eternal loop, nation branding has grown apace, as governments vie with others to attract capital. Slobodian mentions the particular success enjoyed by Singapore and Dubai, noting that the tourists, investors and professionals who are attracted to these places do not appear concerned with the knowledge that these are autocracies. Although Amnesty International reported that in 2024 Saudi Arabia executed one hundred and ninety six people nation-branding consultants found that the concern for democracy rated lowly if at all for those moving to these countries from Western democracies, who consider their home countries as sluggish and messy as compared to the clear unity of strategy and messaging by the autocratic rulers of these states.¹²² Autocratic sentiments are now expressed openly in Britain and France as an antidote to economic decline and paralysis in government, despite the continuing depredation of core democratic institutions in the USA by the Trump-47 regime.

Away from the continuing vicissitudes of the boardroom, life for social marketers has been good, if the number of publications by Philip Kotler serves as an index. Publishing over one hundred single and joint-authored books, many in several editions over a long career, Kotler has kept the flame of marketing and especially of social marketing alight, successfully promoting the application of marketing technology to a range of social issues from persuading individuals to wear seatbelts to the marketing of health care, places, tourism and hospitality, cities, the performing arts, celebrities - even nation-states.¹²³

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Extra refs

Gosnell GK, Bazilian MD. Changing behaviour is the key to solving the climate challenge. Nat Hum Behav. 2021 Mar;5(3):294. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-01047-8. PMID: 33479503.

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¹ Norman, (2018, 248).

² Salecl, (2011, 18-22).

³ Norman, (2018, 250).

⁴ Norman, (2018: 209).

⁵ Smith,, in Viner, (1927, 211).

⁶ From chapter 8, Of the Wages of Labour, Book 1, Wealth of Nations. Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h#chap15

⁷ The number quoted is fifty million, of which half are men and boys and half women and girls. Forced labour accounts for about 90%, predominantly involving men in construction, manufacturing and agriculture with women in domestic labour. Many are captured by debt peonage (ILO, 2022, ILO and Walk Free Foundation, 2017).

⁸ Fraser & Jaeggi, (2018: 74-75).

⁹ Norman, (2018: 250).

¹⁰ This refers to Trump’s second period as 47th President.

¹¹ Ignatius, A. (2021). Americans don’t know how capitalist China is: An interview with Weijian Shan, Harvard Business Review, May-June.

¹² Burgis (2015), mentions China’s policy of offering a “helping hand” to the development of African economies left out in the cold by their ex-colonial masters, with “stupendous” sums of money in building infrastructure in return for resources. He mentions the “usual” complaint about Chinese companies is that they import their own workers and where they do employ locals, they pay them poorly and offer poor working conditions.

¹³ In 1992 the Russian government began issuing certificates with a face value of 10,000 roubles each to all of the 148 million citizens of the country. A fuller account of events is provided by McLintock (2006).

¹⁴ Source: United Nations (2015). The Millennium Development Goals Report. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20(July%201).pdf

¹⁵ Trentmann, (2016, 388).

¹⁶ See Trentmann, (2016, 388-393)

¹⁷ Rhodes, C. (2017). UK steel, decades of decline, House of Commons Library, 17th December. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-steel-decades-of-decline/

¹⁸ Owen & Jones, (2003); Toms & Zhang, (2016).

¹⁹ Source: Irvin, (2008: 16)

²⁰ Source: O’Brien,( 2014).

²¹ Brown, Gordon, (2024). How Britain became a food bank nation. The Guardian, 11th June.

²² Dimson, March & Staunton (2025) summary edition Fig. 30, p. 7.

²³ Ibid., 9.

²⁴ Ibid., 13.

²⁵ Plender, J. (2025). It’s fear not greed that drives the stock market. Financial Times Money, 26th July, 6-7.

²⁶ See for example, Pack, (1987).

²⁷ Parker, (2004).

²⁸ Humphrey, (1974).

²⁹ Quote from Tim Lankester, in Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, F. (2025). It’s a shitshow, London Review of Books, 8th May, p. 29. Review of Lankester, T. (2024). Inside, Thatcher’s monetarist experiment: the promise, the failure, the legacy, Policy Press,

³⁰ Norman, (2018, 97-98).

³¹ Blinder, (2022).

³² The first and most obvious reason was the egregious misbehaviour of firms and individuals in the financial markets.

³³ Mann, (2023). Keynesianism in a foxhole. London Review of Books, 13th April: 34.

³⁴ More properly known as, “The Social and Behavioral Insights Team” (US) and “Behavioural Insights Team” (UK).

³⁵ Jackson, B. (2023). I do a deal right away, Review of Edwards, E. (2023). Are we rich yet? The rise of mass investment culture in contemporary Britain. London Review of Books, 16th March, 42.

³⁶ Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, F. (2025). It’s a shitshow, London Review of Books, 8th May, p. 30 col. 4. Review of Lankester, T. (2024). Inside, Thatcher’s monetarist experiment: the promise, the failure, the legacy, Policy Press,

³⁷ Ibid., 30.

³⁸, Plender, (1987).

³⁹ Radulescu, A., (2024). The gap between the real and financial sides of the economy. Bretton Woods Committee, Mon, 22nd April.

⁴⁰ Sopolnitskiy, L. (2024). The size of global markets 2024: Market dynamics, asset class shifts, insights. LSEG. https://www.lseg.com/content/dam/data-analytics/en_us/documents/charts/lseg-size-of-global-market-2024-in-charts.pdf According to Sopolnitskiy (2024) commodities accounted for $3.7 trillion. Credit markets were reported to have tripled since 2018 with corporate bonds at $39 trillion, credit derivatives $18 trillion, structured finance, $18 trillion and syndicated loans, $9 trillion. Loan funding grew by 36% in 2023.

⁴¹ Kay, (2015: 106-107).

⁴² This is based on an example provided by John Lanchester (2024). The farmer of mangoes needs cash now so rather than waiting for harvest he sells them in advance to a broker for a dollar a crate. The broker then sells the rights to the crop to a dealer who has heard a rumour that mangoes may be scarce and pays £1.10 a crate for the privilege. A “market-time” trader has heard a similar rumour and buys them for $1.20 a crate. A rather naïve “noise” trader then cottons on to the trend and buys in at $1.30. However as signs appear that the crop will be plentiful, a contrarian trader short-sells the mangoes at $1.20. Another speculator learns that the harvest is likely to be abundant and further shorts the price to $0.90. At this point the original broker steps in and buys them for $1.00. Up until this point no value has been created and it only does so when the real mangoes actually pass into the distribution chain.

⁴³ All quotes in this section are from Anderson, (2025, 8).

⁴⁴ See for example Kozinets (2002). I can come up with others if need be.

⁴⁵ Dahl, R.A. (1998), On Democracy.

⁴⁶ Does Coca-Cola franchise in the UK? https://www.pointfranchise.co.uk/articles/does-coca-cola-franchise-6146/

⁴⁷ Philippon, (2019).

⁴⁸ Lynn, (2010).

⁴⁹ Kovavic, (2020: 480).

⁵⁰ For commentary on “notice and takedown” whereby hosting companies must take down material that violates intellectual property when notified – which in reality provides “near immunity” for violators. Another feature, the “anti-circumvention” language facilitated the launch of the DVD. While the Act had a chilling effect on “fair use of copyright material, it enabled Google to become one of the world’s largest companies. See Kravets (2008) and Blistein (2021) for opposing views.

⁵¹ Bhuiyan, J. (2023). US supreme court reinforces immunity for Google and Twitter in win for tech behemoths. The Guardian, 19th May.

⁵² See, Dhar, (1997); Boatright & Nunes, (2001).

⁵³ Gourville & Soman, (2005).

⁵⁴ Chernev,Bokenhol & Goodman (2015) offer a meta-analysis.

⁵⁵ Salecl, (2011: 17).

⁵⁶ See as instances, Zolkefli, (2017); Gregório, Henriques, et al (2021).

⁵⁷ Clarke, (2007, 108).

⁵⁸ From Chapter 1 of Improving Literacy and Numeracy, A Fresh Start Sir Claus Moser http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/mosergroup/rep01.htm

⁵⁹ The percentage of adults with literacy skills at the lowest level is estimated to be: Poland , 44%, Ireland 24%, Britain 23%, USA 22%, Switzerland, 19%, Belgium, France, New Zealand, Canada 17%, Germany 12%, Netherlands 10%, Sweden 7%.

⁶⁰ Skills for Life Survey, (2011) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2011-skills-for-life-survey, the Adult Participation in Learning Survey (December 2019) found that there had been a 10% drop (almost 4 million people) in adults who participate in further learning. https://www.skillsforlifenetwork.com/news/adult-participation-learning-survey-2019/

⁶¹ Gerardi, Goette & Meier (2010), pp. 11-12. A person was assigned to the lowest ability group if they answered questions 1,2 & 3 incorrectly or answered question 1 correctly but got questions 2,3 & 4 wrong (16% of all respondents). The second group was comprised of those who answered at least one of the first four questions incorrectly (54% of all respondents). The third group was comprised of those who answered question 5 incorrectly (17%). Finally all of those who answered all five questions correctly were placed in a fourth group (13%).

⁶² See for example Elster (2014); Jacoby, (2000).

⁶³ United Nations. (2022). Human Development Report.

⁶⁴ Peter Coy (2000), Is the Dismal Science Dazed and Confused?, Buiness Week Jan. 24,, reviewing Paul Ormerod, Butterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior (1998), from Jacoby, (2000: 157).

⁶⁵ See Dahl, R.A. & M. Levi, (2009), A conversation with Robert Dahl. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 1-9, quote from page 8.

⁶⁶ Norman, (2019, 180).

⁶⁷ Davies, William, (2023). The reaction economy. London Review of Books, 2nd March: p. 3,5,6,7,8.

⁶⁸ Davies, (2023, 5).

⁶⁹ Ibid., 7.

⁷⁰ Verhaeghe, (2012).

⁷¹ Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, op. cit., 30.

⁷² Rather than beginning to trade in shares the individuals who bought them sold them when they rose in value (they were sold at a discount) or simply held onto them for fear of knowing what to do with them. Those of the two million private investors who bought British Telecom shares on 30th November, 1984, were reported to have done well, so long as they remembered they had them (Insley, J. (2004). When public went private: Twenty years on. The Guardian, 28th November). A subsequent BBC report into British Gas holdings stated; “Many have shied away from selling largely due to ignorance and fear of brokerage fees eating into profits from the sale. Others may have inherited the shares and simply forgot they had them” ( BBC, (2011) British Gas shares: Thousands 'told Sid' 25 years ago, 21st November). Shares from the privatized water industry were eventually bought by hedge funds or banks that for years paid shareholders millions in dividends while allowing the system to fall into disrepair, allowing raw sewage to flow into lakes, rivers and the sea (see numerous articles in Private Eye).

⁷³ According to the Labour Force Survey 1984, 26.5 million were in work, 4.6 million were self-employed and 25% economically inactive.

⁷⁴ United Nations, (2023). The Sustainable Development Goals, 2023: Special Edition. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/

⁷⁵ OXFAM (2023: 16, Methodology note 1.8).

⁷⁶ Bivens & Kandra, (2022).

⁷⁷ See Anderson, P. (2025). Regime change in the West? London Review of Books, pp. 3-8.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 7.

⁷⁹ The White House, (2025). Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Proceeds with Tariffs on Imports from Canada and Mexico. 3rd March. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-proceeds-with-tariffs-on-imports-from-canada-and-mexico/The White House

⁸⁰ Lynn, (2021).

⁸¹ Office for National Statistics, (2024). Families and households in the UK: 2023. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2023

⁸² Davies, C. (2024). Number of abortions in England and Wales hits record levels. The Guardian, 24th May.

⁸³ Office for National Statistics, (2024). How is the fertility rate changing in England and Wales? 28th October. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/articles/howisthefertilityratechanginginenglandandwales/2024-10-28

⁸⁴ Mishel, L.; E. Gould & J. Bivens (2015). Wage stagnation in nine charts. Economic Policy Institute. See especially Figure 1, according to which the average middle-class household had $17,867 less in 1987 than in 1979.

⁸⁵ Just one person was convicted in the United States – a point I will return to in the next chapter.

⁸⁶ Tinline, P. (2023). Why has it taken so long for stagnant pay to become central to UK politics? Economics Observatory, 11th October. In the USA there was a rise in real wages in 2020. Source, FRED, (2025). Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over (LES1252881600Q. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 16th April 2025.

⁸⁷ Josef Hien, The rise and fall of ordoliberalism, Socio-Economic Review, Volume 22, Issue 4, October 2024, Pages 1947–1966, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad018

⁸⁸ The pejorative term that bundled together Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

⁸⁹ Benson, C. (2023). US poverty rate varies by age groups: Child poverty still higher than for older populations but still declining. United States Census Bureau, 4th December.

⁹⁰ Brown, T. (2024). Child poverty: statistics, causes and the UK’s policy response. House of Lords Library, 23rd April.

⁹¹ Oddo V.M.; C.C. Zhuang, S.B. Andrea, J. Eisenberg-Guyot, T. Peckham, D. Jacoby & A, Hajat (2021).. Changes in precarious employment in the United States: A longitudinal analysis. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2021 Apr 1;47(3):171-180. doi: 10.5271/sjweh.3939. Epub 2020 Dec 7. PMID: 33283874; PMCID: PMC8126438.

⁹² U.S. Center for Disease Control. (2024). Obesity and Severe Obesity Prevalence in Adults: United States, August 2021–August 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db508.htm

⁹³ Sanyaolu A,; C. Okorie, X. Qi, J. Locke & S. Rehman, (2019). Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in the United States: A Public Health Concern. Glob Pediatr Health,1(6):2333794X19891305. doi: 10.1177/2333794X19891305. PMID: 31832491; PMCID: PMC6887808.

⁹⁴ Di Cesare M; M. Sorić, P. Bovet, J.J. Miranda, Z. Bhutta, G.A. Stevens, A. Laxmaiah, A.P. Kengne & J.Bentham (2019).The epidemiological burden of obesity in childhood: a worldwide epidemic requiring urgent action. BMC Med.17(1), 212.

⁹⁵ Hahad et al., (2020).

⁹⁶ Kempen et al., (2018)

⁹⁷Ladjánszki, M. (2020). Health risks caused by environmental noise in Europe, European Environmental Agency, 14th December.

⁹⁸ Murdoch, J.B., (2025). The great crime paradox, 31st July.. McWilliams, D. (2025), Crime is falling, so why do we believe it is surging? Last Word. The Irish Times, 9th August, 24.

⁹⁹ McWilliams, D. (2025). Ireland’s massive problem with “in your face” crimes is stoking fear.  The Irish Times, 9th August.

¹⁰⁰ Onita, L. (2025). Shoplifting at highest levels since records began. Financial Times, 25th July.

¹⁰¹ Becker was awarded a prize by the Swedish National Bank in 1992. The excerpt from the speech is from Black, W.K. (2014). Becker’s imperialistic blunders about crime. New Economic Perspectives, 19th June. https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/gary-beckers-imperialistic-blunders-crime.html

¹⁰² See for instance articles on the extended self, beginning with Belk (1988).

¹⁰³ Shafik, M. (2025). How to live in a G minus one world. Financial Times, 27th July, 11.

¹⁰⁴ Stallard E. & M. Poynting, (2025). Global plastics talks collapse as countries remain deeply divided. BBC News: Climate and Science, 15th August.

¹⁰⁵ See for instance, Kovavic, (2020), Baker (2019); Tepper & Hearn (2019); Philippon, (2019); Lynn, (2010; 2019); Wu, (2018); Shaxon, (2011, 2019).

¹⁰⁶ This and the preceding quotation are from Kovavic, (2020): 461-462.

¹⁰⁷ Piketty, (2022): 9.

¹⁰⁸ Piketty, (2022): 117).

¹⁰⁹ Piketty, (2022): 171.

¹¹⁰ Piketty, (2022): 113.

¹¹¹ Piketty, (2022): 110.

¹¹² Piketty, (2022): 208-211.

¹¹³ Ibid.: 17.

¹¹⁴ This section was mainly influenced by the following article, Brooks, R. & A. Bousfield (undated). Where there’s muck, there’s brass plates. Private Eye, 6pp. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/where-theres-muck.pdf

¹¹⁵ Chatham House (2021) The UKs Kleptocracy Problem: How servicing post-Soviet elites undermined the rule of law, 8th December. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/12/uks-kleptocracy-problem

Murphy, Richard (2022). Russia, and London. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022/02/12/russia-and-london/

¹¹⁶ Slobodian, 2024, 145).

¹¹⁷ Themis, Exploring The Nexus Of Sanctions And Trade-Based Financial Crime In Hong Kong. Also, UAE financial crime: Environmental Financial Crime Risk Mitigation. Accessed August 2025.

¹¹⁸ Robert Lansing Institute, (2025). Hungary’s Sanctions Evasion Nexus: Economic Ties with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as a Backdoor for Russia, 6th June.

¹¹⁹ Staton, B., (2025). It’s been a terrible year to graduate and find a job. Financial Times, 30th August.

¹²⁰ In the UK the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) was founded in 1911 aimed at marketing practitioners, while the needs of academics were catered to by the Marketing Education Group (MEG) which held annual conferences from 1972 1996 when it was rebadged with the more sonorous title of the Academy of Marketing as a bid to professionalize the discipline..

¹²¹ Bettati, A. J. Jacobs,K. Robinson & R. Tas, (2025). The CMO’s comeback: Aligning the C-suite to drive customer-centric growth. McKinsey, 16th June.

¹²² Slobodian, (223, 183).

¹²³ Kotler.org lists a stupendous 101 books he has produced singly or co-authored, many in several editions! My cursory check indicates a range of topics from 1975marketing for nonprofits in 1975; professional services in 1984 (2 edns)., health-care (with Clarke), 1987, professionals as celebrities, 1988 (3 edns.), religious marketing places and cities (with Rein and Haider), Marketing places Europe (with Rein, Haider, Asplund), 1999, Marketing places Asia (with Hamlin, Rein, Haider), 2001, Sustainable marketing in Asia, 2001, marketing tourism and hospitality, 1999 (3 edns.), an Asian perspective (with Ang, Leon, Tan), 1996 (3 edns.), marketing of nations, (with Jatusripitak, and Suvit Maesincee), 1997, performing arts (with Scheff), 1997; marketing the public sector (with Lee), 2006; Strategic marketing for health, (with Shalowitz and Stephens, 2008; marketing Chaotics (with Caslione, 2009). The CMO’s comeback: Aligning the C-suite to drive customer-centric growth, McKinsey, 16th June.