CommentsMyth buster
There is no such thing as a free market. Companies shouldn't be run in the interest of their owners. The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has. Despite the fall of communism, we are all living in planned economies.
These are but four of the eye-popping assertions that Professor Ha-Joon Chang makes in his delightfully iconoclastic 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism.
The claims aren't just meant to startle though.
In his 286-page book, Professor Chang goes on to buttress each of his myth-busting statements with well-laid-out arguments.
The Cambridge professor, a specialist in development economics, makes it clear that while he still counts himself among the faithfuls who fly the flag for capitalism, free-market capitalism gets his goat. He stresses that, most importantly, there are no simple answers when it comes to rebuilding the world economy post the Great Recession, unlike what these free-market capitalists will have us believe.
In an interview with R Rajesh Kumar, Professor Chang holds forth on the dangers of India's fascination with the internet, on why more education does not always translate to better economic performance and explains some of his more out-of-the-box assertions.
Image: German inventor Jacob Christian Schaffer, who came up with one of the early washing-machine designs in 1767.
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