Free-Market Capitalism Is So 20th-Century. A Debate

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The recession of 2008 has cast serious doubt on whether free-market capitalism, an idea set that functioned reasonably well in the 20th century, is a healthy economic ideology to carry over into the 21st. Has free-market capitalism become an outdated economic model? That is the question in this Oxford Union-style debate as panelists make their case. Speakers for the motion argue that capitalism has been empirically proven wrong due to its failure to warn of impending crisis and that "state capitalism," as it is evolving in Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia, is the model for the immediate future; those against identify contributory factors-for example, a lack of adequate competition that enabled core institutions to grow too big to be allowed to fail-as the agents of capitalist catastrophe and point to the systems used in Scandinavia as exemplary models of free-market capitalism. Questions from the floor follow. The final vote? Significantly against. Political satirist Rory Bremner presides.