Capitalism, Alone Quotes

“The fact that the entire globe now operates according to the same economic princi­ples—­production or­ga­nized for profit using legally ­free wage labor and mostly privately owned capital, with decentralized coordination—is without historical pre­ce­dent.”
― Branko Milanović, Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

“What do we find overall, then, when we compare inequalities in the different versions of capitalism? In all six aspects examined here, liberal meritocratic capitalism displays features that enhance inequality. It differs from classical capitalism most distinctively in the feature that capital-rich individuals are also labor-rich, and probably also in greater assortative mating. It differs significantly from social-democratic capitalism in several respects: it exhibits a rising aggregate share of capital in net income, it has labor-rich capitalists, it almost certainly has a greater prevalence of assortative mating, and it most likely has greater intergenerational transmission of inequality.”
― Branko Milanović, Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

“because of constant pressure to deliver more to its constituents, po­liti­cal capitalism might hone its ability to manage the economic sphere well and to keep on delivering, year in year out, more goods and
ser­vices than its liberal counterpart. Thus, what appear at first as a defect may prove to be an advantage.”
― Branko Milanović, Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

“Fears of robotics and technology arise, I think, from two human frailties. One is cognitive: we simply do not know what ­future technological change ­will be and thus cannot tell what new jobs will be created, what our ­future needs ­will be, or how raw materials ­will be used. The second is psychological: we get a thrill from fear of the unknown—in this case, the
scary and yet alluring prospect of metallic robots replacing flesh-­and-­blood workers on the factory floor.”
― Branko Milanović, Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

“It is the reneging on some crucial aspects of this implicit value system, namely a movement toward the creation of a self-perpetuating upper class and polarization between the elites and the rest, that represents the most important threat to the longer-term viability of liberal capitalism.”
― Branko Milanović, Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World