“Things We Pretend Not to Know”: Douglas Murray and the Futilitarian Paradigm

“Mill is pointing to a driver, perhaps the chief driver of inequality in our economic system. The ‘capital’ that young people today are unable to accumulate is, in fact, land (i.e. location) value.”

“The world is pulsing with unrest. There is an irreconcilable conflict between democratic ideas and the aristocratic organization of society. We cannot permit people to vote, then force them to beg. We cannot go on educating them, then refusing them the right to earn a living. We cannot go on chattering about inalienable human rights, then deny the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator.”

– Henry George, Progress and Poverty, chapter 43 The Central Truth (1879)

What ignited today’s radical anti-capitalism and “woke” left-wing cultural politics? According to Douglas Murray, interviewed on his new book, The Madness of Crowds, it started with the economy:

“I trace all of this back ten years. We all understand this historically, when the economics goes wrong, other things go wrong. When the financial crash of 2008 happened it had social consequences too, a loss of confidence by people who were at the heart of what would have been the system because they feel, and not without merit, that the adults screwed up.”

Quillette Podcast (c 31mins)

Specifically, the adults screwed up the housing market:

Interviewer: “We live in a society post the crash where its very difficult to expect young people to be capitalists when they don’t have the chance of having the one form of capital that historically ordinary people have had, which is to own their own home.”