№ 2026.Jul.14-005
The Engine of Capitalism — Innovation or Hoarding?
Jonathan Levy has written an epic history of American capitalism arguing that the profit motive has never been sufficient to drive long-term development. In NLR 159, Moreno Zacarés says: the instinct is right but the foundations are unsound — you take Keynes's theory of hoarding as the skeleton and fill in the flesh with a Smithian commercial narrative, and the two pull each other apart.