Things we’ll really all be better off without

Most journalists have spoken of the financial crisis as evidence of a failure of capitalism. But is it? Or is this kind of reversal in fact necessary if capitalism is to work at all? After all, a free-market economy doesn’t do a perfect job of rewarding success. It may pick better winners than, say, governments, but it is still largely arbitrary. Even relatively worthy successes such as Google’s or Microsoft’s may be as much the result of lucky timing as anything else.

Instead, capitalism is at its indisputable best not when picking but when picking off. In unerringly killing off the bad: the inefficient, the redundant, the outdated or the needlessly complex.

Along with great increases in wealth and industry, the last 15 years of growth have seen a steady accumulation of pointless and unproductive forms of human activity: witless expenditure, insane trends and bizarre herd behaviours. Their disappearance will be welcome — not only to people who were forced to watch them, but even more to those many people who felt driven to participate.