50 Fun Facts About Capitalism

Which hit board game grew out of The Landlord's Game, patented in 1904 by the feminist game designer Lizzie Magie?

Monopoly, the 1935 hit, was inspired by a game Magie designed to teach Georgism, the idea that land values should be taxed for everyone's benefit.

Which flower's bulbs sold for more than ten times a skilled artisan's yearly income in the Netherlands in 1637?

Tulip prices in the Dutch Republic collapsed in February 1637, ending what is widely regarded as the first recorded speculative mania in history.

Which farm animals share a Latin root with the word capital, both tracing back to caput, meaning head?

Cattle once meant movable property of any kind, like its sister word chattel. Only much later did it narrow to mean livestock.

Which Scottish thinker, often called the father of capitalism, used a pin workshop to show the power of dividing labour?

Adam Smith described ten men sharing the work of one small workshop, each doing only a step or two, such as drawing out the wire or sharpening the point.

Which word for a wealthy business leader comes from a Japanese title once used for the shogun?

Tycoon comes from taikun, meaning great lord, and entered English in 1857. Abraham Lincoln's aides jokingly used it as their nickname for the president.

Which animal names a falling stock market, after 18th-century London traders who sold its skin before the catch?

Bear markets owe their name to the bear-skin jobbers of London's Exchange Alley, who sold shares they did not yet own. Traders who bought on credit were called bulls.

Which fictional corporate raider, played by Michael Douglas in a 1987 Oliver Stone film, came to stand for 1980s greed?

Gordon Gekko won Michael Douglas the Academy Award for Best Actor. The character was loosely based on several real financiers, among them the arbitrageur Ivan Boesky.

Which carmaker astonished the world in 1914 by offering a five-dollar daily wage, more than doubling most workers' pay?

Henry Ford wanted to end the constant staff turnover in his plants. The move proved extremely profitable, as the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to work for him.

Which American fast-food chain opened on Moscow's Pushkin Square in January 1990 to record-breaking queues?

McDonald's needed 14 years of planning and negotiation to get there. Its arrival was seen as a symbol of the economic and political reforms under way in the Soviet Union.

Which New York thoroughfare takes its name from a wooden barricade that Dutch colonists built across Manhattan in 1653?

Wall Street follows the line of a palisade ordered by Peter Stuyvesant, who feared an overland attack by English troops. The barrier came down in 1699, once the city had outgrown it.

Which 1776 book by a Scottish moral philosopher became a fundamental work of economics and sold out in six months?

The Wealth of Nations took its author some ten years to produce, drawing on seventeen years of notes and earlier studies.

Which French phrase, traced to merchants answering the minister Colbert, names a hands-off economic policy?

Laissez-faire echoes the merchant Le Gendre, who is said to have told Colbert around 1681 that the best help the French state could give business was to leave it be.

Which German thinker, buried in London's Highgate Cemetery, wrote the three-volume critique Das Kapital?

Karl Marx was expelled from Germany after the revolutions of 1848 and settled in London, where he lived until his death in 1883.

Which metaphor, used just once in a famous 1776 treatise, has markets steering self-interest to the public good?

The invisible hand appears only in passing, in a passage about merchants who prefer to keep their capital at home rather than risk it abroad.

Which oil magnate became America's first billionaire in 1916, after the Supreme Court dismantled his Standard Oil?

John D. Rockefeller grew ever richer as kerosene and gasoline became vital commodities, which made him the wealthiest person in the United States.

Which Scottish-born industrialist wrote The Gospel of Wealth and paid for more than 2,500 libraries around the world?

Andrew Carnegie argued in that 1889 article that the rich should use their fortunes to improve society, and he even backed an estate tax.

Which city is home to the world's oldest modern stock exchange, set up after 1602 to trade shares in the VOC?

Amsterdam's exchange began as a market for reselling shares in the Dutch spice-trading giant, and it was the first to trade securities formally.

Which Florentine family ran Europe's largest bank in the 15th century and bankrolled Botticelli and Michelangelo?

The Medici also financed the building of St Peter's Basilica and Florence Cathedral, and counted Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo among those they supported.

Which British insurance market traces its origins to a coffee house opened on Tower Street around 1689?

Lloyd's of London began among the seafarers and shipowners who gathered at Edward Lloyd's coffee house, which became the ideal place to arrange marine insurance.

Which English textile workers wrecked machines in raids from 1811, giving their name to foes of new technology?

Luddites claimed to follow Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver whose name they signed on threatening letters to mill owners and officials.

Which 1957 novel imagines America's business leaders vanishing in a strike led by the mysterious John Galt?

Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's longest novel and the one she considered her masterpiece. It ends with the strikers planning a new society built on Galt's philosophy.

Which name is given to 29 October 1929, when some 16.4 million shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange?

Black Tuesday came five days after another day of panic selling, when a then-record 12.9 million shares were traded.

Which British economist argued in his 1936 General Theory that governments should spend on public works to fight slumps?

John Maynard Keynes saw his influence wane in the 1970s, when stagflation hit Britain and America and monetarists disputed that governments could tame the business cycle.

Which British prime minister raised over £29 billion by selling nationalised industries and curbed trade union power?

Margaret Thatcher was dubbed the Iron Lady by a Soviet journalist, a nickname that stuck to her uncompromising style of leadership.

Which US president cut the top income tax rate from 70 to 28 per cent and fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers?

Ronald Reagan lowered the top rate in two steps, to 50 per cent in 1981 and to 28 per cent in 1986.

Which investor, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha, turned the textile maker Berkshire Hathaway into a giant holding company?

Warren Buffett later called buying the textile business his worst trade, even though he kept its name for the diversified group he built.

Which American investment bank's collapse on 15 September 2008 remains the largest bankruptcy filing in US history?

Lehman Brothers had more than 600 billion dollars in assets when rescue talks failed, and its fall was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Which pair of market forces did Alfred Marshall popularise as two crossing curves in his 1890 Principles of Economics?

Supply and demand diagrams still follow Marshall's choice of putting price on the vertical axis, although price is normally the independent variable.

Which documentary maker followed Roger & Me and Fahrenheit 9/11 with the 2009 film Capitalism: A Love Story?

Michael Moore built the film around the 2008 financial crisis and the rescue that followed, as an indictment of the American economic order.

Which German sociologist argued that a Calvinist work ethic helped give rise to capitalism in Northern Europe?

Max Weber held that Protestant believers threw themselves into worldly work, building their own enterprises and accumulating wealth to invest rather than spend.

Which phrase did the economist Joseph Schumpeter popularise for innovation sweeping away old firms and industries?

Creative destruction is also known as Schumpeter's gale, although the term itself was coined by his fellow economist Werner Sombart.

Which label for America's late-1800s boom comes from an 1873 Mark Twain novel satirising problems masked by prosperity?

The Gilded Age was a name applied by historians in the 1920s. Twain wrote the novel with Charles Dudley Warner, mocking a thin coat of gold over serious social ills.

Which insult for ruthless 19th-century American industrialists was aimed at Cornelius Vanderbilt as early as 1859?

Robber barons borrows from the medieval German lords who charged illegal tolls on the roads through their lands and along the Rhine.

Which British trading firm fielded about 260,000 soldiers before the Crown took over its territories in 1858?

The East India Company was at its peak the largest corporation in the world, and its three armies were at times twice the size of the British Army.

Which financial mania of 1720 cost Isaac Newton at least £10,000 when a London company's shares collapsed?

The South Sea Bubble burst when the stock, after peaking in 1720, suddenly fell back to little above its original flotation price.

Which programme of reforms did Franklin D. Roosevelt launch in 1933 in response to the Great Depression?

The New Deal began with relief for the unemployed, recovery for the economy and reform of the financial system, an agenda remembered as the 3 Rs.

Which Chicago economist argued in a 1970 New York Times essay that a business's social duty is to raise its profits?

Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences six years later. His argument, also called shareholder theory, puts returns to owners first.

Which Austrian-born economist warned against central planning in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom?

Friedrich Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal, for work on money and economic fluctuations.

Which French-derived term does The Communist Manifesto use for the ruling class said to exploit the proletariat?

Bourgeoisie began as the name for the craftsmen, artisans and merchants who lived in the walled market towns, or bourgs, of medieval France.

Which doctrine, dominant in Europe from the 16th century, aimed to maximise exports and pile up gold and silver?

Mercantilism measured a nation's wealth by the precious metal it held. Academic belief in it began to fade in the late 18th century, under fire from the classical economists.

Which phrase did Thorstein Veblen coin in The Theory of the Leisure Class for buying luxuries to display wealth?

Conspicuous consumption arrived in 1899 with a twin idea, conspicuous leisure, in what became Veblen's first and best-known book.

Which principle did David Ricardo illustrate in 1817 with England and Portugal trading cloth and wine?

Comparative advantage shows why trade pays even when one country, as Portugal was in the example, can make every good with less labour than its partner.

Which New Hampshire resort hosted the 1944 conference that created the International Monetary Fund and World Bank?

Bretton Woods drew 730 delegates from 44 allied nations to the Mount Washington Hotel, where they designed the post-war monetary order.

Which Augsburg banker, nicknamed the Rich, helped secure the election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor?

Jakob Fugger also founded the Fuggerei in Augsburg, the world's oldest social housing complex still in use.

Which tree names the 1792 agreement, signed by 24 stockbrokers, that founded the New York Stock Exchange?

Buttonwood was, legend has it, the tree under which the brokers made their earliest trades. They agreed to trade only with each other, at a commission of 0.25 per cent.

Which US antitrust law, passed in 1890 and named for an Ohio senator, was used to break up Standard Oil?

The Sherman Act was the basis of a Justice Department suit filed in 1906, which ended with the oil giant split into many smaller companies.

Which Chinese city bordering Hong Kong became the country's first special economic zone under Deng Xiaoping's reforms?

Shenzhen was picked for its position next to an established trading hub, and it soon drew in foreign direct investment and migrants looking for opportunities.

Which American political scientist argued that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism marked the end of history?

Francis Fukuyama first made the case in a summer 1989 essay for the journal The National Interest, then expanded it into a 1992 book.

Which French economist wrote the 2013 bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, on rising wealth inequality?

Thomas Piketty drew on 250 years of economic data to argue that an ever-rising concentration of wealth does not correct itself.

Which Swiss ski resort has hosted the World Economic Forum's meeting of political and corporate leaders since 1971?

Davos was earlier known for its sanatoria, one of which inspired the clinic in Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain.