#19 Kristian Niemitz: Free markets, NIMBYs, British stagnation, colonialism and the NHS

Dr Kristian Niemitz is Head of Political Economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Our conversation covered his many works including "Socialism: the failed idea that never dies", "Imperial Measurement: a cost-benefit analysis of western colonialism" and "Universal Healthcare without the NHS". We discussed his journey from "teenage Commie" to classical liberal, why Britain is stagnating and what to do about it, the battle of ideas more broadly, religious influences on economics, socialism's cultural dominance, the failure of politicians to implement good policy, and whether Javier Milei is an exception to this.Like many good Germans he's a beer connoisseur (he even has a Substack on it!). He describes Twitter as containing "the daftest opinions expressed with extreme confidence" (good thing he doesn't spend too much time on LinkedIn) and enjoys the traction he gets from gently mocking those opinions.You can find Kristian here: https://x.com/K_Niemietz, read his longer form writing at the IEA website: https://iea.org.uk/publications, and his Substack on Beer here https://kristianniemietz.substack.com/.This podcast was produced by Matt Cooper with music composed by Loverman.