It has been a great pleasure and honour to give a lecture on “Contemporary Socialist Models” as part of the series “Paradigms and Controversies of Economic Theories” at the Freie Universität Berlin. Many thanks to Cara Nadler for the kind invitation and the excellent organisation of the event. I had the opportunity to meet a group of outstanding students and, after the lesson, engage in a fascinating discussion about the challenges faced by contemporary democracies and the never ending issues of comparing economic systems.
I also had the privilege of being given an office in one of the former buildings of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik, which now hosts part of the university’s Department of Economics. It was here that Albert Einstein once worked, before moving to the United States when the Nazis rose to power in 1933. A small building, yet a powerful reminder of both the incredible intelligence and the profound folly of humankind.