It always troubles me to see professionally produced, economically illiterate videos condemning capitalism. Here’s one:
David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?
@ 3:20 — The fifth of his list of “popular explanations of the crisis” is pretty much correct, though Glenn Beck and the World Bank are hardly apostles of deregulation. Why doesn’t he cite Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Mises, etc? This guy would do well to study the Austrian School.
@ about 3:40, the narrator asks, “What kind of plausible story can I write [explaining our economic crash] which is none of the above?” I think, WTF? Uniqueness is not how we should judge economic theories. How about a meticulous logical examination? “Renowned academic,” my ass.
@ 4:20, the narrator relates a story about the Queen of England asking economists why they didn’t see it coming. “Story” is a good description for what David Harvey is telling. He ignores the many Austrian Economists who did see it coming, and now see things getting much, much worse before they get better. Maybe we should listen to them before we try David Harvey’s workers’ paradise.
@ 6:00, he speaks from Marx’s flawed class analysis. In a free market, the interested of capital are not opposed to those of labor. They are complimentary. In fact, capital competes with other capital for the best of labor, and labor competes with labor for the best jobs. If you consider each a monolithic class opposed to the other, you will be blind to much of the world. Significantly, Marx, in his writing, never defined his most crucial term: class.
@ 7:15 — Capitalism DOES solve its own crises, if you let people fail, and let people accept whatever they damn well please as money. Bailouts and forcing people to use fiat money have nothing to do with free markets or capitalism.
@ 8:50 — Financial innovation does not empower financiers. Government bailouts and government subsidies empower financiers. If firms were allowed to go bankrupt they would regulated themselves / be regulated by their investors.
@ 10:15 — “I don’t have the solutions.” Here, I completely agree with you, Mr. Harvey.
From their website: For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.
That’s not enlightenment suckling in their cradle. I think the previous century has seen enough of their sort of “progress.”
Sure, because the USSR was a paradise for the average working person.
Just look at China – they’ve obviously totally fallen apart since they switched from Communism to Capitalism.
Capitalism IS the unequal distribution of wealth but
Communism is the equal distribution of poverty.