Watch this and get a lot smarter in just 11 minutes! Radical sociologist David Harvey asks: is it 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? From a speech given at the prestigious Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). See the full speech here. The talkshow will returns in a few weeks.
I liked this video and on youtube I found a critique I thought would add to the discussion…what do you think?
Jul 01, 2010
Paige says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJGAs2KwoWk there is the link bahaha!
Jul 04, 2010
lester says:
very much disagree with Mr Harvey as to the nature of the problem.He mentions greenspan only in passing. Greenspan is at the begining middle but cleverly on his part not the end of the story. He kept the interest rates too low for too long. as always, it fueled a boom and in the boom malinvestment occured.
That’s it. There’s no animal spirits, or cultural whatever. the market players responded to the easy money as they always do. The above explanation is elaborate and clever but ultimately useless. I notice he also glosses over Greece. Why?
well because they are suffering under their massive welfare state, the exact sort of thing he as a marxist would prescribe as a solution. central bank inflation and welfare statism are the same side of the coin. Both are (allgedly)well meaning but ultimately harmful intervetions into the market.
He’s on point about the home ownership obsession in the US, that was what directed the malinvestment. Again though, this was a govt initiative.
Interesting presentation though and liked the drawings.
Jul 13, 2010
jon says:
that rebuttal video is kind of terrible, here’s a debunking of it http://theredrock.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/on-the-critique-of-dr-david-harveys-explanation-of-the-economic-crisis/
harvey is spot on in the first instance
Jul 14, 2010
David says:
This reminded me of a BoingBoing TV subversitve sock Puppet show. Kiki and Bubu, the socked crusaders, explore the impending collapse of the American economy. (grin and bear the first two minutes…that’s when it gets deep)
Lester -it is your prerogative to disagree but you are utterly wrong. The system of ‘Finance Capital’ is no more than a sophisticated ‘skimming’ scheme that ‘earns’ or in reality steals value from the rest of us. A study in the UK using real data from the UK economy concluded that for each pound profit the UK banks made up to seven pounds in the real economy was destroyed - the US would be not different.
Furthermore the creation of exotic financial instruments (CDO’s, etc) has been a slight of hand way of stealing value - bankers are only interested in the transactions that makes them money through commissions. The more transactions the greater the profit - they don’t care about the outcome of the transaction - the risk. Hence the selling of financial products to people that could not pay (and buying their own products to reach sales targets, etc), increased volatility introduced into the commodity and share markets, the linking of the food commodity markets with the energy markets, the creation of ‘false’ markets via the use of very high speed computer trading, destabilization of government bond markets, etc.
None of the above adds one jot to economic efficiency and in fact may lead to massive allocation of resources (over building of property in the US for example, or paying excessively for oil products, etc) or the diversion of scarce resources to non productive activities rather than productive capacity.
All that has happened is that trillions of dollars of useless financial assets have been transferred to the public purse. These assets never had any value as no counter party could assign value - so what was the Federal Reserve paying for. This has now introduced a wave of austerity where the poor bloody public has to pay for this via cuts in services, loss of employment, rises in prices, etc. This will lead to massive social and economic dislocation. There are a number of other ‘bubbles’ that will bring havoc to the world’s financial system
