RSA Animate – Crisis of Capitalism

I enjoyed the thought provoking presentation. Under the current global circumstances, most people are generally disillusioned about what they ignorantly think is normal or right at the expense of others, especially the poverty stricken and exploited 3rd world and its natural resources. In the greater scheme of things, we as a global civilization have to realize that we are influenced by wrong and harmful motives and agendas, let’s wake up and get real. We are in a crisis of epic proportions, so for the sake of our children and the earth, we have to carefully infuse whatever socially worthwhile scenarios we can imagine for exchanging value within our communities, the world over in innovative ways. After all, that is all that money is; a token for the exchange of value. Except this time, the value must not be financial, but for humanity before is not too late.

You are wrong, read, Hayek and Mises. "Austrian Theory of Economic Cycles".

Are you serious? He is the most cited academics in geography probably the world currently. Do you really think you have read more and have a better grasp of it?

I was encouraged by the video to say crap, I think that is what is needed to be said. 75% of the wisdom was pretty good and well thought through - but some of the insight was crap.

The circular rise in debt was not brought on by credit cards or excessive consumer spending. It was brought about by mortgage debt. That was brought about by two income families who could buy homes in nicer post codes to send their children to better schools. How do you keep up? More couples go out to work to afford bigger mortgages. The spiral effect starts.

Those families left behind faced schools with a diminishing mix of balanced pupils - the answer was simple, they too had to move to nicer post codes.

Bankers got lucky because property went up and two income families demanded and received bigger loans. From that point, the mortgage arms race had to run out at some point, it was just a matter of when. The only way the mortgage arms race could have been maintained was for government to legalise bigamy so that mortgages could have three or more salaries to count on.

While people were distracted with obtaining ever larger salaries to afford spiralling property prices, society forgot to look after the next generation and give them a nurturing environment. TV, computer games and MSM messenger became the baby sitters and educators for the young people who will run the world in 25 years time.

This talk began with an idea about finding a different narrative for the problems that we encountered and are living through. Great idea, great delivery but short on depth.

With respect: nice try, but slipped on the Maoism banana. @rightproperty

The economical crisis is not actually difficult to fix. In fact, it's rather easy. Off the top of my head I can think of three policy changes that would all but fix the American economy, with little to no negative consequences: legalization of marijuana, revoking the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, decreased spending on non-intelligence / reconnaissance military technology.

So, the real problem isn't finding out what the right thing to do is, but getting people to do it. Now, I know that expecting a majority of americans to suddenly agree on the best solution is impractical, which is why we have the kind of debates encouraged by Harvey.

I honestly think that, in general, the economic system that most western countries have works. It's largely capitalist, with some welfare and other government-funded programs that maintain the quality of life for the citizens. The problem is really specific policy and, as Harvey touched on, people's resistance to change (i.e. that how we come out of the last crisis determines how we deal with this one, when it should be that we deal with each crisis in such a way that we fix it based on its nature.)