David Harvey and Gar Alperovitz dig into the failure of capitalism, the hope presented by worker co-ops, and what activists fighting for a just economy must do to get there.
If you could eliminate the ignorance people have regarding capitalism there could be shared wealth. Capitalist always use government and legal protection to become monopolistic. This form of protectionism capitalist declare to be free market. Capitalist are free to empty the pockets of the poor because of a patent or a copyright to protect greed and gluttony.
Probably a good show, but the voice of Laura Flanders is far too loud, while the Harvey and Alperovitz are not loud enough. Some sound mixing is somehow needed.
A central problem with the "American System" is the destructive power of rent-seeking interests that have been in recent years well-described by economists Joseph Stiglitz, Mason Gaffney, William Vickrey and others. There are many forms of rent-seeking. Arguably, the most serious problem occurs with the rents derived by the ownership and control of locations -- of parcels of land in towns and cities, of tracts of land the highest, best use of which is agricultural production, timber harvesting or mineral extraction. There is also the rent derived from control of the broadcast spectrum, or the paths traveled around the earth by satellites. Many others are identified in the writings of Mason Gaffney (emeritus professor of economics at the University of California). One we might not think of is take-off and landing slots at airports (since no two airplanes can occupy the same space at the same time without disastrous consequences, and there is real economic rent associated with the time of day a plane is able to take off or land).
For anyone interested in system models for the future, check out the zeitgeist movement. They try to address the root causes of the current systems (the 'isms) failings, namely market volitility, the infinite growth myth, and the incompatibility of infinite consumption and environmental preservation.
Control of the distribution of social wealth is the question. Private ownership is also to be a question. Such control won’t be won without a formidable fight, in fact it will be a war, the class struggle is not a fantasy of the mind, it is a permanent war which has been going on since the beginning of the industrial revolution. It is now an urgent question, how long are we going to tolerate the fraudulent private accumulation of social wealth. Some aspects of these questions are touch upon mildly but mention nevertheless. This is already a progress. Money power is the most powerful tool in place in our societies, who controls it and how it is going to be used, and the absolute necessity to forbid accumulation of money power by individuals.
6:38 ..."appropriate the wealth, that has been "appropriated FROM us"." ...NOW we're talking. How long, now that these sounds have been made, will it take for these ripples to reach out to enough people that a ground swell begins? My guess is, not that long.
Beyond Socialism & Capitalism Sustainable Cooperativism: Post-Fiat & Post-Markets - Kickstarting an evolution A. The "EarthUnit": We need a sustainable blockchain currency where a real time, continuously updated 'Environmental Inventory' (ie, health and maintenance of the planet and its lifeforms) would determine the price of all things. A pricing triumvirate would consist of 1) a blockchained democratic voting system from people 14 years old and up, 2) elected committees of ecologically-minded scientists of essentially all disciplines and 3) a Supreme Pricing Court - not of Democrats and Republicans - but of an ethically designed Artificial Intelligent Neural Net governing the weights within the databsed pricing inventory. B. Bretton Woods, Wall Street, Banking, Lobbyists - going going gone. Untraded, the EarthUnit is free of market manipulation. Once again the 'customer' becomes the buyer of goods replacing the current customer base which consists of stockholders and upper management. The EarthUnit's inventory system controls the price of everything based on realtime ecological conditions. The EarthUnit creates, guides, maintains and assures sustainability. Businesses are owned by employees. C. Gold, silver, lumber, bitcoin are market traded and therefore just as subject to ponzi traders as oil, commodities, indexes or stocks. Short sellers, high speed traders, manipulative credit instruments, market coins, trading markets and fiat currencies must be disappeared. One Earth. One Environmental Unit. One EarthUnit. D. Launching the EarthUnit: The EarthUnit provides an opportunity to use a stable, easily understood trading tool where the value only changes with environmental health factors, including human health. Had the various bitcoins not been market traded they would have provided a launching point. A university might be a place to launch of this untraded EarthUnit. Its adjacent, local support businesses and the surrounding town would naturally follow suit. The University of California with the state and community colleges probably represent 100 or more campuses. The EarthUnit could grow from one California campus to the next. And clearly, California would be the right state for this model. Note: The Technocracy Movement of 100 years ago differs substantially in that the EarthUnit is neither a social-control construct nor an abstract notion superiortizing technology. Today's arbitrage traders, the quants, would more aptly be called Technocracy followers than those who may appreciate this proposal which attempts to garner practical equality within the broader paradigm of planetary survival.
See, the problem is that a lot of people don't have money. Where can we get money for them? Wait, I know! RICH PEOPLE!! Rich people have lots of money, we can just take it from them. Problem solved, I'm gonna go make a sandwich.
