Steve Keen: Marxism, Capitalism, and Economics | Lex Fridman Podcast  

What if the reason socialism fails is that you get the wrong people in charge of organizations. Under Capitalism its kind of survival of the fittest so the reason an organization is successful is because the organization is able to start up and maintain its success is because the people running are extremely competent and making the right decisions. Once the people running the organization start making bad decisions the organization gets pushed out by another one. So under socialism you get the people in charge appointed so its political not based on competence. You could end up with someone like Alexandria Cortez running your rocket company instead of Elon Musk. This could be the fundamental reason Socialism doesn't produce innovation or efficiency. So you need capitalism but it needs to be regulated by a government to cut out some of the abuses of pure capitalism. The problem comes in win the powerful capitalists corrupt the government, so the government is controlled by them rather than the government regulating the capitalists.

To many people who are living paycheck to paycheck There’s nothing more real or tangible than money and debt, and if you told some people that some guy walked on water and he came back to life many would say “that’s bullshit”, but if you told them there was more debt than there was money to pay the debts many of them would be confused having assumed that the most tangible and real thing in their lives, is a fraudulent magical system. It’s a system which is much more than necessarily flawed, where cantillionaires are propped up by the money system who then use their money to buy the government to reinforce the system of oligarchy. And in the end none of this is actually even good for the cantillionaires much less for the environment or the average person. Many of these same people talk about free markets and innovation and freedom and democracy but they hate all of these things. Meanwhile the religions of the world have the right idea when it comes to economics - cancel the debts on jubilee as a way to restart the economies and the religions banned usury debts.

I don't know if you will see this, I want to thank you. This world would be a much darker realm of "unknowns" without your contribution.

I'm really enjoying this episode so far, just ten minutes in... Hopefully he mentions UBI, when talking about how consumer economies are doomed to fail, if the majority of consumers can't participate. Add in more automation... This is why direct Government investment of cash into each individual person is needed. Either a UBI or a Basic Income. The hidden benefits will manifest in ways that crime goes down, police don't need to be an occupying force in economically depressed areas, and new forms of tax revenues generated from more independent small businesses serving local needs... UBI is desperately needed. Millennials are less likely to have savings, IRAs, own homes... By 2034, the SSA Trust is out of money, meaning only $700 gets paid out for every $1000 due from SS retirement for people born after 1965...

Absolutely great that you got this severely underrated and historically great economist on. Thank you!

I think you should always buy the most expensive thing, that way everything you've ever bought will last forever. How's that titanium VCR running? You're not a engineer, you're a Leftist propagandists, be real to who you are. Anyone can buy a $30 sewing machine that's going to last 100 hours or spend $6,000 for one that will last 40,000 hours. Both are designed with planned obsolescence because it's stupid to make things no one wants or no one can afford.

And the funny thing is, I've known this for years so what I've been doing is noticing things that regularly break, for example my deep fryer's igniter keeps breaking every 6 months and the first time we had to call in a repair man, and he took couple hundreds for call out and basically swapped a little plastic knob. I went online and bought 20 of those knobs from Ebay and now when it breaks, I just replace it myself. It's crazy what people can do with a bit of tinkering.

There is a theory of capitalism that creates different incentives for manufacturers. Lets say for ex. the Whirpool and fridge or a washing machine. You dont buy the machine, you buy / rent a service of "I want this much space for a fridge and with these parameters", same for a washing machine. That gives companies different incentives. I think it is a worthy and fascinating way of changing some industries within capitalism. As that is the main issue we face, incentives. They are set wrong on many levels.

Well there's also an input regarding how much people can or will pay for quality which can come at a price. I'm not sure which problem comes first, monopoly or thrift. But the first is a public issue and the second a private issue. The current system ignores the former while putting all the explanation on the later. It's fascinating how subjects like this, which are questions of engineering design, quickly become so ideological as to be theological.

@@conceptAIart You choose to buy more of the fragile cheap plastic knobs instead of a expensive steel knob. Your choice signals what to manufacture.

Well, he's half right.

Would love to hear you and Noam Chomsky or Richard Wolff talk. Thanks a lot for this discussion.

That was an enthralling journey Steve, thanks for being a fascinating guide.. Thanks Lex for the chance to join you on it...

interesting discussion on socialism and innovation, I wonder how you would integrate slave (and colonization) labor into the "capitalist" innovation? What is the nature of the "exploitation" that you didn't really dissect (somewhere around 129mins) ? This would have been interesting especially since you are an Australian British colony (what is that back idea of the common wealth)

Good to see an Aussie on the podcast.

painful

So hard to keep all that terminology on my head at once

35 minutes in and 90% of what has been said is generally accepted basic economic definitions, with only his opinions on equilibrium vs stability really being at all controversial. Economics, as it exists, is a painful set of self-sustaining contradictions of reality. I think the best way to follow what’s being said is to accept that your likely well informed view of what reality is that you’ve built up over your lifetime has very little to do with the way modern mainstream economics. When words overlap from one to the other, it’s reasonable to assume a modern economist thinks it’s something incompatibly different. What’s being argued here is largely common sense, in my opinion, but put into the language of modern economics and mathematics is essentially a separate language.

The amount of people applauding this man is also outstanding.

Also surprising how he casually dismissed bitcoiners I. The same breath saying inflation and easy lending is a problem.

LOLLLalL

Just like always- you think you have an original thought and someone else beats you to it!

I half expected him to take off his face halfway through to reveal that the real guest was in fact Arnold Vosloo

Lol once you see it, you can’t Unsee it

I'm upset I missed this. Spotting doppelgangers is a hobby of mine. Nice catch. Lol

🤣🤣

👏

@Samuel Dixon you can like it now

wakka wakka 😁

and 99 thumbs up..

Make it 5, 5 minutes in

@@aguysaid5457right? Hahah it did not take me 30 minutes to realize imma need to listen to this one SEVERAL times.

Me too.

I made it almost 12min. Holy heck! I will watch again

Me too! Steve made me love economics

Wow! That’s awesome. Definitely am inspiring mind.

@@ssssds5254 what a weird fucking comment, and you edited it lmao

Okay commie

@@ssssds5254 what a weird comment to get angry at

That thread about banks, assets, liabilities and money creation wasn't fully developed.

Steve Keen is the Rickest of ricks! He is Rick C-137!!!

agree 100%

It's because the human brain is the most complex thing we know that exists in the universe...and we created economics...lol

What books would you recommend to someone who is just starting to seriously study economics and wants to get a balanced exposure to important ideas in economics? Beginners are often exposed to mainstream ideas only, and, if it happens at all, it takes them a while to discover on their own the less known yet valuable ones. 🙂

@@BiancaAguglia Check out The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton! There are vids of her available too.

@@graham6132 Ya, didn't he turn out to be wrong about practically EVERYTHING?

@@BiancaAguglia 'adults in the room' by yannis varoufakis is very eye opening

@@graham6132 yeah, you know the people you dont agree with are all crazy, very reasonable man

For sure. If we had to regard humans as beings rather than as a resource we would be forced to make some pretty substantial changes.

The motivating force in capitalism is profit - not supporting the needs of human beings. All those decisions you point out are related to the pursuit of profit.

Econmics is a science(soft not hard but still a science) their job is to tell if a and b what happen next...what is right and wrong is out of the science goal...also if think that economist don t know that the more old a person is the more hard is it to retrain him in to a new job u have a totaly distorted idea of the subject...the fact is what is the alternative? Let everybody continue do a job that s not profitable just becouse is hard to them find a new job?in somecases can be done but if this become the norm an economic sistem will collapse...also usualy the kind of job somebody will be retrain in to is a very similar one a factory work will search for an other factory job where the skill set is almost the same...

​@@CarlyonProduction What do you mean? I don't know about you, but from my experience, businesses do not succeed if they fail to produce a desirable product by the majority (people). Especially if businesses are given more freedom to innovate and are not constrained too much. I have hundreds of examples of businesses that make me happy and support my needs - and much better than, for example state-run services. Many many examples.

@@CarlyonProduction yet the majority of happy people that I know work in the private sector, not for the government. And I know plenty in both sectors.

They're economists not environmentalists

Techno Feudalism.

Yanis is a hack

Absolutely

A Russian communist

Yes please.

it's actually him rewording and re-framing what was actually said by his guest. not something that I feel will benefit him.

Would have been excellent if Steve spoke about what’s happening in Australia 🇦🇺 at the moment. The government has got out of control

@@tasd5673 you literally watched this and did not take in a single word did you?

@@bryce3907 sorry Bryce I wrote this comment before he started. As always🤦, however still would have been nice to cover more of the issues. Have a great day

@@tasd5673 WTF ?? are you a bot or truly that stupid

Or his interview with Sam Altman. Lex didn't challenge him, even on obvious guffaws.

Lex was planted, because I haven’t been recommended Anything on RU-vid for over 4 years, so you tell me! I watch 10-20 videos per day and nothing for years….

He already had Michael Saylor on. No need! JK.. More opinions the better.

yes!!! I'll pay for his airplane ticket hotel anything!!

Agree. A study of both Keen and Hudson has helped bring a great deal of clarity to my observations of the world. Calmness follows clarity for my fellow anxious types.

Facts

@@subucni113 saylor has said some of the dumbest shit in history.

Outgrown Marx poetry? Maybe it just got boring.

Outgrown to what exactly? To what we currently are doing? That seems to be doing so amazing right now lol.

Do you have a better theory?

Same. Common sense, consensus building brilliant analysis , followed by disastrous solution propositions. How smart people can get on board with the idea of infinitely powerful centralized global power as protector of freedom, is bizarre.

Well said

Amen 🙏

Cheers beat of luck for the new journey

Power will never, and has never, been stewards for anyone else but itself. Power and government must be exterminated. All history proves it.

If you go to the shop with money... and come back without the money but instead with a loaf of bread to eat... Then money does indeed have value. Stop paying all your bills. See if the value you've been getting in return is taken away from you.

"My fear is that money no longer has value". Precision is important with issues like this. What you possibly mean is "Money has decreasing value in an opaque system I don't understand." Inadvertently use sweeping binaries? Be prepared to be fooled by them.

@@gwho Please watch “The Money Masters.” Then get back to me on my “sloppy and emotional thinking.”

He did a lot of filming/interviews before he left for ukraine to fill the gap

Unless Lex is an expert in everything, he puts in a lot of research before each interview.

@@scabthecat Exactly ! An incredible amount of content to prepare for … yet makes it look easy !

And that's what makes this podcast so special

I think he understands Marxism better than any communist has yet. Use value and exchange value . Labor is only one element of economics utopian/dystopian ideas resulted in socialism-communism. Authortarian governments rely on top down control stifling individual liberties and innovations which constrains progress.

The deficit myth by Stephanie Kelton is very good.

@@StarvingAutist Yes it is. I read Stephanie's book before Keen's. Stephanie Kelton's book is an easier read. However, if you want to dig you have to get some textbooks.

@@jsimonlarochelle Read Lyn ALden's book for the best synopsis on money - I have been looking for a book like that for ten years

@@wellyman2008 Thanks ! I will get a copy.

Lost me at FTTH in Oz - the Lefty missed out that FTTH was literally drawn on the back of a beer coaster (Conroy) - Australia doesn't have China's population and ENGINEERS advised Turnbull that FTTH was ridiculous - also Turnbull was the founder of the successful Private company OzEmail, so he's no numpty. There's always Wireless and (Musk's) satellite alternatives.

Then he says that masks stop Rona - when retailers were being fined AUD$10k for saying that they'd prevent SARS/MERS. Shill. And, of course, Economists love taxing the atmosphere (the dreaded "Carbon")... now they've moved on to Nitrogen in the Periodic Table of Elements (Netherlands et al) - what's next? EU Feudalist enabler, no wonder he loves the Feudalist Sino society. Does Lex have a fetish for Pinkos?

Must be on that alpah brain from jre product line

No. His quips here are lame. Cringe.

@@lawrencefrost9063 You're lame

Do you mean Lex's accent?

@@MissTryALot if only I could distinguish australian from american...

@@arabusov There's a big difference...

@@arabusov Like Steve said using words like "Bastard" can be seen as a negative in USA but in Australia it's Seen as a positive word but of course it depends on the context and the tone of how the word is used. There's words that Americans don't use that Australians use and vice versa such as Crikey or Oi.

I’ve also gone back to replay several parts of this remarkable interview.

@@juancarlosmartinez3621 kc Yeah Yeah I’ll Oiiiiiii P

It's because he actually didn't make sense. Odds are, you are not stupid...but trying to understand a socialist, green party economist who failed at teaching and can't even define his own terms in a logical way that Lex can understand means that you are not the problem. Keen is.

@@WtfRU-vid_YouSuck I disagree. I find Keen to be brilliant and has a more realistic understanding of the world than most intellectuals.

@@WtfRU-vid_YouSuck obvious troll

@@xyzyzx1253 He’s not trolling. Keen’s ideas are pretty widely disputed and the general critique of him is that he’s too ideologically driven; ironically that same critique that he makes of the “mainstream economic theories”. Listening to and enjoying Keen as a person and economist is all well and good, but it’s always worth checking what other scholars in his field think of his work.

​@@TheBreezeShoot which ideas are those?

He didn't want to or care to. Also funny you missed how much he trashed on the current economic system and the neo classical.

What about cuba?

He's not a socialist, he's a neo-keynesian

I hope you realize how much goes into the success of socialist countries. It's not as simple when you're dealing with sanctions, regime change and democracy from a gun barrel. Cuba increased literacy rates exponentially and there's healthcare in the most remote parts of the island. Previously people had to walk the injured for hours to get to hospitals. China lifted millions upon millions of people out of poverty and subsistence farming and their latest projections are saying 1.2 billion people in China will be middle class. We're talking almost 12-15% of the worlds population here!!! If that's not socialist success I don't know where the goalposts are anymore. Maybe idiots like you should stop moving them

He really sounded like an ideologue to me.

@@mikhailnikolaev7813 And Keen himself has been debunked many times. He has a habit of "debunking" strawman arguments (I'm referencing his book "Debunking Economics".

Well he is fundamentally an ideologue and hypocrite. He blasts other people's oversimplified models (which i agree with) then promotes his own oversimplified models as the word of god which cant be questioned. He is a hack. Also... let it be noted and history has proven this over and over... the only people who understand the economy LESS than a politician is an economist. An economist is an intellectual elitist with no practical experience IN the economy. Economics is a science and economists usually use crayons to make their proofs. This guy is using a pastel crayon and thinks he knows it all.

Lmao is as much of an economic ideologue as possible but ok

@@mikhailnikolaev7813 I don’t find Keen to be demanding social change in pure lock step with the left or the right. He might be ideological but he’s really just asking you to acknowledge the enormous consequences of bad theory. The appalling failure of communism is not something he would ignore while the others have clearly just ignored them.

He's good at math, bad at everything else MMT lol

@@qwerty6574 Leaving policy aside, MMT is first and foremost a description of how fiat currency works in countries like the USA, along with the implications and consequences of those facts. There I said “facts” because that’s what they are. That said, you can lol at the mainstream interpretation of MMT all day if you like.

@@stevo-dx5rr cope and seethe.

@@qwerty6574 That means nothing to me.

It is when steve is seemingly trying to confuse him.

He has plenty of times. Endearingly honest and humble dood

@@nenadmatic7166 Perhaps this is due to it's inherently social and constructed nature when compared to "hard" sciences rather than being difficult because it is technically demanding, though you can certainly go deep into the technical side as well.

@@tom4115 lol, how? He spoke fairly plainly, and didn't even use too much economic jargon. Yes he used "big" words, but God dammit have you ever considered that BIG WORDS ARE FUN? Can you not understand how boring and even painful it could be to speak plainly for 4 hours, what's even the point of having a conversation with someone if you don't find having the conversation to be engaging in the first place. These men both have PHDs for christ sake, let them live a little, sheesh. P.S. if you really can't understand the appeal of big words, I recommend you watch the animated sitcom "Archer", or anything made by Quentin Tarantino. The power of clever dialogue is seductive.

@@cjlooklin1914 Fair enough, I really dislike his character though, so I like to criticize him.

I thought it was the Medicis?

Bitcoin fixes this

Any other accountants out there?

@@bobthetroll 😴accountants rn

All credits balance with all debits, all assets with all liabilities. There is no net-net. You may think you have more assets than liabilities, but only by forgetting replacement cost!

Agree, he confused me even more than before. That's because he's not actually explaining it, he's using his own understanding to describe it, which makes no sense for those who don't actually possess his knowledge. He's not a good teacher.

I thought it was terrible on basics of Marx. No class, no historical materialism, no epochs, no alienation, no superstructure, no forces of production, no relations of production, no proles.....I'm not sure how anyone would get a sense of Marxism out of it tbh. I speak as a fan of Steve Keen, just think the Marxism section was really unclear and even incoherent. Difficult to see how what Steve said would lead to production of 'The Communist Manifesto' IMO.

Anybody who treats Marx seriously is a moron

Not much of a discussion. More of a longwinded one-sided free advertisement for authoritarian leftism without any pushback from lex. Again. As usual. Do you think Lex would give such free airtime to a nonestablishment hard right winger, let alone give them no pushback or argumentative debate?

@@bradojacko8247 cope

@@haalogen1917 Cope? This guy was literally arguing that inflation is a good thing (counterfeiting money is okay because the government will totally decide to only do it for "good reasons" without any oversight." This guy is a clown

by the mere definition of something making sense, you wouldn't need to listen to it multiple times to understand it. he just succeeded in confusing you in a way that made you think you understood. for example when talks about economics needing to use differential equations he makes it sound like it doesn't, but economics does use differential equations. differential equations is typically used to model motion and economics, its called growth. in fact, differential equations is extensively in derivatives pricing and volatility modeling. this guy either is lying or doesn't know what he's talking about.

​@@TheNemesis442 Man are you for real? Derivatives pricing is finance, not economics. Finance uses all sorts of advanced mathematics and algorithms because they have a profit motive, if they do a bad job they lose money. When we're talking about economics, the problem is that someone can win the nobel prize with a theory that is mathematically elegant and simple, but has no practical value or application in the real world. When criticizing neoclassical mainstream economics, the criticism is of the general class of DSGE models which DO NOT use differential equations and simply assume natural stability in the system. Keen's point is that if you have an economic model that by the nature of it's construction can't model how complex feedback loops can lead to an economic crash, your model is obviously trash, because we've seen this happen over and over again, we know it happens. Mainstream economics takes it on faith that the economy is naturally self-equilibrating, and that anything that throws the economy out of equilibrium is an "exogenous shock", rather than making any attempt to actually model the problem. So for instance in 2008, we end up blaming "perverse incentives" and illegal activity in the banking sector for messing up what would otherwise have been a perfectly perfect economy, rather than actually looking at the unsustainable build up in private debt and the role of that credit creation in sustaining overall aggregate demand... He's not talking about derivatives pricing models used in finance which have an extremely narrow purpose and scope of their modeling. He's talking about models of the overall macro economy that can be usefully used to inform policy choices.

@@Ballosopheraptor well, yes. derivatives pricing models are used to try to find an objective measure of value, which is what you do in economics. economics is how you deal scarcity and scarcity is heavily influenced by objective value. i dont see much of a difference here. the semantics may be a little different, but not the principal.

100%; Steve is a hero.

Lex is a very smart man. He’s an AI computer engineer and programmer. Teaches at MIT. So he can easily keep up with a deeply intellectual conversation.

100%

Was thinking the exact same thing. Hudson has a fascinating mind and perspective. Killing the Host and Forgive them their Debts are amazing books on economics.

Not Steve but knowing him the second one would probably be environment. i'd answer standard of living and environment.

​@Cam Corl yeah agreed, I think what Paul Krugman aims for is quite reasonable. Good potential for enterprise, not unreasonable inequality, and a safety net to prevent people from falling too far if something goes wrong

Yes. Love that dude

Agreed

He's a conspiracy theorist who believes in chemtrails

I guess you are uneducated in economics.

Yes, Professor Keen is quite brilliant. But he will confuse students of Hegel when he says "thesis -- antithesis --- synthesis" is complete "bullshit". Yes, this was interpreted from Kant's idea and formalized by Fichte. But it has definite similarities to Hegel. Underpining most of Hegel's writings was the dialectic of "abstract --- negative -- concrete", wherein an incomplete idea must move from abstract phase through a negative phase, reaching a concrete meaning. Hegel did not agree that "synthesis" came out of two paradigms colliding like billiard balls. Rather, it was one ball, passing through a phase of questioning and editing, reaching a state of concrete meaning. But obviously, Marx missed this slight difference too.

@@Borat_KazakhMarx didn't miss this, and what you're describing is not at all the same thing as thesis-antithesis-synthesis

@@Borat_Kazakhthanks, that’s insightful, I should just read the guy one day

Terribly difficult unless you get folks who at least agree about the basics of how our monetary system works. At least in my experience about such debates between those who do & those who don’t understand the basics

@@katiecannon8186 Yeah maybe Lex should just stop having economists who thing counterfeiting money is somehow some kind of virtuous necessity on.

​@@xraceboyexspeaking of people who don't understand the basics....

I have a few questions about value. What happens to the amount of value available in a system if we consume more value than we create? Next question in a Marxist utopia how does an individual invest his value rather than just consuming it? What specifically can an individual invest the fruits of his labor on?

@@stuckinthemud4352 that in itself is perpetually up to many variables. I think that depends on someone’s perspective on what “fruit” is to them as not everyone’s “fruit” is something of the material form. It’s much to broad. Also, I don’t think anyone is proposing that under any theory that there would be existent utopia. Ultimately, the whole idea is to work and live rather work to live and escape the fuck of a rat race everyone seems to be in as well as a mass catatonic state of schizophrenia lol

Yeah the physics of anecdotal statements about climate change, Lex called him out on this.

Yeah like ‘some climate forecasts in the past have been wrong so let’s ignore the current scientific consensus’ Genius argument!

That’s how I felt about it

Know your enemy. This guy is preaching the same thing that has seen millions dead in the last century.