Great Economic and societal speakers, shootout!!

So, I thought it would be a great idea to post talks and explanations from todays greatest economic and historical speakers, left and right, and we can watch and judge who has the best explanations and makes the most sense. It would be great to discuss what you think of each, and to debate their theories, either how you think they are wrong, or right. I will start off with some of the greatest, to me, economic and social speakers from the left. Please post any you have, left or right, to balance the debate and add to the discussion. Lets get this rolling and have all the greatest minds from both sides in one place where we can all learn, grow, and take the best from each!!

michael hudson


noam chomsky


yanis varoufakis


chris hedges


Steve keen


Richard Wolff


These, to me, are among the brilliant economists, historians, journalists who clearly see how the economy really works, and the direction we are going. I have myself watched every one of these in their entirety. They are amazing, informative, and often entertaining. Varoufakis has an amazing, charismatic and humorous style, hedges has some great stories and experiences, hudson has an amazing biography that he tells, from creating offshoring to funnel drug money into banks for the US govt to working with goldman and citibank, etc. Chomsky has an incredible grasp of US history presented in an often dryly humorous fashion. They all tend to the left, some far left. I hope you enjoy them, and that they provide you with new ideas and insights. I chose longer videos which provide pretty comprehensive views of their experiences and ideologies so that you dont have to create an opinion based off of snippets but get a larger picture.

PLEASE post any and all thought changing, provocative speakers you have from both sides of the story. Grow the debate. Keep learning. Let us all deny ignorance together!!

Not a speaker but an updated version of the essay "I, Pencil" which was an attempt to explain the overall complexity of markets and why socialism is always doomed to fail

I, Mechanical Pencil

I give you economist Thomas Sowell... body slamming, destroying, and deconstructing leftist economic theory for the past 40 years. You can now shut down this thread.

seriously guys, not even the point. I am trying to open debate and discussion, not win an argument. If you are trying to "win" or come in and close the discussion, you are part of the problem. I want to actually watch and listen to points from all sides. If you are coming in to post an argument (speak) but not actually listen to posted speakers (listen), then you are not contributing, actually the opposite, you are detracting. I really would like this to be a great resource, with great minds from both sides, to help give people a greater picture and understanding. Debate, not cheap sophistry and sidelining tactics. If you dont want to participate in this way, great! just move on then. But i would appreciate if we stuck to the spirit of the room, rather than turning it into a party line/meme fest.

I will be watching Mr. Sowell when i get a chance. Also, to add, several of the guys i posted were among the 8 that predicted the 08 crisis. So speakers who have accurately predicted unexpected events that then went on to happen, displaying a deeper understanding of how things unfold contrary to msm, would be great additions.

What I posted is a piece that simply outlines the massive complexity of market economies and why it's folly to think too much control works well.

But the main point of it is to educate on the sheer complexity of the whole and who interconnected it all is. Most people who argue for massive government intrusion and control mechanisms do not see the whole web and all the pitfalls and interactions.

Interfere too much, and it all unravels.

The '08 crisis was a study in interference.

Milton Freidman... not much else to say.

originally posted by: ketsuko
What I posted is a piece that simply outlines the massive complexity of market economies and why it's folly to think too much control works well.

But the main point of it is to educate on the sheer complexity of the whole and who interconnected it all is. Most people who argue for massive government intrusion and control mechanisms do not see the whole web and all the pitfalls and interactions.

Interfere too much, and it all unravels.

The '08 crisis was a study in interference.

The original...

Let me add. When I say the speakers I’ve posted are left, I don’t mean establishment left. They are equally critical of democrats and republicans.

a reply to: pexx421

The other thing to understand when you read or watch "I, Pencil" or "I, Mechanical Pencil" is that the market is not political. There is a space for government, but that is one tiny facet and necessarily needs to be tiny if you understand it correctly.

Capitalism is *not* political. All it is was a name applied to the market system.

Socialism is as much political as it is economic. It's just like what happens when you look at a system like Islam which is as much political as it is religious. You cannot separate the two in either case. And if you do your research, you will discover that the market (and capitalism) carry on despite socialism although then you are missing an element or elements defined for a proper market -- both the narrow role of government and recognition of property rights. One of the important things for government is the recognition of property rights through a proper system of rule by law.

So, if I may guide the discourse here. I would like it to be a discussion of content, not of ideology. So, what I think would be productive is, rather than coming in and stating your internalized view of socialism or capitalism, watch some videos and then comment on them, either by deconstructing their flaws or discussing their points. And the people I posted are not creators of ideas trying to push an agenda. They are largely people who have worked with governments, been all over the world observing the effects of policies and agendas, and sharing their thoughts and observations. And they are contemporary.

a reply to: pexx421

That's what I've been trying to explain. Socialism is a market philosophy that is inextricably bound up with ideology/politics. There is no separating the two. I will quote from the essay I posted above - these are the errors of Socialist Theory.

1) The economy is run from the centre by the
government itself. Central planning replaces
‘the anarchy of the market’. Where the private
sector remains, massive and intrusive regulations
constrain its operation at every turn.

I will use the public school system as an example since it is pretty much 100% socialized in the US, and we all have nearly direct experience of it.

The government runs the schools, nearly all of them from a Central Authority - the Dept. of Ed. States do have some control over how things are run, but with Common Core and No Child Left Behind, their authority has been severely eroded as has local control. Children are assigned schools based on district and where they live and trying to attend a school outside that assignment is considered a jailable offense (fraud).

If private schools take *any* government money, they are open to all the same regulations as public schools and all kinds of intrusions into how they run their operations. All schools must be accredited regardless of where their monies come from.

2) Finance and national savings are allocated by
the government into the sectors of the economy
it believes are the most productive. Little, if
anything, is left for the market to determine.

You would have had to be living under a stone not to be aware of the school funding fights that come up everywhere annually. And then there are the school choice fights, and fights over vouchers which would allow parents the right to designate which schools their children could attend and where that money would go. This despite the evidence of constant mismanagement of government funds by educational bureaucrats in many districts nationwide. Parents (the market) line up around the block for lotteries to free their children from failing neighborhood schools in many places.

3) Prices are administered by the government, with
the prices of the most important consumer goods
 such as for food, housing and energy  strictly
controlled.

Public education is "free" ... except for you various tax rates. Hope you can afford the high tax rates for the best school districts, right?

4) Production is ‘for need and not for profit’. Guiding
an economy according to profitability is sharply
restricted, if not actually eliminated.

See above, and this is often one of the arguments against allowing a parental voucher system to take hold. We don't want private, for profit schools educating our children to create haves and have nots.

5) Planning of the entire economy replaces the
adjustment processes of the market. The
government does not just watch over the
economy, it runs the economy. Where private firms
are allowed to exist, a high level of regulation
accompanied by high taxation becomes the rule

We see the high taxation mechanism keeping some districts good.

Property rights are abolished, or at the minimum
strictly curtailed. ‘The resources of the nation
belong to the people’ becomes the principle
underlying the laws relating to property. Only
the ownership of one’s personal belongings is
permitted. Every major enterprise either belongs
to the state, or if nominally still owned by private
entrepreneurs, has all its decisions overseen by
government bureaucracies and subject to
political direction.

And of course, the schools are public property, and private ones that take money from the state are strictly regulated so as to be nearly run by the government.

To step outside the public education example for an aside, Obamacare was an attempt to impose that level of regulatory control on the health insurance industry and thus a backdoor takeover of the health care market. And it was a market failure.

The problem is that there are far more complicated factors at work than brute government control can account for.

Very good portrayal of your view of some issues with what you perceive as socialism. I’m not here to debate socialism with you. I’m here so we can debate the content and views of the great thinkers. Did you get any of this material you’re trying to argue from a video you watched on this post? I don’t want to recycle the same exact old arguments that we have here daily with each other. I want us to focus on what the people in the shared videos specifically reference or speak on, and why they are correct or incorrect. If you are posting this without knowing my stance and views, or the stance and views of one of the.... let’s call them invited speakers, then you are just having an argument with a made up person with made up views who is giving all the responses you want in your argument, allowing you to expound upon your personal paradigm or narrative.

a reply to: pexx421

I quoted it from the essay I posted.

You asked me what I thought it was, and I answered using material I provided. This is laying the groundwork for the discussion. You have to know where I am coming from in order to get there. You have laid out where you are coming from.

PS - I prefer reading to watching videos. The other poster posted videos by Thomas Sowell? I've read his economic textbook and a book by him called Economic Facts and Fallacies.

Fair enough. I would also like to add that the speakers I’ve posted are all compelling stories in their own rights. Hudson has been involved personally in many capitalist schemes to recycle criminal money into the us economy, as well as helping bankers understand how to maximize extraction of all surplus from third world economies. Varoufakis was finance minister of Greece, and learned first hand that there is an unelected group who absolutely controls the eu and decides policy which is then implemented to the letter by the assembly, and he names them. Hedges was fired from internship with carters campaign because he was investigating an American corporations assassinating heads of the labor unions in South America. All three of these are great storytellers with enjoyable and entertaining presentations.

So please, dear god, make your guys videos compelling and enjoyable. We want people to watch them and understand them, not suffer through them.

a reply to: pexx421

That's fine.

Please explain now what you understand both socialism and the market to be. Then we can have a discussion.

a reply to: ketsuko
Well, not exactly the format I was looking for. We have had ad nauseum arguments between ourselves here. What I plan to do is to watch some of the videos you or y’all posted, and then I will comment on them, or post compelling arguments from guest speakers that specifically address the issues I may find with your videos. Similarly I’d like you and others to do the same. This started, really, because in my studies I came across people with compelling views and experiences of our current neoliberal system and why it is so bad, and I was wondering if they had any contemporary folks on the opposite side of the aisle, not just old theorists, who had actual experiential and statistical analysis showing the opposite. Not just people who read theories and regurgitate them, but folks who have gone to the ground zero, and can express their understanding in layman’s terminology and is all inclusive.

For instance, Hudson explains not only how Chicago school economists murdered or shut down all opposing economic teachers and institutions, but also that their economic models don’t take into account money, banks or debt. As if all the worlds economy ran as barter.

originally posted by: Edumakated

Milton Freidman... not much else to say.

He should be first, second, third and any other number after that.

a reply to: Edumakated

You beat me to it.