Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Politics (whole documentary)

[foxyd3]

Anybody have the original video for the song around 48:00?

[TheJooberjones]

really dig the video, as well as all the old school cartoons and clips thrown in, where'd you dig all those up??

[FillingtheVoidRevues]

Great documentary!

[raoulhery]

6000views?? that's why american see socialism as evil! Socialism is a way to share wealth equitably not the 99% vs the 1%. Unfortunately corporate thinking kills socialism making it look like communism!

[sk8tafrnk]

@raoulhery Communism is the same line of thinking as socialism is.

Communism is a stateless society with no concentration of power. Fascist dictatorships however, like Russia, Nazi Germany, North Korea and the like, have highly concentrated power. It's the exact opposite of communism.

Don't get mixed up, this is common propaganda. The terms socialism and communism have both been distorted to a point of being completely useless terminology.

[Endstation]

@AMP2K1 The Mondragon coops (google Assesing Mondragon) or John Lewis Partnership are two successfull examples of employee ownership and democratic capitalism/ market socialism. See the excellent book Beyond the corporation by David Erdal.

[Endstation]

@AMPK The Mondragon coops (google Assesing Mondragon) or John Lewis Partnership are two successfull examples of employee ownership and democratic capitalism/ market socialism.

[12TabulaRasa12]

awesome video

[thdyoung]

that cheered me up in a very depressing way ! thank you

[AMP2K1]

What are some alternatives to capitalism? There's socialism and communism but I think there's more out there?

[infiniteinfiniteinfi]

It's great that the occypy movement finaly has arisen in part to adress these very fundamental issues. Occupy everywhere, your town, scool, workplace and so on and hirarchy will be a peculiar and odd topic in history books where it surley belongs ;)

[markduran49]

I'm watching this for my political science course but having three younger siblings with one crazy friend running around doesn't really help jeje

[catbuffalo]

Interesting fact: The newest bond movie "quantum of solace" was all about the privatization of water in bolivia.

[Preskinn]

Thanks alot for this. Doing what I can to circulate. Many thanks.

[niriop]

A good documentary, if a little reiterative and reliant on three central figures. However, a few things:

Did Rockefeller really help Hitler? I can't find any neutral source which isn't biased with outlandish conspiracy.

Another thing: Orwell says there were no vagrants or beggers "except the gypsies". I've always found this quite disturbing. What do think it entails? That the Roma wanted to maintain their independent lifestyle? Or did racism even in an egalitarian society still run deep?

[ytgv3fc7]

1h03min mark: wow. I had no idea about this connection. I'm ALL about wanting to find out about market manipulation. That insider information is given is not surprising to me, that stocks will crash when held by a politician who suddenly dies, that IS critically good information!

[ytgv3fc7]

53 minute mark: markets don't let you decide you can have public transportation:

untrue.

Communities are markets, markets are communities. There's no way out of that truth.

People are insisting on paying for cars. If people refused to buy gas, refused to buy a car & refused to pay higher taxes until public transport was built, it would get built. Why are people not fighting harder for it? They claim they want it but refuse to act in some nations (not all)

[ytgv3fc7]

30% return is unreasonable - 42 minute mark - ABSOLUTELY it is unreasonable. Workers should be able to get a share of that, having some option to get shares, ALL workers having equal right to that, and investors should be taking some of the risk WORKERS are taking in losses, because investment means risk. Attempting to offer 30% returns with no risk is crazy-talk. Again, I refer to fraud. Workers are lied to, lied about & the books may be cooked (we'll see)

[ytgv3fc7]

38:37 "market competition compels it, coerces it"

It does not.

It is merely a reflection of nature itself, which is the ultimate law. We have more people, not more resources. To get your survival share you work harder. If you don't do it then you suffer. The alternative is to have less people for the same finite resources. THAT is the real choice. The market compels nothing-if you want more people on the planet you must get less. That's how nature works.

[ytgv3fc7]

38 mark: "we'd be as well off as in the golden age of capitalism, so why don't we do it?"

Untrue. We had less people then. Changing the number of people in the world changes the number of hours one can get back from productivity. It's all relative. The value of factor-product X is based on the total relative need of the population. A high-density population might have less need for cars. Then car manufacturing should suffer. Then production must shift. And so on

[ytgv3fc7]

37 min mark: actually capital controls vs free flow of money is not quite as Chomsky says it is. Here's why: capital flow that any of us can participate in allows us to avoid damage, whatever the source is, while that source may actually be industry and/or government. The referendum is not one against people but by people. We all have the ability to participate. Even if it takes a union-like collective to wield money to do so, it can.

[ytgv3fc7]

27 min mark: there's lots of things machines can't do, and lots of things they can do with great coordination once guided by a person. A great number of people operating machines can do more work than people working with hammers. Not to be too critical but this is evolution, progress & it's good, though I appreciate the humor used in the clip

[ytgv3fc7]

The fundamental premise of paper fraud in currency, like toxic MBS securities, is that you are holding a debt owed to you of value in trade for something you had before. The fraud is that the value isn't there. The Central control allows dilution of value by printing: literally stealing your work-hours into supporting military, drug-dealing & other crimes you'd refuse to pay for. A central-currency means you MUST pay for these. To end complicity you need to refuse the use of such paper.

[ytgv3fc7]

more on the 16:50 point: we are STILL complicit, now being informed, if we partake in this system. This system of fraud includes all printing of all paper posing as money. Every currency - yen, euro, US dollar, etc - is a fraud. Those papers do not represent any value & by working for them you trade real value (work, energy, materials) for nothing (paper) of value. If you are lucky you can con someone else into taking your paper for a service/goods. It's fraud to accept or use them.

[ytgv3fc7]

16:50 "inherent market inefficiency" - actually no, this is not inherent, it's proportional to how informed we are. If WE are informed that paper is debt, not money, if we are informed that debt is higher cost than no-debt, if we are informed that some debt was turned into stocks using fraud, than we can act against it. Some of us were informed but were ignored: some people actually screamed chicken-little at the warnings then were complicit in the break-down that followed MBS toxic paper

[ytgv3fc7]

16 min 30: "we don't price in the cost to others"

Actually some of us do. There's only one way that can not happen: if we do not detect the theft/crime (pollution, murder) or we admit we live off of it & approve (makes us complicit). So it is priced in once we are aware, even if the sticker doesn't change. Our awareness makes us complicit when we co-operate with the crime. Dirty oil & gold mining should incur a higher spot price to compensate locals near operations

[ytgv3fc7]

16 min mark: "that sector is in crisis because of broader de-regulation"

No it isn't.

It's in crisis because it was built on fraud. There isn't de-regulation there's anti-regulation, a deliberate breaking of laws & cooking of books by the people who are regulators. That's not the removal/lack of regulation. Lacking a law is different than cops breaking laws. This is cops breaking laws.

[ytgv3fc7]

14 min mark: companies don't offer medical benefits to compete - yes they do. I've seen it & been paid in this way.

[kenderoth8]

It's sad that this documentary isn't more widely circulated. It's very informative.

[whedonfreak976]

@kenderoth8 agreed, chomsky is a master of language, and he is one of the smartest people around, on foreign policies

[sk8tafrnk]

@kenderoth8 Well, that's kind of the trend with dissident opinions to the interests of the wealthy elites. Get with the program haha.

[tarnopol]

Really one of the best political documentaries I've ever seen. Extremely well done! I send this out to my friends, post on Facebook, every few months, just in case anyone's missed it! :)

[SecularNumanist]

at 4.40 he doesnt just say religion or class warfare, he also talks about racism. Nice trimming

[PrevailingOne]

Hey mr1001nights,

Thanks for posting this video. I put it on my Facebook. Ferguson's is pretty gnarly.

[thankqwerty]

His comment at around 35:00 about doubled GDP so people could work half as much is imo wrong. His reason was "the market doesn't let us", that's correct but he didn't mention the market was made of people. If no-one in the whole world willing to work more than 8 hrs day that market force would never existed. The market forces us to work hard is because people are willing to work harder - we are genetically engineered to want to do better than our peers, competition is our nature.

[mr1001nights]

Chattel slavery was also "made of people". But which of these "people" have more influence? In the case of chattel slavery, masters. In the case of the market, capitalist bosses who force wage slaves to work for them under threat of starvation, poverty& social stigma/status diminution.

The market prevents ppl from exercising the choice to work less because it makes worker's self-management of industry harder to pursue.

It destroys the participation required to realize the will of individuals

[thankqwerty]

@mr1001nights

I guess I can't debate with you there. It's difficult for me to evaluate how much choice do people really have and on the other hand how much power do the elites have.

My problem with the idea of wage slavey is that it can only be consider as slavey when the supply (labour) market was also controlled by the capitalists. I guess the people of your camp would say this is done by suppressing the living conditions of the workers through their connection with the policy makers ... etc.

[PrevailingOne]

@thankqwerty I think it's the appendix in Ferguson's book, "The Golden Rule" which explains the investor model of party competition really well. It will run you like 20-30 bucks. (If my memory serves me, Ferguson said it is writen partialy as a reaction or critique to Anthony Downs's median voter model). Let me know if you ever have time to read his book it's super interesting.

[thankqwerty]

@mr1001nights

My other question is how much power was taken away from the people and also how much was given up by them. I.e. when campaign spending is the best predictor of election results and voters voting without knowing the candidates' policies, do you see that as innocent people manipulated into that gullible position or you see that as irresponsible, lazy people giving up their right and power.

I haven't made up my mind yet, would be interesting to know what you think.

[mr1001nights]

"They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness." The more power one has to affect things, the more responsibility. Those at the bottom have individually less responsibility than those at the top. The interests of capitalists & wage laborers differ--control exerted by capitalists will tend to undermine worker's control. And capitalist unions (e.g chambers of commerce) will undermine workers unions and influence government & ideological institutions (media, schools etc)

[ytgv3fc7]

This movie is so long I hope no one minds if I make comments as I'm going through only to find out 45 minutes later the question is answered. May not even watch it all in one sitting. I see a collective action power possible with no union & low cost. We now have hi-tech high-speed, even encrypted communications so we can talk & agree on what's fair & refuse anything else. While the business sees individuals "not acting together" their insistence on wages or refusal to work will be "the same"

[ytgv3fc7]

so basically that idea I'm getting at is the "union by stealth" so that workers are all taking a unified front but not saying so, but the end-result is the same: pay a fair wage or I leave (we leave). I think people need to be ready to switch jobs more quickly & be just as ready to threaten termination of employment as employers are ready to threaten to shut down forever. We are better off not being slaves, we need to take a hard line but strikes & protests are not cutting it

[dsego84]

@thankqwerty Totally agree, people of Yugoslavia had workers' self-management and gave it up for the promise of becoming capitalists. None realized, though, that only a few get to actually be capitalists.

[ytgv3fc7]

@dsego84 "None realized, though, that only a few get to actually be capitalists."

The problem with today's so-called capitalism is most people wouldn't know it if they saw it. Fiat paper by central banks is not capitalism. Hard currency is. Centralization is not capitalism (concentration of wealth is, however). We are all capitalists who have skills & can work, who have any tangible assets we produce, hold, can trade. HOWEVER we need to fight hard to avoid being ripped off.

[ytgv3fc7]

@dsego84 To that end I don't trust ANYONE who claims they will LEND me money for my benefit, or BORROW my money for my benefit, or CHARGE ME FEES for my "convenience" or "print my money" (debt) for my own good to spur inflation. ALL of it is exploiting, every last one of those screw-balls is a fraudster.

[lastcaress83]

@thankqwerty"we are genetically engineered to want to do better than our peers, competition is our nature"

What foundation do you have for this statement? What genes account for this predetermination?

How does this theory account for the mass appeal of ideas like equality and civil rights?

People are competitive, cooperative,war-mongering and peace-loving. Perhaps these tendencies are genetically influenced in each individual but there are too many disparities to make such a blanket statement

[thankqwerty]

@lastcaress83

All animal influenced by evolution needs to compete.

Frankly equality and civil rights do not exist. i.e. they were not given, they were gained after hard fought battle. They are the expression of power, i.e. women's voting right. Equality and rights were never given to the weaks.

As all game theorists and evolution theorists would tell u people are only cooperative and peace-loving when they serve their purpose (most of the time).

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty "As all game theorists and evolution theorists would tell u people are only cooperative and peace-loving when they serve their purpose (most of the time)."

Indeed, but the benefits of co-operation are proven. The benefit of competition are proven as well. Surely we can use both without turning into under-paid wage-slaves or fraud-driven exploiters. We know SOME will have the nature to work less & take more from all levels, so how do we act now to stop them all?

[thankqwerty]

@ytgv3fc7

I think the point is to encourage overall cooperation and discourage competition in areas where are can damaging to the society.

Probably all the social scientists in the world are trying to solve this problem ......

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty "we are genetically engineered to want to do better than our peers, competition is our nature"

I am not engineered in such a way. I am engineered only to seek survival & improve my current situation vs the past.

[thankqwerty]

@ytgv3fc7

"improve my current situation vs the past."

I'm not sure in your case, but for most people "current situation" includes social status, which requires competition. Whenever there is limited resource there is competition. There are very few ways to improve your situation without competing, the only way I can think of (off my head) is through new technology which is really is a man-vs-nature mechanism.

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty for me social status has no purpose or meaning.

I'm talking about my past skills & my past holdings of tangible things like tools, food & furniture. Improving my situation using competition is fine. Using co-operation is fine too. Neither one is bad. Fraud is bad. Theft is bad. When I can avoid doing that, there is no problem.

[thankqwerty]

@ytgv3fc7

"for me social status has no purpose or meaning." I find it hard to believe (to me that's as believeable as someone said he has never lie in his life), but at the same time I'm not in a position to argue on a psychological level, so I must let this pass.

Either way, your personal attitude/value has little relevance in this discussion, since we are discussing the driving force of the market. And the fact is that for any people social status is important.

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty I don't know why you find it hard to believe. What good can social status do me? It does not pay me, it does not feed me, it does not house me. My attitude has great relevance to this discussion; others out there are like me, not like your assumptions. Maybe even a majority. A lot of people want to get by without being exploited, probably don't care about social status. So social status is NOT a driving force of the market. It's a fact you're making shit up.

[thankqwerty]

@ytgv3fc7

I'm not making shit up. The social status is an important element in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And why don't you simply do a google scholar search to see how many researchers are studying the influence of social status?

Another example is that recently hong kong introduced the minimum wage, but that doesn't just affect the lowest earners but the whole payroll. The reason is that people don't like the people below them earn as much as they do, as a result all the wages r scaled up.

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty Ok, you're repeating crap someone else made up. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is also wrong.

The reason minimum wage drives up all wages is because some workers ARE WORTH MORE. It has nothing to do with social status, they are smarter & stronger than people making less money. It's impossible to make low-earners get more: they do less work, less intelligently.

[thankqwerty]

@ytgv3fc7

I'm pretty dumbfounded that you reject social status has no influence on people's decisions. Class structure has been in human society for millenniums.

The reason you gave on minimum wage only contribute to part of the cause. I'd say social status definitely play a part.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not 100% right, but so is every theory. You can't just say it's not right and discard everything there.

And how do you managed to ignore the mountains of research on social status?

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty You're dumbfounded because you're not looking at the world around you. People are making decisions based on need, not status, even if their understanding of need may be flawed. People's understanding of savings, investment & money is flawed already, filled with notions of fraud being reality, indoctrination from "economics" teachings in school which are 90% fraud. Class structure is NOT about social status. It's about ABILITY.

[thankqwerty]

@ytgv3fc7

Furthermore, social status obviously has influenced people like the tiger mom who demands her children to be 1st of the class in all (relevant) subjects.

The pursuit of fame, branded products are all related to social status.

[ytgv3fc7]

@thankqwerty No, the pursuit of fame is market capture, trying to get a larger market-share. Same with branded products. It has nothing to do with social status. It has to do with perceptions of quality & terms of familiarity.

[Leibinz]

@thankqwerty The monetary system has required workers to keep working as much as they do. Asset prices (e.g. houses) have been driven by high debt levels making long work hours a requirement in order for the worker to maintain themselves and their dependents.

[brightsuperstition]

Excellent stuff, Shockley. The only problem I have with it is that some of the cuts you make accidentally cut off people as they are speaking. I found it kind of annoying, even though it's pretty easy to figure out what the person was going to say. But otherwise, it's a great documentary.

[tarnopol]

This is just first-rate work, 1001! Great stuff, great, great stuff. :)

[Fusionx916]

What movie was that at 22:43?

[nempozpag]

@Fusionx916 It's a film called 'They Live'. The scene shown is probably the best part of the film. There's a ridiculous 2-3 minute fight scene about half way through and it gets worse from there. I'd recommend watching it though because the first half is excellent.

[St1kyFinguz]

Not bad at all. This was much better then watching the Simpsons. The visualizations were incredibly enlightening.

[EpifanesEuergetes]

Faved. Thanks for uploading.

[megaminxmaster]

this is a good vid but i have some problems with it. first, i do not understand why Noam focuses on voting so much. what i do like about this vid is that it breaks down, at least somewhat the hierarchy that is capitalism. however, what bothers me is that it appears as though this vid is implying that the state is the solution to the problems that capitalism creates in society. just my thoughts :)

[WOGI5M]

Hey Mr1001nights, I'm just curious to know if you have a degree in anything?

[FreiheitKampfer]

Chomsky's worship of the vote is incredibly irritating. The vote is no more influential than the suggestion box at BigBoxMart.

[SamFromNT]

Mr1001Nights, I like you and all but you quote Mr. Chomsky a bit too often. I find him to be great on foreign policy and introduction to leftist politics, but beyond that, his work is pretty limited.

[brightsuperstition]

@SamFromNT

Limited? How so?

[Cefuroxx]

@SamFromNT

chomsky's positions on the Israel Lobby, Zionism and 911 are absolutely mind boggling.

[SamFromNT]

@Cefuroxx I disagree. I personally don't believe that AIPAC controls the U.S. nor do I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, though Zionism is incredibly racist. Even so, Chomsky subscribed to the idea of Jewish migration to Palestine, not a Jewish state. What I personally don't get is his opposition to right of return for Palestinian refugees.

[Cefuroxx]

@SamFromNT

I have seen an interview where he laments "the destruction of Israel" if the refugees return. What is your stance on 911 and the lobby?

[ytgv3fc7]

@SamFromNT the evidence SHOWS 9/11 is a conspiracy. There was no plane at the Pentagon according to workers from INSIDE IT, there was no plane and there were explosives in Building 7 at the Trade Center. I worked for T-Mobile & I can assure you NO CELL PHONE for any company, ours too, can work on a moving plane, yet that's the official story. NONE. AIPAC continues the chain of funding a nuclear-violating nation Israel (India & Pakistan too) as "allies" while badmouthing Iran for the same

[00maharum00ma]

Great work. It's probably the single-best case against the false perception that America is a democracy.

[briano8713]

Thanks for posting the full version!

[grungeface87]

"They came from other Mein Kampfs"?!

D:

[fringeailments]

Absolutely stunning and terrifying!!!!! capitalism in a nutshell.