David Harvey- The Crises of Capitalism

Radical sociologist David Harvey asks: is it time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?

Watch the RSA Animate of this talk: http://youtu.be/qOP2V_np2c0


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• Category

  News & Politics

[ozzitor8]

People discrediting Marx and/or the Left use numbers that explain growth, consumption, development of a country, etc. Yet they neglect to address how said growth or development costs lives and freedoms. It's defending the system as more important than the humans that make it work. Capitalist are nothing without citizens/consumers. Every time someone tries to make the public aware of their role, the capitalists go crazy and attack like rabid dogs. Playing nice wouldn't be such a bad thing.

[Manos Seferidis]

The problem with capitalist is that everyone tries to sell you things you don't need. Of course there are a few things that makes our life easier. However a big proportion of products is utterly rubbish and their reason of existence is so that some people will make money.

[MrDubja]

I despise Cultural Marxism.

[TheSympathize]

You're right when you question the idea that wealth is limited. But given that fact that the lower class income, which includes the middle class, has stagnated over the course of 10 years while the income of 15000 americans has gone upwards by a staggering amount is no way to maintain a healthy democracy or a healthy economy for that matter.

[TheSympathize]

It can work of course, as it did from the 1950s to the 1970s, but something went wrong, what exactly went wrong I cannot say. I merely understand what capitalism and its global counterpart has done to degrade our society, economy, and politics to a certain degree. No one should be asking the rich to dish out their wealth to permanently remove the prospects of proverty, because poverty can never be destroyed. However that does not give us the right to include more people below the poverty line.

[TheSympathize]

Southeast Asians migrating into places like China, and South Korea. As well as arab and African migration, to a lesser degree in terms of the capitalist cause and effect on the displacement of said peoples, to Europe. The globalized free market has destroyed the fundamental economic foundations of successful economic powers such as Japan and Germany, and it has caused the stagnation of lower class incomes since Nixon took us off the Bretton Woods system. Capitalism is flawed.

[TheSympathize]

It has increased the human cost of providing services and goods to the citizens who can actually purchase such goods, services, asssets, whatever, and thus you see such a human cost and the reaction towards such a cost with the massive migration of Hispanic people coming into the US to seek better paying jobs. The funny thing is that globalism destroyed the Mexican economy and is the reason for the displacement of thousands of migrant workers. This same situation applies somewhat to

[TheSympathize]

Im sorry but you're running on a moot point of ignorance. Capitalism is an economic system that runs on the notion or the idea of sustainable, unlimited growth. The price of goods do not take into account the damages of manufacturing or the provision of services that such things can cause. You need only look at what global capitalism HAS done.; it has stymied the economic development of third world countries because it has destroyed the chance for competition stemming from the local economy.

[TheSympathize]

gold does not ensure the stability or ensure the confidence in markets required to keep them from collapsing. The Great Depression did not occur after FDR took us off the gold standard, it happened before.

[Rotorflyte Gimbals]

This fellow is thinking way too much. He is allowing the truth to simply pass right by him completely unnoticed. Distortion of the money supply is to blame for all crises. If our money supply were tied to a solid commodity like gold, there would be no way to distort the world and it's economy.

[Midcal9]

Wow, you actually believe that wealth is limited and more successive people "rob" of wealth less successive ones, unbelievable. Yes of course there always be poor people, their need does not obligate me to provide them with stuff, I'm not an Altruist so quit using appeals to emotion. Capitalism is global, ever heard of Free trade between the nations?

[88CrazyLegs88]

Growth does cost lives. For every "winner" there are multiple "losers." A loser doesn't necessarily stay a loser if they keep on, but the system overall isn't able to absorb everyone. Ultimately, there will be people who end up homeless, broken, and eventually dead. Most of those people are people you never see because they are competing on a world stage.

The system of capitalism people argue against is a global one. Think globally, and you can see the true cost of capitalism.