RSA ANIMATE: Crises of Capitalism
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- Опубликовано: 14 май 2024
- In this RSA Animate, celebrated academic David Harvey looks beyond capitalism towards a new social order. Can we find a more responsible, just, and humane economic system?
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Produced and edited by Abi Stephenson, RSA.
Animation by Cognitive Media. Andrew Park, the mastermind behind the Animate series and everyone's favourite hairy hand, discusses their appeal and success in his blog post, 'Talk to the hand': www.thersa.org/talk-to-the-hand/
The condensed version of his argument is that due to wage suppression and offshoring the rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. Since the poor can't afford to buy goods which spur economic growth, the entire economy shrinks. This cycles over and over until the economy crashes.
@Deniz Gunes That's right. Credit, no money, makes the whole world go round and round. We're indentured well into the next millennium.
Offshoring is not the problem. Real estate, financing, addictions, and lack of skills are the main problems.
There is a name for this specific process, “boom and bust cycles” happens once every few years and it is extremely detrimental
The problem is Capitalism. Capitalism in itself is inherently evil and brutal for the 99% of the world that is not part of the capital owner class. And if you're not part of the capitalist owner class, then you're one of the exploited. Capitalism does not work without economic worker exploitation. Capitalism creates lower classes in order to exploit and profit off of-prison slave labor, migrant worker exploitation, racism is even part of this.. perpetuating the lie that there are races/classes of people worth less than white people.
The poor don't have to buy goods, just let the government spend everything in military...
I have come back to this video every year since it came out and it only gets more depressingly relevant as the years go by. He called it all and nothing's changed in the intervening 13 years. If you're reading this and aren't a member already: Join a Union.
Better yet, join a communist party. Unions are a great first step, but ultimately limited in their capacity to actually challenge capitalism itself. Most, if not all, big unions in the imperialist countries are pro capitalist unions, meaning there is no real fight for the interests of the working class in the foreground. Unions are often heavily influenced and controlled by capitalists or capitalist-friendly opportunists/careerists/bureaucrats and only operate as "co-management" organs to keep workers feeling complacent. There are far too many examples to name of unions being hijacked by corporate interests that continually mislead workers and do more harm than good. In the end, unions of this character not only pose zero threat to capitalism, but they actually help perpetuate capitalism by "stabilizing" it (allowing capitalists to maintain their power in exchange for small wage increases or other compensation). The great minds of Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, and others have already proven long ago that capitalism cannot be reformed, rather it must be overthrown. The ruling class will NEVER give up their power and stolen wealth voluntarily, or without a fight. We really are facing the hard truth nowadays (especially facing the global environmental catastrophe) that there are only two options: socialism or barbarism. There is a lot of work needed to UNDO all the anti-communist propaganda spread by the capitalists over the last several decades. This educational work is especially important within workers unions so that they can begin to gain a new, revolutionary character rather than serving as mere employee management tools.
The ultra elite will push for a WWIII. The American Bankers ( West Europeans ) and it will be just another RACKET. For them is just business.
This video is becoming painfully relevant again, now that we're in the early stages of another crash
dat algo
Capitalism is inherently prone to crisis
@@supermanscat6930 Oh, I agree. I just meant that current events are reminding us of how accurate these theories are
@@supermanscat6930 Just as socialist societies without capitalism are prone to misery.
@@edfoss9974 Doesnt a crisis cause misery? The class system also causes misery. Minimum wage and slave labour
It's an interesting question to ask "Is a starving person Free?"
I would argue that he is not. A man is free when he determines his own course of action, but a starving man is subservient to anyone who can feed him. He has no say over anything he does, so he is basically owned by someone else.
If you say that he is free, at the very least you must admit that there are things in life that are more important than freedom. Food, for instance.
A decade later... The zombie marches on.
Getting on for ten years now. Still not having that open discussion.
A part of the story that should be added is the story of how nature has come into private hands without compensation to the rest of the world's population for what is a privilege and not a right. Adam Smith raised this issue in "Wealth of Nations" and urged on his contemporaries that society collect the rent that arises as land increases in value because of aggregate demand. Thomas Paine also analyzed the way landed property is controlled and in "Agrarian Justice" declared that those who controlled land owed society the ground rent in exchange for the privilege enjoyed. Later in the 19th century, Henry George expanded greatly on this analysis in his writings. George argued the case for a labor and capital goods basis for property. Returns to labor and capital, George declared, are legitimate private property and should not be taxed. The legitimate source of public revenue is the annual potential rental value of land (i.e., of nature, generally), because no individual causes land to come to have exchange value.
The drawer is very talented, indeed!
The drawer has a lot of drawings. lulz.
The animation is brilliant but tbe speaker is clueless.
Considering you have the flag of an oppressive dictatorship, anything you say is invalid.
@@kurtwilkinsongardendesign8000 so tell me where he’s wrong
@@nomisteaks because he calls a mixed economy, capitalism, is he stupid or a liar. Politics and government is the overwhelming problem, and their manipulation of money to the advantage of their friends and massive corporations. That a socialist, who openly admits he has no solution, who is incapable of even describing the problem, is listened to for even a second is amazing.
Nine years on from this video and things have only gotten worse.
Go through RUclips and it's proof where nowgwre near to a solution. The capitalist superstructure is too powerful.
Four years on from this video and things have only gotten worse.
Of course. Nothing changed.
yakyakyak69
I am only going to say this once
1. There is no such thing as FREE MARKET and there can NEVE - EVERRRR be.
2. Govt. involvement is not always bad
3. Capitalism requires inequality, poverty and even slavery and coercion.
Slavery by wages and coercion through poverty.
If you want to reply do it in SMALL comments that are to the point. If you are going to write inane walls of text about how i don't understand "freedom" , spare me the bullshit.
If you want to reply that "this is not real capitalism but *crony capitalism* " or some other euphemism to try and scape goat your pet ideology AGAIN i will not bother replying to this idiotic statement.
Have a nice day,
***** I overheard some guys at Princeton some weeks ago. They said that after studying what label to put on the US as a society with economics in mind. The answer was "oligarchy". Free markets in some way would surely be nice though.
karsy579
Full free market is impossible - from a logical point of view.
The problem with capitalism is that eventually those who control the means of production and wealth decide they want more power.
In other words, power corrupts ( duh :P )
A full free market is impossible because:
a) a free market would be eventually be monopolized by one "player" => not free
b) the government regulates against monopoly => the market is not free
This is why Libertarianist ideologies are completely bonkers.
Check out Richard Wolff's analysis - really powerful stuff.
***** that is why right wing libertarian ideologies are like that! Left Libertarians aren't exactly mainstream in the US, but they make a lot more sense than corporation worshippers...
this is as relevant today as it was 12 years ago
I haven't read many comments about the drawing or animation process that had to be done for this video so here I go. Great work on producing this video. I might not agree with some of the points being made but its great to hear another side of the conversation. The presentation of this conversation in the animations and drawings was awesome and intriguing. Very cool.
Whoever does the drawings for these videos is super dope haha
We're not debating it because capitalism can only tolerate so much criticism, but not questioning of whether it should still be around or not. Simultaneously, the people who own the money and the media tell us incessantly that all alternatives to capitalism are worse than it.
+Gustavo Menezes Form a group with me (we can discuss the structure of this group) to discuss how to change that.
I would like to discuss this subject with (not limited to) like-minded people.
Kind regards
+Gustavo Menezes It's called libertarian-socialism lol. Socialism without a state is the only logical way. We know socialism with a state doesn't work, we know capitalism without a state is a fantasy contradiction, we know that capitalism with a state barely works.
Thank you for posting this. Thank you.
Anarchism is a legit school of political thought, in this day and age only an uneducated twat can still think it means edgy punk kids breaking windows. Have you taken your knowledge of politics from MTV? Do yourself a favor and go read the Conquest of Bread.
Gustavo Menezes name a single country doing well as a communist or socialist country.
That was the Greatest display of "On the Fly" artistic ability that I've Ever seen!! Cheers
Loved this David Harvey ! Every school in the UK should have a copy of this placed on their curriculum for 1 hour a week .
Well... You forgot to mention that money is debt and created out of thin air since the dollar is no more backed by the gold standart. This also is the reason why inflation is escalating because there is just no limits of dollars being put into circulation. This is why there are more billionaires, the federal reserve loans unlimited amount of dollars, creating more inflation of prices and economic bubbles that look like the economy is growing when in fact the people's debt is growing and they benefit from people's debt.
So, your solution to a risk of escalating inflation, is to return to a system that guarantees escalating deflation? That couldn't possibly be bad for the economy!
Rowan Evans It would be better to have deflation than to continue making money out of thin air. Because having a currency with nothing to back it is totally good for the economy. -_-
Rowan Evans It's not a "solution to a risk of escalating inflation", it's a solution to definite, current and inevitably accelerating inflation. The idea that you can have a prosperous economy without competing currencies is even more insane then the leftist intellectual gymnastics in this video.
Maxime Laneville What do competing currencies have to do with it? Is this supposed to be the means by which inflation gets "inevitably accelerated"? Are you advocating that gold must exist as a currency in competition with government issued ones?
Rowan Evans Haha nooooo the only way that a currency inevitably inflates is when a government monopolizes it (and in this case, counterfeits it). And no I don't think the government issued currency can compete with anything because it has no real value. It only retains value in the present economy BECAUSE other currencies are banned by the government. I don't advocate gold, bitcoin, or any specific currency I'm just pointing out the basic economic reality that a healthy economy needs competing currencies because it's a basic fact that often get left out of the discussion.
Since globalism dis-empowered labour because of the resulting competition of a global labour force, wages have been collapsing globally for the majority of the population. As pointed out in this video they compensated for that by issuing cheap credit, they also compensated for it by subsidising private sector wages with state welfare (e.g. tax credits).
Well the 2008 crisis brought the end to the cheap credit cards, austerity measures are also wiping out welfare spending. So people are being left with their stagnant wages with nothing to prop them up.
So business world, where is your demand going to come from now? Global businesses refuse to pay their labour a living wage, yet they expect this same labour to go out and spend to keep their profits growing each and every year. It's not a situation that can be sustained, you cannot grow spending in the face of falling wages.
Arguably globalism which was supposed to liberate Capitalism has in fact broken it, with it only being a question of when this whole thing will collapse.
AnnoyedDragon The 1% don't make a profit by selling you stuff. They wait until the economy collapses and then buy up your assets for pennies on the pound.
There is a theory in economics right now that once global wages catch up with the other "advance" countries, wages in the U.S. will rebound.
What is your definition of globalism anyway to me sounds like a global socialism. As far as I'm concern free market paves the road for what we think globalism is.
+Steve Jung Tell me I'm misreading your post, are you seriously trying to blame Socialism for the current state of the world?
Your using vague terms. "Globalism" which was "suppose' to liberate capitalism...??
Where do you get the notion of globalism? As far as im concern its a vague term that has positive connotation such as world peace and end to world hunger. It is but free trade that brings countries together. A global market. Then how is this "suppose" to liberate capitalism? And what does that even mean? The use of terms are vague.
Amazing work,well drawn images to a well spoken man, u did a very good job capturing what he was saying with the images
Surely, the information is fascinating, but I am always mesmerized by the drawings
"You should know it is crap, and say that it is"
Have come to this 7 years on. Great analysis. same conditions and practices abound. Hmm
Just subscribed, very informative videos, makes alot of sense, everyone needs to start waking up to this.
awesome!! visualisation is the best way to make more people understand
first i want to thank u for letting me know that i still have to improve my english much much more
how's it going with the english hiếu?
@@asuka_the_void_witch LoL good. it's been 6 years. I don't even remember what this video is about
@@hieuthepunk well, as long as your english improved since 6 years ago, you kept your promise haha =D
@@hieuthepunk Congrats hieu
As this is this 7th year can you tell us how much your English has improved.
Wonderful lecture, certainly reminds me of Einstein's words--that the choice is between Socialism or Barbarism, not meaning, of course, to step over the speaker's support of Marxism with some topic of Socialism. But without a doubt, as he implies, it is certainly nearing a time, one long overdue by now, mind, at which we as humans must evolve beyond our early predatory stage--surely we are better than that. Surely we don't need to compete for resources, there are enough for all of us and then some if we start making goods meant to last and not meant to make money fast. I should think it is soon--the wage gap increases and old advocates become increasingly aware that in a system built on competition, you can only have as many or more losers than winners, and in a time of such understanding as ours, do we all really wish to spend our lives trying to win, when it makes others lose, or when we ourselves lose? What is it all worth then, anyway? Great lecture, wonderful animations, glad to have seen it. c:
My comment may be swept away pretty quick by the verocious debate below. But I just wanted to say thanks for putting up this informative video and I really like the drawing style in this series. I especially like the little puns and references to pop culture (peanuts, monopoly) dropped in - very clever. Thanks!
I love watching this guy draw. It's fantastic.
The largest downside of capitalism is that it is not equipped to handle the looming shadow of job loss as robotics replaces people. This is why capitalism is on it's last century and why a new economic system must emerge.
socialism is inevitable...we should make that transition smoother by taking actions collectively instead. Eventually most tasks will be done by robots and those robots can't be owned by certain companies. All of us need to be the part of that company, have shares, and since everyone is going to be part of it...it should be owned by govt a public entity.
answerOfstupids
No, it should be jointly owned by the people and the ceo, therefore giving the people power. Which they don't have at the moment. Government owned businesses is not the way to go, learn from the past.
Again, the businesses should be jointly owned by both the people and the CEOs.
doodelay Question, why can't the workers own directly? Or the consumers, in the case of utilities? Actual ownership by the people directly involved. Why should a CEO, chosen by capitalists, be part of the equation at all? Why shouldn't leadership be chosen by the workers directly?
doodelay no robots for you, throw away your computer, forget youtube and go watch documentaries at the theater.
manu de hanoi
a computer isn't a fucking robot bro lol
We need an even bigger and harder crash to see something changing.
Xa Ven coming right up...!
If one can make a crash destroy the economy, then they should do it.
I remember hearing from Steve Keen years ago (sorta paraphrasing Minsky) that Finance was meant to be the cost of doing business, and never a way a generator of profit and capitol.
Fantastic artwork!! Amazing!
This was a great video and I admire the effort put into these animations.
I don't think there is a one-size-fit-all solution for our global problems. The problem lies in the fact that modern capitalism developed closely with the state apparatus, which lawfully enforces more or less singular policies. Different regions with unique ways of life and subsistence should decide their own local economies, instead we were attached to a system that haphazardly attempts to serve a multitude of needs.
Centralization of power is the main issue. It enables a few people to manipulate and rig the economy in their favor.
Multiple decentralized equalitarian communities, such as anarchist syndalicism, are feasible.
State Socialism doesn't work. It only centralizes power, no matter how benign it's intentions are.
This is a wonderful synopsis. It's a shame people with strong opinions and no knowledge/ability of enquiry leave vehemently ignorant comments.
loving the idea of german dismissing something as `anglo-saxon & therefore nothing to do with them'! :D
How many books would you have to read in order to gain the understanding of this empirical verification of capital gain? How many years of studying?
I just gained all that knowledge in 15 minutes on youtube. Me wasting my time on this proves the fact that as capital increases that labor decreases. Alan Watts was right on how jobs would become useless in being replaced by automatons, the Pantheistic Buddhism integrating consciousness into the cloud computer? Or Christ? You have choices to make.
Indeed! Marx also mentions the trajectory of humanity into mere machinery for capital accumulation and even extrapolates this to conceive that generalized mental labor will be discreetly machinated which, if you're generous with thinking about abstractions and consider he wrote it like 200 years ago, is pretty much a prediction of the whole goal of developing AI, which I found pretty amazing/awesome if nothing else.
But I definitely agree that this sort of backlash against religious dogmatism from the enlightenment essentially threw out the meaningful spiritual baby with the totalitarian bathwater, and perhaps worse is that it wasn't really "thrown out" so much as it has changed in appearance. "The market" and broad enforcement capitalist realism narrows our imagination/collective goals to the point of effectively having instituted the same dogmatism in a different distorted lexicon. Basically Nietzsche's underlying point in decrying the "death" of god.
Yeeeeeeeah...not lookin' too good for this whole humanity thing.
Bisquick can you explain what you both are referring to in regard to religion? Are you saying Buddhism is the new doctrine?
@@taina8622 No God is basically the equivalent of "dads not home! We can do whatever we want!", we're going to end up in a lord of the flies situation very quickly.
Read a book titled Capital in the Twenty-First Century by a French economist called Thomas Piketty. Afterward, if you are not exhausted or denying it, read "Capital and Ideology" by same owner, then a Brief History of Neoliberalism by the very speaker of this video.
9 Years on from this video and things hove only got worse
majestic video, thanks to David Harvey.
Doing an amazing job!!
What the Hell is with all the pausing? With the enormous effort that went into animating the video, you would think they would've taken a few minutes to make sure it all actually flowed together.
Maybe in order to not breach copy-right-bullshit or something. Copied from lecture therefore has to be inferior for some obscure reason.
:/
great video. I enjoyed it and absorbed the information.
+MGTOW Jesus
The best way to listen to this is to wind the window up so the distraction of the artistry does not get in the way of the message.
We connect with the human form talking to us, we connect with the human voice. The game of the hands distracts from the message.
Namaste and care,
mhikl
Brilliant, very creative.
Great video, loved it!
I find that people often like to argue straw man points when it comes to open discussion about the problems of "free market" capitalism and alternative solutions. Instead of building an open environment where people dialogue about solutions to the worlds problems we constantly achieve antagonistic debates about unrealistic expectation of "real" capitalism.
No matter how you slice it market economics: socialism, communism and any form of capitalism are wholly incapable of resolving the world's problems of war, scarcity and environment. The first step toward realistic solutions means looking at that statement objectively, if not scientifically, and w/reason.
Next, any real solution begins with the very real assumption that the real wealth of any nation is in its natural resources and its people. Here we can begin by making one another increasing aware of this reality and begin working toward a more humane life-style through the elimination of scarcity.
All social systems, regardless of the political philosophy, religious beliefs, or social mores, ultimately depend upon natural resources -- i.e. clean air and water and arable land area -- and the industrial equipment and technical personnel for a high standard of living. The money- based system was designed hundreds of years ago and was hardly appropriate for that time. We still utilize this same outmoded system, which is probably responsible for most of today's problems.
oh my god I love this so much
The efficiency is the reaso of the capitalism will always win. Address efficiency from a collective standpoint without sacrificing freedom and you will have solved the problems of communism.
Why is the audio conclusion of this video, after 10:40, when it shows the financier visually in jail.. muted?
@riKringkast, it's worth mentioning that many Scandinavian countries had a system which was close to a Capitalist free-market before the current one today. Sweden is the best example of this.
150 years ago Sweden was a very poor country and it was riddled with crop failure. There was a lack of health services, sanitation, overcrowding, etc. Many people lodged in with other families and disease was pretty abundant.
Between 1850 and 1950 the average Swedish income multiplied 8 times whilst the population doubled. Sweden had the fastest economic and social development in history. During this time, the life expectancy rose by almost 30 years and infant mortality fell dramatically.
This was all during a time where the taxes were very low and the public sector was tiny than in the rest of Europe and the United States. After this, Swedish politicians started placing taxes on people and disbursing handouts on a large scale, redistributing the wealth that workers had already created.
In short; Sweden's biggest social and economic successes were when Sweden had an almost laissez-faire economy, and before wealth was widely distributed by the welfare state. Simply saying that these countries are fantastic because they have this, this and this -- whilst ignoring the history is with respect, rather silly.
well the thing is that if governement gets on the side of the workers, the owners of the industries will go offshore, because they a re moved by maximizing proffits, that´s it. So you move industries out of europe, usa,canada,etc. to countries like china, india,pakistan, south africa,etc. Then the workers in THOSE countries get screwed and ask for better working conditions, and eventually they get them, that wont solve it either cause capital will find new sweatshops like nigeria, kenya, etc. in a cycle that goes on forever. What we will see in the next few years i beleive is a massive kind of intervention or reseting in the economic cycles, throwing us into unknown unreveiled terrain where god knows what can happen, but one thing is for sure: the prime forces and interest of the market will always be the same: maximize profits, minimize loses in an ever increasing pace.
Who ever drew this is very good at drawing.
The absence of doubt, I like that!
Author, you're absolutely right. The modern economic model leads the world to the abyss.
+Sgt Moose Great, now you have quoted Thatcher, another beacon of equality and working class lover. (Mind the sarcasm) I think you're just taking quotes out of a google search and posting them. Please read some basic economics before you comment. Also, you should know financialisation by Raegan/Thatcher is exactly what led to the global economic crisis of 2008.
What do you call this kind of smart revolutionary people that is so grecefully helping us understand the world and informs us of progress and other awsome stuff that makes you just want to learn more and more and contribute to the world??
I was hoping when he mentioned the mortgage interest deduction -- and especially when he brought out the Monopoly ("Capitalism") board -- that he would have mentioned Henry George. I think George's solution to the crisis of capitalism (taxing "land" -- in the economic sense of natural resources of inherently fixed supply -- rather than labor, capital, and trade) makes more sense than the common ownership of all the means of production. Still, a fun animation.
Why is there no debate and discussion on economics? Because it's a high entry level discussion, people can only chew what they can pretend to know about. Finance on the other hands takes hard facts and hard learning to understand let alone master. Hence economics is not a problem the common man can process, let alone solve.
+TheSquidPro I have no idea what's he talking about.
*****
There's no excuse for not being educated in today's world, all the information is a click away. Public libraries are in abundance, and all schools except for the tippest of the toppest are free.
The unambitious will always be at a disadvantage to the ambitious, but that is no fault of society.
I'm still saying that economic texts confuse me and I have no idea what it all is.
*****
Mandatory education is just a benefit of maintaining a societal standard, if you don't have the agency to educate yourself than you're not as smart as you claim to be schools or otherwise.
Meanwhile you try to water the argument of the internet down with baseless drivel then conveniently ignore the libraries who are not 50 bucks a month, luckily for everywhere fibre optic doesn't reach books do.
Billions of people don't need access to the internet, billions of people have more pressing issues like "Lets try to listen to all these specialists the west keeps sending and not forget to feed ourselves." or "Lets reject foreign aid so a domestic market can start blooming" or "Maybe democracy isn't a great idea in countries racked by populism and superstition or foreign infiltrators." or "Lets dig a hole outside the city instead of throwing trash two steps away from my doorstep"
Basic stuff that doesn't need the internet.
It's not hard to reveal who is lazy. From top to bottom there are those who climb and those who wallow being "content", hence any system discriminates against the poor because the poor do not actively choose in life, not they let choices be made for them just like how the media regurgitates opinions for them to absorb in the same way you envision schools.
So I will state again that it is immensely easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, because the ambitious choose their lives and do not let it be chosen for them.
I'm just saying that every time I pick up an economic textbook it makes my head spin, I'm not arguing that information is hard to access, there's also a problem of comprehending the texts.
What are your views on CAPITALISM?
"It's time we got back to Keynes." I hate to break it to you, but we have been living in Keynes country for decades.
We were never at hayek. It's not even keynes, its a manipulated keynes. Hayek would have never bailed out the bankers, the video never even touches on it.
You bail out the losers there is no end to the cost.
In fact, most dictionaries agree with Rand's definition of freedom:
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
"Definition of FREEDOM
1
: the quality or state of being free: as
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence
c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous freedom from care "
Total genius!
He's an idiot.
John Doe Jr. Which he? I was talking about the animator on the white board. If I could do that, that's all I'd do. There is a problem with Capitalism, by the way, at least the new Pope thinks so.
Oh, sure he's a good drawer.
There isn't a problem with Capitalism, there never has been.
John Doe Jr. Sure, if you're rich.
Anthony Blackburn You have no idea how the economy works, do you?
I saw very few (if any) flaws in that evaluation.
Ok, I am just at my introductory phase concerning the above . I appreciate this information and animation. Makes it much clearer for me previously middle class person in Canada. I am glad there are more of these videos. I wonder if video education like this and related ones are used in Canadian colleges and universities and independent higher learning? Could you please expand upon this? Thank you.
Lisa Hind Hi Lisa - I teach Canadian university students and also create instructor aids for a higher-ed publishing company. I consistently incorporate and recommend videos for use in the classroom - students engage with the material, and the follow-up discussion is very 'animated' :)
The last 3-4 minutes are a beautiful and horrific characterization and problematization of the current economic situation. When the gap between the haves and havenots widens, you have to ask yourself in which category you and your children will fall into.
I got a Prager U ad before this video.
The answer is a switch to an economy based on the commons and mathematics (the blockchain). We need to transcend our view of money and power. Look up Jeremy Rifkin, he's got it. We are going to return to a truly free and global market with many currencies representing our belief in certain things, ideas, and cultures. Capitalism as it stands now (particularly in America) depends on perpetual growth and kicking the can down the road, forcing people and nations to take on debt. Now we are seeing the worst of all materialistic ideologies. The US dollar means nothing, the fed and government keep it going with manipulation and misdirection. But hey, we can't do anything about it until the infrastructure of the new global economy really starts to take off. It starts with us as a people, support decentralization, open-source technology, and the dedicated shift to renewable energy.
This is why geographers shouldn't talk about economics.
Please check out 'Progressive utilisation theory' (PROUT). Some key ideas for economy include - co-operatives at the centre of the economy, a ceiling as well as a floor on wages and wealth, economic democracy. Decentralized, deeply ecological, etc.
The solution is simple: cooperatives
There's little specific reason why co-ops couldn't compete with multinationals on the same level, no? I think the only reason the biggest companies aren't co-ops is that there's so few of them, and they're less likely to agressively expand as they go by consensus and member-investment usually. That said, one of the biggest banks in the Netherlands started cooperatively, and several large companies in Spain are co-ops.
There is more needed than just cooperatives. Competition still exists within a cooperative-based system.
Act Free yeah, and that breeds innovation. The cure for economic crises is not the economic equivalent of playing soccer without the ball and then giving everyone a participation medal.
searchoverload8 false equivalency
Resource Based Economy such as proposed by The Venus Project
“They say that life is an accident, driven by sexual desire, that the universe has no moral order, no truth, no God.
Driven by insatiable lusts, drunk on the arrogance of power, hypocritical, deluded, their actions foul with self-seeking, tormented by a vast anxiety that continues until their death, convinced that the gratification of desire is life's sole aim, bound by a hundred shackles of hope, enslaved by their greed, they squander their time dishonestly piling up mountains of wealth.
"Today I got this desire, and tomorrow I will get that one; all these riches are mine, and soon I will have even more. Already I have killed these enemies, and soon I will kill the rest. I am the lord, the enjoyer, successful, happy, and strong, noble, and rich, and famous. Who on earth is my equal?”
Krishna describing the anti-Christ and ignorance.
Great watch!
From which lecture is this taken? Does anyone have a written version I can reference? I'd be happy if anyone could help me !
We need to stop government regulation and let the free market work things out itself. That is how we can avoid a repeat of 2008
+awsomeguy001
The free market doesn't exist. Without the government enforcing private property laws capitalism wouldn't exist.
+awsomeguy001 No, we need to move beyond capitalism altogether.
Anarcho Communist Watch the PragerU video "Myths Of Capitalism"
awsomeguy001
PragerU is just neoliberal capitalist propaganda. The problems with capitalism aren't just myths.
Did you watch it?
This video seems to skip the role of management. Western style free market capitalism is based on a triangle of labor, capital, and management. Power needs to be balanced between the three legs. Labor provides demand. Capital provides broad policy (i.e. vision). Management provides day to day functioning.
Due to advances in management techniques (some technical, some social/legal) management has striped the other two legs of power. Thus the fundamental problem of capitalism has once again reared it's head -- Winners accumulate too much power, The winners come to control the system and inevitably move it away from its free market roots by making monopolies and the like.
Nobody has ever managed to create a monopoly through a free market, absent government intervention. All of the real, coercive monopolies which restricted supply to earn monopoly profits at the expense of consumers were created with the help of government. All of the classic examples of suppsed monopolies persecuted under antitrust laws were increasing production, improving quality, and bringing their products to consumers at ever falling prices. This includes Standard Oil and John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vandervilt was actually a monopoly breaker. He defied a government imposed monopoly on steamboat traffic on the Hudson river.
SaulOhio Who told you the market can be "free" ? No wonder we've never seen it in this utopian form...
Role of management ?Tell me how valuable is your vision for making more money straight from money mister creative entrepreneur ? And labor provides demand my ass, under this system it is the capitalist class that solely creates the demand, the laws of supply and demand just direct the labor.
"the fundamental problem of capitalism has once again reared it's head -- Winners accumulate too much power, The winners come to control the system and inevitably move it away from its free market roots by making monopolies and the like."
Well since it always finishes like this why on Earth you think it has "free market" roots ? How many more years we are going to repair and patch a system that cannot meet even the basic needs of human society ?
Ilian Kulishev A free market is one where market participants are free to enter and leave at will.
They are economically efficient since success breeds imitation and new ideas quickly permeate the entire market.
Of course this isn't always a good thing. For example intellectual property laws are designed to limit the free market.
Also, economic efficiency is not the end all, be all of life. Having dirt cheap food for 9 years running then no food in the tenth year would be bad, even if the average cost was lower than moderately priced food at all times.
BTW, since no one is free to leave the health care market, "Free Market Health Care" is a lie.
Ilian Kulishev You are confusing capital with management.
Capital uses money to make money. Management directs workers in useful directions.
During the corporate "reforms" of the late 1980s businesses were being bought, broken, and sold. Workers were losing jobs so they thought this was bad. They supported rules that made boards of directors beholden to the companies CEOs (that's management) instead of stockholders (capital).
Since then CEOs usually pay themselves bloated salaries for shipping jobs overseas. In other words they ship their own work (managing employees) overseas while giving themselves a raise. Both employees and stockholders (often retired employees BTW) suffer. But there's nothing they can do. Management has most of the power.
Also, in our consumer society it is spending workers who provide demand for products. The hundred or so billionaires just don't eat that many hamburgers (for example).
One problem, or at least incompleteness, I see with the Marxian crisis explanation: The United States was the OECD country with the worst wage repression and income divergence since the 1970s - yet the deepest economic depression seems to be in Europe, especially the PIIGS. So while I agree that income divergence was one of the main driving forces leading up to this crisis, there must have been other factors besides the degree of income divergence that determined how hard the crisis hit a given nation's economy; namely, the feasibility of the Eurozone.
Also the US has the reserve currency of the world, which means it can print money almost without consequence - it has used this ability to spend and spend, thereby softening the crisis. European countries can't just print money, or at least not so much, and so have been forced into austerity.
very nice, was expecting some wallerstein but still good
I do not have a dog in this fight, but I find it perplexing that Sociologist use Marxian analysis to study Capitalism. However the Scholars who actually study Capitalism, Economists, rarely even mention Marxian critiques. And usually, this dismissal of Marxian analysis is done without much respect. I can only conclude that Sociologist's, or anybody else, who uses Marxian critique of Capitalism is not taken very seriously by anyone but fringe Sociologists and others of that ilk. After watching Zeitgeist video's, Sociologists debates and other Anti-Capitalist videos, I can not rid myself of the conclusion that people using Marxian Critiques are merely Pseudo intellectuals with a chip on their shoulders. Sociologists seem the most overly emotional,
its easy, marx points at several problems with american-style democracy. it hurts the establishment so economists (who work for what we call the establishment btw) talk about marx in denigrating terms. if they do otherwise they put their career at stake as the establishment is very vidicative. besides, all thats interesting with marx is him pointing at social issues created by/because of economic laws as well as excesses made possible by capitalizm in its extremes. its not fag blabber, its economists who use economy to have power over government so over us. they zeitgeit fags are only a sickness of today- they talk compassion to hide their own weakness.
besides, marx is 50% utopian bullshit-his economical views- and 50% critique over social issues created by/because of capitalizm -pure social issues- thats why it is irrelevant to economists. as sociology is a half-science cuz poor sociologists dont know much about economics and economics determine social wellness- the best way to keep everybody in the dark, but were into another debate, and its too long for yt comments
First, learn that not every noun is capitalized, second, learn that plural nouns don't have apostrophes. Then make an argument. I didn't even read your post, because nobody would take it seriously. Big words, though. At least you can spell.
There is no "exploitation of the workers", as the employee's labor is worth less to him than it's worth to the employer, and the reason for that is that the labor + capital equipment makes the labor worth more. The employer has the capital equipment, the employee does not. The employee is paid MORE than his labor is worth TO HIM sans capital equipment, and the labor the employer receives is worth more to the employer than the compensation he pays to the employee. It's a win-win. No one is being screwed. (And Marx was a fucking idiot).
The FACT is that child labor began falling as the prosperity derived from capitalism (improvement in compensation, working conditions and living standards began a century before 1836) made it possible for families to forego the income that their children could provide, particularly where industrialization was taking place.
That unions had a vested interest in reducing competition for their labor (from children and freed blacks) explains things they "urged" but doesn't change the reality.
Love this
I don't believe in homeownership, I want to learn how to get out this money state that I am in... I feel like the answer is going to come to me because my mind has changed a lot but I don't really know to many like believers. I want financial freedom for my daughters and myself. Still trying to figure out the smartest and fastest and cheapest way. Than I'll move to a third world country or something and live in a tree house! LOL!
Karl Marx is a goldmine
So long as you want to fix a paper cut using amputation
funny I stumble on this video exactly ten years after it was made, April 26, 2020.
People really don't understand the awesome beauty of the Free Market and the destructive power of government intervention. Free Markets are voluntary action, but governments are force and violence.
if you want to learn about economics, i would recommend Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, and when your ready, Murray Rothbard.
The issues of "capitalism" in this video appear to have nothing to do with results coming out of a free market, but rather the catastrophic consequences of governments meddling in the market.
I think it's misleading to say this crises belong to capitalism. I would argue that they are issues caused by governments.
I've been looking around for a critique of capitalism that doesn't take the issues governments make, and blame capitalism as the cause of these issues.
This video and others I've seen are critiques of crony capitalism. They are excellent critiques, I should mention, just not critiques of what they think they're critiquing.
Jason Colby What you call “crony capitalism” or “corporatism” is simply already the standard feature of capitalism. The whole fundamental of capitalism is to maximize one’s own capital for the sake of.. well.. capital.. The capitalist state ensures this through infrastructure spending, the issuing of money, and enforcing capital maximizing based properties (“private property in factories, corps, enclosure of the commons, imperialism, etc”) .
www.filmsforaction.org/news/the-iron-fist-behind-the-invisible-hand-corporate-capitalism-as-a-stateguaranteed-system-of-privilege/
Gosh. He gets so much right in here while at the same time getting SO much wrong. He's right, Capitalism can't solve it's crisis problems, not because it's a flaw in capitalism, but because capitalism pretty much DOESN'T exist in the major economics of not just the US and Europe, but in the whole world. It's silly to think Capitalism is part of the problem.
@6:14 AWESOME!!!
I am a strong believer in individual rights. My moral premise is the Golden Rule: measure others the same way you measure yourself and treat others the way that you would want to be treated. It naturally follows from this premise that we should have a set of rules which treat everyone fairly and allows everyone to achieve their goals.
To the last question, yes.
So the problem that was created by government intervention, should be solved by more government intervention?
What about allowing the banks to fail? Governments took on the liability of the banks and now governments are mired in debt, we didn't solve the problem, we just moved the deadline.
+DataEntity He discussed this at 9:50
How about nationalizing the banks?
And absorb the liability? You do know that let's the bankers off the hook, right?
If anything is nationalized, it's the savings portion of the bank, allowing the investments to fail per market forces. Possibly only after the bank has been declared bankrupt.
This protects the average citizen form liability they didn't sign up to, while retaining it for those who are responsible for the situation.
Gotta make an important distinction between the free market and crony capitalism. Under the free market, corps get no subsidies. There is no mortgage interest deduction. Big banks are allowed to fail. Crony capitalism is really a partial merger of state and corporate power, something that Mussolini called fascism. And fascism is national socialism, not the free market. We are heading in the direction of this merger between state and corporate power in the US, one little piece of legislation and bail-out at a time. But none of this should be confused with the free market.
Every time the light comes on, the free market roaches run back and forth all over the conversation, and I try to stomp on at least a few....it's hopeless, I know, but here goes;
Every success (as perverted as the measure of it is in this system) is lauded by you market purist's as "the free market", but every failure of it, is simply ridiculed as "crony capitalism". How convenient it must be, to reject anything that doesn't fit that tidy little model, and embrace anything that does. Would you get real? Please? Cause I for one, am sick of the schizophrenia... The "merger" was there from the get go. There is no division. It is a big and messy system of greed, one up man-ship and usury that is out of control and consuming itself. You can't pick little pieces of it out and say "this is our ideal, if only everything hinged on this principle there would be harmony".
There is nothing in serving oneself above all else that is principled! Mussolini meant to merge the people with their work, and with the fruits of that work. That is much closer to a principle. Did it go terribly bad? Of course it did, just like it did with Hitler. Of course, if you claim as your system one built upon the most base instincts mankind has, it's success or longevity is hardly something to trumpet about. The cost of that "success" also has a very nasty looking under belly. One we don't talk about much, huh? Instead, we have "Dictator" in our own image; the iron boot of corporatism.
pjamesbda I readily admit that the free market system has disadvantages. I am just sick of the free market taking the blame for things like corporate subsidies, bailouts, bribing politicians etc. that are explicitly against free market ideals. This is why we need to make a distinction between crony capitalism and the free market. The two are, in many cases, opposites. To be blind to this distinction is to leave yourself open to misunderstanding and error. So I have a question for you: can you name a criticism of the free market? I'd love to discuss the good ones. I am just sick of discussing straw men.
freesk8
Yes, certainly the most obvious is the competition. I'll elaborate if needed.
freesk8
What is the "free" market? Governance and capitalism go hand in hand from the beginning of civilization. Who will enforce property rights, currency, and transactions if not the government? The word "crony" means "friend," so the phrase "crony capitalism" implies that friendship has bought these advantages, not the money itself. I can assure you, it's not all about friendship. Money doesn't care whether it's going against your supposed "free market ideals." Like the Marx quote in the video says, "capital cannot abide a limit." In other words, your "free market," which looks for any advantages it can profit from, has overtaken government, not the other way around. Therefore it seems to me that what you're wishing for is a government that restricts (rather than enhances) the advantages that excess capital affords. Welcome to the club.
humanelk If government didn't have power to intervene economically in the first place, there would be no buyers for this service.
Really. That's pretty amazing given that capitalism only dates back 30,000 years (ancient Mesopotamia) and socialism began as a French concept. And while devaluing the currency is a real problem, it has nothing to do with capitalism and planned economies of any kind for any reason are socialistic failures.
There's a reason that Montagne isn't taken seriously - and, as it happens, its an incredibly good reason.
Millions of small businesses are thriving in the USA.
Walmart efficiently delivers mass cheap goods to consumers who CHOOSE to shop there.
The problem is corporations can/must buy political favors to dominate markets. Amazon made billions because its customers did not pay state sales tax. But other small online retailers began proliferating. Suddenly, Amazon lobbied for online state/county/city sales tax which is complex to compute and thus complicates business for online small competitors.
The best argument against communism or any other form of government is that they all have a monopoly on the use of force. Wars and world wide economic depressions are only made possible by government coercion and force.
A true free market society exists under voluntary agreements between individuals. Consider how many wars would be waged if the soldiers were free to return home at any time? Politicians could not initiate much offensive action under those conditions. Essentially the soldiers themselves would be voting with their feet as to whether or not the war was worth fighting. They say that today's military is an all volunteer force. That is true to the extent that they voluntarily sign away their individual liberty when they join. After signing up they must obey orders to make war or they will be forced into prison.
Marx said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Marx must use force to take from One so that he can give to Another. A centrally planned economy as envisioned by communists, socialists and dictators will end in slavery, starvation and war. Watch Bolivia
If you have no coercive apparatus then you have no property, and if you have a volunteer based society without a state and property, that isn't free-market capitalism. That's communism.
Thomas Sutton "If you have no coercive apparatus then you have no property".
Actually, it is VERY MUCH possible to me to own property without me having to INITIATE violence or force on other people. If I point a gun at you and say, "give me your (fill in the blank with whatever item you wish)" and you give it, I have just used coercion on you. It was NOT a voluntary trade.
However, if I were to offer you something you want (like money) in exchange for that item (and I didn't use force or threaten to use force) then I did not coerce you because I was not causing any harm to you.
FurryMurry7 But property rights must be enforceable. If there was nothing to stop me, I could just go around declaring that your belongings are mine. Some socially agreed on mechanisms for exclusion or entitlement must be in place to support property rights.
Ryan Marsh I completely agree with you! =D And, fortunately, these "socially agreed on mechanisms" already exist. It's called "commonlaw". In a nutshell, commonlaw is basically laws (or rules) that exist outside of government. These are laws that everyone knows and understands. "Common Knowledge", if you will. To illustrate: imagine I went to a restaurant, ordered a turkey sandwich, ate it, and refused to pay, saying "well i never signed uh contract that said ah promise 2 pay for muh food." LOLZ
But seriously, everyone would know that what I'm doing is wrong, even if we were living in a stateless society. This is commonlaw at work. And EVEN IF the fear of jail were taken out of the equation, I would still have a damn good reason to pay my bill. I need a job. I need an apartment. I need money (loans, credit cards, etc.). And with all of those things, someone is going to check on my TRUSTWORTHINESS. (another way of saying trustworthiness is "credit"). When word gets out that I keep ripping off restaurants, a lot of people are not going to want to interact with me. Restaurants won't want to serve me. Employers won't want to hire me (for the good jobs, at least. Maybe I could be a dishwasher making a not-enough-to-live-on wage). Banks and finance companies won't want to lend me money (which I will desperately need, since I can't get a good job). And the list of this kind of "economic ostracism" goes on and on for me. In short, we could say that if I turn to a life of ripping people off, my life will turn into a living hell.
The best medicine is prevention, not cure. The fear of such economic ostracism is usually quite enough for people to respect property rights.
Thomas Sutton
please visit mises.org
There is a distinction between collaborative private enterprise and the price-fixing of essential goods ike petroleum, which the American oil companies do with gasoline, and which constitutes them as a cartel. I agree that the Silicone Valley giants including Walmart could afford to pay higher wages and offer more benefits to their employees and still make a decent profit, but their election not to as you have pointed out is part of the nature of the free market beast. Capitalism is not a perfect economic system nor is it always fair, especially when there is corrupt collusion between private enterprise and government, which is known as "crony capitalism." But it is nevertheless a better alternative than coercive collectivism.
Written By: Atelston Fitzgerald Holder 1st
" Capitalism is not a perfect economic system nor is it always fair, especially when there is corrupt collusion between private enterprise and government, which is known as "crony capitalism." But it is nevertheless a better alternative than coercive collectivism."
Why end it there? That isn't the end-all-be-all, is it? It's the best we have so we just have to deal with it? That's beyond limited.
Typically, most defenders of capitalism speak as if the only alternative to it is what most would regard as historically failed socioeconomic systems (e.g. socialism/communism). While ignoring a more realistic mix between the most successful aspects of both.
To deny that there are aspects of communism/socialism that make much more sense than a free market is, for lack of a better word, delusional. Unchecked capitalism (free market) isn't a solution. Nor is complete socialism. Obviously it's favorable to see what actually is proven to work for the betterment of MOST people (not some), and apply those in a common sense way. The most progressive countries in the world have much better policies than the U.S. in this regard. Many of the Nordic countries, and Canada for instance have free health care -- you can even go to school for free in some regions -- and they're heavily involved in advancing social mobility and welfare. Yet they're just as involved in capitalism and banking as the U.S. despite provably being much harsher on banking criminals than the U.S. -- Iceland jailed their bankers for instance.
There's ample evidence to suggest that a mix of both sides of the spectrum provides, realistically, the best benefits to PEOPLE. People should never settle for any social system. If people are suffering, then change it! And the way capitalism is going right now, regardless of who or what you want to blame, many in the world are definitely suffering.
XSilvenX I disagree. I don't find any of the aspects of communism or socialism to make sense. Yes, Canada and the Nordic countries do have both free education and health care, but they're bad, atleast here in Finland. Also, the Nordic countries and Canada both have freer markets than the U.S., and that's why they are better places to live in.
John Doe Jr. You're desperately wrong, and the fact that you can't find a SINGLE thing "right" with any aspects of communism/socialism, besides showing how tragically unreasonable you are, proves how transparent and shallow your agenda is.
-- www.upworthy.com/a-senator-tried-to-outsmart-a-highly-respected-doctor-it-didnt-work-out-too-well-for-him?c=slt1
XSilvenX I'd just like to point out that communism, as a socioeconomic system, has not been achieved. It's definition has remained the same for hundreds of years: a stateless, classless system with common ownership of the means of production. This is what all communists and socialists (in the traditional sense of the word) hope to achieve. There are many ideologies regarding the best way to achieve such a system, but unfortunately a combination of western and soviet propaganda has considerably blurred the definitions of communism and socialism leaving many people incorrectly believing that the USSR actually practiced communism.
Stephen Wood Fully agreed. Unfortunately, it's almost a waste of breath trying to explain this to most people.
The answer is to embrace strong sustainability.War must be made illegal.All our efforts must go into peaceful cooperation.
He is indeed! :)
Have you read Manufacturing Consent?
This video convinced me. I'm moving to North Korea there is no capitalism there.
That's a beautiful strawman there.
youre out of luck because they have bureaucratic state capitalism (also known as stalinism). The state replaces the corporations of the west there. the state then distributes the resources, as a corporation would in the west. But in north korea, workers still sell their labour on the labour market, as they did in the soviet union.
North Korea is as socialist as the US is Marxist-Leninist. In other words, you can put a dogs collar on a cat, but it's still going to be a cat regardless what you call it. The same is the case with North Korea and other so called "communist" states. You can put the name tag on them all you want, but that's completely irrelevant if what they're actually doing is something else.
Yes there is.
thats not a strawmen, thats just reminder of the result of every communism attempt - hunger, intolerancy, crimes comited in the name of new order, etc
You should not make critical parallels of what we have now, with Capitalism. We do not have Capitalism by definition. Even the most economically free areas of the world (Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand etc), are not *purely* Capitalist societies. So a great deal of the notion this video's based upon is a false one at that.
Much of what he says in this video, is correct. The massive financial structure and centralised pools of economic power do exist and do subjugate the average worker. However, this is Corporatism, not Capitalism. This is the end results of political power becoming deeply intertwined with financial bodies which create these excessively powerful financial institutions which get to 'create policy' on economic matters. This spans from this sense that the state tries to hire 'experts' and academics to run the gritty details of their often ill-thought policies.
These policies face the normal problem of a 'top-down' approach, in that they're enforced through the monopoly of force, through taxation, the state legal structures etc and are too far abstracted from the markets and the individuals the policies effect. This leads to mass inefficiencies in the way currency is organised and recognised. Then you start to see these financial bodies trying to regulate against their own failures and inefficiencies, badly.
Capitalism would work, perfectly, and would be symptomatic of a free, voluntary society if it was allowed to be. If by Capitalism, we mean the simple act of voluntary exchange of time, commodity and labour between consenting individuals, or groups of consenting individuals.
You're arguing semantics, I'm pretty sure the narrator knows we don't have pure capitalism. Pure capitalism is theoretical, it has never existed and never will.
Perfectly put, Vicente Brizola
The capitalism Harvey is talking about is the one that exists. i.e. the subordination of labour power so that a profit can be extracted.
If you want to extenuate that exploitation without refrain through the abolition of the state, which provides cover to the citizens when capitalism goes bad (like it did after the great depression which happened when state intervention was next to invisiable), then you are calling for nothing short of unhindered tyranny.
Plus, to get there, what are you going to do with the monopolies that already exist? The only way they are going to be overcome is through collective action in the best traditions of socialism.
Vicente Brizola Pure capitalism is a fiction, a utopia, same as "everyone is equal, we are all happy" pure communism.
Unless you're talking about something else, pure cap = totally free-market capitalism, and that's not possible: you will always have a public part in any economy, some laws, powerful people gaining an unfair advantage.
A perfectly equal competitive playing field is impossible: perfection doesn't exist in real life. Markets are never completely free and thus pure capitalism cannot exist.
ytandyf84 what makes those in government more moral than the average person? And what gives corporations the power to exploit, if not the state?
Monopolies only exist because of the state, in a free society a monopoly could only exist if gratified by the consumer. They exist now through bail outs and subisidies etc.
You should not make the assertion that we would be subject to pure tyranny without explaining why that would be the case. Personally I don't believe we need the state in order to be moral.
If your concern is the existence of monopolies, why assume then that more state is the fix? When it is the cause to begin with?
In terms of the great depression, it has been empyrically been proven to be the fault of the Federal Reserves bad reactionary policy to a normal market blip that caused the run on banks
Irrelevant of if you swing left right, center or undecided, the most important point to take from this is were not even discussing the division of class! 3 Billion dollars compensation for work that isn't nessessarily more demanding than what you or i may do, its simply deemed more valuable.
Notes Graber: "Credit and debt comes first, then coinage emerges thousands of years later and then, when you do find “I’ll give you twenty chickens for that cow” type of barter systems, it’s usually when there used to be cash markets, but for some reason - as in Russia, for example, in 1998 - the currency collapses or disappears." So hundreds of societies existed before the creation of money and they used debt/credit transaction. This is one (of many) things Rothbard/Austrians get wrong.