YouTube has the video Barack Obama – Protecting Democracy and the Commitment to Facts | The Daily Show

This starts around 23:29 in the video.

The point, though, is they’ve got some blend, some mix. There is an advantage in terms of efficiency and also freedom to a market system. You have a control system. You have some guy in an office is deciding how many potatoes we’re going to grow this year. That usually does not work. The flip side of it is that what we’ve also learned is that some guy in a boardroom is deciding, I’m going to ravage the environment to do whatever I want, that doesn’t work either. So we’re going to have a blend of some sort. We want some collective decision making about the social good. And we want something that’s efficient and dynamic and allows us to exercise our innovation and freedom. And we don’t need to worry so much about the labels as we do about being practical and thinking about what’s working and what isn’t.

This is what I call “what worksism”. The trouble with Obama’s administration is that he made some horrible decisions about what was working and what was not. We cannot exercise our innovation and freedom in a private market that is controlled by oligarchs as monopolists. Privatizing natural monopolies like infrastructure is a terrible idea. Efficiency is not always the primary feature you want to emphasize. There is a place for worrying about resiliency. If you have a system that is highly efficient, but highly fragile, then that is not a good compromise. It takes more nuanced thinking than saying you don’t want some guy deciding how many potatoes to grow this year is a necessary of part of socialism, than a guy deciding on just-in-time efficiency in private enterprise being a necessary part of capitalism. High resilience to the detriment of all concerns about efficiency is not a good compromise either.

Having a financialized and de-industrialized economy is not a good compromise either. Nobody talked about why China’s compromise, mixed-system was beating the USA all to hell in world trade.

YouTube has the Bad Faith episode The Austerity to Fascism Pipeline (w/ Clara Mattei).

This week, Briahna Joy Gray spoke to political economist Clara Mattei about her new book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism. She explains the invention of austerity politics, how it’s been sold to the masses historically, and breaks down a recent Obama interview in which he carries water for what he calls, “inclusive capitalism” when presented with the possibility of transitioning to a more equitable economic system. How does austerity play into the conflict in Ukraine and various “democracy building” neo-colonial endeavors across the world? And what are the alternatives Obama found so difficult to imagine?

These people could use a good dose of understanding Modern Money Theory. They are right about the complaints of the current system, but they are way off the mark in coming up with solutions because they have no concept of how money works in the USA. If they only had an inkling of what it is that they don’t know. They did not talk about the financialization and de-industrialization of our economy. They did not seem to understand that rich people spend their money on different things than working people. They did not understand the purpose of taxation. They did not realize that there are people like Michael Hudson that study and write about all the things they do not understand.

I was surprised to hear that Clara Mattei had appeared on “Macro and Cheese”. Steve Grumbine, the host, touts himself as an expert in Modern Money Theory. The possibility that he did not correct her on her faulty assumptions about how money works may be related to the reason that I pay no attention to Steve Grumbine anymore.

In the commentary on the Obama clip their was no recognition of his describing what I believe in. I call it “what worksism”. What Trevor Noah failed to push on was to make Obama ask himself the question, “Does the current system actually work the best way that can possibly be achieved?” Obama even admitted some problems without being pushed, but there was no follow up in the clip they showed.

YouTube has the video Using Marxism to Understand the Ukraine War – Richard Wolff & David Harvey.

If you read most mainstream media’s explanations of the war in Ukraine, you hear a lot about freedom, decency, and equity. You hear personalized psychological profiles of Mr Putin or Mr Zelensky. But what is missing is an explanation of how the functions and contradictions of capitalism are driving and fueling this conflict in many interconnected ways.

Whatever you think about Karl Marx’s contribution to understanding capitalism, this video could be something that you can consider with some objectivity.

YouTube has the video Jim Gates: Supersymmetry, String Theory and Proving Einstein Right | Lex Fridman Podcast #60,

Beyond the high level of content of this video, Lex Fridman left us with some words to live by.

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth” – Albert Einstein

YouTube has the video Steve Keen: Marxism, Capitalism, and Economics | Lex Fridman Podcast #303.

Steve Keen is a heterodox economist and author.

For somebody who thinks about this topic a lot, this is a fascinating interview. Unfortunately, it is three and a half hours long. I am at 1 hour 11 minutes and 14 seconds and I have to go to sleep. I’ll save this by posting this and coming back later to listen to more.

November 22, 2022

I have now watched the whole thing. It is too overwhelming to make a single comment to sum it all up.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has the article/interview You’re Living in a World Wrought by the Federal Reserve. Notice Anything Wrong?.

In her new book, veteran Wall Street watcher and economist Nomi Prins warns that central bank strategies deployed since the financial crisis are destroying the real economy, worsening inequality, and creating societal chaos.

This is the type of thing that Michael Hudson concentrates on. Nomi Prins has a different way of telling the story that might get through to more people, or at least to a different set of people.

For years, I have been urging the gurus of MMT to explain how the Fed could create trillions of dollars without creating consumer price inflation. Nomi Prins gives us just such an explanation.

Eventually we did see the inflation, and that has to be part of the explanation of why we didn’t see it before, but we are seeing it now.

You can watch the full interview on Youtube Roger Waters on Ukraine, BDS Controversies and American Foreign Policy.

I spoke to Roger Waters, activist and co-founder of progressive rock band Pink Floyd, about his recent spate of powerful, controversial media appearances about American foreign policy. How has he managed to use his fame to go where most progressives aren’t allowed, and how has he managed to stay the course after so much pushback from the establishment?

I watched a badly chopped up version of this interview to the extent that I haven’t got the perseverance to watch this whole thing over again to see what I missed. Based on what I did see in the edited version, I think this is a great interview.

Well, I couldn’t resist, so now I have watched the whole thing. It was well worth it. There was so much of value that got cut out of the edited version. It ended in the middle of a difficult issue because Roger Waters had an interview commitment someplace else.

Gray and Waters got so deep into a discussion at the end that they lost the point. Early in the interview Waters said that the greatest sin was to watch evil and to say nothing. He then went on to say that it is a worse sin to watch evil, do nothing about it, and even applaud its happening.

Gray confused the issue at the end of the interview. She should have asked Waters, if you see evil going on, what should you do? He has already decried standing by and doing nothing. It would be logical to ask, “Well, what should you do?”

Waters had mentioned the tipping point where people would say “No more. We aren’t going to let you win the class war.” What do those words actually mean?

Scott Rittter has posted the article Cancel Culture.

After publicly promoting the event, and changing the venue due to “high demand,” peace activists withdraw their invitation to Scott Ritter

I did not know this about Scott Ritter. It does not change my opinion of his analyses of world affairs. Just like Scott Ritter, I have no intention of hiding this. You decide for yourself what to think.

YouTube has the video Inflation Explained: A conversation with Fadhel Kaboub & NTTP.

A conversation with Fadhel Kaboub about inflation, its root causes, and what it takes to address them. Hosted by the Newark Think Tank on Poverty. Recorded on October 14, 2022.

When Fadhel posted this on his Facebook page, he commented:

A brief #inflation explainer I recorded a couple of weeks ago for the Newark Think Tank on Poverty. I hope it’s useful for others too.

Fadhel Kaboub explains again how to think productively about managing our economy and society. I hope people spend real effort to understand the points he is trying to make. People can waste a lot of mental effort trying to refute what Fadhel is saying, or they can try to think of how to put his insights into practice to solve our problems. It is up to you how you decide to spend your time.

Michael Hudsin has published a transcript of an interview in War and Debt to Rule.

Every successful economy in history has been a mixed public/private economy. Infrastructure should be public in character. Its aim should not be to make a profit (or economic rent), but to provide basic needs freely as human rights, or at least on a subsidized basis in order to lower the economy’s cost of living and doing business.

Each publication from Michael Hudson adds clarity and detail to what he has been trying to explain to us for decades. This article is no exception.