Four Years.Go. Related Video

Good video from the Environmental Defense Fund above -- political action is impossible against industry pressure for no change, unless the public is very clear that a new direction is necessary.  The time to act was decades ago, but now is a lot better than later.  Are we still incapable of action to save ourselves?  If so how broken is our system?

This is an edited version of a talk by Marxist sociologist David Harvey analyzing the econopocalypse in Marxist terms at London's Royal Society for the Arts. (11min) The talk is animated with high-speed whiteboard doodles from Cognitive Media. NONE of the theories David Harvey presents, argues for an economy LIMITED by environmental constraints.  The closest he comes to that is to argue that capitalism recognizes no constraints.  That is one way to put the problem in a nutshell.

Speaking personally, I think in the last 40 years finance has become too powerful, a huge vacuum cleaner that sucks profits from the entire system, so that only finance thrives, with super profits.  Long dead economists have told us that profit maximization, maximizes total output and wealth.  They say that who becomes rich and how that wealth is distributed in not an economic problem.  I think most economists are wrong about that.  The "system", based on false premises, has become self destructive, and we are watching the old economic system sell destruct.  Of course something will replace it.  Whatever that is, you and I are building it, even as the old system crashes. (John S Veitch) (No; I don't know what we are building, and I don't have a name for it.) Our task is to make the transition.  Some clever clogs in 50 years time will give what we've done a name.  Do what needs to be done.

The full lecture is 31 minutes David Harvey - The Crises of Capitalism.

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