Speech (RSA Animate): Crises of Capitalism

A very good and easy to understand speech about the crises of capitalism. Great analysis of the different causes very nicely organised and presented.

Amazing animation too :)




Note:

  There was much criticism by "youtubers" on the comments section who wrote that we do not have capitalism at all, and that in fact actual capitalism is not even legal especially in the USA. While browsing in this chaos of comments I noticed that the majority of constructive and worth reading answers argued that we actually suffer from lack of capitalism and that instead we get "corporatism", "mercantilism" and so on. Basically what they say is that governments and/or corporations are mainly responsible for corrupting the system and creating the crisis. It did make some sense.

  Some of them quoted thinkers, others linked websites and videos or mentioned books and articles to make their thesis stronger (yes, all that on the youtube comment section!) and there was one book that grabbed my attention. It's called "The case for legalizing Capitalism", by Kel Kelly and it seems to elaborate more or less on what all those angry youtubers were trying to say. Amazon's description was quite interesting and
the few reviewers were giving their thumbs up. I suspect though that we are both essentially on the same page - just stuck on word definitions. Call it "capitalism", "mercantilism" or "choose-your-ism" - I don't care - it doesn't look like it's working.
However those guys suggest that actual capitalism and free markets are not that bad after all, and I think this might be worth looking into. Kel Kelly gives a "basic explanation of how capitalism is supposed to work and how society functions when commerce is free. He then turns to all the areas of life that are distorted and destroyed by the great "helping hand" of government" (from Amazon's Description).

I am not implying that a real, not corrupted or government controlled capitalism system might actually work. At this moment, it don't even care. However, I think that understanding how it was initially intended and how it got corrupted to this day might actually be quite helpful in better understanding how the world has come to work and operate the way it does today.

I did find a link to download the book and I plan to at least flick through it :)

/od