Re: Globalization and its Discontents

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

        Yes, "it's always something" that will displease a viewer,
        reader, or audience, and will also displease others for the
        exactly opposite reason.  We see, in a show like CH, what
        we want to see or what we hate to see. The show's authors
        are at the mercy of our subjective selective filters.

        Being a hater of Hayek, all I saw of him in the show was
        his wise warning that bureaucracy and statism could run
        amuck and give us red fascism. Care to protect freedom
        at all cost was the part of Hayek they showed and I saw.

        The fact that they started with the failure of market
        fundamentalism at the beginning of the 20th Century
        and ended with the same failure at its end, was the part of
        Keynes they showed and I saw.

            John Gelles

----- Above in reply to Message -----
From: Roger Koppl <koppl@xxxxxxx>
To: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr;; Post Keynesian Thought
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: Globalization and its Discontents


Barkley Rosser comments on "Commanding Heights."  He notes that Hayek and
Friedman and are the heroes of the TV show and that Keynes gets a rather
shabby treatment.  It might amuse those on this list to learn that over on
the Hayek list someone (or two?) complained that the Great Depression was
not explained away, but represented as a failure of capitalism.  It's always
something.

Roger

================== end Koppl ===================


----- Related Message -----
From: John Gelles
To: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.;  Post Keynesian Thought; ...
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: Globalization and its Discontents


    1. Yes, "Commanding Heights", uses the TV journalistic
        style of entertaining the eye while informing the ear.

    2. No. CH does NOT praise Hayek neoliberal market-
        price-mechanism magical realism bullshit. It mentions
        some of its partial limited uses.

        It does comes down hard against communism and
        Indian style socialism. It presents facts out the kazoo
        and zero solutions.

    3. It's beauty is in the eye of the beholder -- if he loves
        things like Galbraith's "Age of Uncertainty", Trollope's
        "The Way We Are Now" (Enron predux in 1870).

        CH is not Buckley crap. But it is NOT Gelles or Mosler
        with a plan.  It is more like a great high school
        educational film that may get youngsters to know
        some of the history they need to know.

    4. CH ends on the note that globalization, as we knew it
        in 1913, has come again -- and it  may be ready for a
        repeat of booms, busts, wars and nationalism bent on
        earth's destruction.
        OR, we may be ready to mix the best of freedom
        with the best of business science to solve problems!

    5.  CH is missing a coherent view of the future from
        a left-of-center political stance.  Whose fault is that?
        PKT might try to create one.

        The problem, as I see it, is "redistribution of what we
        produce (plus a little bit of growth)"  versus  "exponential
        growth -- via strategic planning and great freedom by
        producers to produce 'more' ".

        Viewed as that kind of a dichotomy, the big issues are
        (1) wages as a constraint on profit, and (2) taxes as a
        constraint on both wages and profit.

        HOW CAN WE FOCUS ON RAMPING UP OUTPUT?

        HOW CAN WE RAISE WAGES VIA SUBSIDIES THAT
        GOV'T PAYS -- NOT PRIVATE FIRMS?

        HOW CAN WE END TAXES?

        These are not insoluable questions:  If, by magic, output
        doubled, we could distribute it with managed fiat money or
        Stiglitz global greenbacks, or any other system of accounting.

        But if, instead, we double monetized demand and do NOT
        double real output (supply) --  then we get hyper-inflation.

        I think we need a PKT comic book style presentation
        of  "21st Century Keynesianism for Idiots" .  "Commanding
        Heights", the TV show, did not give us that!

        John Gelles

================ end Gelles ===============