Ian Morris: Geography is Destiny
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2022
- Ian Morris returns to The Commonwealth Club for an online discussion of his latest research into the deep history of the human race. In the wake of Brexit, Morris now tackles the 8 millennia history of Britain's relationship to Europe as that relationship keeps changing in the context of a continually globalizing world.
When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud and treason. But the Brexit debate merely reran a script written 8,000 years earlier, when rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent.
Morris describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain's arena, and how its people have turned this to their advantage. For the first 7,500 years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer and more sophisticated continental rivals. By A.D. 1500, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one. With the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, however, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European and Chinese actors. But Morris says that in trying to find its new place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The great question for the 21st century is not what to do about Brussels, but what to do about Beijing.
Photo by Linda A. Cicero, Stanford News Service.
July 19, 2022
SPEAKERS
Ian Morris
The Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and Professor in History, Stanford University; Author, Geography is Destiny-Britain's Place in the World: A 10,000 Year History
In Conversation with George Hammond
Author, Conversations With Socrates
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Great program! Thanks for bringing Ian Morris. It was a really interesting conversation!
One important change in the pattern now is that with the massive burning of fossil fuel, humanity has ended the Ice Age. I doubt that the orbital cycles are deep enough to allow another ice advance. I hope that humans have a future, and in this future they are smart enough to act to keep CO2 in the goldilocks region where the earth is just the right temp. So, they add to the CO2 as the orbital cycles are "cooling" the planet and remove CO2 when the cycles would be "warming" it.
Prof Morris is an uncommonly learned fellow but I think he misspoke when he said the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building until 1888. I may be mistaken but I think it was overtaken by Lincoln cathedral in 1311 or possibly the old St Paul's Cathedral in 1221
Life is a wonderful opportunity and An Amazing Journey.It must be Appreciated And Celebrated Happily, Hopefully And Abundantly.
IMO, as long as Russia has an autocratic Gov. and the EU stays the way it is now, the EU can never let Russia join the EU, just because the EU requires a democratic gov. to join or be a member. OTOH, MMTers say that the EU can't stay the way it is now. This is because it is economically flawed. That currently the European Central Bank is violating the treaties by funding bond sales by a few nations. But, there are reports that the EU will make it stop this. And, then those few nations will have to leave the EU. Or, the EU can go the other way and become the United Nations of Europe (UNE), that is copy the US system to some extent. The main economic change would then be that the UNE would spend more euros in Spain, Italy, etc. and less in Germany, etc. This what the US does, shift tax revenue from New York and Calif, to Miss. and Alabama. But, this doesn't solve the problem of what to do about Russia. What it does do is to make joining the EU less of a hit to the economy. Of course, as of now, Russians don't see the Neo-liberal economic thinking will always damage their economy. Of course, most readers of this comment also can't see the flaws in Neo-liberalism. Let me just say this to convince you-all to look at MMT. Neo-liberalism doesn't pretend to be based on a careful analysis of economic reality. Instead it starts by proving its conclusions about how economies work with deductive logic. In deductive logic you start with premises and prove conclusions. However in deductive logic all the premises *must be true* and many neo-liberal premises are obviously false. Just 1 example is that the market is composed of over 1000 players with about equal power to control things. We all know that OPEC, Amazon,, and Microsoft, etc. are *not in such markets.*
Socialism is the natural evolution after capitalism.
You had me until the end, monopolies and monopsonies are well understood and rejected as antithetical to the neoliberal model, not a part of it. Neoliberalism is in principle opposed to top-down control; so when by organic outcome the efficiencies of scale lead to consolidation or in the extreme, monopoly, to the extent they do emerge, the salience of a market failure here is that a too-powerful firm begins to act in a way to undercut the neoliberal principles. MMT isn’t necessarily opposed to capitalism, and NL isn’t necessarily opposed to independent regulators; it counts on them. These two systems can be symbiotic and act in concert, neither can function without the other. Without regulation, the cherished competition ends in monopoly or cartel. Without capitalism there’s no market to apply MMT to. Maybe I’m missing something though?
@@interphatch IMHO, neo-liberalism may be opposed to monopolies, however functionally, it seems to favor them. Big Tech and Amazon are monopolies as are the local Wal-Mart stores. According to my reading, monopolies begin when an industry has just a about 5 players, so oil is a monopoly, even if we ignore OPEC and OPEC+.
Also, I didn't say the neo-liberalism supported monopolies. I said that it assumed that the current market doesn't contain any monopolies. I say this because N-L gives advice based on its model of reality, and not reality. Its model assumes that there are 1000 corps in every industry with about equal market power. This is not true about reality.
There is a new (since 1993) theory of economics called Modern Monetary Theory. All founding MMTers have always said that the EU and especially, the Euro Zone are fundamentally flawed. MMTers say that the EU has baked the false theory of Neo-liberal Economics into the founding treaties. This has kept the prosperity from being realized after the 1st economic crisis, the GFC/2008. MMTers also say that every nation needs its own currency. That without it they can't protect their people from economic competition. So, all MMTers wanted the UK to leave the EU. All MMTers now want the UK Gov. to accept the budget deficits are necessary to replace money leaving the economy as it is saved or is used to buy foreign stuff (a trade deficit). I'm just saying.
500 years???????
Not funny
is this sponsored by the u.s. state department?
No!
And who are you sponsored by?
This guy is a fool
Why do you say that? What did he say that provokes your response?
@@meghan42 my guess is that he mentioned one of the myriad things the poster knows nothing about.
It's a bit like trump saying "who knew".
This guy "has been awarded research fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Hoover Institution, National Endowment for the Humanities,[Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., and Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is also a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and has been awarded honorary degrees by De Pauw University and Birmingham University". He also acquired a Ph.D from Cambridge University and has held two tenured posts at the University of Chicago and Stanford, among the world's preeminent academic institutions. You - by contrast - are simply an anonymous internet commentator with no credentials that anyone can see.
@@NYCOPERAFAN well said. Too many ignorant trolls attacking learned men and women out of sheer ignorance and lack of understanding.
Care to provide details to back up your opinion? Or are you just trolling?