Confronting Financialization on Steroids - Costas Lapavitsas on Reality Asserts Itself (8/8)
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- Mr. Lapavitsas says we must deeply reverse financialization and take on private ownership of banking and other critical sectors
watch full episode therealnews.com...
Some sayings encapsulate parts of the democratic dilemma:
1. "The art of democracy is in having others pay your living expenses"; and
2. "The downfall of democracy comes when the people find they can vote themselves benefits".
Add greedy bankers and speculators, corrupt politicians (most of those in the US Congress are for sale, or already sold), lobbyists, amoral multinational corporations, an unsophisticated public, sophisticated advertising methods, regulatory capture, and irresponsible Central Bankers, and you end up with rich oligarchs using the government as a private tool for their enrichment. This toxic mix led to the removal of the safeguards built into the financial system as the result of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the government push of the welfare state and programs to increase home ownership, rampant increases in the money supply to keep the inflation balloons alive, widespread financial fraud, and the removal of manufacturing and jobs to low-wage countries, and ultimately led to the 2008 crash. The oligarch system then used the public purse and public debt to make the fraudulent speculators whole again, while leaving the corrupt system in place and the economy in ruins. The richest have increased their wealth immensely, while the middle class and poor get poorer and more desperate.
Costas' "solutions" ( vague as they are) assume a sophisticated and engaged public who will take responsibility for the creation and operation of the political and economic structure in which they live. No such public exists in the USA, or most of Europe. His solutions would also require altruistic politicians who act only for the public good, not for private gains, and not for some fanatical moral agenda.
Socialists, Communists, and Capitalists promised utopia, but delivered dystopia - "the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves." Human nature is so varied, and flawed, that any system run by humans ends up flawed.
Empires last, on average, about 250 years. The US Empire is nearing 250, and crumbling under the weight of its own corruption and excesses. As this happens, military adventurism and attempts to extend US hegemony become more frequent and frantic, and the old solution of a war is sought.
We say that we are the most intelligent species on Earth, but we act like a bunch of monkeys in a cage at the zoo - there is frantic activity, lots of conflict and screaming, but no apparent progress.
Some good cumulative arguments here. I still think financial capitalism should collapse and be replaced with a better system, like cooperatives,or a synthesis of this dialectic dialogue.
Only kidding. I meant socialism.
Bitcoin brings banking back to the community.
In this interview Costas Lapavitsas showed many times over that he is a far deeper thinker than Paul Jay can imagine at this point. Paul Jay was constantly trying to redirect the answers so that they would fit into what Paul Jay could imagine. Costas Lapavitsas kept trying to raise Paul Jay's horizons, mainly to no avail.
It is time for Paul Jay to get his ego out of these interviews. He needs to let deep thinkers explain their deep thoughts. Rather than constantly trying to refocus the interview into Jay's narrow perspective, he needs to work harder to bring out the ideas the invterviewee is trying to explain.
Financialization, capitalism, corporation, why can't we just call by the origin name of monopolization.