Bill Moyers: The Dark Side of Capitalism

[marmar]

http://vimeo.com/62409423


Richard Wolff on Capitalism’s Destructive Power
March 22, 2013


Richard Wolff’s smart, blunt talk about the crisis of capitalism on his first Moyers & Company appearance was so compelling and provocative, we asked him to return. This time, the economics expert answers questions sent in by our viewers, diving further into economic inequality, the limitations of industry regulation, and the widening gap between a booming stock market and a population that increasingly lives in poverty.

“We ought to have much more democratic enterprise,” Wolff tells Bill, in response to a question from a viewer in Oklahoma. “We ought to have stores, factories and offices in which all the people who have to live with the results of what happens to that enterprise participate in deciding how it works.”

Addressing a question about capitalism and climate change, Wolff says, “Capitalism is a system geared up to doing three things on the part of business: get more profits, grow your company and get a larger market share… If along the way they have to sacrifice either the well-being of their workers or the well-being of the planet or the environmental conditions, they may feel very bad about it — and I know plenty who do — but they have no choice.”

Wolff taught economics for 35 years at the University of Massachusetts and is now visiting professor at The New School University in New York City. His books include Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism and Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It.


http://billmoyers.com/segment/richard-wolff-on-capitalisms-destructive-power/

[limpyhobbler]

1. So glad this point of view is finally starting to get through

Good for Bill Moyers for having Rick Wolff on the show three times, since he invited him back for a third visit. I think Moyers must have read Hedges' Death of the Liberal Class (he said he read it) and took the correct lesson from it, and decided to do his part to help broaden the conversation.

[bbgrunt]

2. Richard Wolff is almost single-handedly leading

this change in perspective in the US. His ideas are the future. Our reliance on "capitalism" as it now works is leading us to ruin.

Ironically, what he is advocating is a more intense reliance on private interest to solve our bigger interests. In order to succeed, that private interest must be brought to the individual level through democratic decision making.