Today, pretty much every economy in the world is organized along capitalist lines but at the same time, capitalism is almost everywhere regarded with disappointment, frustration and suspicion. Interestingly, none of the criticisms are
new. They've been dogging capitalism since its inception. So let's look back
in time to figure out how capitalism got its bad
name and what might be done to improve it. Padua, Italy, 1304. 0n the wall of a church in Padua
near Venice, the painter Giotto makes a fresco: Jesus and the Money Lenders. It restates for
his own times an idea that had by then already been
well established for centuries in the West: the notion that a good spiritual life
and the pursuit of business and money are sworn enemies. Jesus
goes to the temple in Jerusalem, sees merchants and small-time bankers
crowding the forecourt and gets furious. This sacred place is not a fitting arena
for the polluting activities of buying and selling. The Christian
attack on the immorality of money is deeply influential and severely holds
back the development of capitalism for centuries. Venice, 1450. A Franciscan friar, Luca Pacioli,
publishes the first ever book on accounting: Summa de arithmetica. It's the single
most important capitalist invention until the birth of the joint stock
company and the modern factory. In the book Pacioli introduces the
principle of double-entry bookkeeping which gradually become standard practice
in all companies. Pacioli's textbook proposes that
dealing well with money doesn't depend on faith anymore. Money
isn't a divine punishment or reward; it's a kind of science that can be learnt
through patience, reason and hard work. Geneva, 1555. In powerful sermons to his
congregations in Geneva, the Protestant theologian John Calvin
emphasizes to his Swiss audiences the importance of what have
become known as the Protestant virtues: hard work, self-denial, patience, honesty and duty. These will turn out to
be extremely useful qualities for capitalism. Calvin along with many
other preachers who share his outlook explains that you must never
indulge yourself not spend money having a lavish life. You must simply put any surplus income
back into your business as an investment. Calvin adds that
being good at business is far more pleasing in the sight of God
than being an aristocratic warrior or even a monk. Perhaps more than
technology, it's this new mindset that will
accelerate the progress of capitalism. 1670, Delft, Dutch Republic. The newly
independent Dutch Republic is the world's first explicitly capitalist nation where
lazy aristocrats are looked down upon and hard-working
merchants revered. In the churches, Protestant sermons about
thrift and hard work are heard. In the arts outgo glorifications of
kings and queens. Johannes Vermeer finishes painting
The Lacemaker, a depiction of the intricate careful and
homely tasks of manufacturing lace. In his painting The Little Street, the suggestion is that living peacefully
and quietly in your own home running a business is far more glamorous
and noble than fighting in a war or going to a
monastery. 1776. 141, the Strand, London. These are the offices and shops of Strain & Cable, publishers who have a big success with a new book:
an inquiry into the nature and causes of The Wealth of Nations written by a Scottish philosopher called
Adam Smith. Smith demystifies wealth creation by
explaining how capitalist economies grow. He reaches several important conclusions.
Slavery is remarkably inefficient. Violence is
less of an incentive than money for a worker and the cost of buying and
maintaining slaves far exceeds the cost of wages. Capitalists
will make far more money by treating their workers legally and
humanely. It's by specializing that economies grow,
says Smith. Smith focuses on the pin making industry
and concludes that while one worker could make up to 20 pins
a day, a team of 10 workers well arranged could make not 200 but 48,000 pins, thanks to what Smith terms the Division
of Labour. Smith also tells us that capitalism is
guided by an invisible hand. By maximizing one's own profit,
individuals inadvertently benefit society providing
goods that people want and need. As Smith puts it: "It is not from the
benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,
but from their regard to their own self-interest." These ideas
further remove the moral suspicion that once surrounds capitalism. But not all
will be won over. 1854, London. The British economy is now the largest in the world thanks
to its enormous industries of cotton, shipbuilding, steel and coal. Vast cities
have chewed up the countryside of the Midlands and northern England.
Merchants and the newly rich capitalist class have triumphed. But many are furious.
Charles Dickens, one of Victoria England's most passionate
critics of unrestrained capitalism publishes a novel: Hard Times. Set in the
fictional town of Coketown, a version of Manchester, it takes aim at
heartless capitalists like Mr. Gradgrind who abuse their
workers, exploit young children in mines and chimneys and use their relentless capitalist
logic to blind them to their desecration of nature and human life. Here is Dickens' writing on Coketown: "It
was a town of red brick, or a brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it;
but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and
black like the painted face of a savage." Dickens argues that capitalism is evil
because it encourages appalling conditions for the producers. Under the sway of capitalist logic
otherwise quite nice people will keep coming up with reasons why it's okay to employ a child in a factory or to let poor people
starve once they've reached the end of their working lives. 1860, London. The English reformer John
Ruskin publishes Unto This Last, a furious
track against capitalism that takes aim not so much at the
production side of capitalism as the area of consumption. Like Dickens Ruskin is incensed that people are being
exploited and the environment ruined. But he asks a
further question: In the name of what? Ruskin notes that
large capitalist fortunes are built up on selling people absurd
things: knick-knacks, fancy plates, embroidered napkins, bonnets carved sideboards. The whole of the
suffering of the cotton factories of Manchester are being fed by our appetite for very cheap
shirts with delicate collards. We are ruining our lives for trinkets,
whereas for Ruskin money shouldn't only be made morally, it
should be spent morally on the truly noble and beautiful things
that humans need. He contrast the beauty of Venice with
the ugliness of modern Britain to make his point. Berlin, 1963. The leader of communist East Germany,
Walter Ulbricht launches an ambitious new scheme: the
Neues Ökonomische System or NÖS. It aimes to solve for East Germans the two major failings of capitalism in his
eyes. One: It will guarantee workers good
conditions with a huge expansion in the number of state schools, housing blocks and holiday
camps. And secondly: It will focus not on the fripperies of
capitalist production like blue jeans and pop music; it will
give people the works of Plato and Marx and uplifting television programs about
track to production. 1976, Dresden, East Germany. The fatal flaws of communism come to a
head in January with a massive riot about the unavailability of coffee.
East Germans love drinking coffee but a huge rise in global prices means
that the German Democratic Republic can no longer afford to import it in the
necessary quantities. The Politburo decides to remove all coffee
from shops and replaces it with "mich Kaffee", mix coffee which is 51 percent coffee and 49
percent a range of fillers including chicory, rye and sugar beet.
Dissatisfaction with this eventually has to be quelled with the
use the Stasi or secret police. It's an inadvertent tribute to capitalism
which is especially good at providing us with life's little luxuries.
Edeka hypermarket near Hamburg, November, 1989. East Germans who have
recently breached the wall head straight for West German
supermarkets like Edeka near Hamburg. They marvel at the productive capacities
of capitalism and the ability that it has to provide such
modest but very important things as olive oil, party hats, ice spuns and coffee.
The old East German elite who had believed that the people could be
satisfied with philosophy, athletics, sauerkraut and TV programs
about farming are hounded out of office. 1999, Seattle, USA. The World Trade Organization, a capitalist body dedicated to removing
protection from industry and liberalizing markets gets together
for its next round of talks, 10 years since the fall of communism and
after a decade of unprecedented economic growth. But though
the mood of politicians is upbeat, out in the streets hundreds of
thousands of anti-capitalist protesters have gathered to call an end to the
iniquities of global capitalism. The complaints are strikingly similar to
those made by Jesus Christ. Capitalism doesn't look
after the producers and capitalism downgrades the important
spiritual ends of life for the sake hamburgers,
unsustainably cheap clothes and garish distracting mass media. With
their beards and guard figures many of the protesters look a little
like Renaissance's renditions of Jesus. The police take a very heavy hand, fired
tear gas into the crowds, arrest 2000 and call in the National
Guard. The protest remind the world that besides the winners of capitalism
there is an enormous army of the disenfranchised and the angry
who see more sense in Jesus, Dickens and Ruskin than in Adam Smith and Bill Clinton. 2015, Cupertino, California. Apple Computers officially becomes the largest
corporation in the world. It's a giant success story. But the very same challenges remain. It
turns out that Apple are indirectly responsible for the suffering
and abusive of workers in the supply chain in China by the Foxconn corporation and with the
launch of the Apple watch, a gadget that seems to have no
particularly urgent purpose, questions are once again raised about
why we are exhausting ourselves and the planet for ends that are so out of proportion
with the costs they impose on all of us. To generalize: Capitalism is
amazingly productive but it has two big flaws. Firstly, it
systematically inclines to ignore the sufferings of workers unless regularly prodded not to. And the
wealth of companies is often built up on satisfying what are not the essential needs of human
beings. Fortunes are made on making unhealthy food or bad
television programs. The challenge for the future is how we might
be able to make money humanely by treating people and the earth well and
also make money through activities which
address the more noble end of human needs. Till then, the rage
of Jesus in the temple will periodically always go on.
First off, this bullshit "School of Life" was founded in part by Alain de Botton, a "philosopher" and trust-fund kid who is only able to finance this channel due to the vast sums of money his capitalist parents made. Moving on:
Crony-capitalism and state-capitalism are almost everywhere. Free-market capitalism with zero-government influence is much rarer, but does happen underground to the tune of $10,000,000,000/year in trade. There's even a thriving black-market in North Korea and Venezuela so that people don't starve to death. Check out /r/agorism for more info.
Why did he start in 1304? What about Phoenicia? What about the Silk Road? Then again, that's probably because those are examples of free-trade, when the narrator/writer of this video didn't distinguish between the two. The Economist goes back to the Babylonians.
One of the first sentences that he said was that the "problems with capitalism have been there since the beginning." Well, you skipped from 1304 - 1500s without mentioning any problems. So is the first statement false?
Okay, I got to about 2:30. I think that's all I can take.
Some people think all you have to do is accept a generally optimistic view of humanity.
Fuck apple watches