JasonC SBB

Well done video, but, it's full of misconceptions.

1) The instability in the economy is not inherent in "capitalism", but is due to the debt-fiat fractional reserve banking monetary system wherein
a) legal tender laws produce currency monopoly, i.e. there is no free market competition in currency
b) all new money that is created is loaned and thus has a debt attached
c) the banks are protected by "too big to fail" policies of the central bank and thus leverage to the max without fear of failure due to risk from said over-leverage

This system was modeled by a physicist and the model showed this instability. In contrast, commodity money, and non-debt based fiat money, is not unstable. Here is his paper:

http://129.3.20.41/eps/mac/papers/0203/0203005.pdf

2) The video said the economists didn't see it coming. Only the KEYNESIAN economists (who are mainstream), as a group didn't see it coming. The Austrian School Economists saw it coming a mile away, and teach that false bubbles are created by expansion of debt (which the video correctly rails against), and always lead to crashes. The expansion of debt comes from the fundamentals of debt-fiat currency. The Keynesians teach that more gov't expenditure cures all, and gov't borrows money (more debt) which expands the money supply (even more debt via FRB), and this creates bigger bubbles and thus bigger crashes. The reason Keynesian economists are in the mainstream is because the gov't and the central bankers love their theories, and fund its acolytes, becaues the practice of said theory allows the banksters to get rich loaning money to gov't which loves this ability to spend.

3) The systemic risk that the video mentions comes from the fact that the whole financial industry is a CARTEL which comes from the central bank which protects them, and it is gov't licensed monopoly. You cannot start a Mom and Pop bank for instance, without being part of the Federal Reserve system.

4) The theory that wage depression kills demand which is the cause of the business cycle; along with Minsky's theory, is more Keynesian hogwash. Look to the structure of the monetary system which is a creation of the banking cartel, protected by gov't. Keynesian theory will go on about "falling prices are bad", and "you must create money so people will spend", and so on.

5) What he calls "power of the financial industry" comes from CORPORATISM aka CRONY CAPITALISM - where big biz gets gov't to pass laws to protect them, and the root of it is the central banking regime. In the 1800s the first 2 attempts at gov't protected central banking, were killed by Andrew Jackson, merely by revoking their gov't granted monopoly license - they shriveled and died in the face of free market competition. Without this protection and resulting overleverage, the financial industry would not grow to its size.

6) What the video blames on "Capitalism" are the problems of CRONY CAPITALISM aka CORPORATISM and not Free Market Capitalism. In the latter, companies would actually have to compete with one another and please their customers, as opposed to cartelizing with the protection of gov't, or getting laws passed which kill smaller competitors, in the name of "regulation"..

What Marx regarded as a basic set of contradictions of capitalism was merely a set of contradictions in the reasoning of the earlier classical economists got wrong. He confused a faulty ex*planation of the capitalist process with the actual operation of the capitalist system. His labor theory of value is probably the one of his biggest errors.

If you don't understand the concept of Crony Capitalism / Corporatism as opposed to Free Market Capitalism, and attribute the boom / bust cycle to "capitalism" as opposed to the basic structure of the gov't protected monetary system, you will come to the false conclusion that more gov't control or socialism and more central bank authority will solve the problem.