Radhika Desai Responds

[@mijmijrm]

i don't think USA is interested in "winnable" wars so much as wars that leave behind "profit", "destruction" and "chaos". For USA, this is a win.

[@alcooper6186]

Yes, yes, yes, I agree 100%. I've been saying this for years. It is so obvious that they can never 'lose' from these engagements. Either way it's a win from the spoils and misery. Add to this their alliance with the Zionist Oligarchy that controls most of the world's material resources and the US is in an unbeatable position, at least for now.

[@kathryn1402]

Tqvm Ben Norton for creating GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY where I come to know Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, both of whom are included in My Wishlist to listen to. Hope you are on your way to learning the basic Chinese language to find your way around China. I also wish you success in whatever you wish to study in China. Radhika is the best female who talks with knowledge and based on a wide exposure to economics of the world. Glad she is discussing with like-minded people in China and hope one day, if the opportunity arises, there will be a series of talks between Radhika & Michael with those in China. Very interesting topic, tq

[@M.M.Alam.Liberty]

Most Brilliant scholar on economy and geo politics of Finance are Radhika and Michael Hudson. They are truthful honest sincere. superbly intelligent and knowledgeable

[@trekpac2]

Radhika, you are such a treasure. I learn so much listening to you.

[@hidongcucuk4756]

The British Empire cultivated opium in India and used it as the "currency" for trade with China. Today, the United States uses the dollar like the opium “currency” in international trade. But dollars is much faster and far cheaper to print.

[@NotAPacifist825]

The argument that China's foreign trade policies are "partially extractive" seems quite disingenuous to me. China is not, and never claimed to be, running a charity; mutually beneficial, win-win trade is what it seeks and so far delivers. China is the world's factory and needs inputs. But it also helps countries to diversify and evolve their productive capacity.This is light years beyond the completely exploitative policies of the west.

[@doctornokay9773]

China pays for its commodity at market price, and sells its products at agreed on price. what they referred to as "Extractive' probably to unseen mineral deep in the ground.

[@NotAPacifist825]

@@doctornokay9773 you're probably right. I haven't read the paper Dr Desai refers to but it sounded like it was being used negatively, as in "exploitive". I may be overly sensitive because of all the China bashing here in the imperial core.

[@9064peterpan]

"To the US, unfair trade means China getting a fair share, fair to the US means China gets nothing."

[@marksmit8112]

Nice to hear some facts for a change missing in mainstream media. Counter to popularist neoliberalist economics are Prof Michael Hudson, Richard Wolff, Yanis Yaroufakis, Steve Keen. Many thanks

[@Dashydingo]

I listen to Radhika a lot and enjoy her analysis. I do wish she would add more pauses into her narratives and give the listener brief moments to process what she has said. She can cover a lot of ground between breaths

[@rsavage-r2v]

I would argue that when we focus on questions of abstract categorization like "Is China socialist? Is China truly, purely, absolutely, ideally, socialist?" This is a symptom of the Western puritanical, platonist idealism expressing itself in marxist language, from the perspective of imperial core privilege. If someone wants to do Left critiques of the CPC, fine, but it's a different discussion when we're talking specific material issues rather than assigning absolute moral categories, which is what this "discourse" is usually about -- separating the righteous from the sinners. Maybe you think the PRC should selectively abandon its policy of non-intervention in dealing with fascist regimes such as the Philippines. Maybe you think the PRC should enact a US-style economic blockade of Israel. Maybe you think you have a plan for jumping from semi-feudal poverty to full central planning while also being totally excluded from the global economy. Fine. These are difficult issues full of contradictions. Detailed, fully-contextualized, good-faith criticism is vital. But this primary preoccupation with what is really a pretentious way of calling things "good" and "evil" is not very useful from a historical materialist perspective. I note that marxists from the Third World tend to take a more pragmatic approach and are more interested in problem solving.

[@zhengwenping4764]

3:05

[@sciagurrato1831]

To Dr Desai’s references to the difficulties of other countries emulating the Chinese revolutionary model, I would add that, importantly, Mao and the Party acted to persuade the landed classes (in the face of potential execution) and re-organize the ownership of land (which is now completely owned by the state). Though the Soviets did some of this, the presence of “White Russian” and oligarchies within the ruling structure were never completely extinguished. This may be a road too far for most countries because it requires, ultimately, the support of the people. In China, there is a deep penetration of Confucian thinking which was never eradicated - contrary to the hysteria of Western pundits and their collinear colleagues in the “ROC”. Nonetheless, there is much to be learned and borrowed and adapted from the miracle of the Chinese economy, any degree of understanding of which is positive.

[@GilbertEmoff]

USA doesn't fight wars for winning fights its for economic reasons .if they win then it becomes work and harder to exploit.

[@piccalillipit9211]

And the US never transitioned to a peace time economy post WW2 so if it stops war, the economy collapses

[@vidsurf88]

US growth is akin to how witchweeds grow

[@homergee3381]

Extreme capitalism is monopolism, extreme socialism is communism. Both extremes end with dystopian dictatorships

[@alcooper6186]

True, we can now see it quite plainly with the Plutocracy that runs the US. He who has the money wins. Elon Musk's $270M contribution to Trump's campaign wasn't a charitable donation. In other countries they call it corruption but in the US we call it lobbying.

[@erikeparsels]

Why does the United States not just print more money? Because the government in the US is dominated by deficit hawks in both parties who are committed to neoliberal austerity even as our infrastructure and our human capital rots around us. It is important not to confuse MMT with what is absurdly labeled "Keynesianism" in the US. Merely dumping money into the economy without targeting that spending toward putting the real resources in place is of course going to lead to inflation and weakening of the dollar. All other things being equal, capitalists will always prefer to raise prices or engage in some form of speculation rather than tie their capital up in long-term investment in production. The US government has completely withdrawn from the market and allows the corporations to decide how the money they receive from public spending is going to be used to accomplish the goals they are given by government. Hence the vastly smaller output of US military industries at vastly higher cost relative to Russia. But the corruption and shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot stupidity of our political class provides no serious counterargument to MMT, because our political class is not using an MMT analysis to inform its fiscal or monetary policies.

[@bundleofperceptions1397]

By George, I think I've got it, the grain in Ukraine stays mainly on the plain.

[@peterswatton7400]

Haha, have another glass.

[@tony538]

powerful knowledge

[@erikeparsels]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with Radhika's characterization of MMT. MMT is not a recommendation for governments to spend willy nilly or even to do anything. MMT is not a prescriptive theory. It is a descriptive theory of how money and monetary operations work, and thus does not claim that governments can just spend as much money as they like. The main point MMT is making is that monetarily sovereign governments that issue their own floating exchange currency and are not burdened by significant debt denominated in a foreign currency are not revenue constrained in their spending. There ARE other constraints, but "running out of money" isn't one of them. They cannot be forced to default on any obligations denominated in their own currency.. That being said, it is true thatdeveloping nations generally find that the conditions demanded for capital goods they need for development are explicit demands that they take out ultimately unpayable dollar-denominated loans. So their monetary sovereignty, while it is important for those governments domestically, is not nearly as useful as hoped when it comes to international trade. It took a China, with the largest pool of cheap labor on the planet, to demand and get the concession of technology transfer from western corporations and to withstand the ensuing charges of piracy from the collective west.

[@markheffernan7016]

There is nothing legitimate about a government issuing and then determining access to the abstract acCounting unit. That is NOT a function of governance in a free society. And since no government actually has this power it cannot legitimately hand this off to banking, thereby indebting every populace and every country. The notion that money is a scarce and valuable commodity is what is driving all the hoarding and competition, even to the point of driving the formation of nation states (first as strong armed protectorates to the eventual insanity of today)? Well, protection of valuables is one thing, but then how can those ‘valuables’ that need protection serve as an acCounting unit for the “value” contained in other things!? How can a group of people manifest their best and fullest capacity while attempting to limit and protect Counting Units or thinking that there can legitimately be a scarcity of the Counting Units so that they must first spend some of their energies looking for those units!? THAT is the core of monetary illiteracy. And isn’t the function of the measure of value using an Abstract Unit Of Measure that should be commonly available for all to use for the annotation and the recording of those measurements, isn’t this functional purpose dismembered when attempting to conduct that measuring and recording activity with a commodity!? "The real economy is made up of goods and services (factories, farms, infrastructure, intellectual property i.e. non-financial assets on balance sheets) all of which are dependent on the independent physical nature and properties of real material and human resources. The “financial economy” on the other hand, is made up purely financial assets (securities, mutual funds and other financial instruments in the hands of households, corporations, governments and other direct owners). Economic risk and liability is determined predominantly according to the mathematics of finance as applied to both the financial and real economies that determine the dynamics of account balances over time in currency units. While all economic accounts are ultimately resolved in terms of real assets, outcomes are determined by both the real and financial economies. The real economy being ultimately dependent on objectively determinable physical/scientific criteria while the (predominant) financial economy on purely (arbitrary) mathematical criteria with, as mentioned above, no determinate relation to any reality other than itself (i.e. according to circular logic)." - Gauvin Marc Gauvin: “The need for an authority arises from the need to govern and control money, because the misrepresentation has been assumed in the minds of most everyone. The creation of units as gold or fiat are not equivalent but both need an authority for common and diverse reasons. The misrepresentation first arose out [of] intuitively concluding that the property of proportional divisibility of fungible assets satisfied the requirement for universal measure of value. Fiat arose as a means to deal with the failure of fungible assets as stable measures vis a vis the full spectrum of value creation, here the focus was on the idea that controlling quantity of (fiat) units somehow would be manageable, but as it turns out and in the context of money's logical misrepresentation, it is not. So it can be said that authority over money is the consequence of the misrepresentation not the cause of it. That that authority has consistently failed over millennia is another discussion. Once the misrepresentation is dispelled the current "authority" will disappear or transform. Banking may cease to authorise or administer a "money supply" but continue to provide other valued services e.g. maintaining right accounts and providing actuarial services vis a vis real economy risk as opposed to arbitrary financial risk currently the consequence of money's misrepresentation. So our urgent quest is to make understanding of the misrepresentation common place, as only then can we collectively solve the problem.” Marc Gauvin: "We can prove money's misrepresentation, how it creates systemic instability and how when agents at all levels of society rich and poor unwittingly abide by the imperatives of that misrepresentation, the dynamics of said instability become a "hidden hand" governing society beyond the will of anyone no matter their station in life. Thus, leading all to increasingly assume and accept what otherwise most all would consider unconscionable. If all this is true, why would we conclude that freeing the many other extant mechanisms for social control and governance from the vagaries of such systemic instability, would not lead to a vast improvement for all? "

[@monikadeinbeck4760]

I think China is an example for an Aristotelian politeia, at least the system closest to his idea. ( I doubt Aristotle could have imagined a society this large )

[@pausereflect5911]

I sense someone has put Radhika under "stress". Whatever the reason for the stress, it is not good. She's much better in Michael and Radhika TOGETHER. Not separately. Bring back Michael and Radhika TOGETHER.

[@pausereflect5911]

Also, add breakup slide or stills, charts. Show the questions too.

[@hansfrankfurter2903]

Can someone not explain to me why doesn’t China cut its relations with Israel over the Gaza genocide? No one is asking them for military intervention, or even direct assistance just putting pressure diplomatically on israel by cutting relations. Why not? It will hurt Israel way more than it hurts China, and China will develop long term a reputation for being a trustworthy partner that truly cares and isnt just a cold hearted businessman. Wouldn’t this enhance their long term strategy of a “common future for humanity” ? Running their mouth in the UN isn’t enough, everyone does that and it does nothing.

[@alcooper6186]

Good Point, however, China is somewhat reliant on the Zionist controlled Finance markets, same as Saudi Arabia is. I suppose the Zionist threat of freezing these financial assets [ which they have openly done with smaller nations] is quite alarming. Hopefully the growing strength of BRICS and other similar alliances will mitigate this risk in the future.

[@thatdaywillcome...3387]

Yes and no.

[@pranavsimha9160]

Yes and Yes

[@boi9842]

@@pranavsimha9160 No and No

[@jasonukred2452]

Oh no, now you're gonna get all the multiBipolar Western dengoids excusing capitalism in your mentions.😂 Capitalists in the party but capitalists have no power in the party. 😂

[@ivanhorvat6913]

I stopped watching as soon as I heard that Russia was producing weapons that were higher technology than America's. Russia literally does not know how to make chips. This grandma is an expert and people listen to her for her opinion?

[@ngateminasmoredjo8351]

Sure USA is great. Also for the many homeless people, the poors , without health security, etc, etc, etc...

[@pkwong1940]

Radikha jumps all over the place. In the end I am not sure what is her message.

[@johnsmith-cw3wo]

AMERICA IS THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD ! USA !!! 💪 USA !!! 💪 USA !!! 💪

[@lorenzobetancourt5559]

There has not existed in the history of humanity, a country more criminal than the USA, millions have died from the conflicts led and created by that nation's imperialism.

[@fndngnvrlnd]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha is this your 5th daily dose of Fentanyl?????

[@therealdeal2163]

😂😂😂😂😂 ...u velly funni. ...

[@swchan6152]

Is Ms Radhika Desai a Canadian Indian??