Steve Keen for Age of Economics - Full interview

Age of Economics: in the first part of this project a diverse group of global thinkers answers 8 fundamental questions about economics and capitalist civilization. (Interview number 7)
0:00 - Prologue
01:36 - Intro
01:54 - 1. Why does economics matter?
03:15 - 2. What are the differences between economic science and economic engineering?
11:05 - 3. What role does economics play in society? Does it serve the common good?
16:08 - 4. Economics provides answers to problems related to markets, efficiency, profits, consumption and economic growth. Does economics do a good job in addressing the other issues people care about: climate change and the wider environment, the role of technology in society, issues of race and class, pandemics, etc.?
23:24 - 5. As we live in an age of economics and economists - in which economic developments feature prominently in our lives and economists have major influence over a wide range of policy and people - should economists be held accountable for their advice?
27:11 - 6. Does economics explain Capitalism? How would you define Capitalism?
36:44 - 7. No human system to date has so far been able to endure indefinitely - not ancient Egypt or Rome, not Feudal China or Europe, not the USSR. What about global Capitalism: can it survive in its current form?
41:31 - 8. Is Capitalism, or whatever we should call the current system, the best one to serve the needs of humanity, or can we imagine another one?
About Steve Keen
Australian. Economist, author, and noted neo-Keynesian thinker and critic of neoclassical economics
The major influences on Keen’s thinking about economics include John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Hyman Minsky, Piero Sraffa, Augusto Graziani, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Thorstein Veblen, and François Quesnay. Hyman Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis forms the main basis of his major contribution to economics which mainly concentrates on mathematical modelling and simulation of financial instability. Keen was formerly an associate professor of economics at University of Western Sydney, until he applied for voluntary redundancy in 2013, due to the closure of the economics program at the university. In autumn 2014, he became a professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He is also a fellow at the Centre for Policy Development.
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►Transcript👉www.ageofeconomics.org/interv...
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Interview by William Hynes
Music: J.S. Bach, from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Kimiko Ishizaka, piano. Video by Fabio Dondero

[@lukegardner6917]

Lol somehow listening to Steve bash the absolute lunacy of Nordhouse, Milton and neoclassical economics in general never gets old

[@DantheManMonty]

It's the accent combined with the quips and the no-nonsense-in-a-friendly-way delivery

[@andrewsullivan3874]

This was the best economics interview that I have ever heard Steve Keen give, and I've listened to quite a few!!! Thank you!

[@TheCommonS3Nse]

Steve’s comment about Aristotle’s understanding of the universe really hit home with me. I often feel like economists have come up with this insanely complicated theory for how the economy works mostly because they keep “learning their lesson” when the economy doesn’t behave like they thought. Rather than simply recognizing that everything rotates around the sun, they will retain their earth-centric foundation and simply add another variable to their equations to account for the new phenomenon that their theory didn’t see coming.

[@waynemcmillan5970]

Great talk. Thanks Steve.

[@numbercruncher6242]

Steve is the best. So well spoken across many disciplines. The guy understands the nature of complex systems analysis and its relevance to economics.

[@bundleofperceptions1397]

William Nordhaus was a member of Skull and Bones at Yale (The Brotherhood of Death), 'nough said.

[@rolyars]

I'm always surprised that Steve posits that capitalism breeds innovation, especially compared to the Soviet Union. Until the 60s the Soviets were actually progressing very fast and in the space race they were beating the West. This worried many planners greatly and some secretly believed the Soviet system actually worked better. So how did the US respond? By setting up massive state projects like the Apollo mission and the DARPA program. In other words 'capitalism' beat the Soviets by NOT using the free market but essentially doing what they did: massive state intervention. None of this should be surprising, most disruptive innovation has always come from the public sector.

[@biketickler65]

That's a Galbraithian premise that I would have to agree with

[@Rob-fx2dw]

You say ". Until the 60s the Soviets were actually progressing very fast and in the space race they were beating the West". Whose figures did you use to support your idea? The soviet Union's false figures? - That would be a laugh. You seem to have gone down the path of the economist Paul Samuelson who predicted the Soviet Union would outstrip the US by the 1970's because it was a planned economy and when it did not happen he predicted it would happen in the 80's and again later even after it's economy massively collapsed. A fantasy world again. .

[@BigHenFor]

Careful, capitalism is the means not the motive for innovation in capitalist societies. It is a tool, and being encouraged to treat it as anything but a chosen theory, as a map for understanding human behaviour is problematic. Interestingly, both the Soviet Union and Capitalist societies used authoritarianism to achieve their goals, which is philosophically unsurprising, as Marxist thought emerged as a response to capitalism, and the Marxist Leninist perspective is arguably more "do what what works best" than what is doctrinally pure. Liberal capitalism and communism both promised freedom, but failed to deliver it to the masses subjected to these frameworks when the economic management fails. Ironic really when both claimed TINA - There is no alternative, but really, there has to be, because neither worked well enough to be sustainable in the long term. Yes, capitalism is more adaptable, but in its neoliberal conception it's a failing experiment. " The fault Dear Brutus, lies not in the Stars and Stripes or the Hammer, Sickle and Stars, but in ourselves."?

[@Rob-fx2dw]

@@BigHenFor You say " Liberal capitalism and communism both promised freedom". You fail to define what you call freedom or against what you would measure it. What system promises freedom more than anything that has been tried? For instance. Did the USSR promise freedom ? Yes - Did it fail miserably and become the worst system that has ever been tried in terms of human cost? Yes it did. Did the French revolution promise freedom? Yes it did. But to what extent and did it improve the situation ? Did the overthrow of the Chinese government by Communists and their cultural revolution in China promise more freedom? Yes it did by promising more equality. Did it improve under the heavy handed policies of that revolution succeed? No. - Not until the policies of top down controls and abandonment of their equality movement were removed or done away with in most part. You also say " Marxist Leninist perspective is arguably more "do what works best" than what is doctrinally pure. " That is not what any system allows and certainly not what Keen pushes simply because he has so many of his facts wrong. For an economist he woefully ignorant of how simple payments to foreign entities are made internationally for imports and exports.

[@spizganypywak7338]

Innovation is not only an effect of direct R&D development. If you start selling new type of bread - it's innovation. If you find a new segment of customers for your product - it's innovation. If you, as a worker, come up with simplier way of doing your job - it's innovation. Any new way of doing things: organizational changes, new ways of production etc. Maybe it's achievable in socialist sysem to create incentives for all this types of innovation, but "big projects" like moon trips are hardly any argument here. USSR has some achievements in "space race" by engaging huge resources for that (the other thing is if it was cost-effective, meaning we could get the same results with less costs). And the US did the same as it's very difficult to rely on private sector in the space industry (in military too, so they came up with DARPA). Still, in many achievements of DARPA or space programmes the gov cooperated with the private sector and private sector also did a lot to further develop and commercialize these achievements (so it's rather wrong to say that all disruptive innovations has always come up from the public sector - not always and not completely). After initial developments of the USSR's programmes, the US started surpassing the USSR, quickly leaving it behind. All this doesn't mean that the governmant can't foster innovation or that it shouldn't be engaged in big projects - as Mazzucato is arguing (I belive you refer to her). But we can't narrow the definition of innovation in economy to what DARPA does.

[@visalusanson]

Supurb intro .. Earth center of the Universe…excellent analogy re: Economics niche

[@psikeyhackr6914]

There were 200,000,000 cars in the US in 1994. It has been 28 years. How many of those automobiles are running today? Where did the depreciation go? Economists do not talk about Net Domestic Product that only subtracts the depreciation of capital goods anyway.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Interesting point, another Exogenous blindness?

[@psikeyhackr6914]

@@davidwilkie9551 I don't know what you mean by that. I regard it as a lie to keep the peons confused and running on the treadmill. The Laws of Physics do not care. Consumer technology wears out regardless. If economists cannot get their math correct it simply means that they are stupid or liars.

[@TheCommonS3Nse]

Based on interactions I’ve had with mainstream economists, they’re not much better than the Neoclassical types in terms of how they think about the economy. Everything is about transactions and math. Zero thought is put into the social consequences of those transactions. For example, I raised the question of whether low interest rates were the most efficient method to stimulate aggregate demand. Just going off of logical outcomes, I would presume that because low interest rates generate demand primarily among people who already hold assets and can therefore get the cheap loans on offer, this would lead to not only rising asset prices, including houses, but also food deserts when there is no demand generated in poor communities where few people own assets. An academic economist told me that this “literally wasn’t happening” and that interest rates were working just fine. I’m sorry, I must be getting fake news about food deserts in the wealthiest nation on earth and unaffordable house prices in pretty much every developed nation. That same economist told me that QE doesn’t increase purchasing power, it provides liquidity and increases aggregate demand… as if those are different things. And other economist have made similar arguments, but this one was particularly blatant. Those seem like the arguments of someone who is looking only at the overall numbers and paying no regard for the distributions or how those distributions will impact the economy in the future.

[@roc7880]

economists were not responsible for the Soviet economic collapse for the simple reason they were not allowed to write or say anything against the central dogma. and even if they did so, nobody in power listened to them. the only people who knew the real pulse of the economy were those engaged in the black market, and knew the real prices.

[@Rob-fx2dw]

That happens today. Soviet Union philosophy operates in Russia now with their central' planning' which is more ona path of centrally planned destruction run by the one party system.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Much like the common 2 party government systems, religious beliefs and Cosmological POV are 2 sides of an inside-outside holographic positioning presence, a Single Side Band awareness of real-time events, half-truth mono-dualistic Individuality and assumptions of authority according to empirical lore. (No one is to blame!) As usual Michael Hudson's latest historical book has all the elements of economic mismanagement by special interests, those who have always been Provisioning ready for the Forever War mentality of heirachical dominance. In which case the reservation of Nuclear Technology as a technical means of concentrating political power and monopolising tax-treasury storage of asset values of the kind Australian Housing typifies. The elemental e-Pi-i AM-FM sync-duration communication of information In-form-ation universal innate ecological knowledge of actual circumstances is deflected and denied. Why has the Cult of "weird and mysterious" QM-TIME Completeness Actuality been obfuscated in such a way as to disguise otherwise straight forward observation of existence seem difficult. Martin Luther Time to nail the Bull to the door, again., in plain English, to debunk and replace bs obfuscation.

[@DanielKNewman]

Soul: Edgar Cayce 1877-1945: All souls were created in the beginning, all spirit of one spirit, Spirit of God, that spirit manifest in flesh, that spirit manifest in all creation, whether of earthly forces or Universal forces, all spirit being one spirit. -- Edgar Cayce reading 900-70

[@GhostOnTheHalfShell]

Simon Carter (yt) covers the lost decade to address climate change. He reports that climate scientists did see Nordhaus’ paper and viewed as so ridiculous, they ignored it. If they had known more, maybe they’d have put the screws to Nierenberg, who stuck to Nordhaus on the ideology of market fundamentalism. It’s Nierenberg plus a few more ideological asshats who wrecked climate agreements in the 80s on the grounds that any international cooperation would lead to authoritarian communism or something. The continue to cling to it even today after the USSR fell and capitalist authoritarianism is ascendent. Never mind the capitalists/libertarians are all authoritarians now.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Euler's Entanglement, e-Pi-i sync-duration resonance bonding chemistry is "held in place", i-reflection positioning, by "imaginary" virtual vector-values of time-timing Unit Circle superposition identification of modulo convergent-divergent balance @.dt Absolute Zero-infinity reference-framing containment, ie unity in log-antilog metastable equilibria. Don't know what the lag time is for an innovation-reiteration of standard Gold-Silver Rule Mathematical Disproof Methodology, adaptation Philosophy, but the Eternity-now Interval Conception Superposition-point Lensing orientation-observation POV is as old as relative-timing ratio-rates in QM-TIMESPACE Perspective Principle. Look, listen, hear and see Meditation persisted.