Jon Stewart: Teachers Have it Too Good (Wink)

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | March 4th, 2011

Jon Stew­art had to do it. He had to con­nect the dots. We’re going after the pub­lic ser­vants try­ing to do some good. But how about the non-con­tribut­ing bankers who kept their per­son­al gravy train rolling at tax­pay­er expense? Or the hedge fund man­agers who pay dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er tax­es than almost any­one read­ing this site? 15%?? And let’s not for­get that some of our our largest cor­po­ra­tions – includ­ing GE and Exxon — have recent­ly paid no US income tax? Ulti­mate­ly, this all gets down to who funds your next elec­tion. Banks and cor­po­ra­tions do. Kids and pub­lic ser­vants don’t. David Brooks makes that point rather well. I’m all for sac­ri­fice, but let’s make it fair and shared. Or is that idea too “social­ist” (or what we quaint­ly used to call “demo­c­ra­t­ic”)?

Relat­ed Note:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca is NOT Broke”

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The World in a Satirical Nutshell

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | November 30th, 2010

Greece and Ire­land are down. Por­tu­gal is tee­ter­ing. And Spain may soon be the biggest domi­no to fall. All of this makes this satir­i­cal clip a lit­tle time­ly – per­haps a bit too painful­ly time­ly. Fea­tured here are two Aus­tralian satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe…

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Bill Gates: Solving the World’s Problems Through Technology

in Economics, Education, Technology | August 19th, 2010

Last week, we showed you a clip of Bill Gates speak­ing at the recent Techon­o­my con­fer­ence in Lake Tahoe. Our com­ments con­cen­trat­ed on a short­er seg­ment where Gates talks about the com­ing trans­for­ma­tion of edu­ca­tion – about how the inter­net will start dis­plac­ing the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty with­in five years. That clip fig­ures into a larg­er talk, now ful­ly avail­able online, called “Rein­vent­ing Cap­i­tal­ism: How to Jump­start What the Mar­ket­place Can’t” (48 min­utes). And it puts Gates’ views on edu­ca­tion (not to men­tion his over­all phil­an­thropic work) into a larg­er con­text. What’s gen­er­al­ly on dis­play here is his lim­it­less faith that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy can solve the world’s prob­lems. It’s an approach that makes per­fect sense for rid­ding the world of malar­ia. But it’s poten­tial­ly a dou­ble-edge sword for edu­ca­tion. You can watch the full talk above, or view it here. (His full com­ments on edu­ca­tion & tech­nol­o­gy come around the 21 minute mark, and again lat­er on.) You can also learn more about what Gates is read­ing, watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to on his web­site.

Get 250 Free Cours­es Online or Learn 37 Lan­guages for Free!

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Good Capitalist Karma: Zizek Animated

in Current Affairs, Economics, Philosophy | August 18th, 2010

Slavoj Zizek, one of today’s most influ­en­tial philosophers/theorists, spoke ear­li­er this year at the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts (RSA). And now RSA has post­ed the video online with their patent­ed ani­mat­ed treat­ment. Like oth­er recent RSA speak­ers, Zizek makes mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism his focus. This time, we see how con­tem­po­rary cap­i­tal­ism has essen­tial­ly reworked Max Weber’s Protes­tant Eth­ic, or that strange rela­tion­ship between mon­ey mak­ing and per­son­al redemp­tion. Zizek’s cri­tique isn’t utter­ly damn­ing. (No one will run to the bar­ri­cades.) Nor do I think he intends it to be. But the obser­va­tions hold a cer­tain amount of inter­est, espe­cial­ly when placed along­side Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich and David Har­vey’s relat­ed RSA talks.

You can find the full 30 minute lec­ture (sans car­toons) here, or down­load the video as an mp4 here.

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The Crisis of Capitalism Animated

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | July 5th, 2010

The economic/financial pic­ture is look­ing ugly once again. Indeed, just yes­ter­day, the most emailed New York Times arti­cle warned that the stock mar­ket might be on the verge of an epic crash, one that will bring the Dow below 1,000. So how did we wind up in this glob­al cred­it mess? We’ve heard var­i­ous expla­na­tions, most assum­ing that our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem did­n’t quite func­tion as it should, and that a few reg­u­la­tions will take care of the prob­lem. But this is not the posi­tion tak­en by David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er (now at CUNY). Draw­ing on Marx­i­an analy­sis (it’s still alive and well some­where), Har­vey sug­gests that the cri­sis is built into cap­i­tal­ism itself. It’s not the result of too few reg­u­la­tions. Rather it’s part of cap­i­tal­is­m’s inter­nal log­ic. (Mark Man­call, an emer­i­tus Stan­ford his­to­ry prof, echoes some of these basic thoughts on “Enti­tled Opin­ions” by the way.) The ani­mat­ed video above is an out­take from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed by Har­vey at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce in the UK. You can watch the video in full here. Mean­while, David Har­vey has also made avail­able online a free, 26 hour course that offers a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal. It appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Daniel Pink: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

in Business, Economics, Psychology | June 23rd, 2010

RSA offers up anoth­er ani­mat­ed video explain­ing what makes us tick. This time, they’re fea­tur­ing a lec­ture by Daniel Pink, the best­selling author of Dri­ve: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us. Revis­it­ing research also found in Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty, Pink dri­ves home the point that tra­di­tion­al moti­va­tion schemes – name­ly, bonus­es – rarely achieve their intend­ed results. In fact, the big­ger the bonus, the big­ger the decline in per­for­mance. Or so stud­ies show again and again. So what does moti­vate us? The desire to be self-direct­ed. The will to mas­ter some­thing. The hope to make a con­tri­bu­tion. It’s all what Pink calls “the pur­pose motive,” and it’s the stuff that keeps this site mov­ing along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dan Ariely on the Irra­tional­i­ty of Bonus­es

Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time

via Fora.TV

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Dan Ariely on the Irrationality of Bonuses

in Business, Economics, Psychology | June 10th, 2010

You’ve per­haps heard the buzz around Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty: The Unex­pect­ed Ben­e­fits of Defy­ing Log­ic at Work and at Home. (If not, read this review in the NY Times.) Appear­ing at PopTech! last year, Ariely spent 20 min­utes flesh­ing out an argu­ment in his book. A pro­fes­sor of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Ariely turns some basic assump­tions about work­place com­pen­sa­tion right on their head … and even explains why, in some strange way, it makes sense that high­ly com­pen­sat­ed Wall Street bankers could do so much dam­age to our finan­cial sys­tem.

Note: You can lis­ten to Ariely get­ting inter­viewed ear­li­er this week on my favorite San Fran­cis­co talk show. The con­ver­sa­tion revolves around The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty.

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Economic Crisis and Globalization

in Current Affairs, Economics | May 25th, 2010

The news isn’t good. The Euro is los­ing val­ue dai­ly. Coun­tries are slip­ping into “sov­er­eign debt crises” – mean­ing they’re going broke. And the mar­kets are swoon­ing once again. We’re watch­ing the prover­bial oth­er shoe drop.

Through­out this cri­sis, many Amer­i­cans have direct­ed their anger at Wall Street (and deserved­ly so). But few have won­dered whether there’s any­thing basi­cal­ly wrong with Amer­i­can-style cap­i­tal­ism. And, if any­thing, the only orga­nized protest move­ment (The Tea Par­ty) has assert­ed that we need more cap­i­tal­ism in our lives, not less.

In some rare quar­ters of acad­eme, cap­i­tal­ism still does­n’t get off so easy. And that brings us to three new online cours­es taught by the econ­o­mist Richard D. Wolff at The New School in NYC. Above, we fea­ture the first lec­ture from Eco­nom­ic Cri­sis and Glob­al­iza­tion, a course that takes a less ortho­dox view of how we’re man­ag­ing the Great Reces­sion. (Find the oth­er sev­en lec­tures here.) His oth­er cours­es, both on Marx­i­an eco­nom­ics, appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es under Eco­nom­ics.

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