Lecture 6 on Minsky, Financial Instability, the Great Depression & the Global Financial Crisis

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1. Steve, you have mistaken Eugene McCarthy, who was a progressive South Dakota senator, a presidential candidate. and a generally good guy, for Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin senator and a dick of the first order. (Approx 8:40)
2. I've really enjoyed this whole lecture series, but I have a small nit to pick in regards to the topic covered in the last few minutes. I've see you talk on this subject before and I agree with you in principle, but I think your terminology is confusing. Isn't Total Demand really Total GDP (assuming all that demand gets spent)? If that's the case, then the line you have labeled GDP is really something more like "increase in Demand independent of debt" (maybe you can think of a better name). This would effectively split GDP growth into two factors 1) debt-financed growth, and 2) non debt-financed growth. Amateur economist here, so let me know if I'm just speaking out of my backside.
3. 1:21:20 - Steve quote's that & I paraphrase "No matter the structure. as long as the economy remains capitalist and innovation and finances continue, there will be business cycles"
   
   I watched today an update from Richard Wolff & his argument is to have Co-operatives, rather then Corporations. Richard was discussing Capitalist America verses Communist Russia.
   
   The major flaw in both is that the power is held by a few from a governing & economic stand point.
   
   All today I was thinking how do we get around it & I may have stumbled on to something.
   
   If we were to run our needs based requirements for humanity using a planning method, that is to say the essentials for a base standard quality of living, are managed under a social distribution, where access is equal to all, then for the wants in our lives can be run under a capitalist model that uses Co-operatives to produce important (but not essential) and non-essential goods & services.
   
   Even a Co-operative is going to run itself similar to a Corporation by deciding what to produce, when to produce it, how much to sell it for & what to do with the profits.
   
   The benefit is the workers are the director's & live in the community, so they are less likely to perform their business using practices that are negative towards the place in which they live. (pollution & outsourcing etc)
   
   Clearly automation, robotics, computing - especially with nano & quantum tech means huge disruptions to society, a whole re-think of the term "Work" from a social stand point is needed.
   
   What if technology get's us to a stand point where only a few hours per week is available for everyone?
   
   My thoughts are we need to address, not what work will be available in the future, rather what hours are required by human intervention to meet the needs & wants of every society.
   
   On my current thoughts,  we need to consider large cities as obsolete, but look at smaller communities ranging from 500 - 50,000 spread throughout that are as self-sufficient as technology allows, only trading their surpluses form other communities & surplus.
   
   I mean, even 3D printing will soon allow for re-introduction of small scale manufacturing at the local level & would like limit waste. 
   
   The economics is crucial because we use central systems that are interconnect at a Global level.
   
   However a whole rethink of these aspects is required.
   
   Economic System - Governing System - Justice System - Protection system
   
   I favour a de-centralized view in re-developing these systems, only using Co-ordinated groups where absolutely possible. So if a single currency is required as a base with 10-12 sub currencies, then this would need levels of administration to limit inflation-deflation, but how much of that will technology be able to perform? Hopefully 100% of it.
4. I have watched all of your lectures so far and have enjoyed all of them. I love how you are bringing realism into economics. Keep up the good work.
5. Students might be interested in my comments at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyEqNMGAcOQ where Prof Keen demonstrates the simple model described at 1 hr 4 mn into this lecture.
6. Progress and Poverty - book 10 Ch 4 - "How Modern Civilisation May Decline". All of the boom-busts since the 20th century are explained here. It's quite simple - our unbalanced tax system distorts markets, especially the most important one, causing the boom bust cycle.
   Can Keen prove that a market system operating in countries funded entirely by the Single Tax on land values would be unstable?