Let us now turn to globalisation of China's financial markets and the finance capital facet of China.
CAPITALISM II TURN OFF TECHNOLOGY FREE
Should radicals in the West take the side of free trade lobby or trading nationalists or strike a third way in discourse? The reality today regarding China as a trading power is that despite opposition from domestic industry in many countries, local trading capital in those countries prevails, in the developing world and in EU-US alike, and imports from China keep booming, causing huge trade deficits in most of its trading partners? This, despite the fact that more the imports from China, lesser the domestic employment generation. If the volume of cheaper exports were to be considered synonymous with imperialism, South Korea and little Taiwan would be considered bigger "imperialistic powers than many traditionally known imperialist powers of Europe like Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden and even Belgium. Seeking overseas export markets by monopoly capital after reaching saturation in the domestic market, and politically forced unequal trade need not be the case in all instances. Specific nature of the trading activity as well as the character of the trading powers could make all the difference. And in Marxist tradition, not all overseas trade by all capitalist countries was considered imperialistic either.
But the principle of comparative advantages would also be at work.
But then, trade could never be entirely equal even among, say, USA and EU, or USA and Japan for that matter, as productivity differentials are bound to bring about cross-border shift of surplus/surplus-value even in a supposedly free exchange, if one goes by Marx's theory. Trade was considered a means of imperialism, theoretically substantiated with proof of unequal exchange. Weinstein provides the kind of unflinching critique economists are more used to serving up than receiving.The Chinese Are Coming Of China and Capitalism-II B SivaramanĬhina is the world's largest trading nation todayĪccording to Mckinsey's July 2019 report China and the World. Are academic macro-economists truly in a position to advise government agencies given their own track records? Is it time to turn the same lens on economists that they have so effectively used to analyze other labor markets? With the sharp eye of outsider and the familiarity of an researcher within the field, Dr. Weinstein also explores the political economy of economics itself, discussing the notion of “economics squared” and the role of rent seeking within the field. Such developments have to potential to de facto shift economic decision making away from centralized government control in a manner that is as yet unpredictable.ĭr. He sees other technological changes such as the development of crypto-currencies changing the very basics of a macro economic system currently controlled by central banks.
CAPITALISM II TURN OFF TECHNOLOGY SOFTWARE
In a different line of thinking, as software becomes increasingly sophisticated it takes on the ability to replace humans not only in low level repetitive tasks but also, with the use of deep learning algorithms, in arbitrarily complex repetitive tasks such as medical diagnosis. As production is driven increasingly by bits rather than atoms, he sees the importance of private goods give way to public goods, undermining a basic requirement of market models. Weinstein sees it, is an end to 20th century style capitalism brought about not by a competing ideology, as many had once feared, but instead by changing technology. Weinstein sees not just a temporary recession brought on by a housing crisis, but rather deep and fundamental shifts in the very factors that made market capitalism the driving force of economic growth for the past two centuries. Underlying the seismic shifts in the economy in the last ten years, Dr. Is Market Capitalism simply an accident of certain factors that came together in the 19th and 20th centuries? Does the innovation of economics require a new economics of innovation? Is the study of economics deeply affected by the incentive structures faced by economists themselves, necessitating a study of the “economics of economics”? In this broad ranging interview INET Senior Economist Pia Malaney sits down with Eric Weinstein - mathematician, economist, Managing Director of Thiel Capital (as well as her co-author and husband) to discuss these and other issues.