Another week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives.
Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll soon replace it with rage.
This week on the show we have Sven Beckert to talk about his new book Capitalism: A Global History. Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard and his tome is an attempt to capture the entire history of an economic system in one book. It’s a doorstop, but it’s also readable and clear-eyed. Some come with me on a journey that runs through the plantations of South Carolina to the tech markets of Shenzhen.
Cotton as an entry point to the history of capitalism
The economic big bang
Industrial Revolution as mutation
“It’s still being born.”
Human data is oil to be fracked
The Quaker Oats metaphor
“The market is God.”
Ascribing morality to economics
When Gary Hart ushered in Neoliberalism
“Capitalism is a series of regime changes.”
Moments of great change offer opportunities
