Скачать с ютуб "The End of Socialism" James Otteson, Hayek Lecture Series в хорошем качестве

"The End of Socialism" James Otteson, Hayek Lecture Series

On Thursday, November 12, Wake Forest University Professor James Otteson gave a spirited defense of capitalism, but argued that we should take seriously some of the moral concerns that lead people to embrace socialism. Otteson conceded that most people today do not embrace full-blown socialism, but he did say that many support “socialist-inclined” policy, which advocates centralized economic decision making over individual autonomy and choice. Professor Otteson began by emphasizing the enormous diversity of human preferences, and the complexity of information government agents would need to gather and process in order to understand how to satisfy their preferences. This is especially true, he argued, because our preferences are often opaque even to ourselves: individual preferences change as new experiences occur and new technology creates new kinds of goods, resources, and opportunities. To demonstrate how powerful decentralized decision-making is at increasing human welfare through market exchange, Otteson presented data that correlates economic freedom and human prosperity. The graphs suggested that across nearly all countries for which we have data, there is a strong positive correlation between economic freedom and length of life, quality of life, and many other things people care about. Finally, Professor Otteson argued that although capitalism inevitably produces economic inequality – because people have different abilities and ambitions, and to some extent simply because of luck – the benefits it produces tend to be so large that the poor are better off in capitalist countries than they are in socialist countries. Thus, Otteson concluded, sometimes we have to choose between reducing inequality and alleviating poverty, and in these cases, he argued, the answer is clear: poverty, not inequality, is the source of most human misery. Some in the audience questioned whether we should compare these theories in their most extreme form. Otteson answered that while most people do not sit on the extreme ends of socialist and capitalist spectrum, it’s worth comparing the moral values and empirical consequences of each system of political economy. To learn how you can support the Center and the Hayek Lecture Series, please contact the director, Bruce Caldwell, at 919-660-6896 or [email protected] Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more! Follow us at   / dukepolisci   Like us at   / dukepolisci   Follow us at   / dukepolisci   Produced by Shaun King, Duke University Department of Political Science Multimedia Specialist