It’s interesting to watch a documentary that advocates the free market at the same time when the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression is unfolding.
The documentary is based on a book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. It tells the story of how competing economic views jostled for the mind-share of governments and the public since World War I. The narrative covers the historical background of our modern economic system. It describes how Keynesian economics reigned during the post-WW II era where state control and regulation of major sectors of the economy were the dominant economic ideas and how the shift to free markets started during the Reagan / Thatcher administrations in the 80s.
The authors have a strong disposition towards the free-market and ideas from Jeffrey Sachs and Milton Friedman are illustrated with case studies. One shortfall of this documentary was that it avoids cases where government intervention especially in numerous East Asian economies played a key role in developing local industry.
What I found tremendously useful was the context in which Commanding Heights lent the current financial crisis. There is nothing inevitable about globalization or free markets – the “borderless world” that I’ve grown with is probably the most important casualty one the dust settles. The biggest risk I believe is that protectionist tendencies may overcompensate as countries try to protect and insulate themselves from these financial risks.
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