Amazon.com: DVD: Commanding Heights - The Battle for the World Economy (2002)

Amazon.com: DVD: Commanding Heights - The Battle for the World Economy (2002): "The Washington Post
No more important program for making sense of our life and times has been seen in at least a decade. "

I have seen this very interesting movie, and I can recommend it very much. The problem is not the capitalistic system, the problem is what I call the "false capitalists". The truth is that the world has not seen more "real capitalists" than "real communists". George Bush want to stand as a representant for capitalism and free markets, but he is not even close to his self-appointed ideals.

What Bush for example is doing is to subsidise politically picked industry with giving them monopoly power. For example the Disney company has lobbyed and got copyright protection extended many times: "The extension of copyright clearly benefits the corporation over the consumer. Copyrights lasted only 14 years in 1790. With the challenged 1998 extension, the period is now 70 years after the death of the creator. Works owned by corporations are now protected for 95 years."
http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=cm&id=715

That is not free competition. Another example is that taxpayers money is spendt on opening up markets for the military industry. "FAS indicates that the weapons industry is second only to the US agriculture industry in its receipt of US taxpayer subsidies."
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1554914.php

Another example is that the government has, up till now, favoured the proprietary systems with the taxpayers money in public purchases: "SB 1579 is designed to mitigate these costs by leveling the playing field between proprietary software and Open Source Software (OSS) products."
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2003-03-18-014-26-OS-LL-PB

Actually the people that say that they want free market and globalization is the people that work hard against it more than a rule then the exception. The US and Europe often say that the space industry and the military industry is what bring the world forward. As an economist I am indoctrinatet to think alternative cost and always ask: what is the cost in terms of the opportunity foregone (and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity)? It would be better ways to invest, and it would have been possible to mobilize this forces if it wasnt for the protectionistic and free-trade hostile US and Europe. Contrary to what they present themselves.

Jeffrey Sachs, Bill Clinton, Milton Friedman talk about globalization and capitalism in this movie as "alternative cost" dont exists. They talk about capitalism as a way to stop future "Hitlers" without understanding that both US and Europe dont want to give their people democratic influence in certain cases. It is like an on/off switch. In things that is not so important you start up a very democratic and widespread deliberatd process or voting, but when it comes to things that is considered very important, then the democratic process is stopped and hided. For example the war against Iraq or the "software patent"-case in Europe the last four years is full of examples on this.

"Britain has resisted signing the United Nations Convention on Corruption and British companies are fighting regulations that would make them responsible for corrupt practices by their agents as well as their own staff. London seems to be the favourite city for laundering African corruption money; although reporting regulations have been tightened, the Financial Services Authority pursues reports from banks about suspicious funds only when they are related to drugs or terrorism."
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/history_2701.jsp


Conclusion: The western leaders backed by western economists is talking about a lot of interesting aspect in this TV-production, and they have very much right. Apart from that it is completely wrong that the real forces behind globalization and free markets is the protectionistic and subsidising (so-called "capitalists" or "liberalists") in USA or EUROPE. They are actually the biggest problem for opening up markets and escalate the globalization process.