THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
It sounds like a perfect title for our current times, but in fact
it's from over fourty years ago, from a BBC documentary series,
about economics. At fifteen one hour episodes it's a bit of a
marathon, and I think it's pretty incredible that the support was
found to make it. It was writen and presented by the influential
leftward-leaning economist John Kenneth Galbraith, presenting the
topic from a wide historical perspective, while unapologetically
highlighting his own interpretations and theories. But it is
primarily a facinating history, and allows ample room for the
viewer to draw their own conclusions.
I slowly worked through it in my twelve o' clock lunch breaks,
which are my routine time for watching documentaries downloaded
from the internet. I found it facinating, with creative visuals in
the early parts and shot in some remarkable locations later on
(it's surprising the places where someone with influence could get
in with a film crew), accompanied throughout by Galbraith's
particular dry wit. His conclusions in the later episodes are
interesting, though somewhat dampened by the lack of realisation in
the intervening years. Yet for his theory that large capitalist
orgainisations eventually trend towards socialism through
government intervention, now must be the best chance/demonstration
that it will get with so many businesses being propped up through
the pandemic (at least here in Australia). The Green New Deal could
also be seen as a response to his dispair over the economic
necessity for massive government spending on defence, though I
gather it's no longer really on the table regardless of which way
the US election goes at this point. It is an interesting time to
assess these views, even if like me you're not drawn by any great
faith in them.
In most ways the series remains surprisingly (or even depressingly)
relevent to today. Naturally one key change on the geopolitical front
has been the collapse of the Soviet Union, and probably equally,
the rise of China. With continuing trends of US military
expenditure through that time probably lending quite a bit of
credence to Galbraith's opinions about the driving forces there.
What is noticably missing, besides of course pandemics, is much
discussion of environmental topics. While in the 70s the global
threat was from nukes, today it's from gasses building up in the
atmosphere (although the nukes haven't all gone away of course).
The series ends with three episodes of casual discussion among a
variety of relevent and influential people collected at his house
in the country for a "Weekend in Vermont". Three hours of
interviews probably doesn't sound immediately thrilling, but in
fact it's one of the best parts of the series. After being filled
with historical background through the earlier episodes, it really
is the best and most interesting way to prompt thought about how
the corresponding lessons can be applied practically (albeit in the
70s). The prominence of the people gathered is very remarkable too,
including former britsh Prime Minister Edward Heath, top soviet
advisor Georgy Arbatov, and Henry Kissinger while still Secretary
of State (the last episode is largely a historically facinating
discussion between these representatives of East and West). It's a
shame that one doesn't see this sort of casual and informal
discussion between leaders more often on TV, the medium is well
suited to it - much more insightful than words on a page.
There is also a book, which I might read sometime but it's probably
unlikely. For the lunch break time slot I don't find the
combination of reading and eating nearly so convenient, and reading
while packaging electronics to post is downright impossible (often
these are sort-of "working lunch breaks"). I should find more time
for it though.
I don't know what hope I have of encouraging other Gopher readers
to dive into fifteen hours of old documentary, I guess it doesn't
matter much if I can't. I'm really an old documentary addict; Next
time I'm near a capable internet connection I'll grab Milton
Friedman's "Free to Choose" which was made in response, and after
being thoroghly indoctrinated into both sides of economic thought
I'll have the perfect perspective from which to legitimately
disbelieve in the policies of both sides, which is exactly how I
like to be :).
The Age of Uncertainty is on YouTube, from which I downloaded most
episodes, but they were ripped from dodgy VHS recordings and had
some annoying drop-outs. I later realised that these videos at the
Internet Archive were much better quality, having been taken from
film:
https://archive.org/details/@sot237_?and%5B%5D=Age+of+Uncertainty&sort=titleSorter
Unfortunately that seems to be missing the three "a weekend in
vermont" episodes, so you'll have to go to YouTube for them:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwOdBR6SDRHRhMYiL8XtvTbrNoJIuAxwL
(the same uploader as An Ocean Apart, which is how I found this to
begin with)
Speaking of same uploaders, the person who put this on the Internet
Archive also uploaded Free to Choose:
https://archive.org/details/@sot237_?and%5B%5D=Free+to+Choose&sort=titleSorter
And these actually have their own Wikipedia (nay, Gopherpedia)
pages too:
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/The%20Age%20of%20Uncertainty
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Free%20to%20Choose
- The Free Thinker
