Charlie Rose: Sir James Goldsmith Interview - 15.11.94

I encourage everyone who cares about this space to watch the 1994 Charlie Rose episode with Sir James Goldsmith[0]. He nailed it. [0]: ▶ this video

You should look at Jonathan Goldsmith's appearance on Charlie Rose. ▶ this video Free Trade is not always good, and he correctly predicts that the global movement of capital will disrupt the current agreement between capital and labor that served the West so well. Donald Trump is wrong on many issues, but this is not one of them as far as I can tell. There a religiosity to the argument that free trade is "always good", even though high performing Asian economies are somewhat protective. Economics at its current understanding is almost like a religion of capitalism. It has little to do with actual economic behaviour and has very little predictive power. That's why we keep having crises. Look into the work of anthropologists and behavioural economists to see the reality of how humans actually behave and what that means for "classical economics". Basically, most of it is bunk, all the way down to Adam Smith. One of the best references I've read on this so far is "Debt the first 5000 years" "How Asia Works" On behavioural economics, there's studies coming out all the time. The evidence is piling up that little of what economists have said makes sense. They've deducted general guidelines that sort of work at the macro scale, but their fundamentals are mostly wrong.

For historical context on trade and society, see the classic (1994) Charlie Rose interview of Sir James Goldsmith on GATT/NAFTA, now that we have 20 years of experimental results, ▶ this video