I cannot verify all the facts stated in this documentary, but many of them and the whole sense of this work agrees with my modest knowledge of economic theory and history that I learned at University, in books (last one is "Debt, the first 5000 years") and other documentaries such as "Inside Job" and others that focus on the power of money and their effect on human behavior.
Let's start from the beginning, assuming that PURE Capitalism is the system where production is in private hands and that their owners want to maximize their profit, no matter the path they take to achieve this, this agrees with the fact that capitalists aim is to privatize everything. Why would a person that can buy anything would still want more?, this is answered in "Inside Job" and by many behavioral economic studies.
Let's continue. "Neoliberalism" is widely repeated in the one hour and half documentary. It is presented as an ideology risen in Economic schools in the western world (the same way "Inside Job" did) that has nothing to do with real world. Documentary shows with many examples how massive privatization and efficiency do not go hand-in-hand (as neolibs would affirm), because pure privatization of natural monopolies generally leads to worse services and higher prices of final costumers (which is agree with economic theory of monopolies, that can lower their production in order to increase prices because their aim is to maximize profit, not to serve the people).
More stuff. Politics and democracy are central subjects of debate in this work. Why in democracy is happening such self-destruction of middle class? Catastroika argues that Mass Media is monopolized by the neolib opinion, and opposite-side points of view are rapidly insulted as "populists" or "comunist". Have anyone ever asked why in western cultures those words are insults? Has anything to do with the fact that the capitalist block won the Cold War? Why communist or real socialist parties are seen today as extremists by popular culture? Is it extremist to seek the wellbeing for ALL citizens and not only the ones who possess huge amounts of capital? Why a system based on a (yet fragile) balance of Capitalism and State-driven-Socialism is now so put to doubt and yet it provided the fastest expansion of human development in the 50s and 60s of past century? Catastroika has the ability to help viewers answer some big questions and still let space for far more questions to be answered. Because the research of the undergrounds of the REAL system we live in needs more answers, and more documentaries like Catastroika.
Let's start from the beginning, assuming that PURE Capitalism is the system where production is in private hands and that their owners want to maximize their profit, no matter the path they take to achieve this, this agrees with the fact that capitalists aim is to privatize everything. Why would a person that can buy anything would still want more?, this is answered in "Inside Job" and by many behavioral economic studies.
Let's continue. "Neoliberalism" is widely repeated in the one hour and half documentary. It is presented as an ideology risen in Economic schools in the western world (the same way "Inside Job" did) that has nothing to do with real world. Documentary shows with many examples how massive privatization and efficiency do not go hand-in-hand (as neolibs would affirm), because pure privatization of natural monopolies generally leads to worse services and higher prices of final costumers (which is agree with economic theory of monopolies, that can lower their production in order to increase prices because their aim is to maximize profit, not to serve the people).
More stuff. Politics and democracy are central subjects of debate in this work. Why in democracy is happening such self-destruction of middle class? Catastroika argues that Mass Media is monopolized by the neolib opinion, and opposite-side points of view are rapidly insulted as "populists" or "comunist". Have anyone ever asked why in western cultures those words are insults? Has anything to do with the fact that the capitalist block won the Cold War? Why communist or real socialist parties are seen today as extremists by popular culture? Is it extremist to seek the wellbeing for ALL citizens and not only the ones who possess huge amounts of capital? Why a system based on a (yet fragile) balance of Capitalism and State-driven-Socialism is now so put to doubt and yet it provided the fastest expansion of human development in the 50s and 60s of past century? Catastroika has the ability to help viewers answer some big questions and still let space for far more questions to be answered. Because the research of the undergrounds of the REAL system we live in needs more answers, and more documentaries like Catastroika.