I wish to hell I could speak like this. A clear, logical development, and ex tempore

"the best thing we can do to fight neoliberalism is to build community"

George gets it in spades. It is a shame that nobody else does. A voice in the wilderness.

George is a wonderful thinker and speaker. If you are a Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson, a climate change denier or the owner of any large media organisation, you will disagree with everything he says and call him a destructive lefty, but if you have any capacity for thought, he makes a great deal of sense.

I've never heard so much wisdom in one video clip, this is spot on, the general public is having the wool pulled over their eyes and they don't even realise it, it's a tragedy really :(

Never heard this man before, but I am now a firm fan.

"It's an illustration that what is salient is not what is important, and what is important is not what is salient. The news media have a profound bias in all sorts of ways but the biggest bias of all is the bias against relevance! Those things which are objectively most relevant to our lives and our existence are marginalized while total trite trivia is put in their space as the most front centre as the things we ought to obsess about. "

The world needs more people like this guy. We simply can't afford neoliberalisms fantasies.

This is a great short introduction to neoliberalism. Monbiot knows his stuff!

George describing the 'entity' that is the market, reminds me of John Steinbeck's, The Grapes of Wrath. So many times that book has been relevant to contemporary politics, it's a shame we don't learn more from its warnings.

George explained the situation with such clarity and no nonsense delivery that he could never be a politician himself. He is too honest, he is a seaker of answers not a cover up man of truths or a distorter of facts. The truth is our politics is based on a system that is hundreds if not thousands of years old and it has evolved slowly unlike technology with has evolved at an exponential rate. Big business has taken over the use, research and development of many technologies many of which were developed and researched with the peoples tax money. We really are living in another robber barron era, and nobody seems to have the ability or answers to stop them. I am talling about this subject and I have no idea how an individual like me can help. I have a good idea the end game may be the complete control and enslavement of mankind by unelected super elites, who will in the end start destroying one another until the big fat rat sits at the top.

I'm three years and 35,000 miles into a bicycle tour of the US. Ignoring the far right and the far left, what I see so often is a deep longing for a sense of community. It gives me hope. But we have stacked the odds against us. Neo-liberalism is the candy that was too easy to sell. What George said so succinctly is clearly self-evident. I hope that he can provide some answers, some direction. But will anyone listen?

That was about as good a rendering of neo-liberalism as you are going to get.Superb.Please share it around.

See Edward Bernays, the father of PR and nephew of Sigmund Freud. He said democracy gets in the way of the market. He pretty much invented consumerism and the industrialists of the time flocked for his services. He made it cool for women to begin smoking.

Monbiot does a better job describing Neoliberalism than my other professors lmao

I wish everybody would watch this, if you've a mind or a soul, this is where you are, now

People talk about scarce resources, soil depletion and immigration as objective reality that we have to accept and cope with, and nobody implies that the easiest way to solve those things is to slow down and control procreation. We want to procreate uncontrollably and the government must find out the ways to provide us with resources. Kinda selfish. If people stopped procreating in the face of what the elites/governments do to them, the value of a human life would be so high the ruling elites would not be able to treat us the way they treat us.

Why does this still have less than 5k views? So fucking hopeless mankind.

Everyone share this video. This needs so many more views than it has. Nobody in America truly knows who their enemy is. They only see left or right-wing, they don't realize they are the wings of a blood thirsty vampire either way.

First bit of sense I've heard for years... Why was it the algorithm DIDNT send me here.? I keep getting sent rubbish by yootoob, I truly thank my girlfriend for finding this man's thoughts. She knows me better than the algorithm it seems. I listened to 2 of his essays and immediately signed up as a Patreon. Thank you sir. Keep talking.

Great video. Contrast the logical thinking, clear explanation of the problems and search for solutions from George Monbiot, with the meaningless drivel issuing from our prime minister’s (currently Johnson but hopefully not for long) mouth

Listening to George and people like James Oliver is the best antidote to the insane ramblings of the world's corrupted media machine.

So much to mull over and digest. Sharing this to Environmental Coffee HOuse. Thank You.

I will try to support you in whatever way I can

Insightful, frank and concise and very confronting for anyone who is remotely progressive.

Nicely shot. One camera. No stupid cutaways. Thanks. Nicely edited as well.

A great video. Totally accurate.

Excellent - so much food for thought in 17 minutes

George is brilliant!

Great way to illustrate how kicking government out of market control is anti-democratic because government is supposed to be the will of the people.

RIGHT ON THE MARK...Kudos!!!

Gets more relevant and crucial every day

George, Thankyou! I've just discovered you via Greta Thunberg. You impart crucial information with a rare honesty. I will share your wise words with all who shall listen!

The crowning achievement of the Chicago School was the Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman, who has since been discredited in much of his work. 'He theorized that there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment and argued that unemployment below this rate would cause inflation to accelerate. His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve's response to the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 [that bailed out the big banks and Wall Street with close to 30 Trillion dollars, but allowed Main Street to fail]. It's extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose. Friedman was not open enough to the possibility of market inefficiencies. Not all of his ideas relating to macroeconomics have entirely held up over the years and that too few people are willing to challenge them. Political scientist C.B. Macpherson disagreed with Friedman's historical assessment of economic freedom leading to political freedom, suggesting that political freedom actually gave way to economic freedom for property owning elites. He also challenged the notion that markets efficiently allocated resources and rejected Friedman's definition of liberty. Naomi Klein criticized Friedman's economic liberalism, identifying it with the principles that guided the economic restructuring that followed the military coups in countries such as Chile and Argentina. Based on their assessments of the extent to which what she describes as neoliberal policies contributed to income disparities and inequality, both Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky have suggested that the primary role of what they describe as neoliberalism was as an ideological cover for capital accumulation by multinational corporations.' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Good explanation When George sticks to his subject he is very good!!

Brilliant!

Fantastic!

Chrystal clarity and logic.

Can someone put up the subtitle please?

And always be able to recall your "leaders"!

This is an excellent explanation. One problem with it. When George talks about democracy, he seems to mean representative democracy. As we have seen in recent decades, representative democracy has major flaws and isn't democracy at all, if democracy means rule by the people. The fix to neoliberalism will be more than simply reverting to slightly different economics but the same representative democracy. Direct democracy in various forms will need to be part of the solutiom.

He has obviously read Hannah Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism".

Good discussion the only thing I have ever questioned your thoughts on was the war in Syria!

Very thought provoking

Very true. But I feel that every citizen who isn't working towards a solution against exploitation is a contributor. So theorising is motivating to hear. But ultimately what works is organising, uniting & confronting. In Indian local language we call " yatha praja, thatha raja" meaning "alike citizen, alike king". Neo liberalism is a decent word for the few beneficiaries. For an outcome of mafia work probably "ultra liberalism" or "super capitalism" may suit better for the victimised majority " This is becoming a new class system an imitation in each country and as predatory as the colonising powers of the last century.

Hayek's actual thoughts on democracy: Source: Friedrich A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. The condensed version of The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek as it appeared in the April 1945 edition of Reader’s Digest London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1999. In the democracies at present, many who sincerely hate all of Nazism’s manifestations are working for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny. Most of the people whose views influence developments are in some measure socialists. They believe that our economic life should be “consciously directed,” that we should substitute “economic planning” for the competitive system. Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for? Planning and power In order to achieve their ends the planners must create power-power over men wielded by other men-of a magnitude never before known. Their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires. Hence arises the clash between planning and democracy. Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed, but infinitely heightened. By uniting in the hands of some single body power formerly exercised independently by many, an amount of power is created infinitely greater than any that existed before, so much more far-reaching as almost to be different in kind. It is entirely fallacious to argue that the great power exercised by a central planning board would be no greater than the power collectively exercised by private boards of directors. There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess. To decentralize power is to reduce the absolute amount of power, and the competitive system is the only system designed to minimize the power exercised by man over man. Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work? In every real sense a badly paid unskilled workman in this country has more freedom to shape his life than many an employer in Germany or a much better paid engineer or manager in Russia. If he wants to change his job or the place where he lives, if he wants to profess certain views or spend his leisure in a particular way, he faces no absolute impediments. There are no dangers to bodily security and freedom that confine him by brute force to the task and environment to which a superior has assigned him. Our generation has forgotten that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. When all the means of production are vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of “society” as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us. In the hands of private individuals, what is called economic power can be an instrument of coercion, but it is never control over the whole life of a person. But when economic power is centralized as an instrument of political power it creates a degree of dependence scarcely distinguishable from slavery. It has been well said that, in a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation. Background to danger Individualism, in contrast to socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism, is based on the respect of Christianity for the individual man and the belief that it is desirable that men should be free to develop their own individual gifts and bents. This philosophy, first fully developed during the Renaissance, grew and spread into what we know as Western civilization. The general direction of social development was one of freeing the individual from the ties which bound him in feudal society. Perhaps the greatest result of this unchaining of individual energies was the marvelous growth of science. Only since industrial freedom opened the path to the free use of new knowledge, only since everything could be tried-if somebody could be found to back it at his own risk-has science made the great strides which in the last 150 years have changed the face of the world. The result of this growth surpassed all expectations. Wherever the barriers to the free exercise of human ingenuity were removed, man became rapidly able to satisfy ever-widening ranges of desire. By the beginning of the twentieth century the working man in the Western world had reached a degree of material comfort, security and personal independence which 100 years before had hardly seemed possible. The effect of this success was to create among men a new sense of power over their own fate, the belief in the unbounded possibilities of improving their own lot. What had been achieved came to be regarded as a secure and imperishable possession, acquired once and for all; and the rate of progress began to seem too slow. Moreover the principles which had made this progress possible came to be regarded as obstacles to speedier progress, impatiently to be brushed away. It might be said that the very success of liberalism became the cause of its decline. The liberal way of planning “Planning” owes its popularity largely to the fact that everybody desires, of course, that we should handle our common problems with as much foresight as possible. The dispute between the modern planners and the liberals is not on whether we ought to employ systematic thinking in planning our affairs. It is a dispute about what is the best way of so doing. The question is whether we should create conditions under which the knowledge and initiative of individuals are given the best scope so that they can plan most successfully; or whether we should direct and organize all economic activities according to a “blueprint”, that is, “consciously direct the resources of society to conform to the planners’ particular views of who should have what”. It is important not to confuse opposition against the latter kind of planning with a dogmatic laissez faire attitude. The liberal argument does not advocate leaving things just as they are; it favors making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts. It is based on the conviction that, where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other. It emphasizes that in order to make competition work beneficially a carefully thought-out legal framework is required, and that neither the past nor the existing legal rules are free from grave defects. Liberalism is opposed, however, to supplanting competition by inferior methods of guiding economic activity. And it regards competition as superior not only because in most circumstances it is the most efficient method known but because it is the only method which does not require the coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority. It dispenses with the need for “conscious social control” and gives individuals a chance to decide whether the prospects of a particular occupation are sufficient to compensate for the disadvantages connected with it. The successful use of competition does not preclude some types of government interference. For instance, to limit working hours, to require certain sanitary arrangements, to provide an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition. There are, too, certain fields where the system of competition is impracticable. For example, the harmful effects of deforestation or of the smoke of factories cannot be confined to the owner of the property in question. But the fact that we have to resort to direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function. To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies-these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity. This does not mean that it is possible to find some “middle way” between competition and central direction, though nothing seems at first more plausible, or is more likely to appeal to reasonable people. Mere common sense proves a treacherous guide in this field. Although competition can bear some mixture of regulation, it cannot be combined with planning to any extent we like without ceasing to operate as an effective guide to production. Both competition and central direction become poor and inefficient tools if they are incomplete, and a mixture of the two means that neither will work. Planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition, not by planning against competition. The planning against which all our criticism is directed is solely the planning against competition.

Great video

This is the type of content I have to find the time to translate to Spanish.

They always argue that it is our collective buying power which would regulate them, but then the people collectively don't have enough money to really sway them....

Brilliant! Any chance to have this interview with Spanish subtitles? Many people would appreciate it :)

Thoughts well expressed in my opinion 🎺

Big government and big business go hand-in-glove.

Does anybody know in which publication (and on which page) the FAO states that "we have 60 years of harvest left"?

More please.

Sounds like good old fashion robber barons and fascists to me. Nothing new, just called by a different name.

"In conversation with"- then why is the other side cut out? I don't like this trend in videos of interviews with thinkers and writers, where we only get the answers.

Monbiot is my new hero. Torchbearer to follow Chomsky

Interesting video, George. There are many narratives around Brexit. However, I find it difficult to reconcile your stance on neoliberalism with your comments on Brexit. Is Brexit in some way not democracy fighting back against neoliberalism?

This explains everything that is going on. Spread it far and wide.....also watch The Family on Netflix.

Forgive me. I'm not British, and I'm just learning about this George Monbiot now. I can't tell if he's in favour of Brexit, or not in favour of Brexit. Can someone tell me please?

Best things to do for nature : Cut your last tree, throwing some shade on your solar panels. Replace your lawn by cobbles, making solid ground for both your e-SUVs, your garage being overwhelmed by your e-bikes, e-saw, e-BBQ and your e-ego. Don't forget to finish it off with a bee hotel !

If you call out Friedrich Hayek then you should mention Milton Friedman too

Please read Andrew Yang’s book, “The War On Normal People”. I honestly believe it contains many of the answers we need to be pursuing at this moment.

Globalisation takes away democracy as it protects global elite from tax jurisdictions. Yet Europe hemoginy is a good thing. Sounds inconsistent to me. I agree with you on most of it, and that's the starting point 😊

If everyone would learn Modern Monetary Theory--we could cure this scourge immediately. MMT is the great unifying topic. We are monetarily sovereign, Federal taxes don't fund spending, we can never go broke. Pop over to the Deficit Owls channel and learn. Please.

Thank a lot, george..best wishes from indonesia

Why not accept Basic Attention Token?

Talk to any First Nations people about 'soil' and they will need to avoid slapping you 🤣 The disconnection of Western culture from the land, from each other and from ourselves is the wedge. This wedge is driven by consumerism and facilitated fear and grief avoidance. The other side of privilege is cowardice: the cowardice to admit that affluence has brought disaster. We ran out of time about 30 years ago. It is now only a case of how much longer we allow neoliberalism to continue. That is, how much worse we let climate disasters become. The great experiment of capitalism is now the zombie dragging us into the tomb. Vote for regulation. Buy locally. Reduce energy usage. Reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. Good luck.

Here is a compendium of "solutions" to environmental change. A lot is being proposed and done, but does all this activity address the scale of the "problem"? open-intelligence.co.uk/environmental-change-monitor/index.php?sch=2.4.2.1.4&scroll=330&page=1

revisiting the ideas on the wikipedia page of the conquest of bread for example, not to seem like a communist

People should start their local farms and co-ops.

We've no chance.

We messed everything up but can we fix it in time? I mean the planet earth?

Buy less and share more

ohhhh

Like Greta Thunberg, Monbiot eats a fully plant based diet and advocates for others to do the same for our environment. It is the single most effective way for each of us to minimize our environmental footprint.

You point about what's salient is well taken. This Wokism is a selection box of distractions which Torys can throw up to get out of a tricky situation. The Labour Party is unable to assail anything but micro issues. Or sociopolitical issues which are of little importance.

Big corporations often love regulation; excessive regulation wipes out smaller competitors. Only the big corps can afford to adhere to and deal with the regulations.

Brexit is totally different from Trump, the comparison doesn't go further than both being the only reaction to neo liberalism people from both nations could do within the confines of their respective democratic systems, Trump offered a self financing leader who whether true or not could perceivably act outside of corporate interests, which the Americans saw as the defining factor in military interventionism, Brexit was a direct result of erosion of democracy, the media over played the immigration issue, which in itself was seen as nothing more than exploitation of the job market, Islamic terrorism also sensibly played a big part, not the nonsense that is xenophobia and racism, flooding people in from war torn areas of the world after your own country has been complicit in bombing them is not only historically unheard of its also pretty stupid , Brexit was the first true stand against neo liberalism, which the EU is its biggest champion, the top stories in the brexit camp which I was a member were not brit centric, we were not championed by the likes of Boris Jonson or Nigel Farage, again this is media spin as Mr Monbiot says which is largely irrelevant trivia, people who voted out of the EU saw what was happening to referendum results in Greece and Spain, Ireland was also watched closely. this is an organisation that introduces legislation that serves multi nationals while dressing itself up as workers rights or environmental protection, the result of lobby group intervention and bribery of MEP's to pass rules and regulations that impede small less destructive businesses being able to survive in the monolithic EU market place, Brexit is a retraction from this, an EU that really did have a democratic base would not have seen a Brexit, that much is obvious, Instead this was a self serving expansionist EU with only the interests of the market at its core, Brexit should not be lumped in with Trump any further than the people's attempt to wrestle back control from Global corporate's and a neo liberal agenda, maybe the situation will be no better but at least it will be smaller and more manageable, power must stay in the hands of the people.

In a world of a plethora of conspiracy theories, George cuts through all that and simply tells it how it is! The 'soil issue'. I come from 'edge of fen' in the UK. The fens (which are basically the main source of the UK's vegetables) will eventually become barren due to syndicated agricultural policy and practice. (The peat fens are shrinking and the silt fens are becoming totally chemically dependent with the death of soil life) In my opinion there was only one true Messiah but this guy can certainly claim the right to the title of 'prophet in our own time'. [Who is a prophet? Someone who can assess the present (with reference to history), use their own BEST lights and look to the future, using discernment intellectually and practically.]

spot on absolutly excellent and clear, this is the same view ,I have, which is why we are in "new" 1930's the war is coming as they need a reset and that means many will die. MOst likely by voting for fascists

Walking hand in hands with the founders of the environment movement isn´t a problem then? Or is it just that you want the same thing but for different resons?

At 3:47 George says that banks, corporations and privatised public services too big to fail cant function in the real world because they're not subject to constraints people would like to put on them. Maybe I'm missing the point but I don't see how constraints and regulations put on corporate entities prescribe whether they can function or not. We see success and failure in both highly regulated and deregulated areas of the market all the time. Saying these are due to regulation or a lack of it sounds like a way of manipulating people and events in order to promote an anti-neoliberal agenda. Which is fine, but not really true.

Neoliberalism is dead, long live Open Source/Access Transparency.

VERSO THE AI ROBOT VERSES NUCLEUS THE SUPERHERO

the main problem of his conclusions is considering migrations as something unnatural. While Archeology shows otherwise. From that assertion, the conclusion of "local communities" is impossible without violence. And now it sounds a bit darker than what he intends.

they will blame a minorities and the foriegners...they always do.

I don't see anyone on this forum querying GB's prep school, public school, Oxbridge and Guardian background (though they'd be all over others with similar backgrounds). Like some of the commentators, George wants a huge controlling state presumably headed by somone like him to tell us what we should do... Big shout out to capitalsim for bringing 850 million chinese out of rank poverty in 30 years...

What the fuck was up with this camera operator?

Noice

Monsanto with have us all eating food created in a petri dish.total cancer ridden synthetics

Self-serving racket

George Monbiot is a present day hero alongside others like Russell Brand,Marianne Williamson, Dr Jordan Peterson, Jason Shon Bennett, David Icke, George Galloway, Roger Waters, Dr John Bergman [to new just a few]. The spiritual revolution has begun and is growing every single day. Re -Educate yourself and joint this beautiful revolution.

60 years of soil harvests LEFT...Catostrophy.

GM for PM

Your just putting a pretty face on narsisim. Pull the mask off and your just a hypocrite

Can you imagine being seated next to George at a party. Bloody hell I’d have to leave. I’d make some lame excuse about having to get back home to feed the dog. But that would better than having George bore me to death with his moaning all the time. George you need to lighten up a bit. Get out on your day off. Please.

No one that I am aware of would claim to be an advocate of the ideology this guy is defining. No one. It's certainly a complete misrepresentation of Hayek, who would have absolutely hated Trump and his economic policies (trade war, bail outs, immigration restrictions, etc.) based on everything he ever wrote. It's kind of like how a Scientologist might describe the profession of psychology-- claiming that what they really want is to use trickery to make people more neurotic and depressed in order to turn them into easily controlled zombies hooked on psychoactive drugs. If that were true, then everyone advocating it would have to be deliberately malevolent and there wouldn't actually be anything there. If one cannot separate their biased analysis of a thing from its very definition when attempting to explain it, then it's either a complete spook or they have lost the ability to look at the view objectively. It looks to me like what he's done is taken all the policy decisions that he is generally against, jumbled them together despite a lack of coherent framework, and slapped this derisive "neoliberal" label on them-- mostly for purposes of not having to confront the actual arguments from sincere advocates of some of those ideas. It's both intellectually lazy and dishonest. In that spirit, I propose that what he's advocating is "neosocialism", which is hereafter defined is a desire for the state to control all aspects of every person's life through a tyranny of the majority, where we are all constantly made to monitor one another for wrongthink, and that ideology leads to everything I don't like in the world. We need to stop this neosocialism.

We've no chance.