Why Did The Economy Collapse? A Lecture with Drawings

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 In the final issue of Alan Moore's groundbreaking comic Promethea, he includes the following text:

Pentagon studies in the 1980s demonstrated that comic strip narrative is still the best way of conveying understandable and retainable information. Words being the currency of our verbal "left" brain, and images that of our pre-verbal "right" brain, perhaps comic strip reading prompts both halves to work in unison?

I can't find that Pentagon study on the internet (and if you can, please let me know), but I'm enchanted with the idea. And this is just a preface for this animated augmentation of a talk academic David Harvey gave on the flaws of capitalism and the recent economic meltdown. Not only is the lecture interesting, but the drawings bring his words to life in a vivid way.

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6 comments

  • Comment Link Paul Duke Thursday, 05 May 2011 15:15 posted by Paul Duke

    bloody fantastic!

  • Comment Link David Boese Friday, 08 July 2011 12:45 posted by David Boese

    This is an excellent lecture and hits the nail on the head in every aspect of what's wrong with our economy. I'm 75 and have come to the conclusion that as a stand alone ideology neither Capitalism, nor Communism, nor socialism can be a sustainable economy. So, what we need to create is a new paradigm that marries the best of Capitalism and sound social policies and I think to some degree, I have created such a plan, which is contained in my blog "Apathy Begone-Activating Minds and Voices. We can't have any segment of our society to be all powerful. We need a balance of the various segments that make up our society!

  • Comment Link don Saturday, 09 July 2011 04:26 posted by don

    The Financial Party of Canada offers a radically different approach to fixing the instability of capitalism. See for yourself... http://www.financialParty.ca

  • Comment Link j. smith Saturday, 09 July 2011 18:43 posted by j. smith

    Why can't i find this article ~
    Why Did The Economy Collapse? A Lecture with Drawings [by David Harvey],
    "Written by TJ Dawe" ~
    when i
    > search the beams & struts website,
    > including bits & pieces,
    > and even when i search on tj dawe's
    pages, other than using the specific link for it i received in a posting,
    bits-a-pieces/item/200-comic-strip-economic-lecture,
    (> and get a ''forbidden'' message when i use the entire link in the b&s search bar)
    ?????

  • Comment Link TJ Dawe Monday, 11 July 2011 22:30 posted by TJ Dawe

    J Smith - I can't say why you can't get on the article, but I'm further confused by how you could leave a comment and not get to the article.

    In any case, the article is extremely short. It's really just an intro to this piece you can find on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

    I'm also curious to know why this article is getting play, after sitting in the archives for a while. anyone?

  • Comment Link David Boese Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:44 posted by David Boese

    I've commented before but left out the URL of my blog "Apathy Begone-Activating Minds and Voices.

    http://boeseblog.wordpress.com/

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