Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Castle, David Ogden Stiers, Milton Friedman, Stephen G. Breyer, Tony BennBrand: Public Broadcasting Service
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 360 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: PBS
Movie Reviews of Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
Movie Review: Dissing Marx for Friedman
Summary: 5 Stars
I took a look at the first DVD in this series after reading Malcolm Gladwell's books, Harford's "The Undercover Economist","Freakonomics", and "The Long Tail". I didn't expect too much, then ended up devouring all six hours.
My education about economics is almost entirely summarized by the books above, so as an overview of economic history, I found this series to be terrific. As a three disc, six hour long public televsion documentary, the series is very comprehensive in the one hundred or so years it covers. Considering that I slept through my one college economics class, I was also surprised to find it entertaining with its "battle of ideas" take on economics and its demonstrations of the success and failure of many nations under many economic systems. I don't think it was produced to accomodate the political agenda of everyone watching it; six hours was quite enough.
Because PBS produced "The Commanding Heights", I honestly expected it to be a six hour screed on the evils of Walmart and foreign labor. It was actually quite the opposite; a demonstration of how free, competitive markets with very limited regulation provide the best overall economic conditions while government controlled markets lead to empty stores and bread lines. Mixed economies work only as short term solutions to the booms and busts of completely unregulated free compeitition. Not really "laissez faire" economics, but very discriminative use of government regulation create the best economic conditions--"Hold On Loosely" economics, maybe. Very loosely, probably. That was the whole series in a nutshell to me.
The series also presents an interesting view of how world leadership works in a way you'll never see in a presidential documentary or on the six o'clock news. When your decisions affect hundreds of millions, you have to use the best ideas, presented by the best minds and be careful to not have your decision swayed by dogmatic screamers who only point out problems, but never present well planned solutions. However, the screamers are essential. Leadership decisions are far from always being correct.
On disc 3, When one of the attendees of the WTO conference was asked where he would have been 25 years earlier, he answered that he'd be outside protesting. Now, he felt the real solutions were inside. A labor leader interviewed said that it wasn't the job of the protesters to have solutions, but to check power by letting the failings of power be known. Three cheers for both of those answers I think. It is the role of leaders to come up with the best plan they think possible and for the public to let their dissatisfaction be known via their right to protest. I see Thomas Jefferson loving the whole idea.
There are interesting stories told in the documentary: How Milton Friedman and professors at the Chicago School of Economics were recruited around the world to have their ideas implemented to save national economies; How economists were called in to help win a Polish revolution; how Margaret Thacher took out Friedrich Von Hayek's book on free market economies out in a meeting and tossed it on the table; how Von Hayek had to wait until his old age until his theories were embraced; how Richard Nixon and other conservatives abandoned their posts on free market economics and watched things get worse.
I also learned that one of the problems of free trade (other than the exportation of domestic jobs) is not so much the low wages paid in foreign countries, but how many of these countries don't grant their citizens property rights, so even if their overall conditions improve, they can never prosper because they can't really make a claim to anything they own. It seems that their could definitely be some simple policy decisions made there that would improve things. One has to wonder why they are not being made.
Summary of Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy confronts head-on Americans' critical concerns about the new interconnected world. Based on the best-selling book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, this groundbreaking series explores our changing world?the great debate over globalization and the future of our society.Commanding Heights reunites the team that created The Prize? award-winning producer William Cran (From Jesus to Christ) and Daniel Yergin?and is the first in-depth documentary to tell the inside story of our new global economy and what it means for individuals around the world. Filmed on five continents, the powerful narrative combines stunning film footage with dramatic stories and extraordinary interviews with world leaders and thinkers from twenty different countries, including: Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, Mexican President Vicente Fox, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Singapore?s Lee Kuan Yew, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and President George W. Bush's Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsey.
Commanding Heights dramatically captures the issues that have defined the wealth and fate of nations and shows how the battle over the world economy will shape our lives in the twenty-first century.
Special DVD Features Include: ? Access to the Commanding Heights Web site, including: ? An exclusive time map, which provides an interactive atlas of economic history ? Comprehensive transcripts from on-camera interviews, and biographies of the people who played significant roles in the development of the modern global market ? An online teacher?s guide that provides suggestions for applications of the Web site in classroom instruction ? An excerpt from the companion book to the series ? A complete list of interview subjects included in the series ? Chapter breaks ? English audiotrack and subtitles ? On three DVD5 discs.
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