Economist Joseph Stiglitz on Pro-Palestine campus protests, Trump and rethinking freedom
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is one of the most influential economists in the world, having advised multiple Democratic Presidents of the US and the World Bank, where he worked as Chief Economist and senior Vice President.
His latest book, called “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society,” argues that the economic right’s concept of “freedom” doesn’t take into account the necessary trade-offs, that one person’s freedom often comes at the expense of another’s. And that “free” - unregulated - markets, far from promoting growth and enterprise, in fact lessen economic opportunities for majorities and syphon wealth from the many to the few.
Stiglitz, now 81, is a Professor at Columbia University in New York, where freedom of speech and the right to protest have been making headlines in recent weeks, with hundreds of pro-Palestinian student protesters occupying the campus and clashing with police. The movement has now spread from the US, and encampments around the world are being launched, where the common demand is asking universities to divest and disclose their financial support of the war in Gaza.
In this episode of Ways to Change the World, economist Joseph Stiglitz tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy why more government intervention is desirable, whether campus protests in the US are going “over the line” and why stalling living standards “create a fertile field” for demagogues like Donald Trump.
Produced by Shaheen Sattar and Silvia Maresca
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the freedom to protest comes in conflict with the freedom to learn of other students. |
| 0:06.0 | If you occupy a building. |
| 0:07.0 | There's a conflict of those freedoms. |
| 0:09.0 | Young people sometimes go over the line. that's part of youth and we ought to be at the same time forgiving, |
| 0:19.5 | but I also think it's important for them to learn to respect others. |
| 0:23.7 | Hello and welcome to ways to change the world, the podcast about big ideas and the |
| 0:32.3 | events that have helped shape them. |
| 0:33.7 | I'm Christian Giro Murphy and my guest this week is one of the most influential |
| 0:38.0 | economists in the world. Joseph Stiglitz was chairman of the Council of Economic |
| 0:42.4 | Advisors to US President Bill Clinton |
| 0:44.8 | and chief economist at the World Bank before being awarded the Nobel Prize. |
| 0:49.2 | His latest book is called The Road to Freedom. |
| 0:52.1 | It explores what's gone wrong with the dominant ideology |
| 0:55.0 | of free markets, what he terms neoliberalism. It is the rebuttal to two other Nobel Prize-winning |
| 1:01.4 | economists of the 20th century who've become the gods of right-wing |
| 1:05.0 | free market deregulators, Hayek and Friedman. |
| 1:08.5 | The road to freedom is of course the counterpoint to Hayek's road to serfdom and it argues a good society |
| 1:15.1 | can be created through what he calls progressive capitalism. Professor Stiglitz is |
| 1:20.0 | now based at Columbia University in New York where freedom of speech and the |
| 1:23.7 | right of protest has also been making news in recent weeks. Thank you very much |
| 1:28.0 | for joining this. Nice to be here. We'll get to freedom of speech and protest in |
| 1:31.6 | a moment but you've've got some big ideas which take on the |
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