Commanding Heights - Battle for the World Economy: The Battle of Ideas/The Agony of Reform/The New Rules of the Game [DVD] [2002] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

When I first heard of this documentary it piqued my interest that such an ambitious and timely program existed. A quick background on me - I recently returned (2 months ago) from 7 months straight of traveling (Loop around Australia, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Philippines, Palau, Hong Kong, Qatar, UAE, London/Oxford) which was a follow up to a 3 month road trip around most of the US and 6 weeks in South America and 2 weeks in China. I'm still going! One of my travel themes has been to visit where things are made or processed, and where they come from - a critical aspect of globalization. From the tea plantations in Sri Lanka to the mixing & packaging of that tea from Sri Lanka and 50+ other countries for Celestial Seasonings in Boulder, CO, USA (Did you know there is only 1 tea plantation in the US? And they went bankrupt recently). Or the Silicon Valley of India - Bangalore - as shown in the movie, or strip coal mining in Gilette, Wyoming, the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, or the natural gas reserve rich deserts of Qatar, etc..

Like any documentary or book there is a perspective. The show does a good job of framing the debate. It covers the perspectives of many different influential individuals and some lay people - and in many different countries to boot - lending an air of authority - which is fine as an explanation for the documentary's position. It does provide coverage to both positives and negatives.

However, my sense is that the show is far too positive about what unrestrained globalization will bring us. Not about the process to get to a "free" market - as shown in the "Agony of Reform" episode, but about the side effects to our lives and the world in which a large portion of the world lives in.

Also what is a "free" market? There is no such thing. The movie seems to keep repeating it only in reference to price and wage controls (From what I recall), but these can be controlled in other manners. Subsidies galore in the USA and other countries both direct and indirect will testify to that.

There are certainly other issues it does not address or go deep enough into and/or issues that are overly simplified. Perhaps that will be the work of another individual to reveal - me?

The #1 issue to me that the show does not talk more about or at all is the continuing disconnect between the items we consume and where the resources it takes to build those items/services come from and the impact it has on those places. Only lightly touched upon in the final episode. Realistically - the vast majority of people don't care about what they cannot / have not seen (Thus the importance of travel). Let alone understand how a series of events in a far away place will impact their lives. We can't get something for nothing. Globalization gives that impression. Like magic. The further away we are from production - the less we see the side effects. Like pollution clouds from runaway unregulated growth and auto sales in China (Go to Beijing for one) reaching distant shores - US, among a small list of many.

Don't get me wrong - the idea of globalizatoin improving our lives is true - but only to a certain point. Any idea taken to its extreme is usually wrong.

In contrast to this latter point might be how Singapore has restricted the unbridled usage of cars by putting a heavy import tax on them and designing cities in an intelligent way rather than haphazard (Like many American towns). As Singapore is profiled in the show as a success story - is this tax against the idea of a "free" market? Or is it a conscious choice to improve the quality of life and form it a certain way.

In summary, Commanding Heights - both the PBS website and video is a good basis for ongoing discussion. The only question will be then is whether the people / you who watch it will question it or take it as gospel. It is easy to get caught up and distort our vision in the momentum of thinking a certain way. All of us - rich, poor, middle, smart, educated, not educated, etc.. can be conditioned to believe anything. What's that story about De Beers of South Africa and the diamond trade again?

The truth and our behaviors are easily distorted to the unquestioning mind.

I *highly* recommend Waste Land: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape by Davis Hanson (On Amazon) a book that shows aerial and ground level photos of 75+ US EPA Superfund sites, coal mining in Montana, and US Minuteman missle sites. You will discover that 'wastelands', as depicted in Commanding Heights of the oil industry mess and uncleaned up contamination in Russia, is far from unique to Communism. Rather than being unique in this aspect, unrestrained capitalism looks very much the same.

Also the small and easy to read - Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things by John Ryan and Alan Durning to give you an idea of the extent of globalization with everyday products you use.

For the video minded I *HIGHLY* recommend these DVDs - Life and Debt (Jamaica), Charcoal People (Brazil-cars-rainforest), Orwell Rolls in His Grave (Global media), End of Suburbia (Peak oil), and National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth and Taboo Season One and Two.

Do you remember being caught by surprise and totally baffled, way back in November 1999, upon seeing "Battle for Seattle" on CNN? You remember, that time all those protesters wreaked havoc on the World Trade Organization meeting?

Do you remember asking yourself what all those kids were so angry about, and what the WTO and the World Bank were really up to? In short, suddenly needing to catch up on all the stuff you had been missing?

Well, if you've always wanted clear explanations of these issues, you ain't gonna get them from this DVD set.

...not that it's not worth watching or buying. There is a lot in it that you will probably find interesting and informative.

Take, for example, the first DVD, which largely recounts the theoretical divisions between the competing economic philosophies of von Hayek and Keynes. This part of the series is very well-done and lays out complicated ideas in a super-clear visual way.

However, as the series unfolds, it becomes obvious that it is not living up to its early promise, while all the time hinting (as such documentaries are wont to do) that full revelation lies just around the corner.

For example, the first disk, as I say, does a swell job delineating the differences between Hayek's and Keynes's philosophies. However, although the narration makes it clear that toward the end of the century, Hayek's theories were finally coming into their own, they never really explain why.

They explain Hayek's theories as, essentially, that government should avoid vigorous taxing/spending policies, as this imperils our freedom. Fine.

But later, when his theories have gained the ascendancy, we're left to wonder why. How exactly were supply-sideism and Reaganomics endangering our freedom? Despite the slick images, you will find the discussion behind them, if you carefully chart it through the 3 disks, to be vapid and incoherent.

But the images are slick, that's for sure. They obviously spent a lot of money here and went through a lot of trouble to get even minor shots just right.

But when it comes to explaining globalism, I have to say this series doesn't do such a swell job. I got a lot out of watching the series, but not because of its discussion of that topic.

Take the Seattle thing. All we see is some footage of protesters making trouble, and the indignant WTO officials claiming they've got them all wrong. Meanwhile the narrator blandly describes what we're seeing on the screen.

How hard would it have been for the filmmakers to get some activists to talk to them and inquire, "Why are you doing this? What's you're argument? How exactly do you think the WTO is ruining the world?"

Similarly, they could have gotten WTO officials to sit down and articulate precisely how it was that they were saving the world, and how all the assertions of the masked hordes outside were baseless and counterproductive.

But at no point does the narration ever get this informative.

Instead, all we are told is that globalism is controversial. Duh. At no point is either side invited to side down and really explain their position at length. So all the viewer gets, essentially, is some cool riot footage.

So whether you are with the protestors, the WTO, or in the middle, you will be disappointed by the uselessness of the attendant "discussion." Like I say, if you're really looking for some solid information on why globalism is such a thorny issue (rather than just being told it's a thorny issue), you won't get it here. By about the middle of the third disk, it's become clear that the writers really dropped the ball on what could have been an awesome and mind-bending series.

Instead, this series has all the trappings of excellence, without the real pearl at the bottom.

However, if you're an economics teacher, you should probably get this series anyways. There are, despite what I say, many strengths (the segment with DeSoto springs to mind). Besides, how many entertaining (and, with the abovestated reservations, generally well-done) economics videos do you know of?

And I can't believe all the famous and important people the filmmakers got to speak on film! Holy guacamole!

For those who want an introduction to international economics and globalization, this is the thing to see. I agree with what the Washington Post said - "No more important program for making sense of our life and times has been seen in at least a decade." It made me want to be an economist.

In the first segment, it covers the development of economic theory through Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman, and the historic solutions and events between the war of 1914 and the 1970s, ending with the change of tack that accompanied Reagan and Thatcher's elections. In the second, it follows the "agony of reform" - that is, the paths taken by many states to transition from planned economies to market economies, following the cases of Russia, Poland, Chile, and Bolivia. The last segment follows the contemporary problems and methods of the global economy, with particular focus on crisis: mainly, the 1998 Asian Economic Crisis.

It is important to remember that this documentary is about economics, and that its concern is about the quality and quantity of wealth generated rather than externalities (the environment, &c.) Taken in this context, I think that it does extremely well: anyone who knows at least a little will leave the show literate in global economics. It does have a certain pro-globalization stint to it, though I hardly find that it is outright dismissive of globalization's criticisms: the second half of the third segment is entirely about arguments against globalization, and the first half of that segment is entirely about the crises that have rocked the global economy. And, after all, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Clinton are two of their biggest commentators, who are at least pragmatic globalists (If the writers favor any viewpoint, it's Clinton and Sachs'). That said, I think that this is probably the least biased (or, most centrist, depending on your point of view) documentary on globalization in existence - the others you'll find will almost without exception skew more than this one will. Not to mention that its cast of commentators and the ability of its filmmakers are excellent, and something that's normally very dry is made really entertaining.

There are some things that it probably does leave out more: it doesn't give the criticisms of the IMF and World Bank really, particularly those that come from the right and business, which is somewhat peculiar. This might be because of center-left bias (think Bill Clinton) that rather likes these multilateral institutions, or because they just ran out of time, which seems pretty likely - they had to cram into the two hours that those issues would make sense in information about three global crises, the methods of modern international finance, two meetings of the WTO, and Hernando de Soto.

The other thing they somewhat miss is what happened to Bolivia, Argentina and some of the other Latin American countries "after" globalization who ended up trashed by economic currents. Part of this is because many of these events happened or came to be examined after the series aired, but I think that in their search for an emblematic case they found a pretty good one: the case of Thailand, which was one fo those countries that got "trashed" in 1998 - they provide a particularly stirring personal anecdote of one businessman who lost everything in the crisis on real estate, and is now working his way back up to his dreams as a street vendor. The thing is that they don't link this to Thailand's development as a globalizing economy (that is, Thailand isn't covered in section 2.) so we don't make the intuitive connection between globalization and increased economic risk.

The third thing that concerns me is that they did not cover the "moderate" paths to globalization experienced in France, Ukraine and Germany, or the successful totalitarian export economies of South Korea or Thailand. Again, I think this is because they ran out of time: the emblems of Chile and India almost get at these ideas, and the importantly but not strikingly different paths taken by the countries I listed were close enough that the viewer could infer the important insights. I suppose I'll have to read the book to see if that covers those alternate paths any better.

That's my take on the program's shortcomings - I think that they faced the problem that they could either cover all subjects, remain aloof from any accusations of bias, but say really nothing about anything, or they could (as they did) stab deeply at a number of emblematic cases and avoid some things that they saw as low-priority. This of course came at cost, but by far I think that this is something that everyone should see - I think they should show it to students, as they'd certainly leave knowing a thing or two about the founders of modern economics and how foreign exchange works. Hell, they might even know what short selling is...

No one having watched this film will leave without having learned something new and important about global economics.