Before You Watch

VIDEO/ESSAY SEQUENCE

In light of the fact that market based economies are the basis of development, and the realm within which most architects work, most students are unaware of the basis of economic terminologies and decision making which predicates life-cycle analysis. The PBS series “Commanding Heights” presents the basics of economic history and the social equity impacts of market based economies from the 20^th Century through the Bush Administration in an engaging and accessible way. 3-2 hr episodes review economic and world history from 1890 through 9/11/2001 discussing the impacts of central planning, inflation, market economies, and globalization. Each Chapter of each episode, with additional informational content can be viewed online at the websites listed below.

Episode 1 (2 hrs) “The Battle of Ideas” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfRTpoYpHfw

Further information and transcripts for each episode can be found at the WBGH website for the series

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/educators/ed_synopsis.html

Chapters 1-11 (Week 1)

Chapters 12-19 (Week 2)

“A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack .... The year is 1914.

Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world's economic order.

Two individuals emerge whose ideas, shaped by very different experiences, will inform this debate and carry it forward. One is a brilliant, unconventional Englishman named John Maynard Keynes. The other is an outspoken émigré from ravaged Austria, Friedrich von Hayek.

But a worldwide depression holds the capitalist nations in its grip. In opposition to both Keynes and Hayek stand not only Hitler's Third Reich but Stalin's Soviet Union, schooled in the communist ideologies of Marx and Lenin and bent on obliterating the capitalist system altogether.

For more than half a century the battle of ideas will rage. From the totalitarian socialist systems to the fascist states, from the independent nations of the developing world to the mixed economies of Europe, and the regulated capitalism of the United States, government planning will gradually take over the commanding heights.

But in the 1970s, with Keynesian theory at its height and communism fully entrenched, economic stagnation sets in on all sides. When a British grocer's daughter and a former Hollywood actor become heads of state, they join forces around the ideas of Hayek, and new political and economic policies begin to transform the world.”