Clean Slate: New Ideas for Justice & Democracy

About Clean Slate: New Ideas for Justice & Democracy

Dougald Lamont. Understanding and explaining the world in order to make it a better, freer and more democratic place. dougaldlamont.substack.com (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/s/clean-slate-new-ideas-for-justice?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Dougald Lamont

Category

government · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Oct 2023

Latest episode

6 Nov 2025

Latest episodes

13 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Nov 2025

   All Money is a Legal Bond

   This is the audio version - you can read the original text here: -30- Dougald Lamont’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   28 Dec 2024

   Episode 13: Everything Sucks Because No One Knows What They Are Doing

   For 50 years, governments have been doing exactly what conservatives want The reason the economy and the world are so incredibly messed up, and that people are so angry, and divided and desperate, and that nothing seems to change no matter who gets elected is not because governments haven’t listened to neoclassical rules, it’s because they have. The idea that the problem with the economy is the government’s fault for spending too much ignores the fact that for 50 f*****g years, politicians havebeen doing exactly what businesses, and conservative voters have been asking them to do. Governments have cut taxes. Governments have cut spending. Governments have reduced investments in infrastructure. Governments have eliminated regulations and laws. Governments have privatized and sold off government owned businesses, services. Governments have enacted austerity and laid off government workers. Economic decisions have been handed off to the private sector at the request of the private sector. Most governments did abandon Keynesian economics. Instead of having elected governments run deficits to stimulate the economy, independent central banks were supposed to manage the economy with interest rates instead. The same people who clamour for freedom of expression and decry government overreach have called for, and succeeded, in having Keynesian economics outlawed. Laws punishing politicians who don’t balance budgets have been passed. Constitutional balanced budget amendments have been proposed. In the Maastricht Treaty that created EU, Keynesian economics are outlawed. How libertarian! What freedom! The promise - the explicit promise - of economic propagandists like Milton Friedman - was that this would result in greater freedom and prosperity for all. Instead, we have the worst inequality and greatest concentration of wealth in history. There are housing and cost-of-living crises around the world. The majority people are making the same as they were years or decades ago, and people are everywhere deep, deep in debt. We are not working and investing for growth or to build savings. We are working and investing to finance the continually growing debt that underpins the entire economy. Every single one of these measures has driven greater and greater concentrations of wealth and income, mergers and acquisitions and less competition, and have fuelled an affordability crisis in real estate around the world. Because if we treat the last 50 years as a big economic and political experiment where Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas and some other Chicago Boys all convinced us to try doing it their way, that is what has been happening for the last 50 years. That is why we’re where we all are, right now. Here are some of the links SNL: Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   13 Dec 2024

   If Modern Monetary Theory is wrong, why is it so much better at predicting the economy - and economic disaster?

   Dougald Lamont explores why proponents of Modern Monetary Theory have successfully predicted economic crises, despite superficial criticisms from neoclassical economists who struggle to understand its fundamental differences.

4. 

   7 Dec 2024

   Far-right extremism is rising because Canada, the U.S., UK & Europe are making the same mistakes as Social Democrats in Germany after 1929

   Dougald Lamont, a Canadian politician and Substack author, examines how societal splintering and economic shocks are fueling the rise of far-right extremism in Western nations.

5. 

   13 Oct 2024

   VIDEO: The Truth of Residential Schools is Still Being Denied

   I’ve done a video about Residential Schools and Residential School denialism, because it's becoming a bigger issue. Angus Reid, who's a pollster, ended up leaving Twitter, talking about churches being burned and about claims around Residential schools. And it's really important because the sad - the really tragic part about this is that we're not actually fighting about history. The history is actually not in question. In, 1907 Dr. Peter Bryce, Canada’s First Chief Medical Officer issued a report detailed the fact that First Nations students at Residential schools were dying in appalling numbers of Tuberculosis, when the deaths could be prevented. He wrote: “I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in our residential schools to spread infectious diseases […] The mortality rate in the schools often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime.” There's still more to be discovered, but when you actually look at the records, at people's letters, the stuff that was compiled in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there's no question, that Residential schools were not well-intended, that they were horribly run, that thousands of children died. And it was because of neglect. Uou have people who you might call the usual suspects on the right have been playing down and minimizing the harms of Residential schools. And these articles are being pushed out by Right-wing think-tanks. The Fraser Institute has published them, media outlets like True North. And they're not backed up by facts. It's really, really distressing because the reality is we are nowhere close to accepting the history of how First Nations and Indigenous people were treated in the past, or how they continue to be treated right now in Canada. Indigenous children being taken by child and family services in Canada is every bit the catastrophe that Residential schools were. It's being completely ignored, as if it never happened. And as if it is not happening when thousands and thousands of First Nations and Indigenous children have been seized over decades, taken from their families, and it's still happening now. And it is almost impossible to express the damage that's happened. Just this year, there was a family and children in CFS who died, who were murdered. There have been hundreds of deaths in the last 20 years in Manitoba. Missing and murdered women and girls and two-spirit are overwhelmingly people who were in CFS systems. Manitoba has twice the national incarceration rate, and many of them were in CFS. The vast majority of our prison population in Manitoba is Indigenous. And there is a basically a pipeline CFS to prison because of the way the entire system has been structured and never properly reformed since the 1950s. The Manitoba government doubled the number of children they were taking from First Nations families, from 5500, in about 2005 to 11,000 just a few years later. And then they also took the federal funding that was intended for those children. The apology for that just happened this week. And no one, no person has ever been named as being responsible for any of it, for any of it. And this is ongoing. So part of the problem with Residential school denialism is that people are denying what really happened in the past and fighting over that, while also completely ignoring everything that's happening right now. Images: Thompson Ferrier * 30 Thanks for reading Dougald Lamont’s Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it. Dougald Lamont’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

6. 

   25 Apr 2024

   It’s the Private Economy that’s Broken, not the Federal Government

   Read the original post here: https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/publish/post/143346997 (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/publish/post/143346997) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

7. 

   30 Nov 2023

   Prices aren't just about supply and demand. They're about control over supply and demand

   Things don’t have prices, people do. When we buy something : we are paying people to release it to us.It's easy enough to chalk up problems to and prices to "supply and demand" - when the actual interaction between buyer and seller has one more, really important dimension: control. Prices are affected by how much control over supply, and control over demand that each side has. To show the difference - we look at the real-world famous case of the economy of a Prisoner of War Camp. There, prices moved up and down smoothly - because no one had control. In contrast, there are people who can take such large stakes, or afford to bear such great losses, that that can take over whole markets. This is important - critically important - because while people may assume that price hikes are due to supply shortages - they may be due to something else entirely - price gouging, monopolies, oligopolies, and profiteering. Here's the link to Radford's original article. https://my.vanderbilt.edu/robertdriskill/files/2011/08/POWCampRadford.pdf (https://my.vanderbilt.edu/robertdriskill/files/2011/08/POWCampRadford.pdf) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

8. 

   9 Nov 2023

   Truth, lies, and understanding tools of mass deception

   Larry Wilmore is a complete genius. I like him for lots of reasons - he is a truly brilliant and hilarious award-winning writer, producer, comedian (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0932831/) He has some of the most incredible insights you have ever heard into communication, and politics. On Larry’s podcast - Black on the Air - from January 16, 2021 - just ten days after the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, he helped explain communications and even political propaganda in a way that was incredibly powerful and perceptive, based on insights derived from the deliberate deception that is crafted as part of being a stage magician. It helped me - as someone who has been in politics and dealt with communications for a long time - gain incredible new insight into how we are deceived - between lies, truth - and something more insidious - paltering. Here's Larry Wilmore's webpage - http://thelarrywilmore.com (http://thelarrywilmore.com) Here's the link to his original podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/sam-pollard-on-mlk-fbi/id1234429850?i=1000505504716 (https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/sam-pollard-on-mlk-fbi/id1234429850?i=1000505504716) Here's his appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDFt3BL7FA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDFt3BL7FA) Here's the link to the book, Performing Deception https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9781800646902/brian-rappert/performing-deception?blnBKM=1 (https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9781800646902/brian-rappert/performing-deception?blnBKM=1) The 90's Book of Lists https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Almanac-Presents-Book-Lists/dp/0316920797 (https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Almanac-Presents-Book-Lists/dp/0316920797) From Open Culture: How Propaganda uses lies to erode all truth and morality - https://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-how-propaganda-uses-lies-to-erode-all-truth-morality.html (https://www.openculture.com/2017/01/hannah-arendt-explains-how-propaganda-uses-lies-to-erode-all-truth-morality.html) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

9. 

   8 Nov 2023

   Better Understanding Modern Monetary Theory

   Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

10. 

    7 Nov 2023

    How the Cure for Scurvy was Lost, then Found

    Some years ago, I stumbled across a post by a man named Maciej Ceglowski, where he told the story of how the world forgot the cure to a deadly disease (https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm). Ceglowski was re-reading The Worst Journey in the World, the account of Robert Falcon Scott’s failed 1911 expedition to the South Pole. You can read Ceglowski's excellent post here: https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm (https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm) Learning the right lessons has always been the challenge of all human knowledge, and especially of scientific endeavour. We can defy reason, and gravity, but only for so long. As was once said “you can drive nature out with a pitchfork - it always comes back in.” Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

11. 

    31 Oct 2023

    The History of Hyperinflation in Germany after WWI is Dangerously Wrong. Here's Why That Matters.

    The hyperinflation in Germany is one of the best known such episodes in history. To give an indication of the level of inflation, a loaf of bread that cost 160 marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 (200 billion) marks a year later. Many economists, historians and news articles will seek to explain the dangers of hyperinflation by citing the German government, but the history is almost entirely wrong. The Nazis did not come to power until more than half a decade after the hyperinflation had come to an end. The explosion in money-printing in Germany in 1922 and 1923 was not by the government at all. https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/contributions/the-economic-and-currency-reform-of-1948-the-basis-for-stable-money-915302 (https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/contributions/the-economic-and-currency-reform-of-1948-the-basis-for-stable-money-915302) Check out Mark Blyth's incredible book "Austerity - History of a Dangerous Idea". A must-read. https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9780199389445/mark-blyth/austerity?blnBKM=1 (https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9780199389445/mark-blyth/austerity?blnBKM=1) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

12. 

    25 Oct 2023

    The Only Time Inequality Ever Got Better

    “The middle-class society I grew up in didn’t evolve gradually or automatically. It was created, in a remarkably short period of time, by FDR and the New Deal. As the chart shows, income inequality declined drastically from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, with the rich losing ground while working Americans saw unprecedented gains. Economic historians call what happened the Great Compression, and it’s a seminal episode in American history.” How it happened is even more remarkable - during a period of scarcity, inflation, recycling, rationing, regulation and high government spending had the result of marking the only major decrease in inequality in  U.S. history, with people making more money and saving much more. What’s more, trade was severely disrupted (to say the least) as supply lines to countries who supplied raw materials as well as manufactured goods were cut off, and there was no free movement of people across borders. The result was the creation of the middle class - and it happened in Canada, too. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies) https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9780143117636/ellen-ruppel-shell/cheap?blnBKM=1 (https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9780143117636/ellen-ruppel-shell/cheap?blnBKM=1) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

13. 

    20 Oct 2023

    The Single Most Important Thing We Can do to Address Canada’s Economic Challenges

    Welcome to our first podcast! Sorry about any issues with audio quality. This is the audio version of our first printed article - The Single Most Important Thing We Can do to Address Canada’s Economic Challenges, in podcast format for your convenience. While some economic indicators in Canada are ripping higher, the struggles Canadians are facing are undeniable, and the current policies of the Bank of Canada massively adding stress to Canadian businesses and families alike, in the name of fighting inflation. The Bank of Canada is punishing Canadian borrowers who are being crushed by inflation that’s being driven by international factors like energy and supply chains, as well as by an asset bubble and a domestic debt crisis here in Canada.One of the first steps we need to take to deal with the issue is to immediately reform of the Bank of Canada’s monetary policy, because the current practice of cranking interest rates up and down is not only ineffective, it is actively harmful.It's this policy - more than two decades worth - that is driving Canada's economic turmoil and housing crisis. Unwinding it is a massive challenge - but it starts with taking White's advice, and having central banks change their monetary policy. Here's William White's Paper from August, 2023: https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP_210-White-Monetary-Policy.pdf (https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP_210-White-Monetary-Policy.pdf) Here's Edward Chancellor, in 2022, saying «It Will Turn Out to be Largely Impossible to Normalize Interest Rates Without Collapsing the Economy» https://themarket.ch/interview/edward-chancellor-central-banks-delayed-the-day-of-reckoning-ld.7051 (https://themarket.ch/interview/edward-chancellor-central-banks-delayed-the-day-of-reckoning-ld.7051) Here's the story of how William White predicted the Global Financial Crisis - and was ignored. https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-man-nobody-wanted-to-hear-global-banking-economist-warned-of-coming-crisis-a-635051.html (https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-man-nobody-wanted-to-hear-global-banking-economist-warned-of-coming-crisis-a-635051.html)Here's Paul Romer's blistering critique of macroeconomics from 2016 https://paulromer.net/the-trouble-with-macro/WP-Trouble.pdf (https://paulromer.net/the-trouble-with-macro/WP-Trouble.pdf) Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe (https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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