Cultural Capital and Curriculum Remixing

Week 1: Theme - Capitalism (Teacher text: Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations) My Text: The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorcese, 2014) How this relates to the theme? So this film is all about the excess of capitalism and one man's desire to exploit the system. Although everything he does is illegal, Jordan Belfort constantly enjoys success after success and enjoys the best of what America has to offer. This shows how Adam Smith's ideas around 'The Invisible Hand' don't necesarily work when applied in such a crazed and self obsessed way. If people act in their own self interest so much that they do so to the detriment of others and they exploit holes in the system then the economic system does not work in the interest of everybody. Jordan Belfort became extremely rich but also ripped off many people in the process, this is something the film rarely focuses on and many of the economic points in the film are kept in the sidelines, instead the director...

Week 1 - Theme: Capitalism (Economics) Teacher Text:  Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1776) You can read the full text here http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html The Invisible Hand The core of Smith's thesis was that man's natural tendency toward self-interest - in modern terms, looking out for No.1 - results in prosperity. By giving everyone freedom to produce and exchange goods as they pleased (free trade) and opening all markets to competition (international as well as domestic - Smith lived in the age of government chartered monopolies ), people's natural self-interest would bring about universal opulence with very little effort from a nation's government. This free-market force became known as the invisible hand , but it nee...