
Policy Targets for Capitalist Development
Yale professor Douglas W. Rae opens this session of his course Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform by describing a recent trip to Washington where he studied the health care reform bill, using it to illustrate how tightly capitalist markets and government policy intertwine. The bulk of the lecture then shifts to a case study close to home: Mory's, the historic Yale eating club that had fallen into financial trouble. Two guest speakers join Rae to walk through Mory's decline and the plan to revive it, covering its history, the challenges facing the club, a proposed business plan, and a pitch for reforming membership rules to attract a broader contemporary Yale community. The session treats Mory's as a live example of an institution needing the kind of policy and organizational fixes discussed elsewhere in the course. Recorded at Yale in fall 2009 as part of Open Yale Courses.