Communism in China provides more incentive to improve your education but much more than that it actually gives you the means to do it without coming out with a huge debt
Which is weird because we never seen the end of the world yet have seen captialism die multiple times. What's weirder isn't his historical failure but the fact they keep bringing back captialism. Of course, for 2000 years monarchy failed only to be brought back.
@@gabdewulf You've never observed the death of a capitalist market based system simply because you have to prevent people from exchanging goods and services. You can have an economic crisis which corrects a major flaw in an industry (usually caused by government policies that go against market dynamics), but no matter how catastrophic, the system always reverts to a stable state in the form of market capitalism simply because of the behavior of the participants.
I get the joke, but in economics land includes water and air and ground rights. The question of who "owns" or at least has use of oceans and seas is a very contentious one right now.
Human rights can (and will!) erode under any economic system if the power dynamics go wrong. My biggest third concern is not so much the erosion of 'hard' human rights like freedom from unnecessary cruelty, freedom of movement, the right to privacy or the right to informed choice, but more the erosion of the human experience in general. While prosperity has technically continued to increase, some really questionable lifestyle consequences have emerged from commodifying people's attention and every last second of their time in general.
The unintuitive reality is that economic models have nearly zero effect on citizen prosperity. The only real factor in citizen prosperity is the quality of representation the citizens have in government. A benevolent government with Democratically elected representatives regulating industry will have growing citizen prosperity. An elitist dictatorship government will have failing citizen prosperity. (Side note: even if the dictatorship has a preferred demographic of citizens, even that demographic will experience falling prosperity and oppression, just not as quick as the others. Sorry bigots, you still lose even if your dictator gets in power) A nation with a failing corrupted democracy will be experiencing a fall in citizen prosperity. It does not matter if a nation is labeling itself and pretending to be capitalist or communist or socialist, the citizen prosperity is still tied to the quality of representation that is regulating the system and to who's benefit the regulations lean. The only path to citizen prosperity is for the citizens to be actively involved in democracy (voting and lobby at a minimum) choosing their representatives and telling their representatives how they want to be represented.
@@elvoandro7087 Destruction of third places, rarity of meaningful human contact and the loneliness epidemic, social-media addiction, mental health issues stemming from 'overinformation', ideological radicalization, reduction in the quality of parenting and education, and it may also be contributing to population collapse tbh. Probably survivable, but certainly not ideal and in an absolute worst-case scenario could be society-ending.
@@5353Jumper Capitalism already is a "real time" representation of your own needs and desires. If citizens are actually well represented through their government, even better. But looking at countries like Singapore or China, I don't think it's the most important factor.
People tend to forget pollution was a big issue even in non capitalist nations. It's a byproduct of industrialization, no matter the economic system in place.
Problem is pollution creates a conflict of interests, where the capitalists have an interest in increasing profits despite the pollution while the vast majority of the population have the opposite interest. The problem with capitalism is it tends to value the interest of the capitalist rather than the vast majority of the population.
@@ianmwangi2105 Why do you think the majority of the population are interested in scarifying their standard of living for reduced pollution? Have you seen any polls?
@@ianmwangi2105the same goes under socialism; the vast majority of people are incentivized to attend to their immediate needs (or "rights") rather than worry about the environmental consequences left to their hypothetical children, which is how environmental failures such as the disappearance of the Sea of Aral came to be. Worse, since there's no incentive to improve the technological capital used in either efficiency or environmental friendliness as long as the production quotas are met (since both land and resources are subject to the tragedy of the commons), it's much more likely to happen under socialism than it is under capitalism, where the land owner has an incentive to preserve its value.
@ianmwangi2105 this is not true. Look at how much worse pollution are under socialist economies. You arenforgetting that people are selfish by nature, and almost everyone will seek to enrich him/herself at the expense of others. This is the "tragedy of the commons", and why socialism is so inefficient, and so much more polluting.
When I lived in Hong Kong I quickly realized that the Chinese are probably the world's biggest capitalists. They practically live by the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Never mind the reigning political party or the official line on their governance model. Maybe it's something to do with massive cultural impact of Confucianism, but there's a core intrinsic understanding of value and exchange and whether something is worth your time or not. Federal level governance and how people make decisions in their own lives really can go in separate directions.
Just compare free mark Taiwan to heavily regulated market China, which country has a higher average income, HDI score, and average wealth? They’re the same ethnic group with the same historical background, so it’s a reasonable comparison. Or compare North Korea to South Korea, the states with less regulated markets are always wealthier.
@@xxxBradTxxxto be fair China has much more people and much larger land area with different geographies and climates, which makes it harder to develop and built wealth. Meanwhile Taiwan was helped by the US and Japan to develop quickly and nowdays has an highly lucrative industry
@@MarcoAntonio-hw7si Alright, then compare North Korea to South Korea, or Peru to Chile, or Nicaragua to Costa Rica. Each of those three pairs of countries are fairly similar in their geography, but one country in the pairs implemented more Socialist economic policies while the others implemented freer market policies. Which are wealthier?
@@xxxBradTxxx oh I'm not saying that regulated markets can be wealthier than less regulated ones, I'm saying that's unfair to compare countries with vastly different populations and size
Ikr, it’s not “pure capitalism wins”, it’s been mixed markets under a decently fair government wins. Just like capitalism will exist from the highest to lowest levels of any society, all developed societies through history have developed governments.
My favorite argument from socialists is that they describe "crony capitalism" as "capitalism" when the reality is that crony capitalism is actually an argument against more state involvement in the economy.
The argument for people that support socialism is that capitalism sucks. The argument for people that support capitalism is that socialism sucks. Maybe we could all simply agree that both of them suck.
are you willing to talk honestly about the incentives surrounding homelessness? making an example of people and other heinous manipulation of incentive can make nightmares real. just get ahead and you will only see it from afar.
My mother’s love… must have been some dolla-dolla-bill pay-out. I’m waiting patiently for all those sleepless nights with my sick child to pay off.. cha-ching!
People will buy politicians to appoint tax assessors that give them favorable land valuations and their competitors unfavorable valuations. Same thing that happens with any other government source of power.
people wouldn't be able to afford it and they'd sell their land piecemeal, eventually unable to break even due to a reduced economy-of-scale causing a mass famine as farmers are evicted from their professions. See every socialist nation that had a famine after trying land-confiscating from small farmers.
Capitalism and the free market all the way because it's common sense, basically. Leave the people the fruits of their labor and the freedom to innovate, so all of us can benefit from the dividends of brilliance.
@@joelimbergamo639capitalism existed even before industrial revolution. Think the Renaissance, brought on by capitalism. Back then it was so capitalistic that kingdoms borrowed from Italian banking houses. Then there is the famous Duch East India company. Industrial revolution kicked capitalims into high gear but didn't invent it.
@xiphoid2011 sure, but capitalism bases itself on the free market. And the free market needs rules, and one important one is FREEDOM, and free markets didnt exist. Again, believing that capitalism is more natural than feudalism is just crazy. Also, as explained I'm the video that you should watch again, money and debt exist in other systems, you making this point about borrowing just means you understood nothing from the video
Common sense to who? The millions of unemployed? The millions in poverty? The millions who can’t afford a house or education? The millions in prison? Ah, yes. Clearly very sensible
I lean strongly towards Libertarianism but been pushing for a variation of government based mainly on taxes from land usage. Despite talking to hundreds of people about it and watching thousands of videos on economics and politics, not one has mentioned "Georgism". Anyway, glad I finally heard of it (even if my idea isn't original anymore). I will be checking it out.
I think for me the issue is we have outwardly capitalist individuals arguing you just got to capitalist harder when we don't have good support for that. Nearly every economy is mixed and what we have accepted is that past a certain point, regulation is always needed as no market remains "free" after a certain point. This idea that someone will just innovate a solution is one that does not understand our level of development. No one is manufacturing some new thing in their garage that can outcompete fiber optic cable. There are barriers to entry now that are just not feasible. Even with a good idea. This is so true now that companies that do purport these hyper innovative ideas are usually at best, under delivering, but more often just complete frauds. Looking at you theranos and basically every Kickstarter.
I for one would love to see a video on Georgism. Land Value Taxes have some very interesting properties, and seem to perhaps address some of the excesses of capitalism you mention here. As you say, making land taxes the only tax (as Henry suggests), is unlikely to be a solution. But as someone who lives in a big city on a small island, I can see everyday how land taxes might encourage more constructive investment and improve local communities.
You're missing the MOST important element of Capitalism: Capital is not only traded on the private market but first and formost PRIVATELY OWNED, which means that the factories are not owned by the king, the workers or the state but by rich people that can afford to buy them. Everything else I agree upon
What do crabs evolve into? Too bad octipi don't live a century or two, and raise their young. They'd have a freakish intelligent with ways to manipulate things..
YOU MENTIONED GEORGISM! EXCITEMENT! THANK YOU! Please, make a dedicated video on it! LVT+CD & Pigouvian taxes really ought to be in the public discourse!
Do you know of any good videos showing real world examples of Georgism or other alternative taxation systems? I’ve been searching for videos that take real world examples and show how they would be different under each system of taxation.
@@TheNisgi Singapore and Taiwan were both set up with a lot of Georgist elements in the aftermath of WWII, so I recommend looking at their track records to see the effects of Georgism.
I don't want an end to capitalism. Just an end to state subsidized monopolies. The problems we encounter today are in most part due to government and corporations working together to crush the common people. To consolidate wealth in an elite few through skewed regulations, byzantine tax laws along with the use of the law and the justice system to crush competition.
@@ronald3836 I never said I didn't. But what we have today isn't free market capitalism. It's new age feudalism, perhaps crooked capitalism at best. You'd have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to notice.
The concern there is that corporations in such a system will inevitably try to influence the government because succeeding to do so will grow them massively
It's just weird that the dichotomy between capitalism and socialism so often boils down to free market vs full-on government control of the economy. Is it so hard to imagine a market where companies operate through collective ownership of capital and profits rather than having a single person/family own the entire means of production? Coops are a great example of how this principle can be applied within a free market system without any domineering overreach from government.
To my mind, coops they are a fundamentally free market business structure, since they are based on the same principle of free choice and mutual agreement.
@@thijsstavenga4350There already are democratic companies. They're called publicly traded companies and they consist of voters (customers who vote with their dollars), legislators (shareholders and the board), and the President + Cabinet (the CEO + other company execs)
One thing I mostly see about this issue is that when companies go “public” they normally become more profit centered, and have less of a goal besides profit. I mean, Google is a public company, if you think about it. Is it enough to make it a saint? Nope. The problem of coordinating a huge number of individuals towards a goal, without the coordinator corrupting that purpose, is highly complex. How do you control the actions of someone or something who has more power (since this person or thing coordinates a significant number of individuals) so that they are aligned with the majority, and are still effective enough (no dumbing down)? That is precisely the issue we need to solve if we ever want to have superhuman AI's included in the economy.
Well that’s because people will eventually sell their shares. This will happen enough that only one small well organized group will be in charge. It’s literally a law of nature.
10:48 Because of ATCOR, an LVT is capable of extracting the same amount of wealth as all other taxes combined. Because of EBCOR, all other taxes on productivity reduce economic output. Put those two together, and the LVT ends up being able to extract MORE wealth than all other taxes combined. Also, the best method of calculating the value of the land and the LVT is by using the market mechanism. Auction the land. This makes the enormous task of calculating the LVT cheap, easy, distributed, systematic, and non-arbitrary.
Thank you for mentioning Georgism. When I describe my economic views people often call me a Marxist, and when I explain, "No, I follow Georgism" they look at me as if I invented a new word off the top of my head. Somehow Henry George has been almost completely forgotten.
He wasn't simply somehow forgotten. His ideas were intentionally removed from mainstream economic thought until the man himself was completely forgotten.
It was slightly mentioned, but generally glossed over. Capitalism with no restrictions can also be really, really messed up. People worked in horrible conditions during the industrial revolution. And that is not even talking about all of the capitalism driven colonialism, exploiting people in ways that make the industrial revolution working conditions look like a daycare. Capitalism works well as long as it has enough of an opposing force keeping it in check and regulating it.
Did it really change though? The only change is that those working conditions have been exported. A capitalist society needs low labor cost in countries like DR Congo, China or Vietnam to function. The only reason capitalism works in western society is because externalities are exported to the 3rd world
but if that opposing force (in most cases, the government) benefits from a lack of regulation, there's little incentive to keep things in check beyond making sure it continues to benefit
@@Holidayinspain76 that's not really a fair comparison, even though labor is exported to those countries, but they still get an economic boost, no one wants to buy a $40 shirt or $80 sweater etc, that's the price of having affordable goods, the labor has to go somewhere that is cheap, it's not fair to say it didn't really change
3:09 "Capitalism: Teach a man to fish, but the fish he catches aren't his. They belong to the person paying him to fish and if he's lucky, he might get paid enough to buy a few fish for himself." -Karl Marx.
This was awesome, could we get a video on some economists ideas on how to "fix" capitalism in the modern world? You touched on Georgism, but that seems to apply to primarily land ownership, I'm curious about the labor aspect. Thanks!
I imagine profit sharing is the best way to “fix” capitalism. Sure owners deserve something for getting the business up and running, but evidently it’s been a little too much.
@TheNisgi Profit sharing is a terrible solution. If ever a company is considering profit sharing, it would be better off for society if they just lowered prices instead.
@@Prolute that’s like saying if ever a company is considering paying their executives an ungodly amount of money it would be better for society if they lowered their prices instead.
I'm glad you mentioned Georgism. Yes, please do a full video on Georgism. I recently found out about it from another RUclipsr and ever since have been hoping you'd do a video on it.
@@ImperialSenpai Fascism, famously known for being a friendly ideology to unionists, it’s not like the National Socialists monopolised unions under the state and threw outspoken unionists into death labour camps, absolutely not
I'm surprised you didn't mention Unions in the discussion of labor. Selling labor as a larger collection is a great way to better leverage certain types of labor on the market. Another interesting case study on this topic that I would love to see a video on would be the Mondragoon cooperative in the Basque region of Spain, seeing what a worker owned market economy looks like in the modern market.
My biggest problem with capitalist economists is that I don’t agree with the premise of the “central economic problem” that is “people have unlimited desires but only finite resources with which to fill those desires.” No. Most people don’t have unlimited desires. And when people do display the behavior of insatiable desire (like a child), most societies throughout the world scorn that as immature and encourage that inclination out of people as they grow. Capitalism tells people to have unlimited desires so that it can create an ever willing market to buy its eternal production. This is where you get into planned obsolescence. If people really had “unlimited desires” as the defenders of capitalism argue, why does the field of marketing exist? Why do companies need to convince you to want their stuff if your desires are naturally so limitless? Capitalism creates artificial demand to keep itself going. If not for planned obsolescence and marketing, then people would buy all the cars or phones they need, then have those items for decades without having to buy new ones every year. Producing stuff on an as-needed basis like this is more sustainable for the environment and creates far less waste (and as I mentioned before, is how most societies throughout human history have operated), but following actual demand is also not as profitable for the capitalists as creating artificial demand.
I mean, if you reach all your goals, would you say “I'm done, I have all the things I need and lived all the things I wanted to live, better just die now”? You would rather, probably, find another thing you want and keep living. The problem is the artificial demand you mentioned, marketing is the root of all evil, it changes the value of things and creates demand where there is none. It is a bug in capitalism, it is a way to game the system. Capitalism requires five major fixes (at least), that are: something to discourage speculation, Georgism to fix the land issue, the end of marketing, something to discourage situations of the tragedy of commons like in pollution and CO2 emission, and something to properly represent goods of negative value.
@@allan710 well as with all longrunning Games there were many tryes to Fix those Bugs but they are hard to eliminate, especialy since some of them especialy marketing and the tragedy of the commons are core mecanics the Pro gamer rely on.
I’m personally a socialist, but I acknowledge and applaud the mixed market economies that have industrialised the world and have lifted billions out of starvation and poverty. In the manifesto, Marx and Engels talk about how the market economy has lifted the world up from the feudal era, but they also mention its flaws, as any system has.
Can you also make a video on the pros and cons of the government acting as an investor/owner of capital and land vs private investment/ownership of capital and land? When does one make more sense than the other?
3:09 "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -John Meynard Keynes.
Disagree land cannot be improved. It can be cleared of trees. It can be leveled. You can add fertiliser, remove rocks. Put in a supply line for electricity. The list of things you can do to improve the land is endless. Some are even very long term and very related to the land itself like chemically breaking up lumps of clay over decades to improve the agricultural output. This was a big problem in medieval times as a lot of land was like today's state forests anyone could use it for anything encouraging foraging, hunting and herding over crops which inevitably would be just eaten by some guys cows.
In teaching economics to Junior Achievement students, I always use the title of Anthony Leftwich's book "The Price System and Resource Allocation" to explain the difference between capitalism and other forms of government. Whether it be socialism, communism, or any other ism other than capitalism, they are all "Centrally Planned Economies." The problem with centrally planned economies is that, regardless of their initial motivations, the central planning committee eventually winds up planning for the benefit of the central planning committee rather than the nation as a whole. And, eventually, they wind up planning for the benefit of the head of the central planning committee, becoming a dictatorship. The price system for resource allocation gives the economy freedom to work to the benefit of the national economy. Problems with capitalism come later when wealth gets so concentrated the uber-wealthy can become a central planning committee on their own especially when the economy's tax structure tilts to the benefit of preserving wealth rather than creating it.
What do you think about Yanis Varoufakis’ hypothesis in his book Techno Feudalism that capitalism has been replaced by a kind of feudalism through cloud capital?
10:25 Thank you so much for acknowledging that Georgism is a *type* of capitalism! I've heard some call it a form of socialism even though there's nothing there involving Government ownership of the factors of production. Honestly, the more I learn about economics, the more infuriated I get at the tendency of my fellow Americans (both left and right) to label anything other than libertarian minarchy as "not capitalist" or even socialist! (Honestly, I might not care so much, except that I used to believe such nonsense myself and few were willing or able to correct me back then).
I think it's funny because Georgism's LVT is inherently a regressive tax model (As in, the more money you make, the less money you'll pay in taxes as a percentage) and yet it's often touted by leftist groups as a solution to their problems. It's not even a solution to landlordism, as a slumlord owning a midrise apartment complex is going to have a lower tax liability (as a percentage of their income) than a farmer or a suburban house owner. I see many benefits to Georgism, but I think the majority of people who ascribe to it have no idea what it actually would end up doing.
I'm very aware of the shortcomings of the capitalist system but to say that exploitation of natural resources and erosion of human rights don't happen in other systems is not a great take. I'd argue inequality is similar actually.
Sure, you're right, it happens in other modes more. But what are we then talking about? Serfdom, colonialism and feudalism? I don't see how socialism is worse on human rights than capitalism
It’s true that exploitation of natural resources is not exclusive to capitalism. However, the scale and rate can vary significantly between systems. For instance, in a capitalist system, the drive for profit often leads to over-exploitation. In contrast, other systems tend to have more regulations and checks in place to prevent such exploitation.
While it’s true that human rights violations have occurred under various economic systems, it’s important to note that these are often more a result of political structures and leadership rather than the economic system itself.
@@uninstaller2860socialism is MUCH worse for human rights... It literally HAS to ignore the natural rights of having private property in order to redistribute their earnings. Aka stealing. With capitalism it's voluntary.
At the end, I feel like you miss part of the equation when it comes to Land - Capital - Labour: You mention Labour fights against itself to get better jobs, but you also miss the times when Capital has to compete against itself for better employees. That's why there are times when the job market is referred to as the "job seeker's market" -- When there are too many jobs but not enough Labour (or qualified Labour) to fill them.
This isn’t often considered because it doesn’t really exist in the modern era outside of certain specializations or as a temporary event in a local economy. The current system is built to ensure a minimum level of capital conflict, thereby maximizing the amount of time the equation favors them (ex: monopolies, posting of ghost jobs, stagnation of minimum wage vs inflation, etc).
@@MonochromaticPrism Bullshit, nothing is built. It's simply that there's a ton of people who can, say, manage a social media account; and they need employment more than the corporation actually needs a social media account. Basically the same assymetry that Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations.
I’d like to see a video on a wealth tax, suggested by Thomas Piketty in ‘Capital in the 21st Century’. The problem is that the return on capital is invariably higher than the growth rate of the overall economy
The problem with a wealth tax is that it incentivises reinvestment of profit and capital gains for the greater good and not the personal good of the people who have the power to make this change.
@@AnyVideo999 I'd be inclined to think that it goes the other way around, that a wealth tax would channel investment from unproductive assets towards productive assets?
"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead." - Rejoyce Leyton-Messier
Yeah, Capitalism is great when balanced by a strong government that is isolated from capitalist influence. On the government side, this requires strong laws against any form of corporate involvement in the election process, no campaign donations, no advertising, obviously no direct bribery, no way for corporations to spend money to curry favor with politicians, before, during, or after their time in office. As for what government needs to _do_ with that power, strong regulations to prevent destruction of lives and public resources, strong taxation policies to balance out the wealth generated at the top of capitalism and redistribute it to the bottom, and social safety nets to protect even those with no economic value. If you can balance the two well, let Capitalism do its thing but restrict the most excessive choices available to it, then it works out just fine. It's like a sports league, you want to let the players play, but if you don't have any rules then it's just quick bloodbath in which most of the players are out of commission by the end of the season.
Not really. It is true that bribery and undue influence of money are destructive of society as a whole, but that is not a characteristic of capitalism more than any other means of organizing society. A government should NOT take wealth from one group and redistribute it. A government should ONLY enforce contracts, and ensure those contracts respect unalienable rights. This is not like a sports league, where the ends are determined based on pre-agreed rules.
@@christianlibertarian5488 While I agree that undue influence is not _exclusive_ to capitalism, capitalism is extremely capable at it, and it is capitalism that is the most significant threat if left unchecked, since capitalism itself only cares about profit to the exclusion of all else. And I strongly disagree that governments have no role to play in distributing resources equitably. They exist to enforce the conditions that a society agrees should be enforced. If that means no wealth redistribution, then that's fine, but in many cases it is considered a good thing to take more from those who can afford to do so, and to provide more to those without the resources they need to survive. The rules of a society need to adapt to the conditions on the field, to ensure that by the end of the game, everyone comes out of it ok.
@@timogul Your discussion is oxymoronic. A government that exists separate from the will of the people will be inherently corrupt, and lead to the enslavement of the populace. This is the normal course of history, shown everywhere from the time of Ur to North Korea. So we have tried for the last couple of centuries to enact democracy. But democracies have their own, inherent contradictions. de Tocqueville coined the phrase, “the Tyranny of the Majority.” That is, a government controlled only by the will of the majority will enslave, somewhat, the minority. This was the United States in the Slavery Era. The Founding Fathers of the US knew this. So instead of a pure democracy, they established in government the principle of Individual Rights. That is, an ability that an individual should rightly be allowed to exercise, regardless of the will of the majority, or the government. Several of these rights were embodied in the Bill of Rights, but not all. But implicit in the prohibition of slavery is the idea that an individual has agency, and a right to the fruits of his or her own labor. Your argument implies that an individual does NOT have a right to the fruits of their labor. Once you deny that right, you deny every single other right. You deny that individual any agency, because they are essentially owned by the government.
How can Grammarly guarantee that your data/content will remain private? Do they enter into a binding contract with you? I doubt it. They may say it's private now, but next year, they could decide different, or some other company could acquire them and have different ideas of what to do with the product and all of the user content they've ingested compared to the company's current leaders
Great video, saved me a lot of fruitless arguments as the UK approaches an election ^^ I think the issue is that people who see the issues with capitalism refuse to accept why it's been so successful (or at least know their supporters will see this as counter-revolutionary, as it were) and that those who collect most of it's benefits, and therefore have the power to change it, have no incentive to do so.
Because people who snowball tend to distort everything around them. The narrow-minded people look to them as models and try to follow the model to end up rich. In most cases it doesn't work, and that is precisely on what capitalism feeds on: the misery and wanting of the masses for the benefit of the few. This few that got where they are by breaking rules, legal or moral ones.
It's funny because when socialism succeeds, history has shown us a poor working class with zero mobility and an entrenched elite. The opposite of what capitalism provides.
Your comparison of capitalism to a hammer was great. I think an issue that people in North America are facing is that the capitalist class (people who actually own capital for profit as opposed to those who sell hours of their life to survive) is that the hammer has become harmful. Money is influence and influence is power, and many people with money have no incentive to change our system so they have less money and power. Further, the pursuit of profit can only go so far before people's neccesities can't be met because someone who owns capital wants more. I think this is more apparent in North America than it is in western Europe because we have weaker protections for the people than a country like Germany, Sweden, or Finland has. A part of capitalism in practice that a frightening number of people who claim they love capitalism forget is that the role of government is still to regulate the market. Capitalism does not mean an absolute free for all dog eat dog bloodbath in the pursuit of profit. Regulation isn't just a part of a successful capitalist society but it is an absolute necessity. That is why having Canadian Conservatives and American Republicans tearing apart workers rights and enacting tax breaks for the wealthy has allowed such insane levels of wealth consolidation and record levels of poverty and homelessness. Wealth taxes and wealth redistribution are not some far right communist idea. There is a reason you collect $200 for passing GO despite having done no work for that $200 and the wealthiest players in a game of Monopoly get taxed the most. Society, capitalist or not, can not continue to function with the levels of wealth consolidation we're seeing from corporations and individuals today. There will be a breaking point and I just hope it's in the form of electing someone who is there for the betterment of the average person who sells precious hours of their life because they currently have no alternative to survive. If your politician is a multi millionaire or billionaire: they aren't there for you.
You have stated something that many people don't seem to realize: that there are different forms of capitalism. What is move prevalent is crony capitalism, which is based on the elite being able to have much greater control due to connections and regulations that favor those with heavier resources. The general populace is still generally better off than under non-capitalist systems, but they are heavily restrained from being able to move up in life due to high barriers to entry.
I think one of the bigger problems with trying to define capitalism is that it was a term coined by its detractors who were unsatisfied with the free market and property rights system that had developed during the 19th century. To this day, the best contribution socialism has made to the world is coining the term Capitalism as its opposite. XD
@@ZnamTwojaMama101 Well purest capitalism would have no regulations. However it would be as horrific an existence as authoritarian communism. Probably worse. But in reality we live in a capitalist society with regulation everywhere. I guess it's about how theoretical or real you want to be. Think of slaves and Dickensian London for what a low regulation capitalist society might look like.
@@danellis-jones1591 It depends, in this no regulation capitalism, It has to have private property or else It isn't capitalism. So slaves aren't capitalist either.
@@ZnamTwojaMama101no country has ever achieved a full laissez faire economy due to its fragility in crisis. In any economy, a government sector, even if very small, should have the resources to restart the flow of goods and services. Even Great Britain, during the notoriously unregulated times of the early to mid 19th century, had a government, with the ability to restart the market if needed.
Love the vids, I've gained so much knowledge about macro-economics by binging your videos the last couple months! Could you do an analysis of the politically very complex Belgium? :)
Please avoid relying solely on RUclips videos without cited sources for learning about economics. Economics is a field of social science. Therefore, while RUclips videos can serve as a starting point for an overview, they should not be regarded as factual without cross-referencing with scientific literature.
I recommend learning non economic things. Because his very bachelor’s level understanding of economics and nothing beyond the book he read most recently’s understanding of politics leaves out a lot of context and alternatives to things he presents as syllogistic
@@Souledex in his defense he does give the disclaimer that he is actively avoiding anything even remotely political,,,, even when it might provide relevant context
@@ianmwangi2105 true, but economics isn’t a science - it’s an understanding developed within a political context. Ignoring history and politics (as many econ majors do) just means all this “calculated, systematic understanding” of why things are the way they are give people a false sense of their own wisdom in a manner unlike many other fields. Sort of the way people who got a bunch of “common-sense” finance tips from their dad aggressively asserts they understand economics despite barely having a grasp on microeconomics, similarly people who come to understand the world through the lens of very capitalist friendly (at times almost Austrian) economics often assume the data is great or clear (it is in some ways more than others) and conclusions people draw from it are more concrete than they are without understanding how the floor they are on was made and without learning what history tediously teaches in rhetoric and forensics, or international politics teaches just as a premise that shits different and sometimes that works. And then openminded people approach new data being openminded and then sounding openminded but not able to question the paradigm they have to even frame the questions. It feels like a science, it’s taught like a math with terribly inconsistent terminology, and in some ways things are incredibly sure things like demography so it feels like it has robust conclusions. But then everyone proceeds from bullshit assumptions all the time or just feel that like other sciences they don’t have to keep reproving the same things that were already established even though establishing them as facts actively changes whether they are true, like all inflation is real and not a game of chicken within oligopolies while people are too busy to notice or one of the absolute earliest that without monied economies societies use the barter system- literally from Adam Smith, took 150 years to start digging that out but everyone still believes it despite the very basis of our intelligence as a species developing because of an environment where that isn’t true. It’s just a unique bad foundation to build an understanding of the world on despite being a very important and compelling lens to see the challenges of the world or any other beliefs and values you have through.
The interesting thing to me about this whole discussion, is that even Marx was of the opinion that capitalism was a necessary tool for economic development, and was a required step before the process of transitioning to a socialist economy could take place. Lenin developed the idea of state capitalism as a way for socialist nations to control capitalism so that the state could harness it as a tool for economic development. This of course makes it vulnerable to corruption, so truly no system is without its weaknesses
**Introduction:** The video explores the prevalence of capitalism worldwide, delving into its historical roots, benefits, drawbacks, and alternative perspectives. It emphasizes the need to view capitalism as a tool rather than a polarized ideology. **Emergence and Dominance of Capitalism:** - Capitalism's prevalence in almost every country is discussed, tracing its origins back to the Industrial Revolution. - Key benefits include innovation, motivation for development, and the efficiency of the free market. - Critics highlight rising inequality and resource exploitation as drawbacks. - The video advocates understanding capitalism beyond passionate support or criticism, emphasizing its role as a tool. It encourages defining and exploring alternative economic systems. **Benefits and Drawbacks of Capitalism:** - Capitalism's impact on living standards is explored, acknowledging increased access to goods and services but addressing rising inequality. - Private ownership of capital is discussed, highlighting its role in incentivizing efficiency but acknowledging drawbacks, such as hindering economic development when it comes to land ownership. - The concept of georgism, proposing taxing the unimproved value of land, is introduced as a potential solution to discourage speculation. - The video delves into capitalism's impact on labor, examining the incentivization of skill acquisition and the incentive for owners to minimize labor costs. - The concentration of land and capital in a few hands is identified as a source of power imbalance. - While recognizing capitalism's significant progress, the video acknowledges its imperfections and advocates for improvements to address shortcomings. **Conclusion:** The video concludes by asserting that capitalism should be viewed as a tool to address the challenge of limited resources and unlimited desires. It calls for a nuanced understanding of capitalism, acknowledging both its merits and flaws, and advocates for continuous improvement to create a more balanced economic system. *Note: The summary encapsulates the video's main points; however, for detailed understanding, watch the entire video.*
Touting Global Wealth's rise since the Roman era without adjusting for inflation, accounting for the centralization of asset ownership by the ruling classes and measuring it relative to the population over time is disingenuous at best. The ecconomy has grown, but the share of the ecconomy per commoner has diminished drastically and it rarely grows without a period of intense civil unrest.
I mean you could make that argument for the past say 15 years but i dont think you can deny at least for the west that from like 1800 to 1990 the share of the economy held by the commoner certainly increased. Its not like the average % of the economy the average person holds have been in decline since 300AD thats a pretty far fetched claim
Every nation in the world is mixed capitalist/socialist, but to different degrees. There have only been two real world experiments where a single society was split into a more socialist half and a more capitalist half. Those are East/West Germany and North/South Korea. Both experiments resulted in economic and humanitarian disaster for the unfortunate souls who found themselves on the socialist side.
I'm an Economist and this my standard debate started with everyone that I encounter who starts off with pro/con Capitalism/Socialism. Only difference I use Wrench and Screw to repair the car.
What capitalism does really well is compartmentalizing corruption. See when you consolidate power you inadvertently consolidate corruption too. And that leads to major instability.
I just wanna switch from an autocratic capitalist owner/worker economy to a democratic worker cooperative worker/worker economy by having the government hand out loans to workers who want to purchase the company they work at, then turn it into a worker cooperative. This allows the transfer to be voluntary not mandatory while simultaneously giving the owner an additional group to sell the company to.
@toppedtop5787 it's not mandatory at all. The owner does not need to sell. This is only for when the owner wants to sell by their own free will and it gives that owner a extra buyer so they don't need to sell their company at a reduced rate just because they don't have many buyers.
Think of the couple that's 60years old and has no kids. They want to retire. They don't want to do the daily company tasks, they don't want to have some else do it. They just wanna cash out and go traveling the rest of their life. The problem is after 30 years building this business up they have hundreds of employees and they don't want to close shop and let them all go. They don't want to sell their company to some big business either that will come in and change everything about the company. Giving the owner a way to sell the company to the workers they individually know is a great way to keep a business running as is and staying in the community it was built it.
Heh. This is kind of the big issue with a lot of this The government already does this. As do private markets. If you make a good story and get the workers to want to do it together, you absolutely can do this today.
Wow, what an eye-opening video! I really enjoyed how it delved into the complexities of capitalism and its impact on our global economy. The explanation of capitalism's evolution alongside the Industrial Revolution was incredibly insightful, shedding light on why it has become so dominant worldwide. On the positive side, I appreciated the balanced perspective presented, highlighting both the benefits and drawbacks of capitalism. It's essential to recognize its role in driving economic growth and innovation, but also to address issues like inequality and exploitation. However, I did feel that the video could have explored alternative economic systems in more depth. While the focus on capitalism was thorough, a deeper dive into potential alternatives would have provided a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Overall, a fantastic breakdown of a complex subject! Thank you, Economic Explain, for another informative video!
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The problem with capitalism is that without proper governmental controls, it always results in a small oligopoly or outright monopoly. It's a competition and competitions always have winners. The difference here is that the losers die until there is only one (or three, which makes no difference). Thus, venture capitalism becomes impossible. Keynsian economics do work rather well but the neo-liberal capitalism that has been embraced as of late has made the gulf between the rich and the poor so great that it will end in French-style revolution. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness.
The pure capitalism will always end in neo-feudalism as it is already such case, and its clear shortcomings can be easily fixed but by limiting the exponential wealth growth (or rather centralization) for just a few people, however people are in the mix, and those in power have no reason to limit their own wealth for the benefit of many, and it is childish to think there can ever be a system where such wealth does not influence politics. The big factor to any system is humans in the end, and human greed is larger than any conceivable size of any universe 🤷
Feudaliam turns into Aboslitism, Absolutism Imperialism, turns into Colonilaism, Colinalism turns into Mercantilism, Mercantilism turns into capitalism. Capitalism turns into communism.
03:30 -- The "fundamentally unanswerable problem of economics" is false on the face of it. Human desires may be greater than our current levels of production, but to asset they are *infinite* is plainly absurd. Our lifespans our finite, there is only so much we can consume in roughly 100 years. Even asserting that the variety of human desires is infinite is a very heavy lift, and do we really want an economic system that tries to satisfy our every whim as soon as we think of it? I don't think we do. That's certainly not the goal of any practical field of economics.
the way i understand the difference between capitalism and socialism is that it's about who deserves the profits: the people who brought the capital, or the workers doing the labor? obviously there's a middle ground somewhere, but capitalism basically says that the capital owners & investors deserve most of the profit, while socialists ("laborists"?), say the workers deserve most of the profit. There's obviously tons more to say here but youtube comments isn't the place for that lol ^^
Socialist have always been wrong on where profit goes because they have no clue how value works. Workers are there to do a single job they don’t create value, they are replaceable and their productivity is not innovative nor groundbreaking it takes the managerial position to figure that out which is not only more difficult but can cause massive loss as oppose to a labourer who doesn’t have that challenge other than the singular task they have to do.
Anyone think the definition of capitalism is fundamentally wrong? As if it's a tool we take out of the toolbox to solve a particular problem and then put away rather than a system of doing things that evolved from the ground up and inevitably leads to certain benefits and certain problems?
My pet peeve is the argument that something bad that happened is "because of capitalism" when that same thing is measurably worse in every anti-capitalist country.
Because they will say it wasn't "real" communism because they are all under authoritarian states, but authoritarianism is a FEATURE of communism. They live in this fairy tale where everyone just agrees to share and everyone is provided for. And how do you make sure that happens? A large governing body that has more control than anyone should be comfortable with. Democratic states aren't above corruption. Capitalism can exist at any scale so it doesn't need a governing body. If you and I buy some washing machines and some retail space we can open a laundromat and split the proceeds proportional to how much we each initially put in. We only *want* the governing body to enforce contracts otherwise we'd have to do it like organized crime and enforce things ourselves.
generally the issue with anti capitalist discourse is: A. there are two types of socialism. the one that keeps popping up, leninism, and the one most socialists want, marxism. the main difference is that leninism wants a strong leader to make decisions for the people who need leading (often in the form of a dictatorship), while marxism wants no leaders to make decisions for the people who need freedom (and wants the people as a group to control the means of production, in the form of a democracy). we don’t really know if marxist socialism would work because, as it’s a form of democracy, it does better in peace than in war and can be easily crushed by a dictator or established giant military power like the us. so there’s a bit of a problem in implementation. B. the us has been sabotaging any anti-capitalist country that has existed since it was born. mostly because it and other capitalist countries want to get their hands on all the capital being kept away from them. this means that the argument can be made that the anti-capitalist countries do poorly *because of the other countries’ capitalism*. whether they’d do better in another scenario is unknown.
6:32 birds: 'Good thing we're skilled enough at flying, to avoid these buildings that spontaneously spring up in size!' giant banknotes: Start falling…
Don't decide your favorite tool is a hammer and then try to fix an engine without a socket wrench! LOL solid advice...did the writers just write that? Thats good...well payed!
Not a good video, too abstract. It was mostly about trying to define capitalism and yet all the commenters still have no idea what capitalism actually is
As one of my favorite Economists, Hayek, said. We stumbled upon the pricing system. Pricing is how we can communicate, without words, what is going on. No need to share any information beyond a symbol and a few numbers
Capitalism is effective way to draw resources to place where capital holder is or wants to, no more, no less. It is historical artifact, because capital owners have *always* ruled, and they will be always against their removal of equation. Sometimes I wonder why economy as science even bother - it is all politics, it is a choice. People who own things want to keep owning things. It is psychological construct that you need to overcome if you want to move past this fragile system.
Labour exploitation was given far too little attention as the major downside of capitalism, and labour is not a free market, because there is no freedom of movement for labour. Even within a country there are ties that bind a person to a location and trap them in poverty. But worse still is lack of international freedom of movement.
That’s a government problem not an economic one and that’s not exploiting labor, slavery is exploiting labor. If you can either work for a different company or start your own company and compete you have options. The only issue is government regulation which discourages people from starting their own.
"It's as silly as a mechanic picking a hammer as their favourite tool and then trying to fix a car without even considering a socket wrench" _Jeremy Clarkson has entered the chat_
My god! Thank you. Capitalism is 'new'. Every reasonable mind concedes its effectiveness. Every reasonable mind concedes no one employs it in a pure form. Every reasonable mind concedes its not perfect (Just the best we have). And, its often tied to a more liberal (free, upwardly mobile) social system.
It is my belief that Capitalism died in the years following the 2008-2010 financial crisis. We are increasingly headed towards a future where massive tech companies rule their own closed markets, similar to the fiefdoms that once dominated the world before capitalism. Even the financial industry, through firms like BlackRock, increasingly seems to be less an open and free market and more a monopoly of monopolies. This in turn effects every level of the once free market, from housing costs, to wages and where capital ends up. Technocratic Feudalism seems to be the new reality we are all stumbling into.
You are being myopic. There have been complaints exactly like this about every dominant industry since the dawn of time. First it was landowners, then steel companies, then railroads, then Big Oil, then the automobile companies, then IBM, then Microsoft, now tech companies. There is nothing new under the sun.
@@christianlibertarian5488 I think being myopic is a little harsh. The main difference is that the new players today work on an economic model unlike previous multinationals - Amazon, Google, ect. create closed markets where you come to acquire said services within the confines of their domain. While Standard Oil was a massive monopoly, whose product influenced multiple areas of the economy, nevertheless it was subject to the whims of a free market. And eventually the whims of the United States government. That being said, I find Capitalims to be the worst form of economy except all others. It works because it strives to survive no matter what. And I also see what you are saying. Perhaps I was a tad dramatic.
In the first map you've made a mistake by making Taiwan part of China's Yuan zone (in red). Taiwan uses New Taiwan Dollar (TWD), not Chinese Yuan (CNY)!
Thank you for watching! Sign up and download for FREE using my link grammarly.com/economics01
Just an amazing video man you have out done yourself here. Your perspective needs to be heard.
"""China is Capitalist "" 😂😂😂
Communism in China provides more incentive to improve your education
but much more than that it actually gives you the means to do it without coming out with a huge debt
12:40 LIES and false conceptions about the meritocracy that doesn't really exist under capitalism
" free market seems like an improvement"
go get your jab loser or you're going to be unemployeded
There’s a trope that goes “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism”
Which is weird because we never seen the end of the world yet have seen captialism die multiple times. What's weirder isn't his historical failure but the fact they keep bringing back captialism. Of course, for 2000 years monarchy failed only to be brought back.
@@gabdewulf You've never observed the death of a capitalist market based system simply because you have to prevent people from exchanging goods and services. You can have an economic crisis which corrects a major flaw in an industry (usually caused by government policies that go against market dynamics), but no matter how catastrophic, the system always reverts to a stable state in the form of market capitalism simply because of the behavior of the participants.
That's a logic flaw.
You have never seen a distant solar system, yet know they exist because of science.
We've capitalism die many deaths in history.
For example capitalism is kinda the deafult economic system in sci-fi interstellar empires (of course feudalism and socialism are also easy to find)
@@indrickboreale7381Star Trek is literally post-scarcity space communism.
>"Land can't be created"
*Laughs in Dutch*
I get the joke, but in economics land includes water and air and ground rights. The question of who "owns" or at least has use of oceans and seas is a very contentious one right now.
"They say they tore a mountain down to bring in a couple more, more cars and people on the land."
John Denver in Rocky Mountain High
Rising Sea Level awaiting...
Hmm....I've never heard laughing in Dutch. Does it sound like a chest infection?
@@wonderwhyiwonder3458 "We must escape to the only place not corrupted by capitalism, spaaace!"
Human rights can (and will!) erode under any economic system if the power dynamics go wrong. My biggest third concern is not so much the erosion of 'hard' human rights like freedom from unnecessary cruelty, freedom of movement, the right to privacy or the right to informed choice, but more the erosion of the human experience in general. While prosperity has technically continued to increase, some really questionable lifestyle consequences have emerged from commodifying people's attention and every last second of their time in general.
Can you list some of those consequences
The unintuitive reality is that economic models have nearly zero effect on citizen prosperity.
The only real factor in citizen prosperity is the quality of representation the citizens have in government.
A benevolent government with Democratically elected representatives regulating industry will have growing citizen prosperity.
An elitist dictatorship government will have failing citizen prosperity. (Side note: even if the dictatorship has a preferred demographic of citizens, even that demographic will experience falling prosperity and oppression, just not as quick as the others. Sorry bigots, you still lose even if your dictator gets in power)
A nation with a failing corrupted democracy will be experiencing a fall in citizen prosperity.
It does not matter if a nation is labeling itself and pretending to be capitalist or communist or socialist, the citizen prosperity is still tied to the quality of representation that is regulating the system and to who's benefit the regulations lean.
The only path to citizen prosperity is for the citizens to be actively involved in democracy (voting and lobby at a minimum) choosing their representatives and telling their representatives how they want to be represented.
@@elvoandro7087 If you need a list, then you aren't aware of our modern world problems
@@elvoandro7087 Destruction of third places, rarity of meaningful human contact and the loneliness epidemic, social-media addiction, mental health issues stemming from 'overinformation', ideological radicalization, reduction in the quality of parenting and education, and it may also be contributing to population collapse tbh. Probably survivable, but certainly not ideal and in an absolute worst-case scenario could be society-ending.
@@5353Jumper Capitalism already is a "real time" representation of your own needs and desires.
If citizens are actually well represented through their government, even better. But looking at countries like Singapore or China, I don't think it's the most important factor.
People tend to forget pollution was a big issue even in non capitalist nations.
It's a byproduct of industrialization, no matter the economic system in place.
Problem is pollution creates a conflict of interests, where the capitalists have an interest in increasing profits despite the pollution while the vast majority of the population have the opposite interest. The problem with capitalism is it tends to value the interest of the capitalist rather than the vast majority of the population.
True
@@ianmwangi2105 Why do you think the majority of the population are interested in scarifying their standard of living for reduced pollution? Have you seen any polls?
@@ianmwangi2105the same goes under socialism; the vast majority of people are incentivized to attend to their immediate needs (or "rights") rather than worry about the environmental consequences left to their hypothetical children, which is how environmental failures such as the disappearance of the Sea of Aral came to be.
Worse, since there's no incentive to improve the technological capital used in either efficiency or environmental friendliness as long as the production quotas are met (since both land and resources are subject to the tragedy of the commons), it's much more likely to happen under socialism than it is under capitalism, where the land owner has an incentive to preserve its value.
@ianmwangi2105 this is not true. Look at how much worse pollution are under socialist economies. You arenforgetting that people are selfish by nature, and almost everyone will seek to enrich him/herself at the expense of others. This is the "tragedy of the commons", and why socialism is so inefficient, and so much more polluting.
When I lived in Hong Kong I quickly realized that the Chinese are probably the world's biggest capitalists. They practically live by the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Never mind the reigning political party or the official line on their governance model. Maybe it's something to do with massive cultural impact of Confucianism, but there's a core intrinsic understanding of value and exchange and whether something is worth your time or not. Federal level governance and how people make decisions in their own lives really can go in separate directions.
Capitalism is the first stage toward socialism. I bet you never learned that in Hong Kong? All chinese kids learned that in their political studies.
Just compare free mark Taiwan to heavily regulated market China, which country has a higher average income, HDI score, and average wealth? They’re the same ethnic group with the same historical background, so it’s a reasonable comparison.
Or compare North Korea to South Korea, the states with less regulated markets are always wealthier.
@@xxxBradTxxxto be fair China has much more people and much larger land area with different geographies and climates, which makes it harder to develop and built wealth. Meanwhile Taiwan was helped by the US and Japan to develop quickly and nowdays has an highly lucrative industry
@@MarcoAntonio-hw7si Alright, then compare North Korea to South Korea, or Peru to Chile, or Nicaragua to Costa Rica. Each of those three pairs of countries are fairly similar in their geography, but one country in the pairs implemented more Socialist economic policies while the others implemented freer market policies.
Which are wealthier?
@@xxxBradTxxx oh I'm not saying that regulated markets can be wealthier than less regulated ones, I'm saying that's unfair to compare countries with vastly different populations and size
People tend to oversimplify complex issues to the confrontation between socialism and capitalism
Ikr, it’s not “pure capitalism wins”, it’s been mixed markets under a decently fair government wins. Just like capitalism will exist from the highest to lowest levels of any society, all developed societies through history have developed governments.
My favorite argument from socialists is that they describe "crony capitalism" as "capitalism" when the reality is that crony capitalism is actually an argument against more state involvement in the economy.
What confrontation? Socialism can't exist without capitalism
@@Official-Comments Where are you getting the idea from that the goal of capitalism is equilibrium?
The argument for people that support socialism is that capitalism sucks.
The argument for people that support capitalism is that socialism sucks.
Maybe we could all simply agree that both of them suck.
I'd like to see that video about Georgism.
Me too
Gerogism revolution
Sounds like something I can get behind.
Yeah, georgism sounds kinda hype honestly
Distributism too.
Putting incentives at right place can do wonders
are you willing to talk honestly about the incentives surrounding homelessness? making an example of people and other heinous manipulation of incentive can make nightmares real. just get ahead and you will only see it from afar.
@@Boardwoards He's just a bot
Pointed sticks of the masses pointing at the power-off gated communities. Are they waiting for such an incentive?
Capitalism only has the profit motive. War profit, exploitation of workers, consumers and the environment. The total corruption of the goverment.
My mother’s love… must have been some dolla-dolla-bill pay-out. I’m waiting patiently for all those sleepless nights with my sick child to pay off.. cha-ching!
I'd love a video explaining the pros and cons of a land value tax and how it might work if implemented
People will buy politicians to appoint tax assessors that give them favorable land valuations and their competitors unfavorable valuations. Same thing that happens with any other government source of power.
your feelings would be irrational
people wouldn't be able to afford it and they'd sell their land piecemeal, eventually unable to break even due to a reduced economy-of-scale causing a mass famine as farmers are evicted from their professions. See every socialist nation that had a famine after trying land-confiscating from small farmers.
@patrioticwhitemail9119 but farmland is valued less than land in a city, so farmers would pay way less tax
Capitalism and the free market all the way because it's common sense, basically.
Leave the people the fruits of their labor and the freedom to innovate, so all of us can benefit from the dividends of brilliance.
If it were common sense it wouldn't have taken until the 1800s to appear. Watch the video again
@@joelimbergamo639capitalism existed even before industrial revolution. Think the Renaissance, brought on by capitalism. Back then it was so capitalistic that kingdoms borrowed from Italian banking houses. Then there is the famous Duch East India company. Industrial revolution kicked capitalims into high gear but didn't invent it.
@xiphoid2011 sure, but capitalism bases itself on the free market. And the free market needs rules, and one important one is FREEDOM, and free markets didnt exist. Again, believing that capitalism is more natural than feudalism is just crazy. Also, as explained I'm the video that you should watch again, money and debt exist in other systems, you making this point about borrowing just means you understood nothing from the video
@@xiphoid2011the system you are talking about is not capitalism. It is called mercantilism
Common sense to who? The millions of unemployed? The millions in poverty? The millions who can’t afford a house or education? The millions in prison?
Ah, yes. Clearly very sensible
Please make a full video on Georgism!
I don't know much about Georgism.I would like to know more about it.
@@Nylon_riot The youtuber BritMonkey made a good video going into depth about its tenets and benefits called "The Power of Land: Georgism 101"
I lean strongly towards Libertarianism but been pushing for a variation of government based mainly on taxes from land usage. Despite talking to hundreds of people about it and watching thousands of videos on economics and politics, not one has mentioned "Georgism".
Anyway, glad I finally heard of it (even if my idea isn't original anymore). I will be checking it out.
@@JaimeWarlock if you think that LVT tax is good, you are not libertarian , you are geolibertarian(not judging btw, just explaining terms)
Exactly. I am geolib. Learn this wat from Fred Foldvary@@АртемМакєєв
Should do a series like this for all of the major economic systems. Let's look at communism, socialism, and anarchy; now that we have capitalism.
Facts😂
Unfortunately it wouldn't work. None of the aforementioned systems have ever reached the ubiquity of capitalism.
@@zenoblues7787 maybe it'll work this time
Anarchy is not a system. It's just the state of having no ruler
@@toastytoast9800 Proof is more important than ideas.
I think for me the issue is we have outwardly capitalist individuals arguing you just got to capitalist harder when we don't have good support for that. Nearly every economy is mixed and what we have accepted is that past a certain point, regulation is always needed as no market remains "free" after a certain point. This idea that someone will just innovate a solution is one that does not understand our level of development. No one is manufacturing some new thing in their garage that can outcompete fiber optic cable. There are barriers to entry now that are just not feasible. Even with a good idea. This is so true now that companies that do purport these hyper innovative ideas are usually at best, under delivering, but more often just complete frauds. Looking at you theranos and basically every Kickstarter.
Well said
I for one would love to see a video on Georgism. Land Value Taxes have some very interesting properties, and seem to perhaps address some of the excesses of capitalism you mention here. As you say, making land taxes the only tax (as Henry suggests), is unlikely to be a solution. But as someone who lives in a big city on a small island, I can see everyday how land taxes might encourage more constructive investment and improve local communities.
That might be an interesting idea pre internet but the power of tech companies dwarfs even landowners these days
Singapore?
your feelings would be irrational
Britmonkey has a good one. I would check that one out.
You're missing the MOST important element of Capitalism: Capital is not only traded on the private market but first and formost PRIVATELY OWNED, which means that the factories are not owned by the king, the workers or the state but by rich people that can afford to buy them.
Everything else I agree upon
The same reason why everything always evolves into Crabs
Hahaha. True.
They can say "Both sides have their good and bad" but we all know which side they'd rather be on 😎
Crabs are also known to love money, so it makes sense!
What do crabs evolve into?
Too bad octipi don't live a century or two, and raise their young. They'd have a freakish intelligent with ways to manipulate things..
So Capitalism is to economics as Carcinisation it to evolution.
YOU MENTIONED GEORGISM! EXCITEMENT! THANK YOU! Please, make a dedicated video on it! LVT+CD & Pigouvian taxes really ought to be in the public discourse!
Do you know of any good videos showing real world examples of Georgism or other alternative taxation systems? I’ve been searching for videos that take real world examples and show how they would be different under each system of taxation.
Yes, land taxes and negative externality taxes! Let's make taxes directly change society for the better.
@@TheNisgi Singapore and Taiwan were both set up with a lot of Georgist elements in the aftermath of WWII, so I recommend looking at their track records to see the effects of Georgism.
@@TheNisgi I'm pretty sure this channel did a video on that idea and I think Hong Kong used that system
Agreed, we need to get georgism and the lvt (land-value-tax) more in the public spotlight
I don't want an end to capitalism. Just an end to state subsidized monopolies. The problems we encounter today are in most part due to government and corporations working together to crush the common people. To consolidate wealth in an elite few through skewed regulations, byzantine tax laws along with the use of the law and the justice system to crush competition.
It's socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poors.
The state needs to be smaller. Like 90% smaller.
Then what you want is capitalism.
@@ronald3836 I never said I didn't. But what we have today isn't free market capitalism. It's new age feudalism, perhaps crooked capitalism at best. You'd have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to notice.
The concern there is that corporations in such a system will inevitably try to influence the government because succeeding to do so will grow them massively
It's just weird that the dichotomy between capitalism and socialism so often boils down to free market vs full-on government control of the economy. Is it so hard to imagine a market where companies operate through collective ownership of capital and profits rather than having a single person/family own the entire means of production? Coops are a great example of how this principle can be applied within a free market system without any domineering overreach from government.
Exactly. Having democratic companies will be the next step after capitalism.
To my mind, coops they are a fundamentally free market business structure, since they are based on the same principle of free choice and mutual agreement.
@@thijsstavenga4350There already are democratic companies. They're called publicly traded companies and they consist of voters (customers who vote with their dollars), legislators (shareholders and the board), and the President + Cabinet (the CEO + other company execs)
One thing I mostly see about this issue is that when companies go “public” they normally become more profit centered, and have less of a goal besides profit. I mean, Google is a public company, if you think about it. Is it enough to make it a saint? Nope. The problem of coordinating a huge number of individuals towards a goal, without the coordinator corrupting that purpose, is highly complex. How do you control the actions of someone or something who has more power (since this person or thing coordinates a significant number of individuals) so that they are aligned with the majority, and are still effective enough (no dumbing down)? That is precisely the issue we need to solve if we ever want to have superhuman AI's included in the economy.
Well that’s because people will eventually sell their shares. This will happen enough that only one small well organized group will be in charge. It’s literally a law of nature.
A full video on Georgism is a great idea! Such an important concept with so little good content for the uninitiated.
If tech corporations aren't appropriately taxed, it's a terrible system.
10:48 Because of ATCOR, an LVT is capable of extracting the same amount of wealth as all other taxes combined. Because of EBCOR, all other taxes on productivity reduce economic output. Put those two together, and the LVT ends up being able to extract MORE wealth than all other taxes combined. Also, the best method of calculating the value of the land and the LVT is by using the market mechanism. Auction the land. This makes the enormous task of calculating the LVT cheap, easy, distributed, systematic, and non-arbitrary.
Thank you for mentioning Georgism. When I describe my economic views people often call me a Marxist, and when I explain, "No, I follow Georgism" they look at me as if I invented a new word off the top of my head. Somehow Henry George has been almost completely forgotten.
I wonder why :D
It’s weird if everyone agrees you are one way but you deny it just to be pretentious 😂
He wasn't simply somehow forgotten. His ideas were intentionally removed from mainstream economic thought until the man himself was completely forgotten.
It was slightly mentioned, but generally glossed over. Capitalism with no restrictions can also be really, really messed up. People worked in horrible conditions during the industrial revolution. And that is not even talking about all of the capitalism driven colonialism, exploiting people in ways that make the industrial revolution working conditions look like a daycare. Capitalism works well as long as it has enough of an opposing force keeping it in check and regulating it.
Did it really change though? The only change is that those working conditions have been exported. A capitalist society needs low labor cost in countries like DR Congo, China or Vietnam to function. The only reason capitalism works in western society is because externalities are exported to the 3rd world
but if that opposing force (in most cases, the government) benefits from a lack of regulation, there's little incentive to keep things in check beyond making sure it continues to benefit
@Holidayinspain76 yeah. as far as I've seen capitalism doesn't work without someone being exploited, and so the atrocities of colonialism persist
@@Holidayinspain76 that's not really a fair comparison, even though labor is exported to those countries, but they still get an economic boost, no one wants to buy a $40 shirt or $80 sweater etc, that's the price of having affordable goods, the labor has to go somewhere that is cheap, it's not fair to say it didn't really change
no
3:09 "Capitalism: Teach a man to fish, but the fish he catches aren't his. They belong to the person paying him to fish and if he's lucky, he might get paid enough to buy a few fish for himself." -Karl Marx.
Marx himself saw capitalism as a necessary step to communism. It's too easily forgotten.
This was awesome, could we get a video on some economists ideas on how to "fix" capitalism in the modern world? You touched on Georgism, but that seems to apply to primarily land ownership, I'm curious about the labor aspect. Thanks!
Yes! Tax the land! Georgism makes sense economically and ethically.
I imagine profit sharing is the best way to “fix” capitalism. Sure owners deserve something for getting the business up and running, but evidently it’s been a little too much.
The main way to fix it is to convince people that there's a fundamental issue with it without being labeled a menace to society.
@TheNisgi
Profit sharing is a terrible solution. If ever a company is considering profit sharing, it would be better off for society if they just lowered prices instead.
@@Prolute that’s like saying if ever a company is considering paying their executives an ungodly amount of money it would be better for society if they lowered their prices instead.
I'm glad you mentioned Georgism. Yes, please do a full video on Georgism. I recently found out about it from another RUclipsr and ever since have been hoping you'd do a video on it.
I’d love to see you guys make a video on the economics of unions
So fascist economics.
@@ImperialSenpai wrong side of the political spectum buddy
@@ImperialSenpai Fascism, famously known for being a friendly ideology to unionists, it’s not like the National Socialists monopolised unions under the state and threw outspoken unionists into death labour camps, absolutely not
@@ImperialSenpaiwoahhh someone likes licking rlond brown balloon knot
Thanks!
I'm surprised you didn't mention Unions in the discussion of labor. Selling labor as a larger collection is a great way to better leverage certain types of labor on the market. Another interesting case study on this topic that I would love to see a video on would be the Mondragoon cooperative in the Basque region of Spain, seeing what a worker owned market economy looks like in the modern market.
Unions are nothing more than cartels
Video on Georgism please!
My biggest problem with capitalist economists is that I don’t agree with the premise of the “central economic problem” that is “people have unlimited desires but only finite resources with which to fill those desires.”
No.
Most people don’t have unlimited desires. And when people do display the behavior of insatiable desire (like a child), most societies throughout the world scorn that as immature and encourage that inclination out of people as they grow.
Capitalism tells people to have unlimited desires so that it can create an ever willing market to buy its eternal production. This is where you get into planned obsolescence.
If people really had “unlimited desires” as the defenders of capitalism argue, why does the field of marketing exist? Why do companies need to convince you to want their stuff if your desires are naturally so limitless? Capitalism creates artificial demand to keep itself going. If not for planned obsolescence and marketing, then people would buy all the cars or phones they need, then have those items for decades without having to buy new ones every year.
Producing stuff on an as-needed basis like this is more sustainable for the environment and creates far less waste (and as I mentioned before, is how most societies throughout human history have operated), but following actual demand is also not as profitable for the capitalists as creating artificial demand.
I mean, if you reach all your goals, would you say “I'm done, I have all the things I need and lived all the things I wanted to live, better just die now”? You would rather, probably, find another thing you want and keep living. The problem is the artificial demand you mentioned, marketing is the root of all evil, it changes the value of things and creates demand where there is none. It is a bug in capitalism, it is a way to game the system. Capitalism requires five major fixes (at least), that are: something to discourage speculation, Georgism to fix the land issue, the end of marketing, something to discourage situations of the tragedy of commons like in pollution and CO2 emission, and something to properly represent goods of negative value.
@@allan710 well as with all longrunning Games there were many tryes to Fix those Bugs but they are hard to eliminate, especialy since some of them especialy marketing and the tragedy of the commons are core mecanics the Pro gamer rely on.
I think you’re confusing capitalism with consumerism.
@@danielcuevas5899I'd argue the two go hand in hand
We need a video about Georgism and Land Value Tax
I’m personally a socialist, but I acknowledge and applaud the mixed market economies that have industrialised the world and have lifted billions out of starvation and poverty. In the manifesto, Marx and Engels talk about how the market economy has lifted the world up from the feudal era, but they also mention its flaws, as any system has.
Can you also make a video on the pros and cons of the government acting as an investor/owner of capital and land vs private investment/ownership of capital and land? When does one make more sense than the other?
GEORGISM! Please make a video!
yes pls
3:09 "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -John Meynard Keynes.
Please do a full video on Georgism! Also, ATCOR is a sound argument, the single tax would work.
Disagree land cannot be improved. It can be cleared of trees. It can be leveled. You can add fertiliser, remove rocks. Put in a supply line for electricity. The list of things you can do to improve the land is endless. Some are even very long term and very related to the land itself like chemically breaking up lumps of clay over decades to improve the agricultural output. This was a big problem in medieval times as a lot of land was like today's state forests anyone could use it for anything encouraging foraging, hunting and herding over crops which inevitably would be just eaten by some guys cows.
In teaching economics to Junior Achievement students, I always use the title of Anthony Leftwich's book "The Price System and Resource Allocation" to explain the difference between capitalism and other forms of government. Whether it be socialism, communism, or any other ism other than capitalism, they are all "Centrally Planned Economies." The problem with centrally planned economies is that, regardless of their initial motivations, the central planning committee eventually winds up planning for the benefit of the central planning committee rather than the nation as a whole. And, eventually, they wind up planning for the benefit of the head of the central planning committee, becoming a dictatorship. The price system for resource allocation gives the economy freedom to work to the benefit of the national economy. Problems with capitalism come later when wealth gets so concentrated the uber-wealthy can become a central planning committee on their own especially when the economy's tax structure tilts to the benefit of preserving wealth rather than creating it.
What do you think about Yanis Varoufakis’ hypothesis in his book Techno Feudalism that capitalism has been replaced by a kind of feudalism through cloud capital?
"I am...inevitable."
-Capitalism
What disgusting propaganda
10:25 Thank you so much for acknowledging that Georgism is a *type* of capitalism! I've heard some call it a form of socialism even though there's nothing there involving Government ownership of the factors of production. Honestly, the more I learn about economics, the more infuriated I get at the tendency of my fellow Americans (both left and right) to label anything other than libertarian minarchy as "not capitalist" or even socialist! (Honestly, I might not care so much, except that I used to believe such nonsense myself and few were willing or able to correct me back then).
I think it's funny because Georgism's LVT is inherently a regressive tax model (As in, the more money you make, the less money you'll pay in taxes as a percentage) and yet it's often touted by leftist groups as a solution to their problems. It's not even a solution to landlordism, as a slumlord owning a midrise apartment complex is going to have a lower tax liability (as a percentage of their income) than a farmer or a suburban house owner.
I see many benefits to Georgism, but I think the majority of people who ascribe to it have no idea what it actually would end up doing.
I'm very aware of the shortcomings of the capitalist system but to say that exploitation of natural resources and erosion of human rights don't happen in other systems is not a great take. I'd argue inequality is similar actually.
Sure, you're right, it happens in other modes more. But what are we then talking about? Serfdom, colonialism and feudalism? I don't see how socialism is worse on human rights than capitalism
It’s true that exploitation of natural resources is not exclusive to capitalism. However, the scale and rate can vary significantly between systems. For instance, in a capitalist system, the drive for profit often leads to over-exploitation. In contrast, other systems tend to have more regulations and checks in place to prevent such exploitation.
While it’s true that human rights violations have occurred under various economic systems, it’s important to note that these are often more a result of political structures and leadership rather than the economic system itself.
It would be better described as a loop, where pure capitalism or pure socialism both create a single exploitive monopoly.
@@uninstaller2860socialism is MUCH worse for human rights... It literally HAS to ignore the natural rights of having private property in order to redistribute their earnings. Aka stealing. With capitalism it's voluntary.
At the end, I feel like you miss part of the equation when it comes to Land - Capital - Labour: You mention Labour fights against itself to get better jobs, but you also miss the times when Capital has to compete against itself for better employees.
That's why there are times when the job market is referred to as the "job seeker's market" -- When there are too many jobs but not enough Labour (or qualified Labour) to fill them.
This isn’t often considered because it doesn’t really exist in the modern era outside of certain specializations or as a temporary event in a local economy. The current system is built to ensure a minimum level of capital conflict, thereby maximizing the amount of time the equation favors them (ex: monopolies, posting of ghost jobs, stagnation of minimum wage vs inflation, etc).
@@MonochromaticPrismbullcrap
@@MonochromaticPrism
Bullshit, nothing is built. It's simply that there's a ton of people who can, say, manage a social media account; and they need employment more than the corporation actually needs a social media account. Basically the same assymetry that Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations.
your feelings are irrational
I’d like to see a video on a wealth tax, suggested by Thomas Piketty in ‘Capital in the 21st Century’. The problem is that the return on capital is invariably higher than the growth rate of the overall economy
The problem with a wealth tax is that it incentivises reinvestment of profit and capital gains for the greater good and not the personal good of the people who have the power to make this change.
That's dumb. Just tax land.
The real problem of a wealth tax is that it takes investment from productive assets and moves them to less productive ones.
Wealth tax = upper class flight
@@AnyVideo999 I'd be inclined to think that it goes the other way around, that a wealth tax would channel investment from unproductive assets towards productive assets?
Everything evolves into crabitalism
Can u make a georgism video
Just wanted to say the artist of the thumbnail did a great job.
"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead."
- Rejoyce Leyton-Messier
Yeah, Capitalism is great when balanced by a strong government that is isolated from capitalist influence. On the government side, this requires strong laws against any form of corporate involvement in the election process, no campaign donations, no advertising, obviously no direct bribery, no way for corporations to spend money to curry favor with politicians, before, during, or after their time in office.
As for what government needs to _do_ with that power, strong regulations to prevent destruction of lives and public resources, strong taxation policies to balance out the wealth generated at the top of capitalism and redistribute it to the bottom, and social safety nets to protect even those with no economic value.
If you can balance the two well, let Capitalism do its thing but restrict the most excessive choices available to it, then it works out just fine. It's like a sports league, you want to let the players play, but if you don't have any rules then it's just quick bloodbath in which most of the players are out of commission by the end of the season.
Not really. It is true that bribery and undue influence of money are destructive of society as a whole, but that is not a characteristic of capitalism more than any other means of organizing society. A government should NOT take wealth from one group and redistribute it. A government should ONLY enforce contracts, and ensure those contracts respect unalienable rights. This is not like a sports league, where the ends are determined based on pre-agreed rules.
@@christianlibertarian5488 While I agree that undue influence is not _exclusive_ to capitalism, capitalism is extremely capable at it, and it is capitalism that is the most significant threat if left unchecked, since capitalism itself only cares about profit to the exclusion of all else.
And I strongly disagree that governments have no role to play in distributing resources equitably. They exist to enforce the conditions that a society agrees should be enforced. If that means no wealth redistribution, then that's fine, but in many cases it is considered a good thing to take more from those who can afford to do so, and to provide more to those without the resources they need to survive.
The rules of a society need to adapt to the conditions on the field, to ensure that by the end of the game, everyone comes out of it ok.
@@timogul Your discussion is oxymoronic. A government that exists separate from the will of the people will be inherently corrupt, and lead to the enslavement of the populace. This is the normal course of history, shown everywhere from the time of Ur to North Korea. So we have tried for the last couple of centuries to enact democracy.
But democracies have their own, inherent contradictions. de Tocqueville coined the phrase, “the Tyranny of the Majority.” That is, a government controlled only by the will of the majority will enslave, somewhat, the minority. This was the United States in the Slavery Era.
The Founding Fathers of the US knew this. So instead of a pure democracy, they established in government the principle of Individual Rights. That is, an ability that an individual should rightly be allowed to exercise, regardless of the will of the majority, or the government.
Several of these rights were embodied in the Bill of Rights, but not all. But implicit in the prohibition of slavery is the idea that an individual has agency, and a right to the fruits of his or her own labor.
Your argument implies that an individual does NOT have a right to the fruits of their labor. Once you deny that right, you deny every single other right. You deny that individual any agency, because they are essentially owned by the government.
How can Grammarly guarantee that your data/content will remain private? Do they enter into a binding contract with you? I doubt it. They may say it's private now, but next year, they could decide different, or some other company could acquire them and have different ideas of what to do with the product and all of the user content they've ingested compared to the company's current leaders
That's the point exactly
Great video, saved me a lot of fruitless arguments as the UK approaches an election ^^
I think the issue is that people who see the issues with capitalism refuse to accept why it's been so successful (or at least know their supporters will see this as counter-revolutionary, as it were) and that those who collect most of it's benefits, and therefore have the power to change it, have no incentive to do so.
Progress and Poverty is S tier reading and I hope you'll give it its own video.
Adam Smith proposed a "rent tax" which is similar to georgism in that it attempted to add costs to people who speculate or fail to maintain land.
Please do a video on Georgism it would be amazing!
Because people who snowball tend to distort everything around them. The narrow-minded people look to them as models and try to follow the model to end up rich. In most cases it doesn't work, and that is precisely on what capitalism feeds on: the misery and wanting of the masses for the benefit of the few. This few that got where they are by breaking rules, legal or moral ones.
It's funny because when socialism succeeds, history has shown us a poor working class with zero mobility and an entrenched elite. The opposite of what capitalism provides.
Capitalism if fine, it just needs to be strictly regulated, and stop treating businesses as legal individuals.
Your comparison of capitalism to a hammer was great. I think an issue that people in North America are facing is that the capitalist class (people who actually own capital for profit as opposed to those who sell hours of their life to survive) is that the hammer has become harmful. Money is influence and influence is power, and many people with money have no incentive to change our system so they have less money and power. Further, the pursuit of profit can only go so far before people's neccesities can't be met because someone who owns capital wants more. I think this is more apparent in North America than it is in western Europe because we have weaker protections for the people than a country like Germany, Sweden, or Finland has.
A part of capitalism in practice that a frightening number of people who claim they love capitalism forget is that the role of government is still to regulate the market. Capitalism does not mean an absolute free for all dog eat dog bloodbath in the pursuit of profit. Regulation isn't just a part of a successful capitalist society but it is an absolute necessity. That is why having Canadian Conservatives and American Republicans tearing apart workers rights and enacting tax breaks for the wealthy has allowed such insane levels of wealth consolidation and record levels of poverty and homelessness. Wealth taxes and wealth redistribution are not some far right communist idea. There is a reason you collect $200 for passing GO despite having done no work for that $200 and the wealthiest players in a game of Monopoly get taxed the most. Society, capitalist or not, can not continue to function with the levels of wealth consolidation we're seeing from corporations and individuals today. There will be a breaking point and I just hope it's in the form of electing someone who is there for the betterment of the average person who sells precious hours of their life because they currently have no alternative to survive. If your politician is a multi millionaire or billionaire: they aren't there for you.
You have stated something that many people don't seem to realize: that there are different forms of capitalism. What is move prevalent is crony capitalism, which is based on the elite being able to have much greater control due to connections and regulations that favor those with heavier resources. The general populace is still generally better off than under non-capitalist systems, but they are heavily restrained from being able to move up in life due to high barriers to entry.
I think one of the bigger problems with trying to define capitalism is that it was a term coined by its detractors who were unsatisfied with the free market and property rights system that had developed during the 19th century. To this day, the best contribution socialism has made to the world is coining the term Capitalism as its opposite. XD
But capitalist DOESN'T mean democratic. We're getting more and more capitalist authoritarian politics.
Social democracy is the most pragmatic answer in my opinion.
How are regulations capitalist exactly?
@@ZnamTwojaMama101 Well purest capitalism would have no regulations. However it would be as horrific an existence as authoritarian communism. Probably worse. But in reality we live in a capitalist society with regulation everywhere. I guess it's about how theoretical or real you want to be.
Think of slaves and Dickensian London for what a low regulation capitalist society might look like.
@@danellis-jones1591 It depends, in this no regulation capitalism, It has to have private property or else It isn't capitalism. So slaves aren't capitalist either.
@@ZnamTwojaMama101no country has ever achieved a full laissez faire economy due to its fragility in crisis. In any economy, a government sector, even if very small, should have the resources to restart the flow of goods and services. Even Great Britain, during the notoriously unregulated times of the early to mid 19th century, had a government, with the ability to restart the market if needed.
Love the vids, I've gained so much knowledge about macro-economics by binging your videos the last couple months! Could you do an analysis of the politically very complex Belgium? :)
I recommend TLDR RUclips videos
Please avoid relying solely on RUclips videos without cited sources for learning about economics. Economics is a field of social science. Therefore, while RUclips videos can serve as a starting point for an overview, they should not be regarded as factual without cross-referencing with scientific literature.
I recommend learning non economic things. Because his very bachelor’s level understanding of economics and nothing beyond the book he read most recently’s understanding of politics leaves out a lot of context and alternatives to things he presents as syllogistic
@@Souledex in his defense he does give the disclaimer that he is actively avoiding anything even remotely political,,,, even when it might provide relevant context
@@ianmwangi2105 true, but economics isn’t a science - it’s an understanding developed within a political context. Ignoring history and politics (as many econ majors do) just means all this “calculated, systematic understanding” of why things are the way they are give people a false sense of their own wisdom in a manner unlike many other fields.
Sort of the way people who got a bunch of “common-sense” finance tips from their dad aggressively asserts they understand economics despite barely having a grasp on microeconomics, similarly people who come to understand the world through the lens of very capitalist friendly (at times almost Austrian) economics often assume the data is great or clear (it is in some ways more than others) and conclusions people draw from it are more concrete than they are without understanding how the floor they are on was made and without learning what history tediously teaches in rhetoric and forensics, or international politics teaches just as a premise that shits different and sometimes that works. And then openminded people approach new data being openminded and then sounding openminded but not able to question the paradigm they have to even frame the questions.
It feels like a science, it’s taught like a math with terribly inconsistent terminology, and in some ways things are incredibly sure things like demography so it feels like it has robust conclusions. But then everyone proceeds from bullshit assumptions all the time or just feel that like other sciences they don’t have to keep reproving the same things that were already established even though establishing them as facts actively changes whether they are true, like all inflation is real and not a game of chicken within oligopolies while people are too busy to notice or one of the absolute earliest that without monied economies societies use the barter system- literally from Adam Smith, took 150 years to start digging that out but everyone still believes it despite the very basis of our intelligence as a species developing because of an environment where that isn’t true.
It’s just a unique bad foundation to build an understanding of the world on despite being a very important and compelling lens to see the challenges of the world or any other beliefs and values you have through.
The interesting thing to me about this whole discussion, is that even Marx was of the opinion that capitalism was a necessary tool for economic development, and was a required step before the process of transitioning to a socialist economy could take place. Lenin developed the idea of state capitalism as a way for socialist nations to control capitalism so that the state could harness it as a tool for economic development. This of course makes it vulnerable to corruption, so truly no system is without its weaknesses
**Introduction:**
The video explores the prevalence of capitalism worldwide, delving into its historical roots, benefits, drawbacks, and alternative perspectives. It emphasizes the need to view capitalism as a tool rather than a polarized ideology.
**Emergence and Dominance of Capitalism:**
- Capitalism's prevalence in almost every country is discussed, tracing its origins back to the Industrial Revolution.
- Key benefits include innovation, motivation for development, and the efficiency of the free market.
- Critics highlight rising inequality and resource exploitation as drawbacks.
- The video advocates understanding capitalism beyond passionate support or criticism, emphasizing its role as a tool. It encourages defining and exploring alternative economic systems.
**Benefits and Drawbacks of Capitalism:**
- Capitalism's impact on living standards is explored, acknowledging increased access to goods and services but addressing rising inequality.
- Private ownership of capital is discussed, highlighting its role in incentivizing efficiency but acknowledging drawbacks, such as hindering economic development when it comes to land ownership.
- The concept of georgism, proposing taxing the unimproved value of land, is introduced as a potential solution to discourage speculation.
- The video delves into capitalism's impact on labor, examining the incentivization of skill acquisition and the incentive for owners to minimize labor costs.
- The concentration of land and capital in a few hands is identified as a source of power imbalance.
- While recognizing capitalism's significant progress, the video acknowledges its imperfections and advocates for improvements to address shortcomings.
**Conclusion:**
The video concludes by asserting that capitalism should be viewed as a tool to address the challenge of limited resources and unlimited desires. It calls for a nuanced understanding of capitalism, acknowledging both its merits and flaws, and advocates for continuous improvement to create a more balanced economic system.
*Note: The summary encapsulates the video's main points; however, for detailed understanding, watch the entire video.*
Touting Global Wealth's rise since the Roman era without adjusting for inflation, accounting for the centralization of asset ownership by the ruling classes and measuring it relative to the population over time is disingenuous at best. The ecconomy has grown, but the share of the ecconomy per commoner has diminished drastically and it rarely grows without a period of intense civil unrest.
I mean you could make that argument for the past say 15 years but i dont think you can deny at least for the west that from like 1800 to 1990 the share of the economy held by the commoner certainly increased. Its not like the average % of the economy the average person holds have been in decline since 300AD thats a pretty far fetched claim
My biggest critiques of capitalism are cost externalities, failure to distinguish between wants and needs, and undervaluing of natural resources.
Enter Georgism
"Wants" = what someone wants.
"Needs" = what Comrade Downwardmachine thinks they should want.
Every nation in the world is mixed capitalist/socialist, but to different degrees. There have only been two real world experiments where a single society was split into a more socialist half and a more capitalist half. Those are East/West Germany and North/South Korea. Both experiments resulted in economic and humanitarian disaster for the unfortunate souls who found themselves on the socialist side.
No, most nations around the world are capitalist. You're confusing socialism and a mixture of capitalism and socialism with a welfare state.
Socialism isn't when the government does stuff. Socialism is a transitional phase between capitalism and communism.
I'm an Economist and this my standard debate started with everyone that I encounter who starts off with pro/con Capitalism/Socialism. Only difference I use Wrench and Screw to repair the car.
Love your content. One of my favorite channels to watch
What capitalism does really well is compartmentalizing corruption. See when you consolidate power you inadvertently consolidate corruption too. And that leads to major instability.
I just wanna switch from an autocratic capitalist owner/worker economy to a democratic worker cooperative worker/worker economy by having the government hand out loans to workers who want to purchase the company they work at, then turn it into a worker cooperative. This allows the transfer to be voluntary not mandatory while simultaneously giving the owner an additional group to sell the company to.
mass starvation
You might be interested in the Cleveland model/ Preston model of cooperative economics.
@toppedtop5787 it's not mandatory at all. The owner does not need to sell. This is only for when the owner wants to sell by their own free will and it gives that owner a extra buyer so they don't need to sell their company at a reduced rate just because they don't have many buyers.
Think of the couple that's 60years old and has no kids. They want to retire. They don't want to do the daily company tasks, they don't want to have some else do it. They just wanna cash out and go traveling the rest of their life. The problem is after 30 years building this business up they have hundreds of employees and they don't want to close shop and let them all go. They don't want to sell their company to some big business either that will come in and change everything about the company. Giving the owner a way to sell the company to the workers they individually know is a great way to keep a business running as is and staying in the community it was built it.
Heh. This is kind of the big issue with a lot of this
The government already does this. As do private markets. If you make a good story and get the workers to want to do it together, you absolutely can do this today.
Wow, what an eye-opening video! I really enjoyed how it delved into the complexities of capitalism and its impact on our global economy. The explanation of capitalism's evolution alongside the Industrial Revolution was incredibly insightful, shedding light on why it has become so dominant worldwide.
On the positive side, I appreciated the balanced perspective presented, highlighting both the benefits and drawbacks of capitalism. It's essential to recognize its role in driving economic growth and innovation, but also to address issues like inequality and exploitation.
However, I did feel that the video could have explored alternative economic systems in more depth. While the focus on capitalism was thorough, a deeper dive into potential alternatives would have provided a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.
Overall, a fantastic breakdown of a complex subject! Thank you, Economic Explain, for another informative video!
🤡
Wow, what a nice ChatGPT prompt!
yeah I've seen them pop up in other channels as well with the "very natural" comments @@SzymonPmc
@SzymonPmc I command chat gpt 3.5 to improve my comments and I study how the ai make it formal so it's a win win for me, I can't seem to grasp if you're angry or jealous but my point is I embrace Ai, and every day I practice to integrate it on my daily life, I'm not looking for enemies but that's my point brother I'm open for your constructive criticism 🥰🥰🥰
It's much better to me to leave a RUclips comment like this so that I can recall the topic with ease
Always interesting, thank you.
The problem with capitalism is that without proper governmental controls, it always results in a small oligopoly or outright monopoly. It's a competition and competitions always have winners. The difference here is that the losers die until there is only one (or three, which makes no difference). Thus, venture capitalism becomes impossible.
Keynsian economics do work rather well but the neo-liberal capitalism that has been embraced as of late has made the gulf between the rich and the poor so great that it will end in French-style revolution.
Capitalism has outlived its usefulness.
The pure capitalism will always end in neo-feudalism as it is already such case, and its clear shortcomings can be easily fixed but by limiting the exponential wealth growth (or rather centralization) for just a few people, however people are in the mix, and those in power have no reason to limit their own wealth for the benefit of many, and it is childish to think there can ever be a system where such wealth does not influence politics. The big factor to any system is humans in the end, and human greed is larger than any conceivable size of any universe 🤷
Feudaliam turns into Aboslitism, Absolutism Imperialism, turns into Colonilaism, Colinalism turns into Mercantilism, Mercantilism turns into capitalism. Capitalism turns into communism.
I have come to read the arguments in the comment section
Ah, a true person of culture.
Let me help out..."Unions are good!"
I had to watch the video twice because the first time I was busy reading comments. Then the comments made me curious about the video.
The comments: Forget the video, have you heard of our lord and savior, Georgism?
Not surprising that a system based roughly on paying for productivity works out much better than paying for non-productivity.
03:30 -- The "fundamentally unanswerable problem of economics" is false on the face of it. Human desires may be greater than our current levels of production, but to asset they are *infinite* is plainly absurd. Our lifespans our finite, there is only so much we can consume in roughly 100 years. Even asserting that the variety of human desires is infinite is a very heavy lift, and do we really want an economic system that tries to satisfy our every whim as soon as we think of it? I don't think we do. That's certainly not the goal of any practical field of economics.
This also ignores that capitalism has to actively manufacture new desires via marketing.
Land can’t be created. The Dutch: “Hold our beers”.
the way i understand the difference between capitalism and socialism is that it's about who deserves the profits: the people who brought the capital, or the workers doing the labor? obviously there's a middle ground somewhere, but capitalism basically says that the capital owners & investors deserve most of the profit, while socialists ("laborists"?), say the workers deserve most of the profit. There's obviously tons more to say here but youtube comments isn't the place for that lol ^^
Another shorter way to make the distinction is whether or not you believe in exploitation for spurious profits is justified.
Socialist have always been wrong on where profit goes because they have no clue how value works. Workers are there to do a single job they don’t create value, they are replaceable and their productivity is not innovative nor groundbreaking it takes the managerial position to figure that out which is not only more difficult but can cause massive loss as oppose to a labourer who doesn’t have that challenge other than the singular task they have to do.
Anyone think the definition of capitalism is fundamentally wrong? As if it's a tool we take out of the toolbox to solve a particular problem and then put away rather than a system of doing things that evolved from the ground up and inevitably leads to certain benefits and certain problems?
My pet peeve is the argument that something bad that happened is "because of capitalism" when that same thing is measurably worse in every anti-capitalist country.
Because they will say it wasn't "real" communism because they are all under authoritarian states, but authoritarianism is a FEATURE of communism. They live in this fairy tale where everyone just agrees to share and everyone is provided for. And how do you make sure that happens? A large governing body that has more control than anyone should be comfortable with. Democratic states aren't above corruption.
Capitalism can exist at any scale so it doesn't need a governing body. If you and I buy some washing machines and some retail space we can open a laundromat and split the proceeds proportional to how much we each initially put in. We only *want* the governing body to enforce contracts otherwise we'd have to do it like organized crime and enforce things ourselves.
Yes, or the bad thing actually happens because of government regulation and/or intervention -- which is generally not compatible with capitalism.
generally the issue with anti capitalist discourse is:
A. there are two types of socialism. the one that keeps popping up, leninism, and the one most socialists want, marxism. the main difference is that leninism wants a strong leader to make decisions for the people who need leading (often in the form of a dictatorship), while marxism wants no leaders to make decisions for the people who need freedom (and wants the people as a group to control the means of production, in the form of a democracy). we don’t really know if marxist socialism would work because, as it’s a form of democracy, it does better in peace than in war and can be easily crushed by a dictator or established giant military power like the us. so there’s a bit of a problem in implementation.
B. the us has been sabotaging any anti-capitalist country that has existed since it was born. mostly because it and other capitalist countries want to get their hands on all the capital being kept away from them. this means that the argument can be made that the anti-capitalist countries do poorly *because of the other countries’ capitalism*. whether they’d do better in another scenario is unknown.
@@chesspiece4257On the argument of US crushing anti-capitalist systems would be just proof that they are too weak to resist foreign influences
@@chesspiece4257just blame Hegelianism and the dialectic, it’s easier
6:32
birds: 'Good thing we're skilled enough at flying, to avoid these buildings that spontaneously spring up in size!'
giant banknotes: Start falling…
Excellent video. Thanks for the deep dive 👍
Don't decide your favorite tool is a hammer and then try to fix an engine without a socket wrench! LOL solid advice...did the writers just write that? Thats good...well payed!
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
🕊️
When all you have is a hammer and a sickle, your neighbors start looking like dinner.
Not a good video, too abstract. It was mostly about trying to define capitalism and yet all the commenters still have no idea what capitalism actually is
I can define capitalist: evil
As one of my favorite Economists, Hayek, said. We stumbled upon the pricing system. Pricing is how we can communicate, without words, what is going on. No need to share any information beyond a symbol and a few numbers
Capitalism is effective way to draw resources to place where capital holder is or wants to, no more, no less. It is historical artifact, because capital owners have *always* ruled, and they will be always against their removal of equation. Sometimes I wonder why economy as science even bother - it is all politics, it is a choice. People who own things want to keep owning things. It is psychological construct that you need to overcome if you want to move past this fragile system.
Thank you. It was good. Helps us... understand things we were never taught in school.
Labour exploitation was given far too little attention as the major downside of capitalism, and labour is not a free market, because there is no freedom of movement for labour. Even within a country there are ties that bind a person to a location and trap them in poverty. But worse still is lack of international freedom of movement.
That’s a government problem not an economic one and that’s not exploiting labor, slavery is exploiting labor. If you can either work for a different company or start your own company and compete you have options. The only issue is government regulation which discourages people from starting their own.
What ties?
Too much of one thing is not good. Balance ⚖
"It's as silly as a mechanic picking a hammer as their favourite tool and then trying to fix a car without even considering a socket wrench"
_Jeremy Clarkson has entered the chat_
My god! Thank you. Capitalism is 'new'. Every reasonable mind concedes its effectiveness. Every reasonable mind concedes no one employs it in a pure form. Every reasonable mind concedes its not perfect (Just the best we have). And, its often tied to a more liberal (free, upwardly mobile) social system.
It is my belief that Capitalism died in the years following the 2008-2010 financial crisis. We are increasingly headed towards a future where massive tech companies rule their own closed markets, similar to the fiefdoms that once dominated the world before capitalism. Even the financial industry, through firms like BlackRock, increasingly seems to be less an open and free market and more a monopoly of monopolies. This in turn effects every level of the once free market, from housing costs, to wages and where capital ends up. Technocratic Feudalism seems to be the new reality we are all stumbling into.
But thats what capitalism is
@@veemo8605 unless it’s vigilantly guarded by its own success and reformed, capitalism kills itself.
You are being myopic. There have been complaints exactly like this about every dominant industry since the dawn of time. First it was landowners, then steel companies, then railroads, then Big Oil, then the automobile companies, then IBM, then Microsoft, now tech companies. There is nothing new under the sun.
@@christianlibertarian5488 I think being myopic is a little harsh. The main difference is that the new players today work on an economic model unlike previous multinationals - Amazon, Google, ect. create closed markets where you come to acquire said services within the confines of their domain. While Standard Oil was a massive monopoly, whose product influenced multiple areas of the economy, nevertheless it was subject to the whims of a free market. And eventually the whims of the United States government.
That being said, I find Capitalims to be the worst form of economy except all others. It works because it strives to survive no matter what. And I also see what you are saying. Perhaps I was a tad dramatic.
a mix between the two is optimal
Georgism is the way
In the first map you've made a mistake by making Taiwan part of China's Yuan zone (in red). Taiwan uses New Taiwan Dollar (TWD), not Chinese Yuan (CNY)!
I appreciate your informative presentation and your strange upwards inflections after most sentences equally.
I can't believe it - a fair and balanced RUclips vide that talks about capitalism clearheadedly！