That's my hand (and my wife's) at 4:10. :D I created heaps of similar photos & released them into the public domain as a gentle "up yours" to Shutterstock and their ilk. I'm thrilled they're being used.
That's awesome! Thanks for releasing them, I rely on you and others like yourself who release high quality public domain images to make these videos :)
@@bored1980 Free pictures are very good in certain circumstances, but when a video shows Google's ads and makes (probably) a pittance (but something), while Google earns billions a year, I think that the photographer deserves some remuneration, or at the very least, some sort of acknowledgement. But then, I despise the social re-engineering Google. On the other hand, if content-makers pay for all their pictures, they would want to put up more ads to recoup their expenses, so perhaps free pictures are for the best for YT videos. I try to never click on any Google ad anywhere, or for a "video will start after this ad" notice, I will forego watching the video. EDIT: I also click the 'skip ad(s)' button as soon as it appears, or click on the 'pause' icon if the video is slow in loading so that I can still skip the ads. As I understand, Google makes money from an advertiser if an ad plays its full length, even if it has not been clicked on.
The problem with anarcho-capitalism is that an assumption is made that competing businesses will not collude, cheat, or undermine market mechanisms to gain an advantage. It's assumed that business owners will accept the volatile nature of the market, and will focus on bending to the ever changing will of consumers to gain profit, and will not seek to stabilize their profits by exerting some kind of control over the market. It's assumed that businesses will be perfectly happy competing with other businesses, and will strictly rely on comparative advantage to gain market share, and if they do happen to max out their comparative advantage, they will not seek other manipulative ways to increase profits. It relies on the idea that everyone will play fairly, and the business will bow down before the altar of the consumer. But in reality, these assumptions are questionable. Because in every high-stakes competition in human history, there has been a culture of cheating to go along with it. And it isn't because of governments or regulating bodies. It's because when the risk and reward are high enough, and people's livelihoods are on the line, nobody wants to rely on uncertainty if they have the ability to control the outcome. So the competition itself creates a market for undermining the competition. And the higher the stakes, the more profitable that market becomes.
Phil Barker I don’t think it assumes that; rather, I think the assumption is that these things will sort themselves out. I am no anarcho-capitalist, but I nevertheless believe that those types of behaviors are far more likely under crony capitalism in which lobbyists, government regulatory bodies, and private regulatory bodies make that possible. Sure, some companies may conspire, but in what way? To artificially raise prices? Without regulations locking competitors out, all that will do is make the conditions ripe for a competitor with lower prices to dominate the market. After all, businesses are WHOLLY confined by the whims of the consumers. Furthermore, we can’t reasonably assume that an ENTIRE market will conspire. That example inherently implicates greedy people, no? It is thus reasonable to assume that SOMEONE within the greedy pack will take advantage of the opportunity to undercut everyone else in that market - by giving the consumers what they want or need in a form more desirable than, presumably, the entirety of the rest of that market.
The operational implication of what Phil Barker has written is that the most valuable economic freedoms are the freedom to start a firm, to wind up an existing firm, and to import goods and services from other countries.
Arguments in the video for free market entrepreneurs are flawed because they are based on simplified assumptions that are there to make free market models tractable by economists, but that are not always true in reality. Result is that free market entrepreneurs have gotten richer while doing things that hurt society and consumers. One example are externalities. By polluting air, for example, polluter gets all of the benefits of saving money on disposal of pollutants, while the cost of pollution is borne by all. Another example is unequal information. There is money to be made in selling toxic toys. Life insurance companies could not without government making sure that those companies can pay benefits decades from now in exchange for premiums paid today. Even when information is not hidden, consumers are not equipped to make the analysis necessary to act in their own self interest. Apple and Microsoft made their fortunes by engineering products that lock in consumers, and that makes money for the company after the sale in other ways. And finally, people do not always make rational decisions that are in their best self interest, and a lot of money is made exploiting human flaws. I talking about casinos, tobacco companies, impulse buys, diamond industry, etc.
I agree. The arguments made in the particular video reveal some unexamined assumptions (which we all have). Free market entrepreneurs are not benevolently committed to the wellbeing of consumers. Much of their effort goes into manufacturing a need for their product or service that would otherwise not exist. The packaging is often more important than the content. Another unexamined assumption made is that efficiency is the highest ideal. Except that the efficiency model commodifies individuals and turns them into "consumers" and "workers." It transforms educational institutions into factories that produce workers and transforms culture into a consumer-making engine instead of facilitating the emergence of true individuals. Humans inevitably become units that are compelled serve the efficiency model. The extent to which they fit this model is the extent to which they are allowed to participate in society. Craftsmen and women are replaced by the human units that mass-produce a copy who are then replaced by machines. These mass-produced products are the only ones the masses can afford. Therefore, the smaller percentage of people that can afford the creations of an artist, the fewer artists that can make a living from their art. A person may make the most wonderful hand-sewn clothing, but one wealthy individual can only use so many pairs of jeans. Better distributed wealth allows for the flourishing of more craftsmen and artists. Another is the assumption that concentrations of wealth is altogether different from concentrations of power. However, wealth gives an individual greater power to do something of greater consequence to the rest of humanity. A $15 million project in your community will impact you more than a $15,000 project will. This can be as bad as it can be good. But seeing as how all human beings are flawed, unbalanced wealth will ultimately magnify the flaws of the wealthy individual and impose them on others. When wealth is better distributed (I'm not saying "equal," but better distributed) larger applications of wealth must appeal to more people before the project can be accomplished. A better model would mimic natural systems. In a healthy forest, networks of fungi form a symbiotic relationship with plant life and distribute resources so as to maintain the health of the whole community. In some times and seasons, one plant or area of the forest will have more than it needs to flourish while others do not have enough. The surplus, rather than not being utilized, is distributed to where need exists. By maintaining the health of the whole, it extends the well of resources available to every member of the community at the time they need them so they can each develop and grow to their best ability. This model, however, is a result of spontaneous interdependent ordering. The various economic models argued over today are all ultimately flawed when taken to their end. They all impose order upon the masses and deliver winners, losers, and the buffer in-between to protect the have's from the have-nots by the false hope in the middle that they might one day become a "have." These models simply wear different skins.
Your concerns are moot and useless, as in a completely unregulated economy without bureaucratic interference, any entrepreneurs that do not adhere to the desired conditions of the public would be PUT OUT OF BUSINESS, and replaced by a business that does adhere to such conditions. What do you think happens when a business does something that the public dislikes, such as destroying the environment? The public stops buying from them. What do you think happens when the public stops buying from them? They go out of business and cease to exist, or they are replaced in prominence by a business that the public LIKES and BUYS FROM. This process is known to economists as "The Invisible Hand", and it is the process by which a completely unregulated Free Market would fix itself and weed out bad businesses. The ONLY time this process isn't allowed to occur is in the case of bureaucratic interference and government subsidy, in which case governmental institutions continue to fund bad businesses, allowing them to continue existing even through extreme public distraught. So in this situation, a business would be able to harm the environment and reap the benefits without any of the consequences, as they do today. At this phase Capitalism becomes Corporatism, and it is the socio-economical foundation we live in currently. It's why there are so many hated businesses continuing to exist today, and why the public is so disappointed with the private sector as a whole. Businesses nowadays have no obligation to listen to the wishes and protests of citizens, because that government money is going to come in regardless, so why not just do whatever you want? Why not harm the environment and make more? Remove government influence in the market, and you remove the problem. I repeat, REMOVE GOVERNMENT INFLUENCE IN THE MARKET, AND YOU REMOVE THE PROBLEM. Now, if after reading all this you're thinking "Well couldn't monopolies arise in a completely unregulated market?" then you are even more economically illiterate than I thought. If you wish for me to explain why bad monopolies aren't viable in a Free Market, then just ask and I'll respond.
@@jonathanadamson Refer to my previous response to the OP about why any businesses that did anything bad would just be eviscerated from a Free Market. Also, money being power means nothing nor is it something to fret over. Power is literally one of the four fundamental forces of the universe (Strong Force) so there will literally always be concentrations of power in some manifestation. Even if all of humanity was a hive-mind species as the socialists would have it, power concentration would still exist (if not actually be more disparate).If money didn't exist, power concentration would still exist as much as it does today. Also, you mistake fungi for sentient beings. I can point to rocks co-existing all day long but it means nothing, because we aren't rocks. The simple fact of the matter is that there exists entropy in the universe, and as a result of this, scarcity is a phenomenal consequence. There is only a finite number of resources. The problem is that socialism has always depended on the distribution of said resources AS IF those resources are NOT finite. Socialism assumes humanity is post-scarcity. And this is why it always fails, because we are NOT post-scarcity. So any attempt at distribution in said way leads to over-usage of resources and the impoverishing of the population (which is why literally every population that tries it is pushed into extreme poverty). Once humanity has sufficient enough technology that we are post-scarcity, like something out of Star Trek, then yeah everyone can get everything for free, or at the very least resources can be distributed as you want them. Most futurists think this'll come about after we build our first Dyson Sphere. But right now, the only sensible way to distribute resources is to those who add VALUE, not those who don't, because these resources are finite. Nothing is produced in this world without expelled energy, and it only makes logical sense to REWARD those who expel said energy proportionately, not those who don't. It's almost common sense. Also, NATURE itself produces winners and losers buddy, not the fucking economy lmao what the fuck. It's a fact of life that people are not equal nor are they born equal, are you going to sit here and tell me that a fucking janitor holds a candle to Bill Gates? Capitalism realizes this disparity of talent in nature and plays to it. Be mad at reality. But yeah, if there's anything else you misunderstand, just pick up a Basic Economics book from Amazon (if you can afford it), the retards in this thread seem to need it.
Also, free market does proponents implicitly assume that market treats people differently than it treats other inputs in production. 18th century capitalism was intolerable in part because it treated workers the way we treat machines. If you got injured at work you would basically be tossed aside like a broken part. And safety measures at workplace? Why spend money on those if replacing a broken worker is cheaper. Now think about this: When tractors came, millions of horses, donkeys and mules lost their jobs and no replacement use was found for them. In the past, when a person would lose a job, he or she would eventually find a new one (although there are people on every content who cannot find anything better than scavenging garbage to fi food). However, reason that people could always find something else to do is because machines up to now have been very limited and inflexible. Now, machines are starting to understand language, understand their environment, make decisions in unforseen circumstances, etc. Tractor replaced a horse, and now computer is replacing the driver of the tractor. I see no reason why people wouldn't have the same fate as animals that worked on the farm. Do you think those replaced workers will then end up scavenging municipal garbage landfill? No because there will be a robot that can sift through garbage to remove anything of value, including scraps of food for composting.
I have been watching your videos and I must say they are some of the best justifications for the existence of RUclips and the internet. Concerning this matter of economic equality, there perhaps is another perspective, which is; the treatment of employees by political and free-market entrepreneurs. In the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, bank and automobile CEOs among others were cashing out fat cheques while large portions of their employees had their jobs cut, houses foreclosed and lives ruined. A just, equality driven law would have limited the amount of money such CEOs could cash out and offered protection for the employees who suffered losses that period. Perhaps this is another angle to wealth equality. The state, having the mandate of the majority, should enact laws that'll protect the masses against instances of human greed.
Someone needs to read the law by Frederic Bastiat. Also, rich people don't have to sit there and be oppressed by heavy taxes. They have enough money to leave, or they simply hide it, or take their income in tax sheltered ways.
But in Indonesia, Chinese people are more richer, than a political people before BUMN(political entrepreneurs) created in 1998. Since Dictator Soeharto is not allowing Chinese people become politician, they find a way and learning how to use a potential resource in Indonesia.
A progressive income tax is not a violation of equality before the law, since everyone within the society is subject to the same laws which that society has created for itself. It would only be a violation if there were separate bodies of law for different individuals or categories of people.
Always wondered why my aversion to ideological compliance prevented me gaining trade papers and licence and therefore a decent living . It's no small consolation to have some bright people put the phenomena into words.
This is a false premise because there aren't, in reality, two different types of the very wealthy. Show me one example of the very wealthy who does not use their power and influence, both politically AND economically, to ensure their privilege and advantage.
Free Markets naturally weed out detrimental monopolies. Any monopolies formed in a Free Market is what is known as an "Ethical Monopoly" aka a monopoly that can only survive by providing the best product for the cheapest price, and constantly appealing to customer's wishes. This type of monopoly isn't bad.
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no What about Standard Oil. It was clearly in expense of society. It was created because Rockefeller would sell oil at a lost and cover the costs with the huge reservoir of money he had, leading all his competitors to bankruptcy and then he would buy them. After that he could sell oil at extremely high prices. Government had to step in to stop him by creating the antitrust legislation. So tell me, how would the free market get rid of standard oil and why didn't it back then?
@@babyblooddistilleriesinc3131 Standard Oil isn't a "free market" monopoly, because America has never had anything remotely close to free market capitalism. The Gilded Age monopolies that you are referring to, like Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel, had heavy government subsidy allowing them to outlast competition. President McKinley was directly in the pockets of big business, and would lobby to pass laws that favored big business and made it hard for competition. Your mistake is in thinking that "regulation" is the only form of bureaucratic intervention in the market. A government can completely avoid regulating, but can still flood the market with government interference in other ways like subsidies; rigging the game and tipping the scales regardless of a lack of "regulation". This is what happened in The Gilded Age.
I’ve always wondered why we have so many overweight, and often times extremely, poor people in our economic system is so bad? For example, the ones who live in section 8 housing (townhouses) close to me live better than I do In an apartment. I hope they enjoy what I’m helping to provide for them.
Because our economic system is designed to allow the rich to get away with nearly all the wealth while the middle class does nearly all the work, so it's important your attention is misdirected so you will blame the poor for your predicament instead of the architects of the system.
@@wades623 the situation exists just as it is… “Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.” -Reinhold Niebuhr
I think it more wise to question the intentions and actions of politicians posing as public servants who become wealthy than those who create businesses and jobs who become wealthy. The one depends on money from the masses for wealth while the other depend on providing goods and services to the masses.
Providing goods and services isn't inherently beneficial to society. Though that idea has been repeated ad nauseam in order to convince you that all forms of production are inherently good.
@@tannermcateer1463 That's true. Some things in production are harmful to society. May be we need to look at what things are being produced. I think some drugs, legal or not are harmful while some are beneficial. We should keep a close eye on politicians as well. Their intentions are not always good. Thanks for the reply, makes good sense.
@@danielhanawalt4998 Economics in particular is a tough egg for me to crack bc it seems there are good points to Laisser-faire capitalist approach but also deadly pitfalls, and I think the same couple be said of bureaucratic interventionist policies. Glad you appreciated my comment!
It is and will be one of the my favorite channels on YT. But this episode is a bit strange. Mises, Hayek and Reisman are from the same school of economics so it is rather biased approach :p
The problem of this video that others have noticed is that it reduces wealth to something that must be generated from the physical value of goods produced and provided. One dimensional approach. The only way an "economic entrepreneur" can be successful is by providing things people want and can afford. Their success is directly tied to the access a common person has to resources of acquisition, or money. So, limiting access to money based on "work contributed" only harms the wealth generating capabilities of "Econ entrep" who directly benefit on the success of the whole. Politicians are needed because free market with no constraints lead to the money at the top situation that our man's was trying to blame on the "Poli Entrep", although politicians cause the same, so there's a limit to their benefit. If there is not both equality of law and equal access to basic levels of money (due to the implied value, or potential to provide wealth to the "Econ Entrep" that a given person represents) then the "Poli Entreps" are wheeled out and they impose an upper limit on the growth of "EE's", because of the perceived centralization of wealth that is natural to a free market. Then the "PE's" are able to worm into people's minds and imply that only through political means can the world be rectified. They replace the "EE's" at the top of the wealth bracket, and with that condition the people to value "PE's" more. All of which can be avoided by acknowledging the inherent value of individuals, instead of implying that individuals only have value if they provide a good or service.
Exactly, there's no rational critique of this video from people who disagree with it. Just knee-jerk hate. I guess that's what you get when people can't face the truth.
+towardsthesun Level 0 sophistics, if you faced a video of advanced anrchism defense, you'd probably not know what to answer and be on cognitive dissonance, or you'd actually know what to reply and so would not say an ideology is true then...
Zebezia If by anarchism you mean private property rights denying anarchism, I'd totally know hwo to answer. That it's distinctly anti-humanist, amoral, and is incapable of producing wealth as we're used to it in the modern West and would lead to absolute impoverishment. If you mean property rights based libertarian anarchism, I'd say it has a very solid deontological foundation and may face practical problems in execution on a large scale, but may also be superior on utilitarian grounds.
God, I love this channel so much. Yes, this just barely brushes past the "Neocon propaganda" label, but it's up to you to read further into it and get a better opinion down the line, no?
Huh... one of the very few videos I didn't like. Politics and Capitalism is a very complex system. This video, while not completely wrong in what it says, it does leave out a very large portion of other point of views. This was like reading a page on a 100 page book, then declaring that that one page was all there was. I'm not about to write a book here, but in short, politics and the free market capitalist system need each other. To the extend of which you tweak it is really the only difference. In some situations, high regulation is better while in others, it's not.
We are individuals in a society of individuals. What is beneficial to an individual, may or may not be beneficial to the larger society. What is beneficial to the larger society, may or may not be beneficial to the individual. Maybe the best solution is when the individual and the larger society both benefit. But, what of those times when a choice has to be made? Who benefits, the individual or the larger society of individuals, and why? There is a natural tension between the individual and the larger society of individuals. But we are apparently individuals in a society of individuals. We have to exist somehow, someway. So, how exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to exist while we do exist? We do have choices, with all the consequences and ramifications, seen and unseen, of all those choices. Do we want a one for all and all for one society? And how exactly would that work? Do we want everybody is on their own society? And how exactly would that work? Who would watch over you to keep you safe while you sleep? Who builds and maintains the infrastructure that you utilize? Who would operate on your own brain if you needed it, yourself? Face it, we need each other to properly function and have a better life, individually and as a society of individuals. No one individual can do it all in totality. Not even "God". An eternally consciously existent entity (if such an entity actually exists) could never ever personally experience a total cessation of conscious existence. And yet that just happens to be the one very thing we as humans, (as well as many other species), cannot apparently ever escape. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe we consciously die because "God" can't. It's the only way how "God" could experience "conscious death" is by how it is apparently being done. So, one purpose of our conscious existence might just be that we cease to consciously exist one day. But still, how exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to exist while we do exist? Apparently we have choices with all the consequences of all those collective choices. Then we all apparently die one day from something. Then what in actual reality for the rest of future eternity? What exactly matters into future eternity and to whom does it eternally matter to? "God" alone? and/or "Me" too? and/or "Some other entity or entities"? OR "To no eternally consciously existent entity at all"?
Read the wealth of nations first chapter and all your doubts will be answered. Spoiler: you are wrong about the interaction between individuals and society
Fair to say that today we have this political entrepreneur group hiding behind legit entrepreneurs to sell themselves politically as modern conservatives? In today's economies we also have the added problem of said economies being virtually owned and operated by international banks via money creation not being managed within a nation, to which it's becoming apparent that the resulting debt is becoming more and more unmanageable. Easily argued by design I would add, as it occurs much in the same way that various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries have been crippled and devastated, and whose resources have been taken over in recent history. The famous and prophetic Jefferson quote comes to mind. There's a problem that people, regardless of their political leanings, need to get behind correcting once and for all if there's even going to be any kind of sane future I figure.
Thanks - your videos are always interesting and thought provoking. But this one is purely about Economics, and presupposes that humans' consumer desires and choices are in any way beneficial for themselves or the Environment. Just as an example - One look at the sheer volume of plastic which has now accumulated all over the planet must tell us that creating new consumer desires and producing goods to satisfy these is a very short-term blinkered form of wealth-production which leaves an increasing problem for subsequent generations., quite apart from the ever-increasing levels of plastic particles now being found in all stages of the marine food chain. No, we need to think wider and far beyond Capitalism and Consumer expectations.
There will always be a portion of the populace set aside within any nation-state that utilizes systemic psychopathy, narcissism, and advance methods of manipulation.
Some rules and regulation is neccery to correct the power dynamics that occure. People need to understand the connections there better so more informed choices are possible. Elsewiese I agree.
I am also for cutting the ability to enritchment or growth at some percentage of the GDP, in order to prevnt people, cooperations, collectives of any form from becoming to powerfull.
Hmm I understand what this video is saying. But isn't it impossible for that kind of free market to last? Or in the terms of the video, wouldn't pure market entrepreneurship always lead to political entrepreneurship. The creative "pure market entrepreneurs" pass their wealth down to their children, some kind of oligarchy is created, and then those elite try to influence the government to retain their privileges. The only way to eliminate that from happening would be to get rid of human greed, which isn't likely no?
There’s something genuinely peculiar about the arguments that are glossed over or skipped entirely in these videos. Unfortunately, that makes them less academic and more polemical. Taking a side would be fine, but ignoring sometimes rather obvious counter arguments (e.g., entrepreneurship in finance and monopolistic tactics which antagonize the ‘free’ market) makes the whole presentation less convincing.
can you prove the effectiveness of current strategies? why does "more" equal better quality or efficiency? people don't give to charities now because they are heavily taxed. charitable organisations have been around for a long time. now charity is socialized, and arguably less effective. would YOU give to charity if you weren't being forced to?
The happiest places on earth (the Scandinavian countries) are pretty must left wing, but with a more transparent government. Why can't we just try to copy what we know works, and not have do deal with the uncertainties of a theoretical model.
There are no doubt better forms of governance than others. It is hard to suggest that current quality of life is due to the current government policy as it is built upon past prosperity. I would doubt the credibility of the phrase "happiest places on earth".
Cool video but it highlights the author's lack of a business education. It's important to recognize the correlation between rule of law and an environment which will foster business growth and the entrance into the market by new entrepreneurs. The dichotomy presented here doesn't really fit as a model for use in understanding the real world economy.
I must say, this video is a very one-sided and short-sighted presentation of the topic. A couple of quotations from some people who all have the same opinion on a subject is hardly what I'd expect from a channel called "Academy of Ideas".
I understand the point that you are trying to make with reference to various species of animals to the human species but that comparison is an apples to oranges comparison. You are comparing the diversity across multiple species to one species. It would’ve have been a more equivalent comparison to compare one species such as lions to humans. The reason I bring this up is because it undermines the concept of equality. Lions are equal to lions but not necessarily equal to squirrels. I use this examples because humans think that differences within the species denotes inequality when the difference of inequality is across species. For humans the distribution of inequality is in accordance to phenotype within a species because they don’t realize there is no difference within the species because they conceptualize difference within the species as difference across the species therefore undermining equality within the species. I know this may seem like a meaningless argument but it is not especially with the history of our species not understanding nor implementing equality in practice.
A pure market entrepreneur relies on the exploitation of the worker. The reason they gain so much money, is due to the fact that the workers wage remains stagnant. Why is it that when production increases, and sales go up, the wages remain stagnant. This is exploitation.
Thats false, in a pure market entrepreneur the people has many options to work and even to create their own enterprise. Also, this system boost the technological advance more than any other, so the productivity and well being will increase
if this hypothetical business could do so well to oppress its workers, it would be very easy for one of those workers to leave and make an even better product more efficiently by paying its workers a better wage. the only reason this doesn't happen. is political entrepreneurship.
Fictitious capital is a factor that isn't addressed here. Not only that but the whole internet and every computer startup where funded by the gov't so that is an example of political entrepreneurs benefiting the masses, hence your video.
Ok, but whether the those operating in the market would have developed the technology for the internet if the government didn't is debatable. And based on the enormous amounts of wealth created by the advent of the internet (which free markets tend in the direction of), I think they would have. So I don't think your example lends weight to the idea that government intervention in an economy is good or necessary.
Yes it does if because of gov't intervention is what directly resulted in the advent of the compuer. it's not like our country wasn't capitalistic already, just the gov't funded one aspect and it was prosperous and not at all as black and white as this video's quotes make it out to be.
Ending patent protection, and forcing 'patent trolls' to create the claimed invention (rather than wait for others to do so, then suing them.... like the guy who sued the creators of the 'Bar Code' and QR codes....) we would enrich the smaller creators and inventors who fear bringing their goods to the consumer for fear of being sued. Patents should be good for 10 years, no renewals. Seems like a small thing, but it is huge
So what you're saying is that because people aren't all the same (duh) and have different talents and capabilities, the enormous wealth inequality in the world today (where 1% of the world owns as much as 99% of the other people) is somehow justified. But even if 1% of the world truly owns as much talent as the remaining 99% (as if talent can even be quantified in numbers), why would that neccesarily justify this wealth inequality? Knowing that having great amounts of talent hard work in most cases does NOT translate to great amounts of wealth, it is nonsensical to say the wealth inequality is just a logical and justified result of talent/capability inequality. Of course there's nothing inherently bad about one person owning more than another, but in the modern world (but also in most civilisations after agriculture was invented), this inequality is off the charts and cannot be justified by any reasonable measure.
you're not actually disputing his point. this degree of wealth inequality can only be achieved by political entrepreneurship and coercion. the thing that upsets you is unjust. he says it too, in the video.
can someone please explain the statement at 7:09? I am not able to understand how the war on drugs will benefit established political entrepreneurs...and what's the deal about "police and prison"?
This video ignores significant problems with “pure market economies.” Without laws against anti-competitive collusion monopolies will develop - resulting in higher prices, poorer quality, and limited variety of goods. Externalities are costs not included in the market price of goods: pollution is a prime example. Society as a whole ends up paying for externalities rather than the purchaser of the goods or services. Use of natural resources belonging to the society as a whole to enrich a few is another reason to regulate business. Abuse of labor by corporations is minimized by workplace safety rules, limits to hours worked per day or week, child labor laws, etc.
I believe you missed the point of the video. He is not talking about an unregulated private sector but the comparison of "pure market entrepreneurship" and "Political entrepreneurship". Do you really believe that Political (Crony Capitalists) pay off the political class to set up labor laws or limit work hours? What about pollution, you are correct about externalities, but where has and is the worst pollution occurring in the world. In totalitarian countries where the political leaders and political entrepreneurs don't have to respond to the average people. At least in a free market you may choose between a Tesla or a Chevy.
Your argument at the beginning (that social equality is incompatible with equality before the law) is based on a misunderstanding of the concept of equality before the law. Equality before the law DOES NOT mean that the same laws apply to everybody - every sane legal system has specific laws which apply to certain categories of individuals and not to others. For example, different laws apply to children and adults, or people who enter legal contracts like buyers and sellers, or employers and employees. Does the fact that an employer is required by law to pay a wage to his employees and not vice versa means that they are not "equal before the law"? (or that it "violets freedom" as you claim?) Of course not. What the concept of equality before the law really means is (roughly) that provided we have such and such laws, they should equally apply to every individual in the RELEVANT group as it is antecedently specified in the law. The idea is that it would be unjust or unfair to exempt specific individuals from the law without some principled justification. So for example, it is unjust to let a person who broke the law to escape punishment only because he is rich or good looking, but it could be perfectly just not to punish a mentally ill person or a minor for the same offense. So what goes wrong with your argument is that you conflate equality before the law (in the very abstract sense of "equality") with the question what makes laws just (which is what at issue in the debate concerning social equality ). However, the principle of equality before the law cannot tell you all by itself which laws are just and which are not, and thus showing that a certain law treats people unequally isn't itself sufficient to show that the law is unjust. And thus for instance, progressive taxation (i.e., when the rich pay more taxes than the poor) doesn't violate equality before the law, if there are independent reasons to regard the law as just, and thus citing the principle of equality before the law is simply irrelevant in deciding this question.
If there are cases where an employer doesn't pay wages, then he will suffer failure - either through legal reparation (not fulfilling a contract) or social and economic ostracism. Why does this example need an unequal law?
Well if you are against the existence of any legal system as such, than you have no business talking about "equality before the law" in the first place.
Is this unequal law just? Why would you desire no return from an investment? The employer expects labour, the employee expects wages - as is the contract. If the contract is not met, then there is a dispute. The law requires contracts to be met, where is the need for unequal law?
That's exacatly why free market is the best option for "non-ideal" people, who differ with their frailty. Otherwise any highly-structured and rigid system would be an utopia. You cannot have an universal model of the machine that works with every component, you have to create a system in which everybody creates their own model.
***** exactly, most markets run around the fact that everyone sells shit and that good quality stuff, so that you dont have to throw it/your money to the trash for a single flaw (on purpose), costs so much only a company can afford it because the extra cost comes from the speculation that you are gonna use it to make money hence "i want my cut" People will buy expensive tvs which will fail because it had a cheap cap in the psu and it died and no one repairs them or because they used a cheap flex cable that doesnt last too long or because they made your cellphone just so by the current trend it would run out of memory in a year or two so that it becomes obsolete even if 90% of the rest of the hardware is good enough for everything you have to do. No one is thinking "this is crap, im throwing my hard earned money to the trash by buying this". so that ideal about capitalism promoting quality over quantity is as fake as a 12 cents coin. The system makes it all seem normal so people end like slaves used end, thinking slavery was normal, and good. This is the same, they think all that happens, that they have to work their whole life just to barely be able to stay alive while being feed propaganda through the media to numb any idea they might have, is normal and that it is ok that the rich do it because "it's their right"
Laharl Krichevskoy every great civilization is built on slavery, whether it's done the classical way by physical force and imprisonment, or more nuanced methods for example exploiting artificially generated needs and debt, but that says more about the weakness of people, rather than the evil of producents. The market is always the manifestation of the stupidity of masses. Free market is a very efficient tool to fulfill any desires, and if you see market fulfills repulsive, irrational needs, then people must strive for this shit, otherwise such disgusting options wouldn't be available on the market. Simple rule of demand and supply. The key is to enable an avarage human to meet his urgues even if these are fake ones,aftreall, we must imagine Sisyphous happy.
I want the same “equality before the law” that Alec Baldwin gets. No charges zilch for pointing a gun at someone and killing them. not one second in a court room.
When I first saw thumbnails of videos on Carl Jung, I was surprised and immediately subscribed not to forget you. But as I've seen this video and the one about envy and social justice, I'm pretty disappointed. There's a radical avoidance of the other side of the problem, and that is of misuses of wealth inequality and free entrepreneurship on an international level, as much as the false notion that political and economic power are always seperated. This picture of free-market and political entrepreneurships are...lol...if only, IF ONLY everything was that easy and plain like in your videos. And what is "pure market". Is that some libertarian's wet dream? You know it's not possible. When people attain a certain amount of power, whether econimic or political, they'll work very hard to tackle growing potential of the other, therefore making it waay less "free" and "pure" for pretty much everyone else. And the consumer as the "free agent" isn't actually a thing in most cases, thanks to advertisement, cultural propaganda through media and latent psychological effects the products tend to have, aside from their actual purpose and utility which enhance the consumption and profit at the expense of the consumer.
Arnold Layne Not to mention that the video which points out that removing regulations would improve society implies that companies that sell smartphones more cheaply by dumping pollutants directly into a river and crack dealers improve society. They also seem to forget that railroads and dams are often funded by the government. I'm all for free market capitalism but many of their videos seem to be too one sided.
Cleverly disguised as an open intellectual inquiry site, this is actually a radical right Libertarian propaganda project. The social aspects of topics are played down, giving the impression that philosophy is all about isolated individuals without social or economic obligations to their communities. Take EVERYTHING they say with a grain - many grains - of salt. If you would like to learn about philosophy as the philosophers themselves present it, see the Philosophical Overload channel.
Right because Philosophical Overdose doesn't have an agenda? If you look at their videos they heavily favor Marx and anti-capitalist ideas. Chill out, it's impossible for a human being not to be biased towards certain types of political and social systems. Your fear of allowing others to talk about issues you disagree with is pathetic.
This would make a lot of sense if not for the fact that pure market entrepreneurship inevitably leads to political entrepreneurship once enough wealth has been accumulated to buy politicians.
Genuine economic prosperity from entrepreneurship can only occur if the means of production are owned by the workers and not by sole individuals. Elon Musk, who exploits workers and cracks down on unions is a very case in unity. Workers who contribute immensely to innovations and the general wellbeing society should share ultimately redistributed wealth. Abolishing the state alone will not solve economic inequality, abolishing the state and private property will.
So much wrong here... But I'll give it a shot at pointing it out, hopefully to enlighten you. Firstly what you are saying about equality of wealth not being compatible with equality before the law, is a grave error. In fact not only is equality of wealth compatible with equality before the law, it is essential to it. If you have inequality of wealth you can never have equality before the law, as we see time and time again, the wealthy do not suffer the same penalties for the same crimes as the poorer citizens. This is because wealth grants access to influence and affect decisions which then corrupt individuals carrying out law enforcement and sentencing. Secondly, free mark entrepreneurship and political entrepreneurship is a false dichotomy. They are essentially the same thing, when a group of free market entrepreneurs grow large enough in size or collaborate in groups they always lobby government, this is to gain more power or privileges. This is seen in every single industry, in every single country, there is not one that does not endorse a political party, there is not one whom does not contribute to a political campaign wether publicly or in private. The issue with this video, is you are taking up the position of existing "crony capitalism" vs idealistic "free market capitalism". You, like so many before you proclaim that the economic benefits we enjoy in the west today are the fruits of free market capitalism of a distant past that is now being replaced or has been replaced by crony capitalism, which is the furthest thing from the truth. Indeed one only needs to take a look at the books of history to see why the west enjoys the luxuries we have become accustomed to. Empire. The west (ie Europe and the US) were the first to develop mechanized warfare tools, we then used those tools to expand across the globe and enrich ourselves by enslaving others, pure and simple. Mercantilism (which to put it simply is state controlled trade) was the main form of trade used by the majority of Western nations during their epic rise in power, this in itself should be enough evidence to disprove the free market ideal. Free markets are only used now because outright Imperial colonialism became increasingly hard to sustain. This was due, in large part, to infighting (ie the world wars), the funding of anti colonialism by the Soviets in the cold war, and to a larger extent the extreme degradation in the cost of manufacturing effective mechanical weapons. As we can see even today, a country like Afghanistan with a nominal GDP lower than half the wealth of a magnate like Bill Gates has been able to resist both the Soviets' and our own US military virtually by itself for decades. We also see this true in the Iraq war (which disproved the argued point that Afghanistan was an anomaly because of difficult terrain) where despite claiming victory we have had to keep forces there and quietly increase them so that the country remains firmly in our grip. Even today marketd are not really free (at least not at the international level) and are kept up by huge investments in keeping 3rd world nations both corrupt and indebted. One needs only to read the documentation of an IMF loan to see why it's designed to accrue permanent payback, this is a form of predatory loaning, officially illegal in most nations, with many simplistic loopholes, predatory loaning is where the lender demands concessions from the debtor that perpetuates the cycle of debt. A lot of people always ask "Why don't they organize and make their lives better through strikes and riots like we did in the past?" Well to put it simply, Everytime they try our MNC's bribe their police forces to crack down on the people and arrest their leaders, and in most cases use outright assassination when someone becomes too popular. You need to understand in 3rd world countries you can literally hire a Hitman for $100. We were able to rebel because when we did in the 1800's and 1900's there were no richer nations, there were no superpowers from the outside that could fund the states' crackdowns and the capitalists' against us, meaning when there was a strike, they stopped making money, hence they had to give into us. In the 3rd world it's different, when Indians strike, the MNCs move out of the country, to another that will submit, all the while funding infighting among the populous to create as much chaos as they can so then the people feel like they are forced to elect politicians that will ask for the MNCs to return, as at least then they can eat. This is why I believe revolution if possible must come from the west, but that's a different subject. To finish, the idea of a free market is nothing more than that, an idea, never to be put in practice and only to fool those who realize there is something wrong with the system and lead them to point their fingers only against the state. However the truth is, that the state and business feed off eachother, business provides the wealthy a way to enslave (ie employ) the masses through wage slavery. The state serves among many other functions to capital, as a tool to blunt the crushing force of business so it never becomes too oppressive as was the case in the Victorian age (until it is deemed necessary by the capitalist class). While also providing the opiate of belief to the masses that the state is working for them and when the opinion deviates that it is not, to provide the hope that in the next election they can elect someone who can finally fix everything.
Wealth is bad because it grants influence over politicians, which is why we need to give politicians more power, because then they won't be influenced by the wealthy anymore! Maybe that's true. You forget one thing. Most politicians make their entire career in a decade. They couldn't give a bleep what happens afterwards. Therefore they spend their time in office securing deals to fund the wealthy with taxpayer money, with the hopes that the corporations will then give them sweet book deals, speaking fees, or work with their llcs to give back. You people can never admit to the degree that JP Morgan and Rockefeller ran your whole progressive era and still do to this day. If you're more concerned about big business than big government, which you are, that's what makes you "left wing" these days, I'll have you know, big government is ran by big business and absent the absolute destruction or conquest of business and all of the rights of the humans that make them up, such as in 1930s Germany, Lenin and Stalin's Russia and Maoist China, that will always be the case.
Wealth inequality will always create inequality in the laws. Economic gluttony(living beyond ones needs) creates economic poverty(living below one's needs), they are the same economic coin. Economic balance is the only true healthy economic system. Repeating someones misconceptions does not make your opinions true, nor is it proof of what you are saying is true. This is an inhumane and dangerous idea. You do not realize how much people suffered because of economic gluttony, this human history shows. Love your channel though just do not share your opinion here. Thank you.
iWouldWantSky Where in the world he said is an anarchist? He just presents ideas. Just because I might talk about communism it doesn't mean I'm a communist. If you are not open minded to a new idea wtf are you doing on a philosophy channel?
I agree with all the political entrepreneur stuff but the US leads the world in wealth inequality and that is a huge problem in this country, not only for those on the lowest part of the socioeconomic scale but also those at the top. Japan, Western Europe, Scandinavia, etc. have much smaller wealth inequality and their societies don’t suffer because of it, or at least not to the extent that the US does.
Good video, though it might irritate a few people that the spotlight was given to just one side- that of Hayek, von Mises, etc. i.e. the neoliberals. Why not also tackle Rawls vs. Nozick? I mean we are already talking about inequality and the state. Good job nonetheless.
given the manipulative nature of humans , there never was nor will be Equality before the Law ! Hence the illusion of a free and equal society is just that. All one needs to look at is how the multi billionaires got to where they are. Certainly not by any other means but manipulation and use of the inequality of their wealth.
The mistake of this video is the mistake of all Austrian economics and that's to apply a philosophy to something that yields to measurement. The world is spherical. Despite how counterintuitive that may be. The matter isn't decided by the philosopher with the most reasonable argument. The dead Austrian school was only revived because of it's usefulness to right leaning politicians not because of it's merit in the field of economics.
A monopoly is created when politicians provide companies with bailouts/subsidies and create laws and regulations to prevent competition from other firms. In a true free market a monopoly could only form if that company provided an amazing product to the masses at a great price - that would benefit the population and would not be a bad thing.
What does that have to do with our discussion? So anyone can buy a company if they have enough resources...Ok. In a free market if they didn't offer products people wanted the company would fail.
Abolish all wealth and the Fed. The US has always been criminally mad. I should be Free To Choose to say no, but without consent am forced to say yes and pay for everybody else to say it too. It's absurd and a nonsensical waste of our productivity and time. Nobody can spend somebody else's money more carefully than you can yourself. Wash, rinse, repeat it.
I better understand why the oppressive nature of capitalism is so little criticised here. I have to say I strongly disagree but great work nonetheless at doing what you do.
It is a fact of capitalism. But since you seem to know everything about life educate me more. Biologist FIdgetymo. You seem to come from this human nature perspective, where individuals only strive for their own selves. My questions to you are then, Why do mother breast feed? Why do we reproduce? Why do we strive to reproduce? And if inequality is a fact please provide us with the evidence. You seem to have the facts as a biological scientist who has expended his life researching the truth of human nature please educates us with your theory. I will be glad to hear it.
Individuals must first strive for their own needs. The mother cannot breast-feed without first ensuring her ability to survive. When some don't survive, this is an unequal outcome. I am not a biologist. I am only enjoying the discussion.
Excellent, still why does the mother breast feed? Why do we strive to reproduce? why do we reproduce? you have not answer the why? and why don't others survive? if we strive for individual success then why do we seem to assure the survivals of others.
Cool story bro, inequality has nothing to do with attractiveness they are poor who are very attractive. Yes I agree with the mother statement was the answer I was looking to get. An it is precisely correct the fact is that I am not concerned of whether the mother motives were egotistic or not , it is the physical act that counts not the mentality in doing so. Therefore nature as you and presented is against inequality. False black do not have larger lungs there is no difference in athletic ability between races. Your hypothesis falls apart by making such stupid statement. People are equal there is no difference just because you put social Darwinism in eloquent terms it does no excuse it from being so. Again it is not the mentality that matters to me mentality is subjective and you seem to be basing your hypothesis on Freud and Herbert Spencer, one full of speculative notions that have been rejected by concrete and factual biological studies. The other an out right white supremacist. by the way Nietzsche opposed Spencer and white supremacist like his brother in law so remove the picture of Nietzsche you are just putting true readers to shame.
I like the video and agree with the point, but must disagree with the libertarian perspective about drugs promoted here. The problem is granting the populous the “freedom” to become addicted to drugs, largely to people who don’t understand how addictions work or their risk to succumbing to it, and also the assumption that the decision to regularly use drugs is a truly informed one. One need not look further than the opioid crises, which is only PARTIALLY attributable to the overprescribed use of pain killers; indeed, we can’t assume that the opioid epidemic amongst the impoverished classes - which proceeded that of the affluent classes - can be attributed to hospital stays. This lax view has contributed to governments investing money in heroin “safe” needle distribution centers - instead of treatment centers - which has resulted, in the case of San Francisco, the accumulation of spent heroin needles all over the place. One can argue that the government profiting from the regulation of drugs, as it were, is preferable to it allowing its citizenry to descend into the abyss of addiction. And, considering the undeniable societal costs of a substantially addicted populace, can it not then be argued that the government has a duty to protect its citizenry by preserving the order in this way? Sure, we should do something about crony capitalism and the ability to become rich off of the people at their own expense, and sure it will take various approaches and failures until we get it right, but I believe that the people need to be protected from these things to some extent. After all, when you are dropping needles everywhere and causing a tremendous burden upon taxpayers, your drug use and addiction is NOT just a personal issue.
Alcohol and tobacco are also drugs, and these cause a lot of damage to society as well. Mc Donalds and all those fast food chains also cause a lot of damage to society. Videogames addiction also cause a lot of damage to society. Those cost operate in the long run, the difference is that drugs like heroin and cocaine have a visible impact on people's health in the short term, so the society get alarmed strongly but in essence, is pure hypocrisy, because everybody has the freedom to harm their health the way they want in some aspects, but in others they dont. So the answer is no, the duty of the government is not limit our freedom prohibiting hard drugs for the purpose of conserve our heath (if that was the case, it should prohibit all the stuff I mentioned before: fast food chains, videogames, alcohol, tobacco and so on) its duty is to protect private property and guarantee our safety from wars, injustices and crime
tehflooper It’s not about preserving your health. Me having to go out of my way to avoid your spent heroin needles all over the ground, and me having to endure you mugging me to procure money for your meth fix, is not about protecting your health as an addict. I’m saying that it’s tricky because hard drugs affect society at large much more than cigarettes, McDonald’s, and video games possibly can. Drug addicts can tear a beautiful city into shreds. Granted, that can be addressed by bringing back laws that allow involuntary intake into mental hospitals/rehab or prison time - not for being high, but for being a grievous public nuisance - but there sure seems to be a lot of pushback. Either way, you should have a right to make incredibly stupid choices insofar as they affect ONLY you. Inevitably, legalization of hard drugs will outright kill most of these people knee-deep in addiction. As moral beings, we don’t care about them anyway. Beyond them, millions more will develop habits because they underestimate these drugs. This will all result in degradation of entire areas. We will then need facilities and task forces to deal with the addicts and their inevitable behaviors. Fine. But we cannot have have one but not the other. [Note that I am not implying that you argued such.]
This would be a much easier topic if we (USA, at least) hadn’t degraded into a culture that glorifies drugs and drug addiction. That way, it doesn’t matter nearly as much if drugs were legal because most people would agree that actually doing them is stupid. But legalizing hard drugs within a drug-obsessed population is not simply a thought experiment, or a matter of perhaps obtuse theoretical principles. Not at this point.
Rhyca the same approach was discussed when the time alcohol and cigarettes were legalized, the people believed that those drugs could damage the society strongly (they were prohibited and limited as if they were the worst thing on planet) but today they are as normal as any other market good. Maybe, your assumption about the people getting violent and ruining neighborhoods because of hard drugs is the reason why those addicts act the way they act, because is perceiving as a bad thing for the society, so they choose to be bad as well, is more like a cultural perception about what is wrong or right, but everything is relative and subjective. Nobody has the right to prohibit or limit the needs or desires of other people, of course, only if it doesn't imply a direct damage to others (like homicide, robbery, rapes, and so on). You are arguing about what could happen if they were legalized but that doesn't mean that it is actually what is going to happen. Instead, you can see what happen when something that is considered bad or harmful is permitted: alcohol, prostitution, tobacco, marihuana, etc. The society could work with minor problems as in Netherlands. But if the problem is the state of consciousness of society (that this is not prepared to deal with big changes), then, what is need to be done to surpass that state of mind? More public education? No, we need more freedom. So what are we waiting for? Do we need that some governmental authority teach us what it is possible what it is not? We are only wasting our time thinking that hard drug crime can be eradicated with more violence and control, it could never be possible because that is not the answer, because that is not even a problem in a free society.
Rhyca I mean, more “facilities and task forces to deal with the addicts and their inevitable behaviors” is only a waste of money, time and more important, lives. The more those drugs are limited, the more they are valued. Your taxes are going to be used to solve nothing and all efforts are going to be useless. We need more responsible people instead and it will only occur when we have more freedom to choose. The bad externality of needless everywhere is not the big issue, it could be more easily managed once hard drugs are legalized and the perception of society changes. As I said, alcohol and cigarettes have a big impact on society but the costs act on the long run, tons of lives and ills could be saved, but that is better than deal with mafias, cartels and organized crime. If you think, the fact that the majority of drugs are prohibited both in the US and Mexico is the main reason why violence never ends and every year hundreds of people enter the black market, because they are high valued, and as long as this doesn't change, all efforts will be in vain.
"All animals are equal,but some animals are more equal than others"
George Orwell
Political equality among men has never meant equality in wealth nor in standards of living.
That's my hand (and my wife's) at 4:10. :D
I created heaps of similar photos & released them into the public domain as a gentle "up yours" to Shutterstock and their ilk. I'm thrilled they're being used.
True, true, though they all have watermarks. I wanted to make some that were high quality and free for anyone to use in any way they want.
That's awesome! Thanks for releasing them, I rely on you and others like yourself who release high quality public domain images to make these videos :)
nice hands yo
@@bored1980 Free pictures are very good in certain circumstances, but when a video shows Google's ads and makes (probably) a pittance (but something), while Google earns billions a year, I think that the photographer deserves some remuneration, or at the very least, some sort of acknowledgement. But then, I despise the social re-engineering Google. On the other hand, if content-makers pay for all their pictures, they would want to put up more ads to recoup their expenses, so perhaps free pictures are for the best for YT videos.
I try to never click on any Google ad anywhere, or for a "video will start after this ad" notice, I will forego watching the video.
EDIT: I also click the 'skip ad(s)' button as soon as it appears, or click on the 'pause' icon if the video is slow in loading so that I can still skip the ads. As I understand, Google makes money from an advertiser if an ad plays its full length, even if it has not been clicked on.
lol
The problem with anarcho-capitalism is that an assumption is made that competing businesses will not collude, cheat, or undermine market mechanisms to gain an advantage. It's assumed that business owners will accept the volatile nature of the market, and will focus on bending to the ever changing will of consumers to gain profit, and will not seek to stabilize their profits by exerting some kind of control over the market. It's assumed that businesses will be perfectly happy competing with other businesses, and will strictly rely on comparative advantage to gain market share, and if they do happen to max out their comparative advantage, they will not seek other manipulative ways to increase profits. It relies on the idea that everyone will play fairly, and the business will bow down before the altar of the consumer.
But in reality, these assumptions are questionable. Because in every high-stakes competition in human history, there has been a culture of cheating to go along with it. And it isn't because of governments or regulating bodies. It's because when the risk and reward are high enough, and people's livelihoods are on the line, nobody wants to rely on uncertainty if they have the ability to control the outcome. So the competition itself creates a market for undermining the competition. And the higher the stakes, the more profitable that market becomes.
Phil Barker I don’t think it assumes that; rather, I think the assumption is that these things will sort themselves out.
I am no anarcho-capitalist, but I nevertheless believe that those types of behaviors are far more likely under crony capitalism in which lobbyists, government regulatory bodies, and private regulatory bodies make that possible. Sure, some companies may conspire, but in what way? To artificially raise prices? Without regulations locking competitors out, all that will do is make the conditions ripe for a competitor with lower prices to dominate the market. After all, businesses are WHOLLY confined by the whims of the consumers.
Furthermore, we can’t reasonably assume that an ENTIRE market will conspire. That example inherently implicates greedy people, no? It is thus reasonable to assume that SOMEONE within the greedy pack will take advantage of the opportunity to undercut everyone else in that market - by giving the consumers what they want or need in a form more desirable than, presumably, the entirety of the rest of that market.
Despite of those possible disadvantages, that system will be better than the governmental own state one
The operational implication of what Phil Barker has written is that the most valuable economic freedoms are the freedom to start a firm, to wind up an existing firm, and to import goods and services from other countries.
The idea is to abolish slavery, it will have mixed results yes, but ending it is all that matters.
@@tehflooper some gov regulation is fine. Letting business do whatever it wants never works.
Arguments in the video for free market entrepreneurs are flawed because they are based on simplified assumptions that are there to make free market models tractable by economists, but that are not always true in reality.
Result is that free market entrepreneurs have gotten richer while doing things that hurt society and consumers.
One example are externalities. By polluting air, for example, polluter gets all of the benefits of saving money on disposal of pollutants, while the cost of pollution is borne by all.
Another example is unequal information. There is money to be made in selling toxic toys. Life insurance companies could not without government making sure that those companies can pay benefits decades from now in exchange for premiums paid today.
Even when information is not hidden, consumers are not equipped to make the analysis necessary to act in their own self interest. Apple and Microsoft made their fortunes by engineering products that lock in consumers, and that makes money for the company after the sale in other ways.
And finally, people do not always make rational decisions that are in their best self interest, and a lot of money is made exploiting human flaws. I talking about casinos, tobacco companies, impulse buys, diamond industry, etc.
I agree. The arguments made in the particular video reveal some unexamined assumptions (which we all have). Free market entrepreneurs are not benevolently committed to the wellbeing of consumers. Much of their effort goes into manufacturing a need for their product or service that would otherwise not exist. The packaging is often more important than the content.
Another unexamined assumption made is that efficiency is the highest ideal. Except that the efficiency model commodifies individuals and turns them into "consumers" and "workers." It transforms educational institutions into factories that produce workers and transforms culture into a consumer-making engine instead of facilitating the emergence of true individuals. Humans inevitably become units that are compelled serve the efficiency model. The extent to which they fit this model is the extent to which they are allowed to participate in society. Craftsmen and women are replaced by the human units that mass-produce a copy who are then replaced by machines. These mass-produced products are the only ones the masses can afford. Therefore, the smaller percentage of people that can afford the creations of an artist, the fewer artists that can make a living from their art. A person may make the most wonderful hand-sewn clothing, but one wealthy individual can only use so many pairs of jeans. Better distributed wealth allows for the flourishing of more craftsmen and artists.
Another is the assumption that concentrations of wealth is altogether different from concentrations of power. However, wealth gives an individual greater power to do something of greater consequence to the rest of humanity. A $15 million project in your community will impact you more than a $15,000 project will. This can be as bad as it can be good. But seeing as how all human beings are flawed, unbalanced wealth will ultimately magnify the flaws of the wealthy individual and impose them on others. When wealth is better distributed (I'm not saying "equal," but better distributed) larger applications of wealth must appeal to more people before the project can be accomplished.
A better model would mimic natural systems. In a healthy forest, networks of fungi form a symbiotic relationship with plant life and distribute resources so as to maintain the health of the whole community. In some times and seasons, one plant or area of the forest will have more than it needs to flourish while others do not have enough. The surplus, rather than not being utilized, is distributed to where need exists. By maintaining the health of the whole, it extends the well of resources available to every member of the community at the time they need them so they can each develop and grow to their best ability.
This model, however, is a result of spontaneous interdependent ordering. The various economic models argued over today are all ultimately flawed when taken to their end. They all impose order upon the masses and deliver winners, losers, and the buffer in-between to protect the have's from the have-nots by the false hope in the middle that they might one day become a "have." These models simply wear different skins.
Your concerns are moot and useless, as in a completely unregulated economy without bureaucratic interference, any entrepreneurs that do not adhere to the desired conditions of the public would be PUT OUT OF BUSINESS, and replaced by a business that does adhere to such conditions. What do you think happens when a business does something that the public dislikes, such as destroying the environment? The public stops buying from them. What do you think happens when the public stops buying from them? They go out of business and cease to exist, or they are replaced in prominence by a business that the public LIKES and BUYS FROM. This process is known to economists as "The Invisible Hand", and it is the process by which a completely unregulated Free Market would fix itself and weed out bad businesses.
The ONLY time this process isn't allowed to occur is in the case of bureaucratic interference and government subsidy, in which case governmental institutions continue to fund bad businesses, allowing them to continue existing even through extreme public distraught. So in this situation, a business would be able to harm the environment and reap the benefits without any of the consequences, as they do today. At this phase Capitalism becomes Corporatism, and it is the socio-economical foundation we live in currently. It's why there are so many hated businesses continuing to exist today, and why the public is so disappointed with the private sector as a whole. Businesses nowadays have no obligation to listen to the wishes and protests of citizens, because that government money is going to come in regardless, so why not just do whatever you want? Why not harm the environment and make more? Remove government influence in the market, and you remove the problem.
I repeat, REMOVE GOVERNMENT INFLUENCE IN THE MARKET, AND YOU REMOVE THE PROBLEM.
Now, if after reading all this you're thinking "Well couldn't monopolies arise in a completely unregulated market?" then you are even more economically illiterate than I thought. If you wish for me to explain why bad monopolies aren't viable in a Free Market, then just ask and I'll respond.
@@jonathanadamson Refer to my previous response to the OP about why any businesses that did anything bad would just be eviscerated from a Free Market. Also, money being power means nothing nor is it something to fret over. Power is literally one of the four fundamental forces of the universe (Strong Force) so there will literally always be concentrations of power in some manifestation. Even if all of humanity was a hive-mind species as the socialists would have it, power concentration would still exist (if not actually be more disparate).If money didn't exist, power concentration would still exist as much as it does today. Also, you mistake fungi for sentient beings. I can point to rocks co-existing all day long but it means nothing, because we aren't rocks.
The simple fact of the matter is that there exists entropy in the universe, and as a result of this, scarcity is a phenomenal consequence. There is only a finite number of resources. The problem is that socialism has always depended on the distribution of said resources AS IF those resources are NOT finite. Socialism assumes humanity is post-scarcity. And this is why it always fails, because we are NOT post-scarcity. So any attempt at distribution in said way leads to over-usage of resources and the impoverishing of the population (which is why literally every population that tries it is pushed into extreme poverty).
Once humanity has sufficient enough technology that we are post-scarcity, like something out of Star Trek, then yeah everyone can get everything for free, or at the very least resources can be distributed as you want them. Most futurists think this'll come about after we build our first Dyson Sphere. But right now, the only sensible way to distribute resources is to those who add VALUE, not those who don't, because these resources are finite. Nothing is produced in this world without expelled energy, and it only makes logical sense to REWARD those who expel said energy proportionately, not those who don't. It's almost common sense. Also, NATURE itself produces winners and losers buddy, not the fucking economy lmao what the fuck. It's a fact of life that people are not equal nor are they born equal, are you going to sit here and tell me that a fucking janitor holds a candle to Bill Gates? Capitalism realizes this disparity of talent in nature and plays to it. Be mad at reality.
But yeah, if there's anything else you misunderstand, just pick up a Basic Economics book from Amazon (if you can afford it), the retards in this thread seem to need it.
Also, free market does proponents implicitly assume that market treats people differently than it treats other inputs in production. 18th century capitalism was intolerable in part because it treated workers the way we treat machines. If you got injured at work you would basically be tossed aside like a broken part. And safety measures at workplace? Why spend money on those if replacing a broken worker is cheaper.
Now think about this: When tractors came, millions of horses, donkeys and mules lost their jobs and no replacement use was found for them. In the past, when a person would lose a job, he or she would eventually find a new one (although there are people on every content who cannot find anything better than scavenging garbage to fi food). However, reason that people could always find something else to do is because machines up to now have been very limited and inflexible. Now, machines are starting to understand language, understand their environment, make decisions in unforseen circumstances, etc. Tractor replaced a horse, and now computer is replacing the driver of the tractor. I see no reason why people wouldn't have the same fate as animals that worked on the farm.
Do you think those replaced workers will then end up scavenging municipal garbage landfill? No because there will be a robot that can sift through garbage to remove anything of value, including scraps of food for composting.
I have been watching your videos and I must say they are some of the best justifications for the existence of RUclips and the internet. Concerning this matter of economic equality, there perhaps is another perspective, which is; the treatment of employees by political and free-market entrepreneurs. In the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, bank and automobile CEOs among others were cashing out fat cheques while large portions of their employees had their jobs cut, houses foreclosed and lives ruined. A just, equality driven law would have limited the amount of money such CEOs could cash out and offered protection for the employees who suffered losses that period. Perhaps this is another angle to wealth equality. The state, having the mandate of the majority, should enact laws that'll protect the masses against instances of human greed.
Someone needs to read the law by Frederic Bastiat. Also, rich people don't have to sit there and be oppressed by heavy taxes. They have enough money to leave, or they simply hide it, or take their income in tax sheltered ways.
@babjide I think that's the point he's making. those things could not have happened without unjust political protection.
In the 3rd world most rich are just political entreprenuers
You brought and amazing perspective man!! keep doing the amazing work.
@pavanpyda:
Murica' *Is* a Third-World-Country...4 the Poor.
@@MrMattgood14 love that positivity lol
But in Indonesia, Chinese people are more richer, than a political people before BUMN(political entrepreneurs) created in 1998. Since Dictator Soeharto is not allowing Chinese people become politician, they find a way and learning how to use a potential resource in Indonesia.
Same with the first world.
A progressive income tax is not a violation of equality before the law, since everyone within the society is subject to the same laws which that society has created for itself. It would only be a violation if there were separate bodies of law for different individuals or categories of people.
The state creates these laws and imposes them on the individual.
There is no societu
@@imdebaws3715 Very insightful Margaret Thatcher.
Always wondered why my aversion to ideological compliance prevented me gaining trade papers and licence and therefore a decent living . It's no small consolation to have some bright people put the phenomena into words.
This is a false premise because there aren't, in reality, two different types of the very wealthy. Show me one example of the very wealthy who does not use their power and influence, both politically AND economically, to ensure their privilege and advantage.
it's an academic argument meant to illustrate the difference. of course there is no wholly pure example of either.
What about monopolies?
rey bladen A free market cannot exist with monopolies so monopolies should be rooted out by force
Free Markets naturally weed out detrimental monopolies. Any monopolies formed in a Free Market is what is known as an "Ethical Monopoly" aka a monopoly that can only survive by providing the best product for the cheapest price, and constantly appealing to customer's wishes. This type of monopoly isn't bad.
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no
What about Standard Oil. It was clearly in expense of society. It was created because Rockefeller would sell oil at a lost and cover the costs with the huge reservoir of money he had, leading all his competitors to bankruptcy and then he would buy them. After that he could sell oil at extremely high prices. Government had to step in to stop him by creating the antitrust legislation.
So tell me, how would the free market get rid of standard oil and why didn't it back then?
@@babyblooddistilleriesinc3131 Standard Oil isn't a "free market" monopoly, because America has never had anything remotely close to free market capitalism. The Gilded Age monopolies that you are referring to, like Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel, had heavy government subsidy allowing them to outlast competition. President McKinley was directly in the pockets of big business, and would lobby to pass laws that favored big business and made it hard for competition.
Your mistake is in thinking that "regulation" is the only form of bureaucratic intervention in the market. A government can completely avoid regulating, but can still flood the market with government interference in other ways like subsidies; rigging the game and tipping the scales regardless of a lack of "regulation". This is what happened in The Gilded Age.
Any monopoly could stand in the long run, except if there is some government bias supporting it
I’ve always wondered why we have so many overweight, and often times extremely, poor people in our economic system is so bad? For example, the ones who live in section 8 housing (townhouses) close to me live better than I do In an apartment. I hope they enjoy what I’m helping to provide for them.
Because our economic system is designed to allow the rich to get away with nearly all the wealth while the middle class does nearly all the work, so it's important your attention is misdirected so you will blame the poor for your predicament instead of the architects of the system.
@@tannermcateer1463 both of them are problems
@@wades623 the situation exists just as it is… “Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.” -Reinhold Niebuhr
I think it more wise to question the intentions and actions of politicians posing as public servants who become wealthy than those who create businesses and jobs who become wealthy. The one depends on money from the masses for wealth while the other depend on providing goods and services to the masses.
Providing goods and services isn't inherently beneficial to society. Though that idea has been repeated ad nauseam in order to convince you that all forms of production are inherently good.
@@tannermcateer1463 That's true. Some things in production are harmful to society. May be we need to look at what things are being produced. I think some drugs, legal or not are harmful while some are beneficial. We should keep a close eye on politicians as well. Their intentions are not always good. Thanks for the reply, makes good sense.
@@danielhanawalt4998 Economics in particular is a tough egg for me to crack bc it seems there are good points to Laisser-faire capitalist approach but also deadly pitfalls, and I think the same couple be said of bureaucratic interventionist policies. Glad you appreciated my comment!
It is and will be one of the my favorite channels on YT. But this episode is a bit strange. Mises, Hayek and Reisman are from the same school of economics so it is rather biased approach :p
This comment somehow required a smily face to be taken seriously.
sometimes the truth is difficult to hear
You really have to watch it again.
Yup, this episode is strange
I agree with the whole video, but it’ll be intellectual dishonesty to ignore the other side of the coin
The problem of this video that others have noticed is that it reduces wealth to something that must be generated from the physical value of goods produced and provided. One dimensional approach. The only way an "economic entrepreneur" can be successful is by providing things people want and can afford. Their success is directly tied to the access a common person has to resources of acquisition, or money. So, limiting access to money based on "work contributed" only harms the wealth generating capabilities of "Econ entrep" who directly benefit on the success of the whole. Politicians are needed because free market with no constraints lead to the money at the top situation that our man's was trying to blame on the "Poli Entrep", although politicians cause the same, so there's a limit to their benefit. If there is not both equality of law and equal access to basic levels of money (due to the implied value, or potential to provide wealth to the "Econ Entrep" that a given person represents) then the "Poli Entreps" are wheeled out and they impose an upper limit on the growth of "EE's", because of the perceived centralization of wealth that is natural to a free market. Then the "PE's" are able to worm into people's minds and imply that only through political means can the world be rectified. They replace the "EE's" at the top of the wealth bracket, and with that condition the people to value "PE's" more. All of which can be avoided by acknowledging the inherent value of individuals, instead of implying that individuals only have value if they provide a good or service.
One of my favourite channels on RUclips. I'm sure you'll get tons of knee-jerk hate from people for this video, but everything said in it is true.
Exactly, there's no rational critique of this video from people who disagree with it. Just knee-jerk hate. I guess that's what you get when people can't face the truth.
+towardsthesun
Level 0 sophistics, if you faced a video of advanced anrchism defense, you'd probably not know what to answer and be on cognitive dissonance, or you'd actually know what to reply and so would not say an ideology is true then...
Zebezia If by anarchism you mean private property rights denying anarchism, I'd totally know hwo to answer. That it's distinctly anti-humanist, amoral, and is incapable of producing wealth as we're used to it in the modern West and would lead to absolute impoverishment.
If you mean property rights based libertarian anarchism, I'd say it has a very solid deontological foundation and may face practical problems in execution on a large scale, but may also be superior on utilitarian grounds.
God, I love this channel so much.
Yes, this just barely brushes past the "Neocon propaganda" label, but it's up to you to read further into it and get a better opinion down the line, no?
Neocons absolutely hate mises but go off. Bush McCain Romney Biden voters do not read Ludwig Von Mises.
I would like to see a philosophical video covering the mentioned opposition ive read to this idea. Any suggestions of videos?
thank you for your time making this videos
Huh... one of the very few videos I didn't like. Politics and Capitalism is a very complex system. This video, while not completely wrong in what it says, it does leave out a very large portion of other point of views.
This was like reading a page on a 100 page book, then declaring that that one page was all there was.
I'm not about to write a book here, but in short, politics and the free market capitalist system need each other. To the extend of which you tweak it is really the only difference. In some situations, high regulation is better while in others, it's not.
One of the very few videos you didn't like because one of the subjects the government drills the most into us on.
We are individuals in a society of individuals.
What is beneficial to an individual, may or may not be beneficial to the larger society.
What is beneficial to the larger society, may or may not be beneficial to the individual.
Maybe the best solution is when the individual and the larger society both benefit. But, what of those times when a choice has to be made? Who benefits, the individual or the larger society of individuals, and why?
There is a natural tension between the individual and the larger society of individuals. But we are apparently individuals in a society of individuals. We have to exist somehow, someway. So, how exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to exist while we do exist? We do have choices, with all the consequences and ramifications, seen and unseen, of all those choices.
Do we want a one for all and all for one society? And how exactly would that work?
Do we want everybody is on their own society? And how exactly would that work? Who would watch over you to keep you safe while you sleep? Who builds and maintains the infrastructure that you utilize? Who would operate on your own brain if you needed it, yourself?
Face it, we need each other to properly function and have a better life, individually and as a society of individuals. No one individual can do it all in totality. Not even "God". An eternally consciously existent entity (if such an entity actually exists) could never ever personally experience a total cessation of conscious existence. And yet that just happens to be the one very thing we as humans, (as well as many other species), cannot apparently ever escape. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe we consciously die because "God" can't. It's the only way how "God" could experience "conscious death" is by how it is apparently being done. So, one purpose of our conscious existence might just be that we cease to consciously exist one day. But still, how exactly do we, individually and as a society of individuals, want to exist while we do exist? Apparently we have choices with all the consequences of all those collective choices. Then we all apparently die one day from something. Then what in actual reality for the rest of future eternity?
What exactly matters into future eternity and to whom does it eternally matter to?
"God" alone? and/or "Me" too? and/or "Some other entity or entities"?
OR
"To no eternally consciously existent entity at all"?
Read the wealth of nations first chapter and all your doubts will be answered. Spoiler: you are wrong about the interaction between individuals and society
Fair to say that today we have this political entrepreneur group hiding behind legit entrepreneurs to sell themselves politically as modern conservatives?
In today's economies we also have the added problem of said economies being virtually owned and operated by international banks via money creation not being managed within a nation, to which it's becoming apparent that the resulting debt is becoming more and more unmanageable. Easily argued by design I would add, as it occurs much in the same way that various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries have been crippled and devastated, and whose resources have been taken over in recent history. The famous and prophetic Jefferson quote comes to mind.
There's a problem that people, regardless of their political leanings, need to get behind correcting once and for all if there's even going to be any kind of sane future I figure.
Thanks so much for the video.
Though it is sad that there are some many people in the comments who don't get the point.
Thanks - your videos are always interesting and thought provoking. But this one is purely about Economics, and presupposes that humans' consumer desires and choices are in any way beneficial for themselves or the Environment. Just as an example - One look at the sheer volume of plastic which has now accumulated all over the planet must tell us that creating new consumer desires and producing goods to satisfy these is a very short-term blinkered form of wealth-production which leaves an increasing problem for subsequent generations., quite apart from the ever-increasing levels of plastic particles now being found in all stages of the marine food chain. No, we need to think wider and far beyond Capitalism and Consumer expectations.
Hi, I have a question. Why is the Hungarian parliament the "example picture" for political entrepreneurship?
There will always be a portion of the populace set aside within any nation-state that utilizes systemic psychopathy, narcissism, and advance methods of manipulation.
Some rules and regulation is neccery to correct the power dynamics that occure. People need to understand the connections there better so more informed choices are possible. Elsewiese I agree.
I am also for cutting the ability to enritchment or growth at some percentage of the GDP, in order to prevnt people, cooperations, collectives of any form from becoming to powerfull.
Hmm I understand what this video is saying. But isn't it impossible for that kind of free market to last? Or in the terms of the video, wouldn't pure market entrepreneurship always lead to political entrepreneurship. The creative "pure market entrepreneurs" pass their wealth down to their children, some kind of oligarchy is created, and then those elite try to influence the government to retain their privileges. The only way to eliminate that from happening would be to get rid of human greed, which isn't likely no?
More like Academy of the “Right” ideas. Where is Hegel? Or Marx for gods sake
This, I hope, will lead the U.S. into a prosperity unseen in generations. This article distroys the political let's argument on taxing the rich.
This is your best video ever my friend.
There’s something genuinely peculiar about the arguments that are glossed over or skipped entirely in these videos. Unfortunately, that makes them less academic and more polemical. Taking a side would be fine, but ignoring sometimes rather obvious counter arguments (e.g., entrepreneurship in finance and monopolistic tactics which antagonize the ‘free’ market) makes the whole presentation less convincing.
Something else to consider. Pareto distribution aka The Matthew effect.
Free market doesn't help poors either. What we must do is make the elections funded by public taxes and make the government more transparent.
why can't free markets help the poor? what about charity? innovation?
Can you prove people would give MORE to charity in this kind of society than they CONCURRENTLY do? (I want a proof, not just wishful thinking).
can you prove the effectiveness of current strategies? why does "more" equal better quality or efficiency? people don't give to charities now because they are heavily taxed. charitable organisations have been around for a long time. now charity is socialized, and arguably less effective. would YOU give to charity if you weren't being forced to?
The happiest places on earth (the Scandinavian countries) are pretty must left wing, but with a more transparent government. Why can't we just try to copy what we know works, and not have do deal with the uncertainties of a theoretical model.
There are no doubt better forms of governance than others. It is hard to suggest that current quality of life is due to the current government policy as it is built upon past prosperity. I would doubt the credibility of the phrase "happiest places on earth".
It's fine if you disagree with free markets from some kind of ethical stand point, but at least acknowledge the pragmatic benefits of it.
of course there are pragmatic benefits...who doesn't want to get rich?
I think even Marx at least did that...
Tony Boy You missed his point, my friend
political entrepreneurs are called "tenderprenuers" here in kenya
Cool video but it highlights the author's lack of a business education. It's important to recognize the correlation between rule of law and an environment which will foster business growth and the entrance into the market by new entrepreneurs. The dichotomy presented here doesn't really fit as a model for use in understanding the real world economy.
That actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks for posting this, it was a very interesting video
equality should be at the root of all laws. which is not true currently
What they are not saying is the system was created to keep them at the top and the rest at the bottom.
that's not working out too well for them.
I must say, this video is a very one-sided and short-sighted presentation of the topic. A couple of quotations from some people who all have the same opinion on a subject is hardly what I'd expect from a channel called "Academy of Ideas".
Great video, as always.
this was briliant
thanks
great work
you could enforce law based on time as people are "equal" in that aspect...
I understand the point that you are trying to make with reference to various species of animals to the human species but that comparison is an apples to oranges comparison. You are comparing the diversity across multiple species to one species. It would’ve have been a more equivalent comparison to compare one species such as lions to humans. The reason I bring this up is because it undermines the concept of equality. Lions are equal to lions but not necessarily equal to squirrels. I use this examples because humans think that differences within the species denotes inequality when the difference of inequality is across species. For humans the distribution of inequality is in accordance to phenotype within a species because they don’t realize there is no difference within the species because they conceptualize difference within the species as difference across the species therefore undermining equality within the species. I know this may seem like a meaningless argument but it is not especially with the history of our species not understanding nor implementing equality in practice.
Your vids are pure joy.
Probably the best video you've created to date. Definitely won't be the last.
+Brad Dorce Thanks! And no, it won't be the last :)
You arw the reason why i love philosophy and psych
i love ur channel
You forgot the ugly.
A pure market entrepreneur relies on the exploitation of the worker. The reason they gain so much money, is due to the fact that the workers wage remains stagnant. Why is it that when production increases, and sales go up, the wages remain stagnant. This is exploitation.
Thats false, in a pure market entrepreneur the people has many options to work and even to create their own enterprise. Also, this system boost the technological advance more than any other, so the productivity and well being will increase
if this hypothetical business could do so well to oppress its workers, it would be very easy for one of those workers to leave and make an even better product more efficiently by paying its workers a better wage. the only reason this doesn't happen. is political entrepreneurship.
Fictitious capital is a factor that isn't addressed here. Not only that but the whole internet and every computer startup where funded by the gov't so that is an example of political entrepreneurs benefiting the masses, hence your video.
I refer you to this article: mises.org/library/government-did-invent-internet-market-made-it-glorious
Without the gov't pc users wouldnt have a computer to be marketed. That's the point. The gov't subsidized the project...
It's not either or.
Ok, but whether the those operating in the market would have developed the technology for the internet if the government didn't is debatable. And based on the enormous amounts of wealth created by the advent of the internet (which free markets tend in the direction of), I think they would have. So I don't think your example lends weight to the idea that government intervention in an economy is good or necessary.
Yes it does if because of gov't intervention is what directly resulted in the advent of the compuer. it's not like our country wasn't capitalistic already, just the gov't funded one aspect and it was prosperous and not at all as black and white as this video's quotes make it out to be.
Pertinent points and sensibly stated-and look where we are now..dear oh deary me, it'll take more than a mere vote to remedy.
Ending patent protection, and forcing 'patent trolls' to create the claimed invention (rather than wait for others to do so, then suing them.... like the guy who sued the creators of the 'Bar Code' and QR codes....) we would enrich the smaller creators and inventors who fear bringing their goods to the consumer for fear of being sued.
Patents should be good for 10 years, no renewals. Seems like a small thing, but it is huge
So what you're saying is that because people aren't all the same (duh) and have different talents and capabilities, the enormous wealth inequality in the world today (where 1% of the world owns as much as 99% of the other people) is somehow justified. But even if 1% of the world truly owns as much talent as the remaining 99% (as if talent can even be quantified in numbers), why would that neccesarily justify this wealth inequality? Knowing that having great amounts of talent hard work in most cases does NOT translate to great amounts of wealth, it is nonsensical to say the wealth inequality is just a logical and justified result of talent/capability inequality. Of course there's nothing inherently bad about one person owning more than another, but in the modern world (but also in most civilisations after agriculture was invented), this inequality is off the charts and cannot be justified by any reasonable measure.
you're not actually disputing his point. this degree of wealth inequality can only be achieved by political entrepreneurship and coercion. the thing that upsets you is unjust. he says it too, in the video.
can someone please explain the statement at 7:09? I am not able to understand how the war on drugs will benefit established political entrepreneurs...and what's the deal about "police and prison"?
This video is very lacking and one sided. Don't bother to tire yourself to understand it.
No one should make more money than they need.
This video ignores significant problems with “pure market economies.” Without laws against anti-competitive collusion monopolies will develop - resulting in higher prices, poorer quality, and limited variety of goods. Externalities are costs not included in the market price of goods: pollution is a prime example. Society as a whole ends up paying for externalities rather than the purchaser of the goods or services. Use of natural resources belonging to the society as a whole to enrich a few is another reason to regulate business. Abuse of labor by corporations is minimized by workplace safety rules, limits to hours worked per day or week, child labor laws, etc.
I believe you missed the point of the video. He is not talking about an unregulated private sector but the comparison of "pure market entrepreneurship" and "Political entrepreneurship". Do you really believe that Political (Crony Capitalists) pay off the political class to set up labor laws or limit work hours? What about pollution, you are correct about externalities, but where has and is the worst pollution occurring in the world. In totalitarian countries where the political leaders and political entrepreneurs don't have to respond to the average people. At least in a free market you may choose between a Tesla or a Chevy.
Most in US slave their lives away for a couple of weeks vacation.
Real economics cannot be reduced to simple abstractions.
you can't have a free market if the reward for success in said market is monopoly power
I think someone has read up on their adam smith
Whaaat ?? Academy of Ideas is liberal? I'm not saying that I don't like it, but I did not expect it at all ...
You’re a beast!
Your argument at the beginning (that social equality is incompatible with equality before the law) is based on a misunderstanding of the concept of equality before the law. Equality before the law DOES NOT mean that the same laws apply to everybody - every sane legal system has specific laws which apply to certain categories of individuals and not to others. For example, different laws apply to children and adults, or people who enter legal contracts like buyers and sellers, or employers and employees. Does the fact that an employer is required by law to pay a wage to his employees and not vice versa means that they are not "equal before the law"? (or that it "violets freedom" as you claim?) Of course not.
What the concept of equality before the law really means is (roughly) that provided we have such and such laws, they should equally apply to every individual in the RELEVANT group as it is antecedently specified in the law. The idea is that it would be unjust or unfair to exempt specific individuals from the law without some principled justification. So for example, it is unjust to let a person who broke the law to escape punishment only because he is rich or good looking, but it could be perfectly just not to punish a mentally ill person or a minor for the same offense.
So what goes wrong with your argument is that you conflate equality before the law (in the very abstract sense of "equality") with the question what makes laws just (which is what at issue in the debate concerning social equality ). However, the principle of equality before the law cannot tell you all by itself which laws are just and which are not, and thus showing that a certain law treats people unequally isn't itself sufficient to show that the law is unjust. And thus for instance, progressive taxation (i.e., when the rich pay more taxes than the poor) doesn't violate equality before the law, if there are independent reasons to regard the law as just, and thus citing the principle of equality before the law is simply irrelevant in deciding this question.
If there are cases where an employer doesn't pay wages, then he will suffer failure - either through legal reparation (not fulfilling a contract) or social and economic ostracism. Why does this example need an unequal law?
Well if you are against the existence of any legal system as such, than you have no business talking about "equality before the law" in the first place.
legal systems wouldn't cease to exist. there is still no need for an unequal law in this case.
If I'm required by law to pay money to X, while X isn't required to pay me, than by definition different laws apply to us.
Is this unequal law just? Why would you desire no return from an investment?
The employer expects labour, the employee expects wages - as is the contract. If the contract is not met, then there is a dispute.
The law requires contracts to be met, where is the need for unequal law?
yeah, all in theory with ideal people. No such thing exists in this world
aren't ideologies also unequal? surely one is more ideal than another?
That's exacatly why free market is the best option for "non-ideal" people, who differ with their frailty. Otherwise any highly-structured and rigid system would be an utopia. You cannot have an universal model of the machine that works with every component, you have to create a system in which everybody creates their own model.
***** What are the informational assumptions for and whom?
***** exactly, most markets run around the fact that everyone sells shit and that good quality stuff, so that you dont have to throw it/your money to the trash for a single flaw (on purpose), costs so much only a company can afford it because the extra cost comes from the speculation that you are gonna use it to make money hence "i want my cut"
People will buy expensive tvs which will fail because it had a cheap cap in the psu and it died and no one repairs them or because they used a cheap flex cable that doesnt last too long or because they made your cellphone just so by the current trend it would run out of memory in a year or two so that it becomes obsolete even if 90% of the rest of the hardware is good enough for everything you have to do.
No one is thinking "this is crap, im throwing my hard earned money to the trash by buying this". so that ideal about capitalism promoting quality over quantity is as fake as a 12 cents coin.
The system makes it all seem normal so people end like slaves used end, thinking slavery was normal, and good. This is the same, they think all that happens, that they have to work their whole life just to barely be able to stay alive while being feed propaganda through the media to numb any idea they might have, is normal and that it is ok that the rich do it because "it's their right"
Laharl Krichevskoy every great civilization is built on slavery, whether it's done the classical way by physical force and imprisonment, or more nuanced methods for example exploiting artificially generated needs and debt, but that says more about the weakness of people, rather than the evil of producents. The market is always the manifestation of the stupidity of masses. Free market is a very efficient tool to fulfill any desires, and if you see market fulfills repulsive, irrational needs, then people must strive for this shit, otherwise such disgusting options wouldn't be available on the market. Simple rule of demand and supply. The key is to enable an avarage human to meet his urgues even if these are fake ones,aftreall, we must imagine Sisyphous happy.
I want the same “equality before the law” that Alec Baldwin gets. No charges zilch for pointing a gun at someone and killing them. not one second in a court room.
Excellent. Thank you!
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+Radiyas 13 Nice!
When I first saw thumbnails of videos on Carl Jung, I was surprised and immediately subscribed not to forget you. But as I've seen this video and the one about envy and social justice, I'm pretty disappointed.
There's a radical avoidance of the other side of the problem, and that is of misuses of wealth inequality and free entrepreneurship on an international level, as much as the false notion that political and economic power are always seperated.
This picture of free-market and political entrepreneurships are...lol...if only, IF ONLY everything was that easy and plain like in your videos. And what is "pure market". Is that some libertarian's wet dream? You know it's not possible. When people attain a certain amount of power, whether econimic or political, they'll work very hard to tackle growing potential of the other, therefore making it waay less "free" and "pure" for pretty much everyone else.
And the consumer as the "free agent" isn't actually a thing in most cases, thanks to advertisement, cultural propaganda through media and latent psychological effects the products tend to have, aside from their actual purpose and utility which enhance the consumption and profit at the expense of the consumer.
Arnold Layne Not to mention that the video which points out that removing regulations would improve society implies that companies that sell smartphones more cheaply by dumping pollutants directly into a river and crack dealers improve society. They also seem to forget that railroads and dams are often funded by the government. I'm all for free market capitalism but many of their videos seem to be too one sided.
Cleverly disguised as an open intellectual inquiry site, this is actually a radical right Libertarian propaganda project. The social aspects of topics are played down, giving the impression that philosophy is all about isolated individuals without social or economic obligations to their communities. Take EVERYTHING they say with a grain - many grains - of salt. If you would like to learn about philosophy as the philosophers themselves present it, see the Philosophical Overload channel.
Right because Philosophical Overdose doesn't have an agenda? If you look at their videos they heavily favor Marx and anti-capitalist ideas. Chill out, it's impossible for a human being not to be biased towards certain types of political and social systems. Your fear of allowing others to talk about issues you disagree with is pathetic.
can we get a video on marx next?
This was like watching a bunch of conclusions strung together
This would make a lot of sense if not for the fact that pure market entrepreneurship inevitably leads to political entrepreneurship once enough wealth has been accumulated to buy politicians.
Genuine economic prosperity from entrepreneurship can only occur if the means of production are owned by the workers and not by sole individuals. Elon Musk, who exploits workers and cracks down on unions is a very case in unity. Workers who contribute immensely to innovations and the general wellbeing society should share ultimately redistributed wealth. Abolishing the state alone will not solve economic inequality, abolishing the state and private property will.
Your ignorance is so profound that I am genuinely shocked
So much wrong here... But I'll give it a shot at pointing it out, hopefully to enlighten you.
Firstly what you are saying about equality of wealth not being compatible with equality before the law, is a grave error.
In fact not only is equality of wealth compatible with equality before the law, it is essential to it.
If you have inequality of wealth you can never have equality before the law, as we see time and time again, the wealthy do not suffer the same penalties for the same crimes as the poorer citizens.
This is because wealth grants access to influence and affect decisions which then corrupt individuals carrying out law enforcement and sentencing.
Secondly, free mark entrepreneurship and political entrepreneurship is a false dichotomy.
They are essentially the same thing, when a group of free market entrepreneurs grow large enough in size or collaborate in groups they always lobby government, this is to gain more power or privileges.
This is seen in every single industry, in every single country, there is not one that does not endorse a political party, there is not one whom does not contribute to a political campaign wether publicly or in private.
The issue with this video, is you are taking up the position of existing "crony capitalism" vs idealistic "free market capitalism".
You, like so many before you proclaim that the economic benefits we enjoy in the west today are the fruits of free market capitalism of a distant past that is now being replaced or has been replaced by crony capitalism, which is the furthest thing from the truth.
Indeed one only needs to take a look at the books of history to see why the west enjoys the luxuries we have become accustomed to.
Empire.
The west (ie Europe and the US) were the first to develop mechanized warfare tools, we then used those tools to expand across the globe and enrich ourselves by enslaving others, pure and simple.
Mercantilism (which to put it simply is state controlled trade) was the main form of trade used by the majority of Western nations during their epic rise in power, this in itself should be enough evidence to disprove the free market ideal.
Free markets are only used now because outright Imperial colonialism became increasingly hard to sustain.
This was due, in large part, to infighting (ie the world wars), the funding of anti colonialism by the Soviets in the cold war, and to a larger extent the extreme degradation in the cost of manufacturing effective mechanical weapons.
As we can see even today, a country like Afghanistan with a nominal GDP lower than half the wealth of a magnate like Bill Gates has been able to resist both the Soviets' and our own US military virtually by itself for decades.
We also see this true in the Iraq war (which disproved the argued point that Afghanistan was an anomaly because of difficult terrain) where despite claiming victory we have had to keep forces there and quietly increase them so that the country remains firmly in our grip.
Even today marketd are not really free (at least not at the international level) and are kept up by huge investments in keeping 3rd world nations both corrupt and indebted.
One needs only to read the documentation of an IMF loan to see why it's designed to accrue permanent payback, this is a form of predatory loaning, officially illegal in most nations, with many simplistic loopholes, predatory loaning is where the lender demands concessions from the debtor that perpetuates the cycle of debt.
A lot of people always ask "Why don't they organize and make their lives better through strikes and riots like we did in the past?"
Well to put it simply, Everytime they try our MNC's bribe their police forces to crack down on the people and arrest their leaders, and in most cases use outright assassination when someone becomes too popular.
You need to understand in 3rd world countries you can literally hire a Hitman for $100.
We were able to rebel because when we did in the 1800's and 1900's there were no richer nations, there were no superpowers from the outside that could fund the states' crackdowns and the capitalists' against us, meaning when there was a strike, they stopped making money, hence they had to give into us.
In the 3rd world it's different, when Indians strike, the MNCs move out of the country, to another that will submit, all the while funding infighting among the populous to create as much chaos as they can so then the people feel like they are forced to elect politicians that will ask for the MNCs to return, as at least then they can eat.
This is why I believe revolution if possible must come from the west, but that's a different subject.
To finish, the idea of a free market is nothing more than that, an idea, never to be put in practice and only to fool those who realize there is something wrong with the system and lead them to point their fingers only against the state.
However the truth is, that the state and business feed off eachother, business provides the wealthy a way to enslave (ie employ) the masses through wage slavery.
The state serves among many other functions to capital, as a tool to blunt the crushing force of business so it never becomes too oppressive as was the case in the Victorian age (until it is deemed necessary by the capitalist class).
While also providing the opiate of belief to the masses that the state is working for them and when the opinion deviates that it is not, to provide the hope that in the next election they can elect someone who can finally fix everything.
Wealth is bad because it grants influence over politicians, which is why we need to give politicians more power, because then they won't be influenced by the wealthy anymore!
Maybe that's true. You forget one thing. Most politicians make their entire career in a decade. They couldn't give a bleep what happens afterwards. Therefore they spend their time in office securing deals to fund the wealthy with taxpayer money, with the hopes that the corporations will then give them sweet book deals, speaking fees, or work with their llcs to give back.
You people can never admit to the degree that JP Morgan and Rockefeller ran your whole progressive era and still do to this day. If you're more concerned about big business than big government, which you are, that's what makes you "left wing" these days, I'll have you know, big government is ran by big business and absent the absolute destruction or conquest of business and all of the rights of the humans that make them up, such as in 1930s Germany, Lenin and Stalin's Russia and Maoist China, that will always be the case.
Wealth inequality will always create inequality in the laws. Economic gluttony(living beyond ones needs) creates economic poverty(living below one's needs), they are the same economic coin. Economic balance is the only true healthy economic system. Repeating someones misconceptions does not make your opinions true, nor is it proof of what you are saying is true. This is an inhumane and dangerous idea. You do not realize how much people suffered because of economic gluttony, this human history shows. Love your channel though just do not share your opinion here. Thank you.
Alright we've got a wild and raving anarcho-capitalist here. I subscribed for philosophy, not naive economic ideology.
iWouldWantSky Where in the world he said is an anarchist? He just presents ideas. Just because I might talk about communism it doesn't mean I'm a communist. If you are not open minded to a new idea wtf are you doing on a philosophy channel?
iWouldWantSky Doesn't matter what you subscribed for, no one cares. And since it's his channel he can upload whatever the fuck he wants to.
I agree with all the political entrepreneur stuff but the US leads the world in wealth inequality and that is a huge problem in this country, not only for those on the lowest part of the socioeconomic scale but also those at the top. Japan, Western Europe, Scandinavia, etc. have much smaller wealth inequality and their societies don’t suffer because of it, or at least not to the extent that the US does.
Disagree and agree you run a lot of continuations and contradictions...... Thanks through
That's bourgeois ideology, just give it a try and read Das Kapital.
deutschrap oderwas how in the world is freedom an ideology?
Equality of the law on all citizens? Not really
Good video, though it might irritate a few people that the spotlight was given to just one side- that of Hayek, von Mises, etc. i.e. the neoliberals. Why not also tackle Rawls vs. Nozick? I mean we are already talking about inequality and the state. Good job nonetheless.
given the manipulative nature of humans , there never was nor will be Equality before the Law !
Hence the illusion of a free and equal society is just that.
All one needs to look at is how the multi billionaires got to where they are.
Certainly not by any other means but manipulation and use of the inequality of their wealth.
The mistake of this video is the mistake of all Austrian economics and that's to apply a philosophy to something that yields to measurement. The world is spherical. Despite how counterintuitive that may be. The matter isn't decided by the philosopher with the most reasonable argument. The dead Austrian school was only revived because of it's usefulness to right leaning politicians not because of it's merit in the field of economics.
So, people will have good jobs and buy a lot of stuffs, IF AND ONLY IF, the entrepreneurs don't become greedy. And that, I don't think it's possible.
Without the state it doesn't matter if the entrepreneurs are greedy. They can only become wealthy by serving the needs of the consumer.
towardsthesun There is another way to become wealthy: monopoly.
A monopoly is created when politicians provide companies with bailouts/subsidies and create laws and regulations to prevent competition from other firms. In a true free market a monopoly could only form if that company provided an amazing product to the masses at a great price - that would benefit the population and would not be a bad thing.
towardsthesun sorry, but anyone can buy a company. You just need resources to do that.
What does that have to do with our discussion? So anyone can buy a company if they have enough resources...Ok. In a free market if they didn't offer products people wanted the company would fail.
Every communist who doesn't understand economics should watch this.
good video🙃
Abolish all wealth and the Fed. The US has always been criminally mad. I should be Free To Choose to say no, but without consent am forced to say yes and pay for everybody else to say it too. It's absurd and a nonsensical waste of our productivity and time. Nobody can spend somebody else's money more carefully than you can yourself. Wash, rinse, repeat it.
I better understand why the oppressive nature of capitalism is so little criticised here. I have to say I strongly disagree but great work nonetheless at doing what you do.
There is nothing good about inequality.
inequality is a fact of life
It is a fact of capitalism. But since you seem to know everything about life educate me more. Biologist FIdgetymo. You seem to come from this human nature perspective, where individuals only strive for their own selves. My questions to you are then, Why do mother breast feed? Why do we reproduce? Why do we strive to reproduce? And if inequality is a fact please provide us with the evidence. You seem to have the facts as a biological scientist who has expended his life researching the truth of human nature please educates us with your theory. I will be glad to hear it.
Individuals must first strive for their own needs. The mother cannot breast-feed without first ensuring her ability to survive. When some don't survive, this is an unequal outcome.
I am not a biologist. I am only enjoying the discussion.
Excellent, still why does the mother breast feed? Why do we strive to reproduce? why do we reproduce? you have not answer the why? and why don't others survive? if we strive for individual success then why do we seem to assure the survivals of others.
Cool story bro, inequality has nothing to do with attractiveness they are poor who are very attractive. Yes I agree with the mother statement was the answer I was looking to get. An it is precisely correct the fact is that I am not concerned of whether the mother motives were egotistic or not , it is the physical act that counts not the mentality in doing so. Therefore nature as you and presented is against inequality. False black do not have larger lungs there is no difference in athletic ability between races. Your hypothesis falls apart by making such stupid statement. People are equal there is no difference just because you put social Darwinism in eloquent terms it does no excuse it from being so. Again it is not the mentality that matters to me mentality is subjective and you seem to be basing your hypothesis on Freud and Herbert Spencer, one full of speculative notions that have been rejected by concrete and factual biological studies. The other an out right white supremacist. by the way Nietzsche opposed Spencer and white supremacist like his brother in law so remove the picture of Nietzsche you are just putting true readers to shame.
Lmao mfw you can't afford either of those car groups
Unclaimed First
Excellent analysis.
There are no pure markets the state picks winners & losers, a good government helps the people not corporations.
did your good government teach you that?
@@immaculatesquid no that is what a good government does, it looks after everyone not just the ones rich enough to pay for lobbyists.
when are you guys gonna cover jacque fresco and RBE
I don’t get like I’d like to-help?
I like the video and agree with the point, but must disagree with the libertarian perspective about drugs promoted here. The problem is granting the populous the “freedom” to become addicted to drugs, largely to people who don’t understand how addictions work or their risk to succumbing to it, and also the assumption that the decision to regularly use drugs is a truly informed one.
One need not look further than the opioid crises, which is only PARTIALLY attributable to the overprescribed use of pain killers; indeed, we can’t assume that the opioid epidemic amongst the impoverished classes - which proceeded that of the affluent classes - can be attributed to hospital stays.
This lax view has contributed to governments investing money in heroin “safe” needle distribution centers - instead of treatment centers - which has resulted, in the case of San Francisco, the accumulation of spent heroin needles all over the place.
One can argue that the government profiting from the regulation of drugs, as it were, is preferable to it allowing its citizenry to descend into the abyss of addiction. And, considering the undeniable societal costs of a substantially addicted populace, can it not then be argued that the government has a duty to protect its citizenry by preserving the order in this way?
Sure, we should do something about crony capitalism and the ability to become rich off of the people at their own expense, and sure it will take various approaches and failures until we get it right, but I believe that the people need to be protected from these things to some extent. After all, when you are dropping needles everywhere and causing a tremendous burden upon taxpayers, your drug use and addiction is NOT just a personal issue.
Alcohol and tobacco are also drugs, and these cause a lot of damage to society as well. Mc Donalds and all those fast food chains also cause a lot of damage to society. Videogames addiction also cause a lot of damage to society. Those cost operate in the long run, the difference is that drugs like heroin and cocaine have a visible impact on people's health in the short term, so the society get alarmed strongly but in essence, is pure hypocrisy, because everybody has the freedom to harm their health the way they want in some aspects, but in others they dont. So the answer is no, the duty of the government is not limit our freedom prohibiting hard drugs for the purpose of conserve our heath (if that was the case, it should prohibit all the stuff I mentioned before: fast food chains, videogames, alcohol, tobacco and so on) its duty is to protect private property and guarantee our safety from wars, injustices and crime
tehflooper It’s not about preserving your health. Me having to go out of my way to avoid your spent heroin needles all over the ground, and me having to endure you mugging me to procure money for your meth fix, is not about protecting your health as an addict.
I’m saying that it’s tricky because hard drugs affect society at large much more than cigarettes, McDonald’s, and video games possibly can. Drug addicts can tear a beautiful city into shreds.
Granted, that can be addressed by bringing back laws that allow involuntary intake into mental hospitals/rehab or prison time - not for being high, but for being a grievous public nuisance - but there sure seems to be a lot of pushback.
Either way, you should have a right to make incredibly stupid choices insofar as they affect ONLY you. Inevitably, legalization of hard drugs will outright kill most of these people knee-deep in addiction. As moral beings, we don’t care about them anyway. Beyond them, millions more will develop habits because they underestimate these drugs. This will all result in degradation of entire areas. We will then need facilities and task forces to deal with the addicts and their inevitable behaviors. Fine. But we cannot have have one but not the other.
[Note that I am not implying that you argued such.]
This would be a much easier topic if we (USA, at least) hadn’t degraded into a culture that glorifies drugs and drug addiction. That way, it doesn’t matter nearly as much if drugs were legal because most people would agree that actually doing them is stupid. But legalizing hard drugs within a drug-obsessed population is not simply a thought experiment, or a matter of perhaps obtuse theoretical principles. Not at this point.
Rhyca the same approach was discussed when the time alcohol and cigarettes were legalized, the people believed that those drugs could damage the society strongly (they were prohibited and limited as if they were the worst thing on planet) but today they are as normal as any other market good. Maybe, your assumption about the people getting violent and ruining neighborhoods because of hard drugs is the reason why those addicts act the way they act, because is perceiving as a bad thing for the society, so they choose to be bad as well, is more like a cultural perception about what is wrong or right, but everything is relative and subjective. Nobody has the right to prohibit or limit the needs or desires of other people, of course, only if it doesn't imply a direct damage to others (like homicide, robbery, rapes, and so on). You are arguing about what could happen if they were legalized but that doesn't mean that it is actually what is going to happen. Instead, you can see what happen when something that is considered bad or harmful is permitted: alcohol, prostitution, tobacco, marihuana, etc. The society could work with minor problems as in Netherlands. But if the problem is the state of consciousness of society (that this is not prepared to deal with big changes), then, what is need to be done to surpass that state of mind? More public education? No, we need more freedom. So what are we waiting for? Do we need that some governmental authority teach us what it is possible what it is not? We are only wasting our time thinking that hard drug crime can be eradicated with more violence and control, it could never be possible because that is not the answer, because that is not even a problem in a free society.
Rhyca I mean, more “facilities and task forces to deal with the addicts and their inevitable behaviors” is only a waste of money, time and more important, lives. The more those drugs are limited, the more they are valued. Your taxes are going to be used to solve nothing and all efforts are going to be useless. We need more responsible people instead and it will only occur when we have more freedom to choose. The bad externality of needless everywhere is not the big issue, it could be more easily managed once hard drugs are legalized and the perception of society changes. As I said, alcohol and cigarettes have a big impact on society but the costs act on the long run, tons of lives and ills could be saved, but that is better than deal with mafias, cartels and organized crime. If you think, the fact that the majority of drugs are prohibited both in the US and Mexico is the main reason why violence never ends and every year hundreds of people enter the black market, because they are high valued, and as long as this doesn't change, all efforts will be in vain.
8:04 should be like that,
LOVE
Clear and informative as usual.
Sounds like they are talking about Hillary Clinton...