Kelby Brewer Think about that for more than a second. Business barely even exists for some humans. It's not a natural human trait to do what I described. btw I should've said "ignore" instead of "reject"
They get their investment money from producers and venture capitalists instead of just banks, so their art is less constrained. "Hollywood doesnt make movies for your entertainment, they make movies to piss off Mike Pence." - Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars.
Guys, you know this isn't the "super-fun-time who's a jew" hotline. The point was originally, these people are constantly bemoaning how evil business owners are, and ironically would be kissing producer ass (business owners). Not to mention, the producers are masochists, because they are inevitably calling themselves evil, and to back movies that claim that business owners are evil, means that they secretly want to be out of business. Basically, it is a big goddamn contradiction.
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: *Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;* Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”-Marcus Tullius Cicero
The book "Atlas Shrugged"by Ann Rand spends more then 1000 pages discussing and illustrating what you just said. ruclips.net/video/8F5nhYo5nx4/видео.html
yes but do you think that was because that was the moral they wanted to show or because they just wanted another twist? personally, I'm not sure considering yes Disney is a big suit business, but they are also so big that holding that opinion wont hurt them.
@@federalbureauofinvestigati5588 she is not really business person, she is an evil genius, and it was the brother who did the business side of the company
It's pretty simple, really. In order to have a compelling story, the hero needs a strong villain to go up against, and in modern American society, having the villain be a wealthy businessman means they will have lots of resources to bring to bear against the hero. It should be noted that the government is also often portrayed poorly in media, often being so incompetent/obstructive that they need to outsource all operations to a teenager. And that's ignoring the genres in which the government, or someone associated with the government, is the villain.
Yeah, the evil corrupt government is really the other aspect of this trope. The big video propagandists aren't going to attack themselves (Hollywood) as a corrupt institutional power center, and their socialist fellow traveler friends in the faculty lounges are so lacking in positive human traits & genuine ability that they can't provide quality villains. Once you've excluded those 2 centers of institutional power, big government and big business are really the only other ones this society has. Anything else along those lines requires some sort of fantasy setting, or committing the great taboo of their insular social cliques by criticizing some OTHER society's institutions in their supposed art like Islam in an Arab country. There is also widespread feeling that many heads of the biggest businesses are not really capitalists anymore, but corrupt imitations thereof. The fact that high government officials, business leaders, and mass media barons have visibly melted into a common aristocratic ruling class means the average citizen sees no separation between those who make the laws and those who profit from them. Just as a lack of separation of church and state eventually bred contempt for the state churches and organized religion, our modern lack a lack of separation of merchant and state does the same thing for state merchants and capitalism itself.
I think the "It's just business" trope is also mainly to describe a person who knows what they're doing is wrong, but will do it anyway because they make money.
I think that's any Neutral Karma - Good Ending RPG character. "Happy people safe from bodily harm and oppression is good business. Can't sell a toaster to a dead man."
I'm not sure if this is one but in the green lantern animated series there is an episode ( spoilers ) wherein this villain is doing everything he can to prove that he is the real person who saved their world and not the steam lantern.
Guardians Of The Galaxy « Why do you wanna save the galaxy now, do you think you're a saint !? » « Because I'm part of those idiots who live INSIDE the galaxy ! »
When I hear the line “it’s nothing personal, it’s just business” I don’t really take it as “business is bad” I take it more as the villain simply disconnecting themselves from the situation on an emotional level. There’s really only 2 types of motives that a villain has for their actions in mediums. Emotion or Money, occasionally there’s a combination of the two. Most villains that have relatable motives fall under the emotional category. So when I when a villain says “it’s nothing personal” it’s really just the villain admitting that they don’t have an emotional stake in what they are taking part in. From my understanding, Hollywood tends to do this simply to make the Villain easier to hate, and the protagonist’s actions easier to justify. This is simply my take on that infamous line. I could very well be wrong, so don’t take what I say as concrete. Keep making Out or Frame episodes FEE. I love your content!
When someone says "it's just business" (a a villain), they're basically saying: "I don't hate, nor like you, but I don't considerate reasoning with you, I just want to do what I must, what I chose to, and if it takes your opportunities, money, power, or even life, I'll do it, because I don't mind if you get hurt in the process, even less how you'll badly it'll be, it's not about you as a human, but as the amount. If it's opportunities, taking your opportunities will increase my opportunities. If it's power, I'll use you up to strengthen myself. If it's about money, I'll do any means necessary to get more, even if it's taking from you. if it's morals, I'll destroy yours to built up mine, if it's about your utility, I'll destroy you when it's convenient. It just makes even worse, because, depending of the villain, that's in-character. And I DON'T LIKE this kind of behavior in fiction, because the guys who hold power, money, political relevance, fame, etc... They're normally the first ones to realize how doing their business can be toxic to themselves if done as an abusive way of living. There is nothing more selfish than disregarding the person as a social being.
But here's the catch, when the good guy does things just because it's business, we sometimes reflect or even laugh about the irony, like "well, he's a Businessman, saving the world will mean he'll have to do his work as normally, once more" Like saying "Well, it's not really personal, it's just that I can't work when the world is destroyed" this kind of behavior, however, is refreshing, because even if he says "I didn't do it for you all", he's saying "If I didn't do it for you all, for who would I do?"
help, i tried this business game out and now im heavily in debt to the indian mafia, I can hear T series knocking down my front door as I type, oh God please send help before Its too-pthnyndss yner
Not even a minute in and I'm seeing a running theme with all of your cited villains. Most if not all of them put short-term profits over long-term gains or otherwise sacrificing basic morality for a quick paycheck. Many of them are shown trying to beg for their lives when this "get rich quick" scheme invariably backfires in a huge way. Perhaps there is an alternative message here like "shortcuts to success will often see you driving off a cliff."
I would concede that point, if they also had more examples of good business or had small examples in the shows with bad business to really show that is their point. As it stands now no distinction is made and people more commonly relate business=bad compared to shortcuts=bad
Its funny given most lets say business in stocks people I meet prefer the long term more and say those who go for broke on a short term get rich scheme always fail. Though my friend also says theres nothing wrong with the short term deal, just not many play it smart
Exactly, he completely discounts the fact that there are large corporations who discount people as expendable. Who prioritize short term gain over long term thinking and consequences. What films could do is discuss business ethics. What makes a business long term good for a community, a symbiotic relationship rather than a parasitic one?
"it's just business" "just following orders" ..... it's a real life thing, we hide behind these things when we cause harm or hurt another person. We use these phrases to justify the evil that men do. it has nothing to do with businessmen or soldiers personal mindset. Like a solider follows orders even if he doesn't like it, so too does a business man have to follow the most profitable course of action. No need to over think it... they are over used justifications of ones personal actions when said person might have a different moral respect to the choice..
Joseph Griffin A soldier follows an immoral order because they have to weigh the option of do they do this heinous thing, and potentially be punished later, or do they refuse to do so (which, actually, modern rules of war REQUIRE a soldier to refuse an order they feel is unquestionably wrong) and get punished, possibly executed, on the spot. The Hague has actually made a ruling that the excuse of "I was just following orders" is only an acceptable defense if the soldier in question is in the situation where not following the order would have immediate consequences.
okay.. all you did was elaborate on my original post... children calling in coordinates for mortar strikes still happen, the soldiers kill the child... and immoral action in the eyes of countless people, but that is literally a moment of "just following orders". vietnam... nuf said about that sheit storm. same with the business parallel, for one man to profit another must lose (this is the natural evolution of thought when taking into account entropy in the financial market.) so the point still stands.
@@vishnar2515 The point I was trying to make, and apparently forgot to add, was that businessmen don't have that excuse. If a businessman does something immoral in pursuit of his job, he doesn't have the same protections as a soldier does. That's the main difference. A soldier follows orders because he doesn't have a choice. A businessman follows orders because he decided that his job was more important than his scruples.
+Joshua Morrison any "successful" business man will make the choice for profit over scruples at many points, that's all I was saying, name ONE business man that made millions without dropping the moral bar. Yes there are lots of low on the totem pole business men, and middle management that still hold to their morals, but at the end of the day success takes sacrifice, and often times that sacrifice is ones own morals. you can't get ahead by throwing the other guy a bone(unless it's to have him owe you a favor), you can't make large profits by giving the other guy a fair shake, and you can't make it big without stepping on others. this is Capatalizim 101, well... 103-104 maybe. even steve jobs understood this, and took the "bic" route with apple products. look up the story about the bic razor and how it became a disposable piece of hygiene equipment. TLDR about bic: RnD guys shows off a razor that holds an edge for months, and could last some one multiple life times. The guy who owned bic said " make it loose it's edge after a few uses, and make it out of cheap plastic. I can't make money if they only ever buy one, I want repeat business" to most, and the movie industry, that's dastardly. to those that value the dollar more than their fellow, that's bloody genius. Because at the end of the day "it's just business" and if you don't like it, you the consumer hold ALL the power.. your purchase power tells the business world what is and is not okay.... please stop buying EA products? please? lol cause I mean, there's chasing profit then there's.... EA..... *shudders* but morals are as abstract as good and evil. these are all points of perspective. So what this boils down to is 2 people debating modern philosophy over the internet. Don't get me wrong, I understand your point and understand where you are coming from. Thank you for being civil about opposing opinions. (note the reason for my original post was to point at that without media using the villains motives as "just following orders, and/or it's just business, then this philosophical conundrum would not exist. we would not see a polarity in these things.)
@@vishnar2515 Many many people have become a millionaire without sacrificing their morals, artists and musicians do it all the time, owners of profitable shops, or cafes, or bars, or hotels do it all the time, craftsmen do it all the time. RUclipsrs, video game studios, athletes. Overall becoming a millionaire isn't something that requires unethical behavior at all. Where it starts to get scummy is billion dollar companies, but even there it isn't because the founders suddenly turned evil, but because their success attracted greedy people who found their way into the board of directors over long periods of time.
Well, I´m a bussines man too, I manage a modest family company, despite my geek tendencies (yeah I'm as impressed as you), and I understand your point, but sadly out there are facts that surpass fiction and reinforce the bad image of "business men", for example in my country a multinational wants to put a mine despite the opposition of the entire poblation of a city and against the common sense, it uses all kinds of legal and not totally transparent tricks to pressure a government to allow them to put the mine, this mountain is the main source of water for the city and its habitants and it is a proved fact that the mine will destroy the mountain's sources of water (review the case of the páramo de Santurbán). This is one of many examples of why is too easy to set a bussines man as a villian in a movie or serie, because it happens a lot in real life, some people with economical or political power will do whatever it takes to acomplish their goals, and sadly many rich "business men" are this kind of people.
You, and almost everyone else, is forgetting the simple fact that those kinds of businessmen are the *exception* and not the *rule.* To say that most business people are like that is simply to be ignorant and blatantly wrong. That is like saying guns are bad and only used to kill people because all you see on TV are the crimes, when in actuality you are forgetting the fact that good and legal defensive gun uses are statistically commited many more times in the US each year than otherwise (CDC - exact estimates are 500,000 to 3,000,000 defensive gun uses, in comparison to about 11,000 gun homicides annually including suicides according to FBI). It is easy to say "most business people are bad" when all you are exposed to is the negative examples, rather than the many more positives examples that occur unnoticed all of the time. What about all of the businesses that donate to charity for great causes like medical research, war orphans, abuse victims, etc.? What about the businesses that help build the farms that feed us and the factories that please us? What about the businesses that constantly invent new and better technologies that benefit the average people's lives? Of course you never hear about them in the news and mainstream media, just like how most people never hear about the millions of lives saved with guns every year. No offense, but that philosophy of "oh, here is an example if a "X" doing "Y", so that must mean most if not all other "X" is bad" is childish, anecdotal, and incredibly closed-minded.
I would like to note, that it is not business per se that is vilified, it is the corporate form of business. And it is understandable, since it is a trick allowing people not to have personal liability for many awful actions. As you said, you never see mid or small business owners portrayed in such a light. Because most of us actually see them as people, doing the hard work. Mega-corporations and its CEO's on the other hand are only seen on screens - be it movies or news reels reporting on ever present corporate misconduct. Additionally, for populations that are in some way or another consider themselves victimized, successful people are a natural scapegoat. And a lot off people consider themselves victims nowadays.
I agree. Right now minimum wages barely, if at all, the cost of living. I find business in general is good; however, if business is stuck in a mindset does not profit all who work within and for it, out does become like the evil business portrayed in media.
@Noah Shanaberger I would have liked for some large banks to have gone out of business, but the economy can't function without ANY banks, and thanks to accounting regulations (e.g., mark-to-market) by FASB and pressure from the Federal government to loan money to people who couldn't pay it back, a situation had been created where we could have been without any banks if nothing was done. One of my big disappointments with GWB was that his administration didn't do anything about the housing bubble. It required no great insight to see it was going to end badly, and some earlier action would have been useful. And the damage done by ideologues at FASB is significant. The only other time mark-to-market was put in effect was 1928 - I don't think that it's a coincidence, since this ruke effectively adds positive feedback to the banking system. I wonder if there were equally stupid things which encouraged companies to outsource critical operations, like manufacturing, to the long-term detriment of both the company and the country. Having seen what happened to ordinary engineers in Silicon Valley thanks to FASB's regulations about stock options, combined with SOX, it wouldn't surprise me to learn the gutting of American companies was the result of more ill-considered laws and regulations. I'm not in favor of no regulations, but in my experience, any time 'capitalism' doesn't work, it's when it's become cronyism or is otherwise distorted by bad regulations.
@@coll3g3crissy Minimum wages are a terrible idea. The opposition to these is not the result of greed, but because they create a barrier to entry which keeps poor people unemployed. If you haven't done so, I recommend you read some of the writings of Thomas Sowell, who is, in my opinion, one of the greatest minds of the current era.
@@coll3g3crissy The cost of living according to whom? I could very well claim that I need a 3-bedroom apartment in a vibrant downtown area, and a new car every few years, and it will be true that minimum wage won't allow that kind of lifestyle. Every study I've seen about housing affordability and minimum wage considers adults with kids in costly cities like New York. It is possible to live on the minimum wage in a rented room in a small town and driving a beat-up old car. The people who complain otherwise invariably refuse to move from their expensive city, have kids when they couldn't afford it, etc.
For ages I've considered corporations objectively worse than governments, but the discussion at 11:08 went a long way towards changing my mind. God damn was the quality of news better back in the day. Honestly my biggest concern with businesses is I've had this opinion that they are somehow less accountable to the people than governments are. However governments seem to be no more accountable to the common man than businesses, hell possibly less so. As an american I've had a special resentment for how money corrupts politics due to the omnipresent toxic nature of lobbying and shit like citizens united. However that seems as much a problem influenced by governmental powers as it is by businesses. So if nothing else you've made some serious headway in changing my perspective on things. Cheers!
Think about this, a buisness has to get you to freely associate with them. You have to choose to buy what they're selling. The government can make you buy it. Public Education and school choice is a fantastic example in the US. If anything buisness, has an organic built in mechanism of accountability that's very sensitive and changes rapidly, because if you don't buy it they go broke. Where as a government has cycles in the length of years, and some of thier effects are unnoticeable for many elections. Which doesn't even factor in government departments that do not change across even different political parties.
daymyth also voters are highly disconnected from the actions of policy makers, and often have none of the requisite expertise to judge quality of policies to begin with, so they cannot really vote based on much beyond whether or not they get a good feeling about a candidate. And even then, since there are only really two viable candidates in a given campaign under our voting system, they usually just pick a party and stick with it without learning much about the individual options. This creates a problem where we are forced into choosing one candidate that may represent a large number of different policies - many of which we may dislike but a few of which we think outweigh the bad, but we don't get to pick and choose once they're elected. We get all of it. Contrast this to the market. Say you want a vehicle. There are a dozen different styles. You select a pickup truck. There are almost a dozen manufacturers. You want a V8? V6? Automatic or manual? 4 wheel drive? Towing capabilities? Blue? Green? Red? The beauty is not only that you get to choose the thing that fits exactly what you need or want, but that in making your choice, you prevent no one else from making the choice that suits their preferences and constraints. You get a truck. I get an SUV. Someone else gets a hatchback. Others get an electric car. Others take the bus. Everybody can get what makes the most sense for them without ruining others ability to do the same. But that never happens in politics... You get the policy you want at the expense of those who disagree. It's win lose. That makes it very polarizing. And... The more we have made aspects of our lives subject to political control, the more polarized we have become since the stakes for each election keep getting higher.
Grumbles I've always seen this odd hatred of business as alien to me, especially as a car guy. When you look at the foundings of many car companies, like Lamborghini, Koeniggseg, Shelby, and many others, It's a constant theme: Everyone wants to make a dream come true. And this love of cars that's changed how I live only reinforced my hatred of government as unnecessary regulation after paid regulation at behest of a gross lobby from manufacturers who seek to squeeze out competition utilize the government to make new laws such as import bans (Mercedes Benz, I'm looking at you, you sleazeball company), it all changes how you see things. You really get a feeling for just how much you're inconvenienced by people who think they know better than you and coerce you, or use violent acts such as imprisonment, kidnappings, and all sorts of other things to enforce their beliefs on you.
Grumbles Businesses are usually held accountable to the markets, whereas governments are accountable to the highest bidder (aka lobbyists of major corporations, unions, etc.).
I disagree with two of your examples in the intro. Lord business wasn’t an attack on businessmen, he was a child’s misunderstanding of his father because his dad superglued legos to make models for use in his work, and for the kid lego is all about the freedom for kids to build lots of cool things, take them apart, and build again. Then in the case of the lord of war, it wasn’t about businessmen being bad, it was a specific lunatic based on a real arms dealer, he was fucked up, they showed it, and they showed it from his point of view, so of course the stuff he says about how he makes money and how he saw warfare and the like is gonna look fucked up.
Simple. Hollywood doesn't hate business. It's full of businesses. The movies are made by businesses. That said, greed is a great motivator for villains. It's relatable to real life, too, in both the private and public sectors. So, a greedy businessman makes sense as a villain. It has nothing to do with Hollywood itself hating businesses or businessmen, it's just using what works to tell the story. Remember, greedy businessmen serve as villains in books and video games, too.
I'm just imitating your "simple" approach to this subject. Nothing is "simple" - but it is clear that a narrative is imitated across Hollywood - business is bad. I feel like media can easily be used to influence the perception of people in society, and if you keep reinforcing such a negative stigma against businessmen, you end up with hordes of anti-capitalists storming the streets (antifa).
“Business is not about making money” Your entrepreneur friends told you that? As the son of entrepreneurs, yes it is, at least making money is an important part of it. If it makes money it’s rentable, is a good investment, if you don’t make money there’s no business.
exactly. Creating some form of capitalist business is the only way to be your own boss and sell your creations, and that's why people do it. But if there were a way that didn't require capitalism's fierce competition for profits, most of those entrepreneurs would go about things very differently. It's my opinion that we can do much better than capitalism.
For most entrepreneurs I know (and that's quite a lot) making money is the marker of success and definitely the end goal on one level, but no... It is not really why they do what they do. Most people become entrepreneur busimess owners for one of three reasons (in my experience). 1) They have a vision for a better world that no one else seems to see and entrepreneurship is the best way to bring it into reality. This would be someone like Elon Musk. 2) They have a product or service they absolutely know is better than anything that exists and they can't do anything else but try to build it and bring it to customers. That's more of a Jobs/Woz situation. 3) They simply cannot and will not be satisfied with taking directions from a boss, and need to work for themselves. The first guy I ever did an entrepreneur documentary about was like that, but if I am picking a celebrity, let's say it's basically Mark Cuban or Richard Brandon. Making money is the way these guys know what they are doing is working and that they are creating stuff other people actually want to buy, but it's not usually their driving motivation. Money is for information about value and score keeping the success or failure of a business. Super important to operating a successful enterprise, yes. But... The only important factor to all the businesspeople I know and have worked with over the past decade or more? Not even close.
Yeah, but you rely on your very, VERY comparably tiny experiences to make that assesment about most entrepreneurs. Businessmen probably have a certain charisma and want to livve comfortably, so they go ahead and create their own business. It's unrealistic to think that all succesful people, that became a success due to their companies, are all either an Elon Musk, a Steve Jobs or a Richard Brandon.
This should be taught in junior high school and high school.. the government has the students for 12 years of education and they graduate almost completely devoid of skills and attitude that would make them successful. With a few exceptions who are influenced at home.
Fun fact: prier to the formation of the Department of Education in the 1980's the American education system was ranked 2nd in the world, now it's ranked 17th. Correction: the report I quoted was from 2012, here's a more recent report www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
And funny enough, there's very little actual evidence to suggest that private schools are better than public ones, as well as some very good reasons as to why they're worse. A study done by Statistics Canada published in 2015 suggests that the "better performance" from private schools is less correlated with the schools themselves, and more that the parents of those children were wealthier and better educated. There's even a study from UBC published in 2012 indicating that public school students performed BETTER in post secondary education than their private school counterparts. People who push private schools and "school choice" always seem to downplay or ignore the downsides of private schools. For example, private schools need to focus on marketing, and divert resources to that, while public schools do not. Private schools also need to turn a profit, while public schools, again, do not. Yeah, the education system definitely needs to change, but it's not because "the government is so bad and private education is better". it's more that the world has changed, and education that was great in the 70s for pumping out people with the basic knowledge skills to work in a factory no longer cuts it for a modern economy depending on thinking jobs.
+Mathew Reckamp Going from 2nd in the world -> 17th, does not mean that our education system has gotten worse. It just implies that other countries got better.
well, it's not really about business itself. it's about the concept of big corporations and how they do business as they tend to seek constant growth. most movies that use this trope are about small business and individuals who fight that big corporation. they hold a capitalist ideal, but reject the extreme version of it. also, tony stark, walt disney and many other ficticious and real characters in films are businessmen, but they represent the creativity of the business, the ideal. the evil corporate man, represents the constant growth mentality. which does bring up a lot of problems in a society. it's like you missed the point entirely
J.S. Tama it's also like you didn't watch the video where I explicitly note that there is a version of small businessman that is shown as ok, but that even they are typically pitted against the bigger rich guy enemy. In the end it comes down to the idea that major success in business can't be acheived without evil actions... Sure, you can be a little guy entrepreneur or a mom and pop store and be a decent person, but the minute you become rich, you're going to turn into a psychopath. That's both patently untrue and a terrible thing to tell young people about the world.
+FEE It's also like you didn't read the comment where Tony Stark was cited as an example of a good businessman. The idea proposed by those movies is not that the people at the top become evil/psychopaths. It's that their actions just happen to be no different from psychopaths. It's a truth that Hollywood did not create. When the US government first passed laws to regulate car emissions multiple car makers fought back while others simply made better engines/filters. There is nothing untrue about business practices that actively harm and exploit communities in pursuit of profits. A five minute google search could probably give you dozens of articles about sweatshops, mines and factories that stripped the land of resources, killed ecosystems and left the clean up for the taxpayers to take care of while 'evil businessmen' pocketed he profits and got away scot free.
@@rs3rd464 Tony Stark is essentially the the outlier exception that proves the rule, and not the norm. And even he started out as a bad businessman archetype, saved mainly by how charismatic Robert Downey Jr. is. Plus, it should be noted that in all 3 Iron Man movies, the central antagonists were more evil business guys: Stane, Hammer, then Aldrich. And yes, 5 minutes of Googling will reveal some business people who did bad things... But that's mainly because you find what you search for. In context of the number of serious criminals out there across all areas of life, the standard business owner is a rarity. That said, we do have a slight definition problem to address. The US has constantly expanded the criminal code to the point where famed criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average American commits at least 3 felonies a day, mostly without realizing it. And the Federal Register - which is our list of federal regulations - is nearly 62,000 pages long. If our definition of "criminal" is expanded to this degree, then we are all criminals... Business people, possibly most of all since they interact with more people in more heavily regulated ways. Personally, I think this is ridiculous. What Hollywood portrays is business people who are literally axe murderers or get into shoot outs. They're all secret drug or gun runners, people embezzling millions from unsuspecting old ladies, and deliberately producing products that they know and actively intend to harm their customers. That almost never happens.
@@FEEonline "What Hollywood portrays is business people who are literally axe murderers or get into shoot outs. They're all secret drug or gun runners, people embezzling millions from unsuspecting old ladies, and deliberately producing products that they know and actively intend to harm their customers. That almost never happens." Except it totally does. Just look at all the absurdly unsafe toys that injured or poisoned thousands of children over the years, the infamous Pinto car brand that literally exploded when rear-bumped a little too hard, or even the vast amount of hazardous food/cosmetics additives that need to be outlawed every time a new one is discovered and used, like some legal game of whack-a-mole that puts consumers' health on the line. Product safety has always been a huge issue, and big companies care the least about them since they can afford to pay any fines or compensations a hundred times over, provided they get caught AND forced to pay for the damage in the first place. The case of video game companies lobbying for the right to put psychlogically manipulative gambling-like mechanics in their low-effort "games" to milk money out of their consumers is evidence that overtly malicious companies that don't care about people are totally a thing, and another reality of the world we live in now is that sufficient amount of money brings power beyond the ability to afford goods and services: lobbying is common knowledge and a widespread issue that allows those already at the top to bar anyone else from even competing with them. My own country (France) has outlawed a ridiculous number of fruit and vegetable varieties for bogus reasons just so the big food producers that lobbied to get this bill passed could get several of their competitors out of the picture. The problem isn't capitalism itself, it's the interference of corrupt governments and a shaky justice system.
@@FEEonline I think Bruce Wayne/Batman from the Dark Knight trilogy is a better example. He (and his dead father) are scrupulous businessmen whose main antagonists are Ra's Al Ghul, Joker and Bane. 2 of them (Ra's and Bane) are almost of the same group and are a secret shadow vigilante group with a misguided philosophy while the Joker is an agent of chaos who wants to prove his point that all human beings are essentially bad and doesn't care about money or power (he even burns his share of loot!).
you mean the guy that said reducing taxes raised revenue for the state and was completely mistaken in the matter, participating in the slope of public debt in the US ad around the world?
and by actual economists. Meanwhile the reduction of taxes and friedman curve are only ever defended by ideologues. The friedman curve is the economic myth with the least basis in reality that i know of.
Maxime Teppe That argument does not make sense considering that these ideologues are actual economists too. The economists that you trust so much are not much more than government whores.
its just common sense, the prize won by working or investing is reduced by taxation, therefore it reduces the incentives to work or invest, therefore it reduces work and investment.
Even if the businessman is just in business to make money, he must provide a product or service for a price people are willing to pay or he won’t be in business long. The exception to this rule is getting government involved to suppress the competition to benefit a politically connected business.
or businesses getting big enough to shatter the "free market" delusion. The free market is a state where none is big enough to individually influence the market. take internet providers, they don't actually compete but you have to have internet today to actually fonction in today's world. There is also healthcare, where refusing costly treatment isn't always a ...viable... option.
Maxime Teppe The free market is a state where any businessman can compete. None are barred entry. I don’t know where you live but I can choose between at least 4 different internet providers. Let’s say there is only 1 provider of some service or product, I have no problem with that as long as anyone is allowed entry to compete. Government is the evil that creates monopolies. Without government no monopolies can exist.
really? I mean I know that i the US, many places have only one provider. I live in France, we usually have access to at least three. three is not a state of free market thou: one actor can have a huge influence on the whole, and accords can be passed between the man actor. It's an oligopoly. As for the government, they are the ones giving the rules. in a complete free for all, especially when it comes to infrastructures (roads, railways, sewers), nothing prevents monopolies, or at least local monopolies. I guess they can make handouts that favorise monopolies, but they are also the best tool to prevent them through regulation. A good example is net neutrality: Without institutions to enforce net neutrality, internet providers can hold internet services and websites hostage. For instance, in France, Free (Internet Provider) often (probably illegally) limit the speed for Netflix because they feel like Netflix should pay higher tarifs to broadcast their content. Netflix has the bank account to pay if they need to, but any newcomer won't have the treasury to do the same, and therefore will have it's growth really limited. You probably know all that, and have a very good explanation of why such a problem doesn't exist without government, I guess.
TL,DR: without counterpowers it's possible to accumulate wealth and power in a way that prevents competition. regulation and governmental institutions are a flawed but efficient way to enforce such counterpowers.
Maxime Teppe What is your definition of a monopoly? Ive stated that a in a free market(we don’t have that because the government interferes all the time) anyone can compete. You are not barred from entering any business and competing. When the government gets involved, it protects it favorite businesses with the regulation you favor. Big business loves regulations and taxes because they cripple the smaller new competitors. I understand your wanting regulation, but it doesn’t help. It tilts the playing field toward the politically connected. I just want to be sure I understand your position. Are you saying you favor private ownership of the means of production but you want the government to control, regulate, and tax business? Is that you position?
10:47 Don't use India as an example of "positive environmental outcomes" of globalisation here. Try taking a dip in the Ganges outside the assorted factories and garbage dumps filled with plastic bags and coke cans and you'll find yourself very ill. What's worse is that that river is sacred to the people, who believe it to be all cleansing, so pilgrims (even children) often regularly bathe in it. Many even ask for their ashes to be washed down the river. While I'm sure some business has brought many positives to counties like India, remember there are downsides that need to be addressed too, like worker exploitation and the importation of environmentally harmful materials like plastics. Not to mention the exploitation of children by smoking companies...
Daniel compared to what India was even 30 years ago, there have been undeniably massive improvements on all the metrics I mentioned in the video. You have to compare reality to reality, not reality to your ideal wishes.
India is a socialist hellhole of their own making the only reason programming and electronics got a boom in India it is that they did not have the same level straggling stagnation of laws and regulations on them as they did every other business or industry.
Foundation for Economic Education Surely when it comes to the environment, particularly in a nation like India, pollution levels have undoubtedly severely gone up over the past thirty years, even if there are more environmental activists and regulations being drafted? And I fail to see why admiring (or aspiring to) the ideal is a bad thing? Sure, no river to run through a major city like Varanasi ever comes out clean and sparkling, but to say that something needs to be done before it turns into the Thames from the Victorian era, a river so disgusting the British parliament smelt like a sewer and politicians were regularly sick, not that it isn't like that already, isn't projecting an ideal or a fantasy, its arguing for the protection of both a religious epicentre and a crucial life source? That said, I'd be really interested to see what you think of globalisation more in another video. Particularly Facebook, Coca Cola and Nestlé in Africa. And cigarette companies in the Middle East and South America. For many nations, trade and tourism are undoubtedly a life blood, and have been since the dawn of humanity, and I really appreciate you pointing that out in a time where we easily forget it, but, like almost everything that's positive, there are important negatives too that you'd do well to address. Specifically when talking about developing countries like India and China, and how their existing cultures clashed/excelled with business. Cheers!
I love this. I totally agree with you. Not all businessmen are evil, money-hungry monsters and they shouldn't all be depicted as such. You're one of the only people on RUclips I’ve seen talk about this trope in depth.
I take issue only with the link between media consumption, thought, and action. There's a link, but it's not clearly understood. Take violent video games. If being violent in games was the same as being violent in real life, we'd expect most gsmes to be in jail. Actually, violent crime among young men haa overall decreased as violent games have become more popular. I don't think that's causal, but, if violent video games made people violent, we wouldn't expect that to have happened. People can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I think the real trouble with the evil capitalism Hollywood narrative is that we don't just see it in movies; we get it on the news, in school, and from politicians. It feels real because we hear it from "real" sources, not just fiction. I think people are now learning that much of what they learned in school, on the news, and from politicians isn't real.
And I'd like to point out to the parental activist groups that most violent crimes occur in regions where the general population can't afford video games
@@savagetv6460 There has always been violence, but there has not always been video games. Violent anti Jewish riots in 1930s Germany did not cause the general public to rise up and throw the Nazi party out of office in horror at the atrocities they tolerated and encouraged. Most of the general public was apathetic to the plight of the Jews, this could not have been because of video games, because video games did not exist for many decades. Pong, the first video game, was released in 1972. I could go on all day about peoples apathy to violence in history. Think of the Colosseum in the time of the Ancient Roman Empire. Crowds would watch criminals being torn apart by animals, Gladiators fighting, sometimes to the death, and Christians being burnt alive as "Roman candles." Clearly video games are not the cause of apathy to violence.
When Karl Marx first proposed socialism, he was mostly advocating on behalf of poor factory workers. I’m a factory worker, and I’ve payed off my student loans, I have a healthy emergency fund, and am saving up to buy a house. I’m anything but poor. Now socialists are advocating on behalf of poor service industry workers. I say, do the same thing for them as we’ve done for the poor factory workers. It certainly wasn’t socialist states that have improved the world so I can be moderately wealthy middle class while working in a factory. The socialist and communist states have all fallen apart or are too deeply impoverished themselves to actually do anything for other people. It was capitalist states that made life better for factory workers. You say they deserve a living wage, I say capitalism will give them one.
I don't think that the trope comes from business people automatically being bad, but as a representation of the conflicts of interest that corporate capitalism creates when it separates the means of production so far from those it is meant to produce for.
I think that is true with a lot of movies, however there are too many movies out there that try to demonize capitalism for the sake of trying to spread that capitalism is pure evil.
@@FEEonline I feel the simplistic way in which you portray capitalism in this video is a bit naive and very simplistic. The premise itself is not always the case, in many of the "it's just business" quotes in the montage you showed, that phrase is used to show the character being "cool" even in some cases where said character is villainous. I do agree that capitalism has it's merits, but , long term, it has many problems, and defending it the way you do in this video dismisses the problem with late stage capitalism, and that old gentleman immediately mentioning Communism, as if the only options are the two extremes of the same coin, is disingenuous to say the least. The way american culture glorifies capitalism as a doctrine is weirdly fetishistic, and it's often when it's criticised, the counter arguments are, human benevolence which is barely an argument, or red panic. I would argue that indeed, the media does portray capitalism negatively in it's majority, I feel that fact is undeniable.
@@SkyTowerKurogane to put this as kindly as I can, "late stage capitalism" isn't a thing. Marxists have been saying that we're experiencing the end of capitalism for a century, but history doesn't have an end that you can know or predict (and does not actually end in any case, as it is simply a concept of time), and Marx was wrong about essentially everything related to economic theory, starting with the idea that value is a product of labor. The Marginal Revolution put that idea to bed about 140 years ago. Marx' premises about "surplus value" were built on a flawed theory of value coupled with a bad understanding of both capital structure and human action. The defense of capitalism here is not entirely the point of this video, but I have done dozens of videos covering a wide range of aspects of economic theory and the incredible importance of free markets and economic freedom broadly. It's true that capitalism and communism are not the only two options here, but that's also not the point I would make. The point is that the core tenets of capitalism - property rights, private ownership of resources, and the free choice of consumers and producers on what to make, sell, trade, or buy (or not) - are, and have been, essential to the dramatic increase in prosperity and decline of poverty around the world over the last couple hundred years. The more equally those principle concepts have been applied, the better off people of all races, genders, nationalities, etc. have become. The mountain of evidence for this is truly overwhelming. The point of this video, of course, is actually that the "It's just business" trope spoken by evil people tends to condition audiences to see business as somehow inherently evil, when it is really the lifeblood of human wellbeing. If you want to talk about specific problems you have with capitalism as a concept, I'm happy to talk about those... Though we must first agree on a definition. Mercantilism, corporatism/cronyism, fascism, and all manner of socialist or quasi socialist systems are commonly described as "capitalism", but that is definitionally incorrect and not what I would be defending (here or in the video), so we'd have to start there.
0:18 but Hiroshi Sato wasn't a predictable business villain; he fell under Amon's spell after losing his wife and redeemed himself by giving up his life.
I love the way the writers of legend of Korra give depth to his character without simplifying him to “evil business man”, he’s a great example of writers constructing relatable and complex characters
I've wondered this for SO LONG. I've grown up with an entrepreneur father and seen MANY businesses start most failing and other MUCH FEWER succeeding. And in my life it's always been those that don't understand how RIDICULOUSLY hard it is to start a business that treat companies and corporations as villains, instead of hard working risk takers.
This trope exists because it happens. There are countless real life people, companies, sacrificing the well being of others because it means earning more money. It doesn't mean you should oppose business, it's just being aware that people can be selfish, reckless, uncaring and that it can endanger others...
One example you keep bringing up is the Lego Movie, but in that the fact he's a business man is actually largely irrelevant. The reason why the villain is Lord Business is because it's the representation of a child dealing with the fact his father is never around because he is prioritising his job over his family.
I understand that this is why the character is Lord Business. It's actually pretty clever in that sense. But that's also the point. "Business", to that movie, is cold and devoid of love or imagination. It is the embodiment of stasis (literally, via the Kragle) and all things that aren't "awesome".
Maxime Teppe if you mean jobs for qualified people then, it's as simple fact. Where did anyone say that socialism kills jobs? They talk like that aabout minimu wage....
wait a second, most of Europe is comprised of social democrat countries, there is no shortage of jobs for doctors, ingeneers and so on. So...citation please?
Maxime Teppe You mean social democracies?? Yeah we have those in Europe unfortunately. I will, but could you first cite where days it say that socialism works?
I you mean countries where most of the means of productions are owned by the workers there are none, but the productivity and worker satisfaction in co-ops and other similar models, as well as the progress of tools for lean management in startups makes me hopeful that some form of socialism is possible. There are also anarchist communes that have been functioning for years.
My father is one of the most respectful businessman I know, and that’s not just because he’s my father, he prides himself on providing quality to peoples life. Some people’s Ike to say “that’s an exception, not the rule” and to that I say: “you’re plain wrong”
Yuri Bezmenov tried to warn us about this happening. That said, major corporations are eager to crush individual rights to protect their images. There are countless examples of this happening. Also, businesses used to treat their employees *extraordinarily* badly before OSHA got any real power.
Same thing happened to me. Tried multiple wi-fi's, my phones network, couldn't get it to play. Stayed stubborn and watched it on a computer. Seems a bit fishy.
6:29 it is not substantiated that violence in media like movies or video games leads to violent behavior. Idk where you got this idea from. Crime stats show violent crime has been declining for decades
I think Big Hero 6 took an interesting approach with it because the only reason they assumed the business man was bad was because the media (comic books) depicted them as secret super villains and then it turns out be wasn't actually the bad guy they thought be was.
You do make a nice case but I would like to present a counter-argument. I would easily say that businesses exist to make money but in the majority of cases this is not a bad thing because the means to which they are doing it are in the peoples best interests such as producing clothes or selling food. But I would say one reason that students are getting progressively anti-capitalistic because odds are that because the percentage of educated citizens are increasing they feel that, with the existing system in place they cannot achieve their goals and innovate in their field because the jobs they need are simply too competitive, instead winding up in lower-paying entry level jobs they are overqualified for. A capitalistic society is also reliant on non-innovators willing to do the innovators dirty work in exchange for the profit they are receiving since an individual simply cannot achieve their dreams alone. Fortunately, the advent of industrial automation has presented us with a solution, allowing robots to carry out the menial tasks necessary for an individual to innovate, however with the present capitalistic system, with money being given only by innovators and the profits they make this simply cannot work as there is no guarantee that everyone can innovate, and if automation continues without reform then unemployment and poverty will skyrocket. As such, in an optimistic scenario society leans away from capitalistic policies so that the graduated students will have some kind of budget given by a third party (private or state) to innovate at their own speed, using automation to help grow their budding business. Of course, I now need to provide insight of the "greedy businessman" trope so I'll just use it to say that the stereotypical "greedy businessman" does not like change provided by the outside as they usually wind up costing more and, in my scenario would either adhere to the given example, instead using minimum-wage slaves to carry out while stifling automation policies under deluded principles or support automation policies, use them en-masse while completely ignoring any repercussions of this. To the commoner both of these stereotypes are relatable and plausible: The first being because, at the very least, the most commonly known CEOs can have conservative leanings and oppose technological innovations that can change the status quo; the second can also seem plausible because the rise of automation means you are less reliant on manpower to maintain your profits; and for the most part CEOs can seem completely apathetic to the concerns of the "lesser folk" to some because, at some point they acted against their interests for the sake of furthering their cause. Of course this is my verdict and knowing the RUclips comments section I will be called a communist, "libtard" or SJW because, despite possibly agreeing with them on every other matter, I said at least one thing they don't agree with and now I am the enemy and hate freedom or some other dumb assumption
Your argument is understandable. your not gonna get yelled at for your views its not about which way you lean or anything like that, SJW's are people of an extreme opinion that believe no other opinions could even be slightly correct. I do see issues with your argument but i see where your going. I think the point of the video is to explain that capitalism isn't the pursuit of profit or the idea of the evil businessman capitalism is economic freedom. calling it the source of corruption is just being ignorant of all history Human beings are innately corrupt and not matter what system you put them in they will find ways to make it worse for other human beings. That does not mean everyone is corrupt because wherever there is corruption there will also be people trying to stop that corruption.
So you educate people. You teach them that, by being corrupt, they make the system worse for everyone. A lot of people say it is inherent human nature, it can't be changed and I don't necessarily disagree. But we can't honestly say that we've tried, can we?
What’s this, intelligent discussion regarding opposing opinions on RUclips? And no slander? Are there pigs flying in the sky? In seriousness, you raise a good point, and it is probably part of why I have seen such a disturbing rise in the support for communism (despite it being an objectively worse system) around my city. People feel left behind and think “how could this day of hope make things worse?” forgetting that things can always be much worse. So much worse.
One quibble with the essay: saying that movies are a factor in how people view businesses is not supported by the evidence we have. This was a huge thing with the violent video games rhetoric that came out in the late nineties. The long and short of it is that while, yes, we do have the same physiological reactions to simulated violence as we do with real violence -- and that might increase aggressive behavior in the minutes after encountering said stimulus, it simply does not result in increased violence on a societal scale: to wit, violent video game sales SKYROCKETED while violence was simultaneously PLUMMETING. Granted, there may be different mechanisms at play -- after all, it is an abstract opinion of business versus violent tendencies -- but I do not believe we have sufficient cause to think that they're so different that one would have a completely different impact than the other.
I'd like to point out that current meta analysis studies and systematic reviews tend to show that not only is there no conclusive link between violence in media and violence in society, but there's also no conclusive evidence that violence in media causes elevated levels of aggression, as a lot of studies that do show this tend to suffer from publication bias and methodological issues. I understand that the public perception is that there is a link, and to be honest I find that such common sense thinking _tends_ to be very reasonable and based in truth, but definitely not always.
6:50 - This is where the video confused me a bit. I have never seen a study that suggests violent media causes people to be more violent. The most wide spread and effective study every done actually found the opposite. While they found that violent media can cause *short term* aggression for the duration of engagement with the media, they found that once the television or game was turned off the person actually became far less aggressive than the average person in their day to day lives. What we've been able to gather from tests like these is that violence doesn't tend to engage us the same way as narratives and that it functions more often then not closer to venting frustration than it does intellectual activity.
Is that why hack and slash power fantasy's are so fun despite not really doing much but clearing a room full of enemies then walking to the next room to do the same until you get bored.
I think another reason as to why Hollywood tends to portray business in a negative light is because it appeals to the masses. The story of the everyman/woman or the smaller business going up against the bigger, more corporate business is basically a version of the stick-it-to-the-man trope. It could also be that most people aren't the rich heads of big businesses and are skeptical and or scared of people who are. And rightfully so! Businesses have done bad things in the past and there have been business people with bad intentions. And it's important to be skeptical so that when we see corrupt people in power we can do something about it. But it's also important to remember that the majority of businessmen and women are good people who want to do and create a good things. Iike pumpkin spice lattes, movies, music, and even the divice that your reading this comment on right now was created by business people.
Hi I am from Bolivia. I wanna thank U. You are doing a great job keep going. It seems that we are in a cultural battle and we are losing but we have to strike back.
I mean, to a degree, sure. But theyre not portraying *all* businesspeople as sociopaths. Theyre portraying the outliers that way. The people who take business concerns away from humans, of which there *are* plenty, or we wouldn't have had a small depression about a decade ago, and flint would have clean, drinkable water. Notice that almost none of the characters who say "it's just business" are everyday mooks like you or me, just trying to make ends meet. Theyre people in a position to make a decision that can effect the lives of dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions of people, and instead choose the path that will protect themselves, rather than those they represent or serve, of which those people do exist. Granted, it would be nice to see business represented as more of a spectrum, where those businesspeople are much more of a deviation, or even show someone who makes decisions such as those, and then show his side, that if he had decided otherwise, it would risk the jobs of everyone who works for him. Or someone could be in a similar position, and make the right one, to show contrast. But to claim that evil business models don't exist is simply naive.
6:29 "Exposure to fictional violence increases a child's likelihood of violent behaviour in very similar ways as if they had experienced real violence themselves." Now _there's_ a tall claim! I doubt the psyche people responsible for that trash view are able to differentiate play and real powertrips. And so you get bs views like that. Granted you want to teach your kid that violence doesn't solve much, and that there are far better ways to do things, but that claim there... man, it's just bogus, and it can be scientifically dismantled in so many ways.
Fear of the law and society probably. We still mimic the people we relate to. Art subsides our judgement- whether it’s a movie or video game showing sex or violence, if it’s done in a compelling light we’re likely to ignore our judgement for the sake of aesthetics.
6:30 - I disagree vehemently with fictional violence causing real violence, you can extend it to video games also for it to be a possible outlet for such thoughts one might naturally have. You hold burden of proof, and I think there's a big difference between stories being able to immerse and connect with people, teaching lessons and morals, to affecting their actions as a whole. I can agree at least somewhat that some more violent and adult films should be kept from the youngest children that wouldn't understand the context in the film and what violence they are seeing is for right or wrong reasons, but I think you stretched a bit far. Another point, business is so pervasive as you've pointed out, that I imagine many people can relate more easily to "business" being a driving motivation, but that they have taken too far. The trope is somewhat too common, but you're more predicating this on the common line "It's just business", when that business is often something like being a hitman or drug dealer or other criminal profession, or just profession in general, it is common for people to rationalise their decisions away. You also have quoted "power corrupts", financial power can be included.
As an aspiring entrepreneur, I've always held the idea that "if you say the line 'it's not personal, it's just business', you need to reevaluate your choice immediately, because it's probably unethical." Mainly because there's no such thing as a decision that's "just business"- every decision, no matter how logical, stems from some emotion, which is personal.
I don't believe the part about what we see affects how we think, to a degree. Violent games don't make people more violent, and over the last decade of me playing violent video games, I'm more aware of how things can escalate quickly from bad to worse.
The most impressive thing about this whole video is learning that in the past, when people argued their point on national television, the other person let them speak until they were finished.
I think you miss the point imo. Presenting businessmen like this, they only contribute to the individuation of the problematic, like "it's not capitalism that is wrong despite the fact that it's responsible for the death of millions each year, it's not the system that produces inequalities, no the real problem are the individuals that are within that system and exploit it for they're own gain...". What it achieves is that evil businessmen are depicted as black sheeps, they're the only responsible for the wrong they, and therefore, when they die, the problem is magically resolved. These kind of stories never addresses the real problems, they never talk about capitalism in itself, they never attempt to criticize it, they just depolitize a very political problematic. The reality is that "evil" businessmen are the byproduct of capitalism, not the other way around.
Ir is a fair point until you consider the constant effort that this has become during the last decades... at this point it is safe to say that there is more to it than simple lack of creativity... i'm not completely denying your claim... not even close... just putting my grain of salt
There was a kid's movie called Legend of Everfree. In that, a secondary villain, and catalyst for the main villain's fall to evil is going to remove a campsite to replace it with something else (I don't remember the finer details, and I don't want to watch it again, the movie wasn't that good). He's able to kick them out because they can't afford the payments. one character begs him to let them stay, and he gives them another month to pay what they owe. This seems like very kind behaviour to me. He's not a villain at all, but the movie would frame him that way for some strange reason.
movies didn't always portray business owners as evil? does that mean regressivism can work to restore those films in some countries, but not america where consent of the governed is enshrined in the constitution?
Wow, i belive their is a reason for this trope. I don't believe that most of the top buisnes men are trying to help the world. The current system of companies brings the worst people to the top, as the only measure for success is making money.
Isenskjold they don't need to. they help themselves and BY CONSEQUENCE help others. until the government comes in to rule the competition out of the market by enforcing laws to buy political influence
@@baldeagle5297 the internet and computers, of it's not universities it's something heavily backed by the government. There's a reason no private company has been to the moon.
marco feola yeah but the book does a much better job illustrating the matter and does so in much more detail so I'd be much more likely to recommend it then the movies.
Mathew Reckamp Extreme oversimplifications, borderline mary sue characters, total focus on idealism and debunked concepts even for her time. Overall, the twilight of economics
I've happily subscribed to your channel. Its fantastic and exactly what I've been looking for to help explain economics to my kid. This video in particular is EXACTLY what I've been talking to my kid about for ages.
we've raised a generation on the idea that if you just keep punching up, no matter who it is that you hurt and knock down, someday, somehow, everyone will be equal. I guess my generation will just be here to suffer the consequences... thanks...
i agree. in fact, there is a considerable amount of evidence that points to the opposite. the theoretical explanation for this being either that violent individuals don't have time to be violent and watch violent media (opportunity cost if you will) or that violent individuals use violent media as a way to relieve their stress, thus limiting the likelihood of them acting on their violent desires. personally, i am ok with the "just business" trope, especially since almost every time it is shown, the businessman is either abusing legislature (mafia type, thus it is still technically the fault of the government) or is taking a disproportionate risk in a get-rich-quick scheme, often ending with them losing everything. long term investments between voluntary individuals tend to be more beneficial to the society, as well as more profitable, than the alternative.
Your video does a good job illustrating the extent to which our modern world revolves around business. Small wonder that something so pervasive in our lives would also be pervasive in our media. Most stories revolve around conflict. Often the conflict is made more dramatic by a difference in power between the heroes and the villains. The hero being even more heroic for triumphing over a more powerful foe. In an industrialized setting wealth is one of the few ways to represent such a power difference. The rise of the ‘business people as villains’ trope could be related to the cultural understanding that business creates wealth. Wealth is power, and power is a desirable trait in a villain. From the above we can say it isn’t that business people are uniquely prone to evil, they are simply uniquely potent and relatable villains. Businesses aren't inherently good or bad. They can create both great benefit and great harm. Stories of greed, negligence, and apathy can be powerful illustrations of the things that can go wrong in our modern world and many times inspiration for those stories can be pulled right from the headlines. It isn’t always a movie’s role to tell us about the complex nature of our world or all the times nothing dramatic happened. It is to tell a story. There’s a reason stories like ‘Hansel & Gretel’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ don’t spend a lot of time talking about any nice old ladies or friendly animals. Regarding the surveys, I don’t think the data cited was granular enough to really reveal any deep understanding of people’s real views. Economic policy is too complex for a simple “for or against”. If I answered the question about capitalism thinking the surveyor meant something along the lines of a completely anarchic deregulated free-for-all I’d vote no too. I like having roads, bridges, and public education. I wouldn’t like the government picking who I can buy from, but it seems reasonable to me for them to set standards that all competitors must abide by.
"Business" is just an excuse to do/get what you want/need while ignoring or justifying against any ethical repercussions. That being said, there is a degree of Machiavellian Pragmatism that comes into some of these cases which may justify the line being used. Other times, it's simply: "I'm not sorry."
brackonstudios look around. Business is happening absolutely everywhere you turn, and the vast majority of it works solely on the basis of *mutual* benefit. Already today, I drove to my office where I do what I do best in order to get money from people who value what I can do for them. Win-win. Then I dropped by Target to pick up a flash drive. They got my money, I got what I wanted in a couple minutes. Win-win again! Then it was off to the gas station to power my car. Quickly got some gasoline, my car will keep running for another week and I will be able to go wherever I want to go with no problems. Another win-win. Grabbed a snack from another businessman. Paid. Wins all around. Now I am preparing for a big event at a hotel. The hotel has supplied us with a great venue, support staff, rooms, food, etc. for three days. Our event guests will have a wonderful time in large part due to the Hotel's role in facilitating it. We paid them lots of money to do this. This will be a win for us, win for the hotel, and a win for our conference guests. Trade is literally made of win. We each benefit or the trade never takes place. The only time this is consistently not true is when a business is connected to or controlled by government. In those cases, they can create laws forcing you to do business with them or take your money via taxes without your consent. But... That is a function of the nature of government, not of business.
imagine have to grow your own wheat, salt, meat, etc for your own hamburger. Without business, you can live only as caveman. Stop blame the wealthy because of your own incompetence
+Foundation for Economic Education Thanks for the extensive reply, but I didn't mean to sound as if I was putting business itself down, I love the market and what all we have access to. My comment in relation to storytelling and hollywood, and how they have a surface level view of business and businessmen. Because it shows through characters saying lines like this. It's a cheap way to show a character as morally gray or down right evil. I personally can't imagine a real business person ever saying this after doing something. Again, wasn't intending to sound anti-business. +Evan Karniawan I have imagined that, and I've researched videos and books on how to garden to be more self-reliant, because I see what life would be like if that all vanished. Also, I'm not someone who blames the wealthy, I'm thankful for what they can do. I'm currently learning and working towards how to enter and thrive in the market with what I love and what I can produce. I hope you're doing the same.
Juan Pablo Grajales Canseco of course they're mutually beneficial. I got what I wanted, the businesses i interact with got what they wanted, and neither pay had to be forced into the transaction (which is partly how you can tell we both actually valued the exchange in the first place). What I don't get... What none of us gets to have... It's a magical world where we get everything we ever want without any form of production, work, or exchange. If I want to travel somewhere and I don't want to use my feet, I need a reliable energy-powered vehicle. That means I either build it from scratch myself, which I am entirely incapable of doing, or I use the skills I do have to benefit someone else in exhange for money (in this case, amazingly enough by making videos on the internet), in order to then use that money to buy a vehicle and the continued means to operate it from other people who *are* capable of producing such things. There's no such thing as a free lunch, but the nature of reality isn't an agent and cannot be coercive by itself.
Most people neglect the fact that socialist USSR completely destroyed Aral sea, made several nuclear experiments in Siberia, used forced labor to construct Moscow subway, killed millions by starvation in Ukraine in order to maintain power but that wasn't just business though...
Cultural Marxism is the rewiring of an existing culture to change the economic, political, religious, and social views of a nation to become unstable and destructive towards it's own ends. The purpose is to weaken a nation into subservience and neediness in which the socialist and/or communist comes in for a short while until the nation collapses. The failed state then collects all the goods and properties of the state and sells them to the enemies of that state. Simply put, socialism is the parasite party of the political world that intends to kill it's host. Just look at how Obama made vast swathes of the United States "public property" and then sold it to European and Chinese bankers. Hell they're even trying to sell the Alamo in Texas against the will of the state and the people. They are selling our nation under our nose piece by piece to our enemies already.
Robert Nexion - Hey, dude, I'm sorry you're such a nutjob -- they've got new meds on the market, maybe you should give 'em a try -- for the record, Obama did *not* sell any US land, he declared areas national monuments, where they are clearly still under the control of the US govt -- & they're "selling the Alamo"? Who is "they"? Yeah, sure they are -- right after they round up everybody during Jade Helm! Got a link for that? Yeah, didn't think so -- you need a much thicker tinfoil hat, bro...
This video blew my mind while watching it, I haven't really considered the lives of the businessmen and this video gave me a new prospective on how businesses are shown in film. Thanks for making this video
Nonamearisto the fact that you say it's preachy just proves my point. We live in a society that views business as bad while hypocritically using business.
Abyss Knight I’m talking about the execution, not the message, the point is clear, plus hollywood writers obviously don’t know much about regular jobs as they simply have big projects one after the other, plus reliance on the cliche of big bad bussiness can often lead to lazy writing, but this video itself, it’s a bit on the preachy side and a bit shoe horned in it’s examples. FEE is made up of people, sometimes people come off as preachy. I will speak heresy of your gods all I want.
I can't entirely agree with this. Sure fiction can effect reality to a degree, but it can only truly have a profound effect on a person's worldview if it is enforced by the people around them and their real world knowledge on a subject. The movie Jaws only caused an increase in shark hunting because people were already afraid of sharks and knew very little about them. People past a certain age all realize that if you get bitten by a radioactive spider or otherwise exposed to radiation, you're going to get cancer and die rather than get powers, because others teach them that sort of thing. On the other hand, people may think that people with DID really do get another personality or whatever because most people aren't very well educated on how mental illness works. As for the Evil Businessman, people believing Capitalism is bad probably has way more to do with the constant stream of news reports and expose's about this or that major corporation doing shady and downright terrible things and people not fully understanding what Capitalism is (and then getting pro-socialist propaganda hammered into them at liberal college campuses) than the number of evil businessmen in media.
I have been saying that for years! Thank u! I'm 34 and I have been saying this to my friends and family since I was like 12, no really I have been. As a kid i saw things in movies that I knew they wanted me to think, act and be.
![Summer Walker - Heart Of A Woman [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SFddctbZzw8/mqdefault.jpg)
conservatives: Why do you present capitalism as evil?
Hollywood: It's nothing personal, it's just business.
Hollywood rejects morality in the name of business, so that's what they project onto their antagonists.
@@someguy4405 No, HUMANS do that, not anyone specifically. Don't stroke anyone's ego, here.
Kelby Brewer
Think about that for more than a second. Business barely even exists for some humans. It's not a natural human trait to do what I described. btw I should've said "ignore" instead of "reject"
True.
@Michael Whittmann normal people are terrifying.
Isn't Hollywood run by....
Dun-dun-dun....
*BUSINESSMEN?*
They get their investment money from producers and venture capitalists instead of just banks, so their art is less constrained. "Hollywood doesnt make movies for your entertainment, they make movies to piss off Mike Pence." - Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars.
The worst kind of businessmen, too. "You want the part? This dick ain't gonna suck itself."
Who cannot be businessmen apparently?
Guys, you know this isn't the "super-fun-time who's a jew" hotline.
The point was originally, these people are constantly bemoaning how evil business owners are, and ironically would be kissing producer ass (business owners). Not to mention, the producers are masochists, because they are inevitably calling themselves evil, and to back movies that claim that business owners are evil, means that they secretly want to be out of business.
Basically, it is a big goddamn contradiction.
Dr. Right
Irrelevant. Completely irrelevant.
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
*Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;*
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”-Marcus Tullius Cicero
Kekero very powerful and life changing, thank you for this!!!!!!!!
The book "Atlas Shrugged"by Ann Rand spends more then 1000 pages discussing and illustrating what you just said.
ruclips.net/video/8F5nhYo5nx4/видео.html
bboi elmo
Yes, but it is the belief that that is the ONLY way to get what you want.
bboi elmo Yes, true, but that is because those people first believe that crushing people is part and parcel to achieving financial success.
Kekero 0
Have you seen the incredibles 2, the evil businessman ends up being a brave good guy, its kind of refreshing.
yes but do you think that was because that was the moral they wanted to show or because they just wanted another twist? personally, I'm not sure considering yes Disney is a big suit business, but they are also so big that holding that opinion wont hurt them.
But his sister evil business woman
@@federalbureauofinvestigati5588 that’s kind of the whole point. Business people can be either. Just like everybody else.
@@federalbureauofinvestigati5588 she is not really business person, she is an evil genius, and it was the brother who did the business side of the company
It's pretty simple, really. In order to have a compelling story, the hero needs a strong villain to go up against, and in modern American society, having the villain be a wealthy businessman means they will have lots of resources to bring to bear against the hero. It should be noted that the government is also often portrayed poorly in media, often being so incompetent/obstructive that they need to outsource all operations to a teenager. And that's ignoring the genres in which the government, or someone associated with the government, is the villain.
Yeah, the evil corrupt government is really the other aspect of this trope. The big video propagandists aren't going to attack themselves (Hollywood) as a corrupt institutional power center, and their socialist fellow traveler friends in the faculty lounges are so lacking in positive human traits & genuine ability that they can't provide quality villains. Once you've excluded those 2 centers of institutional power, big government and big business are really the only other ones this society has. Anything else along those lines requires some sort of fantasy setting, or committing the great taboo of their insular social cliques by criticizing some OTHER society's institutions in their supposed art like Islam in an Arab country.
There is also widespread feeling that many heads of the biggest businesses are not really capitalists anymore, but corrupt imitations thereof. The fact that high government officials, business leaders, and mass media barons have visibly melted into a common aristocratic ruling class means the average citizen sees no separation between those who make the laws and those who profit from them. Just as a lack of separation of church and state eventually bred contempt for the state churches and organized religion, our modern lack a lack of separation of merchant and state does the same thing for state merchants and capitalism itself.
I think the "It's just business" trope is also mainly to describe a person who knows what they're doing is wrong, but will do it anyway because they make money.
Ironically. It's the powerful that are the scapegoat.
what's ironic is that people are going toward the left more and more when that means giving more power to the governments
@@zackyezek3760 100% agree with that fact
When will we have :
You saved the world.... for me ?
Nah it wasn’t personal just business
I think that's any Neutral Karma - Good Ending RPG character. "Happy people safe from bodily harm and oppression is good business. Can't sell a toaster to a dead man."
I'm not sure if this is one but in the green lantern animated series there is an episode ( spoilers ) wherein this villain is doing everything he can to prove that he is the real person who saved their world and not the steam lantern.
Guardians Of The Galaxy
« Why do you wanna save the galaxy now, do you think you're a saint !? »
« Because I'm part of those idiots who live INSIDE the galaxy ! »
@@nooneshome8746 "Steam lantern". Got to love autocorrect
@@filmandfirearms yes steam lantern I just forgot which episode you can find it in youtube
When I hear the line “it’s nothing personal, it’s just business” I don’t really take it as “business is bad” I take it more as the villain simply disconnecting themselves from the situation on an emotional level. There’s really only 2 types of motives that a villain has for their actions in mediums. Emotion or Money, occasionally there’s a combination of the two. Most villains that have relatable motives fall under the emotional category. So when I when a villain says “it’s nothing personal” it’s really just the villain admitting that they don’t have an emotional stake in what they are taking part in. From my understanding, Hollywood tends to do this simply to make the Villain easier to hate, and the protagonist’s actions easier to justify.
This is simply my take on that infamous line. I could very well be wrong, so don’t take what I say as concrete. Keep making Out or Frame episodes FEE. I love your content!
I think it's even worse that it's not just a matter of lack of emotional investment, that the people aren't worthy of moral consideration.
When someone says "it's just business" (a a villain), they're basically saying: "I don't hate, nor like you, but I don't considerate reasoning with you, I just want to do what I must, what I chose to, and if it takes your opportunities, money, power, or even life, I'll do it, because I don't mind if you get hurt in the process, even less how you'll badly it'll be, it's not about you as a human, but as the amount. If it's opportunities, taking your opportunities will increase my opportunities. If it's power, I'll use you up to strengthen myself. If it's about money, I'll do any means necessary to get more, even if it's taking from you. if it's morals, I'll destroy yours to built up mine, if it's about your utility, I'll destroy you when it's convenient.
It just makes even worse, because, depending of the villain, that's in-character. And I DON'T LIKE this kind of behavior in fiction, because the guys who hold power, money, political relevance, fame, etc... They're normally the first ones to realize how doing their business can be toxic to themselves if done as an abusive way of living.
There is nothing more selfish than disregarding the person as a social being.
But here's the catch, when the good guy does things just because it's business, we sometimes reflect or even laugh about the irony, like "well, he's a Businessman, saving the world will mean he'll have to do his work as normally, once more"
Like saying "Well, it's not really personal, it's just that I can't work when the world is destroyed" this kind of behavior, however, is refreshing, because even if he says "I didn't do it for you all", he's saying "If I didn't do it for you all, for who would I do?"
Business game: Make a trade deal every time you hear the word "business" in this video.
Healthier than drinking.
Brb buying 500 shares of amazon, 1 trade at a time.
Is that avatar from Dominions 5?
It has been in Dominions 3 as well.
"Would you be interested in trade agreement with England?"
help, i tried this business game out and now im heavily in debt to the indian mafia, I can hear T series knocking down my front door as I type, oh God please send help before Its too-pthnyndss yner
Not even a minute in and I'm seeing a running theme with all of your cited villains. Most if not all of them put short-term profits over long-term gains or otherwise sacrificing basic morality for a quick paycheck. Many of them are shown trying to beg for their lives when this "get rich quick" scheme invariably backfires in a huge way. Perhaps there is an alternative message here like "shortcuts to success will often see you driving off a cliff."
Plus over half of his clips show mobsters and crime bosses. So definitely not evil corporate greed.
I would concede that point, if they also had more examples of good business or had small examples in the shows with bad business to really show that is their point. As it stands now no distinction is made and people more commonly relate business=bad compared to shortcuts=bad
Nah it's just Holywood pushing their Communist Agenda
Its funny given most lets say business in stocks people I meet prefer the long term more and say those who go for broke on a short term get rich scheme always fail.
Though my friend also says theres nothing wrong with the short term deal, just not many play it smart
Exactly, he completely discounts the fact that there are large corporations who discount people as expendable. Who prioritize short term gain over long term thinking and consequences.
What films could do is discuss business ethics. What makes a business long term good for a community, a symbiotic relationship rather than a parasitic one?
I thought that "All Hail Cesar" was fairly neutral on business. The main protagonist is a kind of business man who is smart and ethical.
"it's just business"
"just following orders"
..... it's a real life thing, we hide behind these things when we cause harm or hurt another person. We use these phrases to justify the evil that men do. it has nothing to do with businessmen or soldiers personal mindset. Like a solider follows orders even if he doesn't like it, so too does a business man have to follow the most profitable course of action. No need to over think it... they are over used justifications of ones personal actions when said person might have a different moral respect to the choice..
Joseph Griffin A soldier follows an immoral order because they have to weigh the option of do they do this heinous thing, and potentially be punished later, or do they refuse to do so (which, actually, modern rules of war REQUIRE a soldier to refuse an order they feel is unquestionably wrong) and get punished, possibly executed, on the spot. The Hague has actually made a ruling that the excuse of "I was just following orders" is only an acceptable defense if the soldier in question is in the situation where not following the order would have immediate consequences.
okay.. all you did was elaborate on my original post... children calling in coordinates for mortar strikes still happen, the soldiers kill the child... and immoral action in the eyes of countless people, but that is literally a moment of "just following orders". vietnam... nuf said about that sheit storm. same with the business parallel, for one man to profit another must lose (this is the natural evolution of thought when taking into account entropy in the financial market.) so the point still stands.
@@vishnar2515 The point I was trying to make, and apparently forgot to add, was that businessmen don't have that excuse. If a businessman does something immoral in pursuit of his job, he doesn't have the same protections as a soldier does. That's the main difference. A soldier follows orders because he doesn't have a choice. A businessman follows orders because he decided that his job was more important than his scruples.
+Joshua Morrison
any "successful" business man will make the choice for profit over scruples at many points, that's all I was saying, name ONE business man that made millions without dropping the moral bar. Yes there are lots of low on the totem pole business men, and middle management that still hold to their morals, but at the end of the day success takes sacrifice, and often times that sacrifice is ones own morals. you can't get ahead by throwing the other guy a bone(unless it's to have him owe you a favor), you can't make large profits by giving the other guy a fair shake, and you can't make it big without stepping on others. this is Capatalizim 101, well... 103-104 maybe. even steve jobs understood this, and took the "bic" route with apple products. look up the story about the bic razor and how it became a disposable piece of hygiene equipment.
TLDR about bic: RnD guys shows off a razor that holds an edge for months, and could last some one multiple life times. The guy who owned bic said " make it loose it's edge after a few uses, and make it out of cheap plastic. I can't make money if they only ever buy one, I want repeat business"
to most, and the movie industry, that's dastardly. to those that value the dollar more than their fellow, that's bloody genius. Because at the end of the day "it's just business" and if you don't like it, you the consumer hold ALL the power.. your purchase power tells the business world what is and is not okay.... please stop buying EA products? please? lol cause I mean, there's chasing profit then there's.... EA..... *shudders*
but morals are as abstract as good and evil. these are all points of perspective. So what this boils down to is 2 people debating modern philosophy over the internet. Don't get me wrong, I understand your point and understand where you are coming from. Thank you for being civil about opposing opinions. (note the reason for my original post was to point at that without media using the villains motives as "just following orders, and/or it's just business, then this philosophical conundrum would not exist. we would not see a polarity in these things.)
@@vishnar2515 Many many people have become a millionaire without sacrificing their morals, artists and musicians do it all the time, owners of profitable shops, or cafes, or bars, or hotels do it all the time, craftsmen do it all the time. RUclipsrs, video game studios, athletes. Overall becoming a millionaire isn't something that requires unethical behavior at all. Where it starts to get scummy is billion dollar companies, but even there it isn't because the founders suddenly turned evil, but because their success attracted greedy people who found their way into the board of directors over long periods of time.
Well, I´m a bussines man too, I manage a modest family company, despite my geek tendencies (yeah I'm as impressed as you), and I understand your point, but sadly out there are facts that surpass fiction and reinforce the bad image of "business men", for example in my country a multinational wants to put a mine despite the opposition of the entire poblation of a city and against the common sense, it uses all kinds of legal and not totally transparent tricks to pressure a government to allow them to put the mine, this mountain is the main source of water for the city and its habitants and it is a proved fact that the mine will destroy the mountain's sources of water (review the case of the páramo de Santurbán).
This is one of many examples of why is too easy to set a bussines man as a villian in a movie or serie, because it happens a lot in real life, some people with economical or political power will do whatever it takes to acomplish their goals, and sadly many rich "business men" are this kind of people.
Yeah he's making it seem like rich business men are just as likely to have good intentions as normal people but i think money corrupts people.
I agree with you for the most part.
The reason this happened is recklesness offering more choices than selflessness, not some spiritual power of... power.
@@orionstar3310 As always power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely
You, and almost everyone else, is forgetting the simple fact that those kinds of businessmen are the *exception* and not the *rule.* To say that most business people are like that is simply to be ignorant and blatantly wrong. That is like saying guns are bad and only used to kill people because all you see on TV are the crimes, when in actuality you are forgetting the fact that good and legal defensive gun uses are statistically commited many more times in the US each year than otherwise (CDC - exact estimates are 500,000 to 3,000,000 defensive gun uses, in comparison to about 11,000 gun homicides annually including suicides according to FBI).
It is easy to say "most business people are bad" when all you are exposed to is the negative examples, rather than the many more positives examples that occur unnoticed all of the time. What about all of the businesses that donate to charity for great causes like medical research, war orphans, abuse victims, etc.? What about the businesses that help build the farms that feed us and the factories that please us? What about the businesses that constantly invent new and better technologies that benefit the average people's lives? Of course you never hear about them in the news and mainstream media, just like how most people never hear about the millions of lives saved with guns every year.
No offense, but that philosophy of "oh, here is an example if a "X" doing "Y", so that must mean most if not all other "X" is bad" is childish, anecdotal, and incredibly closed-minded.
I would like to note, that it is not business per se that is vilified, it is the corporate form of business. And it is understandable, since it is a trick allowing people not to have personal liability for many awful actions. As you said, you never see mid or small business owners portrayed in such a light. Because most of us actually see them as people, doing the hard work. Mega-corporations and its CEO's on the other hand are only seen on screens - be it movies or news reels reporting on ever present corporate misconduct.
Additionally, for populations that are in some way or another consider themselves victimized, successful people are a natural scapegoat. And a lot off people consider themselves victims nowadays.
Boris Yusufov this is covered at length in the Larry Ribstein paper I talk about.
I agree. Right now minimum wages barely, if at all, the cost of living. I find business in general is good; however, if business is stuck in a mindset does not profit all who work within and for it, out does become like the evil business portrayed in media.
@Noah Shanaberger I would have liked for some large banks to have gone out of business, but the economy can't function without ANY banks, and thanks to accounting regulations (e.g., mark-to-market) by FASB and pressure from the Federal government to loan money to people who couldn't pay it back, a situation had been created where we could have been without any banks if nothing was done. One of my big disappointments with GWB was that his administration didn't do anything about the housing bubble. It required no great insight to see it was going to end badly, and some earlier action would have been useful. And the damage done by ideologues at FASB is significant. The only other time mark-to-market was put in effect was 1928 - I don't think that it's a coincidence, since this ruke effectively adds positive feedback to the banking system.
I wonder if there were equally stupid things which encouraged companies to outsource critical operations, like manufacturing, to the long-term detriment of both the company and the country. Having seen what happened to ordinary engineers in Silicon Valley thanks to FASB's regulations about stock options, combined with SOX, it wouldn't surprise me to learn the gutting of American companies was the result of more ill-considered laws and regulations. I'm not in favor of no regulations, but in my experience, any time 'capitalism' doesn't work, it's when it's become cronyism or is otherwise distorted by bad regulations.
@@coll3g3crissy Minimum wages are a terrible idea. The opposition to these is not the result of greed, but because they create a barrier to entry which keeps poor people unemployed. If you haven't done so, I recommend you read some of the writings of Thomas Sowell, who is, in my opinion, one of the greatest minds of the current era.
@@coll3g3crissy The cost of living according to whom? I could very well claim that I need a 3-bedroom apartment in a vibrant downtown area, and a new car every few years, and it will be true that minimum wage won't allow that kind of lifestyle. Every study I've seen about housing affordability and minimum wage considers adults with kids in costly cities like New York.
It is possible to live on the minimum wage in a rented room in a small town and driving a beat-up old car. The people who complain otherwise invariably refuse to move from their expensive city, have kids when they couldn't afford it, etc.
For ages I've considered corporations objectively worse than governments, but the discussion at 11:08 went a long way towards changing my mind. God damn was the quality of news better back in the day. Honestly my biggest concern with businesses is I've had this opinion that they are somehow less accountable to the people than governments are. However governments seem to be no more accountable to the common man than businesses, hell possibly less so. As an american I've had a special resentment for how money corrupts politics due to the omnipresent toxic nature of lobbying and shit like citizens united. However that seems as much a problem influenced by governmental powers as it is by businesses. So if nothing else you've made some serious headway in changing my perspective on things. Cheers!
Grumbles it's nice to read this. Happy to try to answer any outsanding questions or challenges you might have.
Think about this, a buisness has to get you to freely associate with them. You have to choose to buy what they're selling. The government can make you buy it. Public Education and school choice is a fantastic example in the US.
If anything buisness, has an organic built in mechanism of accountability that's very sensitive and changes rapidly, because if you don't buy it they go broke.
Where as a government has cycles in the length of years, and some of thier effects are unnoticeable for many elections. Which doesn't even factor in government departments that do not change across even different political parties.
daymyth also voters are highly disconnected from the actions of policy makers, and often have none of the requisite expertise to judge quality of policies to begin with, so they cannot really vote based on much beyond whether or not they get a good feeling about a candidate. And even then, since there are only really two viable candidates in a given campaign under our voting system, they usually just pick a party and stick with it without learning much about the individual options. This creates a problem where we are forced into choosing one candidate that may represent a large number of different policies - many of which we may dislike but a few of which we think outweigh the bad, but we don't get to pick and choose once they're elected. We get all of it.
Contrast this to the market.
Say you want a vehicle. There are a dozen different styles. You select a pickup truck. There are almost a dozen manufacturers. You want a V8? V6? Automatic or manual? 4 wheel drive? Towing capabilities? Blue? Green? Red?
The beauty is not only that you get to choose the thing that fits exactly what you need or want, but that in making your choice, you prevent no one else from making the choice that suits their preferences and constraints.
You get a truck. I get an SUV. Someone else gets a hatchback. Others get an electric car. Others take the bus.
Everybody can get what makes the most sense for them without ruining others ability to do the same. But that never happens in politics... You get the policy you want at the expense of those who disagree. It's win lose. That makes it very polarizing.
And... The more we have made aspects of our lives subject to political control, the more polarized we have become since the stakes for each election keep getting higher.
Grumbles I've always seen this odd hatred of business as alien to me, especially as a car guy. When you look at the foundings of many car companies, like Lamborghini, Koeniggseg, Shelby, and many others, It's a constant theme: Everyone wants to make a dream come true. And this love of cars that's changed how I live only reinforced my hatred of government as unnecessary regulation after paid regulation at behest of a gross lobby from manufacturers who seek to squeeze out competition utilize the government to make new laws such as import bans (Mercedes Benz, I'm looking at you, you sleazeball company), it all changes how you see things. You really get a feeling for just how much you're inconvenienced by people who think they know better than you and coerce you, or use violent acts such as imprisonment, kidnappings, and all sorts of other things to enforce their beliefs on you.
Grumbles Businesses are usually held accountable to the markets, whereas governments are accountable to the highest bidder (aka lobbyists of major corporations, unions, etc.).
I disagree with two of your examples in the intro. Lord business wasn’t an attack on businessmen, he was a child’s misunderstanding of his father because his dad superglued legos to make models for use in his work, and for the kid lego is all about the freedom for kids to build lots of cool things, take them apart, and build again. Then in the case of the lord of war, it wasn’t about businessmen being bad, it was a specific lunatic based on a real arms dealer, he was fucked up, they showed it, and they showed it from his point of view, so of course the stuff he says about how he makes money and how he saw warfare and the like is gonna look fucked up.
Simple. Hollywood doesn't hate business. It's full of businesses. The movies are made by businesses. That said, greed is a great motivator for villains. It's relatable to real life, too, in both the private and public sectors. So, a greedy businessman makes sense as a villain. It has nothing to do with Hollywood itself hating businesses or businessmen, it's just using what works to tell the story. Remember, greedy businessmen serve as villains in books and video games, too.
Gabriel Appleton Hollywood is left and left hates capitalism. Simple
Congratulations on your nuanced and well-researched view of the political spectrum.
I'm just imitating your "simple" approach to this subject. Nothing is "simple" - but it is clear that a narrative is imitated across Hollywood - business is bad. I feel like media can easily be used to influence the perception of people in society, and if you keep reinforcing such a negative stigma against businessmen, you end up with hordes of anti-capitalists storming the streets (antifa).
@@gooboberti his response was much more thought out then yours too and makes valid points yours is just the usually conservative crybaby shit
“Business is not about making money”
Your entrepreneur friends told you that? As the son of entrepreneurs, yes it is, at least making money is an important part of it. If it makes money it’s rentable, is a good investment, if you don’t make money there’s no business.
exactly. Creating some form of capitalist business is the only way to be your own boss and sell your creations, and that's why people do it. But if there were a way that didn't require capitalism's fierce competition for profits, most of those entrepreneurs would go about things very differently. It's my opinion that we can do much better than capitalism.
well we cant and we wont so suck it up or go live in venezuela, north korea, turkey. no evil capitalism there
yeah cause there is no room for nuance or a third option, sure. It's either reagan or stalin, no middle road.
For most entrepreneurs I know (and that's quite a lot) making money is the marker of success and definitely the end goal on one level, but no... It is not really why they do what they do.
Most people become entrepreneur busimess owners for one of three reasons (in my experience).
1) They have a vision for a better world that no one else seems to see and entrepreneurship is the best way to bring it into reality.
This would be someone like Elon Musk.
2) They have a product or service they absolutely know is better than anything that exists and they can't do anything else but try to build it and bring it to customers.
That's more of a Jobs/Woz situation.
3) They simply cannot and will not be satisfied with taking directions from a boss, and need to work for themselves. The first guy I ever did an entrepreneur documentary about was like that, but if I am picking a celebrity, let's say it's basically Mark Cuban or Richard Brandon.
Making money is the way these guys know what they are doing is working and that they are creating stuff other people actually want to buy, but it's not usually their driving motivation. Money is for information about value and score keeping the success or failure of a business.
Super important to operating a successful enterprise, yes. But... The only important factor to all the businesspeople I know and have worked with over the past decade or more? Not even close.
Yeah, but you rely on your very, VERY comparably tiny experiences to make that assesment about most entrepreneurs. Businessmen probably have a certain charisma and want to livve comfortably, so they go ahead and create their own business. It's unrealistic to think that all succesful people, that became a success due to their companies, are all either an Elon Musk, a Steve Jobs or a Richard Brandon.
This should be taught in junior high school and high school.. the government has the students for 12 years of education and they graduate almost completely devoid of skills and attitude that would make them successful. With a few exceptions who are influenced at home.
Fun fact: prier to the formation of the Department of Education in the 1980's the American education system was ranked 2nd in the world, now it's ranked 17th.
Correction: the report I quoted was from 2012, here's a more recent report www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
You mean state-run education, like in nazi germany, china, ect.?
And funny enough, there's very little actual evidence to suggest that private schools are better than public ones, as well as some very good reasons as to why they're worse.
A study done by Statistics Canada published in 2015 suggests that the "better performance" from private schools is less correlated with the schools themselves, and more that the parents of those children were wealthier and better educated.
There's even a study from UBC published in 2012 indicating that public school students performed BETTER in post secondary education than their private school counterparts.
People who push private schools and "school choice" always seem to downplay or ignore the downsides of private schools.
For example, private schools need to focus on marketing, and divert resources to that, while public schools do not. Private schools also need to turn a profit, while public schools, again, do not.
Yeah, the education system definitely needs to change, but it's not because "the government is so bad and private education is better". it's more that the world has changed, and education that was great in the 70s for pumping out people with the basic knowledge skills to work in a factory no longer cuts it for a modern economy depending on thinking jobs.
Well, since there's so much evidence for the superiority of homeschooling or "unschooling", I'm sure it'll be no trouble for you to link some.
+Mathew Reckamp Going from 2nd in the world -> 17th, does not mean that our education system has gotten worse. It just implies that other countries got better.
Ryan: it wasn't personal. It's just business
Michael Scott: Business is the most personal thing you'll ever do...
well, it's not really about business itself. it's about the concept of big corporations and how they do business as they tend to seek constant growth. most movies that use this trope are about small business and individuals who fight that big corporation. they hold a capitalist ideal, but reject the extreme version of it. also, tony stark, walt disney and many other ficticious and real characters in films are businessmen, but they represent the creativity of the business, the ideal. the evil corporate man, represents the constant growth mentality. which does bring up a lot of problems in a society.
it's like you missed the point entirely
J.S. Tama it's also like you didn't watch the video where I explicitly note that there is a version of small businessman that is shown as ok, but that even they are typically pitted against the bigger rich guy enemy. In the end it comes down to the idea that major success in business can't be acheived without evil actions... Sure, you can be a little guy entrepreneur or a mom and pop store and be a decent person, but the minute you become rich, you're going to turn into a psychopath.
That's both patently untrue and a terrible thing to tell young people about the world.
+FEE It's also like you didn't read the comment where Tony Stark was cited as an example of a good businessman. The idea proposed by those movies is not that the people at the top become evil/psychopaths. It's that their actions just happen to be no different from psychopaths. It's a truth that Hollywood did not create. When the US government first passed laws to regulate car emissions multiple car makers fought back while others simply made better engines/filters.
There is nothing untrue about business practices that actively harm and exploit communities in pursuit of profits. A five minute google search could probably give you dozens of articles about sweatshops, mines and factories that stripped the land of resources, killed ecosystems and left the clean up for the taxpayers to take care of while 'evil businessmen' pocketed he profits and got away scot free.
@@rs3rd464 Tony Stark is essentially the the outlier exception that proves the rule, and not the norm. And even he started out as a bad businessman archetype, saved mainly by how charismatic Robert Downey Jr. is. Plus, it should be noted that in all 3 Iron Man movies, the central antagonists were more evil business guys: Stane, Hammer, then Aldrich.
And yes, 5 minutes of Googling will reveal some business people who did bad things... But that's mainly because you find what you search for. In context of the number of serious criminals out there across all areas of life, the standard business owner is a rarity.
That said, we do have a slight definition problem to address.
The US has constantly expanded the criminal code to the point where famed criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average American commits at least 3 felonies a day, mostly without realizing it. And the Federal Register - which is our list of federal regulations - is nearly 62,000 pages long. If our definition of "criminal" is expanded to this degree, then we are all criminals... Business people, possibly most of all since they interact with more people in more heavily regulated ways.
Personally, I think this is ridiculous.
What Hollywood portrays is business people who are literally axe murderers or get into shoot outs. They're all secret drug or gun runners, people embezzling millions from unsuspecting old ladies, and deliberately producing products that they know and actively intend to harm their customers.
That almost never happens.
@@FEEonline "What Hollywood portrays is business people who are literally axe murderers or get into shoot outs. They're all secret drug or gun runners, people embezzling millions from unsuspecting old ladies, and deliberately producing products that they know and actively intend to harm their customers.
That almost never happens."
Except it totally does. Just look at all the absurdly unsafe toys that injured or poisoned thousands of children over the years, the infamous Pinto car brand that literally exploded when rear-bumped a little too hard, or even the vast amount of hazardous food/cosmetics additives that need to be outlawed every time a new one is discovered and used, like some legal game of whack-a-mole that puts consumers' health on the line. Product safety has always been a huge issue, and big companies care the least about them since they can afford to pay any fines or compensations a hundred times over, provided they get caught AND forced to pay for the damage in the first place.
The case of video game companies lobbying for the right to put psychlogically manipulative gambling-like mechanics in their low-effort "games" to milk money out of their consumers is evidence that overtly malicious companies that don't care about people are totally a thing, and another reality of the world we live in now is that sufficient amount of money brings power beyond the ability to afford goods and services: lobbying is common knowledge and a widespread issue that allows those already at the top to bar anyone else from even competing with them. My own country (France) has outlawed a ridiculous number of fruit and vegetable varieties for bogus reasons just so the big food producers that lobbied to get this bill passed could get several of their competitors out of the picture.
The problem isn't capitalism itself, it's the interference of corrupt governments and a shaky justice system.
@@FEEonline
I think Bruce Wayne/Batman from the Dark Knight trilogy is a better example. He (and his dead father) are scrupulous businessmen whose main antagonists are Ra's Al Ghul, Joker and Bane. 2 of them (Ra's and Bane) are almost of the same group and are a secret shadow vigilante group with a misguided philosophy while the Joker is an agent of chaos who wants to prove his point that all human beings are essentially bad and doesn't care about money or power (he even burns his share of loot!).
*Customer asks for extra sauce*
Me (refuses): It's nothing personal, just business.
Milton Friedman just straight up owns him.
you mean the guy that said reducing taxes raised revenue for the state and was completely mistaken in the matter, participating in the slope of public debt in the US ad around the world?
Maxime Teppe What you just said is a famous myth propagated by leftists.
and by actual economists. Meanwhile the reduction of taxes and friedman curve are only ever defended by ideologues. The friedman curve is the economic myth with the least basis in reality that i know of.
Maxime Teppe That argument does not make sense considering that these ideologues are actual economists too. The economists that you trust so much are not much more than government whores.
its just common sense, the prize won by working or investing is reduced by taxation, therefore it reduces the incentives to work or invest, therefore it reduces work and investment.
Even if the businessman is just in business to make money, he must provide a product or service for a price people are willing to pay or he won’t be in business long. The exception to this rule is getting government involved to suppress the competition to benefit a politically connected business.
or businesses getting big enough to shatter the "free market" delusion. The free market is a state where none is big enough to individually influence the market. take internet providers, they don't actually compete but you have to have internet today to actually fonction in today's world. There is also healthcare, where refusing costly treatment isn't always a ...viable... option.
Maxime Teppe The free market is a state where any businessman can compete. None are barred entry. I don’t know where you live but I can choose between at least 4 different internet providers. Let’s say there is only 1 provider of some service or product, I have no problem with that as long as anyone is allowed entry to compete. Government is the evil that creates monopolies. Without government no monopolies can exist.
really? I mean I know that i the US, many places have only one provider. I live in France, we usually have access to at least three. three is not a state of free market thou: one actor can have a huge influence on the whole, and accords can be passed between the man actor. It's an oligopoly.
As for the government, they are the ones giving the rules. in a complete free for all, especially when it comes to infrastructures (roads, railways, sewers), nothing prevents monopolies, or at least local monopolies. I guess they can make handouts that favorise monopolies, but they are also the best tool to prevent them through regulation.
A good example is net neutrality:
Without institutions to enforce net neutrality, internet providers can hold internet services and websites hostage. For instance, in France, Free (Internet Provider) often (probably illegally) limit the speed for Netflix because they feel like Netflix should pay higher tarifs to broadcast their content. Netflix has the bank account to pay if they need to, but any newcomer won't have the treasury to do the same, and therefore will have it's growth really limited.
You probably know all that, and have a very good explanation of why such a problem doesn't exist without government, I guess.
TL,DR: without counterpowers it's possible to accumulate wealth and power in a way that prevents competition. regulation and governmental institutions are a flawed but efficient way to enforce such counterpowers.
Maxime Teppe What is your definition of a monopoly? Ive stated that a in a free market(we don’t have that because the government interferes all the time) anyone can compete. You are not barred from entering any business and competing. When the government gets involved, it protects it favorite businesses with the regulation you favor. Big business loves regulations and taxes because they cripple the smaller new competitors. I understand your wanting regulation, but it doesn’t help. It tilts the playing field toward the politically connected. I just want to be sure I understand your position. Are you saying you favor private ownership of the means of production but you want the government to control, regulate, and tax business? Is that you position?
10:47
Don't use India as an example of "positive environmental outcomes" of globalisation here. Try taking a dip in the Ganges outside the assorted factories and garbage dumps filled with plastic bags and coke cans and you'll find yourself very ill. What's worse is that that river is sacred to the people, who believe it to be all cleansing, so pilgrims (even children) often regularly bathe in it. Many even ask for their ashes to be washed down the river.
While I'm sure some business has brought many positives to counties like India, remember there are downsides that need to be addressed too, like worker exploitation and the importation of environmentally harmful materials like plastics. Not to mention the exploitation of children by smoking companies...
Daniel compared to what India was even 30 years ago, there have been undeniably massive improvements on all the metrics I mentioned in the video.
You have to compare reality to reality, not reality to your ideal wishes.
India is a socialist hellhole of their own making the only reason programming and electronics got a boom in India it is that they did not have the same level straggling stagnation of laws and regulations on them as they did every other business or industry.
Foundation for Economic Education
Surely when it comes to the environment, particularly in a nation like India, pollution levels have undoubtedly severely gone up over the past thirty years, even if there are more environmental activists and regulations being drafted?
And I fail to see why admiring (or aspiring to) the ideal is a bad thing? Sure, no river to run through a major city like Varanasi ever comes out clean and sparkling, but to say that something needs to be done before it turns into the Thames from the Victorian era, a river so disgusting the British parliament smelt like a sewer and politicians were regularly sick, not that it isn't like that already, isn't projecting an ideal or a fantasy, its arguing for the protection of both a religious epicentre and a crucial life source?
That said, I'd be really interested to see what you think of globalisation more in another video. Particularly Facebook, Coca Cola and Nestlé in Africa. And cigarette companies in the Middle East and South America.
For many nations, trade and tourism are undoubtedly a life blood, and have been since the dawn of humanity, and I really appreciate you pointing that out in a time where we easily forget it, but, like almost everything that's positive, there are important negatives too that you'd do well to address. Specifically when talking about developing countries like India and China, and how their existing cultures clashed/excelled with business. Cheers!
There is good and bad. India has developed but environmental consequences are huge. Also, India and china are dumpyards of certain countries.
It takes tones of red tape to start a new business in India, new comers can’t compete with those monopoly
"Business is the most personal thing in the world."
-Michael Scott
I love this. I totally agree with you. Not all businessmen are evil, money-hungry monsters and they shouldn't all be depicted as such. You're one of the only people on RUclips I’ve seen talk about this trope in depth.
i find it ironic that a bunch of businessmen keep telling us business is bad XD
Gatekeeping the mass populace from becoming wholly independent.
After all, there can only be few assets to accumulate.
Less competition.
thank you for existing
I take issue only with the link between media consumption, thought, and action. There's a link, but it's not clearly understood.
Take violent video games. If being violent in games was the same as being violent in real life, we'd expect most gsmes to be in jail. Actually, violent crime among young men haa overall decreased as violent games have become more popular. I don't think that's causal, but, if violent video games made people violent, we wouldn't expect that to have happened.
People can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I think the real trouble with the evil capitalism Hollywood narrative is that we don't just see it in movies; we get it on the news, in school, and from politicians. It feels real because we hear it from "real" sources, not just fiction.
I think people are now learning that much of what they learned in school, on the news, and from politicians isn't real.
And I'd like to point out to the parental activist groups that most violent crimes occur in regions where the general population can't afford video games
Violent video games don't cause violence but it normalizes our apathy to it
@The Bandog I would say the rise in political violence says otherwise
@@savagetv6460 Silly to blame that on video games when there are such other more obvious culprits.
@@savagetv6460 There has always been violence, but there has not always been video games. Violent anti Jewish riots in 1930s Germany did not cause the general public to rise up and throw the Nazi party out of office in horror at the atrocities they tolerated and encouraged. Most of the general public was apathetic to the plight of the Jews, this could not have been because of video games, because video games did not exist for many decades. Pong, the first video game, was released in 1972. I could go on all day about peoples apathy to violence in history. Think of the Colosseum in the time of the Ancient Roman Empire. Crowds would watch criminals being torn apart by animals, Gladiators fighting, sometimes to the death, and Christians being burnt alive as "Roman candles."
Clearly video games are not the cause of apathy to violence.
6:30 Never did I ever expect that argument to prop up outside an interview on CNN consisting purely of boomers, soccer moms, and karens.
This is why I liked the Aviator. It was a fresh glass of water to see a businessman depicted as the good guy.
didn't he loose his marbles?
@@augustuzmoon3814 He became reclusive with OCD, not a paranoid schizophrenic. You could still empathize with him.
When Karl Marx first proposed socialism, he was mostly advocating on behalf of poor factory workers. I’m a factory worker, and I’ve payed off my student loans, I have a healthy emergency fund, and am saving up to buy a house. I’m anything but poor. Now socialists are advocating on behalf of poor service industry workers. I say, do the same thing for them as we’ve done for the poor factory workers. It certainly wasn’t socialist states that have improved the world so I can be moderately wealthy middle class while working in a factory. The socialist and communist states have all fallen apart or are too deeply impoverished themselves to actually do anything for other people. It was capitalist states that made life better for factory workers. You say they deserve a living wage, I say capitalism will give them one.
I don't think that the trope comes from business people automatically being bad, but as a representation of the conflicts of interest that corporate capitalism creates when it separates the means of production so far from those it is meant to produce for.
I think that is true with a lot of movies, however there are too many movies out there that try to demonize capitalism for the sake of trying to spread that capitalism is pure evil.
This is really a simplistic view of things. Also going "what is meritocracy? Comunism?" is like saying "What is less dark than black? White?"
If you have a specific complaint, I'm happy to discuss.
@@FEEonline I feel the simplistic way in which you portray capitalism in this video is a bit naive and very simplistic. The premise itself is not always the case, in many of the "it's just business" quotes in the montage you showed, that phrase is used to show the character being "cool" even in some cases where said character is villainous. I do agree that capitalism has it's merits, but , long term, it has many problems, and defending it the way you do in this video dismisses the problem with late stage capitalism, and that old gentleman immediately mentioning Communism, as if the only options are the two extremes of the same coin, is disingenuous to say the least. The way american culture glorifies capitalism as a doctrine is weirdly fetishistic, and it's often when it's criticised, the counter arguments are, human benevolence which is barely an argument, or red panic. I would argue that indeed, the media does portray capitalism negatively in it's majority, I feel that fact is undeniable.
@@SkyTowerKurogane to put this as kindly as I can, "late stage capitalism" isn't a thing. Marxists have been saying that we're experiencing the end of capitalism for a century, but history doesn't have an end that you can know or predict (and does not actually end in any case, as it is simply a concept of time), and Marx was wrong about essentially everything related to economic theory, starting with the idea that value is a product of labor.
The Marginal Revolution put that idea to bed about 140 years ago. Marx' premises about "surplus value" were built on a flawed theory of value coupled with a bad understanding of both capital structure and human action.
The defense of capitalism here is not entirely the point of this video, but I have done dozens of videos covering a wide range of aspects of economic theory and the incredible importance of free markets and economic freedom broadly.
It's true that capitalism and communism are not the only two options here, but that's also not the point I would make. The point is that the core tenets of capitalism - property rights, private ownership of resources, and the free choice of consumers and producers on what to make, sell, trade, or buy (or not) - are, and have been, essential to the dramatic increase in prosperity and decline of poverty around the world over the last couple hundred years. The more equally those principle concepts have been applied, the better off people of all races, genders, nationalities, etc. have become.
The mountain of evidence for this is truly overwhelming.
The point of this video, of course, is actually that the "It's just business" trope spoken by evil people tends to condition audiences to see business as somehow inherently evil, when it is really the lifeblood of human wellbeing.
If you want to talk about specific problems you have with capitalism as a concept, I'm happy to talk about those... Though we must first agree on a definition.
Mercantilism, corporatism/cronyism, fascism, and all manner of socialist or quasi socialist systems are commonly described as "capitalism", but that is definitionally incorrect and not what I would be defending (here or in the video), so we'd have to start there.
"Why, Haytham?"
"Your death opens a door, it's nothing personal. Well, maybe it's a *little* personal. You've been a right pain in my arse after all".
Multiple studies were made on the subject of "Does violence in media make people more violent" and the answer was always NO, NO, NO and NO.
0:18 but Hiroshi Sato wasn't a predictable business villain; he fell under Amon's spell after losing his wife and redeemed himself by giving up his life.
I love the way the writers of legend of Korra give depth to his character without simplifying him to “evil business man”, he’s a great example of writers constructing relatable and complex characters
I've wondered this for SO LONG. I've grown up with an entrepreneur father and seen MANY businesses start most failing and other MUCH FEWER succeeding. And in my life it's always been those that don't understand how RIDICULOUSLY hard it is to start a business that treat companies and corporations as villains, instead of hard working risk takers.
I thought that Hollywood's favorite Trope was "Artistic License - Guns"
This trope exists because it happens. There are countless real life people, companies, sacrificing the well being of others because it means earning more money. It doesn't mean you should oppose business, it's just being aware that people can be selfish, reckless, uncaring and that it can endanger others...
Alternative title: "How Video Games are Better Moral Teachers than Television"
Lol
One example you keep bringing up is the Lego Movie, but in that the fact he's a business man is actually largely irrelevant. The reason why the villain is Lord Business is because it's the representation of a child dealing with the fact his father is never around because he is prioritising his job over his family.
I understand that this is why the character is Lord Business. It's actually pretty clever in that sense.
But that's also the point. "Business", to that movie, is cold and devoid of love or imagination. It is the embodiment of stasis (literally, via the Kragle) and all things that aren't "awesome".
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
socialism kill jobs...
socialism kill jobs...
socialism kill jobs...
Wow, you're right!
Maxime Teppe if you mean jobs for qualified people then, it's as simple fact. Where did anyone say that socialism kills jobs? They talk like that aabout minimu wage....
wait a second, most of Europe is comprised of social democrat countries, there is no shortage of jobs for doctors, ingeneers and so on. So...citation please?
Maxime Teppe You mean social democracies?? Yeah we have those in Europe unfortunately.
I will, but could you first cite where days it say that socialism works?
I you mean countries where most of the means of productions are owned by the workers there are none, but the productivity and worker satisfaction in co-ops and other similar models, as well as the progress of tools for lean management in startups makes me hopeful that some form of socialism is possible. There are also anarchist communes that have been functioning for years.
My father is one of the most respectful businessman I know, and that’s not just because he’s my father, he prides himself on providing quality to peoples life. Some people’s Ike to say “that’s an exception, not the rule” and to that I say: “you’re plain wrong”
As a kid I hated the evil man trope because I felt like they were calling my mom evil.
Yuri Bezmenov tried to warn us about this happening.
That said, major corporations are eager to crush individual rights to protect their images. There are countless examples of this happening. Also, businesses used to treat their employees *extraordinarily* badly before OSHA got any real power.
This is the one RUclips video that I can't load. Unlimited waiting for the buffer flower.
Andrew Shaw Strongly suspect YT is strangling the buffer on videos from certain worldviews...
Same thing happened to me. Tried multiple wi-fi's, my phones network, couldn't get it to play. Stayed stubborn and watched it on a computer. Seems a bit fishy.
I got it to load at work. Seems odd because I could load other videos at home.
Hollywood doesn’t hate the idea of business, Hollywood hates the idea of unethical business, which is kind of ironic
6:29 it is not substantiated that violence in media like movies or video games leads to violent behavior.
Idk where you got this idea from. Crime stats show violent crime has been declining for decades
Crime stats are garbage.
I think Big Hero 6 took an interesting approach with it because the only reason they assumed the business man was bad was because the media (comic books) depicted them as secret super villains and then it turns out be wasn't actually the bad guy they thought be was.
You do make a nice case but I would like to present a counter-argument.
I would easily say that businesses exist to make money but in the majority of cases this is not a bad thing because the means to which they are doing it are in the peoples best interests such as producing clothes or selling food.
But I would say one reason that students are getting progressively anti-capitalistic because odds are that because the percentage of educated citizens are increasing they feel that, with the existing system in place they cannot achieve their goals and innovate in their field because the jobs they need are simply too competitive, instead winding up in lower-paying entry level jobs they are overqualified for. A capitalistic society is also reliant on non-innovators willing to do the innovators dirty work in exchange for the profit they are receiving since an individual simply cannot achieve their dreams alone.
Fortunately, the advent of industrial automation has presented us with a solution, allowing robots to carry out the menial tasks necessary for an individual to innovate, however with the present capitalistic system, with money being given only by innovators and the profits they make this simply cannot work as there is no guarantee that everyone can innovate, and if automation continues without reform then unemployment and poverty will skyrocket. As such, in an optimistic scenario society leans away from capitalistic policies so that the graduated students will have some kind of budget given by a third party (private or state) to innovate at their own speed, using automation to help grow their budding business.
Of course, I now need to provide insight of the "greedy businessman" trope so I'll just use it to say that the stereotypical "greedy businessman" does not like change provided by the outside as they usually wind up costing more and, in my scenario would either adhere to the given example, instead using minimum-wage slaves to carry out while stifling automation policies under deluded principles or support automation policies, use them en-masse while completely ignoring any repercussions of this. To the commoner both of these stereotypes are relatable and plausible: The first being because, at the very least, the most commonly known CEOs can have conservative leanings and oppose technological innovations that can change the status quo; the second can also seem plausible because the rise of automation means you are less reliant on manpower to maintain your profits; and for the most part CEOs can seem completely apathetic to the concerns of the "lesser folk" to some because, at some point they acted against their interests for the sake of furthering their cause.
Of course this is my verdict and knowing the RUclips comments section I will be called a communist, "libtard" or SJW because, despite possibly agreeing with them on every other matter, I said at least one thing they don't agree with and now I am the enemy and hate freedom or some other dumb assumption
Your argument is understandable. your not gonna get yelled at for your views its not about which way you lean or anything like that, SJW's are people of an extreme opinion that believe no other opinions could even be slightly correct. I do see issues with your argument but i see where your going. I think the point of the video is to explain that capitalism isn't the pursuit of profit or the idea of the evil businessman capitalism is economic freedom. calling it the source of corruption is just being ignorant of all history Human beings are innately corrupt and not matter what system you put them in they will find ways to make it worse for other human beings. That does not mean everyone is corrupt because wherever there is corruption there will also be people trying to stop that corruption.
So you educate people. You teach them that, by being corrupt, they make the system worse for everyone. A lot of people say it is inherent human nature, it can't be changed and I don't necessarily disagree. But we can't honestly say that we've tried, can we?
What’s this, intelligent discussion regarding opposing opinions on RUclips? And no slander? Are there pigs flying in the sky?
In seriousness, you raise a good point, and it is probably part of why I have seen such a disturbing rise in the support for communism (despite it being an objectively worse system) around my city. People feel left behind and think “how could this day of hope make things worse?” forgetting that things can always be much worse. So much worse.
One quibble with the essay: saying that movies are a factor in how people view businesses is not supported by the evidence we have. This was a huge thing with the violent video games rhetoric that came out in the late nineties. The long and short of it is that while, yes, we do have the same physiological reactions to simulated violence as we do with real violence -- and that might increase aggressive behavior in the minutes after encountering said stimulus, it simply does not result in increased violence on a societal scale: to wit, violent video game sales SKYROCKETED while violence was simultaneously PLUMMETING.
Granted, there may be different mechanisms at play -- after all, it is an abstract opinion of business versus violent tendencies -- but I do not believe we have sufficient cause to think that they're so different that one would have a completely different impact than the other.
Thank you for creating videos of substance
I'd like to point out that current meta analysis studies and systematic reviews tend to show that not only is there no conclusive link between violence in media and violence in society, but there's also no conclusive evidence that violence in media causes elevated levels of aggression, as a lot of studies that do show this tend to suffer from publication bias and methodological issues.
I understand that the public perception is that there is a link, and to be honest I find that such common sense thinking _tends_ to be very reasonable and based in truth, but definitely not always.
*buys ice-cream*
"thank you"
"its nothing personal, just business"
I like you. You question things with actual questions rather than choosing off of a proverbial list of criticisms
just saw Shazam! today - yet another Evil Businessman movie
Yep. Though at least Dr. Sivana's dad isn't the main bad guy.
6:50 - This is where the video confused me a bit. I have never seen a study that suggests violent media causes people to be more violent. The most wide spread and effective study every done actually found the opposite. While they found that violent media can cause *short term* aggression for the duration of engagement with the media, they found that once the television or game was turned off the person actually became far less aggressive than the average person in their day to day lives.
What we've been able to gather from tests like these is that violence doesn't tend to engage us the same way as narratives and that it functions more often then not closer to venting frustration than it does intellectual activity.
Is that why hack and slash power fantasy's are so fun despite not really doing much but clearing a room full of enemies then walking to the next room to do the same until you get bored.
I think another reason as to why Hollywood tends to portray business in a negative light is because it appeals to the masses. The story of the everyman/woman or the smaller business going up against the bigger, more corporate business is basically a version of the stick-it-to-the-man trope.
It could also be that most people aren't the rich heads of big businesses and are skeptical and or scared of people who are. And rightfully so! Businesses have done bad things in the past and there have been business people with bad intentions. And it's important to be skeptical so that when we see corrupt people in power we can do something about it. But it's also important to remember that the majority of businessmen and women are good people who want to do and create a good things. Iike pumpkin spice lattes, movies, music, and even the divice that your reading this comment on right now was created by business people.
Hi I am from Bolivia. I wanna thank U. You are doing a great job keep going. It seems that we are in a cultural battle and we are losing but we have to strike back.
I mean, to a degree, sure. But theyre not portraying *all* businesspeople as sociopaths. Theyre portraying the outliers that way. The people who take business concerns away from humans, of which there *are* plenty, or we wouldn't have had a small depression about a decade ago, and flint would have clean, drinkable water.
Notice that almost none of the characters who say "it's just business" are everyday mooks like you or me, just trying to make ends meet. Theyre people in a position to make a decision that can effect the lives of dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions of people, and instead choose the path that will protect themselves, rather than those they represent or serve, of which those people do exist.
Granted, it would be nice to see business represented as more of a spectrum, where those businesspeople are much more of a deviation, or even show someone who makes decisions such as those, and then show his side, that if he had decided otherwise, it would risk the jobs of everyone who works for him. Or someone could be in a similar position, and make the right one, to show contrast. But to claim that evil business models don't exist is simply naive.
This video and channel is criminally underwatched. Such great content and original ideas/perspectives.
6:29 "Exposure to fictional violence increases a child's likelihood of violent behaviour in very similar ways as if they had experienced real violence themselves."
Now _there's_ a tall claim! I doubt the psyche people responsible for that trash view are able to differentiate play and real powertrips. And so you get bs views like that. Granted you want to teach your kid that violence doesn't solve much, and that there are far better ways to do things, but that claim there... man, it's just bogus, and it can be scientifically dismantled in so many ways.
*Small* business should be celebrated
*Big* business should be regulated
6:30 if violent movies and games make people more violent, then how come we don't live in the most violent time ever?
Fear of the law and society probably. We still mimic the people we relate to. Art subsides our judgement- whether it’s a movie or video game showing sex or violence, if it’s done in a compelling light we’re likely to ignore our judgement for the sake of aesthetics.
we do, but not becasuse of games and moies
@@RealBadGaming52 we really don't.
@@jlupus8804 i can confirm that consequences are what stop me from committing violent crimes
Most underrated channel of all time. New fav
6:30 - I disagree vehemently with fictional violence causing real violence, you can extend it to video games also for it to be a possible outlet for such thoughts one might naturally have.
You hold burden of proof, and I think there's a big difference between stories being able to immerse and connect with people, teaching lessons and morals, to affecting their actions as a whole. I can agree at least somewhat that some more violent and adult films should be kept from the youngest children that wouldn't understand the context in the film and what violence they are seeing is for right or wrong reasons, but I think you stretched a bit far.
Another point, business is so pervasive as you've pointed out, that I imagine many people can relate more easily to "business" being a driving motivation, but that they have taken too far. The trope is somewhat too common, but you're more predicating this on the common line "It's just business", when that business is often something like being a hitman or drug dealer or other criminal profession, or just profession in general, it is common for people to rationalise their decisions away. You also have quoted "power corrupts", financial power can be included.
As an aspiring entrepreneur, I've always held the idea that "if you say the line 'it's not personal, it's just business', you need to reevaluate your choice immediately, because it's probably unethical." Mainly because there's no such thing as a decision that's "just business"- every decision, no matter how logical, stems from some emotion, which is personal.
Gosh why are these viewpoints so hard to come by?
Daniel Baker as long as it's all voluntary, this would be a great game. Also, you're going to do it anyway.
Foundation for Economic Education I think you misclicked
Daniel Baker they're not.
Because it gets in the way of worshipping Government...
I don't believe the part about what we see affects how we think, to a degree.
Violent games don't make people more violent, and over the last decade of me playing violent video games, I'm more aware of how things can escalate quickly from bad to worse.
17:54 "The Lego Movie (2014)"
It's big hero 6
The most impressive thing about this whole video is learning that in the past, when people argued their point on national television, the other person let them speak until they were finished.
When you cite someone pretending that Hitler is a good example of capitalism-alternative, you're officially doing some boot licking stuff, my dude.
George Soros who?
I don't know how you do it. Every single episode of Out of Frame is brilliant and insightful in ways I didn't even considered before.
I think you miss the point imo. Presenting businessmen like this, they only contribute to the individuation of the problematic, like "it's not capitalism that is wrong despite the fact that it's responsible for the death of millions each year, it's not the system that produces inequalities, no the real problem are the individuals that are within that system and exploit it for they're own gain...". What it achieves is that evil businessmen are depicted as black sheeps, they're the only responsible for the wrong they, and therefore, when they die, the problem is magically resolved. These kind of stories never addresses the real problems, they never talk about capitalism in itself, they never attempt to criticize it, they just depolitize a very political problematic. The reality is that "evil" businessmen are the byproduct of capitalism, not the other way around.
Ir is a fair point until you consider the constant effort that this has become during the last decades... at this point it is safe to say that there is more to it than simple lack of creativity... i'm not completely denying your claim... not even close... just putting my grain of salt
Hollywood hating business is nothing personal, just business.
There was a kid's movie called Legend of Everfree.
In that, a secondary villain, and catalyst for the main villain's fall to evil is going to remove a campsite to replace it with something else (I don't remember the finer details, and I don't want to watch it again, the movie wasn't that good).
He's able to kick them out because they can't afford the payments. one character begs him to let them stay, and he gives them another month to pay what they owe.
This seems like very kind behaviour to me. He's not a villain at all, but the movie would frame him that way for some strange reason.
movies didn't always portray business owners as evil? does that mean regressivism can work to restore those films in some countries, but not america where consent of the governed is enshrined in the constitution?
Wow, i belive their is a reason for this trope. I don't believe that most of the top buisnes men are trying to help the world. The current system of companies brings the worst people to the top, as the only measure for success is making money.
Isenskjold they don't need to. they help themselves and BY CONSEQUENCE help others. until the government comes in to rule the competition out of the market by enforcing laws to buy political influence
@Noah Shanaberger seeing as most innovation is born from universities, claiming capitalism drives innovation is intellectually dishonest
@@bri1085 Cite examples please.
@@baldeagle5297 the internet and computers, of it's not universities it's something heavily backed by the government. There's a reason no private company has been to the moon.
Whenever I see evil business people in film I imagine everyone in the film creative chain complaining about Hollywood as a business.
They have a word for this kind of thing:
*Cliche.*
It's ironic because the thumbnail is of the ONLY businessman in a movie who ISN'T an evil overlord (by the end of the movie.)
There's a book called ATLAS SHRUGGED that spends more then 1000 pages discussing and illustrating this very subject.
And 3 movies in case people can't read.
marco feola yeah but the book does a much better job illustrating the matter and does so in much more detail so I'd be much more likely to recommend it then the movies.
Mathew Reckamp the book is pretty trash, and ayn rand should never be cited
Salokin what about the book is trashy?
Mathew Reckamp
Extreme oversimplifications, borderline mary sue characters, total focus on idealism and debunked concepts even for her time. Overall, the twilight of economics
I've happily subscribed to your channel. Its fantastic and exactly what I've been looking for to help explain economics to my kid. This video in particular is EXACTLY what I've been talking to my kid about for ages.
Decent video, though a lot of comments seem to miss the point
we've raised a generation on the idea that if you just keep punching up, no matter who it is that you hurt and knock down, someday, somehow, everyone will be equal. I guess my generation will just be here to suffer the consequences... thanks...
Economics of Bee Movie 😏
Look, I got nothing personal against business people, it's just business
6:30
I agree with everything else, but this point has been proven false numerous times by... everyone.
i agree. in fact, there is a considerable amount of evidence that points to the opposite. the theoretical explanation for this being either that violent individuals don't have time to be violent and watch violent media (opportunity cost if you will) or that violent individuals use violent media as a way to relieve their stress, thus limiting the likelihood of them acting on their violent desires. personally, i am ok with the "just business" trope, especially since almost every time it is shown, the businessman is either abusing legislature (mafia type, thus it is still technically the fault of the government) or is taking a disproportionate risk in a get-rich-quick scheme, often ending with them losing everything. long term investments between voluntary individuals tend to be more beneficial to the society, as well as more profitable, than the alternative.
Your video does a good job illustrating the extent to which our modern world revolves around business. Small wonder that something so pervasive in our lives would also be pervasive in our media.
Most stories revolve around conflict. Often the conflict is made more dramatic by a difference in power between the heroes and the villains. The hero being even more heroic for triumphing over a more powerful foe.
In an industrialized setting wealth is one of the few ways to represent such a power difference.
The rise of the ‘business people as villains’ trope could be related to the cultural understanding that business creates wealth. Wealth is power, and power is a desirable trait in a villain.
From the above we can say it isn’t that business people are uniquely prone to evil, they are simply uniquely potent and relatable villains.
Businesses aren't inherently good or bad. They can create both great benefit and great harm. Stories of greed, negligence, and apathy can be powerful illustrations of the things that can go wrong in our modern world and many times inspiration for those stories can be pulled right from the headlines.
It isn’t always a movie’s role to tell us about the complex nature of our world or all the times nothing dramatic happened. It is to tell a story. There’s a reason stories like ‘Hansel & Gretel’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ don’t spend a lot of time talking about any nice old ladies or friendly animals.
Regarding the surveys, I don’t think the data cited was granular enough to really reveal any deep understanding of people’s real views. Economic policy is too complex for a simple “for or against”.
If I answered the question about capitalism thinking the surveyor meant something along the lines of a completely anarchic deregulated free-for-all I’d vote no too. I like having roads, bridges, and public education. I wouldn’t like the government picking who I can buy from, but it seems reasonable to me for them to set standards that all competitors must abide by.
"Business" is just an excuse to do/get what you want/need while ignoring or justifying against any ethical repercussions. That being said, there is a degree of Machiavellian Pragmatism that comes into some of these cases which may justify the line being used. Other times, it's simply: "I'm not sorry."
brackonstudios look around. Business is happening absolutely everywhere you turn, and the vast majority of it works solely on the basis of *mutual* benefit.
Already today, I drove to my office where I do what I do best in order to get money from people who value what I can do for them. Win-win.
Then I dropped by Target to pick up a flash drive. They got my money, I got what I wanted in a couple minutes. Win-win again!
Then it was off to the gas station to power my car. Quickly got some gasoline, my car will keep running for another week and I will be able to go wherever I want to go with no problems. Another win-win.
Grabbed a snack from another businessman. Paid. Wins all around.
Now I am preparing for a big event at a hotel. The hotel has supplied us with a great venue, support staff, rooms, food, etc. for three days. Our event guests will have a wonderful time in large part due to the Hotel's role in facilitating it. We paid them lots of money to do this.
This will be a win for us, win for the hotel, and a win for our conference guests.
Trade is literally made of win. We each benefit or the trade never takes place. The only time this is consistently not true is when a business is connected to or controlled by government. In those cases, they can create laws forcing you to do business with them or take your money via taxes without your consent. But... That is a function of the nature of government, not of business.
imagine have to grow your own wheat, salt, meat, etc for your own hamburger. Without business, you can live only as caveman.
Stop blame the wealthy because of your own incompetence
+Foundation for Economic Education Thanks for the extensive reply, but I didn't mean to sound as if I was putting business itself down, I love the market and what all we have access to. My comment in relation to storytelling and hollywood, and how they have a surface level view of business and businessmen. Because it shows through characters saying lines like this. It's a cheap way to show a character as morally gray or down right evil. I personally can't imagine a real business person ever saying this after doing something. Again, wasn't intending to sound anti-business.
+Evan Karniawan I have imagined that, and I've researched videos and books on how to garden to be more self-reliant, because I see what life would be like if that all vanished. Also, I'm not someone who blames the wealthy, I'm thankful for what they can do. I'm currently learning and working towards how to enter and thrive in the market with what I love and what I can produce. I hope you're doing the same.
Juan Pablo Grajales Canseco of course they're mutually beneficial. I got what I wanted, the businesses i interact with got what they wanted, and neither pay had to be forced into the transaction (which is partly how you can tell we both actually valued the exchange in the first place).
What I don't get... What none of us gets to have... It's a magical world where we get everything we ever want without any form of production, work, or exchange.
If I want to travel somewhere and I don't want to use my feet, I need a reliable energy-powered vehicle. That means I either build it from scratch myself, which I am entirely incapable of doing, or I use the skills I do have to benefit someone else in exhange for money (in this case, amazingly enough by making videos on the internet), in order to then use that money to buy a vehicle and the continued means to operate it from other people who *are* capable of producing such things.
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but the nature of reality isn't an agent and cannot be coercive by itself.
Evan Kurniawan this is the core lesson our founder Leonard Read wrote about in his essay, "I, Pencil".
Yeah, but we can't deny the malpractices done by corporations (like Nestlé for example). Guess a few rotten apples ruin the barrel?
The malpractice done by government(s) dwarfs anything done by private businesses.
Sounds like you’re a evil capitalist now! 😂😱😂
Most people neglect the fact that socialist USSR completely destroyed Aral sea, made several nuclear experiments in Siberia, used forced labor to construct Moscow subway, killed millions by starvation in Ukraine in order to maintain power but that wasn't just business though...
Its called cultural marxism.
Doad Master how exactly?
Hahahahaha! Looks like we've got a full-blown lobster-head, folks!
Cultural Marxism is the rewiring of an existing culture to change the economic, political, religious, and social views of a nation to become unstable and destructive towards it's own ends. The purpose is to weaken a nation into subservience and neediness in which the socialist and/or communist comes in for a short while until the nation collapses. The failed state then collects all the goods and properties of the state and sells them to the enemies of that state. Simply put, socialism is the parasite party of the political world that intends to kill it's host. Just look at how Obama made vast swathes of the United States "public property" and then sold it to European and Chinese bankers.
Hell they're even trying to sell the Alamo in Texas against the will of the state and the people. They are selling our nation under our nose piece by piece to our enemies already.
Robert Nexion - Hey, dude, I'm sorry you're such a nutjob -- they've got new meds on the market, maybe you should give 'em a try -- for the record, Obama did *not* sell any US land, he declared areas national monuments, where they are clearly still under the control of the US govt -- & they're "selling the Alamo"? Who is "they"? Yeah, sure they are -- right after they round up everybody during Jade Helm! Got a link for that? Yeah, didn't think so -- you need a much thicker tinfoil hat, bro...
Robert Nexion - & I see, still no link to back up your nonsense claims -- you're such a sad little turd...
This video blew my mind while watching it, I haven't really considered the lives of the businessmen and this video gave me a new prospective on how businesses are shown in film. Thanks for making this video
2:00
There’s a word for that, cliché.
This video as a whole does come off as preachy.
Jabberwocky Draco Cliches reflect the minds of the people and culture.
Not really. Hollywood comes off as preachy every time movies say "business is bad!"
Nonamearisto the fact that you say it's preachy just proves my point. We live in a society that views business as bad while hypocritically using business.
Abyss Knight
I’m talking about the execution, not the message, the point is clear, plus hollywood writers obviously don’t know much about regular jobs as they simply have big projects one after the other, plus reliance on the cliche of big bad bussiness can often lead to lazy writing, but this video itself, it’s a bit on the preachy side and a bit shoe horned in it’s examples. FEE is made up of people, sometimes people come off as preachy. I will speak heresy of your gods all I want.
The theory of narrative transportation is the best description I've heard of about how the media effects us. Thank you for sharing.
I can't entirely agree with this. Sure fiction can effect reality to a degree, but it can only truly have a profound effect on a person's worldview if it is enforced by the people around them and their real world knowledge on a subject. The movie Jaws only caused an increase in shark hunting because people were already afraid of sharks and knew very little about them. People past a certain age all realize that if you get bitten by a radioactive spider or otherwise exposed to radiation, you're going to get cancer and die rather than get powers, because others teach them that sort of thing. On the other hand, people may think that people with DID really do get another personality or whatever because most people aren't very well educated on how mental illness works.
As for the Evil Businessman, people believing Capitalism is bad probably has way more to do with the constant stream of news reports and expose's about this or that major corporation doing shady and downright terrible things and people not fully understanding what Capitalism is (and then getting pro-socialist propaganda hammered into them at liberal college campuses) than the number of evil businessmen in media.
I have been saying that for years! Thank u! I'm 34 and I have been saying this to my friends and family since I was like 12, no really I have been. As a kid i saw things in movies that I knew they wanted me to think, act and be.