Actually, there is no one driving the bus. People think that human activity is guided by big business, governments, or even a secret cabal of illuminate. But, the human enterprise has grown so large that the current gameboard of market forces, lacking adequate regulatory levers, compel the Superorganism to slough forward mindlessly, utilizing every available resource, toward the quickest return on investment of any frivolous product or activity.
Yeah, capital acts almost like it has its own mind and it acts upon people who believe in it. There’s all these tendencies and trends capital moves towards like the tendency towards monopolies, imperialism, planned obsolescence, the crisis of overproduction etc. Financial crisis’s, mass destruction of the environment, poverty, unemployment, etc are all part of the capitalist system. They’re features and not bugs. All of which are a byproduct of the capitalist-worker divide and the money-commodity-money cycle. Marx and Lenin figured this out like 100 years ago. Though idk if Marx ever used the term superorganism.
Salut, de curiozitate (inca nu am reusit sa vad tot video-ul), cum ar putea o economie degrowth sa dezvolte tehnologie precum vacinuri noi, deflectarea de potentiale pericole precum o coliziune cu un asteroid ori extragerea CO2 din atmosfera.
Toate aceste tehnologii și inovația aferentă rămâne în domeniul public. Dezvoltarea și cercetarea va continua și chiar accelera dar nu se va permite companiilor private să capteze domeniul public în scopul realizării de profit privat. Vezi de ex cum s-a creat Internetul, GPS-ul și multe alte tehnologii care apoi au fost “furate” din domeniul public de către corporații. Pentru mai multe exemple vezi cartea marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state
@@ecoandrei328 În general ar trebui ca brevetele să aibă o perioadă relativ scurtă de exclusivitate, să zicem maxim 7 ani, pentru inovații făcute de persoane și organizații private, indiferent cine ar fi proprietarul. Ceea ce se inventează de către sectorul public (universități, spitale etc) ar trebui să fie nebrevetabil și liber de folosit de către oricine.
Noi suntem deprinși că creșterea economică în termeni de profit este definiția progresului, și dacă la începutul capitalismului în secolul 19 capitalismul dezvolta mijloacele de producție, azi crizele financiare cauzate de speculații financiare regulat aduc la distrugerea vieților, locurilor de muncă și a progresului. Progresul care există este sporadic și este promovat doar dacă este financiar profitabil în măsură competitivă pe piață. Monopolizarea din altă parte aduce la ceia că competiția se micșorează și progresul nu este obligatoriu pentru a majora profitul.
it is as easy as you say...no need to make it any more complicated. We all intuitively understand the human "hierarchy of needs"; we all intuitively understand equality and justice; and very little thought is needed to see that being a smaller and smaller part of a bigger and bigger machine is not the path to a better life, healthier world or happier future. I'm not optimist that people will do anything before the next "bronze age collapse", but I'm hoping that the people (assuming we didn't make ourselves part of the mass extinction) we'll look at these simple ideas and do a better job next time. We can work to make these simple ideas as widely known as possible, so whoever is left the next time around might start from a better foundation. -- Thank you so much for all you sacrifice to get the message out. Brian
The holocene extinction is coming in very hot. Unfortunately, we're taking the ecosystems with us. As temperatures exponentially increase, we will hit more and more tipping points. I doubt there will be a next time. Not for humans anyway.
It's not clear that we actually live in a capitalistic society. Like Janis varoufakis puts it. I see free market capitalism as the best economic system.
What Janis Varoufakis and others that make the use of the term highlight is the ossification of the system that we have. I don't like the term because it obscures the mechanisms that produce this situation and makes it hard to understand how we got there and what would be the solution. Capitalism in our day and age destroyed and continues to destroy competition and forms monopolies and the monopoly isn't just an aberration stemming purely out of greed or the profit motive and the need of capital to grow and consolidate to stay competitive and dominant. Monopolies also enable a degree of integration of the means of production that is progress in itself and some sectors of the economy function best, are more efficient and some are only possible as monopolies. Examples are utilities like water supply and water treatment, electrical grids, cutting edge electronics, aerospace engineering, etc. For some of them the sheer concentration of capital required automatically makes them monopolies. There is no rolling back of capitalism to its phase of free competition. Together with the formation of monopolies those gradually subdue governments to their needs of opening foreign markets and helping in the competition of the world stage. As monopolies become an important part of the economy governments naturally tend as well to favor those monopolies and their interests converge. This phase of capitalism is called imperialism. This lack of competition in the economy and the alignment of state and corporate interests also leads to politics getting stagnant largely and being dominated by the same groups for long periods of time and this state of affairs stays true for dictatorships and democracies alike, just the way in which politics is conducted is different. A dictatorship enforces its policies directly and a monopolized democracy has to play electoral theatre and compete for the campaign donations of the monopolies. The same monopolies in a dictatorship would just organize a power transfer or a coup. The essences stays the same. As we can see, monopolies have a progressive side to them, but also a regressive aspect when organized the way they are now under capitalism. It is also clear from this explanation that winding back the clock is impossible or would actually be regressive and destructive. The answer I would say lies in making monopolies and production in general subject to the control of society at large. That would be socialism. As to how to exactly implement and organize it, that's a whole different discussion with varying opinions.
Free market capitalism is an impossibility, nor has it ever actually existed. Even the birth of capitalism was through enclosures, highland clearances, and the forcible commodification of labor-power all backed by the state stripping people from their lands and commons. A society where markets dominate life will automatically lead to actors in the markets doing everything they can to concentrate power and increase their market share/stability for their own security, because the tragedy of the commons (ironically a specifically capitalist issue) says that if one doesn't collude, perform immoral actions, then others will do them anyways to undercut the competition. No matter what you call it, this is the product of a society that is dependent on market mechanisms of allocation (which was never possibly purely and thus always intermingled with actions of the state) ruling society alongside private property. That's not to say that a 'free market' even if it were somehow possible would be desirable either. Markets are a form of shutting down deliberative decision-making and valuation of things like the environment, forcing an ideology of "revealed preferences" where supposedly one pursues one's own values through spending their money, and when they have to make choices between things (like the environment vs their own well-being) they'll choose the one they care about more. Thus apparently we can reach a state where everyone has their maximal preference satisfaction of values. But this is obviously wrong in the case of things like the environment--whose care entails not just individual commitment, but community-wide commitment. If I as an individual commit to being a vegan, I'm sacrificing a lot of time, effort, energy, and food in order to show my preference for the environment. However, it becomes difficult for me to sustain this when I see that my individual commitment is doing almost nothing, and thus I end up lapsing out of veganism. Things like the environment, and even social values in general, require the fact that these things are committed by individuals not just individually but socially, that through care and commitment together it is something to care about. So no wonder why you see ecological destruction--its not that people simply don't care enough about the environment and the market is simply acting on that, its that markets prevent social deliberation and valuation as a community for things like the environment. People's values are often conflicted, and it comes from social deliberation that they can become more certain about the social aspects of their decision-making, and act as a community. So if there are values that can only be realized through community-efforts, otherwise lapsing into an individualist cynicism, and markets obstruct this sort of community-effort, where does that lead us? Where we are today. Certainly one can still form informal communities and affinity groups under capitalism, but the problem is that getting it started and growing in the first place has such an uphill battle based off the same demoralization that there's a low chance they'll ever gain traction and popularity, at most they transform into a market niche themselves (look at Patagonia for example.) If we come to recognize this--that markets aren't simply mediators of peoples natural desires/preferences but that its 'isolated decision-making' bent actively shapes it, that the social realm is an important aspect of our decision-making, and that capitalism itself shapes culture due to its incessant need for valorization/exponential growth (thus creating a culture of excess consumption,) then its not hard to see how capitalism, even in a hypothetical free market, naturally leads to the kind of hyperconsumerist culture we see now. Prices also don't reflect social values. Things like carbon are, in natural markets, severely underpriced relative to the social costs they incur through externalities. Likewise, things with positive externalities are never priced accordingly to those benefits either. 'Efficiency' in economics should always mean that the social benefits of producing a good should be atleast equal, preferrably higher, than the social costs entailed in said production. This should be true both spatially--between communities--and temporally--between generations. Markets do not account for these. Future generations and those 'outside' the market transaction have no say in it, despite being affected by it. It only accounts for the buyer-seller bargaining relationship (which capitalism automatically subverts anyways due to monopolizing/oligopoly and price-setting a la first paragraph.) Obviously there's the question of to what degree prices can even reflect the plurality of social benefits and costs, but that's a different issue altogether related to the second paragraph.
True that Capitalism is not perfect. But it is demonstrably The Best system devised so far. No other system leads to increased prosperity and satisfaction for everyone, especially for least fortunate. All other system lead to mass poverty, serfdom/enslavement, and suffering, especially for the least fortunate.
This is just so wrong. Capitalism is effective at transferring wealth from poor to rich, and does none of those things you listed. Any safety nets in place are despite capitalism, necessitated by it, since it otherwise strips the "least fortunate" of the ability to care for themselves. It's Robin Hood and the king's deer, the Tragedy of the Commons, etc. - ad absurdum. Poverty and wealth in that system are based on comparison to other people, rather than merely to their needs. This leads to antisocial behavior and reduced mental health, where people seek to conquer and exploit each other, rather than work cooperatively. It espouses competition, as if that was naturally better than sharing; the point is to prevent people with little capital from regaining that which was taken from them - and to justify people not sharing, even when they have more than they could possibly use. For example, the top 25 richest people could still be literally billionaires, while also sharing enough to raise every other citizen out of poverty. Much more can be said - but the point is, capitalism is objectively bad, let alone the best.
Actually, there is no one driving the bus. People think that human activity is guided by big business, governments, or even a secret cabal of illuminate. But, the human enterprise has grown so large that the current gameboard of market forces, lacking adequate regulatory levers, compel the Superorganism to slough forward mindlessly, utilizing every available resource, toward the quickest return on investment of any frivolous product or activity.
Fellow Nate Hagens listener I see 😁. Good stuff.
Yeah, capital acts almost like it has its own mind and it acts upon people who believe in it.
There’s all these tendencies and trends capital moves towards like the tendency towards monopolies, imperialism, planned obsolescence, the crisis of overproduction etc. Financial crisis’s, mass destruction of the environment, poverty, unemployment, etc are all part of the capitalist system. They’re features and not bugs. All of which are a byproduct of the capitalist-worker divide and the money-commodity-money cycle.
Marx and Lenin figured this out like 100 years ago.
Though idk if Marx ever used the term superorganism.
First video I’ve seen of you! Such great work. I will share it around :)
Outstanding video!! 👏👏👏 Very clear, informative, and decided!
Salut, de curiozitate (inca nu am reusit sa vad tot video-ul), cum ar putea o economie degrowth sa dezvolte tehnologie precum vacinuri noi, deflectarea de potentiale pericole precum o coliziune cu un asteroid ori extragerea CO2 din atmosfera.
Toate aceste tehnologii și inovația aferentă rămâne în domeniul public.
Dezvoltarea și cercetarea va continua și chiar accelera dar nu se va permite companiilor private să capteze domeniul public în scopul realizării de profit privat. Vezi de ex cum s-a creat Internetul, GPS-ul și multe alte tehnologii care apoi au fost “furate” din domeniul public de către corporații.
Pentru mai multe exemple vezi cartea
marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state
@@VladBunea Multumesc, pentru raspuns!
@@VladBunea Ce parea ai avea de un sistem unde o persoana publica poate cumpara un procent dintr-un viitor brevet ai carei sucess nu este asigurat?
@@ecoandrei328 În general ar trebui ca brevetele să aibă o perioadă relativ scurtă de exclusivitate, să zicem maxim 7 ani, pentru inovații făcute de persoane și organizații private, indiferent cine ar fi proprietarul. Ceea ce se inventează de către sectorul public (universități, spitale etc) ar trebui să fie nebrevetabil și liber de folosit de către oricine.
Noi suntem deprinși că creșterea economică în termeni de profit este definiția progresului, și dacă la începutul capitalismului în secolul 19 capitalismul dezvolta mijloacele de producție, azi crizele financiare cauzate de speculații financiare regulat aduc la distrugerea vieților, locurilor de muncă și a progresului. Progresul care există este sporadic și este promovat doar dacă este financiar profitabil în măsură competitivă pe piață. Monopolizarea din altă parte aduce la ceia că competiția se micșorează și progresul nu este obligatoriu pentru a majora profitul.
Wow, primul român pe UA-cam care nu este de dreapta care l-am găsit! M-am abonat!
Comment for the algo-rythm! Cheers~
Excellent video!
it is as easy as you say...no need to make it any more complicated. We all intuitively understand the human "hierarchy of needs"; we all intuitively understand equality and justice; and very little thought is needed to see that being a smaller and smaller part of a bigger and bigger machine is not the path to a better life, healthier world or happier future. I'm not optimist that people will do anything before the next "bronze age collapse", but I'm hoping that the people (assuming we didn't make ourselves part of the mass extinction) we'll look at these simple ideas and do a better job next time. We can work to make these simple ideas as widely known as possible, so whoever is left the next time around might start from a better foundation. -- Thank you so much for all you sacrifice to get the message out. Brian
The holocene extinction is coming in very hot. Unfortunately, we're taking the ecosystems with us. As temperatures exponentially increase, we will hit more and more tipping points. I doubt there will be a next time. Not for humans anyway.
It's not clear that we actually live in a capitalistic society. Like Janis varoufakis puts it. I see free market capitalism as the best economic system.
Yanis likes to call it technofeudalism. That’s ok. However I still think the core doctrine is the same, regardless of the name of the system.
What Janis Varoufakis and others that make the use of the term highlight is the ossification of the system that we have. I don't like the term because it obscures the mechanisms that produce this situation and makes it hard to understand how we got there and what would be the solution. Capitalism in our day and age destroyed and continues to destroy competition and forms monopolies and the monopoly isn't just an aberration stemming purely out of greed or the profit motive and the need of capital to grow and consolidate to stay competitive and dominant. Monopolies also enable a degree of integration of the means of production that is progress in itself and some sectors of the economy function best, are more efficient and some are only possible as monopolies. Examples are utilities like water supply and water treatment, electrical grids, cutting edge electronics, aerospace engineering, etc. For some of them the sheer concentration of capital required automatically makes them monopolies. There is no rolling back of capitalism to its phase of free competition. Together with the formation of monopolies those gradually subdue governments to their needs of opening foreign markets and helping in the competition of the world stage. As monopolies become an important part of the economy governments naturally tend as well to favor those monopolies and their interests converge. This phase of capitalism is called imperialism. This lack of competition in the economy and the alignment of state and corporate interests also leads to politics getting stagnant largely and being dominated by the same groups for long periods of time and this state of affairs stays true for dictatorships and democracies alike, just the way in which politics is conducted is different. A dictatorship enforces its policies directly and a monopolized democracy has to play electoral theatre and compete for the campaign donations of the monopolies. The same monopolies in a dictatorship would just organize a power transfer or a coup. The essences stays the same. As we can see, monopolies have a progressive side to them, but also a regressive aspect when organized the way they are now under capitalism. It is also clear from this explanation that winding back the clock is impossible or would actually be regressive and destructive. The answer I would say lies in making monopolies and production in general subject to the control of society at large. That would be socialism. As to how to exactly implement and organize it, that's a whole different discussion with varying opinions.
Free market capitalism is an impossibility, nor has it ever actually existed. Even the birth of capitalism was through enclosures, highland clearances, and the forcible commodification of labor-power all backed by the state stripping people from their lands and commons. A society where markets dominate life will automatically lead to actors in the markets doing everything they can to concentrate power and increase their market share/stability for their own security, because the tragedy of the commons (ironically a specifically capitalist issue) says that if one doesn't collude, perform immoral actions, then others will do them anyways to undercut the competition. No matter what you call it, this is the product of a society that is dependent on market mechanisms of allocation (which was never possibly purely and thus always intermingled with actions of the state) ruling society alongside private property.
That's not to say that a 'free market' even if it were somehow possible would be desirable either. Markets are a form of shutting down deliberative decision-making and valuation of things like the environment, forcing an ideology of "revealed preferences" where supposedly one pursues one's own values through spending their money, and when they have to make choices between things (like the environment vs their own well-being) they'll choose the one they care about more. Thus apparently we can reach a state where everyone has their maximal preference satisfaction of values. But this is obviously wrong in the case of things like the environment--whose care entails not just individual commitment, but community-wide commitment. If I as an individual commit to being a vegan, I'm sacrificing a lot of time, effort, energy, and food in order to show my preference for the environment. However, it becomes difficult for me to sustain this when I see that my individual commitment is doing almost nothing, and thus I end up lapsing out of veganism. Things like the environment, and even social values in general, require the fact that these things are committed by individuals not just individually but socially, that through care and commitment together it is something to care about. So no wonder why you see ecological destruction--its not that people simply don't care enough about the environment and the market is simply acting on that, its that markets prevent social deliberation and valuation as a community for things like the environment. People's values are often conflicted, and it comes from social deliberation that they can become more certain about the social aspects of their decision-making, and act as a community.
So if there are values that can only be realized through community-efforts, otherwise lapsing into an individualist cynicism, and markets obstruct this sort of community-effort, where does that lead us? Where we are today. Certainly one can still form informal communities and affinity groups under capitalism, but the problem is that getting it started and growing in the first place has such an uphill battle based off the same demoralization that there's a low chance they'll ever gain traction and popularity, at most they transform into a market niche themselves (look at Patagonia for example.)
If we come to recognize this--that markets aren't simply mediators of peoples natural desires/preferences but that its 'isolated decision-making' bent actively shapes it, that the social realm is an important aspect of our decision-making, and that capitalism itself shapes culture due to its incessant need for valorization/exponential growth (thus creating a culture of excess consumption,) then its not hard to see how capitalism, even in a hypothetical free market, naturally leads to the kind of hyperconsumerist culture we see now.
Prices also don't reflect social values. Things like carbon are, in natural markets, severely underpriced relative to the social costs they incur through externalities. Likewise, things with positive externalities are never priced accordingly to those benefits either. 'Efficiency' in economics should always mean that the social benefits of producing a good should be atleast equal, preferrably higher, than the social costs entailed in said production. This should be true both spatially--between communities--and temporally--between generations. Markets do not account for these. Future generations and those 'outside' the market transaction have no say in it, despite being affected by it. It only accounts for the buyer-seller bargaining relationship (which capitalism automatically subverts anyways due to monopolizing/oligopoly and price-setting a la first paragraph.) Obviously there's the question of to what degree prices can even reflect the plurality of social benefits and costs, but that's a different issue altogether related to the second paragraph.
you don't have to explain, we know it's not good, but i shall listen anyway
When it is pretty much illegal to live without money you know there is a problem. Then, without alternatives, you know you are a slave to it.
super video!
It's great for the Won Percent!
Se o capitalismo é ruim então por que você não vai morar na Coreia do Norte?
The alternative to capitalism is NOT North Korea.
True that Capitalism is not perfect. But it is demonstrably The Best system devised so far. No other system leads to increased prosperity and satisfaction for everyone, especially for least fortunate. All other system lead to mass poverty, serfdom/enslavement, and suffering, especially for the least fortunate.
This is just so wrong. Capitalism is effective at transferring wealth from poor to rich, and does none of those things you listed. Any safety nets in place are despite capitalism, necessitated by it, since it otherwise strips the "least fortunate" of the ability to care for themselves. It's Robin Hood and the king's deer, the Tragedy of the Commons, etc. - ad absurdum. Poverty and wealth in that system are based on comparison to other people, rather than merely to their needs. This leads to antisocial behavior and reduced mental health, where people seek to conquer and exploit each other, rather than work cooperatively. It espouses competition, as if that was naturally better than sharing; the point is to prevent people with little capital from regaining that which was taken from them - and to justify people not sharing, even when they have more than they could possibly use. For example, the top 25 richest people could still be literally billionaires, while also sharing enough to raise every other citizen out of poverty. Much more can be said - but the point is, capitalism is objectively bad, let alone the best.