You can’t really substitute ‘video’ for ‘genius’, they are different kinds of nouns. Closer word would be ‘masterpiece’- and then the statement makes sense doesn’t it? I must be missing the joke (a word that gets thrown around a lot…)
As an agricultural scientist I disagree with the assertion made by the Varoufakis quote. By their argument, grain agriculture can be cited as the invention upon which economy is built. However, while fish, meat, and fruits certainly do spoil quickly, so does grain if not stored properly. All four of these can easily be stored and even exchanged if dried. I think this argument falls into an easy trap in the discussion of early agriculture and society. Most of us think of agriculture as a specific invention, an unlock on a tech tree, that turns societies from hunter-gatherer to settled civilizations. This is an oversimplification. After all, isn't the gatherer who returns to the same wild grain field every two years simply engaging in a low-input farming method? Isn't a buffalo hunter simply a rancher who follows his herd, instead of the other way around? The line between hunter-gatherer and farmer is very blurry. Humans may have been gently selectively breeding plants long before they became productive enough to support settled farming. I think that this line of thinking comes from wanting to define a clear origin. We want to point at some potential moment in time and say "Look! The First Economy!". To do this, we imagine a time "before economy" and think about what makes it different from today. This can create some very compelling narratives but it fundamentally compresses the emergence of economy into a single point. I agree with the assertion that consistent surplus is the key to identifying economy, and I even agree that grain cultivation was key in developing larger, more consistent surplus. However, allowing grain cultivation to occupy such a central role in the narrative only serves to downplay the complexity of nomadic societies. Settled grain agriculture was not the unlock we needed before we could research "civilization" on the tech-tree. Rather, it was one step in a long history of developing increasingly productive forms of food collection and storage. If we wish to compare modern society to a "pre-economy" past, we should not compare ourselves to nomadic societies, we should compare ourselves to animals.
I'd also like to add that there have been permanent settlements, including what we might call cities and civilizations, that didn't have agriculture beyond hunting and gathering. Surely these places required something we'd call an economy. Edit: I had to look up some examples because it's been a long time since my anthropology classes, but the Pacific Northwest and coastal Japan seem to be two relevant cultures where hunter-gatherers settled into large permanent communities.
Read any Lewis Mumford? He's very big on the evolution of urban centers... main premise is that it was the centralized storage of food surplus that began to join us to our permanent economies.
Yes, exactly. It's also worth noting that agriculture is not a Pandora's box that was never undone. In many cases, people moved away from agriculture in favor of other forms of organization. People not practicing agriculture also co-exist(ed) with people practicing it and had varying levels of interaction. I think it's unnecessarily reductive to define economies as the ones that traditionally fit into the agricultural "modern economy" mold. Even in hunter gatherer societies you need some form of organization to distribute production. For example, who hunts and who gathers, where do you do it and how do you organize it? How do you allocate time for other activities? How and what do you trade? (because large-scale trade between hunter-gatherer societies was widespread). There can be (surprising) variety in how you answer these questions and I can't see how trying to answer them isn't "economics".
As an economic historian of the classical period who has had to push back against economists who believe their views on economics gives them 'a ready-made set of (neoclassical) laws that can be applied across history, often without sufficient understanding of the period': Thank you. Thank you for your precise analytical thinking. Thank you for 'doing the homework' and finding it worthwhile reading some of our work and representing it fairly.
Market economies habitually enrich the people in their societies for centuries. Socialist economies have consistently exploited working people to enrich a Left fascist elite. Over time this socialist mechanism of hypocrisy and exploitation has become increasingly easier to discern and disseminate, which is why there is an increasing market for pro-socialist propaganda and hit pieces against anti-socialist critics. This is what you're "thanking."
It’s also worth noticing that the South Korean example in the video is basically one of a number of variations on the “export led growth” model arguably pioneered by Japan and all of these feature significant government intervention (in Japan through MITI), supporting national champions (keiretsu in Japan) and various other government initiatives. This type of “developmental state” supporting export led industrial growth as a road to national prosperity was well documented when Sowell wrote his book, as not only Japan, but also South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore had followed variations of this strategy, and the obvious example of China should speak for itself. I was surprised that Sowell’s “Basic Economics” was from 2000, because a lot of the quotes used in the video sounds like something written in the early 1990s, and the obsession with Stalinist USSR and Maoist PRC seems like something out of the 1970s or ‘80s.
The real question is, how long did it take him to write it because anyone born before the 90s would be able to tell you that it was probably in development hell.
Though Germany is also a good example. It was a military dictatorship that enacted extremely harsh trade barriers and put in harsh standards for education and production. With a focus on military but also on mechanics and chemicals to the point that 30 years after the unification Germany made over 80% of all chemicals and held more patents than Britain, France and the US combined. Prussia was a military state at it's core and it ran the economy in a similar way with the industries related to steel, gunpowder, vehicles and other such things focused on. There was also a strong system of trade tariffs especially on Germany's enemies that was ruthlessly enforced which created a lot of ire especially in the UK. Japan brought in many German economists and industrialists as well as military officers. There was a lot of admiration for Germany in Japan as they saw themselves in a similar light, new powers to challenge the old ones. This Japanese model was later imported to South-Korea and in turn copied to China. Each one did change it to their needs but the model of a militaristic top-down system as a means of security has remained. France's industrialization was more gradual though also very coordinated growing from mercantalism and in some ways was even a thing in the time of it's kings. Canals were dug, ports were build, unequal trade deals established. The state did a lot of marketing for French goods and enabled their exports. In the US local governments were very heavily involved in the industrialization with massive subsidies granted by the federal government but allocated by local government. This link between local governments and large corporations is a big part of what created the American gilded age as the capitalists gained more and more power and the local governments became subservient under them. My main point is that each industrialization was it's own tale. British industrialization was in large part fueled by it's empire with them wanting more efficient ways to process the raw materials that came in. French industrialization was more driven by export of it's own products and the need to secure them, German industrialization was mostly militaristic in nature and US industrialization was driven by competition between local governments and the drive to expand American power west. The US is probably the closest to a uncoordinated market but even so without federally funded railroads and subsidies local industry could never have arisen. Nor could it have done it without US laws and their enforcement or quaranteed access to credit. Even then local governments like in Michigan build up factory towns, dug canals and provided cheap credit on behalf of specific companies. There were indeed hard working entroponeurs who took advantage of opportunities but those opportunities were created for them by local and national government. Even today this is the case, the Obama administration in the wake of the 2008 financial crash gave enormous subsidies to green energy and a big receicpiant was the then tiny company Tesla. In many ways the way the US industrialized is not that dissimilar from how South-Korea did, just in a slightly less organized fashion.
His conversion to neo-liberalism because "I worked in the capitalist american government, so I concluded no socialist government would have a positive impact on its population." sounded like an exaggeration, but then I realized how much he uses anecdotes as evidence in his books and now it seems like it's actually the truth...
As if there's a lot of evidence backing the opposite of what he believes. Economics is a social science, prone to all the flaws of one, the main one being that hard evidence is very hard to come by and even then it is very context dependent.
@@carlosjosejimenezbermudez9255 True, but it's not impossible. There's overwhelming evidence that states can play a key role in bettering people's lives, and are vastly more efficient than he makes out.
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@@carlosjosejimenezbermudez9255And yet the predicted values keep occurring. One can be wrong on why and still be right tbh.
The most painful thing ever people who keep bring of thomas sowell like he's the second coming and never questioning his logic of "welfare bad" with little to actual evidence show how welfare is bad
@@jeffersonclippership2588Thomas Sowell is not alone. Uncle Rukus is satire but not as much s you think black people on average are more conservative they just know Republicans are more racist. Some don't care or know that bit and vote for trump anyways.
Not a paradox at all as free market by definition of everyone except anarchists, include and need rule of law to exist. That's literally one of the only roles that Friedman and sowell have always accepted and actively encouraged in societies, and yet people still think these guys were anarchists...
@@Bolognabeef they have no critical thinking capacity. We’re asking for an umpire, not for an umpire to rig the rules and play first base and third base and left field. It’s really not complicated
But also no true capitalist system has ever succeeded. Behind every capitalist success lies a complex story of government regulation, subsidies, state intervention, state companies, foreign resources either granted or taken by force, often forceful movement of people and many other factors.
@@MrMarinus18 yeah it literally can't government's are companies. Capitalism will always devolve into either dictatorship of one kind or another let it be worker owned or owning class owned. One party will take over once a monopoly happens.
The fact that I recognize statements in that first section from my Florida community college economics classes, which the class textbook presented as objective truth without evidence or a counter-narrative, lends to my impression that my gen eds were largely designed as propaganda, not actual education.
@@MajkaSrajka not really, I was taught in a model-based approach where it becomes clear that knowledge is never set in stone, but is always a piece of rhetoric to answer a specific question within a set of boundary conditions. Whether we talk about gravity or economic history, what we create is always a model that tries to condense an infinitely set of interactions into model that has some degree of useful explanatory power. This model is never "correct", but can be correct enough to build onto. The best red flag for any speaker is if they use the words "This explains how X really works". If you are taught in a model-based approach from a very early stage, you are much better able to critically assess the things you believe when new information enters your live.
Got the same from my economics classes (UK), it wasn’t taught like an exact science, but capitalism was usually talked about like the lesser of all evils and a kind of “natural” symptom of society existing. No alternatives were ever considered or discussed. “It is what it is 🤷♂️"
@@-kerplink-7738Same here. While I read here in the US about all of this "librual indoctrination" in universities, all I received was neoliberal indoctrination. No other ideas were ever presented. Back then "free trade" was part of the right neoliberal indoctrination and it annoys me to no end that people like Sowell who championed the whole idea now call it globalist and somehow blame the end result on "leftist globalists" now.
It's ok, we most likely have a cringe and irrational political phase in life, especially when we are young. What matters is we managed to get out of it and get over the mistakes we made by being critical, nuanced and rational as much as possible and always step back when we wre wrong instead of being stubborn and childish.
@@TankieVNthis fr. And for ppl like me who were on the alt right in that time, it’s important for us to right said wrongs and do what we can for minorities who are under attack and under represented. Also, ppl like me and others should warn others about the alt right and it’s ever growing connectivity internationally.
@@itsmedjoom987 yeah. I was a right-leaning nationalist a few years back until I watch Hakim's videos. After that I thought to myself "Hey socialism actually has lots of potential ! It's definitely worth investing my time and energy on it." then I dived into Soviet history and then Marxism. Though Hakim himself is quite biased so I recommend channels that are more academic such as 1Dime, Paul Cockshott, The Marxist Project, Bradon Lee, Badempanada,...
Historians: "don't flatten history." Economists: "I've developed a circular representation of a spherical database to demonstrate why the garden of Eden was cringe."
Economic outcomes aren't hard to predict. If you were playing an mmo and one day there is a currency duping hack, it will appear as if surplus has raised the server out of poverty. But that game is on a short path to total destruction. Without scarcity there is no real substance to that economy. Take the game Requiem as an example. When the community discovered how to dupe the money supply, the money became worth less until it became worthless. Does it matter where the surpluss of dupped money came from. Can you not see how needs and wants are now a toxic version of the previously retrained system.
What's even more baller is the narrativization of not even pretending to be good faith less than a minute into the video! Start with the conclusion, fill in the rest...
"In conversations with my daughter about capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis discusses..." You made it sound like Yanis is casually coming to your home and talking to your daughter about economics.
Proposition 1: Yanis Varoufakis is Greek. Proposition 2: He is teaching your daughter about economics. Proposition 3: Aristotle was Greek. Proposition 4: Aristotle taught Alexander Before He Was Great, or Alexander the Average. Proposition 5: Your daughter is basically average, now. Conclusion: In the future, your daughter will conquer the known world but will also cause global inflation. Thomas Sowell: yes.
He probably would. I wrote a two paragraph critique of his eurocomunist defeatist politics in my little-read blog, and he spent half an hour " refuting" it in his next lecture (available on YT). The man is all ego.
@@casteretpollux wow 2 paragraphs?!?! That's more than anybodys ever written in critique of Yanis before? You must've put years of work into that. Really had him running scared!
Hold on...around 20:00, the claim about grain storage being necessary/sufficient to lead to complex distribution systems, seems more controversial these days. Graeber and others have cited more recent archaeological work, which found, among other things, that hunter-gatherers created civic infrastructure, lived in settlements, built monuments, and more. I think it's probably true that hard/fast rules about the emergence of certain behaviors in our human and non-human ancestors are still fairly speculative, and inevitably, that date of emergence itself is often contested and pushed back further into history as we uncover more of the archaeological record. UPDATE: Quibbles aside, this video was an absolute goddamn banger. So many of my fellow academics recommend his work, almost anthropologically, as a study in what "respectable conservatism" looks like. As if it's supposed to be some edifying process unraveling before our eyes as we turn the page. Um...no. I'll just send people this video next time they recommend Sowell. Evergreen content on this one!
"I almost died reading this book" Not to worry, the market has accounted for this, and the value of Thomas Sowell's books includes an amount apportioned for legal settlements regarding people who died from reading his books. As always, the market provides.
Things I have learned: - I'm not going to learn much about that by reading Thomas Sowell - A lot of people have pools I've tried to be exhaustive, I hope I didn't miss anything
Wow, thats an outrageous amount. I've been retired for three years now, and I'm only 45 years old, thankfully i met a friend Katherine c boone, who happens to be a financial consultant, she offers excellent investment plans.
The historical literature also shows that's it almost impossible to maintain a market economy without significant public infrastructure underpinning it. For example, The car industry doesn't exist without significant early government investment into developing car technology and creating and maintaining millions of miles roads, or how intellectual property that generate billions is only possible due to publicly funded courts enforcing those laws. I'm primary referencing the work of economist and historian Jacob Soll if anyone is interested in researching the history of capitalisms origins.
@@quefreemind5698 If a libertarian said "Leftists argue that government intervention is a good thing and governments will fix all market issues" would you tell them they are either ignorant or purposely mischaracterizing your views?
"let's cut money here" "let's cut money here" "let's cut money here" "oh no! All our social services are failing and the economy is in recession! How could this be? My bible of neoliberal economics predicted the opposite!! see: the United Kingdom
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@jays5002 Yet if you don't then when the debt is too high they all fail.
Because you only get interested in technical topics when it gives you the adrenaline rush of an ingroup/outgroup, good guy/bad guy war on the internet.
@@jamesbuchanan3888 why would a government that is perfectly good at enacting anti-democratic laws after private companies lobby its politicians need inflation to control democracy? Wealth inequality has been rising for decades irrespective of if it's during a period of high inflation or not.
@@Betweoxwiteganother anthropology major here. Im a security guard in a rapidly gentrifying downtown and they want someone who will ask the fentynal addicts to overdose in a neighboring parking lot with empathy. School was interesting but there isnt much demand in the field outside of bigger cities and those are competitive positions. For the most part an HR position is the brass ring which is actually really depressing.
@@arja2317 Yeah it's actually crazy, especially if you pay a lot for the degree. It's an interesting field but the jobs are too scarce which deflates the value of the degree and only people with a Masters or PHD will actually work in the field. It's pretty much the same with most humanities and social sciences, like philosophy, etc. You may also be subject to lots of travelling which isn't for everyone.
I'm just gonna throw out that the only information I know about the Garden of Eden is that the only frequently reported 'fact' about it is that it famously has a very strict scarcity on the supply of Apples of Knowlege
famously strict scarcity on Apples of Knowledge, but yet demand for them has soared to capturing 50% of the population. This is mostly due to false advertising from Serpentine Marketing, LLC
As Hayek stated: "The power of abstract ideas rests largely on the very fact that they are not consciously held as theories but are treated by most people as self-evident truths which act as tacit presuppositions." (from law, legislation, and liberty) Thomas Sowell is a perfect example for the use of abstract ideas to push a narrative.
Banger intro. The song rocks. Why is he always interviewed in the same Charlie Rose style room? Finally, did you punch your roommate for making you read Sowell?
But as Milton Friedman said, "a theory should be judged on its ability to predict, not the realism of its assumptions." So it tracks that Sowell is not bothered by the quality of his assumptions.
@@RolandHesz Oh god. I thought it was pretty clear what I was saying but clearly not. (1) I am saying two things. (i) Sowell’s predictions are wrong. (ii) Sowell’s predictions are wrong because he uses flawed assumptions which is hilarious. The reason why it is so funny to me that Sowell’s arguments fail is because Sowell will reduce the possible behaviors to a specific subset, make arguments about that subset, and then generalize those arguments to all behaviors when that is not necessarily applicable. The reason why Sowell is wrong is because he narrows his world to a small subsection of actual reality and then uses that small subsection to try to fully explain reality. It is like a physicist only using classical physics to explain the world. Of course your predictions about matters such as black body radiation and photons are wrong. Those are quantum phenomena that are outside the purview of classical physics. You are ignoring an entire field of physics. And that behavior is exactly what Sowell (edit: does). Which is hilarious because Sowell knows what he is doing. (2) And Milton is wrong. The value in a theory is not in its ability to predict. The value in a theory is in its ability to accurately explain the world. Prediction is a useful tool to reaching such ends, but it isn’t the only one. By (edit: Milton’s) standard, the theories of meteorology are not good theories because we can’t predict weather with any relevant degree of accuracy. (edit: It is also hilarious to me that you would use Milton as your reference. He quite literally built his career off not using accurate assumptions and those inaccurate assumptions being the cause of his theories being not descriptively accurate)
@@jloiben12yes, you were very clear. And I agreed with you. And kind of sarcastically dropped in the "what do you expect from a Friedman fan?" I'm sorry, I thought that it was clear that it wasn't an endorsement of using awful assumptions. My bad.
@@RolandHesz Now I feel really dumb for being so antagonistic towards you. Damn UA-cam. I am not used to good faith actors. I am gonna go off myself now
Haven't finished watching, but I think this might go along with economic surplus. Even in a world with an infinite surplus, everything can't exist everywhere all the time. This might be what you meant by "allocation". If human life is also infinite in the garden of Eden, time would be cheap. But if human life is finite, "time spent doing something" is the scarcity.
Sowell was part of the contingent of economists that were saying the 2008 market crash was becuz of *too much* regulation, somehow. Pretty hard to take the brotha seriously after hearing him say that. Lol
@butt317 as dan olson said in his video about the crypto craze, the hyper-capitalist response to the 2008 recession came largely from bitter grievances about not having been in on the the speculation scheme prior to it
I've heard a convincing argument that it was caused by too much regulation in some areas and not enough in others, and that the regulation was harmful. Regulation is not good or bad; you can regulate to ensure petrol has lead in it or to ensure that it doesn't, one of these will create health problems and the other will create less health problems, they're both still regulation. And we shouldn't try and solve everything with regulation, maybe, if the government hadn't been willing to bail out the banks and the hedge funds (yes I know it was a conservative government I don't think those are good) then they wouldn't have invested irresponsibly. And maybe we should change our legal system so that instead of letting the people who caused the crisis walk off more or less fine with their saved money whilst everyone else suffered, if they do cause something like that they are fully liable for the results of their actions. Read Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He's not a conservative, at least not a dogmatic "conservative" like Sowell who exists to profit off promoting the political ideology, and he has some good criticisms of the American economy that fall outside of mainstream politics, unfortunately.
If regulations allow people to take out loans from banks and the banks lend them out predatorily then I'd say yeah, bad regulations caused the 08' housing bubble. And since a bubble is unsustainable it follows that the regulations also caused the pop when the regulations were just trying to give people mortgages they weren't capable of or willing to pay back.
They haven't read Sowell either. They think Ben Shapiro, and Candice Owens are intellectuals. Like raving evangelicals who have no clue what's in the Bible.
Sowell's basic argument in "basic economics" is that the more free market an economy or sector is, The more productive it is; the more socialist, the less productive. He cites dozens of countries, sectors, even individual products to prove his point. Outside of short-term price controls, this doesn't need to be a matter of opinion, we should just look at the record of human economic production over time. Where is the example where a non-free-market economy outcompetes the free market one in comparable conditions? I couldn't even find an above-average period in the socialist years of France and UK. The current Chinese experiment is also excellent evidence of free-market supremacy, as it isolates capitalism as the only variable without mixing in other Western institutions. It's not a hard problem really, there's plenty of data and it points clearly in one direction, so far as I can tell. The best argument left is that economic productivity isn't the highest goal.
... Indeed, if you break your windows just to have them replaced with the same kind of new ones, this would be economically productive for GDP. It would also be wasteful and pointless.
@@ericritchie6783 theoretically, yes but I think you can only maintain that kind of distortion for a limited time -- it's baked into the free market. For your window example, the prices on these breakable windows would go down commensurate with their decreased value/utility. Even bigger cons like mortgage-backed securities eventually find their true value. So too will the value of china's 'ghost cities'. You can goose gap for a while, maybe even a couple of decades, but not forever. And in any case, neither the scale nor the duration is enough to seriously challenge the supremacy of free-market capitalism (indeed, it's far more likely to find the goosing in planned economies, as their tendency to fail necessitates creative bookkeeping). So I think you need to define value on a deeper level, like maybe even having lots of productivity -- better tech, better medicines, better infrastructure - is not worth the trade-off of, for example, losing your cultural identity, or alienating/atomizing individuals, or making everyone work 24/7, or accelerating inequality to an unbearable level. That's the argument to have, I think, the notion that some "other" system is going to outcompete it is, I think, pretty thoroughly disproved
@@billywhite1403 It was just an unnecessary activity re doing something that had already been done. The innate value of the energy and materials that go into making the same kind of window are unchanged, the new window is as valuable as the old one was as it's the same kind of window. What was an unfortunate accident or some deliberate act contributes to economic productivity, yet was simply unnecessary and not ideal occurrence. More effective use of tech, better medical care, more effective infrastructure ect, doesn't necessarily have to "trade off" with any of these things, I would of course add the decimation of the ecological environment, the rapid depletion of energy reserves and dire mishandling of material's...
@@ericritchie6783 1. I understood your point. You might be surprised by how much deliberate obsolescence is built into industrial economies (especially USA) -- auto companies deliberately use plastic instead of metal in key components so they can make money on the replacement parts, accounting for about 30% of total industry profit. And so it goes for medicines, etc, where they would prefer you to come back over and over again. Disposability is built into the model. This is why everything is now moving to a subscription model. All this is to say, for example about the glass is actually a major feature of capitalist economies. 2) Which leads me to The next term, "necessary" -- The only things strictly necessary wish you would survival are food, water, shelter and defense. Arguably, medicine as well, but not from a long-term / group survival perspective (unless we encounter a plague which kills 100% of humans who it encounters, without proper treatment). And the first three offer limited marginal utility (possibly the opposite, As Western food produces obesity and messed up teeth). But the fourth one is a doozy -- Even a comparatively small gap between defense mechanisms, like arrows and armor, can lead to total subjugation (think of Southeast Asia or Africa). So ultimately, when the s hits the fan, The point of modern economics might ultimately be to create gnarly weapons, We are just spared from having two think about it for the time being as long as our population and resource availability are reasonably matched. 3) The other wrench in the works is the fact that almost all modern economies are severely in debt, with the sole exception of Russia. Otoh, Not all debt is bad, But that surely is something to take into account when measuring efficacy of economic systems.
A small correction; 100% life in the universe. And he would be 100% correct. Life is not necessary, it keeps existing because it wants to. And Thanos half-assing with the annihilation is just delaying the inevitable.
Yeah good point actually. I smell some parallels with Tommy whatever he's protagonist or antagonist. Because needs/wants are one of the basic tool for writing to display character's inner conflict in storytelling.
As an Engineering professor, Im glad to know one constant of academics across disciples is needing to google basic definitions we should have memorized as an undergrad.
Absent coercion forcing people to acquire from a producer, almost all goods can be replaced by other substitute goods. That's the whole point. Natural monopolies are an incoherent position, because no firm can remain the *sole* producer of a given good and hike up prices without others either creating their own firms to compete with prices closer to the real equilibrium, or people switching to a substitute good. If there was a single railroad in the entire country, owned by a single firm, and it decided to hike up prices prohibitely due to its monopoly status, then people would either create more railroads to price them out, or switch to other modes of transportation.
@@CommissarLORDBernn You got me intrested in the so called railways that people build on their own. Or the transportation alternative to a railroad that doesn't involve cramped buses that take 2 times the travel time and are heavily susceptible to traffic.
@@nati0598 You should look into the history of the gilded age and how the first railroads started, as well as analyze the supposed cases of monopolies with a critical eye. J.P. Morgan is used as an example of a monopolist due to buying up failing railroads and pricing out others, but he wasn't selling at a loss as the common idea of monopolies forming is usually told. J.P. Morgan got its huge portion of the market by streamlining and standarizing already existing competing railroads that were inefficient or underfunded, and in the process lowered transportation costs instead of increasing them. There was no point at which there was a monopoly hiking up prices. Another example is Standard Oil, which is likewise used as a boogeyman. Not only the highest share of the market it held was an (still incredibly impressive) ~85% of the US oil market, which is still far from 100%, its market share declined naturally from competition until it had 64% at the moment politicians decided to break it up. And during that whole time, oil prices were constantly at historic lows. Oil prices skyrocketed afterwards because of WW1.
@@nati0598 Everything invented, after producing their first commercial copy becomes "monopoly". If its price is absurdly high, people will either drop it as it has no value to them, or if they buy it assuming the profits are large, other people will want a piece of that pie and create knock-off alternatives. There are no alternative to railways not because there is some magical monopoly, but because railways suck ass, and busses suck ass and all are subsidized (good intercity busses connection has value to property owners of places that are well connected via them, not due to price tickets).
@@MajkaSrajka You got it backwards. Or rather, correct, but you seem to think that I got it backwards. It's not that railways have no alternatives because of a monopoly, it's a monopoly because there are no alternatives.
speaking of demand, what about when businesses create demand where none exists? As sociologist Michael Dawson has written: The goal of marketers "is to coax people into habits that maximize profitable consumption of the firm's products."
@@Bolognabeef Do yourself a favour and learn a bit about the concept of marketing; affecting consumer behaviour without explicit threat of violence or institutional force is the entire point.
I took an Econ class that used a Thomas Sowell textbook. I had never heard of him and just thought he was normal economist. I remember being so shocked seeing a UA-cam video of him talking like a crazy person. Like this who were learning from 😅
@timstone2813 All he did was give an anecdote specifically about Sowell. You just responding with 'but that could be anyone' is a complete non- argument. The anecdote is specifically about Sowell and how he thought he makes terrible points. Do you have a counter argument or are you content to just make everything abstract and thus pointless?
@@stonesoupstudio2348 How are we supposed to give a counter-argument to such a powerful anecdote? "I once had a textbook and thought the writer was crazy" is possibly the most powerfully persuasive argument ever to sprout from a human brain, Thomas Sowell fans are in shambles everywhere and may never recover
I can't overstate how skilled you are at taking challenging subjects, curating and condensing them, and dumbing them down to the point even a guy like me who stares at bugs for a living can follow the material.
Food is a perfect example of a consistent market failure throughout history. Food subsidies or the outright providing of grain and bread to populations has happened basically through every large civilization in history because the cost is good is often more than what is acceptable or possible to pay.
It also is one of the simplest and most reliable ways to bribe the population. The food provision of the Roman empire was put into place after nearly a century of general unrest and many food riots. It was successfully put in place and remained in place for nearly 300 years.
" because the cost is good is often more than what is acceptable or possible to pay." Two questions: 1) Do you speak English? 2) Can you write in English?
It seems this level of hubris is encouraged in economics (they're the most highly cited group in congressional testimony, and except for one year WWII, the most frequently quoted profession in the New York Times for almost 100 years). It's strange because there are so many assumptions required for their models of "reality" to work. Also, it seems that Sowell is ignoring that price is an approximation of willingness to pay (but is limited by the interaction with ABILITY to pay), which approximates of the satisfaction of preferences (Hausman has some good critiques of economic theory). So REAL value (hedonic pleasure, pain avoidance or time savings) is frequently NOT measured by the construct of price.
There are no hard and fast lines in the real world at all. Belief that the natural world is actually divisible into rigid categories is a profound philosophical problem reflecting a misunderstanding between the mind and nature, something Engels wrote extensively on.
Reminds me of something I heard when I was picking my degree: Biology is really Chemistry Chemistry is really Physics Physics is really Maths And Maths is really hard
That beginning really sounded like: "On the positive side: he doesn't use mathematics and formulas. On the negative side however: he doesn't use mathematics and formulas."
Also his argument about the monopolies is kind of twisted if you think about it. Even if he was right and they will eventually fall during the time that they do exist they can cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. By that same logic the Nazi's shouldn't be opposed cause they will fall or imperialism or communist dictatorships or any empire.
@MrMarinus18 Yeah, it's twisted. He would actually prefer a scenario where malevolent monopolies exist and cause harm over collectivization or regulation in the chance it may harm monopolies. He also ignores the fact that capitalism trends toward monopolization as competition leads to consolidation of capital. He probably thinks the government creates monopolies through regulation instead of monopolies control regulation by lobbying the government
@@logancatron2239Governments are given the Federal capacity to abrogate or inact economic regulations at their leisure consequently this causes private or corporate entities to lobby the government because that is the only way they can stay a step ahead of their competition which results in those select few corporations consolidating power and becoming monopolies and an extention of the government.
I don't get how some people can say things like, 'Feudalism wasn't so good because you had some authority telling you what to make and what to do', when that's what happens in capitalism. It's like they only think employers exist, and employees are subhumans who don't count. If some authority telling you want to make is bad, then economic power should be given not to the State, but to the people.
That's not what happens in capitalism at all. Consumers tell you what to make. Millions of people making different decisions about what they want, and how much. Not one person.
Thomas sowell's position, and others like him, is basically that anything "good" that happens in an economy with *some* market mechanisms (NEP USSR, modern china etc.) is because of the wonders of free market capitalism. When something "bad" arises in those same economies or other similar "mixed economies", the problem is government intervention. Its an inherently infallible position.
I feel like in addition to "Everything good is due to the market", we should also add "Everything that results from the market is good". The core mantras of modern economic thinking.
The point is that nobody promised you anything in the free market. So you weren’t cheated out of anything because you didn’t have to buy into anything. But the government maintains authority under the presumption that they’ll deliver results. So you paid your entrance fees for nothing.
@@pekka1900 you can apply this to literally any school of economics, so... congrats on insulting literally everyone I guess? Not a very meaningful comment to make.
As a history major, you really hit the nail on the head of what I found disturbing about a lot of economics literature and pop economics I've read. The history training I received emphasized the need for treating complex historical processes with nuance, properly contextualizing them, and highlighting their contingent and embodied nature. What I mean by that last bit is that processes like the emergence of capitalism and market economies were not preordained, and at every step, individuals and organizations made specific choices within a range of potential choices that shaped the development of the processes. For me, the works produced by academics like Sowell are deeply disappointing because they take fascinating historical concepts and reduce them to so many abstract eternal laws that must be followed. Your section on the role of governance within markets was particularly interesting to me, and I really appreciate you including your sources so I can learn more about those topics!
Have you read Basic Economics? It actually has a lot of nuance that's being ignored by the creator of this video. I think you'd find that Sowell actually talks about how important nuance is. The whole point of the book is that implementation is the most important thing in any scenario. That's the whole idea behind scarcity and tradeoffs. I really recommend you read the book even if you disagree with what he says. I think you'll find it way more complex than it's being portrayed.
I'd like Unlearning Economics do a video on war economies particularly during the second world war. He might need to interview someone who specialises in that field. It would be interesting to know how much each nations' economy resembled a planned economy as the war escalated.
@@geoffgjofThe man isn't a scientist interested in truth, he's a propagandist and it becomes obvious if you actually check his statements against the modern historical or economic literature. He never learned how to perform credible statistical work (economists were notoriously bad at it for decades and he got his PhD in the 1960s) and it really really shows when he tries to "prove" something. This video fairly represents the book and the reasons that is a very poor quality learning resource. The section on market failures in particular is well worth watching. Greetings from a statistican in Switzerland
@@Bill-kk7tz I obviously think you're mistaken. Can you point to some specifics to back up your claim? Everything in this video is actually wrong when you look up all the stats 🤣
I think one of the immediate counters to Sowells argument that "free markets allocate resources most efficiently" is in the existence of luxury goods. The vast majority of a population can and will never have the resources to operate in that market segment, yet it accounts for a disproportionately large amount of financial movement despite having such a small number of participants. The items it creates aren't necessary, requested by the greater market or the most efficient use of resources - yet these sections of the economy are remarkably resilient, even in times of wider economic crisis (e.g. sales of luxury vehicles increasing during recessions). The Bugatti Tourbillion and GMA T.50 are far from the most efficient use of our resources - however beautiful and marvelous they may be - and the wider market did not call for their existence, yet they continue to exist and sell for unfathomable amounts of money.
@@elizartringov2583 If there's a significant number of people who are homeless, housing insecure, permanent renters, food bank reliant or living paycheck to paycheck and the free market is still pushing out £2m luxury vehicles, that is an objectively inefficient use of resources. Again, I understand the attraction, but there's no way to square that as an efficient use of resources.
What goods would u define as luxury, cause this is relative. Most developed and some developed economies access to a bar of chocolate is not even considered a luxury. But chocolate is a luxury good isn't it? In conclusion, what u propose doesn't annul sowel point. Not saying sowel is correct, but that u haven't disproven him.
1:40:24 Parks and libraries are unique because they offer a space where you can "be" without the expectation of spending money. They kind of exist in their own realm, almost off limits to monetization.
Libraries could be viewed as one of the safeguards against the excesses of markets. Not just a place to sit and do nothing, but also a way to bypass the price requirements of information and communication
The money has been spent through taxes to create the library and its space. Either the library visitor paid for it or someone else's taxes paid for it. It's not outside the realm of monetization
@@poptraxx418 Yeah that's why financial investors call entering a market with companies like Amazon "kill zones" because it's impossible to enter. Because the markets are like totally not monopolized.
The quote about how the burden on the libertarian is greater is quite apt. I was literally once featured on /r/badeconomics for a post where I merely argued, citing statistical data and academic sources, that parts of China's public sector positively impacted its growth. My post was not even pro-central planning as it was literally talking positively about China's system which is a mixed economy. The people who reposted me on/r/badeconomics argued against literally every example, saying all of them would've been better if it was privatized. They refused to accept a _single_ point _at all._ To be a libertarian you have to one-by-one argue against literally _everything_ the government can ever do, which has always just come off as dogmatic to me, but it's the approach you mostly see when there is a discussion on China's economy. It already has most its GDP produced by the private sector but there's usually an insistence that this inherently means if they just privatized everything they would grow even more, which is incredibly dubious especially if you read what Chinese economists say about their own economy.
Can't argue that public sector hurt the growth, but I can argue that the growth is more like a cancerous tumor than anything positive. The masses of ghost cities and tofu dregs, along with the very poor living conditions, seems to suggest that the growth is hollow, similar to how GDP growth by inflation means nothing.
@@drascalicus5187oh my god stop consuming propaganda. There are no "ghost cities" they're literally just planning for housing and they're filled up pretty quick.
Thomas Sowell’s books were my first dedicated introduction economics, and I found a lot of them quite helpful and fascinating as someone completely new to many of these concepts, but as someone with a love of history I am well aware that the kind of free market systems Sowell praised were very contingent on certain institutional and cultural frameworks that were definitely not hands-off or intuitive. Given literally no oversight, the same kinds of issues seen elsewhere in society arise in economies. I came into this video a bit guarded given the thumbnail, but this was well-argued and asked a lot of the same questions I had with better insight, especially regarding government intervention and regulation.
I am thankful I had taken the two basic economics classes in college (micro and macro) *BEFORE* I even knew who he was. To me, he comes across as a right wing charlatan than an intellectual.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 Micro and macro economics are now _propaganda_ ? Gee, I didn't know calculus verbal problems (ie. micro and macro) had _an agenda._ 🤦🏻♀️
22:30 - "Sowell's counterexample of [the Garden of Eden] is entirely made up" I suspect half of Sowell's readership would probably ragequit the video at this point lol
I guess I have always had a soft spot for command economies because I essentially lived in one for 8 years while in the US army and saw how it can work and provide for the basic physical needs of a society. Every large company also uses a centrally planned economy to manage its interior economy, and these companies manage to output enormous numbers of products while never using a pricing mechanism to determine interior consumption. However, much like market based systems, I dont believe that centrally planned systems are inherently better at producing everything a society wants.
Thank you. After working for corporations, it's hard for me to take at face-value the idea that command economies don't work. Corporations are command economies internally and there's an industry of consultants, business schools, and researchers trying to figure out ways to make the command economy work better.
@@robfromvan that's like complaining that that the US military is comparatively bloated compared to a random African militia that doesn't need a burger king flown in from the US. The contexts in which they operate in and the requirements that come from such contexts makes such comparisons ludicrous. Big corporations, as compared to small businesses, can and do participate in a much wider variety of trades across a much larger geographies. That's why they're big. and why small businesses have to become big if they want to do the same thing. Yeah, your neighborhood bar serves better burgers than McDonald's but McD is selling burgers all over the world, with pricing precise enough to be used as a proxy metric for comparing economies. and with localized menus to cater to local tastes and develop their brand beyond being American fastfood.
People should be replacing "the economy" with "the people." Because that's all an economy really is when you boil it down. It's people making decisions on what to prioritize and what things they are willing to sacrifice for their higher priorities. People keep treating the economy likes it's some machine they can tinker with to get the outcome they want, but it's an organic network of people, in their own unique conditions, making decisions and interacting together.
governments who of course are extremely effecient, locking down the world over a cough virus killing no one anmd forcing a batch of rushed untested echemicals that they bought at 200 bucks a dose because the companies who created it had exclusive contracts...
@vebdaklu I agree with you 100% about top-down control being the worst way you could manage an economy, but that doesn't change the fact that, at it's core, the economy is organic. And that's exactly why top-down control doesn't work.
I remember Mark Blyth talking about how he first got into economics by watching a TV discussion between a Keynesian economist and a monetarist one. The monetarist had 5 equations to explain the entire economy compared to the Keynesian's 30 or so, and he thought: 'That has to be bullshit' .
here’s a random useless comment: i thought backscratchers were novelty gifts until i was 16 and learned many people cannot scratch any part of their back as they please. i was exceptionally flexible from my youngest days and remain so currently
It's kind of sad, really, because that's an amount of flexibility just about everyone but the most muscular dudes should have. So many of us let ourselves go or have our bodies destroyed by years of manual labor without proper rest and recovery. I, too, thought backscratchers were stupid, until I saw an obese person try to get a post-it note off their back and realized that basically anyone over the age of 30 who doesn't take care of themselves probably can't reach their own back.
@@TheSpecialJ11 Hey, I'm over the age of 30, don't take care of myself, and can reach my back just fine! xd I don't think it takes that much flexibility to be honest. It's just not particularly comfortable, and a bit awkward.
As you say, "glib" is the best way to characterize Sowell. I think he's interesting as a history of ideas case study, a shift in black intellectuals in the 70s. Besides that, it's just the bog standard old libertarian stuff.
The part about Sowell claiming "people always want more" almost feels like propaganda rather than theory; the biggest hurdle in capitalism's eternal growth is the fact that demand doesn't grow similarly (not necessarily at least). Saying it's a rule of nature that people always want more might function to increase demands of commodities, because if people believe this, they might feel less bad about spending irresponsibly. But this is of course a problem in the field of economics in general, where the line between theory and propaganda is obscured almost entirely.
I think this is why we've had such a strong move towards "rentier capitalism" (Is it really capitalism if it's rent and not profit?). Demand has been satisfied in the developed world, so now the only way to get people to spend more money is to make their needs, like education, healthcare, and housing cost more, because despite TVs being cheaper than ever, no one needs eight of them.
Why associate capitalism specifically with "eternal growth"? Captialism itself speaks nothing to the need for constant growth. The reason there's a drive for continual growth is because *people want that growth* - and they use capitalism to achieve that goal. They'd do it in a variety of other economic systems as well.
Once you all can't use the term "capitalism " and are required to understand "Free Market economy" as the need and principle, then ask which term fits that best and under which system persons can and do obtain actual growth??
@@whackedoutpoobrainno, it's the seleucid empire. It was ruled by the seleucid dynasty, a family descended from seleucus. If you're "in seleucid", you're either in the seleucid dynasty or... 😳
Sowell's arguments as to why food and oxygen aren't "needs" has me banging my head against the wall, either to get it out of my head or damage my brain enough so that it makes sense
I'm glad your patrons caught that bit on hunter-gatherers and indigenous peoples, that was my immediate reaction while listening 😅 I will say though, as a non-economist I always saw surplus in their societies to be either of finished products (tools, clothes, pelts, etc) or stuff like firewood, and well meat in some climates can be salted and stored for long, but primarily I felt the surplus or deficit was *in nature* during a season, year or longer period. Don't have to store things if nature is keeping it fresh. Edit: also wonder where indigenous people practicing slash and burn agriculture or pastoralism (both which can be nomadic) would fit in to that discussion, since they have more ways of generating surplus.
@@jaihawkinsthe Khoikhoi of South Africa were nomadic pastoralists, and measured wealth in cattle. They traded cattle with local farming groups, as well as Europeans. Doesn't this imply some form of surplus?
@@kwarra-an In this case we are talking about an agrarian society, my ancestors, Indigenous Australians, did engage in limited agriculture, planting of seasonal crops, building weirs, and fire stick farming, however in my understanding there was no concept of "personal wealth". The closest approximation would be the size of your tribe, as in the number of people you could keep fed, the size of your mob. Of course all people have desires, but a 'European' concept of wealth is an introduced one.
@@jaihawkins suppose it depends on how you're defining surplus, I would guess that any group able to preserve things by salting, drying, etc. or store some inedible forest produce would do so for when times are tougher. I guess that's more of a reserve than a surplus explicitly for trade, but I know that the indigenous tribes of Brazil would produce brasil dye and trade it with Europeans. So such communities probably wouldn't maintain a surplus of raw perishable items, but processed goods. Edit: I'm talking about indigenous communities more generally, not specific to Australia.
I would love a UE video about Graeber's Debt: The first 5000 years. It was really life changing for me in how I view society and money, but its such a dense book that I dont think ill ever have anyone in my life to discuss it with.
"... Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages…" Apple Computer was founded in 1976, not the 1980s; and none of its three founders had ever worked for, let alone split from, IBM-they had worked for Atari & HP... Anyone who shamelessly makes stuff like this up has absolutely no credibility whatsoever.
@@tomasrocha6139take your copy of the book, cross out IBM and write in HP and atari. next cross out 1980s and write in 1976. There u go, one edit and Mr Graeber is one of the great anthropologists of the 2000s again! Being a few years off and naming the wrong firm is a mistake an editor shouldve caught, not the kind of mistake that tanks the central thesis.
@@alphachicken9596 It's filled with similar blunders, for instance it asserts Carl Menger mathematized Adam Smith's theory of money when Carl Menger did not use mathematics in his economic theories.
Oof. Your mea culpa around 19 minutes was all good until you brought up 'dark emu'. That once-beloved book has received a fair bit of criticism of late. As I understand it, Pascoe is kind of like the Jared Diamond of Australian history. Popular with the public, but 'real' historians tend to give him a major side-eye.
Yes, but the broad point remains: Australia had around 500 recognised Aboriginal "nations" with internal trade networks as well as trade into Indonesia and PNG, across these groups the existence and management of surplus and scarcity was diverse. That remains uncontroversial and is the central point of his (slightly clumsy) mea culpa. But also, yeah, Bruce Pascoe is not an academic historian
HEY so glad your covering this, just wanted to share my expiriance witn this guy: Tomas sowell litteraly taught me to hate myself for being black in highschool... i had abit of a right wing jordan peterson phase, and during this time bought "intelectrualls on race" and man, idk just good job covering this, thomas sowell is peak neo- liberal or should i say neo-fascism apologetics..
Thomas, the guy who repeatedly says we should ignore race, got you to hate yourself? And Jordan Peterson is not right wing. He’s a classical liberal through and through. I think you need to read up on these guys again.
@@davidnavarro4821 These days, yes. Today's conservative is basically a 2003 liberal, for the most part. The whole overton window has certainly shifted leftwards as the years have gone on.
Thank you, “Unlearning Economics” for this video. I appreciate the alternate view because I would rather be proven wrong than remain in ignorance. I have a few criticisms of your criticism of Sowell. I mean no disrespect to you, and if my assessment is incorrect, feel free to explain so I might understand more clearly Firstly, the "Economics and scarcity" chapter of your video. The logic behind this critique seems to be something like this: 1) Sowell's definition of economics is in line with mainstream economics. 2) I don't like the mainstream definition. 3) Therefore, Sowell is a bad economist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but by that logic, Sowell is no worse than any economist in the mainstream. Further, the Robbins definition as quoted in the video doesn't appear in "Basic Economics" (at least the fourth edition, which is the copy I have). You say that Sowell’s definition doesn't give anything to point to and say 'we study that'. The definition Sowell does provide is "Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses", and he writes, in other words, that "economics studies the consequences of decisions that are made about the use of land, labor, capital" etc. To me, that's a fairly clear statement of what economists study. The way I understand it, your refutation of Sowell seems to rely on a logical fallacy and misrepresentation of the text. However, if you can convince me otherwise, I’m happy to listen. Second, you claim that The New York Times article doesn’t support Sowell’s argument that people’s desires exceed their income. In my understanding, Sowell uses the article not as evidence, but to illustrate a self-evident statement that people’s desires exceed their income. To try to debunk it as evidence is to miss the point. However, assuming your point is valid, you’re arguing that the family with the pool are evangelical Christians who shun material trappings. When you quote the couple, you includes the words “a lot of people define their lives, by how much they have... I am not saying we are above that thinking. We clearly aren't.” So, the couple themselves are admitting that they do, in fact, to a degree, define their lives by how much they have. Moreover, the article states that that family struggled to save money because of the cost of fixing up their house, the most expensive item of which was “a new pump and other equipment for the pool”. This does support Sowell’s point that people's desires exceed their income, and consequently, trade-offs are inevitable. In this case, the choice was to put the money into savings or fix the pool. It makes no sense for them to claim that they’re struggling because they can’t do both.
I don't see how one can dispute the notion that people’s desires exceed their means of satisfying those desires. I’m a pretty simple guy, but I can’t afford everything I want, so I have to prioritise the things that are most important to me. However, if you can enlighten me, I would greatly appreciate it; as stated, I do not want to remain in ignorance. What evidence can you produce to demonstrate that people’s desires do not exceed their means? Third, you claim that Sowell does not believe in needs. In the chapter of ‘Basic Economics’ that you’re referring to, Sowell states that “however urgent it may be to have some food and some water, for example, in order to sustain life itself, nevertheless-beyond some point-both become not only unnecessary but even counterproductive and dangerous... even the most urgently required things remain necessary only within a given range.” Here’s my understanding of that quote: Shelter, for instance, is a need. However, ‘shelter’ could be a tent, or it could be a 12-bedroom mansion. Like the presenter said, transport is also a need. But transport could be a bike, a 25-year-old Ford like the one I drive, or a $150k BMW. All Sowell is saying that the need is met at some point along those scales. Anything beyond that point is a desire, but it can be difficult to tell where that point is, and that point may be different for people in different circumstances, or even for an individual at different points in their life. Therefore, needs do exist, but can be difficult to differentiate from desires. Again, it appears to me that you are misrepresenting or misunderstanding the text. I'm 40 minutes into your video and have considered your arguments (rereading Sowell's text, watching parts of the video multiple times, and reading Sowell's sources as I went). I think I've given you fair consideration so far. As ever, I mean no disrespect in challenging your views, and if you can convince me otherwise, I’m happy to be proven wrong.
It’s a shame that you went through the trouble of such a well thought out rebuttal of this guys criticisms, and yet it has almost no engagement. People go into these videos wanting confirmation bias. Tom Sowell is an absolute legend.
I think I can sum it up a little more succinctly: when Sowell says that scarcity exists because 'what everyone wants always adds up to more than there is', the suspicion a left wing or otherwise non-liberal economist would have about that statement is that producers have some way of manipulating consumers in order to make them want more than there is. I've had this argument many times, and there isn't much in the way of evidence to point to either way. It really digs down to deeper assumptions about wether or not people are capable of free will in the first place. The fact that humans can be manipulated/coerced and are fallible doesn't mean they can't or never make decisions of their own volition, but neither does it mean that we can completely trust price signals as a true reflection of the aggregate of supply and demand, which is what Sowell would basically claim they are. In my opinion, this argument is insoluble and will never be resolved, because the problem of free will is intractable.
sorry, leaf sheep are definitely animals. they may photosynthesise via kleptoplasty but they lack cell walls and are more closely related to other gastropods
@@rifelawyes the powerful like to be lied to and told they are doing no wrong. Duh. Use your brain. The polio vaccine made no money. Not $1. Is it inherently bad because it was free? That's your argument. That the only value that can be derived from something is monetary.
Yeah. The ONE little comment that they're not a good idea was bizarre to me. All companies internally plan, all economies are already a mix, China seems like it's doing well, etc. All I can think he meant was that bureaucrats shouldn't dictate prices or something, which isn't what anybody means by this.
@@ismaelramirez4803 What else would planning mean but logistics? Economic planning is linear algebra, taking in the data about inputs and outputs to balance supply and demand rationally. This is absolutely what companies do. Anyway. It's still weird to me to hear a lefty say something that sounds like old propaganda. We know planning works because it already is being used and works.
Just commenting that Dark Emu is a terrible work of history. It cherry picks colonial sources to frame increase ceremonies as farming attempts, stretches the definitions beyond breaking point (for example his definition of domestication would mean that sharks have domesticated pilotfish), and completely ignored indigenous oral and cultural history. More fundamentally, it's central claim reveolves around this idea that to be "mere hunter-gatherers," is somehow deficient compared to agriculture (there's a joke in anthropology that Pascoe's whole argument is "Don't be racist, the Aboriginal people weren't savages, they were barbarians!"). There's evidence that Aboriginal people on the north Queensland coast were exposed to agriculture by the Austronesian Torres Strait Islanders and just... decided it wasn't their thing. For anyone curious about the critiques of Dark Emu that aren't racist right wing screeching, I'd recommend Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe.
And tbh, there are accounts by early colonists about seeing episodes of cannibalism by certain indigenous tribes in Australia. These are in the state archives but not talked about much.
@@mkkrupp2462That's true, but I'm not sure what that has to do with their agricultural mode of production. All the primary sources I've read state that it's funirary cannibalism (them eating their own dead as a sign of respect), not as a means of sustainance.
It's interesting all this because Dark Emu is heavily based on the work of Neil Gammage's "The Biggest Estate on Earth" and the core aspects of Pascoes agricultural claims are derived from there, but nobody goes after Gammage... Firstly because parts of Dark Emu are speculative, but I also think the big reason is that right-wing commentators obsess is because they think Pascoe a fake aboriginal and there's an awful animus towards him just for existing. Gammage is white and he is a very hard-working and learned researcher so I don't think they would dare. I recommend the book if u havent. I have argued with people who denigrate Pascoe that there is a problem with the definition of agriculture as defined by settled societies. And yes some have shared your feeling about hunter-gatherer cringe, but thats not how I read him. Pascoe is trying to show that Aboriginal people had a material culture with complexity, and that's not easy to do in Australian society. Plus If you plant seeds as you move through the landscape, and you make infrastructure to harvest prey (fish/eel/wallaby traps) as well as modify landscape to steer the wildlife composition (fire) then isn't this a bit MORE than just hunting and gathering? Its not a technology that is very impressive compared to settled civilisations, but considering that Australia has always been fickle in climate, settler agriculture would have been a precarious strategy and thus curtailed? Archaeological evidence shows that there were times when populations were hammered by famine caused by long drought... I cant help but wonder if events like this could have scuttled attempts at developing settled agriculture as it was emerging.
@@mkkrupp2462 the "cannibal savages" trope is a supremely contestable claim, virtually all the 'primary sources' are based NOT on actual eye-witness accounts of actually seeing anyone commit cannibalism (outside of scattered incidents of it occurrring due to famine or individual emergency situations, and thus not the cannibalism-as-cultural-custom that it's nearly always framed as), but from 2nd-hand accounts (a dude from this tribe said that long ago their grandpa said that.../this tribe says tribe B does it but we've never seen it so we'll take their word for it), or suppositions (the savages killed our shipmates then built bonfires presumably to cook and eat our comrades but we were so scared and sickened at the thought of this that we split before the "feast" took place and never considered that maybe they were just going to burn the bodies) to outright making shit up. So, in these accounts, did early colonists *actually* see these tribes eating people, and under what conditions? Are these colonists reliable narrators, or is it possible that they just assumed that's what was *going* to happen? It was pretty common for colonists everywhere to tell horrendous stories about the people they saw as primitive, bloodthirsty savages who needed to be exterminated. Just saying.
@@almishti Well I guess we’ll never know for sure, but it is fairly clear that the romanticised view of Aboriginal culture as benign peaceful farmers is extremely far fetched. Life was no doubt very difficult and it was a great accomplishment that the Aboriginal people had persisted on this continent for that length of time. But the great majority of people with aboriginal dna today are not those people. They have lived their whole lives in a modern technological civilisation and it’s certainly the case that they would not cope with the lifestyles of their ancestors. In that sense they are more similar to non indigenous Australians than some of them would like to acknowledge.
I grew up working class in a house with a pool. It also had asbestus in the walls, the pool needed to be redone, pretty much every fixture needed replacing and the backyard was a jungle. It took my mom years to gather the money to do all the repairs.
I hope you are doing well now. Ironically, the house with a pool example exemplifies Sowell's other point about how too much of a good thing can be bad. Just like too much Oxygen would lead to cancer, a house with a pool (instead of the right investments in a living wage, freely available healthcare, good transit, and reasonably sized high quality housing etc.) will lead to a decrease in people's quality of life. It's basically a white elephant.
For all you Thomas Sowell fanboys. Google the number of peer-reviewed publications Sowell has in leading academic economics journals. Google the number of quantative articles Sowell has published (and I don't mean descriptive statistics). Google the number of UA-cam videos showing Sowell debating a leading economists. Google what economic contributions Sowell is credited with making. Google the number of books Sowell has published from non-far right think tanks. Never mind, I will just tell you - ZERO, ZERO, ZERO, ZERO, and ZERO Sowell is the orginal DEI/Affrimative Action hire...
Google how Sowell helped create Anti Trust laws in the 1960s. The man deserves some credit. But you'll just sit here and wont mention any of that. Now. "Your" world economics leaders (Not sowell) have selectively chosen which businesses are too big to fail. Socialism is already in the US. All 10 of Karl marxs points are in use today. Sowell is wrong that socialism will never be in america. But he will not be wrong on how it ends.
He's a plant stop blaming everything on DEI you and your ancestors fumbled a 400 year head start while we gave you most important inventions to win wars and make the us what it was. That's why you haymte us and blame DEI cuz without us yall have accomplished nothing but slavery colonization racism sexism and classism without that you guys would be last in everything.
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The idea that pre-agriculture or contemporary forager societies don't have economies seems very... strange and ahistorical. If what makes an economy is scarcity and surplus then they certainly had both. That said, I also don't really understand why an economy must have either if an economy is all about the production and distribution of goods and services.
I'm definitely on the pro-Sowell, pro-market side of things, but I was hoping this would be good. As soon as he said that nonsense, I was disappointed. But I'm still slogging through it. Economics, in my opinion, is the study of human choice under conditions of scarcity. Surplus is irrelevant to its definition, though it's certainly a very important phenomenon to study.
The defining event in the creation of what we call "capitalism" today was Cromwell's conquest of Ireland. The conquest was one of the first instances in Europe of simultaneous disruption of political power, land tenancy and land ownership, under the control of a merchant class (the puritans) rather than a feudal aristocratic class. It allowed the mass conversion of land from being based on traditional legal obligations and tenancy, to land as a tradeable commodity, that Cromwell used to pay off the various mercenaries who put him into power. You can draw a straight line between that and the spread of mass evictions and enclosures back in England later on. It also laid the groundwork for the ideology of capitalism, especially the puritanical ideas around "thrift" and "hard work" being inherent to the ownership class, despite them demonstrably not being hard-working or thrifty at all while they accumulated and spent the wealth their indentured laborers worked for. But by forcing the lower classes to work, by giving business owners the status of "moral educators" to the lower classes - part of the ideology that's still inherent to capitalism today, if you see the debates around "return to office" for remote workers. (Cromwell's conquest of Ireland is also the source of things like anti-miscegenation laws, individual gun ownership as a tool for controlling an underclass of segregated workers, and a big reason for the spread of "plantations" as a colonial economic model, if you're familiar with where all of those things led...)
Indeed. The idea of the work-ethic is intrinsically linked with capitalism too though that was more American. The idea that work is a virtue by itself regardless of context. This was used to justify American slavery though it was also spread to other people. This combination of mercantile land ownership and morality through work by itself was the moral justification for capitalism. This idea of work ethic is a big part of the alienation Marx talked about. the idea that work is valueable even if you don't own the tools or get any of the rewards.
But also while the Soviet-Union had a ton of issues many seem to forget it was still an overall success. It was undoubtably one of the strongest nations in the world with the second largest economy, a massive industry, a huge military and the sophisticated political and beaurocratic system to manage it all. While some of it's problems, mainly it's bloated military proved too much in the end I would still classify the Stalinist economic system as an overall success. Being one of the world's dominant powers for over 50 years is nothing to scoff at.
@@MrMarinus18 I agree and this is my main point of contention with this incredibly informative video. While I fully recognize it's issues, and thus would not necessarily advocate for central planning, specially not with some of the Stalinist characteristics, dismissing it outright as "simply bad and does not work" is very shallow too. I can't help but wonder how it could have worked out if it was the entire world working with that same goal, instead of a bunch of disparate nations competing in arms races and sabotaging each other every chance they get.
@@edumazieri Many say the Soviet-Union economically collapsed but it didn't. It had stagnated but it ran just fine and most of the people actually liked it. The main reason it failed was a military coup due to how bloated and corrupt the military had become. So when Gorbachov tried to get it in line they arrested him and essentially held him hostage as they didn't want to lose their power. A bloated and corrupt military rebelling against a ruler trying to get them in line is a quite common thing in history. It's not unique to the Soviet-Union.
@@edumazieri I think the problem is that the cold war is just 30 years ago. Most leftists still feel a strong need to distance themselves from the USSR and disavow it to prove that they are not "communists".
Why do you think central planning wouldn't work? This may be my bias as an ex-inventory analyst, but the inventory for the manufacturing processes my warehouses supplied was managed using Lean Six Sigma and a network of demand signaling nodes that warned upstream nodes of inventory needs, with calculated risks for unforseen events. While the global economy is too complex to manage in its entirety, much like our warehouses, each node managed its own inner complexities and signaled other nodes up and down the line, like a nervous system. For profit businesses have been centrally planning for years, why can't a country? Taking out the profit motive seems to be like it would only make it easier
Because the people who ardently and dogmatically advocate for Capitalism, don't really understand the basic processes that make it tick. They think that somehow one entity can do the job, but the other one couldn't. Why? Because they say so; and "saying so" is the first step to manufacture "the truth", in people's minds. When in reality, that "truth" only exists to serve the dominant class. It's propaganda and ideology. People think that Governments couldn't run supermarkets, or make food, or own a construction company - even though history has already proved otherwise. Even Unlearning Economics - God bless is soul - is not immune to that relentless propaganda, either. People repeat it so much that it becomes truth, it becomes canon, it becomes impossible to contradict the narrative because those who believe in it will act incredulous at your disbelief of it - and in their minds, they think that's enough to "win the argument". And they don't need to take you seriously anyway, because your position systematically loses to the Status Quo (TM).
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make with conceptualizing a centrally planned economy is conceptualizing it as having price-fixing as an end-goal. When I plan a distribution network, I do NOT "charge" node 3 for resources demanded from node 2. No sane-minded business would charge themselves money. Instead, Node 3 sends a demand signal to node 2, which sends a demand signal to nodes further up the chain... etc. until we hit the point of providence for the raw materials. The most classic, easiest example of the absurdity of a "centrally planned economy" that utilizes prices is that of your own home. When you stock resources in your house, you *charge* your children when they eat the cereal and use the price of that to control demand for the cereal to match what you buy? It's an insane notion. When workers own and share the resources, demand signals determine how much of what is brought to the table, not the other way around. When competing for limited resources, you look at the demand signals of the downstream nodes and allocate fairly amongst them. Price fixing is a method of manipulating markets, but a centrally planned economy cannot coexist with a market; markets are, after all, unplanned. Entirely new methods of resource allocation will need to be invented.
I also don't think you need any sort of cost incentive to increase efficiency in a system. When the system has known demands, known priors, and information shared equally among all "players", then the efficiency gains are in time and resources. If you know that the downstream nodes you serve need 300 widgets, then finding a way of producing 300 widgets faster means *you can go home earlier*. And finding a way to produce them using less waste or requiring fewer upstream resources means that other groups of your fellow workers have to produce less, which means more resources can be allocated elsewhere. There is a global efficiency incentive.
How do you counter vicious behavior on a large scale? You can't just hire and fire people like you do in a company: the filter which ensures some basic loyalty. When we design nation-wide systems we should think as if we had a user-base of complete psychopaths.
The Sowell moment they always got me was, when he debated Francis Fox Piven and she made a point that black voters tend to vote Democratic now because the Democrats provide the things they want to which Sowell argued, obtusely, that unless piven had asked every black person in America, she wasnt proving anything and that Black people actually don’t support social programs because Sowell doesn’t support social programs
Sowell wasn't entirely wrong if a bit too pithy: the Democrats pander to the minority communities basic immediate wants, not what they actually need to lift their communities out of dependence on government which is EXACTLY where Piven and the Democrats want them as pawns in their power game... keep them dependent and they will continue to vote for those who give them what they want. Research the Cloward-Piven strategy designed to bring down government via economically crushing dependence on government welfare in order to create the necessary conditions for THEIR Marxist revolution. It's evil.
Sowell is popular to people who don't know much about economics for one reason: race. Sowell despises African Americans. He somehow discovered that his loathing of his own ethnic group, can be monetized. Candace Owens, Larry Elders, and many other Black conservatives have used Sowell's "self-hate" playbook to make a nice living for themselves. I'm African American, and enjoy debating White nationalists online. During my many debates over the years with WNs, they've only raised the name of one economist: Sowell. When I ask them to name their 3 favorite economists, they're speechless.
Oh, I see, if someone can't name more than one economist then their opinion should be discarded. Got it. Does this apply to everyone or just people who claim to like T. Sowell? "They" lol .... Has anyone ever told you that you changed their mind about Sowell because of your quizzing them on other economists? Gimme a break. How many conversations do you even HAVE with "them"? I mean, economics isn't a lightning rod for people's attention, is it? No you just want to relate some silly interaction you've had online as real life. Good try.
@@michaelwayne7887 Michael, the debates I'm referring to involve White nationalists. Only after several WNs raised the name of Sowell, did I began asking them to name 3 economists. Weird how none of the WNs could name any economist than Sowell. If I asked you for your top 3 economists, other than Sowell, who would you name?
How about Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Roland Fryer? Would it be okay to list several Jewish economists without getting reamed for it? Or how about we stop playing the race game and appreciate that black people, Jews, gays, or whatever else are actual individuals, capable of having their own values, worldviews, understandings, opinions, and analysis of the facts that have nothing to do with hating this group or being a "pivk-me" or any other of the horribly racist, bigoted things I've personally heard leftists say about people who have the courage to think for themselves regardless of demographics.
It's intensely ironic that Sowell talks about how having enough parking for everyone would be a bad thing when conservatives are typically the ones demanding more car parking at the expense of all else. He's American, and this book was published in 2000 after American cities had been thoroughly hollowed out mostly for car parking, and something tells me he's not trying to critique the very real problem of car dependency in the US.
Sowell grew up in New York City and has talked about the change the city has experienced. He has identified many problems that caused American cities to decline, and car dependency isn't one of them. Rising crime, falling youth unemployment, increased single motherhood, rising housing costs, and failing schools are all issues Sowell has talked about concerning the reason why American cities have declined. Sowell would also have much to say about why people focus on problems that aren't significant at the expense of problems that are.
@@BulletRain100Car dependency has one very serious effect (among others): helping to keep the working poor, poor. If one is poor, and require a car to get to one's job, the cost of operating a vehicle is a fairly serious expense. That's less money for rent and food. That's money one cannot set aside for emergencies.
@@BulletRain100 you want to help those in urban environments bootstrap up? Then you support public transit systems in urban AND SUBURBAN environments. The limited spread of public transit is a direct factor impeding many people's personal economic growth.
@@christophergreen6595 Is this why cities with robust public transportation have an ever increasing poor population while the middle class only exists in middle-sized cities? I'm all for public transportation but as someone who grew up dependent on it, it never helped me. The government and its services are not reliable and never will be for long.
@@BulletRain100 The explosion in the number of cars on the road caused leaded exhaust to pollute the air people breathed, and the effects on the brain of widespread lead poisoning contributed to at least half of the increase in crime in the second half of the 20th century. The EPA banning of leaded gasoline did more to reduce crime than the entire police force in the US. Sowell has nothing of value to suggest; it's policies of his very type that are largely to blame for the decline of US cities in that period. I don't wouldn't take seriously anything he says about that topic in particular. There's absolutely no denying that access to transportation is the biggest factor in being able to go to work, which means it plays a big factor in all of those problems you mention as well. If you can't commute to a job, you can't work, and then you either resort to other means or you become destitute. During this period, many jobs moved out of cities and into suburbs making many completely inaccessible to people who don't have an alternative means of transportation but public transit. Of course unemployment spiked. It's the predictable and fully intentional results of car centric planning.
The "Alexander the great" Proof, reminds me of the reasonings in a university course in economics text book that 'prove' things. My favorite example Premise: Planned economies are inferior Proof: North Korea has a planned economy while South Korea has a free market and North Korea's economy has a way lower GDP than South Korea. the two countries are very close together and are according to us only different in their economic policy. therefore: Conclusion: We have now proven that Planned economies have always been and will always be inferior! QED The book then pats itself on the back for being so brilliant and scientific. The book is full of "Cetris Paribus" assumption based horse-shit like this, "proving" statements for which real-world counterexamples exist and completely ignoring the geo-political, cultural and often even military/imperialist context. Let's ignore that one country has a dictatorship running it while the other is a democracy. These things should not be considered a meaningful difference, right? Or the fact that the 'great capitalist' power blocks were having this thing called 'cold war' going on that was mostly fought through proxies like small 2nd and 3rd world countries falling to communism or socialism. Let's also ignore all the cultural social context. All other things equal after all. Its like when you talk about minimum wage and you pretend that the entire ecosystem that is the economy can be reduced to the microcosm of the supply and demand of labor with no other variables or interactions between factors and draw a little graph and declare conclusions without any further testing of your conclusion Let's ignore the fact that a higher minimum wage might increase the means of the poorest section of the population who spends the most of their income, and that this increase in buying power might increase consumpution and that this could perhaps create more demand for labor and perhaps impact that simple two-dimensional model in ways it is unable to represent. I've been subject to economics education a lot in my country and what always struck me is how uncurious many free-market economicists are about the reality behind the models they made that are so dumbed down that a 9-year-old could understand them as long as they 'prove' the things that they politically agree with, in the same breath as that they declare that economics should ignore ethical questions no matter how much their work influences policy making and therefore the lives of millions of living breathing human beings. But then I had the epiphiny that perhaps the fact that the insanely simplified model is clear enough for a nine-year-old to understand is the entire point. Something that feels so simple and elegant can be very persuasive and hard to argue against. Why would you want to test disprove it if it serves your purposes? The decision to ignore ethical considerations, is an ethical consideration. It just happens to be one that intentionally leads to unethical decisions.
The disgusting part was that all this was part of an economics course that was offered to governance students, that had the goal of informing them that rent control and minimum wage were bad things with only bad consequences, and that we future policy makers should remember to listen to the economists about this stuff. In a country where minimum wages and rent control have been effectively implemented since World War 2. And the course was designed by the department's lead economist who very much prides himself about how he spends half his time talking to the policy makers that reprivatized the energy market, the telecommunications infrastructure markets, the student loan market, the health insurance market, and all hospitals...leading to worse outcomes for way more expensive services in all cases without exception. Under the old system, we paid 20 bucks a month for health insurance, unless you had no income because then you got it for free. Hospitals had decent reasonable waiting times and looked like sterile empty spartan buildings with minimalistic approaches. But they had plenty of hospital beds. Now, you pay about 200 bucks a month for (for many things partial coverage) hospitals that look really nice, with bloody museums and botanical gardens in their entry halls along with shopping centers, severe bed shortages solved by sending people home after surgery as soon as they won't definitely die from that, long ass waiting lists, and insurance companies striking another 5 things from what is covered under the basic insurance policy every year while some politicians have started arguing that life-saving surgeries for people over 65 should be re-classified as non-essential. And we now have to pay for more and more drugs ourselves too. Public transportation went from very affordable, driving on time, driving at least once every hour for all busses and trains to under privatized.... well, the buses look nicer, but the drivers are underpaid, the ticket prices are so high that it's cheaper to own a car and drive than to take the bus to work and they don't do the driving on time as much anymore either. The company in charge of maintaining the rail network just didn't do that for 5 years, just stuffing out the entire budget in dividents, and now they ask for more money because the whole bloody network is faulty and in disrepair and they don't get enough money to cover replacing all the broken parts. Something they could have prevented by doing the job they were paid to do, but cut corners on. So trains often don't go along certain routes for weeks as rail sections become inoperatble. (most of this has now been solved by spending lots of government money to make up the difference, you know, money all that privatizing was supposed to save, the remainder was fixed with price hikes, which has caused more people to opt for private transport where they could afford the investment of buying a vehicle) Student loans...well they used to be grants but now we're all stuck paying them back. Something economists all think is awesome because the costs of education are now paid for by the people benefitting from that education by getting better jobs. Except loans are bad for people's mental health which has upped the costs for healthcare as depressions become way more common and less people opt for a higher education, undermining the knowledge-economy status of the work-force which also hurts our competitive edge over other countries. The energy market..... oof. A power company would buy 1 KWH for 0.02 euros, and sell it to consumers for 0.22 euros. Then the whole energy market crash happened because Ukraine, yada yada. So then power companies would buy 1 KWH for 0.18 euros, and thus also increase their selling price by 900%. Because that is a sane thing to do. If your price of import rises, than so should your profit margin. This has been bad for everyone. Paying 1.98 euros for 1 KWH (raising the price by 900% instead of by 20 cents like their cost rose) effects every level of the economy. Every business uses power to produce their products. So all prices in all markets went up accordingly and we saw a price inflation of over 10% overall while people's energy costs at home went up with 900% The government was forced to hand out money to everyone below the poverty line to prevent massive loss of housing and everyone was forced to turn down their heaters and desperately implement whatever power-saving measures they could afford. So the rich bought solar panels And the poor started using food banks. Telecom infrastructure markets... We used to have a universal grid for phones, cable etc maintained to a certain universal standard in the entire country. now the availability of options for internet, phone lines and tv-cable are dependent on where you live and what companies invested into what kind of grid there. Prices differ accordingly and prices are fixed where companies don't have competing offers and lowered by competition where they do. What you pay for what internet speed thus depends on where you live. So good stuff, that privatization business. Almost as nice as what they did with care for the disabled....🤬 I remember well in 2007 it was announced that the government agency that allocated mobility aids to those who needed them would be disbanded and that cities would do that individually from now on. The measure would provide custom solutions of 'higher quality' to more people.....and the budget would be cut by 8 billion euros (my country counts 16 million citizens so that's quite a reduction) Of course that was never going to work out. Cities had to obey the overall laws governing what a disabled person's rights were but could make their own policies on what solutions to implement when and what the standards were. Here's the thing. You have three priorities. 1. Access 2. Quality 3. Cost reduction You can have it be Accessible and cheap but then it won't be high quality. You can have it be high quality and cheap, but then you can't give it to everyone who needs it, and you can have it high quality and accessible but then it will be very expensive. So predictably, cost cutting was the highest priority, because not only did the budget get slashed in half, the cities were also not legally mandated to spend that budget on the things it was for. If they somehow saved more than half of what it used to cost, they could spend the extra money on other stuff....but also, then the budget would be lowered the next year. So predictably, everyone and their mum was forced to sue their cities to get the mobility aids their legal rights promised them. Many could not fight that fight and just fell through the cracks. Many cities managed to draw those legal cases out in court to the point where that first year came up with much access budget to use for other stuff like investing in neighborhoods to raise property values. and of course... the central government got to adjust all the budgets way down, saving even more than the 8 billion they set as their goal. The chaos of the years that followed had a severe cost in human suffering. I myself have sued my city, my insurance company and several hospitals, for a total of 16 court cases between 2014 and 2020. All that stress and pressure and not getting the required mobility aids when I needed them but instead after a year of legal fighting each time, cost me 75% of my ability to function that I would not have otherwise lost, making it so that I needed even more help and mobility aids. Fucking bitter stuff. and I was lucky enough to be a fighter that knew my rights. Worse than that Many with diminished capacity or an inclination to believe and obey authority figures just simply accepted a much lower quality of life Worse still many who could not fight, simply died. I have come to learn that many economists are bold-faced liars. It's an area of science that sees more motivated reasoning than even the diet and nutritional supplement branches of 'scientific research' Every time an economist argues that they have an obligation to disregard the ethical implications of their policy proposals because that would "unprofessional' and "unscientific" I throw up in my mouth.
@@evelienheerens2879As a statistican here in Switzerland you can add on "abuse of statistics" to your list of failures of libertarian economists. But, yes, all of your complaints are well taken and it's particularly troubling how they wish to take previously socially agreed upon areas for government intervention and "experiment with markets" while ignoring the reasons that markets won't work in the area.
The Evergiven AKA the Suez Canal jamb right along with the shut downs from the first Covid wave- when shortages led to huge price increases. Yeah, I knew then that prices wouldn’t come down when it was all done with and they damn well haven’t!
So, distilled down in essence, Sowell is: -at least admirable for his desire to pitch economic ideas in terms a large audience could understand without previous specialization and training. -an clear, if repetitive, writer. -unoriginal in his economic ideas -a cherry-picker of the data. -lazy in his engagement with relevant scholarship -incomplete in his account of the historical examples he does use. -dishonest w.r.t. his critique of competing theories in various sub-areas of economics. -a post-hoc rationalizer of a range of social phenomena it is not clear that his free-market apparatus cleanly applies to, or, even if it does, comes out the way he reconstructions. Correspondingly, Republican party lines/political conservativism more nearly predicts how he will come down on issues involving these phenomena than any of the economic first-principles he espouses. -outdated in the going conversations currently had by economists.
Basic Economics should surely explain, basic economics like Externalities, marginal propensity to consume and inelastic demand curves. If those and others are not in there it is not basic economics, it is teaching an ideology.
@@TheWiggum123 academics? I learnt those in GCSE economics if they are basic enough for 14 year olds to get a grasp of, it should be contained in a book on the basics of the topic for citizens.
@@Alex-cw3rz acedemics as is in structured learning, school, college etc. An example, pic the book people are more likely to buy in a book store. The finance book, the black swan which has like two graphs in the body of the book and several at the end. dl.abcbourse.ir/dl/Library/book/Taleb_The-Black-Swan.pdf Or a book on the exact same topic by the same author codowd.com/bigdata/misc/Taleb_Statistical_Consequences_of_Fat_Tails.pdf
@@Alex-cw3rzacedemics as in text books. Structured learning. It’s not uncommon for people writing to the general public not to use these. An example is the black swan by Nassim Taleb, he has another book on the same subject filled with pure maths, he would probably never sell the book if he put them together.
The word, "video," is thrown around so much these days, but this is close to being one.
Hi, what do you mean?
Edit:Nevermind lmao, I understand now
The words banana and bread are thrown around a lot, what are your opinions on it
@@pieppy6058- I only know that bananas are used for scale.
Definitely one of the videos of all time
You can’t really substitute ‘video’ for ‘genius’, they are different kinds of nouns. Closer word would be ‘masterpiece’- and then the statement makes sense doesn’t it? I must be missing the joke (a word that gets thrown around a lot…)
As an agricultural scientist I disagree with the assertion made by the Varoufakis quote. By their argument, grain agriculture can be cited as the invention upon which economy is built. However, while fish, meat, and fruits certainly do spoil quickly, so does grain if not stored properly. All four of these can easily be stored and even exchanged if dried.
I think this argument falls into an easy trap in the discussion of early agriculture and society. Most of us think of agriculture as a specific invention, an unlock on a tech tree, that turns societies from hunter-gatherer to settled civilizations. This is an oversimplification. After all, isn't the gatherer who returns to the same wild grain field every two years simply engaging in a low-input farming method? Isn't a buffalo hunter simply a rancher who follows his herd, instead of the other way around? The line between hunter-gatherer and farmer is very blurry. Humans may have been gently selectively breeding plants long before they became productive enough to support settled farming.
I think that this line of thinking comes from wanting to define a clear origin. We want to point at some potential moment in time and say "Look! The First Economy!". To do this, we imagine a time "before economy" and think about what makes it different from today. This can create some very compelling narratives but it fundamentally compresses the emergence of economy into a single point.
I agree with the assertion that consistent surplus is the key to identifying economy, and I even agree that grain cultivation was key in developing larger, more consistent surplus. However, allowing grain cultivation to occupy such a central role in the narrative only serves to downplay the complexity of nomadic societies. Settled grain agriculture was not the unlock we needed before we could research "civilization" on the tech-tree. Rather, it was one step in a long history of developing increasingly productive forms of food collection and storage. If we wish to compare modern society to a "pre-economy" past, we should not compare ourselves to nomadic societies, we should compare ourselves to animals.
Good comment, however monkeys can also have currency and trade
I'd also like to add that there have been permanent settlements, including what we might call cities and civilizations, that didn't have agriculture beyond hunting and gathering. Surely these places required something we'd call an economy.
Edit: I had to look up some examples because it's been a long time since my anthropology classes, but the Pacific Northwest and coastal Japan seem to be two relevant cultures where hunter-gatherers settled into large permanent communities.
Read any Lewis Mumford? He's very big on the evolution of urban centers... main premise is that it was the centralized storage of food surplus that began to join us to our permanent economies.
Yes, exactly. It's also worth noting that agriculture is not a Pandora's box that was never undone. In many cases, people moved away from agriculture in favor of other forms of organization. People not practicing agriculture also co-exist(ed) with people practicing it and had varying levels of interaction. I think it's unnecessarily reductive to define economies as the ones that traditionally fit into the agricultural "modern economy" mold. Even in hunter gatherer societies you need some form of organization to distribute production. For example, who hunts and who gathers, where do you do it and how do you organize it? How do you allocate time for other activities? How and what do you trade? (because large-scale trade between hunter-gatherer societies was widespread). There can be (surprising) variety in how you answer these questions and I can't see how trying to answer them isn't "economics".
Great comment, hard agree, based, hope you have a nice lunch or see a pretty picture today!
As an economic historian of the classical period who has had to push back against economists who believe their views on economics gives them 'a ready-made set of (neoclassical) laws that can be applied across history, often without sufficient understanding of the period': Thank you. Thank you for your precise analytical thinking. Thank you for 'doing the homework' and finding it worthwhile reading some of our work and representing it fairly.
Modern economic indicators like GDP are of questionable use even in today's economies.
What are good books about classical economics?
Market economies habitually enrich the people in their societies for centuries. Socialist economies have consistently exploited working people to enrich a Left fascist elite. Over time this socialist mechanism of hypocrisy and exploitation has become increasingly easier to discern and disseminate, which is why there is an increasing market for pro-socialist propaganda and hit pieces against anti-socialist critics. This is what you're "thanking."
It’s also worth noticing that the South Korean example in the video is basically one of a number of variations on the “export led growth” model arguably pioneered by Japan and all of these feature significant government intervention (in Japan through MITI), supporting national champions (keiretsu in Japan) and various other government initiatives.
This type of “developmental state” supporting export led industrial growth as a road to national prosperity was well documented when Sowell wrote his book, as not only Japan, but also South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore had followed variations of this strategy, and the obvious example of China should speak for itself.
I was surprised that Sowell’s “Basic Economics” was from 2000, because a lot of the quotes used in the video sounds like something written in the early 1990s, and the obsession with Stalinist USSR and Maoist PRC seems like something out of the 1970s or ‘80s.
The real question is, how long did it take him to write it because anyone born before the 90s would be able to tell you that it was probably in development hell.
But also the economy of west-Germany was very union dominated rather than capitalist dominated and it worked very well.
Though Germany is also a good example. It was a military dictatorship that enacted extremely harsh trade barriers and put in harsh standards for education and production. With a focus on military but also on mechanics and chemicals to the point that 30 years after the unification Germany made over 80% of all chemicals and held more patents than Britain, France and the US combined.
Prussia was a military state at it's core and it ran the economy in a similar way with the industries related to steel, gunpowder, vehicles and other such things focused on. There was also a strong system of trade tariffs especially on Germany's enemies that was ruthlessly enforced which created a lot of ire especially in the UK.
Japan brought in many German economists and industrialists as well as military officers. There was a lot of admiration for Germany in Japan as they saw themselves in a similar light, new powers to challenge the old ones. This Japanese model was later imported to South-Korea and in turn copied to China. Each one did change it to their needs but the model of a militaristic top-down system as a means of security has remained.
France's industrialization was more gradual though also very coordinated growing from mercantalism and in some ways was even a thing in the time of it's kings. Canals were dug, ports were build, unequal trade deals established. The state did a lot of marketing for French goods and enabled their exports. In the US local governments were very heavily involved in the industrialization with massive subsidies granted by the federal government but allocated by local government. This link between local governments and large corporations is a big part of what created the American gilded age as the capitalists gained more and more power and the local governments became subservient under them.
My main point is that each industrialization was it's own tale. British industrialization was in large part fueled by it's empire with them wanting more efficient ways to process the raw materials that came in. French industrialization was more driven by export of it's own products and the need to secure them, German industrialization was mostly militaristic in nature and US industrialization was driven by competition between local governments and the drive to expand American power west. The US is probably the closest to a uncoordinated market but even so without federally funded railroads and subsidies local industry could never have arisen. Nor could it have done it without US laws and their enforcement or quaranteed access to credit. Even then local governments like in Michigan build up factory towns, dug canals and provided cheap credit on behalf of specific companies. There were indeed hard working entroponeurs who took advantage of opportunities but those opportunities were created for them by local and national government. Even today this is the case, the Obama administration in the wake of the 2008 financial crash gave enormous subsidies to green energy and a big receicpiant was the then tiny company Tesla. In many ways the way the US industrialized is not that dissimilar from how South-Korea did, just in a slightly less organized fashion.
His conversion to neo-liberalism because "I worked in the capitalist american government, so I concluded no socialist government would have a positive impact on its population." sounded like an exaggeration, but then I realized how much he uses anecdotes as evidence in his books and now it seems like it's actually the truth...
Want an anecdote,socialism is garbage,i was born in it,Sowell is an apologist,for dumba$$ libertarians,but socialism is garbage no one can fix.
As if there's a lot of evidence backing the opposite of what he believes. Economics is a social science, prone to all the flaws of one, the main one being that hard evidence is very hard to come by and even then it is very context dependent.
Have you converted a loaf of banana bread to neo-liberalism yet
@@carlosjosejimenezbermudez9255 True, but it's not impossible. There's overwhelming evidence that states can play a key role in bettering people's lives, and are vastly more efficient than he makes out.
@@carlosjosejimenezbermudez9255And yet the predicted values keep occurring. One can be wrong on why and still be right tbh.
That line from that video has been on my mind for three years, thank you for resolving the plotline.
Exactly yessssss
I feel like there is a pothole in banana bread
As a black man who has to debate this guy with conservative black people, thank you
The most painful thing ever people who keep bring of thomas sowell like he's the second coming and never questioning his logic of "welfare bad" with little to actual evidence show how welfare is bad
Black Conservatives are the dumbest Conservatives.
Black Conservatives aren't real Black people in my view.
Wait he actually has black fans? I thought Sowell's whole thing was telling white people what they want to hear.
@@jeffersonclippership2588Thomas Sowell is not alone. Uncle Rukus is satire but not as much s you think black people on average are more conservative they just know Republicans are more racist. Some don't care or know that bit and vote for trump anyways.
The greatest paradox of "free" market is that it needs government control to remain free - free from monopolies, abuse, crime, and failures.
Not a paradox at all as free market by definition of everyone except anarchists, include and need rule of law to exist. That's literally one of the only roles that Friedman and sowell have always accepted and actively encouraged in societies, and yet people still think these guys were anarchists...
Wrong. Monopolies require government control or intervention.
@@Bolognabeef they have no critical thinking capacity. We’re asking for an umpire, not for an umpire to rig the rules and play first base and third base and left field. It’s really not complicated
Unlearning Economics: The Movie
But also no true capitalist system has ever succeeded. Behind every capitalist success lies a complex story of government regulation, subsidies, state intervention, state companies, foreign resources either granted or taken by force, often forceful movement of people and many other factors.
I've done so much unlearning today!
@@MrMarinus18 yeah it literally can't government's are companies. Capitalism will always devolve into either dictatorship of one kind or another let it be worker owned or owning class owned. One party will take over once a monopoly happens.
@@MrMarinus18Bro,tankys are stupid,& can barely count,capitalism ain’t perfect,but socialism is sh*t.
Hmm, banana bread
The irony of Mike Tyson with a copy of Basic Economics is that he has tattoos of Mao and Che.
The dude definitely contains multitudes
Truly thesis and antithesis.
@@JohnnySplendid Multitudes of concussions
He prestiged and went back to play again.
A dialectical man
The fact that I recognize statements in that first section from my Florida community college economics classes, which the class textbook presented as objective truth without evidence or a counter-narrative, lends to my impression that my gen eds were largely designed as propaganda, not actual education.
Doesn't that apply to most if not all education?
My question to this is what statements are you referring to specifically?
@@MajkaSrajka not really, I was taught in a model-based approach where it becomes clear that knowledge is never set in stone, but is always a piece of rhetoric to answer a specific question within a set of boundary conditions. Whether we talk about gravity or economic history, what we create is always a model that tries to condense an infinitely set of interactions into model that has some degree of useful explanatory power. This model is never "correct", but can be correct enough to build onto.
The best red flag for any speaker is if they use the words "This explains how X really works". If you are taught in a model-based approach from a very early stage, you are much better able to critically assess the things you believe when new information enters your live.
Got the same from my economics classes (UK), it wasn’t taught like an exact science, but capitalism was usually talked about like the lesser of all evils and a kind of “natural” symptom of society existing. No alternatives were ever considered or discussed. “It is what it is 🤷♂️"
@@-kerplink-7738Same here. While I read here in the US about all of this "librual indoctrination" in universities, all I received was neoliberal indoctrination. No other ideas were ever presented. Back then "free trade" was part of the right neoliberal indoctrination and it annoys me to no end that people like Sowell who championed the whole idea now call it globalist and somehow blame the end result on "leftist globalists" now.
You're interesting and educational, but you're making me uncomfortably guilty about my teenage libertarian phase.
😂
It's ok, we most likely have a cringe and irrational political phase in life, especially when we are young. What matters is we managed to get out of it and get over the mistakes we made by being critical, nuanced and rational as much as possible and always step back when we wre wrong instead of being stubborn and childish.
@@blackpalacemusic
Huh.
I don't know you but based sub list there, partner.
@@TankieVNthis fr. And for ppl like me who were on the alt right in that time, it’s important for us to right said wrongs and do what we can for minorities who are under attack and under represented. Also, ppl like me and others should warn others about the alt right and it’s ever growing connectivity internationally.
@@itsmedjoom987 yeah. I was a right-leaning nationalist a few years back until I watch Hakim's videos. After that I thought to myself "Hey socialism actually has lots of potential ! It's definitely worth investing my time and energy on it." then I dived into Soviet history and then Marxism.
Though Hakim himself is quite biased so I recommend channels that are more academic such as 1Dime, Paul Cockshott, The Marxist Project, Bradon Lee, Badempanada,...
Historians: "don't flatten history."
Economists: "I've developed a circular representation of a spherical database to demonstrate why the garden of Eden was cringe."
Love it.
"Historians", and those dialetic historians which literally flatten history. Actually, I would call that a spagetiffication of history
Well, Marxist “economists”.
Broad economic theory exists as a medium for people to argue their world view.
Economic outcomes aren't hard to predict.
If you were playing an mmo and one day there is a currency duping hack, it will appear as if surplus has raised the server out of poverty. But that game is on a short path to total destruction. Without scarcity there is no real substance to that economy.
Take the game Requiem as an example. When the community discovered how to dupe the money supply, the money became worth less until it became worthless.
Does it matter where the surpluss of dupped money came from. Can you not see how needs and wants are now a toxic version of the previously retrained system.
just blurting off 30 minutes into a three hour video that obviously a part 2 is coming is so fucking baller
FR he knows his audience and he can get away with it I really like that not a lot of long form content like this
It's surprising how he can stay fully interesting and entertaining for hours at a stretch. I sure can't.
😂 I didn't even check the length of the video until I read the original comment.
Yeah he is doing an excellent job of keeping the viewer engaged.
What's even more baller is the narrativization of not even pretending to be good faith less than a minute into the video! Start with the conclusion, fill in the rest...
@@MaximusTCR Libertarian crybaby detected!
Thomas Sowell is a hack.
Change my mind!
😎😎😎😎
"In conversations with my daughter about capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis discusses..."
You made it sound like Yanis is casually coming to your home and talking to your daughter about economics.
Yeah I've watched a lot of yannis varufakis and it still took some decoding.
Proposition 1: Yanis Varoufakis is Greek.
Proposition 2: He is teaching your daughter about economics.
Proposition 3: Aristotle was Greek.
Proposition 4: Aristotle taught Alexander Before He Was Great, or Alexander the Average.
Proposition 5: Your daughter is basically average, now.
Conclusion: In the future, your daughter will conquer the known world but will also cause global inflation.
Thomas Sowell: yes.
He probably would. I wrote a two paragraph critique of his eurocomunist defeatist politics in my little-read blog, and he spent half an hour " refuting" it in his next lecture (available on YT). The man is all ego.
@@casteretpollux that's called an explanation and is used regularly by teachers and parents?
@@casteretpollux wow 2 paragraphs?!?! That's more than anybodys ever written in critique of Yanis before? You must've put years of work into that. Really had him running scared!
Hold on...around 20:00, the claim about grain storage being necessary/sufficient to lead to complex distribution systems, seems more controversial these days.
Graeber and others have cited more recent archaeological work, which found, among other things, that hunter-gatherers created civic infrastructure, lived in settlements, built monuments, and more. I think it's probably true that hard/fast rules about the emergence of certain behaviors in our human and non-human ancestors are still fairly speculative, and inevitably, that date of emergence itself is often contested and pushed back further into history as we uncover more of the archaeological record.
UPDATE: Quibbles aside, this video was an absolute goddamn banger. So many of my fellow academics recommend his work, almost anthropologically, as a study in what "respectable conservatism" looks like. As if it's supposed to be some edifying process unraveling before our eyes as we turn the page. Um...no. I'll just send people this video next time they recommend Sowell. Evergreen content on this one!
Graeber was a charlatan who would only look back in history to find whatever agreed with him. No one takes him seriously.
"I almost died reading this book"
Not to worry, the market has accounted for this, and the value of Thomas Sowell's books includes an amount apportioned for legal settlements regarding people who died from reading his books. As always, the market provides.
Certianly if someone disagrees with me they must be wrong.
Have you or a loved one been negatively affected by 'Basic Economics' by Thomas Sowell? You might be entitled to financial compensation!
@@nayrtnartsipacifythat is how disagreeing works, yes
Communist.
@@calvingarbacik272 i disagree.
Things I have learned:
- I'm not going to learn much about that by reading Thomas Sowell
- A lot of people have pools
I've tried to be exhaustive, I hope I didn't miss anything
That videos exist.
Ah, you forgot that you just can't argue with Thomas Sowell, so they just hide his work
You have used this video as thoroughly as Sowell does for his references!
@@Der1Metzlershhh we’re trying to keep that one quiet
It’s the libertarians burden to prove it’s best to avoid intervention as much as possible.
Retirement planning is very important in our world, funny how in some parts of the world, you need over a million dollars to retire comfortably
Wow, thats an outrageous amount. I've been retired for three years now, and I'm only 45 years old, thankfully i met a friend Katherine c boone, who happens to be a financial consultant, she offers excellent investment plans.
How is that viable,because the approved retirement age is 65 here in the US
Katherine C Boone? I've heard of her. I just did a little research and found her. I'm planning to schedule a call with her soon.
@@liamcm50 67.
it is really easy to have to much and more if you plan at a young age
You are killing me... Need part 2... It has already been a month, and I have poured through the first part several times already.
this aged poorly
@@baileyayyy5085 Na, it was a joke. Already knew he would take months to get the next one out
we are so back
Thomas Sowell is so joever
we are so black*
@@williampan29no
We are Sobek
You may be back, but are you back to eating banana bread
The historical literature also shows that's it almost impossible to maintain a market economy without significant public infrastructure underpinning it. For example, The car industry doesn't exist without significant early government investment into developing car technology and creating and maintaining millions of miles roads, or how intellectual property that generate billions is only possible due to publicly funded courts enforcing those laws.
I'm primary referencing the work of economist and historian Jacob Soll if anyone is interested in researching the history of capitalisms origins.
Who is arguing that governmental court systems are a bad thing? Or that they are not necessary?
@@jonnyd9351 free market advocates argue that government intervention is a bad thing and that markets will self correct. Thomas Sowell is one of them.
@@jonnyd9351 Sowell and his ilk for starters. Where did you think tax cuts come from?
Iraq has no government, so all its industries are propped up by foreign governments, and even then it's all food industry abd light industry.
@@quefreemind5698 If a libertarian said "Leftists argue that government intervention is a good thing and governments will fix all market issues" would you tell them they are either ignorant or purposely mischaracterizing your views?
“They think their economics gives them a set of ready-made laws that they can apply to --“ is something I have wanted to tattoo on many a face.
Tattoo banana bread on your forehead instead
Modern economic understanding has sure worked out well hasn't it?
Robinson Crusoe!
"let's cut money here" "let's cut money here" "let's cut money here" "oh no! All our social services are failing and the economy is in recession! How could this be? My bible of neoliberal economics predicted the opposite!! see: the United Kingdom
@jays5002 Yet if you don't then when the debt is too high they all fail.
At 1:07:00 - The statement: "I almost died reading this book." is absolutely gut-wrenchingly hilarious.
congratulations, you got my adhd ass to sit thru nearly 3 hours straight of economics. no sarcasm, that’s legitimately impressive
Because you only get interested in technical topics when it gives you the adrenaline rush of an ingroup/outgroup, good guy/bad guy war on the internet.
@@nomoresunforever3695I think u r stupid
stop itemizing the damn disorder its annoying and goes double if you are undiagnosed which I'm gonna assume you are
@@nomoresunforever3695??? what a weird strawman to make, you dont know anything about them or their motivations. the arrogance
@nomoresunforever3695 so, what's your point?
You are here because you're only interested in being a dick on the internet.
as soon as i hit play in this video debunking Sowell, i was counting down the minutes till FD made an appearence. Was not disapointed.
Missed opportunity to call the video "A brief look at Thomas Sowell"
If you stare into Thomas Sowell for too long, Thomas Sowell stares right back at you.
@joke_explainers somebody help me
Basic Thomas Sowell.
@@noThankyou-g5c Some 2+ hours long video essays have titles such as "a brief look at ..." in an ironic way
Part 1 😂
the funny thumbnail has been betrayed
58:23
"Vote with your dollar just means people with no money get no votes."
-Abagail Thorn of Philosophy Tube
What would debt be in this situation?
It means that anyone who can arbitrarily create inflation can "tilt the scales" of any vote.
It's cute you think your favourite UA-camr coined that. Lol.
@@tcritt They never said they think Abigail coined the quote, it's probably just where they heard it from for the first time. What's wrong with you?
@@jamesbuchanan3888 why would a government that is perfectly good at enacting anti-democratic laws after private companies lobby its politicians need inflation to control democracy? Wealth inequality has been rising for decades irrespective of if it's during a period of high inflation or not.
The word "subscriber" is thrown around a lot these days, but I'm close to being one.
Me, an anthropologist: "I hope he talks about hunter gatherer societies" 🤣🤣
What do you even do as an anthropologist? It's like the most general, worse paid, highest unemployment rate job/degree.
@@Betweoxwitegan I make comments on UA-cam videos.
@@Betweoxwitegan Whatispolitics69 is an Anthropologist but works as a lawyer for tenants.
But his youtube vids are amazing 😆
@@Betweoxwiteganother anthropology major here. Im a security guard in a rapidly gentrifying downtown and they want someone who will ask the fentynal addicts to overdose in a neighboring parking lot with empathy. School was interesting but there isnt much demand in the field outside of bigger cities and those are competitive positions. For the most part an HR position is the brass ring which is actually really depressing.
@@arja2317 Yeah it's actually crazy, especially if you pay a lot for the degree. It's an interesting field but the jobs are too scarce which deflates the value of the degree and only people with a Masters or PHD will actually work in the field. It's pretty much the same with most humanities and social sciences, like philosophy, etc. You may also be subject to lots of travelling which isn't for everyone.
And almost 3 hours long UE video with part 1 in the name? I'm in!
I'm just gonna throw out that the only information I know about the Garden of Eden is that the only frequently reported 'fact' about it is that it famously has a very strict scarcity on the supply of Apples of Knowlege
No mention of apples per se
Fruit. Yes
@@Christine-eb1sc Even so, the whole thing wound up in a vicious landlord-tenant dispute.
The supply is infinite it's just that EVIL COMMUNIST God prohibits the free flow of Apples of Knowledge in a free Market economy
famously strict scarcity on Apples of Knowledge, but yet demand for them has soared to capturing 50% of the population. This is mostly due to false advertising from Serpentine Marketing, LLC
@@pivotguydc1149Such slander towards Serpentine Marketing. They told no lies in their campaign, they only told the truth.
As Hayek stated: "The power of abstract ideas rests largely on the very fact that
they are not consciously held as theories but are treated by most
people as self-evident truths which act as tacit presuppositions." (from law, legislation, and liberty) Thomas Sowell is a perfect example for the use of abstract ideas to push a narrative.
Hayek the GOAT srikes again
@@lukasgray1443 Not really.
It's strange because the other criticism of him is that he relies on anecdotes. Which is it anecdotes or abstract ideas it can't be both.
He's just another neolib lol @@lukasgray1443
Banger intro. The song rocks. Why is he always interviewed in the same Charlie Rose style room? Finally, did you punch your roommate for making you read Sowell?
I mean you could punch some banana bread instead
@@pieppy6058Your banana bread obsession is worrying
@@pieppy6058 bro, just confess to the banana bread at this point or get a therapist.
i mean this is canonically the unlearning economics movie
@@pieppy6058 What is this thing about banana bread? I'm not clued into whatever this meme is about.
The funniest thing to me is Sowell’s arguments fail simply by investigating the accuracy of his assumptions
But as Milton Friedman said, "a theory should be judged on its ability to predict, not the realism of its assumptions."
So it tracks that Sowell is not bothered by the quality of his assumptions.
@@RolandHesz
Oh god. I thought it was pretty clear what I was saying but clearly not.
(1) I am saying two things.
(i) Sowell’s predictions are wrong.
(ii) Sowell’s predictions are wrong because he uses flawed assumptions which is hilarious.
The reason why it is so funny to me that Sowell’s arguments fail is because Sowell will reduce the possible behaviors to a specific subset, make arguments about that subset, and then generalize those arguments to all behaviors when that is not necessarily applicable. The reason why Sowell is wrong is because he narrows his world to a small subsection of actual reality and then uses that small subsection to try to fully explain reality.
It is like a physicist only using classical physics to explain the world. Of course your predictions about matters such as black body radiation and photons are wrong. Those are quantum phenomena that are outside the purview of classical physics. You are ignoring an entire field of physics. And that behavior is exactly what Sowell (edit: does).
Which is hilarious because Sowell knows what he is doing.
(2) And Milton is wrong. The value in a theory is not in its ability to predict. The value in a theory is in its ability to accurately explain the world. Prediction is a useful tool to reaching such ends, but it isn’t the only one. By (edit: Milton’s) standard, the theories of meteorology are not good theories because we can’t predict weather with any relevant degree of accuracy.
(edit: It is also hilarious to me that you would use Milton as your reference. He quite literally built his career off not using accurate assumptions and those inaccurate assumptions being the cause of his theories being not descriptively accurate)
@@jloiben12yes, you were very clear. And I agreed with you.
And kind of sarcastically dropped in the "what do you expect from a Friedman fan?"
I'm sorry, I thought that it was clear that it wasn't an endorsement of using awful assumptions. My bad.
@@RolandHesz
Now I feel really dumb for being so antagonistic towards you. Damn UA-cam. I am not used to good faith actors. I am gonna go off myself now
@@jloiben12 nah, it's all good, I've been in your place, I understand. The internet isn't the healthiest place.
Haven't finished watching, but I think this might go along with economic surplus. Even in a world with an infinite surplus, everything can't exist everywhere all the time. This might be what you meant by "allocation". If human life is also infinite in the garden of Eden, time would be cheap. But if human life is finite, "time spent doing something" is the scarcity.
Sowell was part of the contingent of economists that were saying the 2008 market crash was becuz of *too much* regulation, somehow. Pretty hard to take the brotha seriously after hearing him say that. Lol
It was actually government regulations and the fed that caused the crisis that's common knowledge wide market failure are government policies
@butt317 as dan olson said in his video about the crypto craze, the hyper-capitalist response to the 2008 recession came largely from bitter grievances about not having been in on the the speculation scheme prior to it
Your comment tells me all I need to know about Thomas Sowell
I've heard a convincing argument that it was caused by too much regulation in some areas and not enough in others, and that the regulation was harmful. Regulation is not good or bad; you can regulate to ensure petrol has lead in it or to ensure that it doesn't, one of these will create health problems and the other will create less health problems, they're both still regulation. And we shouldn't try and solve everything with regulation, maybe, if the government hadn't been willing to bail out the banks and the hedge funds (yes I know it was a conservative government I don't think those are good) then they wouldn't have invested irresponsibly. And maybe we should change our legal system so that instead of letting the people who caused the crisis walk off more or less fine with their saved money whilst everyone else suffered, if they do cause something like that they are fully liable for the results of their actions. Read Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He's not a conservative, at least not a dogmatic "conservative" like Sowell who exists to profit off promoting the political ideology, and he has some good criticisms of the American economy that fall outside of mainstream politics, unfortunately.
If regulations allow people to take out loans from banks and the banks lend them out predatorily then I'd say yeah, bad regulations caused the 08' housing bubble. And since a bubble is unsustainable it follows that the regulations also caused the pop when the regulations were just trying to give people mortgages they weren't capable of or willing to pay back.
Have you ever noticed, people telling you to read Sowell will NEVER read anything you tell them they should read.
I mean you should read a banana bread recipe
Never is a big word.
I was asked to read Sowell and I asked which book and they said ‘just listen to Candace Owen and she says which book I think’
FML 🤦♀️
But they didn't like it when you have read Sowell. And can explain why it's arse.
They haven't read Sowell either. They think Ben Shapiro, and Candice Owens are intellectuals. Like raving evangelicals who have no clue what's in the Bible.
Sowell's basic argument in "basic economics" is that the more free market an economy or sector is, The more productive it is; the more socialist, the less productive. He cites dozens of countries, sectors, even individual products to prove his point. Outside of short-term price controls, this doesn't need to be a matter of opinion, we should just look at the record of human economic production over time. Where is the example where a non-free-market economy outcompetes the free market one in comparable conditions? I couldn't even find an above-average period in the socialist years of France and UK. The current Chinese experiment is also excellent evidence of free-market supremacy, as it isolates capitalism as the only variable without mixing in other Western institutions.
It's not a hard problem really, there's plenty of data and it points clearly in one direction, so far as I can tell.
The best argument left is that economic productivity isn't the highest goal.
... Indeed, if you break your windows just to have them replaced with the same kind of new ones, this would be economically productive for GDP. It would also be wasteful and pointless.
@@ericritchie6783 theoretically, yes but I think you can only maintain that kind of distortion for a limited time -- it's baked into the free market. For your window example, the prices on these breakable windows would go down commensurate with their decreased value/utility. Even bigger cons like mortgage-backed securities eventually find their true value. So too will the value of china's 'ghost cities'. You can goose gap for a while, maybe even a couple of decades, but not forever.
And in any case, neither the scale nor the duration is enough to seriously challenge the supremacy of free-market capitalism (indeed, it's far more likely to find the goosing in planned economies, as their tendency to fail necessitates creative bookkeeping).
So I think you need to define value on a deeper level, like maybe even having lots of productivity -- better tech, better medicines, better infrastructure - is not worth the trade-off of, for example, losing your cultural identity, or alienating/atomizing individuals, or making everyone work 24/7, or accelerating inequality to an unbearable level.
That's the argument to have, I think, the notion that some "other" system is going to outcompete it is, I think, pretty thoroughly disproved
@@billywhite1403 It was just an unnecessary activity re doing something that had already been done. The innate value of the energy and materials that go into making the same kind of window are unchanged, the new window is as valuable as the old one was as it's the same kind of window.
What was an unfortunate accident or some deliberate act contributes to economic productivity, yet was simply unnecessary and not ideal occurrence.
More effective use of tech, better medical care, more effective infrastructure ect, doesn't necessarily have to "trade off" with any of these things, I would of course add the decimation of the ecological environment, the rapid depletion of energy reserves and dire mishandling of material's...
@@ericritchie6783 1. I understood your point. You might be surprised by how much deliberate obsolescence is built into industrial economies (especially USA) -- auto companies deliberately use plastic instead of metal in key components so they can make money on the replacement parts, accounting for about 30% of total industry profit. And so it goes for medicines, etc, where they would prefer you to come back over and over again. Disposability is built into the model. This is why everything is now moving to a subscription model. All this is to say, for example about the glass is actually a major feature of capitalist economies.
2) Which leads me to The next term, "necessary" -- The only things strictly necessary wish you would survival are food, water, shelter and defense. Arguably, medicine as well, but not from a long-term / group survival perspective (unless we encounter a plague which kills 100% of humans who it encounters, without proper treatment). And the first three offer limited marginal utility (possibly the opposite,
As Western food produces obesity and messed up teeth). But the fourth one is a doozy -- Even a comparatively small gap between defense mechanisms, like arrows and armor, can lead to total subjugation (think of Southeast Asia or Africa). So ultimately, when the s hits the fan, The point of modern economics might ultimately be to create gnarly weapons, We are just spared from having two think about it for the time being as long as our population and resource availability are reasonably matched.
3) The other wrench in the works is the fact that almost all modern economies are severely in debt, with the sole exception of Russia. Otoh, Not all debt is bad, But that surely is something to take into account when measuring efficacy of economic systems.
If Sowell had a "debate" with Thanos, he'd convince Thanos to delete 100% of the universe, because nothing is necessary and all things are just wants.
👏😂 True.
A small correction; 100% life in the universe. And he would be 100% correct. Life is not necessary, it keeps existing because it wants to. And Thanos half-assing with the annihilation is just delaying the inevitable.
Yeah good point actually. I smell some parallels with Tommy whatever he's protagonist or antagonist. Because needs/wants are one of the basic tool for writing to display character's inner conflict in storytelling.
You make that sound like a negative.
@@thebigdawgj Found the elfist lol
As an Engineering professor, Im glad to know one constant of academics across disciples is needing to google basic definitions we should have memorized as an undergrad.
*disciplines (?)
Digital definitions keep changing, you're better off with an ol Oxford dictionary... you know, the one that comes with a magnifying glass.
@@indanekwaffles7074 haha, engineers are also terrible at spelling
Not to mention the definitions are spuriously altered to fit the manufactured narrative du jour.
Unfortunately, the lack of laying out one's stall at the beginning, by stating one's chosen definitions upfront is all too common. Not helpful.
"Monopolies don't survive because people switch to their competitors"
*Well, it isn't monopoly then, is it?!*
Absent coercion forcing people to acquire from a producer, almost all goods can be replaced by other substitute goods. That's the whole point. Natural monopolies are an incoherent position, because no firm can remain the *sole* producer of a given good and hike up prices without others either creating their own firms to compete with prices closer to the real equilibrium, or people switching to a substitute good.
If there was a single railroad in the entire country, owned by a single firm, and it decided to hike up prices prohibitely due to its monopoly status, then people would either create more railroads to price them out, or switch to other modes of transportation.
@@CommissarLORDBernn You got me intrested in the so called railways that people build on their own. Or the transportation alternative to a railroad that doesn't involve cramped buses that take 2 times the travel time and are heavily susceptible to traffic.
@@nati0598 You should look into the history of the gilded age and how the first railroads started, as well as analyze the supposed cases of monopolies with a critical eye.
J.P. Morgan is used as an example of a monopolist due to buying up failing railroads and pricing out others, but he wasn't selling at a loss as the common idea of monopolies forming is usually told. J.P. Morgan got its huge portion of the market by streamlining and standarizing already existing competing railroads that were inefficient or underfunded, and in the process lowered transportation costs instead of increasing them. There was no point at which there was a monopoly hiking up prices.
Another example is Standard Oil, which is likewise used as a boogeyman. Not only the highest share of the market it held was an (still incredibly impressive) ~85% of the US oil market, which is still far from 100%, its market share declined naturally from competition until it had 64% at the moment politicians decided to break it up. And during that whole time, oil prices were constantly at historic lows. Oil prices skyrocketed afterwards because of WW1.
@@nati0598 Everything invented, after producing their first commercial copy becomes "monopoly". If its price is absurdly high, people will either drop it as it has no value to them, or if they buy it assuming the profits are large, other people will want a piece of that pie and create knock-off alternatives.
There are no alternative to railways not because there is some magical monopoly, but because railways suck ass, and busses suck ass and all are subsidized (good intercity busses connection has value to property owners of places that are well connected via them, not due to price tickets).
@@MajkaSrajka You got it backwards. Or rather, correct, but you seem to think that I got it backwards. It's not that railways have no alternatives because of a monopoly, it's a monopoly because there are no alternatives.
speaking of demand, what about when businesses create demand where none exists? As sociologist Michael Dawson has written: The goal of marketers "is to coax people into habits that maximize profitable consumption of the firm's products."
It's people's problem.
I demand more sociologists in the market.
Such as when? Business cannot force anyone to buy their goods, unless they use force, which is by assumption forbidden in the FREE market.
@@Bolognabeef Do yourself a favour and learn a bit about the concept of marketing; affecting consumer behaviour without explicit threat of violence or institutional force is the entire point.
@@Bolognabeef Coconut island
I took an Econ class that used a Thomas Sowell textbook. I had never heard of him and just thought he was normal economist. I remember being so shocked seeing a UA-cam video of him talking like a crazy person. Like this who were learning from 😅
@timstone2813no not really.
@timstone2813there's video of Karl Marx lol?
@timstone2813 All he did was give an anecdote specifically about Sowell. You just responding with 'but that could be anyone' is a complete non- argument.
The anecdote is specifically about Sowell and how he thought he makes terrible points. Do you have a counter argument or are you content to just make everything abstract and thus pointless?
@timstone2813so you are saying "you could be dumber in a different time line"?
@@stonesoupstudio2348 How are we supposed to give a counter-argument to such a powerful anecdote? "I once had a textbook and thought the writer was crazy" is possibly the most powerfully persuasive argument ever to sprout from a human brain, Thomas Sowell fans are in shambles everywhere and may never recover
I can't overstate how skilled you are at taking challenging subjects, curating and condensing them, and dumbing them down to the point even a guy like me who stares at bugs for a living can follow the material.
Staring at bugs is critical work.
Dude, we all know if you stop staring at bugs they dissappear and pop up somewhere concerning, so thank you for your great service.
Stellantis is unneccessary.....
@@zacheryeckard3051
Gold
Food is a perfect example of a consistent market failure throughout history. Food subsidies or the outright providing of grain and bread to populations has happened basically through every large civilization in history because the cost is good is often more than what is acceptable or possible to pay.
Nah, Ukraine and USA should not had gifted Russia of the 90s any bread. Should had let Russia default and balkanize
It also is one of the simplest and most reliable ways to bribe the population. The food provision of the Roman empire was put into place after nearly a century of general unrest and many food riots. It was successfully put in place and remained in place for nearly 300 years.
" because the cost is good is often more than what is acceptable or possible to pay." Two questions: 1) Do you speak English? 2) Can you write in English?
@@iseeumreplace "is" with "of". Not everybody speaks perfect English, the guy just made one mistake. Fucking elitist motherfuckers out there man
@@iseeumpretty sure they meant "the cost of goods"
It seems this level of hubris is encouraged in economics (they're the most highly cited group in congressional testimony, and except for one year WWII, the most frequently quoted profession in the New York Times for almost 100 years). It's strange because there are so many assumptions required for their models of "reality" to work.
Also, it seems that Sowell is ignoring that price is an approximation of willingness to pay (but is limited by the interaction with ABILITY to pay), which approximates of the satisfaction of preferences (Hausman has some good critiques of economic theory). So REAL value (hedonic pleasure, pain avoidance or time savings) is frequently NOT measured by the construct of price.
Slight correction: i think chemistry is a study of matter. And if you go deep into it, the boundry between physichs and chemistry is blurry
There are no hard and fast lines in the real world at all. Belief that the natural world is actually divisible into rigid categories is a profound philosophical problem reflecting a misunderstanding between the mind and nature, something Engels wrote extensively on.
@@amihartz well said.
@@amihartzTell me about the blurry boundaries between electrons & quarks, or neutrons & neutrinos
Reminds me of something I heard when I was picking my degree:
Biology is really Chemistry
Chemistry is really Physics
Physics is really Maths
And Maths is really hard
Natural philosophy is natural philosophy regardless of flavor
That beginning really sounded like:
"On the positive side: he doesn't use mathematics and formulas.
On the negative side however: he doesn't use mathematics and formulas."
But that shows your understanding, doesn't it?
After learning a Sowell i realize i dont NEED food or water but that is only because i now WANT to die
All I need is Warp drive and let me die by thirst in space
Also his argument about the monopolies is kind of twisted if you think about it. Even if he was right and they will eventually fall during the time that they do exist they can cause a lot of harm to a lot of people.
By that same logic the Nazi's shouldn't be opposed cause they will fall or imperialism or communist dictatorships or any empire.
@MrMarinus18 Yeah, it's twisted. He would actually prefer a scenario where malevolent monopolies exist and cause harm over collectivization or regulation in the chance it may harm monopolies. He also ignores the fact that capitalism trends toward monopolization as competition leads to consolidation of capital. He probably thinks the government creates monopolies through regulation instead of monopolies control regulation by lobbying the government
@@logancatron2239Governments are given the Federal capacity to abrogate or inact economic regulations at their leisure consequently this causes private or corporate entities to lobby the government because that is the only way they can stay a step ahead of their competition which results in those select few corporations consolidating power and becoming monopolies and an extention of the government.
@Donfryesmustache precisely, this exposes the lie of Bourgeois democracy
I don't get how some people can say things like, 'Feudalism wasn't so good because you had some authority telling you what to make and what to do', when that's what happens in capitalism.
It's like they only think employers exist, and employees are subhumans who don't count. If some authority telling you want to make is bad, then economic power should be given not to the State, but to the people.
So true, king.
That's not what happens in capitalism at all. Consumers tell you what to make. Millions of people making different decisions about what they want, and how much. Not one person.
which part of the tide-pod do you usually eat first?
Thomas sowell's position, and others like him, is basically that anything "good" that happens in an economy with *some* market mechanisms (NEP USSR, modern china etc.) is because of the wonders of free market capitalism. When something "bad" arises in those same economies or other similar "mixed economies", the problem is government intervention. Its an inherently infallible position.
I feel like in addition to "Everything good is due to the market", we should also add "Everything that results from the market is good". The core mantras of modern economic thinking.
No one is claiming that.@@plateoshrimp9685
The point is that nobody promised you anything in the free market. So you weren’t cheated out of anything because you didn’t have to buy into anything.
But the government maintains authority under the presumption that they’ll deliver results. So you paid your entrance fees for nothing.
@@BobDingus-bh3pd Idk man these free market guys seem to be promising a lot
@@HirokuDev but you still don’t have to pay for it 🤙
Finally - some good fuckin’ economics
Do you find banana bread “good” or “funkin’”
I just need to know
Pieppy. This isn't good trolling. Try to be entertaining please.
Good economics = stuff I agree on an emotional level?
@@pekka1900 But of course
@@pekka1900 you can apply this to literally any school of economics, so... congrats on insulting literally everyone I guess? Not a very meaningful comment to make.
As a history major, you really hit the nail on the head of what I found disturbing about a lot of economics literature and pop economics I've read. The history training I received emphasized the need for treating complex historical processes with nuance, properly contextualizing them, and highlighting their contingent and embodied nature.
What I mean by that last bit is that processes like the emergence of capitalism and market economies were not preordained, and at every step, individuals and organizations made specific choices within a range of potential choices that shaped the development of the processes.
For me, the works produced by academics like Sowell are deeply disappointing because they take fascinating historical concepts and reduce them to so many abstract eternal laws that must be followed.
Your section on the role of governance within markets was particularly interesting to me, and I really appreciate you including your sources so I can learn more about those topics!
Have you read Basic Economics? It actually has a lot of nuance that's being ignored by the creator of this video. I think you'd find that Sowell actually talks about how important nuance is. The whole point of the book is that implementation is the most important thing in any scenario. That's the whole idea behind scarcity and tradeoffs. I really recommend you read the book even if you disagree with what he says. I think you'll find it way more complex than it's being portrayed.
I'd like Unlearning Economics do a video on war economies particularly during the second world war. He might need to interview someone who specialises in that field. It would be interesting to know how much each nations' economy resembled a planned economy as the war escalated.
@@geoffgjofThe man isn't a scientist interested in truth, he's a propagandist and it becomes obvious if you actually check his statements against the modern historical or economic literature. He never learned how to perform credible statistical work (economists were notoriously bad at it for decades and he got his PhD in the 1960s) and it really really shows when he tries to "prove" something.
This video fairly represents the book and the reasons that is a very poor quality learning resource. The section on market failures in particular is well worth watching.
Greetings from a statistican in Switzerland
@@Bill-kk7tz I obviously think you're mistaken. Can you point to some specifics to back up your claim? Everything in this video is actually wrong when you look up all the stats 🤣
I think one of the immediate counters to Sowells argument that "free markets allocate resources most efficiently" is in the existence of luxury goods. The vast majority of a population can and will never have the resources to operate in that market segment, yet it accounts for a disproportionately large amount of financial movement despite having such a small number of participants. The items it creates aren't necessary, requested by the greater market or the most efficient use of resources - yet these sections of the economy are remarkably resilient, even in times of wider economic crisis (e.g. sales of luxury vehicles increasing during recessions). The Bugatti Tourbillion and GMA T.50 are far from the most efficient use of our resources - however beautiful and marvelous they may be - and the wider market did not call for their existence, yet they continue to exist and sell for unfathomable amounts of money.
There is nothing inefficient about people who want and can pay for luxury goods, getting them. Your idea of efficiency is quite skewed.
@@elizartringov2583it’s inefficient because those time and resources can be used for providing needs of people that aren’t fulfilled.
@@elizartringov2583 If there's a significant number of people who are homeless, housing insecure, permanent renters, food bank reliant or living paycheck to paycheck and the free market is still pushing out £2m luxury vehicles, that is an objectively inefficient use of resources. Again, I understand the attraction, but there's no way to square that as an efficient use of resources.
What goods would u define as luxury, cause this is relative.
Most developed and some developed economies access to a bar of chocolate is not even considered a luxury.
But chocolate is a luxury good isn't it?
In conclusion, what u propose doesn't annul sowel point. Not saying sowel is correct, but that u haven't disproven him.
1:40:24 Parks and libraries are unique because they offer a space where you can "be" without the expectation of spending money. They kind of exist in their own realm, almost off limits to monetization.
Libraries could be viewed as one of the safeguards against the excesses of markets. Not just a place to sit and do nothing, but also a way to bypass the price requirements of information and communication
Unfortunately, parks and other previously public spaces are increasingly becoming privatized
@@janmelantu7490and this can extend to other goods and services too, things like tools etc., anything that can be shared, really.
The money has been spent through taxes to create the library and its space. Either the library visitor paid for it or someone else's taxes paid for it. It's not outside the realm of monetization
@@mathewwelsh9129Do you not also pay taxes?
Why would he mention water while trying to claim monopolies don't exist, when water is a great example!
Especially with Nestlé trying their nonsense :/
There has never been a free market Monopoly
@@poptraxx418 water...
@@poptraxx418
Yeah that's why financial investors call entering a market with companies like Amazon "kill zones" because it's impossible to enter.
Because the markets are like totally not monopolized.
@@poptraxx418
1. Standard Oil
2. Bell System
The quote about how the burden on the libertarian is greater is quite apt. I was literally once featured on /r/badeconomics for a post where I merely argued, citing statistical data and academic sources, that parts of China's public sector positively impacted its growth. My post was not even pro-central planning as it was literally talking positively about China's system which is a mixed economy. The people who reposted me on/r/badeconomics argued against literally every example, saying all of them would've been better if it was privatized. They refused to accept a _single_ point _at all._ To be a libertarian you have to one-by-one argue against literally _everything_ the government can ever do, which has always just come off as dogmatic to me, but it's the approach you mostly see when there is a discussion on China's economy. It already has most its GDP produced by the private sector but there's usually an insistence that this inherently means if they just privatized everything they would grow even more, which is incredibly dubious especially if you read what Chinese economists say about their own economy.
As a former libertarian, yeah that's pretty accurate
There's a reason why roads are their weakness.
Can't argue that public sector hurt the growth, but I can argue that the growth is more like a cancerous tumor than anything positive. The masses of ghost cities and tofu dregs, along with the very poor living conditions, seems to suggest that the growth is hollow, similar to how GDP growth by inflation means nothing.
@@drascalicus5187oh my god stop consuming propaganda. There are no "ghost cities" they're literally just planning for housing and they're filled up pretty quick.
@@drascalicus5187 Haven't people moved in and now they're just cities?
Man, the libertarian cope in this comment section is incredible.
Has anyone been able to figure out who "They" are and why they are hiding Solwell's work?
I love how one sentence later he backtracks to "them" simply ignoring him
The intellectuals who fancy themselves as having a better understanding of how your life should be ran better than you do.
Pay attention.
Ya, we figured it out.
@@postplayslike himself???
It was me. I’m hiding him in my basement.
Thomas Sowell’s books were my first dedicated introduction economics, and I found a lot of them quite helpful and fascinating as someone completely new to many of these concepts, but as someone with a love of history I am well aware that the kind of free market systems Sowell praised were very contingent on certain institutional and cultural frameworks that were definitely not hands-off or intuitive. Given literally no oversight, the same kinds of issues seen elsewhere in society arise in economies. I came into this video a bit guarded given the thumbnail, but this was well-argued and asked a lot of the same questions I had with better insight, especially regarding government intervention and regulation.
I am thankful I had taken the two basic economics classes in college (micro and macro) *BEFORE* I even knew who he was.
To me, he comes across as a right wing charlatan than an intellectual.
@@charlee_hotel "I'm sure glad I got to hear a year's worth of propaganda before reading that author" 😅
@@authenticallysuperficial9874lol
@@authenticallysuperficial9874
Micro and macro economics are now _propaganda_ ?
Gee, I didn't know calculus verbal problems (ie. micro and macro) had _an agenda._ 🤦🏻♀️
@@authenticallysuperficial9874
Let me guess: you also think math is _racist._
22:30 - "Sowell's counterexample of [the Garden of Eden] is entirely made up"
I suspect half of Sowell's readership would probably ragequit the video at this point lol
I guess I have always had a soft spot for command economies because I essentially lived in one for 8 years while in the US army and saw how it can work and provide for the basic physical needs of a society.
Every large company also uses a centrally planned economy to manage its interior economy, and these companies manage to output enormous numbers of products while never using a pricing mechanism to determine interior consumption.
However, much like market based systems, I dont believe that centrally planned systems are inherently better at producing everything a society wants.
Thank you. After working for corporations, it's hard for me to take at face-value the idea that command economies don't work. Corporations are command economies internally and there's an industry of consultants, business schools, and researchers trying to figure out ways to make the command economy work better.
@@s-man5647theyre actually less efficient than much smaller business and have layers and layers of bureaucracy comparatively
@@robfromvan that's like complaining that that the US military is comparatively bloated compared to a random African militia that doesn't need a burger king flown in from the US. The contexts in which they operate in and the requirements that come from such contexts makes such comparisons ludicrous.
Big corporations, as compared to small businesses, can and do participate in a much wider variety of trades across a much larger geographies. That's why they're big. and why small businesses have to become big if they want to do the same thing. Yeah, your neighborhood bar serves better burgers than McDonald's but McD is selling burgers all over the world, with pricing precise enough to be used as a proxy metric for comparing economies. and with localized menus to cater to local tastes and develop their brand beyond being American fastfood.
I guess you weren't.... Thomas Sold on the book. I'm so sorry.
Reading this book has zapped him of his Sowell.
That was terrible. You should both be pun-ished.
I’m sold on banana bread, try it
@@pieppy6058 Cinnamon bread is better.
@@epicphailure88but good ol' plain bread is more customizable though.
At this point I believe you can replace "the economy" with "the ravenous beast consuming the future" in every sentence and the meaning doesn't change.
Demanding infinte growth tends to make an economy transform into that, yes.
People should be replacing "the economy" with "the people." Because that's all an economy really is when you boil it down. It's people making decisions on what to prioritize and what things they are willing to sacrifice for their higher priorities. People keep treating the economy likes it's some machine they can tinker with to get the outcome they want, but it's an organic network of people, in their own unique conditions, making decisions and interacting together.
governments who of course are extremely effecient, locking down the world over a cough virus killing no one anmd forcing a batch of rushed untested echemicals that they bought at 200 bucks a dose because the companies who created it had exclusive contracts...
@@henrystickman4349Nothing organic about it, my guy, it's heavily dictated from top down. Very little choice there for the individuals, I'm affraid.
@vebdaklu I agree with you 100% about top-down control being the worst way you could manage an economy, but that doesn't change the fact that, at it's core, the economy is organic. And that's exactly why top-down control doesn't work.
I remember Mark Blyth talking about how he first got into economics by watching a TV discussion between a Keynesian economist and a monetarist one. The monetarist had 5 equations to explain the entire economy compared to the Keynesian's 30 or so, and he thought: 'That has to be bullshit' .
But, look at Blyth's approach, and he's no monetarist either.
Anyone who says they lived in Harlem during the 1943 race riot and claims he never heard a shot there is either deaf or lying to you.
How old are you?
We're you there to be so smug about it? Not even benefit of the doubt, no, people who disagree with you are either disabled or liars...
@@williamstitsinger2389old enough to read but not quite old enough to think they know things just because their old
here’s a random useless comment: i thought backscratchers were novelty gifts until i was 16 and learned many people cannot scratch any part of their back as they please. i was exceptionally flexible from my youngest days and remain so currently
Fascinating. Well done.
It's kind of sad, really, because that's an amount of flexibility just about everyone but the most muscular dudes should have. So many of us let ourselves go or have our bodies destroyed by years of manual labor without proper rest and recovery. I, too, thought backscratchers were stupid, until I saw an obese person try to get a post-it note off their back and realized that basically anyone over the age of 30 who doesn't take care of themselves probably can't reach their own back.
@@TheSpecialJ11 Hey, I'm over the age of 30, don't take care of myself, and can reach my back just fine! xd
I don't think it takes that much flexibility to be honest. It's just not particularly comfortable, and a bit awkward.
Weird flex but ok
As you say, "glib" is the best way to characterize Sowell. I think he's interesting as a history of ideas case study, a shift in black intellectuals in the 70s. Besides that, it's just the bog standard old libertarian stuff.
The part about Sowell claiming "people always want more" almost feels like propaganda rather than theory; the biggest hurdle in capitalism's eternal growth is the fact that demand doesn't grow similarly (not necessarily at least). Saying it's a rule of nature that people always want more might function to increase demands of commodities, because if people believe this, they might feel less bad about spending irresponsibly.
But this is of course a problem in the field of economics in general, where the line between theory and propaganda is obscured almost entirely.
I think this is why we've had such a strong move towards "rentier capitalism" (Is it really capitalism if it's rent and not profit?). Demand has been satisfied in the developed world, so now the only way to get people to spend more money is to make their needs, like education, healthcare, and housing cost more, because despite TVs being cheaper than ever, no one needs eight of them.
@TheSpecialJ11 me making a streaming setup with 6 tvs:
Why associate capitalism specifically with "eternal growth"? Captialism itself speaks nothing to the need for constant growth. The reason there's a drive for continual growth is because *people want that growth* - and they use capitalism to achieve that goal. They'd do it in a variety of other economic systems as well.
The thing is if people always wanted more than marketing would be largely a waste of money.
Once you all can't use the term "capitalism " and are required to understand "Free Market economy" as the need and principle, then ask which term fits that best and under which system persons can and do obtain actual growth??
48:38 as we all know, a flooded basement is a symptom of too much water intake
“In Seleucid” is grammatically like referring to production “in Ottoman” or the Industrial Revolution “in British”. It’s an adjective.
Perhaps it is more like "In Saudi", as I've heard Saudi Arabia be referred to.
@@whackedoutpoobrainno, it's the seleucid empire. It was ruled by the seleucid dynasty, a family descended from seleucus. If you're "in seleucid", you're either in the seleucid dynasty or... 😳
@@chillin5703You're not disagreeing with them. It's Saudi Arabia, ruled by the house of Saud.
@@MrGoldfish8 calling it saudi is wrong tho 🗿
What if i told you "ottoman" and "british" are both nouns?
Sowell's arguments as to why food and oxygen aren't "needs" has me banging my head against the wall, either to get it out of my head or damage my brain enough so that it makes sense
"Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence." - Immortan Joe
A need is something that is required but not to that extent of a necessity.
@@MrJohnnyDistortion Lets see how long you survive without water then since you don't need it.
@helpsus
No problem. Beer, wine, coconut milk, fruit in a blender, microwaves veggies. 😆
@@MrJohnnyDistortionThat all contain water yeah.
I'm glad your patrons caught that bit on hunter-gatherers and indigenous peoples, that was my immediate reaction while listening 😅
I will say though, as a non-economist I always saw surplus in their societies to be either of finished products (tools, clothes, pelts, etc) or stuff like firewood, and well meat in some climates can be salted and stored for long, but primarily I felt the surplus or deficit was *in nature* during a season, year or longer period. Don't have to store things if nature is keeping it fresh.
Edit: also wonder where indigenous people practicing slash and burn agriculture or pastoralism (both which can be nomadic) would fit in to that discussion, since they have more ways of generating surplus.
You wouldn't generate a surplus through Indigenous farming practices, you would be able to have a larger number of people in your mob
@@jaihawkinsthe Khoikhoi of South Africa were nomadic pastoralists, and measured wealth in cattle. They traded cattle with local farming groups, as well as Europeans. Doesn't this imply some form of surplus?
@@kwarra-an In this case we are talking about an agrarian society, my ancestors, Indigenous Australians, did engage in limited agriculture, planting of seasonal crops, building weirs, and fire stick farming, however in my understanding there was no concept of "personal wealth".
The closest approximation would be the size of your tribe, as in the number of people you could keep fed, the size of your mob. Of course all people have desires, but a 'European' concept of wealth is an introduced one.
@@jaihawkins suppose it depends on how you're defining surplus, I would guess that any group able to preserve things by salting, drying, etc. or store some inedible forest produce would do so for when times are tougher. I guess that's more of a reserve than a surplus explicitly for trade, but I know that the indigenous tribes of Brazil would produce brasil dye and trade it with Europeans. So such communities probably wouldn't maintain a surplus of raw perishable items, but processed goods.
Edit: I'm talking about indigenous communities more generally, not specific to Australia.
@@ojassarup258 And then you're referring to post-European intervention into the Indigenous peoples community and cultural practices.
The previous thumbnail was much better.
Ok, who’s gonna be the first one to bring up Graeber
I think we will need a backhoe or at least a shovel and pick axe, but I'm game if you are!
I would love a UE video about Graeber's Debt: The first 5000 years. It was really life changing for me in how I view society and money, but its such a dense book that I dont think ill ever have anyone in my life to discuss it with.
"... Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages…"
Apple Computer was founded in 1976, not the 1980s; and none of its three founders had ever worked for, let alone split from, IBM-they had worked for Atari & HP...
Anyone who shamelessly makes stuff like this up has absolutely no credibility whatsoever.
@@tomasrocha6139take your copy of the book, cross out IBM and write in HP and atari. next cross out 1980s and write in 1976.
There u go, one edit and Mr Graeber is one of the great anthropologists of the 2000s again!
Being a few years off and naming the wrong firm is a mistake an editor shouldve caught, not the kind of mistake that tanks the central thesis.
@@alphachicken9596 It's filled with similar blunders, for instance it asserts Carl Menger mathematized Adam Smith's theory of money when Carl Menger did not use mathematics in his economic theories.
Oof. Your mea culpa around 19 minutes was all good until you brought up 'dark emu'. That once-beloved book has received a fair bit of criticism of late. As I understand it, Pascoe is kind of like the Jared Diamond of Australian history. Popular with the public, but 'real' historians tend to give him a major side-eye.
Yes, but the broad point remains: Australia had around 500 recognised Aboriginal "nations" with internal trade networks as well as trade into Indonesia and PNG, across these groups the existence and management of surplus and scarcity was diverse. That remains uncontroversial and is the central point of his (slightly clumsy) mea culpa. But also, yeah, Bruce Pascoe is not an academic historian
Diamond is indeed a charlatan and wanker.
HEY so glad your covering this, just wanted to share my expiriance witn this guy: Tomas sowell litteraly taught me to hate myself for being black in highschool... i had abit of a right wing jordan peterson phase, and during this time bought "intelectrualls on race" and man, idk just good job covering this, thomas sowell is peak neo- liberal or should i say neo-fascism apologetics..
Thomas, the guy who repeatedly says we should ignore race, got you to hate yourself? And Jordan Peterson is not right wing. He’s a classical liberal through and through. I think you need to read up on these guys again.
@@jasondashney Sometimes the issues of race have to be handled rather then ignored.
Jordan Peterson does say some conservative views.
@@jasondashney « classical liberal » is just a code word for conservatives who don’t like to be called « conservatives ».
@@davidnavarro4821 These days, yes. Today's conservative is basically a 2003 liberal, for the most part. The whole overton window has certainly shifted leftwards as the years have gone on.
I'm not sure most people can adequately define "conservative" or "liberal"
Thank you, “Unlearning Economics” for this video. I appreciate the alternate view because I would rather be proven wrong than remain in ignorance.
I have a few criticisms of your criticism of Sowell. I mean no disrespect to you, and if my assessment is incorrect, feel free to explain so I might understand more clearly
Firstly, the "Economics and scarcity" chapter of your video. The logic behind this critique seems to be something like this:
1) Sowell's definition of economics is in line with mainstream economics.
2) I don't like the mainstream definition.
3) Therefore, Sowell is a bad economist.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by that logic, Sowell is no worse than any economist in the mainstream.
Further, the Robbins definition as quoted in the video doesn't appear in "Basic Economics" (at least the fourth edition, which is the copy I have). You say that Sowell’s definition doesn't give anything to point to and say 'we study that'. The definition Sowell does provide is "Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses", and he writes, in other words, that "economics studies the consequences of decisions that are made about the use of land, labor, capital" etc. To me, that's a fairly clear statement of what economists study.
The way I understand it, your refutation of Sowell seems to rely on a logical fallacy and misrepresentation of the text. However, if you can convince me otherwise, I’m happy to listen.
Second, you claim that The New York Times article doesn’t support Sowell’s argument that people’s desires exceed their income. In my understanding, Sowell uses the article not as evidence, but to illustrate a self-evident statement that people’s desires exceed their income. To try to debunk it as evidence is to miss the point.
However, assuming your point is valid, you’re arguing that the family with the pool are evangelical Christians who shun material trappings. When you quote the couple, you includes the words “a lot of people define their lives, by how much they have... I am not saying we are above that thinking. We clearly aren't.” So, the couple themselves are admitting that they do, in fact, to a degree, define their lives by how much they have. Moreover, the article states that that family struggled to save money because of the cost of fixing up their house, the most expensive item of which was “a new pump and other equipment for the pool”. This does support Sowell’s point that people's desires exceed their income, and consequently, trade-offs are inevitable. In this case, the choice was to put the money into savings or fix the pool. It makes no sense for them to claim that they’re struggling because they can’t do both.
I don't see how one can dispute the notion that people’s desires exceed their means of satisfying those desires. I’m a pretty simple guy, but I can’t afford everything I want, so I have to prioritise the things that are most important to me. However, if you can enlighten me, I would greatly appreciate it; as stated, I do not want to remain in ignorance. What evidence can you produce to demonstrate that people’s desires do not exceed their means?
Third, you claim that Sowell does not believe in needs. In the chapter of ‘Basic Economics’ that you’re referring to, Sowell states that “however urgent it may be to have some food and some water, for example, in order to sustain life itself, nevertheless-beyond some point-both become not only unnecessary but even counterproductive and dangerous... even the most urgently required things remain necessary only within a given range.”
Here’s my understanding of that quote: Shelter, for instance, is a need. However, ‘shelter’ could be a tent, or it could be a 12-bedroom mansion. Like the presenter said, transport is also a need. But transport could be a bike, a 25-year-old Ford like the one I drive, or a $150k BMW.
All Sowell is saying that the need is met at some point along those scales. Anything beyond that point is a desire, but it can be difficult to tell where that point is, and that point may be different for people in different circumstances, or even for an individual at different points in their life. Therefore, needs do exist, but can be difficult to differentiate from desires.
Again, it appears to me that you are misrepresenting or misunderstanding the text. I'm 40 minutes into your video and have considered your arguments (rereading Sowell's text, watching parts of the video multiple times, and reading Sowell's sources as I went). I think I've given you fair consideration so far.
As ever, I mean no disrespect in challenging your views, and if you can convince me otherwise, I’m happy to be proven wrong.
@centerfield6339 Feel free to check my logic on this one--I'm always open to the idea that I could be mistaken
It’s a shame that you went through the trouble of such a well thought out rebuttal of this guys criticisms, and yet it has almost no engagement. People go into these videos wanting confirmation bias. Tom Sowell is an absolute legend.
I very much appreciate comments like these. It's very respectful and has a good and concise argument.
Excellent comment. Thank you
I think I can sum it up a little more succinctly: when Sowell says that scarcity exists because 'what everyone wants always adds up to more than there is', the suspicion a left wing or otherwise non-liberal economist would have about that statement is that producers have some way of manipulating consumers in order to make them want more than there is.
I've had this argument many times, and there isn't much in the way of evidence to point to either way. It really digs down to deeper assumptions about wether or not people are capable of free will in the first place. The fact that humans can be manipulated/coerced and are fallible doesn't mean they can't or never make decisions of their own volition, but neither does it mean that we can completely trust price signals as a true reflection of the aggregate of supply and demand, which is what Sowell would basically claim they are.
In my opinion, this argument is insoluble and will never be resolved, because the problem of free will is intractable.
Is that ma boy F.D. Signifier reading the quotes?
He’s really eaten the banana bread so to say
He's also got a cameo around the 1 hour and 56 minute mark.
sorry, leaf sheep are definitely animals. they may photosynthesise via kleptoplasty but they lack cell walls and are more closely related to other gastropods
Thomas never has any real world examples of his economic ideas working, just presumptions based on his own biases.
He's compensated very well for those biases.
And an example of that is..?
So in other words he's an Austrian?
@@rifelawCandice Owen is vying for that juicy sinecure too.
@@rifelawyes the powerful like to be lied to and told they are doing no wrong.
Duh. Use your brain.
The polio vaccine made no money. Not $1. Is it inherently bad because it was free? That's your argument. That the only value that can be derived from something is monetary.
Please make a video on central planning, I would love to learn more about it.
Yeah. The ONE little comment that they're not a good idea was bizarre to me. All companies internally plan, all economies are already a mix, China seems like it's doing well, etc. All I can think he meant was that bureaucrats shouldn't dictate prices or something, which isn't what anybody means by this.
Companies don’t internally plan, they do logistics in response of outside forces compelling them to compete. It wouldn’t work in a vacuum lol
@@ismaelramirez4803, society is not a vacuum, and businesses don't "compete", they seek constantly increasing wealth accumulation.
@@ismaelramirez4803 What else would planning mean but logistics? Economic planning is linear algebra, taking in the data about inputs and outputs to balance supply and demand rationally. This is absolutely what companies do.
Anyway. It's still weird to me to hear a lefty say something that sounds like old propaganda. We know planning works because it already is being used and works.
@@ismaelramirez4803 Varoufakis said Amazon is run like the Soviet union lol
Just commenting that Dark Emu is a terrible work of history. It cherry picks colonial sources to frame increase ceremonies as farming attempts, stretches the definitions beyond breaking point (for example his definition of domestication would mean that sharks have domesticated pilotfish), and completely ignored indigenous oral and cultural history.
More fundamentally, it's central claim reveolves around this idea that to be "mere hunter-gatherers," is somehow deficient compared to agriculture (there's a joke in anthropology that Pascoe's whole argument is "Don't be racist, the Aboriginal people weren't savages, they were barbarians!"). There's evidence that Aboriginal people on the north Queensland coast were exposed to agriculture by the Austronesian Torres Strait Islanders and just... decided it wasn't their thing.
For anyone curious about the critiques of Dark Emu that aren't racist right wing screeching, I'd recommend Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe.
And tbh, there are accounts by early colonists about seeing episodes of cannibalism by certain indigenous tribes in Australia. These are in the state archives but not talked about much.
@@mkkrupp2462That's true, but I'm not sure what that has to do with their agricultural mode of production.
All the primary sources I've read state that it's funirary cannibalism (them eating their own dead as a sign of respect), not as a means of sustainance.
It's interesting all this because Dark Emu is heavily based on the work of Neil Gammage's "The Biggest Estate on Earth" and the core aspects of Pascoes agricultural claims are derived from there, but nobody goes after Gammage... Firstly because parts of Dark Emu are speculative, but I also think the big reason is that right-wing commentators obsess is because they think Pascoe a fake aboriginal and there's an awful animus towards him just for existing. Gammage is white and he is a very hard-working and learned researcher so I don't think they would dare. I recommend the book if u havent.
I have argued with people who denigrate Pascoe that there is a problem with the definition of agriculture as defined by settled societies. And yes some have shared your feeling about hunter-gatherer cringe, but thats not how I read him. Pascoe is trying to show that Aboriginal people had a material culture with complexity, and that's not easy to do in Australian society. Plus If you plant seeds as you move through the landscape, and you make infrastructure to harvest prey (fish/eel/wallaby traps) as well as modify landscape to steer the wildlife composition (fire) then isn't this a bit MORE than just hunting and gathering? Its not a technology that is very impressive compared to settled civilisations, but considering that Australia has always been fickle in climate, settler agriculture would have been a precarious strategy and thus curtailed?
Archaeological evidence shows that there were times when populations were hammered by famine caused by long drought... I cant help but wonder if events like this could have scuttled attempts at developing settled agriculture as it was emerging.
@@mkkrupp2462 the "cannibal savages" trope is a supremely contestable claim, virtually all the 'primary sources' are based NOT on actual eye-witness accounts of actually seeing anyone commit cannibalism (outside of scattered incidents of it occurrring due to famine or individual emergency situations, and thus not the cannibalism-as-cultural-custom that it's nearly always framed as), but from 2nd-hand accounts (a dude from this tribe said that long ago their grandpa said that.../this tribe says tribe B does it but we've never seen it so we'll take their word for it), or suppositions (the savages killed our shipmates then built bonfires presumably to cook and eat our comrades but we were so scared and sickened at the thought of this that we split before the "feast" took place and never considered that maybe they were just going to burn the bodies) to outright making shit up.
So, in these accounts, did early colonists *actually* see these tribes eating people, and under what conditions? Are these colonists reliable narrators, or is it possible that they just assumed that's what was *going* to happen? It was pretty common for colonists everywhere to tell horrendous stories about the people they saw as primitive, bloodthirsty savages who needed to be exterminated. Just saying.
@@almishti Well I guess we’ll never know for sure, but it is fairly clear that the romanticised view of Aboriginal culture as benign peaceful farmers is extremely far fetched. Life was no doubt very difficult and it was a great accomplishment that the Aboriginal people had persisted on this continent for that length of time. But the great majority of people with aboriginal dna today are not those people. They have lived their whole lives in a modern technological civilisation and it’s certainly the case that they would not cope with the lifestyles of their ancestors. In that sense they are more similar to non indigenous Australians than some of them would like to acknowledge.
I grew up working class in a house with a pool. It also had asbestus in the walls, the pool needed to be redone, pretty much every fixture needed replacing and the backyard was a jungle. It took my mom years to gather the money to do all the repairs.
I hope you are doing well now.
Ironically, the house with a pool example exemplifies Sowell's other point about how too much of a good thing can be bad. Just like too much Oxygen would lead to cancer, a house with a pool (instead of the right investments in a living wage, freely available healthcare, good transit, and reasonably sized high quality housing etc.) will lead to a decrease in people's quality of life. It's basically a white elephant.
For all you Thomas Sowell fanboys.
Google the number of peer-reviewed publications Sowell has in leading academic economics journals.
Google the number of quantative articles Sowell has published (and I don't mean descriptive statistics).
Google the number of UA-cam videos showing Sowell debating a leading economists.
Google what economic contributions Sowell is credited with making.
Google the number of books Sowell has published from non-far right think tanks.
Never mind, I will just tell you - ZERO, ZERO, ZERO, ZERO, and ZERO
Sowell is the orginal DEI/Affrimative Action hire...
He is Token.
Maybe even the original one.
Google how Sowell helped create Anti Trust laws in the 1960s.
The man deserves some credit.
But you'll just sit here and wont mention any of that.
Now. "Your" world economics leaders (Not sowell) have selectively chosen which businesses are too big to fail.
Socialism is already in the US. All 10 of Karl marxs points are in use today.
Sowell is wrong that socialism will never be in america. But he will not be wrong on how it ends.
He's a plant stop blaming everything on DEI you and your ancestors fumbled a 400 year head start while we gave you most important inventions to win wars and make the us what it was. That's why you haymte us and blame DEI cuz without us yall have accomplished nothing but slavery colonization racism sexism and classism without that you guys would be last in everything.
Yes, they've tried so hard to stifle and cancel him
@RK-um9tu just throw his anti trust legislation out the window, I guess.
Who am I kidding, expecting a good faith assessment from a liberal?
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The idea that pre-agriculture or contemporary forager societies don't have economies seems very... strange and ahistorical. If what makes an economy is scarcity and surplus then they certainly had both. That said, I also don't really understand why an economy must have either if an economy is all about the production and distribution of goods and services.
Some Ants have systems for distributing scarce goods, including surplus that they store for later (see honey pot ants)
It seems weird to me that anyone would think primitive societies wouldn't have traded with other tribes/groups, or even within their own.
I'm definitely on the pro-Sowell, pro-market side of things, but I was hoping this would be good. As soon as he said that nonsense, I was disappointed. But I'm still slogging through it. Economics, in my opinion, is the study of human choice under conditions of scarcity. Surplus is irrelevant to its definition, though it's certainly a very important phenomenon to study.
This video is terrible
The defining event in the creation of what we call "capitalism" today was Cromwell's conquest of Ireland.
The conquest was one of the first instances in Europe of simultaneous disruption of political power, land tenancy and land ownership, under the control of a merchant class (the puritans) rather than a feudal aristocratic class. It allowed the mass conversion of land from being based on traditional legal obligations and tenancy, to land as a tradeable commodity, that Cromwell used to pay off the various mercenaries who put him into power. You can draw a straight line between that and the spread of mass evictions and enclosures back in England later on.
It also laid the groundwork for the ideology of capitalism, especially the puritanical ideas around "thrift" and "hard work" being inherent to the ownership class, despite them demonstrably not being hard-working or thrifty at all while they accumulated and spent the wealth their indentured laborers worked for. But by forcing the lower classes to work, by giving business owners the status of "moral educators" to the lower classes - part of the ideology that's still inherent to capitalism today, if you see the debates around "return to office" for remote workers.
(Cromwell's conquest of Ireland is also the source of things like anti-miscegenation laws, individual gun ownership as a tool for controlling an underclass of segregated workers, and a big reason for the spread of "plantations" as a colonial economic model, if you're familiar with where all of those things led...)
Indeed. The idea of the work-ethic is intrinsically linked with capitalism too though that was more American. The idea that work is a virtue by itself regardless of context. This was used to justify American slavery though it was also spread to other people. This combination of mercantile land ownership and morality through work by itself was the moral justification for capitalism.
This idea of work ethic is a big part of the alienation Marx talked about. the idea that work is valueable even if you don't own the tools or get any of the rewards.
But also while the Soviet-Union had a ton of issues many seem to forget it was still an overall success. It was undoubtably one of the strongest nations in the world with the second largest economy, a massive industry, a huge military and the sophisticated political and beaurocratic system to manage it all.
While some of it's problems, mainly it's bloated military proved too much in the end I would still classify the Stalinist economic system as an overall success. Being one of the world's dominant powers for over 50 years is nothing to scoff at.
@@MrMarinus18 I agree and this is my main point of contention with this incredibly informative video. While I fully recognize it's issues, and thus would not necessarily advocate for central planning, specially not with some of the Stalinist characteristics, dismissing it outright as "simply bad and does not work" is very shallow too. I can't help but wonder how it could have worked out if it was the entire world working with that same goal, instead of a bunch of disparate nations competing in arms races and sabotaging each other every chance they get.
@@edumazieri Many say the Soviet-Union economically collapsed but it didn't. It had stagnated but it ran just fine and most of the people actually liked it.
The main reason it failed was a military coup due to how bloated and corrupt the military had become. So when Gorbachov tried to get it in line they arrested him and essentially held him hostage as they didn't want to lose their power.
A bloated and corrupt military rebelling against a ruler trying to get them in line is a quite common thing in history. It's not unique to the Soviet-Union.
@@edumazieri I think the problem is that the cold war is just 30 years ago. Most leftists still feel a strong need to distance themselves from the USSR and disavow it to prove that they are not "communists".
bring the part 2 man. Its a need! (Yes I'm 51 minutes into the video and already waiting for part 2)
Why do you think central planning wouldn't work?
This may be my bias as an ex-inventory analyst, but the inventory for the manufacturing processes my warehouses supplied was managed using Lean Six Sigma and a network of demand signaling nodes that warned upstream nodes of inventory needs, with calculated risks for unforseen events. While the global economy is too complex to manage in its entirety, much like our warehouses, each node managed its own inner complexities and signaled other nodes up and down the line, like a nervous system.
For profit businesses have been centrally planning for years, why can't a country? Taking out the profit motive seems to be like it would only make it easier
There's no reason we can't. We just need to, well, "unlearn economics" including some of the pro-market dogma in this video.
Because the people who ardently and dogmatically advocate for Capitalism, don't really understand the basic processes that make it tick.
They think that somehow one entity can do the job, but the other one couldn't. Why? Because they say so; and "saying so" is the first step to manufacture "the truth", in people's minds. When in reality, that "truth" only exists to serve the dominant class. It's propaganda and ideology. People think that Governments couldn't run supermarkets, or make food, or own a construction company - even though history has already proved otherwise.
Even Unlearning Economics - God bless is soul - is not immune to that relentless propaganda, either. People repeat it so much that it becomes truth, it becomes canon, it becomes impossible to contradict the narrative because those who believe in it will act incredulous at your disbelief of it - and in their minds, they think that's enough to "win the argument". And they don't need to take you seriously anyway, because your position systematically loses to the Status Quo (TM).
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make with conceptualizing a centrally planned economy is conceptualizing it as having price-fixing as an end-goal. When I plan a distribution network, I do NOT "charge" node 3 for resources demanded from node 2. No sane-minded business would charge themselves money. Instead, Node 3 sends a demand signal to node 2, which sends a demand signal to nodes further up the chain... etc. until we hit the point of providence for the raw materials.
The most classic, easiest example of the absurdity of a "centrally planned economy" that utilizes prices is that of your own home. When you stock resources in your house, you *charge* your children when they eat the cereal and use the price of that to control demand for the cereal to match what you buy? It's an insane notion. When workers own and share the resources, demand signals determine how much of what is brought to the table, not the other way around. When competing for limited resources, you look at the demand signals of the downstream nodes and allocate fairly amongst them.
Price fixing is a method of manipulating markets, but a centrally planned economy cannot coexist with a market; markets are, after all, unplanned. Entirely new methods of resource allocation will need to be invented.
I also don't think you need any sort of cost incentive to increase efficiency in a system. When the system has known demands, known priors, and information shared equally among all "players", then the efficiency gains are in time and resources. If you know that the downstream nodes you serve need 300 widgets, then finding a way of producing 300 widgets faster means *you can go home earlier*. And finding a way to produce them using less waste or requiring fewer upstream resources means that other groups of your fellow workers have to produce less, which means more resources can be allocated elsewhere. There is a global efficiency incentive.
How do you counter vicious behavior on a large scale? You can't just hire and fire people like you do in a company: the filter which ensures some basic loyalty. When we design nation-wide systems we should think as if we had a user-base of complete psychopaths.
The Sowell moment they always got me was, when he debated Francis Fox Piven and she made a point that black voters tend to vote Democratic now because the Democrats provide the things they want to which Sowell argued, obtusely, that unless piven had asked every black person in America, she wasnt proving anything and that Black people actually don’t support social programs because Sowell doesn’t support social programs
Sowell wasn't entirely wrong if a bit too pithy: the Democrats pander to the minority communities basic immediate wants, not what they actually need to lift their communities out of dependence on government which is EXACTLY where Piven and the Democrats want them as pawns in their power game... keep them dependent and they will continue to vote for those who give them what they want. Research the Cloward-Piven strategy designed to bring down government via economically crushing dependence on government welfare in order to create the necessary conditions for THEIR Marxist revolution. It's evil.
I used to believe in free markets but this video made me reconsider and do some serious Sowell-searching
Sowell is popular to people who don't know much about economics for one reason: race. Sowell despises African Americans. He somehow discovered that his loathing of his own ethnic group, can be monetized. Candace Owens, Larry Elders, and many other Black conservatives have used Sowell's "self-hate" playbook to make a nice living for themselves.
I'm African American, and enjoy debating White nationalists online. During my many debates over the years with WNs, they've only raised the name of one economist: Sowell. When I ask them to name their 3 favorite economists, they're speechless.
Oh, I see, if someone can't name more than one economist then their opinion should be discarded. Got it. Does this apply to everyone or just people who claim to like T. Sowell? "They" lol .... Has anyone ever told you that you changed their mind about Sowell because of your quizzing them on other economists? Gimme a break. How many conversations do you even HAVE with "them"? I mean, economics isn't a lightning rod for people's attention, is it? No you just want to relate some silly interaction you've had online as real life. Good try.
@@michaelwayne7887
Michael, the debates I'm referring to involve White nationalists. Only after several WNs raised the name of Sowell, did I began asking them to name 3 economists. Weird how none of the WNs could name any economist than Sowell.
If I asked you for your top 3 economists, other than Sowell, who would you name?
Did Hayek know "much about economics"?
How about Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Roland Fryer? Would it be okay to list several Jewish economists without getting reamed for it? Or how about we stop playing the race game and appreciate that black people, Jews, gays, or whatever else are actual individuals, capable of having their own values, worldviews, understandings, opinions, and analysis of the facts that have nothing to do with hating this group or being a "pivk-me" or any other of the horribly racist, bigoted things I've personally heard leftists say about people who have the courage to think for themselves regardless of demographics.
@@johnmurray5573
Not sure. Why, did Hayek hate African Americans like the Sowell-loving White Nationalists I keep running into do?
It's intensely ironic that Sowell talks about how having enough parking for everyone would be a bad thing when conservatives are typically the ones demanding more car parking at the expense of all else. He's American, and this book was published in 2000 after American cities had been thoroughly hollowed out mostly for car parking, and something tells me he's not trying to critique the very real problem of car dependency in the US.
Sowell grew up in New York City and has talked about the change the city has experienced. He has identified many problems that caused American cities to decline, and car dependency isn't one of them. Rising crime, falling youth unemployment, increased single motherhood, rising housing costs, and failing schools are all issues Sowell has talked about concerning the reason why American cities have declined. Sowell would also have much to say about why people focus on problems that aren't significant at the expense of problems that are.
@@BulletRain100Car dependency has one very serious effect (among others): helping to keep the working poor, poor.
If one is poor, and require a car to get to one's job, the cost of operating a vehicle is a fairly serious expense.
That's less money for rent and food. That's money one cannot set aside for emergencies.
@@BulletRain100 you want to help those in urban environments bootstrap up? Then you support public transit systems in urban AND SUBURBAN environments. The limited spread of public transit is a direct factor impeding many people's personal economic growth.
@@christophergreen6595 Is this why cities with robust public transportation have an ever increasing poor population while the middle class only exists in middle-sized cities? I'm all for public transportation but as someone who grew up dependent on it, it never helped me. The government and its services are not reliable and never will be for long.
@@BulletRain100 The explosion in the number of cars on the road caused leaded exhaust to pollute the air people breathed, and the effects on the brain of widespread lead poisoning contributed to at least half of the increase in crime in the second half of the 20th century. The EPA banning of leaded gasoline did more to reduce crime than the entire police force in the US.
Sowell has nothing of value to suggest; it's policies of his very type that are largely to blame for the decline of US cities in that period. I don't wouldn't take seriously anything he says about that topic in particular.
There's absolutely no denying that access to transportation is the biggest factor in being able to go to work, which means it plays a big factor in all of those problems you mention as well. If you can't commute to a job, you can't work, and then you either resort to other means or you become destitute. During this period, many jobs moved out of cities and into suburbs making many completely inaccessible to people who don't have an alternative means of transportation but public transit. Of course unemployment spiked. It's the predictable and fully intentional results of car centric planning.
The "Alexander the great" Proof, reminds me of the reasonings in a university course in economics text book that 'prove' things.
My favorite example
Premise:
Planned economies are inferior
Proof:
North Korea has a planned economy while South Korea has a free market and North Korea's economy has a way lower GDP than South Korea.
the two countries are very close together and are according to us only different in their economic policy.
therefore:
Conclusion: We have now proven that Planned economies have always been and will always be inferior!
QED
The book then pats itself on the back for being so brilliant and scientific.
The book is full of "Cetris Paribus" assumption based horse-shit like this, "proving" statements for which real-world counterexamples exist and completely ignoring the geo-political, cultural and often even military/imperialist context. Let's ignore that one country has a dictatorship running it while the other is a democracy. These things should not be considered a meaningful difference, right? Or the fact that the 'great capitalist' power blocks were having this thing called 'cold war' going on that was mostly fought through proxies like small 2nd and 3rd world countries falling to communism or socialism. Let's also ignore all the cultural social context. All other things equal after all.
Its like when you talk about minimum wage and you pretend that the entire ecosystem that is the economy can be reduced to the microcosm of the supply and demand of labor with no other variables or interactions between factors and draw a little graph and declare conclusions without any further testing of your conclusion
Let's ignore the fact that a higher minimum wage might increase the means of the poorest section of the population who spends the most of their income, and that this increase in buying power might increase consumpution and that this could perhaps create more demand for labor and perhaps impact that simple two-dimensional model in ways it is unable to represent.
I've been subject to economics education a lot in my country and what always struck me is how uncurious many free-market economicists are about the reality behind the models they made that are so dumbed down that a 9-year-old could understand them as long as they 'prove' the things that they politically agree with, in the same breath as that they declare that economics should ignore ethical questions no matter how much their work influences policy making and therefore the lives of millions of living breathing human beings.
But then I had the epiphiny that perhaps the fact that the insanely simplified model is clear enough for a nine-year-old to understand is the entire point. Something that feels so simple and elegant can be very persuasive and hard to argue against. Why would you want to test disprove it if it serves your purposes?
The decision to ignore ethical considerations, is an ethical consideration. It just happens to be one that intentionally leads to unethical decisions.
The disgusting part was that all this was part of an economics course that was offered to governance students, that had the goal of informing them that rent control and minimum wage were bad things with only bad consequences, and that we future policy makers should remember to listen to the economists about this stuff.
In a country where minimum wages and rent control have been effectively implemented since World War 2.
And the course was designed by the department's lead economist who very much prides himself about how he spends half his time talking to the policy makers that reprivatized the energy market, the telecommunications infrastructure markets, the student loan market, the health insurance market, and all hospitals...leading to worse outcomes for way more expensive services in all cases without exception.
Under the old system, we paid 20 bucks a month for health insurance, unless you had no income because then you got it for free. Hospitals had decent reasonable waiting times and looked like sterile empty spartan buildings with minimalistic approaches. But they had plenty of hospital beds.
Now, you pay about 200 bucks a month for (for many things partial coverage) hospitals that look really nice, with bloody museums and botanical gardens in their entry halls along with shopping centers, severe bed shortages solved by sending people home after surgery as soon as they won't definitely die from that, long ass waiting lists, and insurance companies striking another 5 things from what is covered under the basic insurance policy every year while some politicians have started arguing that life-saving surgeries for people over 65 should be re-classified as non-essential. And we now have to pay for more and more drugs ourselves too.
Public transportation went from very affordable, driving on time, driving at least once every hour for all busses and trains to under privatized....
well, the buses look nicer, but the drivers are underpaid, the ticket prices are so high that it's cheaper to own a car and drive than to take the bus to work and they don't do the driving on time as much anymore either. The company in charge of maintaining the rail network just didn't do that for 5 years, just stuffing out the entire budget in dividents, and now they ask for more money because the whole bloody network is faulty and in disrepair and they don't get enough money to cover replacing all the broken parts. Something they could have prevented by doing the job they were paid to do, but cut corners on. So trains often don't go along certain routes for weeks as rail sections become inoperatble. (most of this has now been solved by spending lots of government money to make up the difference, you know, money all that privatizing was supposed to save, the remainder was fixed with price hikes, which has caused more people to opt for private transport where they could afford the investment of buying a vehicle)
Student loans...well they used to be grants but now we're all stuck paying them back. Something economists all think is awesome because the costs of education are now paid for by the people benefitting from that education by getting better jobs. Except loans are bad for people's mental health which has upped the costs for healthcare as depressions become way more common and less people opt for a higher education, undermining the knowledge-economy status of the work-force which also hurts our competitive edge over other countries.
The energy market..... oof.
A power company would buy 1 KWH for 0.02 euros, and sell it to consumers for 0.22 euros. Then the whole energy market crash happened because Ukraine, yada yada.
So then power companies would buy 1 KWH for 0.18 euros, and thus also increase their selling price by 900%. Because that is a sane thing to do. If your price of import rises, than so should your profit margin.
This has been bad for everyone. Paying 1.98 euros for 1 KWH (raising the price by 900% instead of by 20 cents like their cost rose) effects every level of the economy. Every business uses power to produce their products. So all prices in all markets went up accordingly and we saw a price inflation of over 10% overall while people's energy costs at home went up with 900%
The government was forced to hand out money to everyone below the poverty line to prevent massive loss of housing and everyone was forced to turn down their heaters and desperately implement whatever power-saving measures they could afford.
So the rich bought solar panels
And the poor started using food banks.
Telecom infrastructure markets...
We used to have a universal grid for phones, cable etc maintained to a certain universal standard in the entire country.
now the availability of options for internet, phone lines and tv-cable are dependent on where you live and what companies invested into what kind of grid there. Prices differ accordingly and prices are fixed where companies don't have competing offers and lowered by competition where they do. What you pay for what internet speed thus depends on where you live.
So good stuff, that privatization business.
Almost as nice as what they did with care for the disabled....🤬
I remember well in 2007 it was announced that the government agency that allocated mobility aids to those who needed them would be disbanded and that cities would do that individually from now on. The measure would provide custom solutions of 'higher quality' to more people.....and the budget would be cut by 8 billion euros (my country counts 16 million citizens so that's quite a reduction)
Of course that was never going to work out. Cities had to obey the overall laws governing what a disabled person's rights were but could make their own policies on what solutions to implement when and what the standards were.
Here's the thing. You have three priorities.
1. Access
2. Quality
3. Cost reduction
You can have it be Accessible and cheap but then it won't be high quality. You can have it be high quality and cheap, but then you can't give it to everyone who needs it, and you can have it high quality and accessible but then it will be very expensive.
So predictably, cost cutting was the highest priority, because not only did the budget get slashed in half, the cities were also not legally mandated to spend that budget on the things it was for. If they somehow saved more than half of what it used to cost, they could spend the extra money on other stuff....but also, then the budget would be lowered the next year.
So predictably, everyone and their mum was forced to sue their cities to get the mobility aids their legal rights promised them. Many could not fight that fight and just fell through the cracks. Many cities managed to draw those legal cases out in court to the point where that first year came up with much access budget to use for other stuff like investing in neighborhoods to raise property values. and of course... the central government got to adjust all the budgets way down, saving even more than the 8 billion they set as their goal.
The chaos of the years that followed had a severe cost in human suffering. I myself have sued my city, my insurance company and several hospitals, for a total of 16 court cases between 2014 and 2020. All that stress and pressure and not getting the required mobility aids when I needed them but instead after a year of legal fighting each time, cost me 75% of my ability to function that I would not have otherwise lost, making it so that I needed even more help and mobility aids.
Fucking bitter stuff. and I was lucky enough to be a fighter that knew my rights.
Worse than that
Many with diminished capacity or an inclination to believe and obey authority figures just simply accepted a much lower quality of life
Worse still
many who could not fight, simply died.
I have come to learn that many economists are bold-faced liars. It's an area of science that sees more motivated reasoning than even the diet and nutritional supplement branches of 'scientific research'
Every time an economist argues that they have an obligation to disregard the ethical implications of their policy proposals because that would "unprofessional' and "unscientific" I throw up in my mouth.
@@evelienheerens2879As a statistican here in Switzerland you can add on "abuse of statistics" to your list of failures of libertarian economists.
But, yes, all of your complaints are well taken and it's particularly troubling how they wish to take previously socially agreed upon areas for government intervention and "experiment with markets" while ignoring the reasons that markets won't work in the area.
The Evergiven AKA the Suez Canal jamb right along with the shut downs from the first Covid wave- when shortages led to huge price increases. Yeah, I knew then that prices wouldn’t come down when it was all done with and they damn well haven’t!
Inflation is just a scam.
So, distilled down in essence, Sowell is:
-at least admirable for his desire to pitch economic ideas in terms a large audience could understand without previous specialization and training.
-an clear, if repetitive, writer.
-unoriginal in his economic ideas
-a cherry-picker of the data.
-lazy in his engagement with relevant scholarship
-incomplete in his account of the historical examples he does use.
-dishonest w.r.t. his critique of competing theories in various sub-areas of economics.
-a post-hoc rationalizer of a range of social phenomena it is not clear that his free-market apparatus cleanly applies to, or, even if it does, comes out the way he reconstructions. Correspondingly, Republican party lines/political conservativism more nearly predicts how he will come down on issues involving these phenomena than any of the economic first-principles he espouses.
-outdated in the going conversations currently had by economists.
Basic Economics should surely explain, basic economics like Externalities, marginal propensity to consume and inelastic demand curves. If those and others are not in there it is not basic economics, it is teaching an ideology.
Almost like he mentioned this in the preface, it’s for citizen not academics.
@@TheWiggum123 academics? I learnt those in GCSE economics if they are basic enough for 14 year olds to get a grasp of, it should be contained in a book on the basics of the topic for citizens.
@@Alex-cw3rz acedemics as is in structured learning, school, college etc.
An example, pic the book people are more likely to buy in a book store.
The finance book, the black swan which has like two graphs in the body of the book and several at the end.
dl.abcbourse.ir/dl/Library/book/Taleb_The-Black-Swan.pdf
Or a book on the exact same topic by the same author
codowd.com/bigdata/misc/Taleb_Statistical_Consequences_of_Fat_Tails.pdf
@@Alex-cw3rzacedemics as in text books. Structured learning. It’s not uncommon for people writing to the general public not to use these. An example is the black swan by Nassim Taleb, he has another book on the same subject filled with pure maths, he would probably never sell the book if he put them together.
Have you read Basic Economics?