Her "capitalism is good" video is remarkably bad. I noticed that takedowns of it were making the rounds in left-ish online spaces recently, and figured it would be one of her worse videos, but even with that bias I was shocked at how bad it is. Hardly any real-world history or economics, and zero engagement with actual critiques of capitalism. She name-drops Adam Smith and Karl Marx, but doesn't really quote or integrate the ideas of either. Overall, it's a disorganized mess of pro-capitalism cliches, hypothetical examples, and eliding discussion of key issues with phrases like "that's another story". I'd honestly expect better from PragerU, let alone someone whose tagline is "science without the gobbledygook".
That was my final straw. Her video about rabid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) was bad. While she correctly (sorta) dismissed the theory of ROGD she was appallingly sympathetic to many of the ROGD talking points. Her worst offend was being skeptical of gender affirming care because of some vague and unproven long term-effects and because “the mental health of the treated kids didn’t improve, so much as the mental health of the kids that didn’t get treated declined”.
This kind of misunderstanding of the science is suspect when coming from a scientist famous for her skeptical take in her own field. Her sorta dismissal of ROGD is also suspect, because she seems to sorta believe the anecdotal “evidence” for it why also noting the lacking of actual evidence. This is the opposite of the kind of skeptical take she is known for. I call it suspect because here we have a social issue surrounding a minority where she flips her philosophy. I wonder why she did that.
The thing is, ROGD is not a scientific theory, it is a misdirection—or rather a debate tactic—by people with an interest in trying to discredit the existence of trans people. A true scientist would not have a “neutral take” on ROGD, just like a true scientist would not have a neutral take on the chemtrail conspiracy, or the theory that vaccines cause autism.
There are no evidence for ROGD other than very bad and highly suspicious anecdotal evidence. There isn’t even a statistical evidence for it. A scientist would know that, and would quickly dismiss this theory and all the talking points of those advocating for it.
btw. she raised more “concerns” than just the population skew in favor of trans people assigned female at birth—which btw. is not a concern, but at most a curiosity. She also had concerns about the efficacy and the long term health affects of gender affirming care. The concerns were without merit, and a true scientist with a neutral take would not find the long term health impacts “concerning” given the evidence we have, and as for the efficacy... well... see my parent post.
It's a reasonable hypothesis that happens to be politically inconvenient, as if it turns out to be the one that best explains the available data, this is another nail in the coffin of an ideology that is already severely weakened by significant challenges in many areas, despite so many of its acolytes having already gone all-in.
It is not any more reasonable as a theory—or even a hypothesis—than the theory that vaccine causes autism or that fossil fuel usage does not contribute to global warming. If there is no evidence to back up a theory—or a hypothesis—it is unreasonable to push it as a possibility.
What is reasonable is to assume that people are pushing these theories (or hypotheses) because they have an agenda. What ROGD is stating is basically that transgender people are contagious. This is a very disgusting thing to believe so they decorate it with science sounding terms and provide compelling—and suspicious—anecdotes to support it. This isn’t science and it is definitely not reasonable. I’m gonna call it what it is, this is hate speech, and it is not reasonable by any definition of that word (not even political convenience).
She provides a basic description of fiat money and the process by which capitalists allocate resources, taking on risk in the hopes that their investment produces goods/services that consumers value more than the price to produce them. It should be uncontroversial to state that that arrangement has facilitated extraordinary increases in global prosperity.
The many "that's another story" caveats are important because there are many ways in which the interaction between markets and governments can cause bad outcomes; far too many to be covered in a 20 minute video.
I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
> It should be uncontroversial to state that that arrangement has facilitated extraordinary increases in global prosperity.
No it did not. Market economy combined with the positive feedback loop between science and productivity were the key components. They helped bring about prosperity for at least several thousand years. Recent fad of factory owner(s) hiring other people, paying them wages and skimming the difference is actually a net drag.
> I'd like to hear just one example of a society which does not have capitalism (as defined by the ability to risk capital in hopes of future profits) which is a nice place to live.
And if there is none because our societies co-evolved and at the present moment in history it is the universally dominant economical and political model? You sound like a person who would ask for an example of a non-feudal state in medieval Europe to prove the point that having a king is the best arrangement ever.
You can risk something else than capital ("time of people who do what I tell them to"), for example your own time. With that, everyone can risk something important to them to try to build something better and we don't even need a special social class to bravely take on the risk ("of wasting time of people who have to listen to them or starve"). Wooooot?!
Maybe we would have some such societies, if fascists in Europe and then fascists in US did not take great care to crush them.
> And if there is none because our societies co-evolved
Or maybe, instead of that that, those other societies just sucked.
Given that lots of societies have attempted and failed at non capitalist systems, how about instead of inventing excuses we can just use that as evidence that those other non capitalist systems are bad.
While I disagree with the video's framing of the question, I didn't find her position within that framing surprising at all. In that sense it's a pretty standard center-left embrace of capitalism with caveats/regulations. What surprised me is just how scattershot and circular the argument was, and the near-total dismissal of any kind of critique of capitalism (which I consider kind of a problem for someone arguing "capitalism is good" in light of a ~150-year tradition of "capitalism is bad" commentary).
It would be interesting for me to understand why you believe she should give more weight to critiques of capitalism when there's practically zero alternatives in the world today, and that's been the case for decades now. Yes, it's cliche to say "capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others", but that's absolutely true as far as anyone today can claim without completely losing sight of reality... and I say this as someone who really wished human nature didn't make this true.
It's not clear to me what the point is, or what it even means, to say that "capitalism is good" without any substantial reference point for what it would mean for an economic system to be bad.
The point of the video was to give a basic explanation of completely uncontroversial concepts covered in an economics 101 class.
Econ 101 is taught to people, and not "non capitalist systems that doesn't have money 101" because the experts have studied the topic extensively and the conclusions in her video are uncontroversial.
Of course she is going to listen to the experts on how economics works.
You appear to have defined a universal practice as "capitalism", a person in a commune walks to a field, they "risk capital" (their very person) as they could be killed en route. Everytime you plant a crop (build a factory, launch a satellite, write a program,...) you risk capital in hopes of future gains, I'm struggling to see how a human society can proceed without doing that.
In short, your definition of capitalism seems extraordinarily deficient.
To attempt to get a little closer:
Capitalism is the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort.
Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices, but instead those who have inherited power, acquired through past violence, get to decide on the application of resources and cream off the benefits of the workers whom they have used to action their (the Capitalists) chosen activities.
Many actions (in a just society) would have been chosen in any case, things like delivery of water to each person; now the Capitalist gets to make delivery of water something for which they claim the right to profit from, ultimately extracting worth from the inherent nature of people's needs.
> Society could collaboratively endorse actions, eg through democratic choices...
There is nothing about capitalism which prevents this from occuring. People can be allowed to invest while simultaneously participating in a democracy which elects to provide all sorts of publicly funded goods and services.
What has never existed (to the best of my knowledge) is a society which prevents "the funding of an activity by people who are otherwise uninvolved in order to take some of the gains without direct application of work/effort," which is not also a terrible place to live.
What you are describing is basically social democracy and exists in large parts of Europe.
That said capitalism is a state enforced system, which is protected with violence. Every attempt to topple the system and provide an alternative has been met with violence by the state, and every successful revolutions have been through violence. It is hardly a scientifically pristine environment to provide a fair comparison of alternatives, is it?
There will come a time in human history where capitalism is a thing of the past, and only then will we have the tools to judge alternatives. As of now, we can clearly see that early attempts at capitalism were horrible, and resulted in travesties for the common working population. This is the same story of any system that preceded it. I have a feeling future peoples will largely blame the current system for the climate crisis, and deem it equally bad—if not worse—than our historic alternatives.
Like I said, all successful alternatives to the capitalist systems were made with violent revolutions. And were then further met with violent actions from other states. Cuba is still to this day suffering from an embargo despite it being 65 years since their revolution. Any alternative system is going to have to be violent or suffer being reverted back to capitalism. This is no basis in which to weigh alternatives.
My observation about the future is merely historical, not a prediction. Forever is a long time, and there is 0 chance that capitalism will be the dominant system for the remainder of human history. There are many systems of governments which exist in the past which we today look on favorably. However there has been no world—or even regional—dominating economic system enforced with violence which has survived the scrutiny of history. They all suck, though some more then other.
It is arrogant to think that capitalism will be any different, especially as we are now facing a potentially societal collapsing climate crisis which our economic system is not handling well, and the political class is reluctant to act on fearing damage to this very system.
Even in the short history of capitalism, history still does not look kindly on earlier attempts at the same system. The Laissez Faire capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th century yielded a series of depressions, and treated workers horribly. Attempts to reform the system yielded the great depression. It was only through severe regulations of Keynesian economics where this system had some lasting success, but this success was not to last as deregulation of neoliberalism took over. History doesn’t even look kindly on Reaganomics which isn’t even a 50 year old system.
My prediction about the future is just about as plausible as someone looking at the Sun in the post Galilean heleocentric universe, and predicting that perhaps one day humanity will discover that the Sun isn’t at the center of the universe either.
Interesting that he uses.some ext service for caching the images.
Doesn't this creates a security issue with ext content?
Shouldn't this easy to Selfhost through some nginx config?
Like nginx do a proxy pass upstream and cache and return a cache header? The only thing you need to do is either use a specific path or do the same as this service does with a URL at the end.
