the_dunk_tank

alright, i'm going to make this a proper dunk and try to watch the video. My prediction is "capitalism made the iphone" and "communism killed 1,000,000,0000,00000000" will take center stage, but she is a scientist, so maybe the rationalized mysticism of Friedman and Pinker will pop up.

• Weird dunk on Greta Thunberg. Okay I guess we're goin full boomer in this one.

• Right off the bat we're explaining money with the barter myth. It's of course only natural that people, friends even, would require a trade of equal value to give their friend something. If you would simply give your friend a banana without expecting immediate payment, you're probably not even human. Starting a countdown now to how long before any real historical account of economic activity shows up.

• "...the US dollar would collapse -- so don't do it"

• "Many economists" have argued that money is the most efficient way to distribute resources, but the only economist she names is Adam Smith, and she doesn't actually say what his arguments were. There's no obvious reason why it would be efficient, or what efficiency even means, which is a much harder question than "what is money?" although I suspect that the intended audience here is children.

• Glances off the problem of overproduction but can't actually recognize it. So far all our imaginary characters have been capitalists buying and selling commodities which accrue magically. Also running a clock for how long until labor is explicitly mentioned.

• Puts the beginning of capitalism "with the industrial revolution, 150 years ago." I know this is the grade school account, but it's a ridiculous oversimplification that only arises because liberals identify capitalism with technological advancement so strongly.

• Her big example here is the story of the discovery of penicillin but she doesn't even really make clear how capitalism enabled it, except to point out that capitalists owned the pill factories? Why exactly does the technology of mass production necessitate that someone profit off of it? The University of Oxford isn't a capitalist institution! It's over a thousand years old!

• Marx was apparently the first critic of capitalism, and there was "an element of truth to his fears... but that's another story." If your full-throated defense of capitalism has to simply ignore its most famous detractor, then you're barely even trying!

• Woah big Western Lib moment out of nowhere: capitalism is good because of progress. places without capitalism like North Korea, Cuba, and Laos are places "you don't want to live." No explanation about why this is or how that happened, but the way it's said sounds like a threat.

• Lol I'm jackin myself off with this "invisible hand" fuck you

• Microeconomics works fine because it's won nobel prizes. Counting that as an oblique Friedman mention.

• Global warming is happening because people don't pay enough attention to (certain) economists. Why do you think that is Sabine? Do you think it's sometimes not profitable to pay attention to economists?

• It's bizarre that the central account of capitalism here is that it works, but only with sufficient regulation, yet she gives zero thought to how capital can purchase political power, that this has happened immediately and overwhelmingly in every new liberal "democracy," and that attempts to legally restrict capital have been laughably ineffective.

• Cap and trade. Abloo abloo ablooo bloo. Good fucking luck. This was the real point of the video, the defense of capitalism is really half-assed and the first 10 minutes of the video are just clickbait.

At least she's getting torn apart in the comments. Good responses there for once.