I am always amazed at people who think private property has no legitimacy. Haven't they ever seen a floor kitchen in a college dorm?

This guy looks like the film professor from Annie Hall, when they're waiting on line at the movie theater...

This guy's opinions seems quite compatible with the political theory of Henry George, who argued essentially for socialism of land and natural resources: those who own such things are required to pay the natural rent (i.e., what they made purely by owning the property, not by actually working to generate wealth) to the community. Thus, upon the conversion of some material good from a publicly owned natural resource to a privately owned product, the community is compensated.

That wearing that haircut is also an important stage that he needs to outgrow.

I hate when people contest a political position, like free markets, by saying that the other side is advocating an idea that is not just wrong, but evil as well as primitive and ignorant. It is the epitome of elitism. Worse, apparently people who believe that ensuring the security of property rights are the best way to improve the living situation of all people are actually "nefariously retarding the human potential of workers". Can we not stipulate that almost all people are well intentioned?

Also, in my opinion, he is only convincing if you already agree with him.

Did he also do the voice of Dudley Do-right?

I think he went a little too easy on it.

What profound historic ignorance. Workers in industrial, capitalist societies have greater access to every form of human development than anybody who came before them except the highest of elites, and in many ways even greater access than them.

A prime example comes immediately to mind: the widespread absence of child labor made possible by capitalist wealth. Without the economic calculation made possible by our relatively free prices and hundreds of years of accumulated capital, children would be laboring in fields rather than in classrooms.

Actually, most adults would be laboring in fields, to. He seriously needs to reflect on how a life of grueling sustenance farming might "retard the human potential of workers," and on the fact that 90+% of the population would be doing just that, baring capitalism.

Well, actually, most of the population would not exist, given that the late boom in human population would not have been possible with pre-industrial agriculture. But of those who would be left, most would be sustenance laborers.

AR: if you are interested in reading up on contemporary socialist themes then there is no better starting place than this: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Published%20writing/Taking%20the%20social.pdf

Apparently he thinks that serfs aren't dependent on their Lords... ahahahahahahaha LOL. No. Serfs are dependent on their Lords for EVERYTHING THEY HAVE, considering the lord owns ALL THE THINGS including THEM. Further, even if you lucked out and the system worked as it is idealised (rather than "run by jerks") then you were relying on your Lord for defense from other Lords who might be less nice to you. Even if no-one was trying to kill you working long hours growing food isn't exactly "fun". Oh, and even very early societies traded stuff they could make for stuff they couldn't.

The past. It sucketh mightily. Pls not to be romanticising it in name of glorious socialist republic hmmm.

I'll stick with William Graham Sumner.

He spoke about things as if a factory sprouted off the ground. People make stuff out of raw materials, that entitles them to property. If you work the land, you are entitled to what you grow there. Sure, private property as it is still has questionable aspects to it, but what else could work in our complex society?

As he acknowledged, capitalism has improved humanity in general, under capitalism not only people saw technological progress but also a more equal society. The world is getting better off in most aspects, despite the increase in the wealth gap.

Are there any other successful non-capitalist systems in modern society? Looking at other alternatives I'd say unemployment is preferable to widespread famines.

I also feel he severely underestimated people's intelligence, as if everyone is a drone brainwashed by advertisement and doesn't know any better.

"If you work the land, you are entitled to what you grow there."
That's an argument for socialism- the ownership of the means of production by those who work it- rather than private property. After all, most people who work the land in the US do so in the pay of huge agribusinesses, so they're not really receiving what you quite rightly acknowledge as their legitimate entitlement.

Here's the thing with G.A. Cohen's analogy at the start of his talk. Aside from generalizing "capitalists", he comes across the first problem when he said "they got the government". Hold. In a truly free market economy, the "capitalists" couldn't go to the government. "The government propaganda..." In a small government, the government wouldn't have propaganda to manipulate, and yet Cohen blames the "capitalists" for the abuse. If the government was the propagandist, and if the government had the power to manipulate, and if the government decreed that the hypothetical creatures were against the law, and if the government obliterated them from existence, then why are you blaming the capitalist? Blame the government!

"In order to survive, they had to hand themselves out to capitalists."

He speaks of people being able to support themselves throughout history, and I can only assume that means farming. The issue he completely neglects is that you can do that just as well here in modern times. The capitalist system is completely voluntary, and you can opt out if you wish whenever you want. People didn't have to sell their labor, or their goods, but the benefit they got from doing so allowed them a better quality of life than the alternative.

"The buyers treated sellers as nothing more than sources of profit."

That is completely incorrect. Selling your labor, and someone buying it, is a voluntary contract, and if the demands on either side are too weighty for one side then that side will leave. The reason why people sold their labor was because the "evil capitalists" made it worth their while. If someone could get $10 a week from farming, or $5 a week from working in a factory, then they wouldn't work in the factory. If conditions got too bad, people would simply leave, but they didn't. Somehow people were drawn to factory work. Now did they have an unhealthy love of metal? No, they did it because the money was worth it.

At 4:30 when he talks about unemployment is just total garbage. I'm sorry, it's completely wrong.

To his welfare state: "Workers don't depend for everything they need on finding someone who wants to buy their labor."

How can a university professor not understand even basic economics? If I make a product and nobody wants to buy it, it's a problem with me and not the consumers. If my labor is my product, and nobody wants to buy it, then I need to make another product or I need to lower my asking price. If you look at all welfare programs, they take the disadvantaged poor and make their labor an inferior product. And the minimum wage laws make it so I cannot sell my inferior product at a cheaper price. Possibly the worst thing one could do to the poor is make it so they cannot underbid their higher skilled counterparts, ex: the minimum wage.

Jeez, and I'm only half way through the first video. You know what, screw it. He's just wrong. His video is simplistic and childish. I feel like he's treating me like a child. He doesn't understand basic economic principles, he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he's just not worth it. If those here really want to look at how to fix poverty, an economic issue, then I suggest they study economics. Watch some Milton Friedman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk

@ Village Idiot

"I guess it’s going to be a litany of convoluted and out-of-the-larger-context justifications and slavish devotion to the wisdom and power of the free market to save us right up until the day it’s our turn to join the long list of failed civilizations."

First you cannot blame the free market. We've never had a free market. So dismissing an idea that nobody has ever tried is dismissing a possible solution you didn't think of.

"There's only just the one, and polluting one part with the idea of leaving another part pristine does not work anymore no matter how much we delude ourselves into thinking "well, it's over there so it's not my problem."

That kind of collectivistic thinking just doesn't work when you own your land. Pollution in another country is the responsibility of that other country, and just as you wouldn't want someone cleaning your yard without your consent, you must allow that country to clean their mess, unless they specifically ask for aid. The problem of pollution can be solved with taxes, to which the taxes act as a fine for environmental damage. If it is suddenly too costly to pollute, then corporations will not pollute.

And I'm sorry you disagree with my statements on ecology, but the most extreme damage done to the environment is habitat destruction caused by human habitation. Those are not opinions, but scientific facts.

"The kinds of corner-cutting that goes on to maintain profitability once limits of expansion have been met undermines the entire system's resiliency."

Not at all. Once it becomes too costly to perform an action, a business will try a different method to reduce waste. A monoculture is efficient in creating crops, and it is sensitive to disease, but if you were to instead plant as natural vegetation, which is impossible with high yield plants, you would be taking up many times more space. Once again, habitat destruction is the highest environmental damage, and to become less efficient in growing space means more environmental damage.

"I can't help but conclude that economists (and most CEO's) clearly have absolutely no clue about what sustainability in an ecological sense entails."

Something tells me you haven't actually talked to a CEO about ecological issues. No business model will ever succeed if it is not sustainable. Every business wants to sustain itself. The problem is that government causes businesses to be unsustainable. If the price of gas gets too high, the government will step in and use taxes to pay part of the cost. That increases the demand for gas, and it continues a failing system. The problem is not with the business for refining the oil, but the government from shielding them from failure. The free market wants what consumers want, and if they want sustainability, the market will give sustainability. The only time when the market does not provide what the people want is when the government tries to "keep jobs", or they're "too big to fail" or some other poor excuse.

The only reason solar and wind innovation have been slow in the U.S. is because government keeps propping up coal and oil, making it impossible to compete.

"It's so obvious and the examples so numerous that it really makes me think we've in all likelihood already crossed the critical threshold and are now simply waiting around for the last of our industrial inertia to wind down and grind to a halt."

Don't underestimate the power of innovation. The innovation to not only sustain ourselves but reverse the damage comes from market forces, and they will work if the government doesn't keep the older and failing infrastructure alive. No more gas subsidies, no more war for oil, no more bailouts for car manufacturers, no more handouts to coal companies. If the government were to take their hands off, even for a little bit, the sustainable businesses could rise to power, but until the government stops feeding the big dogs, it will never happen.

At this point you shouldn't blame the market as much as the government. The government has made our economy into a corporatist economy, not a capitalist or free market economy.

"Hell, I have personal memories of visiting old-growth forests and rich, diverse wilderness areas that no longer exist, or I suppose it's more accurate to say they've been transformed into wastelands or toxic dumpscapes"

The market can prevent those things from happening again, and even reverse those damages. Private wildlife reserves have done a lot of good to create habitat sanctuaries.

"One group says "we're going to run out of certain key resources that support our current industrial existence." The other group says "no we're not!" and then it's "Yes we will,"

I don't know where you get the idea that people think our resources will be infinite. That is simply a straw man. Any idiot knows that if we use something, and that thing doesn't get replenished, that it'll run out. I have seen no arguments, whatsoever, that state we're fine and dandy as is. Except for people who think the rapture will be here in May. (I think we can ignore those guys.)

Innovation and technology are going way further than any government programs could. If anything, government supports old businesses because of corporate connections and the urge to keep jobs.

The market is making solutions if you look for them:

Renewable Cars & Power Grids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSdnycHfLnQ

A libertarian's rebuttle to naysayers of the free market, and shows examples of where government has made the problem worse. At the end he talks about new sources of biofuels that are the result of innovation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xta4c731F-Y

"if a wildcard event depletes our food and/or energy reserves beyond a certain point then we may well fall off that edge when all of our calculations told us we'd be ok."

"A single volcanic eruption can cost us a year's worth of global agricultural output and has in fact done so in the past (the year 1816)."

And that would happen with new technology or old, so what's your point? That is not a very good argument if you think that we shouldn't innovate or try to change anything, or that capitalism is wrong because a meteor could wipe us out. That's nonsense.

"If large-scale unexpected disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, solar flares, etc. are not factored in then we will likely get caught with our pants down when they inevitably occur."

I think I see what you're saying, and it's absolutely crazy. There is no way to prevent human loss from disasters even if we return to agrarian days. If anything technology will help us survive, since supplies can be stored and shipped with efficiency, and medical technology can keep people alive. Forget about volcanoes, how about plagues? How would giving up medical technology save us from disease. Your thinking is entirely counter-productive.

"I notice no reply to the comments about exponential growth and our fundamental inability to intuitively grasp it's consequences"

That doesn't actually matter. As I said before, and yes I did address your point, the consumption of resources and the use of habitat will plateau and not continue indefinitely. The only way to prevent too much growth it to stabilize the planet and our resource consumption. There are two ways to do this: you can kill off a few billion people, or you can let technology innovate and make supporting the current people efficient and sustainable. If you allow the market to increase the economic wellbeing of poorer nations, who by far contribute to problem of overpopulation, they will stop having so many kids and the population woes will decrease. Population is not nearly as big of a problem as people think. People are living in denser areas, actually taking up LESS land.

Technological and economic growth doesn't mean taking up more resources. As technology gets better, and faster, and smaller of all things, it will take less resources to make, maintain, and use. Think of the size and speed of a computer 60 years ago when they were as big as houses which now can be out computed multiple times over by a cell phone. Again, technology is the solution.

"Could it be that before corporate charters existed the owners of large businesses were wanting to figure out a way to limit their personal liability and so they got together."

Wrong. Just completely wrong. Before you make that claim you should at least know what you're talking about. Corporate charters were first designed to bind a few businesses together to complete public works projects that those businesses couldn't do individually. The charters also had an expiration date. It wasn't until the 20th century that they became permanent. Please know what you're talking about before you assert something.

Corporations are going to use the government however they can if they think they can get an advantage, but the government is the gate keeper, and if the government weren't corrupt we'd have no issues. Like I said, if there was a separation between government and the economy we'd have no corporations and no special treatment. Businesses could not influence government, and government could not influence businesses.

"thanks to the friction of the various competing interests and corruption and all the rest, power keeps swinging like a pendulum one way and then the other"

But that's what prevents any one institution from gaining complete power. If the power is constantly shifting it means no one business can dominate. That's not a bad thing, that's a GOOD thing. Please study some economics, seriously, if at least to learn your opponent. That is just a straw man. I'm seriously embarrassed for a statement like that.

"we don't perceive the world nearly as accurately as we think we do and our brains have some self-deceptive quirks to them that are relevant to the discussion at hand"

Have you ever heard of the Wisdom of Crowds? I suggest looking it up.

"Neither discipline allows the crafting of testable hypotheses within a controlled environment"

Well first that's simply wrong, since economics runs various experiments. From my understanding of what you've said, you don't have a very large wealth of knowledge when it comes to economics, so I suggest filling that gap. Not that I know much about economics either, but it's important to grasp the principals.

That being said, to the degree of which economics is experimental has little to do with its validity. If it can explain natural forces through observation then it is a science. Your opinion on the subject is only an opinion.

As a person with a degree in psychology, I can certainly tell you it's not a pseudoscience, since we do use experimental methods in studies. Certainly the self help snake oil salesmen give psychology a bad rapport, but until you understand it, you can't simply call something pseudoscience. You base a lot of your arguments on assumptions and confirmation bias. That's psychology by the way. Instead of saying something based on your vision of common sense, (since as you should know that it's worthless in science) learn the ins and outs of the thing you're arguing for and even against. Sometimes it's good to know your opponent.

Anyways, I've got a lot out of this exchange. You have a nice day.

@ Village Idiot

"So if a truly free market can solve all these issues and there’s no sign of one emerging in the foreseeable future, how are we going to solve them in the meantime?"

That's an awesome question. My personal feeling is to get the government out of messing with the economy. If you look at all the new innovations coming out to fix the problems of the environment, almost none are coming from the government. However if you look at all the old industry that's being kept alive, mainly oil and coal, they are only in that state because the government keeps them there.

"Or rather it may be sound logic but since it’s extremely improbable that it will become a reality then it’s not valid."

Quite the contrary; thinking that because we cannot see the answer, therefore there is no answer is the logical fallacy. Just because a solution is difficult, and there are obstacles in the way, does not make it invalid. I don't want to sound like a fundamentalist, but the free market seems to avoid many of the problems that are caused now. Those current problems are either caused by government, or by corporations empowered by the government.

Very simple example: electric cars. You would think they would have been implemented, since it is 2011, and the experiment was done before with resounding success. Why though has innovation been stifled? For one the demand for gasoline has been artificially inflated by government gas subsidies. Since gasoline and oil are in demand, BP and Exxon have no reason to switch to renewable fuels, and because gas is kept at an artificially low price, auto manufacturers have no incentive to innovate. The problem stems from government, because by all common sense, consumers want electric cars because they are cleaner and most of all, cheaper. Take the hands off the wheel (excuse the pun), and the wisdom of crowds will move the problem towards the solution.

"Pollution, desertification, loss of biodiversity through extinction, and climate change (among other major problems) don’t respect borders but our domesticated primate brains keep treating them as if they’re objectively real."

You give so little credit to your fellow man. I don't know who you surround yourself with, but people are generally smart, and nobody actually wants pollution save for the fictional Captain Planet villains. Give people the option to choose between renewable and clean energy or expensive and pollutant energy, and their choice will be obvious.

"the requirements for qualifying as a “wise” crowd are getting tougher to meet as the educational foundation for such wisdom has been getting progressively weaker in recent decades."

You should know who controls the schools and therefore controls the wisdom of people.

"Like with a pure free market, it sounds nice but when the theory becomes practice it ends up working out a little differently"

How can you determine with so much certainty the outcome of an experiment that hasn't been conducted? You only accept or reject the null hypothesis when the experiment is complete.

"Ironically, I’m counting on the not-so-free market we have to allow the large-scale application of some of that innovation you mentioned, of which I am a part. I don’t just sit here writing comments about it, I’m following a for-profit business plan to remediate toxic waste sites using higher fungi. I culture species that eat oil/diesel, remove E. coli and other pathogens from water, draw heavy metals from soil and concentrate them in the fruitbodies for easy recycling and too many other uses to list."

And I think that's some great work, and it's a testament to the system despite being so crippled. The only thing you have to worry about is the special interests using the government to shut you down. If the development of your fungi can clean toxic waste and pollutants cheaper and more efficiently than simply dumping the waste, then companies will buy what you're selling. Investors will see the potential of the business. They will give you money to grow, and your growth will make them money. The only possible snag in the plan comes form the government. They could make dumping toxic waste cost next to nothing, making your innovation useless. The friction you fear comes from the dominant power in the land: the government.

"It seems unlikely that companies operating in a free market would see things any differently; it’ll always be cheaper to leave a mess without cleaning it up and just go somewhere else instead"

Only the government allows the dumping to be cheap. Private businesses don't want to ruin their own land, and they can't ruin private property or they'd be sued. What has happened in the past is that well connected business and government relationships allow dumping on public land where nobody can sue, and the business cannot claim a loss.

"We also seem to forget that there are many things we want that no amount of dollars can buy or replace once they’re gone, so they’ll never end up on anyone’s balance sheet yet many of them are what makes life worth living in the first place."

You choose not to see that capitalism has allowed people to free themselves from an agrarian lifestyle (if they choose) and find value in whatever they feel. The free market is free, not only in that it is not bound by outside forces, but that humans are allowed to participate in it freely. The Free Market, for all that the naysayers proclaim, is a completely voluntary system with no force or coercion. Anyone can choose to opt out whenever they want without reprimand or punishment. Contrast that to the government, in which every single action it takes is force. You cannot choose to pay your taxes, since if you do not, you will be legally kidnapped. Many on the left look to Socialism as a noble economic system that claims to secure the interests of everyone, but look at the nature of the best who holds the reins. Government by its very principal is force. There is no way you can opt out of its laws.

So when you say that those crowds cannot take us to the promised land, I can only ask, what will? Surely it cannot be the power of force.

I love capitalism, because it has allowed me to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of very hard work, and because it allows the general population to allocate most of society's resources where they see fit through their purchases. I can't imagine how some ruling group would be able to do this better.

I'll always defend your right to criticize my position, but I'll vote against you every time on this one!

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