Comments by "Curious Crow" (@CuriousCrow-mp4cx) on "The Market Exit" channel.

  1. In the first series of Succession, the Patriarch of the family says that America was created as "a factory to turn suffering into gold." Corporations in history were institutions given royal patents to find and exploit territories for profit, usually with the monarch being a member, or being in receipt of taxation on goods sold. This is why modern corporations have so many legal rights. So, historically your observation is coherent and credible.
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  2. Amen. The Left-Right political spectrum is just a trope put to use mostly by those who wish to Divide and Rule. But as a famous British Statistician said, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." Why? Humans have a bias towards categotisation and heuristic information processing. In simpler terms, we tend to pigeonhole phenomena, including ourselves, in an attempt to remove complexity to save mental processing effort. The Evolutionary perspective in psychology, explored by Bruner, an influential thinker in both Law, who explained this bias as a result of the way our brains process data from our environment. His chunking theory is this tendency applied to perception and memory. Everything we perceive as data is labelled and stored in chunks of information. They become information by being categorised and interlinked, to established categories for storage in our memory. This bias/tendency has the consequence of reductive categotisation. And bias is fundamental to how we think about the world and ourselves. Our best thinkers are aware of bias, and seek to explore complexity to provide nuance and deeper understanding than avoid it. But as a tendency, we are not all the same. And our brains are limited in the energy and effort they can spare to different areas. Thus, as an extension to our survival tools, our intellectual capacity can be subverted by our emotions and lack of energy to devote to thinking. Thus no-one is immune to the dangers of bias, oversimplification, and tribalism. And it takes time, effort and resources to counter it. In a more complex world, those commodities are in limited supply. And those who wish to influence us, are willing to use our biases to do so. So, the author is correct. We need to resist the traps of our own minds by taking time and effort to think about what links us rather than what separates us, and to respect our common humanity, even while we disagree. That does not mean we do not defend ourselves against dangers, but we don't proceed to short-circuit the need for accuracy, nor give into mere prejudice or fear, without reasoning things through. It's only when we short-circut that process, that we can mislead ourselves, and sleepwalk into disaster. Or hunker down in conceptual tunnels that give us a false sense of security.
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  3. Not really. Numbers are infinite, but purchasing power is not. It's not impossible, unlikely, yes. But where you are you are correct is to identify that if we allow the people at the bottom to fall lower, it drags people down with them. Where we set the minimum, determines the fate of those in the middle. No wonder then the middle classes everywhere are being eroded in terms of pay and living standards. In these terms, the ladder of social mobility is being kicked away.
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  4. "People will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities." — Voltaire. Be careful.
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  5. The EU doesn't think it's owns the whole world. The US definitely wants hegemony, but not the EU. But it also means that Russia doesn't own Ukraine since 1991. Just a thought.
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  6. But we are not our emotions. Emotions are messages, they are not instructions. Ditto our beliefs. What you do about them should be a conscious decision taken before we act, especially in regard to the objects of our emotions. Sadly, that's something not everyone understands. Emotions are responses, not directions. Thus, think about what they are telling you, and what you really need to do about it. Emotions are good servants, but poor masters. So listen, but think before acting on them. Beliefs also have to questioned in as how far they actually match reality too. Why? Because change is the only constant. Beliefs have to be tested against reality to be valid.
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  7. OMG, this channel is like Myth Busters for politics and economics. Keep up the good work.
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  8. ​ @violentfox Tell them: "A fair exchange is no theft. People value you as much as you value yourself. And if you aren't treated well by your boss, work at getting out and finding a boss who will treat you well. And if you can't, employ yourself."
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  9. ​ @vikinggeorge7007 Bye! Adding value to a community is more than throwing cash on the table. And if you resent even doing that, you're not really adding anything. So, go.
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  10. ​ @meyr1992 Not really. It tells us very little. It doesn't tell us what was the price they paid, or whether they were lucky. Nothing comes for free. And not everyone wants two jobs at once: getting rich and staying rich are two different jobs.
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  11. But you haven't been everywhere, have you?
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  12. Meritocracy does not admit to luck. It's framed in the form of just deserts, where in reality, justice is a human notion/aspiration. However, such hierarchies that emerge in human societies mostly fail to meet the definition of a meritocracy. It's tribal, rather than anything else, and meritocracy as a phenomenon it is far rarer than is claimed. Why? Hierarchy ensures those at the top act as gatekeepers to keep out the competition. And most our institutions are kakistocracies. The Peter Principle is rampant. So forget about merit. Be grateful and thank your luck.
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