Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "The 1 Basic Economics Principle People Misunderstand" video.

  1. I don't have an issue with capitalism per se, but the issue we have nowadays is the hoarding of wealth by many of the rich, rather than wise investment in creating new industry and job opportunities. This is the real issue. People like Elon Musk and Rockefeller produced industries and jobs, growing the economy. I don't begrudge them their wealth because they are (or did) work hard to create something with the profits they made. However, many of the wealthy nowadays take advantage of the perks of being in a managerial or high corporate executive position to live the high life, wasting money that could be spent elsewhere, or salting it away in offshore accounts where it just sits. Any healthy system requires some degree of imbalance to function. Hydroelectric power generation works this way, so do the cells in our bodies. . An economy is about the flow of money within the market system. And this is why I have problems with those capitalists who hoard wealth - they remove capital from the system and eventually destabilize the economy (by creating an inverted pyramid of capital). For a somewhat different reason I think that people who adhere to purely socialist ideals have no understanding of economics either. Creating a completely level playing field, like hard core socialists and Marxists claim will create a "worker's paradise", is a dead end as well, since distributing the wealth evenly leads to stagnation (with no large pool of capital, how will you build new factories and businesses) and eventually the death of the economy. Besides, has anyone seen how incompetent a lot of senior civil servants are? I wouldn't trust most of them to run a coffee shop. One other thing I notice you did not really mention was the issue of the cost of living. If we have a situation where people have to hold down 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet, there is an issue. People shouldn't be living on the verge of starvation when working as hard as they can. One could say to them that they should get another job, but this is not always possible. In one case where I live, a new business opened up and were hiring 10 employees. There were over 200 applicants! Plus, one has to always remember that you are not talking about numbers or statistics. These are real people who have spouses and children. You also cannot forget that when the industrial revolution started in Britain, there was a lot of poverty and even starvation, and no jobs. This lead to a massive increase in crime, which in turn lead people being arrested, convicted, then forced to live on prison hulks, or eventually shipped off to places like Australia. Capitalism is a reasonable system, but we also have to remember that we have to ensure there is a humanitarian bent to is as well. Otherwise, people will get exploited (check out the "Revolutions" history podcast where he talks about the causes of some of the revolutions he covers) and quite possibly rebel.
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