Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "TimeGhost History" channel.

  1.  @michielwerring5846  The 13th amendment specifically has an exception permitting forced labor as a punishment for a crime. "Also, didn't Tsarist Russia have serfdom in the start of the 20th century?" No, the serfs in Russia were emancipated in 1861 (and those living on state land in 1866).
    4
  2. Things look a lot better now than they did in the interwar years.
    3
  3. So there's reason to be hopeful.
    2
  4. "The job of a central bank is to steal money from the those who produce it and give it to the political class." Not really. If the political class wants to "steal" money, it's much easier to do it with taxes. It's better to have a currency that can be inflated when needed. The gold standard didn't work that well during the Great Depression.
    1
  5.  @dicktracy3787 : Ah, the US did indeed have a central bank. But my argument was that fiat money is good and it would be a bit difficult to have fiat money without a central bank (but it's certainly possible to have a central bank without fiat money like in that case). I'm certainly not in favor of 90% tax rates but that's a different issue in any case.
    1
  6.  @dicktracy3787 : "By the erosion of purchasing power, which is really theft." Inflation (in the normal ranges) won't result in a big loss for you unless keep a big part of your wealth in the form of currency. "Even the best central banks steal 3-5% of the economy every year" This is an exaggeration. It was a bit hard to find data on how much seigniorage (i.e. income from production of base money) do central banks typically earn, but according to the link below in the US it's been at most in the tens of billions making it a fraction of a percent of the size of the economy. https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/92/03/Seigniorage_Mar_Apr1992.pdf "from the people who created that wealth to the politically connected" No, "the people who created that wealth" don't lose very much unless their wealth is mostly in the form of currency. Also, the seigniorage typically mostly ends up in the government budget eventually. It's no different from regular taxes in this regard.
    1
  7.  @dicktracy3787 : "If central banks were good for the economy/people then counterfeiters would be also." If some of the monetary base is created by counterfeiters then the central bank has to create less money than otherwise to hit its inflation target thus earning less seigniorage. That means that typically counterfeiters don't really have a big macroeconomic effect but they directly reduce the seigniorage income the government earns so it's fairly understandable that governments want to combat counterfeiting. (I guess in extreme situations they might increase inflation but that probably doesn't seem common.) "Your justification is that central banks are only stealing a little from each person each year." My justification is that some inflation makes the economy operate more smoothly. Nominal prices and especially wages don't often react to changing situations fast enough so it's easier to adjust the money supply around them. Btw, I don't view e.g. taxes as theft so I don't view seigniorage either since it's similar from a certain point of view. Do you view all taxes as theft and support 0% tax rate? "BTW it is definitely 3-5%. The goal is 2% inflation in most western countries, plus the money supply has to grow at the same rate as the economy (1-3%)" But there's a number of problems with this. Just because there's 2% inflation doesn't mean that 2% of the economy disappears somewhere or anything. People who hold currency of course suffer some amount of real loss because of it and the government earns some income from the production of money. But 3-5% yearly growth rate of the money supply doesn't mean that these figures would be equal to 3-5% of the economy unless the supply of base money is equal to a year's GDP which it isn't. It's much less than that.
    1
  8. "You will not hear this in 95% of Polish schools" Really? Is that recent or has history "always" been taught like that?
    1
  9. How are things in Indonesia today?
    1
  10. History Matters also has a video on the Holodomor and he mention's that many kulaks and other Ukrainians were sent to gulags and ironically got bigger rations than those left in the Ukrainian cities.
    1
  11. IPA please.
    1
  12. He's really Astinus in disguise.
    1
  13. Then Italy did the opposite in the invasion of Greece.
    1
  14. "The USSR makes a non-aggression pact with Germany, and everybody says "it's an alliance!"." I'm not sure if calling them "allies" is descriptive but note that that pact involved dividing other countries into spheres of influence, possibly against these countries will.
    1
  15. That's slightly inaccurate. They officially abolished slavery in 1981. In 2007 enslaving people was made a criminal offence.
    1