Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "BOMBSHELL: Chicago Water POISONED By Lead | Krystal Kyle u0026 Friends" video.

I'm an Australian engineer but actually graduated from U. Illinois (late 80s - aerospace). Ironically this and many other issues is all the fault of one of Chicago person. Sorry for the longish answer. A couple years ago I started to take more serious look at economics. I'd done Econ 101 as an option and regarded the whole subject as a joke. But eventually I had to accept that Economists have incredible influence. As an engineer I got tired of being asked "What's the business case for that?" or "Who's going to pay for that?" and no matter the answer its never enough. I eventually realised its always from people with economics backgrounds. Even those with business degrees have a core of economics education and certain things are hardwired into that education. So I chose to learn about them so I might have a chance of dealing with them. The person at fault is Milton Freidman the famous University of Chicago Professor, who's theories became the foundation of Reaganomics and Thatcherism that we now call neoliberalism. Its been adopted across the entire Western World. His solution to every problem was free market capitalism combined with small government. Its been preached without challenge (or so little its irrelevant) to 4 generations of Western civilisation - boomers, gen -x, millennials and Zoomers. I say preach not teach quite deliberately because anyone who questions free market capitalism is treated like a heretic. If you look at almost any Western Nation right now there are serious issues with basic services and infrastructure. It varies from place to place, but its the same root cause - Milton Freidman's ideology. He had some great lines like "Greed is good" but his line about "Corporations have no other obligation but to deliver profits to owners" that's at the center of these problems. Don't forget that energy, water, waste water, roads, bridges, transportation,... etc are all engineered systems. All the rest of you just assume that us engineers can just deliver this stuff. People are so accustomed to turning on a tap or flipping a light switch they never consider what it takes to make that happen. You all assume we are listened to by management, but we aren't. We constantly get pushback with those 2 questions "What's the business case for that?" or "Who's going to pay for that?" and no answer is ever good enough. Remember Ronald Reagans famous catch cry "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem." That was pure Milton Friedman philosophy. Another of his lines is "free markets are the most efficient way to run society" has shaped many government decisions IRRESPECTIVE of the the political ideology of those in charge. Don't forget that all the basic economics classes are the same with text books out of Harvard, Yale, Princeton,... etc. So even the most lefty government is riddled with economists all trained in free market economics. In my home state of Victoria it was a Left Wing government that sold off the train system and the power stations. They told us the same line everyone hears: "free market competition will provide better services and lower costs to consumers." * BUT how can that be true when the corporations who have just bought those public assets have "no other obligation than to deliver profits to their owners?"* We now have to subsidise those corporations who bought our rail system. Our power bills are up over 400% and we have our own version of the energy crisis. The problem is Milton Freidman was WRONG and it should have been obvious that he was WRONG, but to question his ideology and its offspring of Reaganomics and Thatcherism is to labelled a heretic. I hate to see this happen to Chicago but it was a Chitown native who brought this shite down upon us all. Sorry for the long answer.
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@carpediem44 You're about 90% right. There's a line I heard a while back about Government needs to lead and do the things industry can't and then hand on what it can. You're absolutely right that there are things that government should just not do and history bears that out again and again. BUT then there are things that industry needs to let government do without interference. As an aerospace engineer NASA is the best example I know. As part of the Apollo program they developed all sorts of new technologies and then handed them on for industry to take further. I was in college when Challenger happened and in the aftermath there were all kinds of "we must abolish NASA" sentiment. But the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics published a rebuttal. They commissioned and auditor to estimate the financial benefits of NASA. Just from the tech spin-offs and the taxes paid from sales the US People had made back $9 for every $1 spent on Apollo. AND THAT'S STILL GOING. If you're wondering the single biggest pay-offs have been in metal alloys and computers. People forget that before Apollo computers were monstrosities the size of houses. Apollo needed one the size of a shoe box. The lap-top I am using right now including its software systems can have its history traced back to Apollo. BUT THEN if you look at NASA after Apollo its this endless story of industrial interference via political lobbying.
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@kyle Thanks. It started for me with this odd little consult job I had on Australia's future energy needs. I was shocked (and still am) at how old our list of power stations is. I was even more shocked to find that many engineers have tried to point these things out. Every time we do the economists just parrot back "What's the business case for that?" or "Who's going to pay for that?" Our answer is always "Do you want the lights to stay on?" and that's when we get told to leave. It's just like the film "Don't look up!" Every politician in the world who's been told has simply ignored it and hopes some engineer will magically appear out of the mist like Aladdin's and solve the problem.
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@carpediem44 Another great example is the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, which many other nations are now copying. Instead of letting their oil wealth go to government coffers and then letting it disappear they put it into this fund that's managed by a handful of people INDEPENDENT of the government. So its government owned but operates independently and its been insanely successful, which is why other countries are copying it. So there are examples of government owned institutions that have been incredibly profitable and successful as well as disasters. What we need to ask is why some things work and others don't and then do the things that work and NOT do the things that don't. The same applies for private industry.
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@dominicfucinari1942 Thom Hartmann did a really good explanation of neoliberalism. Its an older video but its not lost on today. You are right it was created by Germans in the 1940s but it was weaponised by Milton Freidman and unleashed by Reagan & Thatcher. If you go and listen to Mark Blyth and his analogy to computers the neoliberal order should have died after 2008 and we should have moved on, but instead we bailed out the billionaire class and made it linger like a bad fart in an elevator.
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