Comments by "josh fritz" (@joshfritz5345) on "What Orwell Actually Believed" video.

I see disturbing authoritarian, even totalitarian tendencies among the modern far left progressive movement. They seek to alter language in such a way as to obscure the truth, and they can be quite aggressive about enforcing their orthodoxly. As someone who places a great deal of value on individual liberty, I am deeply concerned by the progressive movement. In some countries where the far left progressive movement has taken hold, simply daring to speak the truth has become a crime. Researchers are jailed for publishing papers affirming the biological differences between the sexes. Parents are jailed for objecting to their children being indoctrinated into the cult, and to their bodies being mutilated.
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@PolitictalDipsit Unfortunately, Youtube is censoring most of the comments on this chain. I have very little faith in "democratic socialism," socialism of any kind leads to a strong central government, which invariably leads to corruption and oppression. That isn't unique to socialism, but socialism is one of the most reliable ways to create the circumstances for totalitarianism. The USSR, Cambodia, China, Germany (fascism is derived from socialism), Korea, Venezuela, Cuba... all of these places suffered under socialism.
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@PolitictalDipsit "I don't like that therefore it's not socialist." Okay, sure. Whatever you want to believe. America isn't real capitalism because our roads aren't made of gold and homelessness exists and corruption happens.
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@PolitictalDipsit Fine. I put forth that capitalism does not exist in the world today. Real capitalism embraces the free market, and implements the absolute minimum level of taxes possible. Real capitalism allows unfettered trade with no regulation, no bureaucracy, no permits, no regulation. America is a corporatist nation that has more in common with socialism than it does capitalism because it has a 40% tax rate and a centralized fiat currency.
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@PolitictalDipsit Alright, well, if you're going to pretend that real socialism hasn't been tried, I'm going to pretend the same for capitalism. If you're going with narrow definitions of both, then every single nation in the world has a mixed economy. It's really stupid when socialists change the definition of socialism and capitalism so that only good things come from socialism and only bad things come from capitalism. If you want an actual conversation and not a shit throwing contest, keep your definitions consistent.
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@PolitictalDipsit I'm just making the point that you're changing definitions to fit your narrative. If China and the USSR aren't communist, then the USA isn't capitalist. We need to be consistent on that.
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@PolitictalDipsit Capitalism is literally just free trade without government restriction. I'm completely in favor of people being able to exchange goods and services freely without compulsion or theft from a powerful government entity.
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@mattrussell8309 Well, if I create or inherit a company, you can be damn sure I expect to maintain control over it. No one else is entitled to my hard work, nor to my inheritance. Socialism is the institutionalism of theft of property when the government arbitrarily decides that some property should be "publicly owned" (which means state owned, which means the state seizes your property, often without compensation, and often killing you in the process.)
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@PolitictalDipsit Socialism is when the "people" (government) own property and control the economy. Capitalism is when people own property and control the economy, but without subtext. The former creates a powerful government for the entire purpose of re-distributing (stealing) people's property and putting it in the hands of the the state, who favor elites (themselves mostly). In this respect, socialism has much in common with corpratism. Socialists call it "crony capitalism" or "late stage capitalism", but it has nothing to do with capitalism. Without a free market, there is no capitalism. Capitalism is a system where the government has little to no influence over the economy, and cannot seize property at will. There is not a single nation in the world at the moment that is fully capitalist.
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@PolitictalDipsit Free market doesn't necessarily lead to tyranny. It can, but monopolies don't tend to last long due to market competition. We have plenty of monopolies today, but nearly all of them have one critical thing in common: they are in very heavily regulated sectors of the economy. Government regulation creates the conditions for monopolies. Monopolies, the purest form of market tyranny, struggle to survive in a free market. I find that most often the harshest critiques of capitalism are often targeted at the least capitalistic parts of modern capitalism. There are a few industries which present issues, and there is room for some regulation (environmental regulations can be important for example,) but as a whole, less market regulation actually tends to lead towards better output, better products, and often even better wages. One example: Minimum wages. A minimum wage might sound like a great idea. It protects the worker from having their labor exploited, right? Well, here's the problem. If you're doing unskilled labor, and your labor only provides around $15 of value to the company, your employer can't afford to pay you $15, so the position never opens up, and there is no job created. Higher minimum wages reduce the number of low-skill jobs, and result in higher unemployment among less skilled people. It might not be ideal working for $12 per hour, but getting that first job can create the conditions for you to work your way up. Minimum wage earners work their way up to more respectable earnings rather quickly, but without entry level positions, that option isn't available to them. Minimum wages are an example of government legislation designed to make people feel good and get politicians elected, but which causes more harm than good, both to employers and to workers. It can drive smaller employers out of business, and cause larger companies to replace workers with automation, thus reducing the number of jobs available.
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@PolitictalDipsit No offense, but that was a little hard to read. A little punctuation and use of paragraphs would go a long way. To some extent I agree that the free market isn't perfect, because the ultra wealthy tend to use their wealth and influence to lobby government to create laws which favor them and suppress competition. But that isn't a product of the free market in action, that is an example of government working in conjunction with a corporation to subvert the free market. That kind of thing becomes increasingly difficult to address as government grows in size. But in general, more regulation will result in a less free market, and a less competitive, more monopolistic industry. Some of the most heavily regulated industries (food, medicine, international trade) are the most heavily dominated by monopolies. I understand your idea of capitalism being exploitative, there's some truth to it. Yes, corporations are greedy, and they would love to minimize the amount they pay their workers. But if those workers are free to leave their jobs at will and join another, better paying competitor, the corporations can't risk losing skilled workers by under-paying them for their work. As long as we have some basic worker protections in place, and as long as the industry isn't too heavily regulated, there is effectively a market for skilled labor, and employers will try to out-bid each other for more skilled employees. Skilled workers will bring in more money, and employers know this, thus are willing to pay more for workplace experience. Also worth considering. Some employers willingly offer extra incentives to reliable, profitable workers such as paid sick leave, holiday bonuses, and a break room stocked with free drinks. While not free to the employer, the company realizes the value of skilled labor. These perks are designed to attract and retain skilled workers who bring in profit for the company. Skilled labor is NOT expendable, and any successful businessman knows this.
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@AveragePicker Fact checkers label everything that goes against the narrative as "misinformation." If you disagree with the statement "trans women are women" you are a bigot. If you don't support the violent activist group "black lives matter", you are a bigot. If you criticize how the police handled the January 6th riot and draw comparisons between that event and the "firey but mostly peaceful protests", you are an insurrectionist. If you point out that the media lied about George Floyd, Kyle Rittenhouse, and any number of other famous cases, you are spreading misinformation.
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@PolitictalDipsit The DeBeers diamond monopoly required massive cultural influence campaigns and a huge organized crime ring to enforce. A well organized cartel operates very similarly to a government, and in many of those diamond rich countries, diamond cartels were the defacto governments. They used this immense power to corner the market and were ruthless to shut down any potential competition. Yes, powerful criminal cartels are bad too. Yes, but the attempt to consolidate control of the market to one huge mega-corp can't work as long as it's possible for new small upstarts to enter the market. Dominoes can never have a pizza monopoly unless they lobby the government to make permits for opening a new restaurant too expensive for small upstarts to afford. One real world example, the reason why all toy manufactures in the US are huge companies is because Mattel, a very rich toy manufacture, lobbied for heavy and expensive regulation of the toy industry which drove independent toy manufactures out of the market. Yes, bad bosses exist because bad people exist. You can't regulate cruelty out of the human race. But by limiting structures of power, we can reduce the capacity for it. And no structure of power is more unaccountable and prone to abuse than a government. There has never been an economic system put into practice at scale that has resulted in equal sharing of wealth across society. Any system that promotes hard work and innovation necessarily rewards some people more than others, because not everyone has as much to offer society as each other. In a free society, rich people tend to be wealthy because they provide a valuable service to society. Engineers, scientists, economists, doctors, all provide valuable services that benefit society, and are well paid for their efforts. Even ultra billionaires who are quite easy to hate, like Mark Zuckerberg have done something huge for society. I'm happy to criticize lots of stuff Mark Zuckerberg has done, I think he's a pretty bad guy. But you can't deny that a lot of people use the platform he created, and in a sense, he got his wealth because he innovated how we communicate with each other.
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@PolitictalDipsit That's a level of intellectual honesty that is quite rare. Being open to new information makes you wiser than most. I'll also concede that there are a small handful of industries which are "natural monopolies". They're pretty rare and can only exist under specific circumstances. One example would be a city's power grid. It's hard to encourage competition in something like that because the biggest guy could quite easily afford to charge less to drive out competition since their expenses are relatively flat, and startup costs for competition are huge. So yes, natural monopolies can exist, but they're pretty rare, and they tend to become public utilities more often than not. On the last part, I completely understand your moral beliefs on the issue. The problem is that it's basically impossible to create a level playing field without excessive amounts of authoritarian intervention. The best we can do is allow equal opportunity under the law, and try to help those who fall too far behind without overly punishing those who get ahead on their own merit. Obsession with equality over prosperity never leads to a good place. Better to have a smaller slice of a bigger cake, all parties involved are better off, albeit unequally.
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@PolitictalDipsit I think GDP is a pretty good measure of prosperity, but I respect your take on collectives. I'm not a collectivist, but I can see the appeal of it. That being said, unions tend to evolve into corrupt lobbying groups, same as corporations. Maybe collectives wouldn't be so bad if the central government didn't wield so much power and bow down to special interest groups so easily. My criticisms of workers unions are very similar to my criticisms of corporatism. Lobbying to a central government subverts the free market. Small scale collective bargaining? I've got no issue with that at all. I don't need it because I'm able to negotiate well enough on my own merits. That being said, if a union started screwing with me saying that I won't get a job unless I join the union, now that's another issue. That happens in some places, and I very much take issue with that. That being said, I won't attribute gross practices like that to all unions, I'm sure some are respectable. Personally, I've had mostly negative interactions with unions, but some people speak very highly of theirs.
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@PolitictalDipsit The theory is that with GDP comes everything else. I'd argue that letting people keep the bulk of their money and spend it how they see fit is better than having a centralized government use taxes to spend people's money for them. People know what they need better than the central planners do. Some people just don't want a centralized healthcare system. If you're dead set on taxes as wealth redistribution, well I guess I'm not going to convince you otherwise, but I would still argue that cash payments to the impoverished are better than systems like food stamps. People generally know what is best for them. They should also have a limited duration. Sometimes people need help getting back on their feet, but nothing destroys a community quite like creating a system of dependency. The only exception are drug addicts and the mentally ill who are incapable of acting in their own self interest. I'd say the best way to do welfare checks is that you file for them once, and you receive a certain number of checks in the mail for however many months (maybe 3 to 6 or so) regardless if you have a job or not. If getting a job ends your welfare checks, why the hell would you ever get a job? After the checks stop, you can't reapply for a period of time, perhaps a year or so. Financial assistance should not necessarily be denied to someone who is employed, it should be provided based on income level. We want to avoid disincentivising employment as much as possible. For all the criticism on America, we have some of the best economic mobility in the world, and key to improving this further is to avoid making whole families, whole communities even, dependent on government checks. We can find ways to help them without crippling their independence.
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