Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "Hitler's Socialism | Destroying the Denialist Counter Arguments" video.
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I came back to comment again, after I've listened to Sławomir Menzen, who is a Polish politician from Konfederacja:Wolność party, which is the absolute extreme right, the most pro free market party in Parliaments of Europe right now. Nobody comes even close. Law and Justice party, which is considered to be far right in the West, is center-left in comparison to them.
So, he's a wise guy and he offered several insights, which I consider to be worth propagating further.
1. The country can't be ruled by economists, because economy is incapable of establishing truth. The lead economists disagree with each other on absolutely fundamental issues. In other words, they don't know squat.
2. He compared Classical Economy to Classical Physics. Newtonian physics worked perfectly well on usual scales, but when the velocities became very high, the masses very big, the distances very small and so on, it failed us. He suspects (he's still working it out), that it's quite possible that Classical Economy will fail us when the scale of events becomes extreme.
The example he considered here was immigration. It's obvious that small scale immigration has positive impact on the economy, but just because that happens, we should not assume that large scale immigration will be even better. One does not guarantee the other.
3. Free market has limitations. The two obvious examples, which we know to be true, because we have observations of it happening, are armament and food production. Investing in armament is extremely wasteful. During peace, nobody needs weapons, and especially nobody needs factories which are capable of producing huge amounts of them, but once the war starts, you can't simply buy arms outside. You either produce those weapons internally, or you are badly armed.
The same goes for food. It may not be economical to keep producing food locally, but once the cannonballs starts flying, it's too late and you face starvation.
4. There is no way of making money on Science. The only difference between us and Dark Age Europe is what we know. Scientists did not earn a dime on what they discovered. Inventors often do not, scientists have no chance. Yet, the whole world benefited from their discoveries immensely . Nothing ever has changed the world as much as Science. Maybe agriculture, but I doubt it.
Why did I bother writing all of that? Because I got the impression, that from Socialist you switched into an Anarcho-Capitalist, which means that you totally flipped to the other side. Menzen is an extreme far right, yet he recognizes the limitations of the philosophy he considers to describe the world the most accurately. Philosophy! Economy is not a hard science. Only empirical sciences are hard, the rest is just running your mouth a lot.
So I simply hope you will keep on thinking and keep on developing your understanding further. Don't just flip from one side to the other. You are way too wise for that.
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@ExternalThreat There are exceptions like awards, but otherwise science is a non-profit activity. Galileo, Copernicus, Gauss, Ampere, Volta, Darwin, Newton, etc, the list is endless. None of those guys was able to market and sell their ideas.
Since there is no profit associated even with the most beneficial and useful scientific discoveries, capitalism is incapable of funding science. Science initially was funded by scientists themselves, and that's why they were always wealthy to begin with. It was a hobby of the rich. Later we figured out that's it's so useful, that it actually makes sense for the society to fund it.
Transistor which made it possible for You to read my post, was funded by the state. Internet was funded by the state. It's quite likely you used an ARM processor to send your post. The earliest projects were funded by the state. So on, and so forth. Open up and examine your smartphone. I bet you'll find a state funded project at the root of most, if not all, of important technologies which make it useful.
Capitalism is an evolutionary system. You have a nerve which starts in your head, goes around your heart and goes back to your head. Why such nonsense? Because evolution is incapable of insight, so a complete redesign is simply impossible. Humans are capable of insight, though. That's why we sometimes decide to do what makes "no financial sense", because we are able to foresee that it might lead to large scale benefits in the future.
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You argue that because the individual exists, therefore all collectivist ideologies are inherently flawed. If I understand you correctly, showing a strong example where collectivist ideology was successful would totally ruin this argument, would it not?
Whatever you may say about anything else, nations definitely exist. They not only exist, but they have proven to be a very powerful concept, capable of huge successes, however you want to measure those successes. Territorial success (controlling vast territories), material success (amassing huge wealth), cultural success (imposing their culture and language over others) and reproductive success (spreading their genes). All of that has happened over, and over, and over again. Not a fluke!
So if collectivism is apparently impossible as long as the individual remains in existence, how come ethnocentrism was still capable of all of the above? How come it happened so often and for so long?
That's simply because while extreme individualism and extreme collectivism are on the opposite sides of the spectrum, like all other extremes, the existence of a spectrum itself proves that the compromise between those two opposite concepts is obviously possible.
And history has shown us, that at least sometimes this compromise is also extremely powerful.
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