Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "TIKhistory"
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Exactly right.
In my Australian state, the bus companies were privately owned. They did alright during the depression when people could not afford cars and thus had no option but to commute to work and shops on the buses. But after WW2, a lot of people bought cars - enough to kill the bus companies' profits. So they could not afford to buy new buses, but were still providing about 70-80% of the transport of people. When their old pre-war buses got worn out and broke down a lot, it became an election issue. There was a change in the State Government, and the newly elected government nationalised the various bus companies into one big state owned outfit. The private companies would have had to go to their banker for capital funds, and pay heaps of interest due to the business risk, but a government is its own banker and pays very low interest, as it is practically risk free. For a few years, we still had the rotten worn out busses, but gradually the now government-owned bus company acquired new modern buses without increasing its budget. and with one big centralised maintenance depot, they go economies of scale and kept the busses clean and well maintained yet spend no more than the private firms collectively did.
Everything was sweet until about 20 years ago. The buzzword was "privatisation" and all sorts of governments adopted a policy of selling everything off that they could. The State bus company got privatised. Guess what: now the buses aren't as clean, they break down, and there's even been quite a few catch fire and become total write-offs. And because the private owners can't afford to buy new busses as the old ones wear out, the State has had to come in and buy buses for them.
The same thing with the phone company, which was government owned. They were going to roll out an optic fibre distribution network to facilitate cable TV and fast internet, to be paid for out of their own revenue, but the government decided that privatisation and competition would lower prices - after all, every one "knows" that private companies are more efficient and competition lowers prices, right? But the various competitors couldn't afford to put in the optic fibre, as they were busy driving each other in a downward spiral of prices. So eventually the government stepped in, created a new GOVERNMENT owned company to install the optic (NBN Co.), which they did, at a much lower performance and three times the planned cost, at taxpayer's expense, and no hope of full cost recovery.
Just one of the reasons why I cringe whenever TIK says the solution to every problem is for the State to be hands off and allow free market prices. It frequently just doesn't work that way. State ownership doesn't work in all situations, but private ownership and free market prices don't work in all situations either.
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This is another TIK video where he tells us the Germans lost the war because they partly centrally planned their economy and didn't have free market pricing on critical things. But Britain switched over to a mostly centrally planned economy for the war too. And the Soviets - well, they were communist, which is all about having a totally centrally planned set price economy - and they won the war, with British Commonwealth and American help.
In peacetime, centrally planned economies and price controls are not so good - as proved by all the queues for scarce consumer goods in Russia in peacetime. But in all out war, it's the only way.
In 1939 my mother worked for a factory near London making tiny electric motors for toy trains. Just before Britain declared war on Germany, some men "from the ministry committee' visited the factory, photographed the machines, interviewed people, got a list of all employees, their qualifications and experience, and took lots of notes. A little later, they came back, and said to the management "As of now, you will NOT make any more toy train motors. You will make small generators to this drawing for the RAF, and we will pay you cost (which we will check) plus a small percentage. We have determined that you can do this with the staff and tools you have. You won't need certain of your employees as are on this list, so you will let them go for service in the Army. You and your other employees are deemed to be in Reserve Occupations." (Story slightly simplified)
That's part of how fighting the War worked in Britain. Centrally planned and controlled. And it did work. Resource allocated and price controlled. Kids could go without toy trains. With TIK's free market prices, some kids would still have toy trains, albeit perhaps only the ones who had well to do parents. The RAF would have less generators than they needed, AND the taxpayers would have to pay more for them.
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TIK has overlooked something important:-
1. Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Agreement. 2. Later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and declared war on the USA. This meant the USA had necessarily to declare war on Japan and retaliate. Due to the Tripartite Agreement, this automatically made the USA at war with Germany and Italy - the declaration of war against Germany being just confirming and clarifying the situation.
It is very well documented that the USA was NOT interested in joining the European war. In Churchill's history of WW2, he explains at length how and why spent a lot of thinking time and haggling time manoevering, persuading, and begging the USA to abandon official policy and come and help. He eventually got the USA to supply arms by selling Roosevelt on the concept of explaining it as a freely entered commercial transaction - Churchill even said that the USA was free to enter into similar war material supply contracts with Germany (a la Switzerland & others) should the USA wish. Of course, the British Navy would have sunk any German freighters sent to collect such equipment.
Not until the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour did the USA provide any military help to Britain apart from selling arms. At that point it was go go go.
As TIK himself has alluded to, but then discounted, one should not confuse German propaganda with what Hitler and his upper echelon actually thought.
You should note that when Hitler ranted against the Jews, he was largely being a politician and playing to his audience. There was in the 1930's considerable racist views in the German public (and in other European countries, eg Poland). In Germany there were 3 kinds of Jews: a) Getto Jews - living in virtually closed communities and contributing almost nothing to the German culture or economy. People didn't like that. b) well to do and rich Jews, controlling shops, pawn shops, and banks. This aroused jealousy. c) Jewish university boffins with international repute. Jewish culture encourages study and learning. This was seen as displacing non-Jews and an embarrassment. So when Hitler and the Nazis ranted or took action against Jews, they had considerable public approval.
Disclaimer: I am by descent a German Jew. But, like many, my family did not suffer in the Holocaust etc, because 1) they weren't practicing Jews and blended in, with many non-Jew friends, 2) family members served in the German Army, 3) other family members had regular jobs.
Something else to note: make of it what you will: Under the Treaty of Versailes, Germany was required to make regular large reparation payments Britain - this they did until Hitler stopped it. Where did Germany get the money, you should ask. They borrowed it from the USA. Thus Britain ended up with huge reserves of US dollars. Britain paid for American war material by using these $ reserves (contributing about 30%, and by lend lease (contributing about 70% & took decades to pay off.)
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You can't take notice of anything Goering said. He was a lazy waste of space who much of the time didn't know which way was up, and when he did know, he told nonsense anyway. He's the guy who told Hitler and Germany that the other side would never be able to drop bombs on Berlin. Yeah, right.
Elon Musk is quite wrong when he said that Goering's praise of Hitler had no bearing on Goering's defence. The primary defence of the Germans at Nuremberg was that they followed orders. This is easier to justify if you claim a "genuine" belief in the person giving the orders (Hitler). If Goering (or any of the others) had said the truth, i.e., Hitler was out of his depth and not mentally fit, the next question from the prosecutors would have been "Well, why didn't you do something about it, then?" Yes, I know Hitler could order someone shot, but if the top Nazis had ganged up on him, he would have had to step down.
As I said in a comment on another of TIK's videos, you should not over emphasise Hitler's antagonism and measures against the Jews. He was a politician playing for his audience - the German people who at that time had immense racial prejudice against the Jews. He could claim the allies were being led against Germany by the Jews, but that doesn't mean he believed it. He most likely didn't. But it made good propaganda copy.
Why didn't Hitler end the war when it all went downhill?
Well, when you are a dictator who started a war, subjected your people to hardship during the war, had lots of propaganda broadcast, and enemy bombs are dropping, if you then say "Uh, sorry, it's no good, I'm going to cease the fight", the people would probably lynch you. You certainly would not be able to retain power - the one most important thing that politicians strive for. And Hitler had Parkinsons' disease and was on nasty drugs anyway. He was fine at the beginning of the war, but was rapidly going mentally down hill and not really able to grasp what was going wrong. And he was partly surrounded by yes-men.
This rat-forced-into-a-corner situation for Hitler is a critical thing to understand, because we have a situation now. Western politicians think that by sanctions, diplomacy, and other measures, they can get North Korea to give up ICBM's and nuclear weapons. It's not going to happen. After having for years distorted their economy and caused hardship among the people to prop up their military and develop missiles and nuclear bombs, to give it up now would make the leadership look really stupid and it would cause a revolt.
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TIK talks a lot of absolute nonsense. As an engineer I just love economists, because economists always overlook the obvious.
Using natural free prices as a basis for decisions can only work if the market is mature and stable. In wartime it never is. Especially in WW2, when the technologies in use at the end were completely different to what was in use at the start eg jets at the end, biplanes still in use at the start. When transistors were first put into production, far sighted companies made them at a loss - they figured with experience over many years they could get prices down and would eventually come out ahead. They took a gamble and it paid off. Same with mobile phones. Phone companies for a while heavily subsidised the cost of phones, figuring that unless they did, mobile phones would never catch on.
Some things tend to be government owned, unless in VERY large countries eg USA, and some things never are government owned. The reason is seen in a simplification of unit prices as price = A + Bx where x is the number of units sold. Things like railways and power companies (and hospitals) have been government owned is because the A factor (fixed cost) is very large, and the B-factor (incremental cost) is very low. You build a rail line - it costs the same huge amount regardless of whether it stands unused or whether you shift 1000's of tonnes freight per hour. The cost of fuel and the engine driver wage is quite small. Selling newspapers at a news-stand is the opposite - the A factor is minute and the B factor is large - you need to employ one person for about each 30 newspaper sales per hour.
Things that have a high A and a low B (eg power industry) tend naturally to be monopolies and/or government - only these can get money at low interest rates to be viable. Things with a low A and a High B tend naturally to be a large number of competing small businesses, as they can compete on efficient manpower utilisation. Like the newsagent near me - when the lady needs a break, she gets her retired mother to come in and mind the store.
Developing military hardware involves immense A and may or may not involve a large B. If airforces were run on a free and natural price basis, megabuck things like the B52 bomber would never have been contemplated.
TIK said Australia Post is not as good as couriers. That's true and the reason is simple - AP are a heck of a lot cheaper. You get what you pay for.
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Some important reasons why the Soviets won against the Germans, which have little or nothing to do with logistics:-
# Hitler was a meddler - issuing stupid orders and counter orders instead of leaving the Eastern Front to experienced generals that knew what they were doing. WW2 was the first major war where electronics/radio/telecommunications enabled leaders to keep in close immediate touch with what was happening in the field. Roosevelt was smart enough to not get mixed up at levels he was not qualified for, and stay at high level politics. Churchill was more involved but also much more militarily qualified than Hitler, Roosevelt, or Stalin. Hitler fell for the temptation presented by excellent real time communications and got mixed up in things he should have left to the professionals. Hitler wasn't dumb (before the Parkinson's set in anyway) but he was after all just a corporal as far as leadership experience goes.
# Hitler directed - he wasn't good at delegating or consulting. By contrast, Stalin was actually pretty good at delegating and consulting/taking advice from those well qualified.
# Hitler had advanced Parkinson's disease, for which there was no effective treatment at the time. Stalin was mentally fit. Hitler's doctor filled Hitler up with drugs and potions that at best did no good, and mostly made Hitler even less mentally fit. The well known example of this is when he ordered Steiner to attack - when Steiner had no forces or equipment to attack with.
# The Soviets were first defending their territory and then retaliating. This makes for superior morale.
# The Soviets employed behind the line troops to fire upon any of their own troops that deserted, or retreated without authorisation. The Germans tried this eventually, but only to a limited degree. It's a very nasty thing to do, but effective at making troops try their hardest against an enemy. Many times Hitler ordered, for strategic reasons, some outfit to fight to the last and not retreat - and it just didn't work out that way. (Same with Churchill, incidentally).
# The Soviets would have won eventually in any case, just by sheer weight of numbers and plenty of territory to prepare in.
# Goering was a complete waste of space - completely undependable. A well known saying is "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Well, with Goering, it was more like "When the going gets tough, Goering just goes."
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This is definitely not one of TIK's best efforts.
I've wondered why Germany didn't ramp up coal to liquid conversion. So I watched this video. I still don't know why. Yes I understand the process is expensive, because it took 22 tonnes of coal to make 1 tonne of gasoline. But the Germans were throwing money around on lots of things. The reason why it is expensive is because the process needs a lot of energy. Energy came from coal-fired power stations - so build some more. It's no good TIK saying repeatedly it was too expensive - what were the actual technical/engineering/decision factors?
So, the Nazis made only half the fuel they needed by coal conversion. An achievement that indicates mastery of the process. But why only half? What fraction of the total expenditure of funds preparing for war was the cost to make that half-requirement? Was that fraction significant? TIK doesn't address that.
Were the conversion plants competing for resources for steel or restricted availability metals for catalysts or something? TIK doesn't address that.
I don't know whether or not these two factors were important, but they are obvious things to follow up on.
I suspect it was the same problem that caused Germany to develop no heavy bombers, jet fighters far too late, rockets too late, etc - bad planning / bad risk management. Hitler didn't like to commit funds and resources to big projects if they looked like taking more than a couple of years or so as he thought the war would be over within that time - he never planned on it lasting until 1945.
Hitler did not understand risk management - that is, identify potential issues and their impact and have a strategy for dealing with them should they come to pass. He just gambled. Like a gambler playing pokie machines, he could win once or twice, but in the long haul gambling doesn't work.
A lot of the big picture planning was done by Goering, who was a waste of space.
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