Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "Economics Explained" channel.

  1.  @ShavoSoaDer  honestly the biggest issue with big corporations is the trend toward using the government
    22
  2. Honestly I'd say it's more that China got about a 10 year head start and an extra amount of time in the spotlight which drove a lot of the investment to China instead of India. India on the other hand is honestly very similar to where China was about 10 years ago. And India is about to get a big influx of investors who are disillusioned with China and trying to find a better market of over a billion people.
    21
  3. I think a problem which you seem to have overlooked is that in the age of population decline, even the anchor cities would lose population. Which means that everyone would fall into economic decline.
    17
  4. To be fair, it's mostly concentrated among the youth
    5
  5. ​@gpsoftsk1 Ironically, this seems to be a theme with demographically advanced countries. Maybe it's just due to the way it plays out and the workers involved, but a lot of the aging economies seem to have high youth unemployment. I don't know much about Japan, but Germany, Italy, and seemingly Korea too face this issue. Not to mention there is a large slice of unemployment that is semi-voluntary as it's less ability to find work and more that they just refuse to work the terrible hours offered. Nothing wrong with that, just a different case than forced unemployment.
    4
  6. 2:27 I got an ad for this before the video
    4
  7. @Night Raven  Yes but economics is a social science rather than a hard one. Rather than hard laws you can observe, much of these values are subject to humans' erratic behavior.
    4
  8. It's never been that way. Ultimately, it's always demand driven, in certain in demand cities. That's where the lack of supply applies. If you go to somewhere like, I think Victoria? Anywhere northwest you'll basically find dirt cheap homes. Ultimately as well, as another commenter alluded to, homes are often treated as a speculative asset and is the underlying current of every housing bubble video. Thus, they can have all of the capacity they want, it doesn't really change that much until it's greater than demand. Which, isn't necessarily driven by population.
    4
  9. Part of this is that in the same time, the explosive rise of bureaucratic institutions which increase costs on EVERYONE. For example, one of the biggest factors in Healthcare inflation has been that administrators outpace physicians by roughly 100x. It's just really not feasible overall, but it's something that we've gained culturally as something of a necessity for reasons which I'm not entirely sure of. Whether it be fear of conflict or people refusing to be told no. I can't really figure it out. It's a symptom of the managerial revolution where middle managers have most control and the organizations are more complex and impersonal ruling most people's lives.
    4
  10.  @theondono  Do you think you could edit this into the initial comment? It seems like a really good explanation that doesn't get seen unless you click on the section and it seems criminal to not simply see it.
    3
  11. actually a while back it was covered in "The monolithic economy of the USA" and actually got 2 or 3 videos on it
    3
  12.  @Theviewerdude  finally someone in this comment section who isn't pushing leftist talking points
    3
  13.  @blessedpigeon6304  That is probably the best recipe for economic, social, and political collapse you can have as the right is largely the retarding force on the leftward push. The left unopposed goes too far, too fast, and eventually everything just unravels.
    3
  14. Well... it may have been a republic but also largely was an IMPERIAL republic. So... still an empire.
    2
  15. smooth brained dictator lol
    2
  16. Why do these governments always try to print their way out of the issues? It always ALWAYS leads to hyperinflation!! Did NO-ONE learn!?
    2
  17. Yeah the book "the population bomb" was silly because it was written basically 2 years after we saw industrialized birth rates fall off a cliff. I don't think most of our problems can be traced to overpopulation. You have local overcrowding which can cause social tensions, but that's an administrative or social issue primarily rather than an economic one. The biggest problem economically is that people make up the economy. And socially, there has never been a period of population decline which hasn't had immense social issues. Not to mention, most periods suffer economic collapse. If you take Japan as an example, its economically all but died and has now been on 30 years of life support. What do you think happens when they slowly lose even more people overall? I don't think it'll end well. Overall, while growing populations have their issues, they're far less than losing people.
    2
  18.  @KalonOrdona2  Why? Just because there are a lot of people complaining doesn't mean they're the majority
    2
  19.  @cas343  HAHAHA!!! I love it
    2
  20.  @mikochild2  Yeah this is basically the issue. In Miami for instance an efficiency is $1k per month. Compare that to the two bedroom two bath for only 2/3 the price. But people keep moving to Miami because big city means tons of jobs. I guess this could possibly facilitate the changing of some industries to more flexible job types and definitely a lot more remote jobs. City workers will always live in the city as well as small business, but there are also tons of people who are working in huge skyscrapers who are normally driving up the price of housing and could possibly live elsewhere now distributing housing prices making a marginal increase in smaller communities but taking a big chunk out of the big cities.
    2
  21.  @karenwang313  Yeah see initially I'd have said similar, except I know of the other countries with similar structures in similar positions. I'm going to guess it's that a lot of positions simply don't open up when you have that kind of age structure.
    2
  22.  @horridohobbies  Not exactly. It's a democracy... on paper. As soon as those elected officials start to elect other elected officials your "democracy" starts to fall apart which is why Xi Jingping recently got term limits removed and basically became leader for life. There's also a lot of power in the executive more so than the others. And I'm pretty sure Xi Jingping can't be removed by anyone short of revolution. If someone can't be removed from office it's not a democracy. The constituents of the politburo are the other party members who work within the party. That's not exactly much of a democracy. Part of why there's so much satisfaction with government is that the people are rightly concerned primarily with their local governments which they do have a lot of control over. The national activities simply aren't thought about and will continue to not be as long as the economic going is still good. There's no transparency either so they don't even know what's going on. Can't really get any information from outside (though many use VPNs), biggest source of information is the people's daily (which is just propaganda), and overall have little real Control. Right now that China is is much like what it's historically been but to a much more extreme degree thanks to the Russian communist influence. It's currently an authoritian security state led by an all powerful leader with various levels of control on the local level. It claims democracy by having representatives with term limits but they're simply ceremonial roles rather since they're all central party members who still have power within the party both before and after. The west is not arrogant in Saying its democratic model is best... however it's the only actual democracy format currently in style and it's incredibly ignorant, negligent, or just dishonest to call China a democracy. It's a sham that honestly insults the concept. The people don't rule. The party does. As long as that's true, it's not a democracy. As long as the people control the party, it's a democracy. If they don't, like China, it isn't.
    2
  23. To be honest... that's a good thing. It requires a lot of popular support. It also means that mistakes happen less often. Great, China put down all of that high speed rail. But what is it good for? What's the benefit? Is there a guarantee that it won't be useless within a few years or even immediately after it was finished? There are absolutely benefits to fast moving systems, but the point of the political systems was intentionally to be slow. It wasn't meant to ram through policies and instead make very slow and deliberate progress.
    2
  24.  @horridohobbies  That is the most ignorant line I've read in a very long time. "The west did not invent democracy." You've outed yourself as entirely ignorant on the concept and history. Democracy was invented in ancient Greece in the city-state of Athens. It was a direct democracy and then evolved into the modern idea of the republic/ representative Democracy by the Romans. In that time, China still used the Civil service system which was an entire bureaucracy managed by itself in which they would enter new bureaucrats as needed. This system would continue all of the way until the 1900s with the overthrow of the Ming dynasty. Similar systems were very much the norm across the east and honestly the democratic system itself has been very abnormal over the course of human history and even the original democracies eventually fell to autocracy.
    2
  25.  @horridohobbies  Democracy is "rule of the people, by the people, for the people" and I think you have somehow missed the definition of "by the people" because "by the people" requires the choice of said people in its control. If there's only one choice, then it simply isn't a choice. If you can't dissent, then you don't actually have a choice. If you do not have a choice then it is not "by the people." It is "by those in charge" and they are not the people being referred. Dissent is incredibly important as it is the measure of satisfaction with the government. To disallow dissent, is to effectively disguise the satisfaction with the government. It keeps issues with said government buried. It keeps people in line artificially by not allowing them to express what may need to change. If after that you still attempt to say that dissent is not required with a democracy, then you fundamentally do not understand what a democracy is and are only bounded by the party's manipulation of it to convince you that this is the best option and a version of it, when it simply isn't. So that you can attempt to tell people online that China has a democracy when it demonstrably DOESN'T by any accepted definition.
    2
  26.  @horridohobbies  Has it really been falling? I can see those points... and yet about half of them are still democracies. Btw the USA used to have representatives duel so Taiwan parliament fights are pretty low deal. Brazil is still a democracy. USA democracy is not really a sham. The countries you named are still democracies with the exception of Venezuela which is a result of a socialist state takeover. Hey wait a minute which other countries have had socialist takeovers of the state? 1912 in China the issue is that the attempt to become a republic was foiled by people who wanted to restore the Qing and someone who wanted to make an empire with him at the head. On top of that immediately descended into civil war. You can't say China attempted to become a republic when it didn't even start. You're also correct about Russia and the "democracies" the USA led. However it's honestly been pretty widely accepted that they were simply USA aligned dictators. You also curiously leave out all of western and even current eastern Europe, other South American countries like Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina, and Even south Africa. Terrible track record? 50/50 at worst. It's also worth noting that many democracy movements get co-oped by various Marxist movements, and then immediately become undemocratic oppressive regimes.
    2
  27.  @horridohobbies  That is not representative democracy. That's the antithesis of the idea. Representative democracy consists of Representative choosing either specifically other un-elected positions and voting on laws. It also must require a general assembly and really can't extend further than one level. As soon as you extend beyond that your democracy tends to become a lot less so.
    2
  28.  @10244325  I think this is a very bad take in which you say that the people are deeply and irreversibly divided and very much a modern situation as this is the type of thing which has happened and then reversed over time. It's also important to understand that the propaganda hides any and all missteps by the party and highlights all good things. It has no free press so overall problems don't get highlighted and that transparency is important. In fact even the divide is important at times to make sure that different ideas are debated and tried. One set of ideas doesn't respond well to everything. It's also rather dishonest to say that the CCP is the reason the Chinese people enjoy their current standard of living as the best thing they did was start to get out of the way and spent decades killing millions in terrible industrialization plans and ideological purges. They allowed foreign investors and private firms. These are things which ACTUALLY raise standard of living and do good for the people and if the CCP was not an authoritarian security state they would arguably be even better than they are today.
    2
  29.  @horridohobbies  I simply have to wonder what would happen if they got a taste of western democracy. And no I can judge. I think everyone has a right to judge the systems of others based on their merit. And there are certainly benefits to the Chinese system. However due to a focus on personal freedom (which leads almost directly to economic freedom), much of the world has a distaste for the Chinese system.
    2
  30.  @horridohobbies  Possibly, but the western democracies still work even in those societies. Take Japan for instance. Or a country like...I want to say Norway but it may be Sweden. You can also take South Korea. Two of which are very collectivist and two of which still eastern even with the feelings of personal freedom So I don't think they're mutually exclusive. China's collectivist ethos is largely ignored as well with the party beyond the party. Where normally you would start to see the rollout of numerous social services China has next to none in comparison. I don't know enough about South Korea to really say much on either front however beyond that they are still a democracy. You can say cultural differences all you want, but I think there are enough similarities to the culture of other differences they you can find the issue is not actually the culture and simply that a party wants to stay in power by any means necessary and that the reason the people are willing to accept it is because the standard of living is on the rise so consistently. I can't imagine the party was popular during the cultural revolution. Or with the mass collectivization and how the system was on the verge of collapse until the government started to do less and open up and allow economic freedom. An oppressed populace isn't necessarily a happy populace. And the party doesn't necessarily have to reflect even a portion of the populace to be in power. It took about 50 years to bring stability and they're in danger of bringing more instability to the system with the current trend. We will simply have to see where the Chinese Soviet ends up.
    2
  31.  @thevoiceofthelost  What do you mean? That's the point that IS peddled to us. That's why I said "leftist talking point" because I've seen it so often. And I find it stupid every time. Especially on that bit about 1/3rd of the world starving since it's at least half of that and most of it is because of political reasons with dictators wanting to opress their people. Because for the first time in history no-one starves unless people specifically will it.
    2
  32.  @thevoiceofthelost  Basically any leftist news outlet you can find a piece on that. And furthermore they're really not business friendly. They're simply the type to do whatever it takes to hold on to power and because of that frequently specifically keep from doing things like industrializing which would make them more rich. The only ones they're really "business friendly" are the Chinese as they go ahead and attempt to Basically turn Africa into China. It's not that it fails to meet the needs of the people so much as it is a tool for controlling them and keeping them weak so that they can't just rebel. Latin America in particular is basically a story of giving the CIA too much credit. In many instances they blamed the US but Latin America has tons of problems that really are there with or without the Americans. Honestly the thing the Americans do most is by keeping out other powers so they don't just get conquered again. Btw Bautista in Cuba was ousted in part by the Americans because they thought he was too oppressive. Iran in particular is an interesting one to me because if the negotiations weren't held so incompetently and the optics so bad it probably wouldn't hate the US like it does currently because the US has a habit of installing a dictator or regime (historically it's really just been to oppose the enemy who would've done it themselves and so that entire thing is more an issue of foreign politics than capitalism) and then sending in another team to overthrow the power because they got too brutal. They didn't like the dictator they had but he wanted treatment for a disease so they just said okay. Btw while it's bad that 9 million die of hunger every year, it's entirely for political reasons and without the free market system in the first place even more would die as currently there are less than 1 billion skinny people on this planet and more than 2 billion obese which has never been the case in human history. I think it's right to criticize, there's also informed criticism and also considering the alternative. Because there's absolutely a way to solve that: invade and depose the dictator so that the people don't go hungry. Can't just pressure them because China (and previously the Soviets) will support them instead. Welcome to global politics where the reason people get screwed over in tiny countries is because other people are self interested and being not self interested gets you killed 99% of the time.
    2
  33. So are you going to make that video on economics inside prisons yet? You're at 20k now
    2
  34. @TheBandFiles  This is all kinds of stupid. TL;DR WW2 USA faced literally 0 of these factors as you've brought up having been as you've said massive industrial investment. However, not even that really happened. First off what happened immediately after the war was that they did what no other time did: they took money OUT of the economy afterward which basically set it back to 0, not to mention that the change was actually quite gradual with money increases of only 2.5% to 5% for 4 years with an immediate 10% reduction. Mass printing of money was not something that happened rather Mass loans as a result of trying to pay for the war... which is basically what always happens unless they genuinely can. Not to mention the US genuinely financing the war with the help of the population by issuing war bonds almost constantly. Secondly, those actually didn't do much and had the economy still been falling it would've done near nothing. WW2 did almost nothing for the US economically and in fact, the reason for surge in productive capacity was more related to the fact it was the only economy left in the world rather than much else. It was also an economy which had recovered by the outbreak of war in Europe and thus the productive capacity was capitalized on rather than truly increased with other civil sector goods. The generous benefits of the GI bills only really served to put veterans into homes and increase specialization. It didn't do anything to create the high employment and stable prices. Not to mention we still have high employment. The stable prices were also a function of not much in the way of real economic competition.
    1
  35. ​@ZeroGravitas187 The US actually has a fair bit it can privatize if it wants. Ultimately, the cost of living crisis is mostly limited to the cities and driven primarily by cost of housing, something the government is historically pretty bad at managing. There's also a question of how long the cost of living crisis has been around, and the answer is less than 10 years and globally relevant (every developed country and many developing countries are having a cost of living crisis). Thus, this argument falls pretty flat. Not to mention, the medical costs aren't the reason for the cost of living crisis.
    1
  36. @johnmarks227  He claimed it was "for decades" and we're clearly discussing about today. Especially relevant given during the great depression that no governments had as much funding or as many duties as they have today. This was something only created in the post-WWII paradigm. Go back to school and learn reading comprehension and then history.
    1
  37. @johnmarks227  Do you know the average government spending to GDP ratio for most of the world in the 1930s? Because i have a graph that tracks from 1910 into 1960 for most major combatants and can easily find data for the rest.
    1
  38. There are very few analogies which fit THAT well. And that one did.
    1
  39. ​@@jackjones4824Tbh, the welfare state seems to decrease children by roughly half a kid as the children are the original welfare.
    1
  40. @@jackjones4824 Well not when they're children, but they grow up and become adults and are expected to care for their parents in their old age
    1
  41. Yeah, people usually get it beforehand. Even more often, on accident. So, not quite.
    1
  42. I'd say more like a huge raging river that in a year suddenly got a huge dam in the middle of it. While if you only did a part of it, the water would flow around it. But instead what you did was block the water so the water only has the option of filling up until it overflows or breaks the dam entirely.
    1
  43.  @l-y-d-s  The resources aren't really the problem in most instances and by that argument we wouldn't have even been able to get where we are now in the first place. Biggest thing is constant population growth. That won't keep up forever because it hasn't been the norm across history. You have periods of strong growth as factors allow/necessitate it and then periods of mostly stable populations.
    1
  44. Has been for a long time as it's incredibly fragile and prone to shocks. The biggest thing is that the current system of the last 100 years is basically unprecedented within history and so we're basing modern economics on whatever the trend of the last generation or so have been. But it's not their fault since there's not as much to look back on. Modern economics doesn't begin until like 250 years ago so they don't have much of a reference and looking back doesn't yield as much since not as much was written about it and economists usually don't go for history past its inception anyway. It'll take a while for economics to reach a point like modem science has in the amount of records and progress. Also economics will always advance slower since any actual applications and tests have tremendous stakes since entire populations depend on it. Oh also lacks controls and any sort of isolating abilities you'd be able to do in actual science. Basically we're not going to have a complete grasp on these concepts and realize how we've fucked up for about another century or so. Hindsight is 20/20 anyway.
    1
  45. I've heard India compared to Russia in the 19th and 20th century... yeah sounds about right
    1
  46.  @toomuchtrashpodcast7412  I think the issue has to be with where the job is and requiring to move to another place entirely with its own local market. But huge cities command a ton of jobs and also command insane premiums on the cost of living.
    1
  47. How does that even work? Especially if you can prove that you pay more in rent?
    1
  48. 14:03 Jake Tran has a video on that too
    1
  49.  @Boofus90  Then the entire economy will fail and be inefficient usually making everyone worse off. The only reason competition isn't a driving favor in socialism is because there's only a single entity in the first place. Not enough people want to do things out of the goodness of their hearts and essentially get the same as whatever the worker does. People who seek status are usually the biggest producers in society as they do so to seek status and wealth. As a consequence this allows for more to be produced and societies to become wealthy increasing the standards of living. So there's not enough positive incentive and so the only other one is basically the threat of death of deprivation. On that basis I'm very curious as to how there can be a market socialism when socialism implies state-run industry only. I'd love to pick your brain about That if you would indulge me.
    1
  50. Do you think you can describe market socialism to me real quick? As I understand it there can't really be a market in socialism since the government is the only entity.
    1
  51.  @djole94hns  Basically it's a social market economy (I want to compare to like Germany or the Nordic states) with only worker co-operatives at least in how I understand it. That's certainly a very radical view compared to currently, but honestly the only issue I see is the mandating of the worker co-operatives. It's a very capitalist take on the philosophy but in real terms it might as well be in isolation probably one of the stable and least authoritarian of the takes on his philosophy. I feel the biggest issue there on a macro-scale is that it probably works best in a very peaceful world where military spending doesn't need to be very high so you can have much of that welfare spending. However if you prioritize the spending enough you could possibly have enough to allocate to the military and welfare as long as the central bureaucracy isn't too bloated. Yeah it's definitely not really socialism but definitely a very workable take. Edit: thinking about it again I wonder if it could work if food and water is decommodofied. Government production is usually the least efficient of production but if it could be lowered to only basic rations or simply be qualified by the fact that you have to work it would basically keep all of the utility of a capitalist system. "You don't work you don't eat" has been the primary motivator in getting society to work but in terms of getting it to succeed it's having the incentive of success. So you very much at the very least have the important reward for success which allows the growth in standard of living and production which drives the current world.
    1
  52.  @10244325  I think the fundamental issue is that the people do not recognize that the wealth when strived for still help the people. And considering the distinct lack of social services, I don't think the government is really doing much for the people. Now, me personally, I don't think they have to. However if the idea is to benefit the people, well the people seem to be benefiting themselves more than the state has and the best decision it ever made was to start leaving people alone to do it themselves.
    1
  53.  @horridohobbies  He was also an idiot which probably largely came from his belief in socialism. And the party compositions are currently being changed out.
    1
  54.  @horridohobbies  You're right, but the party isn't controlled by the people. It's by the party. People who aren't elected control that. It's all internal party politics instead of any control by the people. And the fact that there's an entire chain to the representative democracy means that it is less representative of the people in the higher levels and simply their own agenda.
    1
  55. ​​ @cyrilmrazek6649 West Germany got 14 billion in 2019 dollars. Italy got as much, and the Netherlands almost as much. France and the UK each got double. Frankly, West Germany didn't get a lot out of the Marshall plan. Not to mention Europe as a whole only had about 10% imports and attracted little capital influx, including Germany suffering capital loss. Thus, it mostly had to rebuild manually.
    1
  56. "69th, nice"
    1
  57.  @03david08  To be fair he did say he wasn't a programmer and so I give him the benefit of the doubt of simply not understanding well enough while also being an interesting concept to discuss.
    1
  58.  @Antonio-lt1sp  Did you just called economics explained for leftists?
    1
  59. This is the most correct analysis. However, corruption lowers with an increase in societal trust. Right now, especially due to tribal conflicts (as far as I understand it) especially among the elite, it's not really a society where you can truly trust everyone to not steal your stuff. Or, even if you can trust your neighbor, you can't trust your government. Especially as others will have implicitly less trust in seeing someone from another group. In real terms, the only way to improve this is to integrate and just get to know your neighbor and or have friends with different ethnic groups. If the youth is already at this stage, that's fantastic. However, it'll still take a few decades to really see that effect manifest in government as they're all still too young.
    1
  60.  @tellesu  sounds like political schizophrenia
    1
  61. well someone had to tackle it
    1
  62. What do you mean? Most countries in Africa have very little wealth inequality. They're simply all poor.
    1
  63. Stability and confidence: It may be Argentina, but it's not in a civil war or facing a violent coup or revolution, and that's our real baseline.
    1
  64. What were those shots you fired at the infographics show lol?
    1
  65. I think we're moving that direction
    1
  66. Tbh, that's perfectly fine
    1
  67.  @asmsayeem3973  Tbh it is... the only difference is that the bottom two levels of the pyramid don't apply.
    1
  68. Here's a question: are those issues truly created by the actual economic system? What about the system creates these issues? Because by your metrics it would be better for all humankind to go back to the feudal system. Less depression, anxiety, more satisfaction with life, etc. You were happy in your life and nothing really bothered you. You worked the fields with your family and you were happy. I'm really not convinced that the system itself has caused these issues and in fact I'm fairly certain of anything it's the technological innovation that has done so. You don't have time to be depressed if you're focused on simply attempting to not die constantly, if you are simply working all day in a field making sure everything is together, trying to not die to diseases that come from everything around you. What we have is a life of comfort and there's little hardship in modern life. People are comfortable and don't need to work hard. We also tend to not interact with each other as much and view more and more people with suspicion. Have you noticed how many people hate people who just genuinely love everyone or think those kinds of people don't exist? I'm not really attempting to refute your arguments on a philosophical level, but instead asking you to think about this on a historical and practical level. What do you think is different today, that wasn't different before? While thinking about that please remember that all of the problems you've mentioned with people today, largely weren't present before, yet there was still very large wealth inequality.
    1