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hey mia, you said you'd put the census in the description, but i don't see it in there. I might've missed it, would it be possible to link it? also, good luck in your political career! i wish you much succes!
As an American, I’m disgusted that “parents rights”, a transphobia dog whistle, it more important to a majority of the candidates than free healthcare. We’re fuckin dying over here
American politicians still work from the stupid idea that the producer is the important part, not the consumer. They don’t understand that it doesn’t matter how much is made if no one can afford to buy it. The Green New Deal written by the Green Party in 2012 included a $400 per week Basic Income in order to stabilize the economy. It’s demand-side stimulus, if the word socialism offends you.
I realize this is super reductive and probably not as persuasive for others as it is for me, but when faced with the "but do they deserve (free healthcare/housing/food)?" I just always default to "they have a right to live, so... absolutely yes?"
Do you deserve it? Do your children deserve it? Do i deserve it? Does anyone deserve it? If only deserving people should get something, then we’ll quickly end up with no one deserving it
Nope, don't ever feel bad for this way of thinking. It's literally the only thing that should matter to people. And it is so sad that it isn't the thought process of every single person in this country.
To add to the "lifted out of poverty" debunking, the graphs tend to begin at 1800 for the most part, obscuring the fact that poverty went up in the preceding time: colonization, industrialization, enclosure have made people poor.
Just pretend that India under the control of the British East India Company was how it had always been! Peasants have _always_ been starving trying to grow enough cotton to pay their taxes.
@@americaisthebestcountryeverI’ve never met a primitivist who does. They think it will be like some hippy commune or modern indigenous community, forgetting that without science and modern medicine most people died in infancy, lifespans were much shorter for those who did make it, and most of them died agonizing deaths from diseases that are now fully preventable or even eradicated. Primitivists imagine themselves playing drums in the forest with their chosen family, hunting animals (because they don’t morally matter 🤦) and living off the land. They don’t realize that what they’d actually be doing is dying of dysentery at 26 (or dying in childbirth at an even younger age after being forced into an arranged marriage, which is the way a lot of AFAB people passed before feminism, gynecology and hospitals, etc).
@@marcuswarren3516China has a planned *state capitalist* economy, with a very large dose of private capitalism as well. It hasn’t been socialist (let alone communist) since shortly after Chairman Mao’s death. Deng Xiaoping got rid of the command economy in 1979.
@@americaisthebestcountryeverYes. Early industrialization and enclosures did thrust a lot of people into poverty. We can see it through falling life expectancy, worse (much worse) nutrition and the overall state and growth of slums . Yes, there were poor in the pre-industrial times but their number and spread was different.
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Those "free gifts" are mostly trash, too. Vibrators that run on unusual types of batteries, strokers sized appropriately for a single finger, and similar things that either go in the back of the toy box never to be used or straight in the trash
The UBI argument around why "rich people" can gain the benefits, that has satisfied me most is With the working class being stable, they can better negotiate work. If the option is not "work for pennies or starve" then the owner class/worker class gap will be shrunk.
Big agree, been tryin to explain this to people for ages. Those who live within that class who can afford to say they're "at least not poor" want to ensure they're not in the poverty class they've been taught to despise. Instead of bringing the struggling up with them, they force them to the bottom, b/c it feels nicer to be better than someone than to struggle together...
For me it's that we already have a tax system and administration in place. If we pay rich people we can just take that money back in tax later. No big deal!!
@@niamhleeson3522 That assumes that Liberal/pro-Capitalism governments are willing to plug tax loopholes, and to create a proper tax code. Which will never ever ever ever ever happen. This is what we, Socialists, would call an "Utopia". We don't need to tax them; we need, first and foremost, to create and uphold fair social/working relationships. How? By taking control of the means of production. By democratizing workplaces. By nationalizing industries. If we do that, billionaires will no longer be able to accumulate that much wealth, and that problem becomes solved. The truth is simple: if we ever got to the point where we COULD tax billionaires at 95% (for example), then we would probably have enough political power to do the full revolution anyway (which makes the whole "but let's skip the Revolution anyway!" idea quite suspicious). The question we pose to you is this: why would anyone want to tax billionaires that much, but not want to do the revolution? Where do your priorities lie? What are you trying to achieve? Which system are you trying to preserve, and what are your reasons for preserving it? Who do you think you're fooling? Because you're certainly not fooling me.
@@niamhleeson3522This is why the highest marginal tax rate (for people with 50x or more the average income) for the best points in US history approached 75%. When you earn millions you can and should give most of that back to make sure roads, sewers, libraries, police, firefighters, etc (all the public services that make our society healthy and safe) are present FOR ALL.
Strictly speaking, the rich don't even get free money under a universal basic income. The basic income comes out of taxes, which they pay most of, so if the tax system is at all progressive(like, even America probably still qualifies) then they effectively just get a small tax cut.
Canada made a good trial of UBI in a town in Ontario with pretty good results. We just didn't do anything with the results of that fairly generous experiment. Quite disappointing.
Yes! We have no sure way of knowing who does or does not "deserve" any given thing, so the only _fair_ thing to do would be to make sure we give it to _everyone._ Abandoning the concept of who "deserves" something would improve our society in every conceivable way.
...if you don't understand where what people need in order to live comes from, or how people become incentivized to make more so more people can live more happily. It's easy to say "we" should give people more when it doesn't come from you. Or worse, when it does come from you, but not by your choice or because it makes you happy, just because you value yourself so little to let others take it. You deserve your own effort. Others deserve none of your effort unless you think they do, unless you choose to give it to them. That's about as far as "deserving" goes.
@@hagoryopi2101others are you, and you are others, we eat the same, drink the same and need the same, no matter all your talk of "deserving", the mere process of working for your own sake will take care of others
@@Tsuruchi_420 we do not eat the same. Some people love peanut butter, I'm allergic. I love dairy, some others are intolerant. We do not drink the same. I love water, some people can't stand it without sugar or other flavor. Some other people can binge drink alcohol unaffected, if I have more than one serving at once I'm out of it. However, I do absolutely agree that the process of working for my own sake will help others! Because to benefit myself most, I have to get some benefit from others: to incentivize benefit from others, I have to offer in return. But it has to be *my* work, which *I own,* to have the right to offer benefit to others and earn benefit from others, or else they can just take it and offer nothing. And I have to do that work, myself, or else I will have nothing to offer myself. No matter how larger or interconnected the perceived collective, all action starts with the individual, all experience is perceived by the individual, all consciousness is individual. Individuality is diversity, and diversity is our strength.
@@hagoryopi2101 If we're to believe in modernity, progress, and technology at all then society will (at some point) evolve beyond a zero-sum game. Many would argue that the West already lives in post-scarcity conditions for basic needs-yet houses owned by landlords sit vacant, grocery stores throw food away to justify inflated price tags, and our rivers are siphoned to fill plastic bottles and water subsidized farmland. What did any of those profit seekers do to Deserve the surplus they squander? (hint: the answer is not Risk)
Ty for this video. Last month I helped with a bake sale for my child's elementary school to build a playground because currently, they all play in the dirt. We have ppl come up and tell us how the kids don't need one because when they were at the school decades ago they didn't have a playground.
Mia you can't just drop a feature length movie on us like this. Some of us have lives and can't spend 3 hours watching you talk about economics, y'know. I mean, _I'm_ gonna watch you talk about economics for 3 hours, sure. But some of us might have a life. I assume.
hahaha - nobody has a life here, silly goat, we're all lazy commies living off welfare needlessly bitching about billionaires who deserve to have more than us by being born in the right family and fucking up more people every day to rake in more profits!
@@alansegura5953I'm sorry you didn't get as much out of it, Alan. It may just be a matter of how little I know about economics relative to you. I learned at least kind of a broad strokes gist of how Sweden's healthcare system works, and that was valuable to me since it's something I'd heard a lot about but hadn't looked into. I didn't really go into the video expecting Econ 101, even if I could probably use a personal finance course, ha! But hey, different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
One major argument against UBI that wasn’t mentioned is that it still allows accumulation of capital. The stimulus gets funnelled to landlords and other major corporations. UBI alone is not a sufficient solution so long as the power coupons called “money” can be accumulated by individuals. That’s why cooperatively (or, if otherwise impossible, government) owned businesses are still a required step towards a more equal economy. Thank you for the wonderful video Mia. Your work is appreciated comraaaugh, ekhm, politician-influencer.
And deeper down, hence reply to my own comment, there is also abolishment of currency. The argument of facilitating complex structures is valid. Therefore we move towards a more local society, without labor outsourced to east Asia, it would be possible for an intentional community to operate on an economy of mutual aid/care/social debt/whatever other name clever people find for a moneyless society.
@@villentretenmerth11tried and failed many times. It was one of the first things the Soviets tried to do (with disastrous results!). Global trade is inseparable from Global peace and unity. We must be interconnected to make large scale conflict a self-defeating proposition, and to create the infrastructure needed to distribute to those currently without. Unless the plan is to let people without stay without. Currency itself is the emotional core of anti-capitalism, but it's actually a very simple and necessary thing. It's the society managing it that defines its consequence, and only that society that can be changed. Once a medium of exchange is removed, a new one will immediately be needed for any technocrats or experts to do their work for reform. This will simply create a broken system. There must be a global society, or else any reform is purely temporary and regional. Making life fair just for Americans solves nothing, of course. I will agree the medium of exchange should be different than it is now. I would love to see Energy as calculated by Work to create + externalities as a kind of universal medium of exchange. The very concept of cost can be linked to the actual energy loss to humanity to create it.
We could socialize land ownership. Not even necessarily development on that land (at first), just the land value itself. If the price of land was locked down to the quality of the development and improvements thereof then slumlords wouldn't be economically enabled (and normal landlords heavily discouraged). That plus things like public development of land, or even public land trusts could get use of land to benefit the public than just only profit.
I've recently lost friends due to a money situation. It's more complicated than that, but the bottom line came down to a disagreement on who should pay for what. This video gave me comfort in a time when money and friendships are tight. Thank you, Mia.
I'm currently nearly 30 and I can understand how hard life can be, when you need to spend about 20-25 years to just get education and then you're expected to just make more and more money to just afford basic life. I mostly lived with my grandma as a kid, my father left my mother, when I was 5 and my mother never really cared about me, so I moved out on my own to another city, when I was 20 and now I'm expected to help her, because she's becoming unable to exist on her own. I don't even have bad salary, but everything is so expensive and salaries are in general so poor, that it becomes impossible to help other people, even if that's your own family. In case that I lose my job, then I'm risking a lot, because I'll be unable to pay my debt, unless I can quickly find new job that pays at least the same salary. At the same time this salary is still not good enough in my situation, so I'm stressed out about future and I wish that I just had $10-20k more in savings, because it would literally change my life a little and I'd have some space to breath.
are you, me? i've spent me entire life trapped in, if not outright poverty, absolute precarity. it's definitely gotten more difficult for people in our situations to eke out savings. when was the last time you even had a vacation? meanwhile our parents generation, although they had it tough, were still able to have the occasional go-somewhere-and-experience-new-thing vacation. in fact, most of the people doing vacations right now are generation X! we've been screwed
I'm no longer able bodied and have post concussion syndrome. This video isn't helping with the looming dread I feel about food & housing security. Nice to hear Alice's voice tho!
This is such a good run down Mia, really good to have such a comprehensive overview. The economy gets simplified too often in discourse I think and this video seems to give its complexities their due. Also now I want Vyvanse
And, as it usually happens, it is the rich who don't deserve what they get out of society. Thanks for this video. I've had so many discussions trying to push UBI and I feel this really covers all points.
This is the first video I have seen of yours. It showed up in my feed and I am so glad that I watched it. The “do they deserve it” portion really resonates with me. It is definitely brain rot. I too do not care who gets the money. I think everyone should have what they need. If they don’t want to work that’s ok with me. It is just too easy to want others to go through the trials and tribulations that I have gone through. It makes it so easy to let people who have too much convince people who don’t have nearly enough to gate keep people in need. Every time I hear these kinds of arguments I wish people could see through how they are being used to keep the rich… rich.
The tulip bubble is also a common tale in plant virology. The tulip breaking you can see in paintings from the time is a symptom of some viral infections.
In defence of the "71% of global CO2 emissions come from 8 companies" thing, yes, we buy the products they sell, but the companies control what is available. If you give people the choice between buying regular electricity and electricity that comes from wind and solar power, many people will pay higher prices for the electricity that comes from wind and solar power. Because it's impossible to tell one kilowatt hour of electricity from another, this often works even if you're lying and it didn't really come from wind and solar at all (looking at you origin energy). The point is, we don't really have a choice. Same same but different with cars - until very recently fossil fuels were the only option for cars - and in large parts of the world, particularly north america but to some extent everywhere, the car lobby have pushed policies for development and land use that make living without a car so impractical that huge numbers of people can't function without one. Point is, people don't have a choice but to buy those energy products. If the energy market were half as free for the consumers as it is for the corporations, customers could choose a less destructive alternative. I would love to see what an actual free market looks like, but liberals have spent the last half century promoting the lie that a market can only be free if it's unregulated. For most products and services that couldn't be further from the truth; regulation essential to prevent monopolistic tactics from destroying all competition and therefore choice. I'm a socialist through and through but since the idea of "free market capitalism" is so heavily entrenched in the western world, it seems tactically advantageous to take the justification for that ideology - competition gives people choices, forces companies to innovate all that shit - and focus on how badly the markets are failing to achieve those goals.
> many people will pay higher prices for cleaner energy Many, but not nearly enough for the clean transit to happen just through market forces. Most people will just buy the cheapest possible product or service that simply works _for them_.
@sasha_chudesnov sure. So now we have two lines of reasoning for thinking that consumer choices can't save us, one that consumers don't actually have a free choice and the other that many (maybe most?) wouldn't choose clean even if they could. I think that just adds more incentive to focus political efforts on pressing the companies to change rather than pretending unregulated "free markets" and consumer choices can save us.
The issue with a UBI in a capitalist society is that money is drained upwards. So without price controls the UBI would be taken by landlords increasing rent and companies refusing raises. Unfortunately some amount of administrative oversight will be required to place people with their needs.
This is true, otherwise the increase would just feed price inflation and wage decreases like you describe. I still think UBI will be needed mostly to deal with the effects of widespread automation, but yes, price controls on essential goods (housing, food) will probably be necessary in the short term after UBI.
This video is great and I love you. I think the transactional mindset and "I had to work why don't they?" etc. is a great example of society constructing and reproducing itself.
Thanks for this, "constructing and reproducing itself" is a very concise way to describe thoughts I've been having for a while but had no shorthand for.
😮 I never really thought about the idea that indigenous critiques and perspective had even existed on European society and how it may have sparked the enlightenment movement. Super interesting perspective I never even considered. I appreciate the algo putting your video on my recommended list.
I was so worried when she was talking about the myth of barter like it was fact. Totally got me 😂 I was like “MIA NOOOOOOO” and then 5 seconds later she’s like jk I know about daddy Graeber
Hey Mia. US trans woman here. My monthly inhaler costs $275 and my monthly Estrogel costs $640. This is if I buy them in the US with the health insurance provided by the hospital I work at. I buy them from Canada more cheaply, otherwise I could not survive. I hope you're able to continue getting proper care.
@@BenjaminWalburn I'm sorry in advance for rambling. Thank you for caring about trans people. The expenses around HRT depend on how you do it. There are several different ways to take estrogen. I could do the injections or the pills and it would be cheaper, but you usually need to take a testosterone blocker with those and they can have side effects depending on which one you take AND which ones are available in your country. I'm considering switching to pills. Long story. ALSO, you have to pay for blood tests, visits to a counselor, and visits to doctors and nurses. Just to talk to my counselor or doctor or nurse for an hour costs $300. In the past 3 years I've paid over $4000 just for blood tests to make sure that my whole body is safe and healthy. However if I hadn't started HRT then I probably wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'm more at peace now. For the first time in 36 years I feel like my body belongs to me and my mind is my friend.
Wow! This has to be one of my favorite videos by you (and I am only halfway done)! Thanks, I hope you do more mega feature-length videos on stuff I almost failed in college again in the future!
the free money thing was done here in Australia, the labour government gave everyone 800 dollars during the global financial crisis and we avoided it cause we went out and spent it on tv's, food, paying off debts, it can be done, we also ended up as the number one performing economy because of it.
@@luizmonad777 the thing about energy is, it's not easy to convert it from one from to another. Not sure how tenable an energy based currency is. Not to mention the kind of 'mining' that this energy based currency is going to incentivise might just exasperate the climate crisis.
@@luizmonad777*"it is easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism"* - Fredric Jameson & Slavoj Žižek Your comment sounds extremely dismissive This whole "capitalism" thing will end one day I, you, and OP will probably never be alive to see it So while we are still here Fighting for a moneyless, anti-capitalist existence is something worth fighting for. Even if it nudges a little bit towards that future, then it Is enough. Capitalism has a way of tricking people into thinking that capitalism will always be here It won't, it is a parasite in the most existential level that is unsuitable for human life It WILL crumble. Also I disagree with your hypothesis on "Energy Currency" In my opinion, people shouldn't have to justify their existence lmao Because what happens to the people who can't output the same amount of energy as other people? How does that energy get distributed to the lowest worker, to the disabled, to the neurodivergent, people with asthma, overweight people, the elderly, ects, sound dystopian af I don't know just some food for thought
i cannot believe you made a 2h40m long video about economy that is so engaging! and the ending call to action is so sweet. help each other and make soup. thank you for yor work Mia! also i just started reading The Dawn of Everything, funny coincidence :з
I found this really interesting, thank you for putting it together. I was unaware of Kandiaronk, he sounds amazing. I think you even understate the case for things like UBI and worker democracy. I've been hard pressed to find any evidence that either of them have negative effects economically. Usually, they have massive positive social effects (through higher wellbeing, better health, more freedom) while not 'endangering' economic outcomes like employment participation or GDP. As you point out, though, there's a good political reason why they are not adopted despite their myriad positive effects. An essay you do not reference but which may be worth a look if The Political Aspects of Full Employment by Michal Kalecki, which argues that even if full employment benefits capitalists in an absolute sense, it mayendanger their relative wealth and will therefore be opposed by them.
Holy shit the fake ad got me. I noticed the pause, the tone, and good pavlovian dog I am, raised my finger to press skip ad, only to be puzzled by the lack of a skip button. Upon which I started hearing "Mulder" and realised how I had been played.
the way you manage to simplify the marxist theory of class society into something so digestable and easy to understand is astounding. by far the best video essay i think ive ever watched lol
Lots of observations on economics, history, etc .. The intro, false ideas, and outro outfit (white blouse with the silver, crystal choker) was best outfit. The cacti caused me anxiety, you use a lot of hand gestures. And the metallic green eye shadow goes really well with those glasses.
About half way through and loving it, great video! I've been watching through your backlog over the past couple weeks and have been wondering: is it feasible for you to subtitle your videos? My hearing isn't fantastic and sometimes it's difficult for me to make out words among even the mildest lofi soundtrack
Hi! I've been dropping the ball on this previously but thanks to medication and a new editing software I'm actually working on those as we speak! Should be up tomorrow, and the backlog should be taken take of before december as well :D
I had a health scare several years ago. It was potentially treatable, but the calculation of hospitalization plus loss of income meant that it was cheaper for me to die. I rolled the dice and focused on bettering my diet as a solution. It turned out to not be the worst case scenario, but I’m still pissed that I had to take that chance.
I love these sorts of videos that dive into concepts I know nothing about. I'm going to have to read more about this "economy" thing, sounds like some crazy stuff.
Regarding "don't let money come between friends" - I'm experiencing the conflict and emotions and power dynamics that are tied up with money right now. Over the summer I wanted to get an old quilt my parents gave me repaired, and a friend offered to do it. I wanted to compensate them for their labor, so we agreed on a price of a couple hundred bucks and they took the quilt to work on it - I told them no rush since I wouldn't need the quilt until winter. A couple weeks later they asked if they could receive the money early cuz their finances were tight, and I was fine with that and sent them the money. Then winter comes around... no quilt. I reach out and ask how things are progressing, and they say they need a little more time. Several more weeks pass... still no quilt. I reached out again, and this time they just didn't respond. Ghosted me completely. So I was out a couple hundred bucks AND my quilt. It sucks because I know I have more power (money) in this relationship; I'm hurt and angry that they took my money and my stuff, but I can afford to buy a new quilt if I need to. (Which I did.) Meanwhile they have a disability, struggle to hold down a job, and have a precarious living situation, so I can understand them getting too emotionally and physically overwhelmed to finish the job. But I still want my goddamn quilt back!! When you said that money is an abstract representation of trust relationships, I understood exactly what you mean because I gave this friend my trust (money), they violated that trust and now I don't trust them anymore.
@@natmorse-noland9133 No idea what portion of your budget a few hundred is, if it's say a quarter or even more then yeah I could understand bbeing deeply upset. If it's say 200 out of 800,000 dollars say then I'd be scratching my head. Nuance and context matter, and people can only know of such nuance in such cases if well the information is available. This may also be just differing views on money and *when* it matters, if i'm struggling to keep warm and fed it's a different level of suffering than say losing a television and what can be covered financially or not matter more between such different categories, as you alluded to with your situations being different. Also had no idea it had value beyond the being created for a friend bit since well...that's not mentioned in your story. I certainly have hand me downs that I value and also hand-me-downs that I don't, it greatly depends how much use I got out of it/ how much my family cared what history was or was not attached to it, etc. So yeah knowing that now I find your response more understandable, and wish to clarify that I think it is a good and helpful thing for you to have made both comments. Apologies if (as I suspect I did) I came off as abrasive, I had no intentions of doing so. Also to reiterate don't think this associate of yours handled things well and anger feels warrented, but towards what and how much like everything else thats on a spectrum. A spectrum I only will ever have a glimpse of, and those glimpses are what I have to make do with when communicating with anyone. Which is explanatory, not exclupatory, I should have asked you for clarification on points instead of just stating my puzzement. That would have been more helpful. If you are reading this, thank you for your time, and I wish you better luck with your future relations and projects.
So in the US most companies just include the same insurance to all of their full time employees. It's cheaper and easier to negotiate the same offer for everyone. Generally, the offer includes a set cost for the insurance that is significantly less than you would pay on the open market because they negotiated a group rate, and they partially underwrite it. You used to need to look very closely to figure out which insurance plan was best, but since the affordable care act they are all basically offering the same three tiered plan. Sometimes unions do negotiate to get the company to underwrite more of the cost, but it's very rare for them to be negotiating whether or not to offer insurance at all. Basically, at this point insurance is so much assumed to be a part of a good job that companies feel like they have to offer it or they'll struggle with recruiting.
okay gotta add some context to the ”“disappointing”” UBI experiment in Santa Land: there’s been critical studies commenting the ”“disappointing”” results, and noting how there were lot of external factors affecting the results. most notoriously there were overlapping effects from the new government-implemented employment system (aktiivimalli, job-seeker activating-model or smthn), and also the sampling wasn’t very good: among the participants there were proportionally too much ppl with well-known difficulties finding employment in the Santa Land job market, like long-term unemployed and ppl with immigrant-backgrounds. it’s so frustrating that the experiment was executed so poorly and now ppl get to say “yeah we tried it, doesn’t work” (even if it did increase the experienced well-being, as u said) and it gets showed into some backshelf.
21:23 re: strangers there was interestingly very strict rules about being hospitable to strangers. That way if you were a stranger you could count on others hospitality. I think that is how they got around the issue of being hospitable to strangers while there weren’t too many strangers around.
Apparently I live in the same "kommun" of where you work and do political stuffy stuffs, the world is a small place sometimes! Keep doing what you are doing! 🎉😊
The thing about early economies and debt makes so much sense! It's not at all natural to introduce a new currency, cause there is the issue of how to distribute it in the first place. But IOUs can come from nothing and are inherently stable in value
Idk, I don't trust the US government. And I'm having trouble finding anyone who does. The Federal Reserve, for most anyone aware of it? Is very much in the same position.
Funny enough my home state of Washington USA had a part to play in popping the Dutch tulip bubble. Around the time the bubble was reaching its climax, farmer’s realized that the climate of the western side of the state was extremely conducive to growing them, allowing the state to flood the market.
This would definitely be an interesting story, but it isn’t really historically accurate. The tulip bubble happened during the 1630s. The land that is now Washington State wasn’t known to exist by Europeans until a century later, and it wasn’t settled until 1774. I’m sorry if this is offensive! I’m not trying to ‘correct’ you, it’s just that I think historical accuracy is important.
great vid, thank you for sharing, the dark souls boss cut really got me lol - anyways keep up the good work, glad to hear you're an elected rep. even if it _is_ in.. you know.. _SWEEEEEEDEN_ (danish accent obvious)
US healthcare victim here. the idea that other countries have longer wait times... uuum, I've had tremors of my left hand since a year ago, the referral to get in to a neurologist took 6 months after requesting help. in that time I developed migraines with scintalating scotoma (leaving blind for half hours at a time). at the meeting with neurologists they put in an order for a single test... for two months later, and the follow up after to get the results and next steps, two months after that. pretty much the same problem for the GI for managing and testing for IBD. and I'm still paying thousands of dollars each year for this to happen. I'll die before I get any help or answers.
Employers offering healthcare as a bonus package is how the US healthcare system began. This was at a time when hospitals were basically hospice care. Why did they offer these healthcare packages? You guessed it. Money. It was cheaper to offer the packages than it was to offer employees better pay. And now we're here.
I heard they also began offering it during WWII because during the war there were freezes on wage hikes, while ESI was exempted to prevent strikes. Why do they continue to offer it and fight against universal coverage, even though that would save costs? Because it gives them a huge amount of leverage over their employees. If your health insurance is tied to your job, you will think twice before leaving to find better work or risk trying to form a union.
Well put! Almost 3 hrs of content and I say you hit it spot on. Not gonna lie I had to chew on some of this info for a few minutes to let it sink in... But ya spot on spot on! Thank you Mia for your take on relevant issues!
22:10 A moment of working in customer service that really stuck with me was when someone ordered from me as a cashier, but he forgot his wallet in the car. I couldn't allow him to leave because he didn't pay and could just get his food when I wasn't looking, so the guy just gave me his phone. There was no way he was going to forget his phone, so that was a symbol of trust he gave me to ensure he would pay his "debt" back to the business.
As an American with decent health insurance, I can say that the system doesn't even work for us because of the number of hoops we have to go through to find someone who takes our insurance. And then fighting the health insurance companies for incorrect claims.
As an American living in Europe - I kind of love telling my friends here about the health care situation there just to watch their horror. The health care being tied to the employer thing is so fucked … I’m so fucking glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore
As you said, the economy is more than money, it's the relationships we have. So the problem I have with UBI is that it doesn't change the relationships we have with how, say, our food is produced and transported to us. It just entrenches the capitalist corporations extracting value at every stage. Like how if a twitch streamer gets some subscriptions. They then buy a sub on their friend, who buys a sub on their friend, who buys from their friend, etc. etc. twitch takes a cut from each of those transactions until the entire value is extracted to twitch. UBI does not change that relationship. The private corporations still existing means that money and therefore power is still extracted and concentrated in the hands of a small number of people and businesses that will use that power to get more money at the expense of everyone else. I don't deny that it would do wonders for keeping people alive and healthy and happy, and that the whole economy would benefit in the short term from people being more free to do shit. But in the long term we would end up right back where we are. Maybe they would lobby to undo UBI, maybe they would find some other way to undermine it, like how the NHS still exists but is barely functional and is dying thanks to death by a thousand funding cuts. And the thing is, UBI is not going to happen without massive organisational pressure. If we have the ability to get UBI, we would have the ability to get so much more. It will be offered as a concession to try and keep capitalism alive because it is their last resort. And we should not take that offer and instead dismantle the extractive relationships altogether.
How do businesses "extract" money? Don't people consent to paying for things? Isn't that a mutually beneficial relationship? Where did businesses get the money in order to provide services on such a large scale in the first place? Didn't they have to contribute a lot of value to get so much value in return?
@@hagoryopi2101 1. Workers: The relationship between bosses and workers is basically a situation where one person has all or most of the power. Of course, the worker can just leave if they're mistreated but then he goes job hunting for a company where the power dynamic is the same. Of course good bosses might exist, but which happens first? Does he find a job he likes or does he run out of money. If you look at wage stagnation, it seems that overwhelmingly the answer is the latter. Of course, it doesn't help that paying workers well puts you at a competitive disadvantage. 2. Is it consent when there's coercion? Inelastic goods are the most obvious example, like healthcare and food. If a starving person signed away all their rights for a bit of food, we wouldn't call it consent, would we? Of course, most things aren't that black and white, but when more and more of society is privatized, and everything that an enjoyable life constitutes is gatekept behind a paywall, the more coercive it becomes, at least in my opinion. An obvious example would be the lack of public transit in the US, where you need cars a lot of the time to get around. Another obvious example is just the existence of the advertising industry, they exist to make you associate their products with a fundamental human need, so you buy their product. 3. If a firm gets too big to fail, for a while at least, it can do whatever it wants as the government will bail them out. There's probably more I can't think of.
@@testest12344 where did the bosses get that power from? If you have to give to take, you have to give a lot to get a lot of power, right? How does paying employees well put you at a disadvantage? Better pay incentivizes better work from those you've already employed, and attracts more better workers. That's a competitive advantage, I think. What's the alternative to transactional "coercion"? The only one I can think of is coercion by direct force, coercion at gunpoint, which is much worse. Transaction gives you choice, force does not. If having something you want and expecting something in return is coercion, then all human interaction is "coercion" and the word is meaningless. Is society getting more privatized? Subsidy and regulation of healthcare has been increasing for decades, yet it's been getting less accessible over that same time. You cite government bailouts as protection of businesses which are "too big to fail," but if big businesses are getting more and more corporate welfare, how private are they really at that point? It seems to me like the investment of public money into private economic issues is increasing problems, not actual privatization. The only alternative to transaction is force, and problems are increasing as public subsidy and regulation increases, as force increases. Corporations get more welfare and we call that "capitalism," regulations increase and then we blame the free market for its problems, we call consensual interactions "coercive" while the government coerces us into giving them more and more of our money by putting us in jail if we don't and then funnelling it into big businesses without our consent. None of that is capitalism.
@@hagoryopi2101 1. having the money to invest does not mean you earned it fairly? And even if it did, it doesn't justify using that earned power over others. 2.If your point about wages was true, wage stagnation wouldn't be a thing. It's about bargaining power. If there's too many potential employees, they have less bargaining power. If potential employees have to find a job before they run out of money, they have less bargaining power. I explained this. >competitive advantage Do you not know what cost cutting is? If your costs are higher, you either charge more or earn less profit, which means less money can be reinvested in the business thus you lose your edge. Keeping workers motivated only really matters for more glamorous positions like executives or for very specialized technical workers, where companies are, by and large, very happy to shell out a bunch of benefits and high pay. But someone has to work the less glamorous jobs, and we know from statistics how well they're paid. Desperation is a good motivator. The market is very efficient. >What's the alternative to transactional "coercion"? There will always be coercion in society, don't get me wrong, but it is a coercion that does not have to exist, since I gave examples where there is less coercion (public transport, healthcare). Of course, a lot of the time, the difference between violent coercion and non-violent coercion is whether someone actively hurts you or lets you suffer through deprivation (my starving man example). >Subsidy and regulation of healthcare has been increasing for decades, It is still privately owned, and for profit. If government involvement was the issue, healthcare in European countries would not be so much cheaper per capita than the US. Also, do you not think that inelasticities are a problem? I've heard libertarians express that sentiment before. >You cite government bailouts as protection of businesses which are "too big to fail," but if big businesses are getting more and more corporate welfare You know what happens when governments don't do that? The whole economy crashes. The Great Depression happens. Corporations know this, and use. Also, even if this wasn't the case, corporations would still get politicians to help them through bribes. There's no real way to get the government to stay out of the free market. There will always be people willing to do underhanded shit to get an edge.
There's this economic theory that's currently been growing in popularity called "Modern Monetary Theory". It's intend is to explain macro economic processes. One thing it explains is that "tax payer money" doesn't actually exist. Instead all money is owned by the government. If it needs more money, it can just make more of it (technically it's the central banks, but it still boils down to "government owns the money" at the end of it). Taxes, in that regard are what gives the money its value and that's all there is. The argument of "the government wastes tax payer money" becomes nothing more than a piece of narrative used by those with power to instill fear into regular people that the government is screwing them over somehow by taking their hard earned money. Obviously, the only goal here is to find justifications for tax cuts that per usual benefit really only those who earn the most (aka rich people).
Watched this masterpiece on Nebula, so Mia gets paid! I'm so glad you were able to access the ADHD diagnosis, and medication, (and hopefully ongoing access to support) you need. It's making such a huge difference for me in my life, to have an accurate diagnosis, and understanding of how to accommodate myself, and the right meds at the right dose, instead of detrimental attempts to muddle through using brute force compensation strategies, and self-blame. If you ever decide any of the rabbit holes in the 5 hours-ish of research material is something you want to present us with, I'm absolutely in. The way you explain things makes my brain happy.
I’m so stressed about the bunny ear cacti in front of her 😅 They spit out tiny reddish spikes and someone in Finland had to go to a hospital after getting them in their eyes. Take care! Interesting video though
Two and a half HOURS. What the hell Mia. Can't you explain the economy in like, a ten minut tiktok with a techno background music ? Thanks for the hard work !
Hi Mia, I think this is the kind of video that should probably come with a bibliography. Yes, google exists, but it seems to me that when it comes to the economy and specific topics like the UBI, you can always find 10 opinion pieces that argue in favour and 10 that argue against, and the algorythm will just show you what it thinks you want to see.
Love the way you describe "economies" based on reciprocity as the real, human system of "exchange" which also culturally includes ideas like generousity, and the value of giving to your tribe if you are one of the luck with more than you need.
2:07:33 Honestly when I saw this thumbnail I immediately thought that you HAD gotten FFS and that's why you'd been away. You look great. Hope that's not inappropriate to say
about the point that production is often unresponsive to demand drops, if enough people stop eating meat for enough time, like forever, then eventually theres gotta be a point where these companies go bankrupt, meat is murder, it shouldnt be reduced it should be abolished
It can only happen if we stop subsidizing meat. Which we need to do ASAP. Same with fossil fuels. They get big subsidies and we get an unlivable climate.
At 46:00 you're talking about the Dutch West India Company... But that was actually the Dutch East India Company (VOC: Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie = United East India Company). The Dutch West India Company (WIC) came much later and remains most renowned for losing a lot of money by trading New Amsterdam (later named New York) for Suriname... The VOC (East India Company) however is know for raking in unholy gobs of cash, among other things by slaughtering the entire population of the Banda islands in order to secure a monopoly on... nutmeg. And it's they that were the first ever company in the sense in which we now use that word.
Because Mia has lots of subscribers, I want to share uniquely how I view money. Money is permission. Namely to work. On what what we want to. It's also permission to get what you need. It's permission for society too to do what it needs to do. Permission to do stuff without police and others stopping us. Note that we need permission just to work. Being able to work and create value requires a lot of money upfront, and some work you even *lose* money to do, even though it's super helpful, beneficial, and even essential. Sometimes lots of people even want you to do that thing, but since they don't have permission either, society won't let them do it. Some people get permission from no one. So they can do what *they* want to do. We didn't give them permission, but now they have permission to give others permission by them working for their mission. Thereby, they (the workers) have permission to work for others, but not for themselves or their cause. People everywhere are working for people who have been given permission maybe from no one or other people who did the same, and none of them were given permission by many, and most of us do not have permission for what we want to do, need to do, should do, and need to be done.
Oh, I like that. Permission to have kids and raise them (well). Would be a big example. If you are poor you will simply not have the time and the ressources to devote to your children. Or even permission to get sick...
I believe the other useful term to describe money as power coupons. If you have enough power coupons, you can exchange the coupons as a use of the power.
Coming from rural Africa and so based on my own experiences, I don't think people before modern times decided to be strictly butchers and farmers to barter food. Most families would have a garden and some chickens at least. So what would happen if a family fell on hard times before the teachings of the west(? North?) or they lacked meat or veggies? I think they would just ask for it personally. I mean, who the hell would deny a person some food?
Enjoying the video so far, but my understanding is that handmade historical clothing, even clothes made by regular people without any training as tailors or dressmakers, was generally much more durable and better constructed than even pretty nice modern clothing, although it's true that clothes are much cheaper now. Had to pause and say that real quick, back to the video now.
have to say the whole "deserving" thing completely falls apart if you're so disabled that you can't work. it would be cool if anticapitalists talked about people like me more because hi i live in this world too and i deserve to have a comfortable life... as comfortable as possible with this horrible illness (ME/CFS). and i will never be able to work again
F'n for a bowl of soup is a common shared monkey and primate trait. I just saw a thing where a researcher was seeing if small ones understood the abstract value of money and after a while the little monkey was trading coins for grapes to give to a female, which was receptive after the exchange. He basically quit eating if they gave him money for treats.
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hey mia, you said you'd put the census in the description, but i don't see it in there. I might've missed it, would it be possible to link it? also, good luck in your political career! i wish you much succes!
Girl, your videos are so good and so quiet
@@limo_was_here9lpp
Ok, but what about Adam and Steve? And Ada and Eve?
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As an American, I’m disgusted that “parents rights”, a transphobia dog whistle, it more important to a majority of the candidates than free healthcare. We’re fuckin dying over here
But at least those gosh darn undeserving transes won't get to, well, exist... That's obviously more important.
What is free healthcare? Doctors are slaves now or something?
American politicians still work from the stupid idea that the producer is the important part, not the consumer. They don’t understand that it doesn’t matter how much is made if no one can afford to buy it.
The Green New Deal written by the Green Party in 2012 included a $400 per week Basic Income in order to stabilize the economy. It’s demand-side stimulus, if the word socialism offends you.
Parents' rights to make their LGBTQ kids miserable🤮.
The phrase certainly has been appropriated for a variety of awful purposes for decades now. But its current form, at least to me, is the darkest.
I realize this is super reductive and probably not as persuasive for others as it is for me, but when faced with the "but do they deserve (free healthcare/housing/food)?" I just always default to "they have a right to live, so... absolutely yes?"
Do you deserve it? Do your children deserve it? Do i deserve it? Does anyone deserve it? If only deserving people should get something, then we’ll quickly end up with no one deserving it
Nope, don't ever feel bad for this way of thinking. It's literally the only thing that should matter to people. And it is so sad that it isn't the thought process of every single person in this country.
@@patrickhaley1312 This idea breaks down when you introduce scarcity. What if everyone needs something?
@@appa609 Seeing as the scarcity of healthcare, housing, and food is entirely artificial, it's not really relevant in this conversation.
@@klisterklister2367I think the idea of being deserving itself was the focus of Mia’s interest.
The chart showing over 40% of your audience as bisexual is hilarious. I can't explain it, but you can count me among them.
birds of a feather
I'm normally het, but will and have been bisexual if it's for a good enough bit
@@andrewcapra715320 dollars is 20 dollars🤷
i'm not bi, i'm too poor to be bi.
Sexy bean explain economics 🥵🤤
To add to the "lifted out of poverty" debunking, the graphs tend to begin at 1800 for the most part, obscuring the fact that poverty went up in the preceding time: colonization, industrialization, enclosure have made people poor.
Just pretend that India under the control of the British East India Company was how it had always been! Peasants have _always_ been starving trying to grow enough cotton to pay their taxes.
They also tend to obscure that the majority of those people "lifted out of poverty" are Chinese people living in a state that centrally plans.
@@americaisthebestcountryeverI’ve never met a primitivist who does. They think it will be like some hippy commune or modern indigenous community, forgetting that without science and modern medicine most people died in infancy, lifespans were much shorter for those who did make it, and most of them died agonizing deaths from diseases that are now fully preventable or even eradicated.
Primitivists imagine themselves playing drums in the forest with their chosen family, hunting animals (because they don’t morally matter 🤦) and living off the land. They don’t realize that what they’d actually be doing is dying of dysentery at 26 (or dying in childbirth at an even younger age after being forced into an arranged marriage, which is the way a lot of AFAB people passed before feminism, gynecology and hospitals, etc).
@@marcuswarren3516China has a planned *state capitalist* economy, with a very large dose of private capitalism as well. It hasn’t been socialist (let alone communist) since shortly after Chairman Mao’s death. Deng Xiaoping got rid of the command economy in 1979.
@@americaisthebestcountryeverYes. Early industrialization and enclosures did thrust a lot of people into poverty. We can see it through falling life expectancy, worse (much worse) nutrition and the overall state and growth of slums . Yes, there were poor in the pre-industrial times but their number and spread was different.
I pray to the line every night and sometimes it goes up, can’t explain that
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Those "free gifts" are mostly trash, too. Vibrators that run on unusual types of batteries, strokers sized appropriately for a single finger, and similar things that either go in the back of the toy box never to be used or straight in the trash
The UBI argument around why "rich people" can gain the benefits, that has satisfied me most is
With the working class being stable, they can better negotiate work. If the option is not "work for pennies or starve" then the owner class/worker class gap will be shrunk.
Big agree, been tryin to explain this to people for ages. Those who live within that class who can afford to say they're "at least not poor" want to ensure they're not in the poverty class they've been taught to despise. Instead of bringing the struggling up with them, they force them to the bottom, b/c it feels nicer to be better than someone than to struggle together...
For me it's that we already have a tax system and administration in place. If we pay rich people we can just take that money back in tax later. No big deal!!
@@niamhleeson3522 That assumes that Liberal/pro-Capitalism governments are willing to plug tax loopholes, and to create a proper tax code. Which will never ever ever ever ever happen. This is what we, Socialists, would call an "Utopia".
We don't need to tax them; we need, first and foremost, to create and uphold fair social/working relationships. How? By taking control of the means of production. By democratizing workplaces. By nationalizing industries. If we do that, billionaires will no longer be able to accumulate that much wealth, and that problem becomes solved.
The truth is simple: if we ever got to the point where we COULD tax billionaires at 95% (for example), then we would probably have enough political power to do the full revolution anyway (which makes the whole "but let's skip the Revolution anyway!" idea quite suspicious).
The question we pose to you is this: why would anyone want to tax billionaires that much, but not want to do the revolution? Where do your priorities lie? What are you trying to achieve? Which system are you trying to preserve, and what are your reasons for preserving it? Who do you think you're fooling? Because you're certainly not fooling me.
@@niamhleeson3522This is why the highest marginal tax rate (for people with 50x or more the average income) for the best points in US history approached 75%. When you earn millions you can and should give most of that back to make sure roads, sewers, libraries, police, firefighters, etc (all the public services that make our society healthy and safe) are present FOR ALL.
Strictly speaking, the rich don't even get free money under a universal basic income. The basic income comes out of taxes, which they pay most of, so if the tax system is at all progressive(like, even America probably still qualifies) then they effectively just get a small tax cut.
Canada made a good trial of UBI in a town in Ontario with pretty good results. We just didn't do anything with the results of that fairly generous experiment. Quite disappointing.
Did it in Manitoba in the 70s too and just forgot about it
The Nixon administration almost passed UBI in the states around the same time
Same thing has happened in the US ... just because something works doesn't mean we will do it.
Yes! We have no sure way of knowing who does or does not "deserve" any given thing, so the only _fair_ thing to do would be to make sure we give it to _everyone._ Abandoning the concept of who "deserves" something would improve our society in every conceivable way.
...if you don't understand where what people need in order to live comes from, or how people become incentivized to make more so more people can live more happily.
It's easy to say "we" should give people more when it doesn't come from you. Or worse, when it does come from you, but not by your choice or because it makes you happy, just because you value yourself so little to let others take it.
You deserve your own effort. Others deserve none of your effort unless you think they do, unless you choose to give it to them. That's about as far as "deserving" goes.
To each according to their needs goes brrrrr
@@hagoryopi2101others are you, and you are others, we eat the same, drink the same and need the same, no matter all your talk of "deserving", the mere process of working for your own sake will take care of others
@@Tsuruchi_420 we do not eat the same. Some people love peanut butter, I'm allergic. I love dairy, some others are intolerant.
We do not drink the same. I love water, some people can't stand it without sugar or other flavor. Some other people can binge drink alcohol unaffected, if I have more than one serving at once I'm out of it.
However, I do absolutely agree that the process of working for my own sake will help others! Because to benefit myself most, I have to get some benefit from others: to incentivize benefit from others, I have to offer in return. But it has to be *my* work, which *I own,* to have the right to offer benefit to others and earn benefit from others, or else they can just take it and offer nothing. And I have to do that work, myself, or else I will have nothing to offer myself. No matter how larger or interconnected the perceived collective, all action starts with the individual, all experience is perceived by the individual, all consciousness is individual. Individuality is diversity, and diversity is our strength.
@@hagoryopi2101 If we're to believe in modernity, progress, and technology at all then society will (at some point) evolve beyond a zero-sum game. Many would argue that the West already lives in post-scarcity conditions for basic needs-yet houses owned by landlords sit vacant, grocery stores throw food away to justify inflated price tags, and our rivers are siphoned to fill plastic bottles and water subsidized farmland. What did any of those profit seekers do to Deserve the surplus they squander? (hint: the answer is not Risk)
Disappearing for a few months and resurfacing with a 2h+ video is a video essayist rite of passage at this point.
Can't wait to digest this in chunks
Ty for this video.
Last month I helped with a bake sale for my child's elementary school to build a playground because currently, they all play in the dirt. We have ppl come up and tell us how the kids don't need one because when they were at the school decades ago they didn't have a playground.
Mia you can't just drop a feature length movie on us like this. Some of us have lives and can't spend 3 hours watching you talk about economics, y'know.
I mean, _I'm_ gonna watch you talk about economics for 3 hours, sure. But some of us might have a life. I assume.
hahaha - nobody has a life here, silly goat, we're all lazy commies living off welfare needlessly bitching about billionaires who deserve to have more than us by being born in the right family and fucking up more people every day to rake in more profits!
Bold assumption
You are wrong, but I appreciate the thought.
I'm listening at the gym, during groceries, taking a walk, doing the laundry. The visuals don't matter much.
@@LynnWinx Yeah, def. I treat these videos like a podcast mostly too.
As someone who finds the economy scary, I'm thankful for this. Mia has a talent for discussing tense subjects like this in an approachable way.
Discussing without knowledge. Really entertaining, but empty if you really want to learn something.
@@alansegura5953I'm sorry you didn't get as much out of it, Alan. It may just be a matter of how little I know about economics relative to you.
I learned at least kind of a broad strokes gist of how Sweden's healthcare system works, and that was valuable to me since it's something I'd heard a lot about but hadn't looked into. I didn't really go into the video expecting Econ 101, even if I could probably use a personal finance course, ha!
But hey, different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
@@alansegura5953what are a couple of things that should have been mentioned that were not? Was anything claimed that was not factual?
@@Colonizer2 everything was not factual and presents a very naive vision about money and it's origins.
@@alansegura5953 can you give a brief summary of money and it's origins or direct me to a video you think is more accurate
the whiplash from "why is everyone bisexual" to "let's talk about inflation" was very real for me
Telling my kids this was the original upload
What was the original?
This
Me getting 2 notifications 😭
kids? in this economy?
@@ayle1312lol nice 😂
"a surprising number of you are bisexual" i feel so Seen
I got outed by a youtube video 😂
One major argument against UBI that wasn’t mentioned is that it still allows accumulation of capital. The stimulus gets funnelled to landlords and other major corporations. UBI alone is not a sufficient solution so long as the power coupons called “money” can be accumulated by individuals. That’s why cooperatively (or, if otherwise impossible, government) owned businesses are still a required step towards a more equal economy.
Thank you for the wonderful video Mia. Your work is appreciated comraaaugh, ekhm, politician-influencer.
And deeper down, hence reply to my own comment, there is also abolishment of currency. The argument of facilitating complex structures is valid. Therefore we move towards a more local society, without labor outsourced to east Asia, it would be possible for an intentional community to operate on an economy of mutual aid/care/social debt/whatever other name clever people find for a moneyless society.
@@villentretenmerth11tried and failed many times. It was one of the first things the Soviets tried to do (with disastrous results!). Global trade is inseparable from Global peace and unity. We must be interconnected to make large scale conflict a self-defeating proposition, and to create the infrastructure needed to distribute to those currently without. Unless the plan is to let people without stay without.
Currency itself is the emotional core of anti-capitalism, but it's actually a very simple and necessary thing. It's the society managing it that defines its consequence, and only that society that can be changed. Once a medium of exchange is removed, a new one will immediately be needed for any technocrats or experts to do their work for reform. This will simply create a broken system.
There must be a global society, or else any reform is purely temporary and regional. Making life fair just for Americans solves nothing, of course.
I will agree the medium of exchange should be different than it is now. I would love to see Energy as calculated by Work to create + externalities as a kind of universal medium of exchange. The very concept of cost can be linked to the actual energy loss to humanity to create it.
We could socialize land ownership. Not even necessarily development on that land (at first), just the land value itself. If the price of land was locked down to the quality of the development and improvements thereof then slumlords wouldn't be economically enabled (and normal landlords heavily discouraged). That plus things like public development of land, or even public land trusts could get use of land to benefit the public than just only profit.
That is exactly why we should tax wealth and assets more than income
Another issue often ignored is that it could cut all disability benefits for folks relying on those benefits.
I've recently lost friends due to a money situation. It's more complicated than that, but the bottom line came down to a disagreement on who should pay for what. This video gave me comfort in a time when money and friendships are tight. Thank you, Mia.
I'm currently nearly 30 and I can understand how hard life can be, when you need to spend about 20-25 years to just get education and then you're expected to just make more and more money to just afford basic life. I mostly lived with my grandma as a kid, my father left my mother, when I was 5 and my mother never really cared about me, so I moved out on my own to another city, when I was 20 and now I'm expected to help her, because she's becoming unable to exist on her own. I don't even have bad salary, but everything is so expensive and salaries are in general so poor, that it becomes impossible to help other people, even if that's your own family. In case that I lose my job, then I'm risking a lot, because I'll be unable to pay my debt, unless I can quickly find new job that pays at least the same salary. At the same time this salary is still not good enough in my situation, so I'm stressed out about future and I wish that I just had $10-20k more in savings, because it would literally change my life a little and I'd have some space to breath.
are you, me? i've spent me entire life trapped in, if not outright poverty, absolute precarity. it's definitely gotten more difficult for people in our situations to eke out savings. when was the last time you even had a vacation? meanwhile our parents generation, although they had it tough, were still able to have the occasional go-somewhere-and-experience-new-thing vacation. in fact, most of the people doing vacations right now are generation X! we've been screwed
"People who'd know if I was an unreliable douchebag"
Ea-Nasir has entered the chat
I'm no longer able bodied and have post concussion syndrome. This video isn't helping with the looming dread I feel about food & housing security.
Nice to hear Alice's voice tho!
You need to apply for as many welfare program as you can
This is such a good run down Mia, really good to have such a comprehensive overview. The economy gets simplified too often in discourse I think and this video seems to give its complexities their due. Also now I want Vyvanse
And, as it usually happens, it is the rich who don't deserve what they get out of society. Thanks for this video. I've had so many discussions trying to push UBI and I feel this really covers all points.
This is the first video I have seen of yours. It showed up in my feed and I am so glad that I watched it. The “do they deserve it” portion really resonates with me. It is definitely brain rot. I too do not care who gets the money. I think everyone should have what they need. If they don’t want to work that’s ok with me. It is just too easy to want others to go through the trials and tribulations that I have gone through. It makes it so easy to let people who have too much convince people who don’t have nearly enough to gate keep people in need. Every time I hear these kinds of arguments I wish people could see through how they are being used to keep the rich… rich.
The tulip bubble is also a common tale in plant virology. The tulip breaking you can see in paintings from the time is a symptom of some viral infections.
In defence of the "71% of global CO2 emissions come from 8 companies" thing, yes, we buy the products they sell, but the companies control what is available. If you give people the choice between buying regular electricity and electricity that comes from wind and solar power, many people will pay higher prices for the electricity that comes from wind and solar power. Because it's impossible to tell one kilowatt hour of electricity from another, this often works even if you're lying and it didn't really come from wind and solar at all (looking at you origin energy). The point is, we don't really have a choice. Same same but different with cars - until very recently fossil fuels were the only option for cars - and in large parts of the world, particularly north america but to some extent everywhere, the car lobby have pushed policies for development and land use that make living without a car so impractical that huge numbers of people can't function without one.
Point is, people don't have a choice but to buy those energy products.
If the energy market were half as free for the consumers as it is for the corporations, customers could choose a less destructive alternative. I would love to see what an actual free market looks like, but liberals have spent the last half century promoting the lie that a market can only be free if it's unregulated. For most products and services that couldn't be further from the truth; regulation essential to prevent monopolistic tactics from destroying all competition and therefore choice. I'm a socialist through and through but since the idea of "free market capitalism" is so heavily entrenched in the western world, it seems tactically advantageous to take the justification for that ideology - competition gives people choices, forces companies to innovate all that shit - and focus on how badly the markets are failing to achieve those goals.
> many people will pay higher prices for cleaner energy
Many, but not nearly enough for the clean transit to happen just through market forces. Most people will just buy the cheapest possible product or service that simply works _for them_.
@sasha_chudesnov sure. So now we have two lines of reasoning for thinking that consumer choices can't save us, one that consumers don't actually have a free choice and the other that many (maybe most?) wouldn't choose clean even if they could. I think that just adds more incentive to focus political efforts on pressing the companies to change rather than pretending unregulated "free markets" and consumer choices can save us.
The issue with a UBI in a capitalist society is that money is drained upwards. So without price controls the UBI would be taken by landlords increasing rent and companies refusing raises. Unfortunately some amount of administrative oversight will be required to place people with their needs.
This is true, otherwise the increase would just feed price inflation and wage decreases like you describe.
I still think UBI will be needed mostly to deal with the effects of widespread automation, but yes, price controls on essential goods (housing, food) will probably be necessary in the short term after UBI.
This video is great and I love you.
I think the transactional mindset and "I had to work why don't they?" etc. is a great example of society constructing and reproducing itself.
Thanks for this, "constructing and reproducing itself" is a very concise way to describe thoughts I've been having for a while but had no shorthand for.
😮 I never really thought about the idea that indigenous critiques and perspective had even existed on European society and how it may have sparked the enlightenment movement. Super interesting perspective I never even considered.
I appreciate the algo putting your video on my recommended list.
I was so worried when she was talking about the myth of barter like it was fact. Totally got me 😂 I was like “MIA NOOOOOOO” and then 5 seconds later she’s like jk I know about daddy Graeber
Bless you I was just about to comment like "?!"
Graeber sucked.
Hey Mia. US trans woman here. My monthly inhaler costs $275 and my monthly Estrogel costs $640. This is if I buy them in the US with the health insurance provided by the hospital I work at. I buy them from Canada more cheaply, otherwise I could not survive. I hope you're able to continue getting proper care.
How does your monthly inhaler cost almost $300? The avg price of an inhaler is $50 a month in the USA.
It's not a rescue inhaler like Albuterol. It's Flovent, a maintenance inhaler. Why does it cost so much? I don't know, sadly.
Holy shit, I thought HRT was one of those "it's expensive in the long run" things, not "you could buy a nice car with this money" 😢
@@BenjaminWalburn I'm sorry in advance for rambling. Thank you for caring about trans people. The expenses around HRT depend on how you do it. There are several different ways to take estrogen. I could do the injections or the pills and it would be cheaper, but you usually need to take a testosterone blocker with those and they can have side effects depending on which one you take AND which ones are available in your country. I'm considering switching to pills. Long story. ALSO, you have to pay for blood tests, visits to a counselor, and visits to doctors and nurses. Just to talk to my counselor or doctor or nurse for an hour costs $300. In the past 3 years I've paid over $4000 just for blood tests to make sure that my whole body is safe and healthy. However if I hadn't started HRT then I probably wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'm more at peace now. For the first time in 36 years I feel like my body belongs to me and my mind is my friend.
estrogel at 640 per month?? WHAT?????????????????????????
Wow! This has to be one of my favorite videos by you (and I am only halfway done)! Thanks, I hope you do more mega feature-length videos on stuff I almost failed in college again in the future!
the free money thing was done here in Australia, the labour government gave everyone 800 dollars during the global financial crisis and we avoided it cause we went out and spent it on tv's, food, paying off debts, it can be done, we also ended up as the number one performing economy because of it.
Thanks for fixing the audio issues ! Now I just need a good drink and I can enjoy watching this video !
Have a great day !
Ah, yes: The Hole. I kept wiping my screen for an embarrassingly number of times before I realized it was your wall.
everyone has an expedient hole in their home
Moneyless society is what I fight for
@@luizmonad777 basically I'm saying abolish all forms of currency!
@@luizmonad777 you have inspired me to start an “unhinged youtube comments” account. Thank you
Moneyless, stateless and classless
@@luizmonad777 the thing about energy is, it's not easy to convert it from one from to another. Not sure how tenable an energy based currency is.
Not to mention the kind of 'mining' that this energy based currency is going to incentivise might just exasperate the climate crisis.
@@luizmonad777*"it is easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism"*
- Fredric Jameson & Slavoj Žižek
Your comment sounds extremely dismissive
This whole "capitalism" thing will end one day
I, you, and OP will probably never be alive to see it
So while we are still here
Fighting for a moneyless, anti-capitalist existence is something worth fighting for. Even if it nudges a little bit towards that future, then it Is enough.
Capitalism has a way of tricking people into thinking that capitalism will always be here
It won't, it is a parasite in the most existential level that is unsuitable for human life
It WILL crumble.
Also I disagree with your hypothesis on "Energy Currency"
In my opinion, people shouldn't have to justify their existence lmao
Because what happens to the people who can't output the same amount of energy as other people?
How does that energy get distributed to the lowest worker, to the disabled, to the neurodivergent, people with asthma, overweight people, the elderly, ects, sound dystopian af
I don't know just some food for thought
2 hours and 40 minutes...
I need more of this I'm my life
LOVE THE GREEN! I also started the match eye shadow to glasses frames. It works so well.
i cannot believe you made a 2h40m long video about economy that is so engaging! and the ending call to action is so sweet. help each other and make soup. thank you for yor work Mia!
also i just started reading The Dawn of Everything, funny coincidence :з
ok no seriously I love your eye makeup in the first scene??? The way your eyeshadow matches your glasses is just *chefs kiss*
I found this really interesting, thank you for putting it together. I was unaware of Kandiaronk, he sounds amazing.
I think you even understate the case for things like UBI and worker democracy. I've been hard pressed to find any evidence that either of them have negative effects economically. Usually, they have massive positive social effects (through higher wellbeing, better health, more freedom) while not 'endangering' economic outcomes like employment participation or GDP. As you point out, though, there's a good political reason why they are not adopted despite their myriad positive effects. An essay you do not reference but which may be worth a look if The Political Aspects of Full Employment by Michal Kalecki, which argues that even if full employment benefits capitalists in an absolute sense, it mayendanger their relative wealth and will therefore be opposed by them.
Holy shit the fake ad got me.
I noticed the pause, the tone, and good pavlovian dog I am, raised my finger to press skip ad, only to be puzzled by the lack of a skip button. Upon which I started hearing "Mulder" and realised how I had been played.
the way you manage to simplify the marxist theory of class society into something so digestable and easy to understand is astounding. by far the best video essay i think ive ever watched lol
Lots of observations on economics, history, etc ..
The intro, false ideas, and outro outfit (white blouse with the silver, crystal choker) was best outfit. The cacti caused me anxiety, you use a lot of hand gestures.
And the metallic green eye shadow goes really well with those glasses.
New Mia Mulder and new Mia Cole?! Woke up to 4 hours of assorted Mias in my inbox. It's a good day.
A thousand dollars for an ambulance ride?? Where, that's a FANTASTIC price!
About half way through and loving it, great video! I've been watching through your backlog over the past couple weeks and have been wondering: is it feasible for you to subtitle your videos? My hearing isn't fantastic and sometimes it's difficult for me to make out words among even the mildest lofi soundtrack
Hi!
I've been dropping the ball on this previously but thanks to medication and a new editing software I'm actually working on those as we speak! Should be up tomorrow, and the backlog should be taken take of before december as well :D
Incredible! Thanks for all your hard work! Recently got meds myself and it's definitely a process lol, good luck to you
@@MiaMulder don't you ever need help? I recall you trying to find an editor couple of years ago.
Can you imagine ignoring medical issues because of debt? It could get worse!
Yeah, I've accepted death 🙃
I had a health scare several years ago. It was potentially treatable, but the calculation of hospitalization plus loss of income meant that it was cheaper for me to die. I rolled the dice and focused on bettering my diet as a solution. It turned out to not be the worst case scenario, but I’m still pissed that I had to take that chance.
what's killing you?
WOO look at how long that video is! It's going to fill up my brain so gooood....
I love these sorts of videos that dive into concepts I know nothing about. I'm going to have to read more about this "economy" thing, sounds like some crazy stuff.
Regarding "don't let money come between friends" - I'm experiencing the conflict and emotions and power dynamics that are tied up with money right now. Over the summer I wanted to get an old quilt my parents gave me repaired, and a friend offered to do it. I wanted to compensate them for their labor, so we agreed on a price of a couple hundred bucks and they took the quilt to work on it - I told them no rush since I wouldn't need the quilt until winter. A couple weeks later they asked if they could receive the money early cuz their finances were tight, and I was fine with that and sent them the money. Then winter comes around... no quilt. I reach out and ask how things are progressing, and they say they need a little more time. Several more weeks pass... still no quilt. I reached out again, and this time they just didn't respond. Ghosted me completely. So I was out a couple hundred bucks AND my quilt.
It sucks because I know I have more power (money) in this relationship; I'm hurt and angry that they took my money and my stuff, but I can afford to buy a new quilt if I need to. (Which I did.) Meanwhile they have a disability, struggle to hold down a job, and have a precarious living situation, so I can understand them getting too emotionally and physically overwhelmed to finish the job. But I still want my goddamn quilt back!! When you said that money is an abstract representation of trust relationships, I understood exactly what you mean because I gave this friend my trust (money), they violated that trust and now I don't trust them anymore.
I can understand being pissed about the ghosting but I can't grasp being pissed about something one person could replace that the other could.
@@Sara3346 You don't understand getting pissed about losing a couple hundred bucks and also an item that had sentimental value?
@@natmorse-noland9133 No idea what portion of your budget a few hundred is, if it's say a quarter or even more then yeah I could understand bbeing deeply upset.
If it's say 200 out of 800,000 dollars say then I'd be scratching my head. Nuance and context matter, and people can only know of such nuance in such cases if well the information is available.
This may also be just differing views on money and *when* it matters, if i'm struggling to keep warm and fed it's a different level of suffering than say losing a television and what can be covered financially or not matter more between such different categories, as you alluded to with your situations being different.
Also had no idea it had value beyond the being created for a friend bit since well...that's not mentioned in your story.
I certainly have hand me downs that I value and also hand-me-downs that I don't, it greatly depends how much use I got out of it/ how much my family cared what history was or was not attached to it, etc.
So yeah knowing that now I find your response more understandable, and wish to clarify that I think it is a good and helpful thing for you to have made both comments.
Apologies if (as I suspect I did) I came off as abrasive, I had no intentions of doing so. Also to reiterate don't think this associate of yours handled things well and anger feels warrented, but towards what and how much like everything else thats on a spectrum.
A spectrum I only will ever have a glimpse of, and those glimpses are what I have to make do with when communicating with anyone. Which is explanatory, not exclupatory, I should have asked you for clarification on points instead of just stating my puzzement. That would have been more helpful.
If you are reading this, thank you for your time, and I wish you better luck with your future relations and projects.
Your makeup is on fire in this video. Your eyeshadow looks awesome with those glasses in the office scenes. ❤
So in the US most companies just include the same insurance to all of their full time employees. It's cheaper and easier to negotiate the same offer for everyone. Generally, the offer includes a set cost for the insurance that is significantly less than you would pay on the open market because they negotiated a group rate, and they partially underwrite it. You used to need to look very closely to figure out which insurance plan was best, but since the affordable care act they are all basically offering the same three tiered plan. Sometimes unions do negotiate to get the company to underwrite more of the cost, but it's very rare for them to be negotiating whether or not to offer insurance at all. Basically, at this point insurance is so much assumed to be a part of a good job that companies feel like they have to offer it or they'll struggle with recruiting.
okay gotta add some context to the ”“disappointing”” UBI experiment in Santa Land: there’s been critical studies commenting the ”“disappointing”” results, and noting how there were lot of external factors affecting the results. most notoriously there were overlapping effects from the new government-implemented employment system (aktiivimalli, job-seeker activating-model or smthn), and also the sampling wasn’t very good: among the participants there were proportionally too much ppl with well-known difficulties finding employment in the Santa Land job market, like long-term unemployed and ppl with immigrant-backgrounds.
it’s so frustrating that the experiment was executed so poorly and now ppl get to say “yeah we tried it, doesn’t work” (even if it did increase the experienced well-being, as u said) and it gets showed into some backshelf.
21:23 re: strangers there was interestingly very strict rules about being hospitable to strangers. That way if you were a stranger you could count on others hospitality. I think that is how they got around the issue of being hospitable to strangers while there weren’t too many strangers around.
That depends a lot on the specific society. Not all were hospitable to strangers.
Apparently I live in the same "kommun" of where you work and do political stuffy stuffs, the world is a small place sometimes! Keep doing what you are doing! 🎉😊
The thing about early economies and debt makes so much sense! It's not at all natural to introduce a new currency, cause there is the issue of how to distribute it in the first place. But IOUs can come from nothing and are inherently stable in value
Idk, I don't trust the US government. And I'm having trouble finding anyone who does. The Federal Reserve, for most anyone aware of it? Is very much in the same position.
I love it when my fav youtubers talk about the Rules of Acquisition. Rom would be proud
Funny enough my home state of Washington USA had a part to play in popping the Dutch tulip bubble. Around the time the bubble was reaching its climax, farmer’s realized that the climate of the western side of the state was extremely conducive to growing them, allowing the state to flood the market.
This would definitely be an interesting story, but it isn’t really historically accurate. The tulip bubble happened during the 1630s. The land that is now Washington State wasn’t known to exist by Europeans until a century later, and it wasn’t settled until 1774.
I’m sorry if this is offensive! I’m not trying to ‘correct’ you, it’s just that I think historical accuracy is important.
Glad to have you back. Thank you for the thunks.
Love your MIAndering way to tell us about different topics!
great vid, thank you for sharing, the dark souls boss cut really got me lol - anyways keep up the good work, glad to hear you're an elected rep. even if it _is_ in.. you know.. _SWEEEEEEDEN_ (danish accent obvious)
I swear, this lady. Does. Not. Miss.
US healthcare victim here. the idea that other countries have longer wait times... uuum, I've had tremors of my left hand since a year ago, the referral to get in to a neurologist took 6 months after requesting help. in that time I developed migraines with scintalating scotoma (leaving blind for half hours at a time). at the meeting with neurologists they put in an order for a single test... for two months later, and the follow up after to get the results and next steps, two months after that. pretty much the same problem for the GI for managing and testing for IBD. and I'm still paying thousands of dollars each year for this to happen. I'll die before I get any help or answers.
The sponsorship already tells me this is going to be a great vid
Love that you're making longer videos. I learned things! Glad you got the David Graeber stuff in there, too
Employers offering healthcare as a bonus package is how the US healthcare system began. This was at a time when hospitals were basically hospice care. Why did they offer these healthcare packages? You guessed it. Money. It was cheaper to offer the packages than it was to offer employees better pay. And now we're here.
I heard they also began offering it during WWII because during the war there were freezes on wage hikes, while ESI was exempted to prevent strikes.
Why do they continue to offer it and fight against universal coverage, even though that would save costs? Because it gives them a huge amount of leverage over their employees. If your health insurance is tied to your job, you will think twice before leaving to find better work or risk trying to form a union.
I just discovered you via Bluesky, and holy shit!!! I adore your content. You're not a breath of fresh air, you're a wind I can go hang gliding on!!!
Well put! Almost 3 hrs of content and I say you hit it spot on. Not gonna lie I had to chew on some of this info for a few minutes to let it sink in... But ya spot on spot on!
Thank you Mia for your take on relevant issues!
22:10 A moment of working in customer service that really stuck with me was when someone ordered from me as a cashier, but he forgot his wallet in the car. I couldn't allow him to leave because he didn't pay and could just get his food when I wasn't looking, so the guy just gave me his phone. There was no way he was going to forget his phone, so that was a symbol of trust he gave me to ensure he would pay his "debt" back to the business.
As an American with decent health insurance, I can say that the system doesn't even work for us because of the number of hoops we have to go through to find someone who takes our insurance. And then fighting the health insurance companies for incorrect claims.
Thanks!
Thank you!
As an American living in Europe - I kind of love telling my friends here about the health care situation there just to watch their horror. The health care being tied to the employer thing is so fucked … I’m so fucking glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore
Love the makeup-fit combo. Love the rant. All round good job.
As you said, the economy is more than money, it's the relationships we have.
So the problem I have with UBI is that it doesn't change the relationships we have with how, say, our food is produced and transported to us.
It just entrenches the capitalist corporations extracting value at every stage. Like how if a twitch streamer gets some subscriptions. They then buy a sub on their friend, who buys a sub on their friend, who buys from their friend, etc. etc. twitch takes a cut from each of those transactions until the entire value is extracted to twitch.
UBI does not change that relationship.
The private corporations still existing means that money and therefore power is still extracted and concentrated in the hands of a small number of people and businesses that will use that power to get more money at the expense of everyone else.
I don't deny that it would do wonders for keeping people alive and healthy and happy, and that the whole economy would benefit in the short term from people being more free to do shit.
But in the long term we would end up right back where we are. Maybe they would lobby to undo UBI, maybe they would find some other way to undermine it, like how the NHS still exists but is barely functional and is dying thanks to death by a thousand funding cuts.
And the thing is, UBI is not going to happen without massive organisational pressure.
If we have the ability to get UBI, we would have the ability to get so much more.
It will be offered as a concession to try and keep capitalism alive because it is their last resort.
And we should not take that offer and instead dismantle the extractive relationships altogether.
How do businesses "extract" money? Don't people consent to paying for things? Isn't that a mutually beneficial relationship?
Where did businesses get the money in order to provide services on such a large scale in the first place? Didn't they have to contribute a lot of value to get so much value in return?
Hell yeah, if we only fight for our basic needs we'll end up with nothing at all
@@hagoryopi2101 1. Workers: The relationship between bosses and workers is basically a situation where one person has all or most of the power. Of course, the worker can just leave if they're mistreated but then he goes job hunting for a company where the power dynamic is the same. Of course good bosses might exist, but which happens first? Does he find a job he likes or does he run out of money. If you look at wage stagnation, it seems that overwhelmingly the answer is the latter. Of course, it doesn't help that paying workers well puts you at a competitive disadvantage.
2. Is it consent when there's coercion? Inelastic goods are the most obvious example, like healthcare and food. If a starving person signed away all their rights for a bit of food, we wouldn't call it consent, would we? Of course, most things aren't that black and white, but when more and more of society is privatized, and everything that an enjoyable life constitutes is gatekept behind a paywall, the more coercive it becomes, at least in my opinion. An obvious example would be the lack of public transit in the US, where you need cars a lot of the time to get around. Another obvious example is just the existence of the advertising industry, they exist to make you associate their products with a fundamental human need, so you buy their product.
3. If a firm gets too big to fail, for a while at least, it can do whatever it wants as the government will bail them out.
There's probably more I can't think of.
@@testest12344 where did the bosses get that power from? If you have to give to take, you have to give a lot to get a lot of power, right?
How does paying employees well put you at a disadvantage? Better pay incentivizes better work from those you've already employed, and attracts more better workers. That's a competitive advantage, I think.
What's the alternative to transactional "coercion"? The only one I can think of is coercion by direct force, coercion at gunpoint, which is much worse. Transaction gives you choice, force does not. If having something you want and expecting something in return is coercion, then all human interaction is "coercion" and the word is meaningless.
Is society getting more privatized? Subsidy and regulation of healthcare has been increasing for decades, yet it's been getting less accessible over that same time. You cite government bailouts as protection of businesses which are "too big to fail," but if big businesses are getting more and more corporate welfare, how private are they really at that point? It seems to me like the investment of public money into private economic issues is increasing problems, not actual privatization.
The only alternative to transaction is force, and problems are increasing as public subsidy and regulation increases, as force increases. Corporations get more welfare and we call that "capitalism," regulations increase and then we blame the free market for its problems, we call consensual interactions "coercive" while the government coerces us into giving them more and more of our money by putting us in jail if we don't and then funnelling it into big businesses without our consent. None of that is capitalism.
@@hagoryopi2101 1. having the money to invest does not mean you earned it fairly? And even if it did, it doesn't justify using that earned power over others.
2.If your point about wages was true, wage stagnation wouldn't be a thing. It's about bargaining power. If there's too many potential employees, they have less bargaining power. If potential employees have to find a job before they run out of money, they have less bargaining power. I explained this.
>competitive advantage
Do you not know what cost cutting is? If your costs are higher, you either charge more or earn less profit, which means less money can be reinvested in the business thus you lose your edge. Keeping workers motivated only really matters for more glamorous positions like executives or for very specialized technical workers, where companies are, by and large, very happy to shell out a bunch of benefits and high pay. But someone has to work the less glamorous jobs, and we know from statistics how well they're paid. Desperation is a good motivator. The market is very efficient.
>What's the alternative to transactional "coercion"?
There will always be coercion in society, don't get me wrong, but it is a coercion that does not have to exist, since I gave examples where there is less coercion (public transport, healthcare). Of course, a lot of the time, the difference between violent coercion and non-violent coercion is whether someone actively hurts you or lets you suffer through deprivation (my starving man example).
>Subsidy and regulation of healthcare has been increasing for decades,
It is still privately owned, and for profit.
If government involvement was the issue, healthcare in European countries would not be so much cheaper per capita than the US.
Also, do you not think that inelasticities are a problem? I've heard libertarians express that sentiment before.
>You cite government bailouts as protection of businesses which are "too big to fail," but if big businesses are getting more and more corporate welfare
You know what happens when governments don't do that? The whole economy crashes. The Great Depression happens. Corporations know this, and use. Also, even if this wasn't the case, corporations would still get politicians to help them through bribes. There's no real way to get the government to stay out of the free market. There will always be people willing to do underhanded shit to get an edge.
2:09:02 wait, where can you get an ambulance ride for 1k in the US?
Its like 3-5k here...
There's this economic theory that's currently been growing in popularity called "Modern Monetary Theory". It's intend is to explain macro economic processes. One thing it explains is that "tax payer money" doesn't actually exist. Instead all money is owned by the government. If it needs more money, it can just make more of it (technically it's the central banks, but it still boils down to "government owns the money" at the end of it).
Taxes, in that regard are what gives the money its value and that's all there is. The argument of "the government wastes tax payer money" becomes nothing more than a piece of narrative used by those with power to instill fear into regular people that the government is screwing them over somehow by taking their hard earned money. Obviously, the only goal here is to find justifications for tax cuts that per usual benefit really only those who earn the most (aka rich people).
Ah, The Mia Mulder Cactus Anxiety Hour. My favourite show!
Anxiety for Mia, or for the cacti?
@@CyberneticCupcake2 It keeps alternating, so that's fun?
Watched this masterpiece on Nebula, so Mia gets paid!
I'm so glad you were able to access the ADHD diagnosis, and medication, (and hopefully ongoing access to support) you need. It's making such a huge difference for me in my life, to have an accurate diagnosis, and understanding of how to accommodate myself, and the right meds at the right dose, instead of detrimental attempts to muddle through using brute force compensation strategies, and self-blame.
If you ever decide any of the rabbit holes in the 5 hours-ish of research material is something you want to present us with, I'm absolutely in. The way you explain things makes my brain happy.
watching this video at 1.5x speed really drives home the vyvanse point
I’m so stressed about the bunny ear cacti in front of her 😅 They spit out tiny reddish spikes and someone in Finland had to go to a hospital after getting them in their eyes. Take care! Interesting video though
Giiirl, are those new glasses?? Love the glittery emerald!
Two and a half HOURS. What the hell Mia. Can't you explain the economy in like, a ten minut tiktok with a techno background music ?
Thanks for the hard work !
Will never. Ever. Ever.. submit to taking down my ad blocker. Also, great video
Hi Mia, I think this is the kind of video that should probably come with a bibliography. Yes, google exists, but it seems to me that when it comes to the economy and specific topics like the UBI, you can always find 10 opinion pieces that argue in favour and 10 that argue against, and the algorythm will just show you what it thinks you want to see.
Love the way you describe "economies" based on reciprocity as the real, human system of "exchange" which also culturally includes ideas like generousity, and the value of giving to your tribe if you are one of the luck with more than you need.
The meandering IS the point
Yes! Someone gets it
2:07:33
Honestly when I saw this thumbnail I immediately thought that you HAD gotten FFS and that's why you'd been away. You look great.
Hope that's not inappropriate to say
about the point that production is often unresponsive to demand drops, if enough people stop eating meat for enough time, like forever, then eventually theres gotta be a point where these companies go bankrupt, meat is murder, it shouldnt be reduced it should be abolished
It can only happen if we stop subsidizing meat. Which we need to do ASAP. Same with fossil fuels. They get big subsidies and we get an unlivable climate.
At 46:00 you're talking about the Dutch West India Company... But that was actually the Dutch East India Company (VOC: Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie = United East India Company). The Dutch West India Company (WIC) came much later and remains most renowned for losing a lot of money by trading New Amsterdam (later named New York) for Suriname... The VOC (East India Company) however is know for raking in unholy gobs of cash, among other things by slaughtering the entire population of the Banda islands in order to secure a monopoly on... nutmeg. And it's they that were the first ever company in the sense in which we now use that word.
I was so confused for a bit, wondering if I had a knowledge gap about the Dutch West India Company, but you're right, Mia just said it wrong.
Because Mia has lots of subscribers, I want to share uniquely how I view money.
Money is permission.
Namely to work.
On what what we want to.
It's also permission to get what you need. It's permission for society too to do what it needs to do. Permission to do stuff without police and others stopping us.
Note that we need permission just to work. Being able to work and create value requires a lot of money upfront, and some work you even *lose* money to do, even though it's super helpful, beneficial, and even essential.
Sometimes lots of people even want you to do that thing, but since they don't have permission either, society won't let them do it.
Some people get permission from no one.
So they can do what *they* want to do.
We didn't give them permission, but now they have permission to give others permission by them working for their mission. Thereby, they (the workers) have permission to work for others, but not for themselves or their cause. People everywhere are working for people who have been given permission maybe from no one or other people who did the same, and none of them were given permission by many, and most of us do not have permission for what we want to do, need to do, should do, and need to be done.
Oh, I like that.
Permission to have kids and raise them (well). Would be a big example.
If you are poor you will simply not have the time and the ressources to devote to your children.
Or even permission to get sick...
I believe the other useful term to describe money as power coupons.
If you have enough power coupons, you can exchange the coupons as a use of the power.
Coming from rural Africa and so based on my own experiences, I don't think people before modern times decided to be strictly butchers and farmers to barter food. Most families would have a garden and some chickens at least. So what would happen if a family fell on hard times before the teachings of the west(? North?) or they lacked meat or veggies? I think they would just ask for it personally. I mean, who the hell would deny a person some food?
Lots of people in the west will willing deny people food. This world be fucked.
Enjoying the video so far, but my understanding is that handmade historical clothing, even clothes made by regular people without any training as tailors or dressmakers, was generally much more durable and better constructed than even pretty nice modern clothing, although it's true that clothes are much cheaper now. Had to pause and say that real quick, back to the video now.
oh i love that necklace/choker thingy. me wantee 🥲
Thank you for this video! Every time you were speaking to Greg I just picture Succession Greg standing there defeated
You added more than $4.99 of value to my day!😊
Thanks
Thank you so much!
have to say the whole "deserving" thing completely falls apart if you're so disabled that you can't work. it would be cool if anticapitalists talked about people like me more because hi i live in this world too and i deserve to have a comfortable life... as comfortable as possible with this horrible illness (ME/CFS). and i will never be able to work again
F'n for a bowl of soup is a common shared monkey and primate trait. I just saw a thing where a researcher was seeing if small ones understood the abstract value of money and after a while the little monkey was trading coins for grapes to give to a female, which was receptive after the exchange. He basically quit eating if they gave him money for treats.