Buddy of mine at my old job always said "people oughta know their place" when it came to economic class. Funny thing is that we both worked in a grocery store at minimum wage.
It's a very weird socio-economic belief wherein members of a middle/lower Class resent those that seek to raise themselves. "Putting on airs." They see an attempt at improvement/advancement as some form of pretentiousness. Or worse, agitation.
"Because if you're flipping burgers, you're a minnow, and you don't need 15 an hour to be a minnow. But sharks? They deserve all they can get, because they know what to do with it. They use it to give us Amazon. Don't you want Amazon?" This reminds me of when I got into an argument with a copyright lawyer I was interviewing in high school. I was working on a podcast about copyright law, and I wanted to make the argument that the law needs serious reform in order to give artists the freedom they need to make art without fear of being sued by large corporations for copyright infringement. I forget the specifics, but I think I started asking the lawyer why copyright protection should last as long as it does (life of the author plus 70 years, which seemed absurdly long to me and still does). I wasn't satisfied with his answer, so we started to go back and forth a little. After a while, he finally said something to this effect: "You like Star Wars, right? Well, we're not going to get another Star Wars if Disney thinks they won't be able to make a profit on the intellectual property for long enough. And don't you want another Star Wars?" I didn't know how to respond at the time, so I let it go and moved on with the interview. But that always stuck with me. Now I feel like I have a better framework for understanding how we got into that argument: I was coming at it from a democratic point of view, and he was coming at it as a capitalist. I wanted power to be more evenly distributed among artists, but he wanted it to stay the way it was, because in his mind, Disney had proven that they knew best what to do with it. Don't you want another Star Wars?
Which is, again a contradictory mindset because if the hierarchy really only puts people in the places “they belong” why wouldn’t Star Wars survive on its own profit off sales?
If people in entertainment only worked on things that were profitable, the entire video game modding community would never exist. It ranges from devs using Halo Online to port Halo 3 multiplayer to PC for free before MCC was released on Steam to recreating the entire Fallout New Vegas single player in Fallout 4. This doesn't happen with most triple A games since it's more profitable to just sell additional content through microtransactions instead of allowing people to make their own.
@@mattwong5403 absolutely. there's genuinely no group more committed than unpaid creators in fandoms and subcultures. whether it's mods, fan artists and fan fiction writers, they all prove that it isn't profit that creates art, it's passion.
Did you become a journalist later in life? I honestly would not have known what to say at a younger age myself. And... I have unfortunately discovered that no, I do not want another Star Wars. My appreciation of the original remains untarnished, but I have been disappointed by current iterations. Although I do think Bobo Fett series was pretty good! And Mando, but the movies...
Well of course, capitalism observes the greed and desire of those who are up on the hierarchy, and tries to figure out the best way possible to use that greed and benefit everyone else in the process. As it turns out, we’ve created a system where the best way to earn money and make a fortune, involves creating jobs and financing those below on the pyramid. It also involves creating new products that benefit the quality of life of everyone below.
@@parabellum2674 Imagine believing in trickle down economics in 2022. No, the richest don't create jobs for everyone, they exploit everything and everyone, hoarding their grotesque wealth until they die, at which point they just pass it on to their spoilt children. If trickle down works, how come the divide between different economic classes have only increased while billionaires increase both in numbers and in wealth? No, billionaires are a leech on society, sucking both their workers and the state dry while being richer than some small countries. They underpay and exploit their workers, employ slaves in the form of sweatshops in asia, they recieve disgusting amounts in subsidies from the state and pay, on average, less than a percent in taxes. Exactly how does it benefit any of us if Elon Musk gets paid tens of billions by the state to do exactly what NASA does but worse? In what way does it improve your life when Jeff Bezos evades taxes by running Amazon into debt, taking a 0% interest loan against his assets, recieves state subsidies to pay for Amazons debt and then uses the billions of dollars he loaned to buy stocks?
...This is hard to listen to as a disabled person According to their ideology, I guess my "place" is dead, because I can't hold a job. Or I'm just meant to hope that someone will be kind enough to give me what I need to get by. Because living, for me, in this ideology, is a gift, not a right Even if they won't admit that to disabled people or to themselves, in practice, what they believe is that people have to earn their right to live. And if they can't, they don't deserve to live at all. The reason they don't have to recon with the reality that they are advocating for the death of people less fortunate than them is because they can always claim those people just "aren't trying hard enough". Which is why they are so commonly bigoted. They have to be, to defend this worldview
Even if they won't admit it to themselves? Perhaps because you are wrong. I believe only a minority of conservatives do not believe in welfare at all. Most people do not fall at the very extreme end of unregulated capitalism.
I'm a conservative. I believe in welfare for people who need it. As far as I am aware, all my conservative friends all believe the same. I have talked about welfare with a few of them, and they all seem to believe it should be available to people who need it.
Where people differ is who needs it. But most people, and all of my friends, I have discussed it with agrees that people who physically cannot work should receive welfare.
@@peterwallis4288 Yeah, politics are complicated, not everyone under one label wants the same things. This series is called "the alt-right playbook", not "the conservative playbook", after all. It's sort of relieving to hear, actually
@@peterwallis4288 Ah, yeah, that's where it gets hard. I'm not physically disabled (past physical weakness from chronic malnourishment which leaves me with a very sedentary life). My main disability is complex PTSD, combined with autism (plus social anxiety, depression, and ARFID - an eating disorder). And the autism wasn't medically recognized until very recently. So it's much easier for people to overlook me and say I'm "not trying hard enough", because my struggles aren't something they can physically see or easily understand. I really hope these misunderstandings can be solved with education, I think a lot of people just don't know how much a mental disability can really mess a person up. I do the best with what I have, and I hope to recover enough to work someday, but for now it's just not possible. But I'm glad they can at least agree that people should receive wellfare Oh, I should also clarify, when I reference being dead it's because if my mom wasn't caring for me by bringing me food, I wouldn't eat (and it's basically charity that she still takes care of me at age 19... I mean, she owes me for having a part in my trauma and causing a lot of what makes me disabled, but still). Even if I had the money to buy food, I wouldn't be able to consistently go out to buy it. Because of my food apathy, I wouldn't even order doordash. And people may think "if you were starving, you would", but I've starved before, and I didn't. I completely lost my appetite, and I never gained the weight I lost back. So uh, I wasn't just trying to be dramatic, sorry if it sounded that way. I mean that if I was left on my own I would die if I didn't have intervention, and there's nothing protecting me from that except individuals choosing to help me (the rest of this is personal stuff about my life, you don't have to read it if you don't wanna, I just felt like sharing for whatever reason) I've been told many times that I just need to push myself. And I've tried many times, it's left me more disabled. It's like the mental equivalent of breaking a bone? Or pulling a muscle while exercising. I have a bunch of mental injuries from trying too hard and hurting myself. So before I can lead a productive life, I have to do the work to fix all of these old injuries that never got the care they needed. Which will probably take years, to get me to a place close to a typical person's functionality. If that makes sense? And I do small things when I can, that's like uh... you know when someone gets injured, they need physical therapy, they very carefully work with the part of their body to move it, without overdoing it. That's what I'm doing with my productivity and my mental state. My friend recently has started reminding me take care of my teeth morning and night, I can finally do brushing, flossing, and mouthwash... not entirely consistently, but twice a day most days. It's been something I failed at for a long time, I couldn't be more thankful to them for helping me. And last night, I cleaned up my room on my own. Without going into one of those awful manic states (not a healthy place to be in even if it makes me productive, it gives me one of those mental injuries I talked about earlier, when I come down). So I am slowly getting better I think someday, if I get a job, I'll try to look for one that has to do with data entry or organization. Because I love doing stuff like that. If I have something I'm passionate about, I love collecting images related to it, and I'll put tags and credits in the metadata, it's all complicated and methodical but I can fixate on it for hours, or even days. So once I've recovered enough to do something like that consistently, not just in my own time, hopefully it'll work well, for me. I also know some html/css coding, enough to make a simple website, if I hone that skill I could maybe do that, too. It'll just take a while before I can do these things consistently enough I think, when I try to explain to people what I can't do (which is a lot), they think I'm not trying, or I've shut myself down to progress. But really, I just have realistic expectations for myself, and I'm trying not to allow others to pressure me into doing something I know will revert the progress I've made
When I went to the State University several decades ago, tuition for a semester was $375, now that same university is $8,000 a semester (not including a dorm room, a meal card, or books/e-books).
@@stevechance150 was college more subsidized back then? Or is running a college just more expensive these days. I'm not tryna make a point I'm just curious lol
I remember seeing a comment online somewhere that read something like: "If I give a homeless man food, I'm called a saint. If I ask why the man is homeless, I'm called a communist." I just thought of that while watching this video.
Something a lot of more conservative people forget is that many classic "blue collar" jobs now require degrees or certs. Mechanics have ASE, Firefighters have fire science degrees to move up, etc etc. Even the "pick yourself up by your bootstrap" jobs need some level of college now. Edit:spelling
@Brandon Tran watch him come at you for quoting wiki even though they cite their evidence now so people can fact check. This guy real life said neoliberals liked regulations LMBOOOO💀
If your hose operators need a college degree with a mandatory minor in poetry because the faculty leadership's wife just so happens to teach it, maybe the solution isn't to hide the cost of the bloated system by socializing it. Perhaps the fetid tree needs to be cut down altogether and replaced with a new sapling that isn't built on the elitism of yesteryear's nobility. Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? That's because you haven't really thought about any of it. Maybe you should.
@@Lucy-cl2qk he also invested a lot of money to automate things instead of paying people and the ones he does employ treats them like they are disposable. I'm struggling to understand why that asshole was given as an example in this context.
I really hate the idea of someone's entire life's value being determined by the amount of work they can do. It may not apply to everyone, but our society/culture is all built around work work work and doesn't include for people doing what they love or people who cant work.
Survival, since the beginning of man, has been work. We've merely traded hunting and foraging for jobs and professions to pay us money to purchase the things we need, rather than have to create them for ourselves. It's always been and always will be work to survive.
You cannot survive on feelings when the work you do contributes nothing. A million artists of all kinds put together with nothing but their talents on an island with no external help or resources; will starve or be forced to give up what they love doing in order to survive. You NEED to work. The reason why food is a near universal currency when metaphysical methods die out - is because it is always needed. People NEED to grow food. People NEED to purify drinking water. People NEED housing to be protected from the environment. People NEED resources to turn into fuel to power everything around you. Work is absolutely Necessary. You Need lumber for the homes - or stone masons - architects - etc. Luxury jobs are almost worthless because they can only exist when things are good. So yes, it is sad. But that is life and survival: you NEED to work. The painter who never lifts a finger to help the farmer grow food doesn't deserve the right to take what everyone else worked for. We are however, a sympathetic society. We are still a social and empathetical species. Those who CAN'T work for one reason or another do get some empathy and extra lee-way into surviving because of group mentality when there are plenty of resources. But should resources become scarce, the super old - the unhealthy - and the incapable are the first ones that will be dropped off to save the overall heard. If you are a strain on resources when they are scarce, you are going to be removed. That is a sad reality. We don't live in an age of infinite resources to just hand out. We never HAVE been in that age. Ever. And until the day of Fabricators or molecule reconstruction machines exist along with infinite sustaining energy to power those machines; we arguably never will get to an age of Post-Scarcity.
Technology has improved. Not as much human labor is required anymore. Besides, even in the past people had more free time than capitalism gives them. Many can't work this much, and no-one should. Would you need to work if food was free? Why would those who provide necessities need to charge you, if their needs were covered?
You're not entirely right, people's value is ofc determined by how much they can work but it is also determined by the "prestige" the job they're doing has; cleaners get paid scraps and are generally regarded as "low value, low skill workers" while working 100x harder that people who get paid 1000x more. Workers are replacable tools without any personal value, no matter how hard you work or how much value you produce your boss can still choose to lay you off without consequences, your life could be ruined overnight just for the sake of profits no matter how good of a job you do or how long you work. It's not fair.
"The good times were always about thirty years ago." Coincidentally, that's about how long it takes for your children to grow up and start calling you out on your b.s.
@@virtualmartini People don't grow up more conservatist, society simply starts realizing that their worldview is bullshit making them look more conservative because their viewpoint isn't accepted without question anymore. Have you seen kids? Most kids are definitely not born lover of equality, peace and solidarity. Granted they aren't born a nazi either, but to think growing up means automatically getting more conservative is just wrong as far as I'm aware. You just grow more conservative relative to the shifting society. (And that doesn't mean society automatically shifts on the left, just that things are always going to change and individual viewpoints tend to evolve slower than society).
THIS, especially because larger brands with dodgy production methods and low pay and may donate to discriminatory organisations are always the most affordable option
@@adamdawson6700 Well neither hirarchy or egalitarianism are "true". Capitalism serves the state by keeping competition going. As soon as a monopoly exists it's egalitarianism for everyone but one. Then the state has to step in to keep the fight going.
Under lassez-faire capitalism (or what passes for it) having/earning more money means, in practical terms, having more rights/freedoms than those with less. Equality under the law (on paper) doesn't mean a great deal by comparison.
He didn't directly call this out, but in voting money plays a huge deal: hiring staff, marketing agencies + running ads, travel, etc. The entire field of lobbying is capitalism messing with democracy.
@@AviMarcus Kind of, lobbying also fulfills a deficiency. The reason politicians ask for advice, explanations, and drafting of legislation from private individuals is because they generally aren’t experts in the fields of any individual law, and because they don’t hire enough advisors to realistically have expert advice without private industry. Because having a large, expert Congressional Staff is unpopular and expensive.
It fills the information gap between voters/politicians and actual policy experts edit: But lobbying isn’t the best way to fill this gap. Public education should be better, news should be better, expert advisors should be more widespread.
@@AviMarcus There's a story that during Detente when a Soviet representative learned how lobbying works in the States, he turned to his host and said 'In my country we would call this corruption.'
It's not that it is necessary - it is inevitable. There are always going to be those who climb the ladder and claim dominance as the hierarchy - you can't abolish EVERYONE that climbs up the ranks. Because that inevitably leads to the bar of "What is too high" to be lowered until it is so low that no one is gaining any ground anywhere. Because everyone is greedy. Everyone is looking out for themselves - because we are not a hive mind or a collective serving entity. We never evolved that way. What is often best for society does tend to be that a specific few rise above everyone else for one reason or another: either you are innately and truly better at doing something than everyone else around you - or you were born into a state of wealth and continue to grow that wealth with the ease of opportunity it initially granted you. Everyone CANNOT be at the same level. There is literally no system conceived for that because everyone has drastically different wants and needs from each other. No matter how hard you try - it is inevitable. We can do our best to trim it - we can do our best to even out the field; but there always will be that one sly snake that convinces or will convince the majority around you that THEY are better. Or that THEY deserve more. It's just going to happen. The only way it CAN'T happen - is if Everyone is constantly being pushed to being 100% equally as intelligent. But that also requires everyone to WANT to be intelligent and strive to be intelligent. And far too often - even with College students, College graduates, and the Common Folk; we see that they will choose to elect their intelligence into being TOLD what is right or wrong - what is smart or dumb - rather than strive for true intelligence and independent research. These are the people who will always without fail; fall victim to the snake-oil salesman tactics of the liars and deceivers. No political party - ethnicity - or tribal mentality is safe from it. It WILL always happen. Edit: Found a couple of typos
@@Nai-qk4vpwhen we destroy it we tend to recreate it as there is a demand for leadership. French Revolution is the worst case scenario but it’s clear people don’t wish for a higher power but unfortunately easily fall for one.
The most infuriating thing about the "where people deserve to be" thought process is that the single greatest indicator of financial success, is the amount of wealth you were born into. Sure, things like work ethic, creativity, and business savvy matter, but that really only determines the outliers and exceptions to the rule. The vast majority of the time, people who were born rich either stay rich or get richer, and people who were born poor stay poor or get poorer.
This is actually factually incorrect and I'm not sure why people keep parroting it. It's easily disproven by looking up data on upward mobility in the United States. Generational wealth is one of the biggest myths that needs to die. If you're born in the bottom percentile of income, then the probability of you out-earning your parents is about 79%. If you're on the higher percentile of income, then the probability of you earning less than your parents is about 92%. In fact, about 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% lose their wealth by the third. The reality is, wealth is constantly changing hands. People move from the middle class to the upper class and then back down again. While it is true that upward mobility in the United States is "stagnant" (in the sense that in the 1940's your probability of out earning your parents was 98%), that's not the same thing as saying "the rich keep getting richer".
@@xero964 Wow, it's almost like those who end up being able to maintain their generational wealth due to reason often beyond them end up doing better than those who end up losing it... And calling generation wealth a myth is just plain conservative retardation.
@@Speedojesus Wow, it seems like those who end up losing their wealth appear to regain their generational wealth all again due to reasons that might possibly be outside of their control. The same argument could literally be made the other way around.
I have a friend who is super Conservative, and he's going to law school. His family was always super rich, but he has recently been treating me like I'm an inferior species. I'm not exactly the most...respectful person when it comes to being talked down to, and that frustrates him to no end. Like at one point he flat out called me stupid, because I'm not as successful as him (I'm a librarian, I want to be a librarian, I don't want to be rich, and I enjoy what I do). I pointed out he's only successful because his parents paid him through law school, and he freaked out saying I don't understand what I'm talking about. It's always fun to knock people down a notch when they talk about this hierarchy, because they can't comprehend when people are not conforming to their pyramid. Don't think of yourself as lower than anybody.
I had a falling out with an old coworker as we ended up on different sides of the political spectrum. He said something to me that I didn't get why he thought this until watching this video. We were talking about equal rights and why he was actually against it. He said "You don't understand. In order for everyone else to get rights, it means I have to lose. There always has to be a loser." Ppl on the right believe there always has to be a loser so they're against anything that could be considered a "handout' as someone else will lose unfairly. What they fail to see is that that shit's being going on since America was a country. Ppl have won and lost unfairly due to patriarchy, class warfare and all sorts of shit.
The unfortunate thing though is that they still silently feel as if that is "fair game". Rather than searching deep in their soul and finding that darkness, they deny it even exists. As Malcolm X said, they'll deny that the knife is ever there. A not so insignificant chunk of the conservative population look back at that dark time with FONDNESS, as the time they were "winning". While I still believe that there can be converts from the right( me being one of them) I recognize that I am the exception that proves the rule that they simply cannot be reasoned out of their beliefs, considering they were never reasoned into them in the first place. You cannot play fair with someone who believes the way to play the game is to cheat. We simply must stop playing their game, and start playing ours. That means really free markets, that means antifascist action, that means abolishing not only capitalism, but the state as well.
Actually what they fail to see is that that logic makes absolutely no sense. Someone else having rights doesn't take away mine. In fact, everyone else having rights is the only way to ensure I will always have rights. Because so long as there is any situation where someone is deemed undeserving of rights, I will have to argue that I deserve my rights (against people who believe that I don't deserve them for idiotic reasons). Even though in fact, no one can *deserve* rights but it isn't about what anyone deserves. Like it says, they are "endowed by our Creator" and "inalienable". The whole point is that we get them whether we deserve them or not. But conservatives are only capable of agreeing with that line of thinking when it is applied to a foetus.
In the truest or most technical sense, your coworker is correct. Everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING, is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. And everything suffers a loss of available, usable energy. It's expressed in many different ways, but one such way is inflation due to a loss of resources, energy in various forms, etc. What it comes down to, is that conservatives just make sure the losers are POC, the poor, LGBTQ, women, etc, and the winners are white males. Aka, the hierarchy, falsely claiming they let the "invisible hand the market" determine "winners and losers". As the video states, Conservatives assume the "smart liberals" know the hierarchy exists. But Ian also notes they don't live up to their ideals, because they need money from the rich elites to fund their campaigns, so the working class still suffers. You cannot break the laws of thermodynamics, and as such, cannot solve really the fundamental problems that cause humans' problems. Of course, you could live within the world's means, but since when have humans been content with that?
That tends to be because Socialists romanticise their ideology and are incapable of viewing it from a "Warts And All" perspective. Just because you wouldn't call it Socialism doesn't mean that it isn't. But the 23 times that Socialism/Communism has been implemented before weren't real Socialism right? But you'll still try and claim that conservatives and moderates, are in some way delusional.
@@goawayleavemealone2880 Nobody is really arguing for pure Socialism; most people realize that the free market is great for consumer goods and most of our day to day spending. But some things, like public health, are demonstrably better provided by socialism than capitalism. Compare US per capita health care spending with UK, and then see who lives longer - NHS is cheaper and provides better outcomes than our free market health care. The problem is that special interest groups like the insurance companies and drug manufacturers have enough influence to persuade you that any socialism is bad, and that nationalized health care would turn us into Venezuela somehow. And you trust them.
@@johnschwartz1641 - I live in the UK and you think you can present the NHS as a shining beacon of a successful nationalised service. The NHS is underfunded to a point that's frankly absurd, the wait times are staggeringly bad and the treatment received often barely adequate. Medical advancements are never born in the NHS, they seem to be born in privatised health care. I wouldn't even want a competent government to nationalise any sort of service, let alone a Corbyn lead government. When Rail Services were nationalised in the 70s, it catastrophic omnishambles and there are people advocating for pure Socialism.
That shits hilarious too, cause alphas dont even exist. People think that an alpha, say, chimpanzee. Is like the chad of the group. But no. The alpha is more comperable to the leader of the group. Anybody can be an alpha Chad, but anybody could also be the leader of the pack.
@@a.bagasm.7253 I actually cant see your comment. But i hope you realize that, uhh, i was literally saying that an 'Alpha' person doesnt exist. And the fact that anyone can be an 'alpha chad' means that literally anyone, even the opposite of what you would think is an 'Alpha chad' could be this hypothetical non existent 'alpha' creature.
It was more articulate than most idiots i see online, but as an actual conservative, it still felt like a strawman. He gets the general picture though, we do care a lot about capitalism and laissez faire economics, and we only support reformation when we agree with liberals that its absolutely necessary (otherwise, its just a matter of us being out-voted). Another thing he sort of misses is that independents may become conservative over time when liberal politicians begin to fail them or their communities with their policies. After all, politics can be very personal in some cases. "Law and Order" is a phrase constantly tossed around. Though thats circumstancial since conservative politicians are just as likely to fail their voters or communities as well. Its why the antithesis of Law and Order, "ACAB", even exists to begin with.
@@four-en-tee If anything it was a steel man. He gave the conservative much more awareness of where they were coming from than most conservatives have. Most conservatives are reactionary who put little thought into why they feel a certain way. There are also conservatives who are intellectually curious and can find a breadth of philosophies and (mythologized) histories that back their preconceived notions. "Facts and logic" are on their side, and Innuendo put their conservatives more on the latter end in terms of articulating their own beliefs, but still repeating bad faith talking points about liberals they would have heard on TV. There are also leftists/liberals (combining them for the sake of simplicity) who operate like the former conservatives. They're bothered by war, poverty, racism, homo/trans phobia, environmental destruction, etc. and just think a lawful good government needs to come in and make the bad people stop being bad. I'd say they're more liberal than leftist because they think there's nothing wrong with power as long as the people who have it are "good." Most people on either side operate out of somewhere between gut feeling and intellectual rigor.
@@patstevenswhohatesbuttermi5861 I used to be moderate leaning right and slowly leaned left throughout the course of Trump's presidency. It became very clear that so much of the rights politics are based off religion, misinterpretation of the constitution, and extreme nationalism all while serving only the intrest of big corporations and not the actual nation. In left politics I found more freedom to my beliefs that I would be destroyed for even considering in right political circles. I can be pro-second amendment while still supporting regulation, I can be anti-abortion while still supporting the right to choose, I can be pro border security while not being anti-immigration, I can support tax cuts for lower classes but not for billionaires, I can support the Rittenhouse verdict while not praising the dumb fucker. The US right has become way to radical and has gone from free market proponents to religious nationalist as evident in its biggest platform the Grand Old Party. Of course this is generalizing from my experience and not every righty is the same way but alot of the moderates I know feel the same way and so do millions of right leaning Americans who sadly had to vote against their beliefs this past election because they didn't want this platform to represent their ideology.
@@four-en-tee Just chiming in to say that I appreciate this comment! You've clearly written it to clarify your position and help others understand you, without attacking/belittling those who disagree or assuming bad faith on the part of Innuendo for mischaracterizing your stance. I wish more political discourse could be like this.
I've literally heard "Don't you WANT amazon?" before. A couple times actually. And, uh, NO. I DON'T want amazon! I don't want "easy shopping that has cheap shipping!" I don't want workplace abuse! I want communism! I want to each according to his needs, and from each according to his ability! Fuck amazon, I DON'T WANT amazon lmao
idk how many times I've viewed this before realizing that in the hypothetical conversation, the friend dodges the "why is what happens to poor people not your problem but what happens to rich people is" question.
@@KovaXCX - This assumes the we are all 100% in control of our lives. Bit funny, that notion. What policies the government lays out directly affects my life, even if I make the best possible decisions at the time. And, aside from voting (which has been proven to have relatively small impact compared to say, having enough money to donate and get your desires through Congress), I have little control over what policies government implements. Take bankruptcy as an example. Let's say that I, through no fault of my own, have a horrific accident or develop a life-threatening medical condition. Perhaps I caught COVID-19 when I went to work and was one of the 20% of people who had a severe version of it. I end up spending weeks in the ICU. I survive. I had good insurance through my job, but even one day in ICU is incredibly expensive. I am now hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and will not be able to pay this back for decades, if at all. So, my best option is to declare bankruptcy. Well, turns out, bankruptcy laws were changed in 2005. It's now much harder and much more expensive to declare bankruptcy. I am still recovering from COVID-19. I have no money and I'm not yet fit enough to work. By the time I'm back at work, I have fallen behind on rent/mortgage and necessary bills. I'm having to pay back the deductibles I missed while away (at least my job let me do this rather than cutting my insurance immediately). I won't have the several thousand dollars necessary to declare bankruptcy anytime soon. I'll be lucky if I keep a roof over my head. Maybe, if the economy recovers, I will reach a point where I can declare bankruptcy. Maybe not. Of course, depending on the actions of government when the pandemic began, maybe I wouldn't have caught COVID-19 at all. After all, several countries managed to keep their cases much, much lower than the US did, even without a total shutdown. Or maybe I'm a Texan who was on the ERCOT power grid this past February. My power stayed on for most of that severe storm, but my electric company was one of those that charged me the current market rate. My next electric bill is over $100k. Had Texas changed certain regulatory rules to prevent this, or had they simply forced companies to properly weatherize after the 2011 storm that caused Texas to institute rolling blackouts (though was not severe enough to freeze natural gas wells), my bill would not have been $100k. My elderly cousin in another part of the state wouldn't have frozen to death. The family in my town who used their car to try to keep warm during a power loss wouldn't have died of CO2 poisoning. Or perhaps it's not my personal bill that's the problem. Maybe I'm in charge of a power company. My customers paid an average rate, rather than the current rate (quite common in Texas power companies). But the producers of power at the time charged _me_ the current rate. My company, which serves several million Texans, is boned. It's millions in debt. And if it goes under, that's millions of Texans without power. These are just a couple of examples. There are hundreds I could point out, just off the top of my head. From economic policy, tax policy, trade policy, patent laws, medical regulations, etc. All of it has an impact on people and, depending on the circumstances, can send your life from 'this is fine' into 'I'm screwed' territory. Government, and the decisions it implements (or in Texas's case, fails to implement), has a massive impact on our lives. It is a complete fantasy that we are 100% in control. It may make you feel better to think that way, but it is in no way accurate.
@@KovaXCX Because "Everyone is responsible for their own life" is nonsensical when it is impossible for a human to live, much less have a good life, unless they are handed things. Every single person who has a decent quality of life only has it because they were handed a lot.
There aren’t enough high paying jobs for everyone. Someone has to clean the toilets. And that’s why it’s so important to have strong social safety nets and government provided education and healthcare! Why should the fact someone is a custodian be the basis for denying them the right to higher education? Learning is an admirable end goal in and of itself, even if they never have to use what they learned in their professional life
That's a pretty cool liberal take. I would say that custodian need not be a career, maybe just a specialty. If everyone had input in their place of work, and were trained to be a functioning and flexible part of that specific place of work, then there wouldn't need to be high and low paying jobs necessarily, as each person in the functioning body would have a well-enough understanding of their own and other's contributions to distribute their total earnings accordingly. But I certainly agree about the education. Knowledge isn't something that really needs to be restricted, it's not like there's limited access to it or that a history or math major could be given to someone unjustly.
@@tofupowda it is worded confusingly, but I think they’re talking about balanced job complexes (where the people in a democratic workplace share both empowering and wrote work). On another note, it’s so weird how education is supposed to be a job factory. Academia is a wonderful place all on it’s own, and education for education’s sake is good for people and society
The more educated people are, the less likely they are to be religious. As their religious beliefs diminish they become less conservative and more democratic in their thinking.
@@NoodleBerry Agreed. Education is a goal in itself! For me, Life is about finding happiness, and money is just a means to happiness, and jobs are just means to money, and education is just a means to jobs. But if you have the tuition and can get happiness from education itself, well you're cutting a lot of middlemen to your happiness.
this video really helped me understand what is going on in my dad's head. being a leftist in a family of conservatives can be really confusing when i actually just don't understand the world they see.
@@SnoFitzroy this is why it is important to know what they believe. If you just write it off as bullshit but don't actually dig, you're in a different type of denial, I would say. I know plenty of conservative people who I respect. I don't have to agree with every one of their beliefs. The problem, really, is that people have their reasons for believing what they do, and to them, their reasons feel just as (if not more) valid than your reasons for feeling how you do.
But, how? Every point this video makes is false to make you buy into a certain narrative. 1. Sharks don't produce anything of value for the minnows. CEOs (via their companies) organise the production of stuff and their existence at the top depends on them producing stuff of value. Nobody thinks there is a rigidly defined pyramid like in the animal kingdom, thinking so is silly. 2. Countries would be lost without their rich. Look at countries such as Venezuela that decided to get rid of their rich: they ARE lost without them. Venezuela doesn't even have a stable electricity supply anymore, even with perfect weather. Because nobody goes the extra mile to make it happen, because electricity production is all run by government employees who are being rewarded a prescribed amount of money regardless. There is no Edison or Westinghouse there, incentivized to produce as much electricity as possible (because the more electricity they sell the more money they'll make). Not to mention the production of cars and computers. 3. Liberals DO try to use diversity and inclusion as a tool to sneak people into good-paying jobs, based not on relative merit but by how much those people supposedly "need" that position. You don't see any liberals complaining that white men are overrepresented in the sewage works or garbage disposal sector. Not as much as they do about Silicon Valley jobs anyway. It's all about "redistributing" the good-paying jobs regardless of merit (productivity).
All work is dignified. My kids were academically gifted and would report teachers threatening struggling students with, “if you don’t learn this, you’ll be flipping burgers and asking people if they want fries with that.” Those teachers would melt into a pity puddle if they couldn’t swing through the drive-thru for some of that “useless labor”. Pay the burger flippers a living wage, make it possible for surgeons to acquire the needed education no matter their families’ finances.
@@goroakechi6126 everyone knows modern Christians are an extremist version of actual Christians. It’s a small part of why I am no longer Catholic. I’m not an atheist though, more agnostic. The world’s an interesting place
@@apollo1573 _"everyone knows modern Christians are an extremist version of actual Christians."_ That really depends on the angle you look from. Early christians would stone each other's spouses for cheating and let the men go, just like the bible tells them to. And the ingrained us and thm mentality is actually more diluted now and people don't at all remember that "neighbour" is Palestinian Jews and now one else. Come to think of it, I actually don't know what behaviour or beliefs are actually more extremist. I was inclined to agree, but can you first tell me what you're talking about? _" I’m not an atheist though, more agnostic. The world’s an interesting place"_ It sure is. Just the other day I was talking with a friend about why she celebrated christmas and she intuitively said it's because it breaks up the dark months of hard work and she wants to spend time with the people she loves, and sending a card to a friend she can't see during that time shows that she does think about them, and giving gifts to her parents, paid for with her own self earned money and having elaborated dinner just feels like a natural thing she really wants to do to show how happy she is, how well she's doing and how grateful she is for everything she has and does, with, for a large part to, and for her proud and loving parents. The church will find this a show of arrogance and decadence. The pagans, whose celebrations were shoved out and assimilated by the church celebrated the winter solstice as a turning point in the dark months, and celebrated it's mid point, the darkest day, after which optimism is justified and days will get more sunlight (in the northern hemisphere, but history is nothing if not Eurocentric), and sang and danced and ate exorbitant amounts of (stored) foods with loved ones to break up the cold dark months of hard work, to motivate and remember why we even care that we are alive and work so hard: to love and enjoy. I find this human nature so interesting and beautiful, and I am an enormous misanthrope when I'm out getting my groceries. I fucking hate it that people are in my way, especially if it's windy and cold. But I remember growing up outside a tiny village too, where it's even colder. There was no internet or warm water unless you chopped wood. There was no central heating and we had 3 channels on the tv and with good weather some German channels that showed some movies as well. I remember people saying the world was getting over crowded and people starving because of it and not seeing a soul on my 15km way to school and back. I remember a teacher explaining that the amount of people on the planet sky rocketed when we started cross breeding and genetically modifying crops. Population grew because people weren't starving anymore. The "god given" plants allowed for a lot of death and starvation. People changed that. Medicine improved. Not because a god stopped giving children cancer and gave us solid advice. No. God still wanted us to not wash our hands but watch our language instead. People changed that. My life, and yours and everyone else's, is (on average) pretty fucking comfortable compared to what sick and starving people go through. Those people that I hate seeing when I am getting my groceries are the reason why my life is so good. If I'm feeling under the weather, the world will go on just fine and the baker will bake bread, and the farmer will grow crops and if they can't we have wheat storages, the truckers will supply the stores, my neighbour will buy me a bread and I can just take my time to get my shit together again. How awesome is that? And because I helped him pour out a pan of oil once he said: "You helped me out and I can finally help you out, keep your money, enjoy the bread and get well soon." If there was a god worth worshiping or even thinking about, do you think it would stay invisible, let millions die while we struggle to find cures, improve food production, and still want us to spend time on that god instead of the awesome fucking reality around us? A god worth worshiping would have no room or need for growth or learning, so there's no purpose to letting people suffer for a feeling of accomplishment and it would definitely have found a way to still teach us such valuable lessons without the amount of suffering we see now and make our brains a lot bigger and less prone to fallacious thinking, so we would've ended slavery millennia earlier and cure all cancers and aids centuries ago. Wouldn't a god that was worth your time just reward you for concluding that you have a lot to be grateful for and all of it is because of people and of how the universe functions? Without ever considering a role for a god that is just not evident in anything at all? All human behaviour can be explained by the fact that we're social animals. The good and the bad and everything in between and that overlaps. My friend loves her family and wants to show it, and churches will have her believe that it's arrogant of her and decadent and that we are sinful and that we should remember the birth of a boy who bled to death because that's somehow a loving thing to let someone do on your behalf. It's beyond perverted and I can see why the church finds nothing about christmas celebrations to be in line with it's intended meaning. I'm poor as shit and I know that the gifts they give to each other are practically unnecessary, but they are specifically thought out to make their leisure time more enjoyable and getting those things as a gift will remind them every time of their love. The food is extra fancy and expensive, and they feel that everyone around them is more than worth it and they save up for it, just for that reason. It's decadent for sure, and for good reason and I support it fully and I designed a christmas card especially for her because of it. I told her that she should never feel guilty for spending so much money on things they don't actually need when she knows I'm poor. I live in the same society. Because she and other people with more to spend do spend it, it made my internet more affordable and it made it more affordable to order things online so I don't have to travel the whole country in search for an affordable rare thing that would help me a lot. But more than that, I want her to remember what the solstice celebrations are for. She never told her parents about this, but her parents, like millions of other people, intuitively celebrate christmas for those exact reasons and not because of some religious tradition. They are not arrogant in their intentions and the decadence is deliberate and proportionate. Don't feel guilty because of what the churches tell you. Remember that you know better, that you love and show your love and that millions of other people do that as well. You don't have to convince anyone that this is true, but please, for yourself and as a christmas gift to me, think about it and enjoy your christmas/solstice like people did before christainity came along and perverted it to take away earned pride and the gratitude for what people mean to you and focus it onto the god and church. You already do what's in your heart and so do your parents. All I ask you is to see that you do. If statistics shows our intuition to be wrong, we're probably wrong. If the church says our intuitions to be wrong, they're probably lying to get you to give your attention and gratitude to the invisible narcissist instead of to the people who earn it, who do the science, who improve the medical care, who fight for equal rights, who learned to become a teacher, or a baker. So I want to ask this of you: will you please think about what kind of a god would be worth considering and might it be one that doesn't want and consideration for itself unless it showed itself and showed a pattern of helpful actions that we don't see from a god but that we do see from people? And I know, catholic doctrine specifically warned you against valuing human behaviour over god's. I know that what I ask of you may hurt you deeply and make you aware of the abusive doctrine that you can't just shake off but have to slowly outbalance with new learned behaviour and thinking patterns. I know and it's okay. We'll still be here and the world will spin on as it always has. I just hope that you will see us slightly differently than you do today, slightly more beautiful than you ever thought we were. And I hope it will hit you like a truck filled with flowers that you are the same as me, beautiful and amazing. Everything that is good in this world is because people are just like you, loving and looking for something fun to do.
Just reminds me of playing card games with people who are conservative and leftist. If the game was mostly up to chance, then I would occasionally complain when I got a really bad hand. With my leftist friends, they would usually say "yeah, the game is pretty random chance based" even when winning. They might also fall silent, but they would never insult me. However, when playing with conservative I noticed that they always will say something along the lines of "you're just upset cause you're not good enough at the game". They always had a tendency to believe that any advantage they had must have been because of their strategy and never from random chance even if the game was rooted in random chance
Sounds about right... what I've gathered is that their entire philosophy is based in extreme arrogance and selfishness. Insane thoughts like "I can't possibly be wrong and nothing you can say will convince me" and "as long as my family and I have got ours, screw everyone else, if they didn't also get theirs then they're just lazy"
In general, that is to say, the majority of the time, Conservativism is genuinely plagued by the Just World fallacy. They believe the system, that the world is inherently good and will reward optimal choices while punishing bad ones.
@@loganwittman803 did I OFFEND you!?!? Sorry, I had to, lmao. The conservative party is based in the principal of generalizing everything and everyone as much as possible. This is an anecdote, I said it was an anecdote, and it's clearly meant to be a reflection of me. I'm not under your (or any) obligation to ensure that my anecdotes are research quality Edit: btw, it's losing, not loosing
It is very clear to me, each time I have a conversation with a right-winger, that they confuse being equal with being identical, having the same rights and having the same lives.
@@dfmrcv862 A system is equal if all acting participants operate under the same set of parameters. That is to say, it is a system without any form of arbitrary bias. It does not mean that everyone gets the same outcome, only that work is compensated at the same rate. Imagine an office: when we say pay is equal we don't mean that everyone gets an identical cheque regardless of work, we mean that they get paid in direct accordance with how many hours they worked. You can't get more money for being white, or male, or whatever. The only way to get more money is to do more work. Consequently society must be constructed in a way that allows everyone to do the same amount of work: the only different is how people choose to spend their time.
Are we talking Equality or Equity? Equality is everyone getting the same regardless of other factors, equity is summed up best by "to each according to their needs." It's that picture of the kids and fence at a baseball game. Everyone getting 1 box is equal, and still screws over the little guy. Equity is the tall person getting no box, the medium person a single box, and the short child two boxes. Now they can all see and therefore participate the same. I mean right-wingers get pissed over equality, and if my experience has taught me anything is that they literally shit their pants in anger over the idea of equity.
@BP Those rights are not treated equally, nor viewed equally, especially by the system. A white person's right to bear arms or right to petition their government for redress of grievances are treated completely differently than a black person's or a hispanic person's 'same' rights.
SleeplessRonin that’s not true I’m Hispanic and I have the same opportunities as a white man. Stop kneeling for people just cus of skin color it’s anti progressive
This reminds me of the argument: "Without landlords there would be no housing to rent" And all I can do is die inside to the idea that someone out there legitimately believes that houses - structures that have been around since we were trading seashells and learning how wheels work - can only exist through major investments.
I would assume they're mostly talking about apartment buildings. Still not entirely true since a developer could choose to sell apartments rather than rent them, but the point is that no single person in that building would have the capital to build that building, thus no housing.
Because building homes in and of itself is a major industry now. We arent all out there building our homes by hand, they're far too complicated nowadays for most people to do so. You would need to have expertise in at least electricity, plumbing and architecture in order to build a serviceable home thats up to stuff with the needs of today's society. If you want to go live in a log cabin in the woods and live off the land, then thats your deal, but most of us arent up for that. You probably arent either if you've still got good enough internet to watch TH-cam videos.
@@four-en-tee I agree landlord's are essentially necessary in today's society but his logic makes more sense when the parameter landlord is equal to a single large owner of land. When a hand full of single entities own the majority of private land it leads to price gouging, scarcity and hoarding of land. If these factors didn't make land so expensive and scarce it's logical to assume that more people are more likely to buy their own land and build their own houses. I like capitalism but land owning is where it starts to show some of it's problems. The fact that "go out and try to build your own house" sound rediculous enough to be used as a valid argument in favor of landlords is just sad honestly.
@@ihswap Ever read little house on the prairie? Part of a western pioneer family, Laura extols her father's ability to build cabins and wagons from scratch. They planted farms, made tools, even mined. She praised their INDEPENDENT living. Nowadays DIY is frowned upon and we're all CULTURALLY told to be dependent on landlords, manufacturers. I decided a while ago I'm gonna build my own fuckin house. Don't need landlords and real estate agents if I have engineering experience and a brain.
And the Engels family had to leave the prairie, because it wasn't viable in the long-term. Those first sod busters were not going to make anything like a reasonable living.
Speaking as a formally trained economist, these right wing economic views are so old they have been disproven by the idea of what we now call "empirical economics" or econometrics time and time again. This is the idea that we now have better ways to test to see if our models are born out in real life, and it has helped us use the actual scientific method to prove how people make decisions in markets and how those markets function as a result. This field is still in it's infancy and is only about 30 years old. It has systematically destroyed these people's talking points about capitalism and shown that even if you want capitalism to work "as it should" you need to actually understand how it is supposed to work. These people who talk about the "free market" don't realize or choose to ignore that an entirely unregulated market (as you have pointed out in this video) leads to undue influence in government and politics that leads to power, which in turn leads to the destabilization of the market. The "guiding hand of the market" as some of these right wingers talk about actually works in some cases to improve how efficient the market is at meeting needs, but only if the first welfare theorum holds true: - There are no externalities - There is perfect information - There is perfect competition - agents are rational This to me has been eye opening. The most important thing about discussing a model you are using honestly is being transparent about the assumptions you have to bake in for that model to prove accurate. This is the big myth of republican "economics". They chose to adopt this model while pre-supposing that all of these conditions are met and while building a framework that makes it impossible to try and verify in an actionable way if they hold suitably true or not. To sum it up, nearly zero of the 4 conditions for the first welfare theorum hold true when there are massively destabilizing forces in the market like Amazon, or religious extremists who gain undue influence in that market. The "free market" isn't free if people can't act on those freedoms in meaninful ways. If you are free to shop wherever you want by law, but there is only Walmart then do you have a choice to use your purchasing power elsewhere? Is that effective and efficient for competition's sake or for the sake of innovation? I would say not. I think when it comes to talking about our economy with people who label themselves capitalists, it is very important to make sure if you are talking about these things you are clear about what is empirical and what is theory, and if you are trying to equate the two that if you want to have intellectual honesty (or for others to) you need to bring attention to these assumptions and challenge them. Use this capitalist framework, the actual one that is studied by the real scientific method, to debunk these decades-old talking points that come out of half-baked understanding of what we are actually even talking about.
To simplify and weaponize it against them, I have found it best to paraphrase that one quote, "the law, in it's infinite wisdom, has prevented both poor and rich alike from sleeping under bridges." But then again, no discussion can truly be weaponized against conservatives, because their values aren't based on logic, observation or any sense of universality. Their based on violence, hierarchy and impulse.
My argument is still this: highschool used to cost money. People used to have to *pay* to be educated past 13. Now, why did we change that? Well, a lot of reasons, but the most relevant answer is because we realized that more educated people are more productive and capable of doing more complex things with their time. For capitalists, they are a "better return on investment". Sure, they have a higher initial input value, but they have higher, much higher, returns. Same goes for college and university.
Nanofuture87 True. This arguemtns works for the “hard sciences”, but likely wouldn’t work with them on philosophy or any of the arts or social sciences.
Rules for rulers, by CGPGrey, brings this point up, that in democracies, their value is mostly vested in their population. In states in which the vast majority of the value lies in products or even a single product (such as oil), you have greater opportunities for fewer civil rights (especially education), since having happy, educated subjects doesn’t necessarily raise the value that flows into the nation’s coffers.
The hierarchy becomes very visible when you inhabit multiple spots on it (i.e being queer or disabled). When I pass as male (being already white) the deference I get is shocking. When I don't pass and am viewed as a white woman, I'm treated as a human being at the least. When I'm clocked as trans, it's like i've got an open season sign hanging around my neck
Im sorry to hear the as a black straight man i dont really have many placements to move up or down on that scale.unless i go into entertainment of course
You heard it here first ladies, gentlemen and variations there-upon! Leo da Vinci officially came out as a trans person! Left: "Yes! Another of the greatest minds confirmed to be politically aligned with us!" Right: *inhale* .... "fUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU(etc.)
Wow. This totally illuminates an argument I got into where I lamented the influence of donors in politics as "wielding 1000x the power I will ever wield." I meant it in an egalitarian way -- I think we should all wield the same power in politics. The conservative assumed that I just wanted to replace that rich donor and have me be the one in control over others, and I was so confused where that jump in logic was coming from. But this video does such a good job explaining it! He thought that I wanted to move up the pyramid and I was using the language of equality as a trojoan horse. He couldn't fathom that I actually want real democracy and equality. He was able to accept the rich donor's control because he's a shark. Damn. Conservatism is some cynical and social darwinist shit.
It sheds a lot of light on the “white replacement” conspiracy. The amount of sheer terror at the thought of whites becoming a minority reveals how they regard minorities and their place in society.
Andrew Pillion That’s what we’re seeing right now in Trump. He’s always assuming that everyone else must be running frauds and scams and screwing him over because it’s the only set of values he has himself.
It’s also a perfect example of how your beliefs shape your world. I don’t know if this is just generational but my parents and everyone else’s around me are seemingly OBSESSED with collecting physical things and securing them physically (alarms, guns, shutting down the fucking wifi when it’s not being used because wtf, etc.) while my generation perhaps has realized that physical things often provide very little actual value and in the long term ONLY sentimentally.
Conservatism would make a lot more sense if we all started out at the same place. A genius born poor might not ever be able to overcome their circumstances, but the idiot child of wealth can walk right into the whitehouse with no aptitude or qualifications. It's hard to imagine that that's the idea distribution of power.
Hi! I grew up in poverty, got great grades, joined the military, joined Mensa. I'm still in poverty. Meanwhile a lot of rich kids with half a brain are running multi-million dollar companies.
@@TheHighSpaceWizard This might depress you. Judging by your photo, the difference between you and me is about 30 years. I think it was far easier in the 80's than it is now. The other thing is that fewer people went to college and even fewer got advanced degrees. It was easier to get scholarships and once you got out of college, there was less competition.
That’s why billionaires pretend it doesn’t exist. Donald Trump’s “Small loan of a million dollars” comment sounds dumb, like a million dollars isn’t a “small loan”, and he got much more than his father in actuality. But by spewing crap, it makes it harder to find the truth.
That's called the "Door in the Face" technique -- intentionally highballing the other party in a transaction to get them to offer something that "feels lower" to them but is more than they would otherwise have accepted
@@thegreatusername2355 It's literally why people start off sueing others for outrageous sums, typically no-one ever gets the outlying sum, typically the range narrows.
You're sat between a rich person and a poor person, at a table with 10 cakes on it. The rich person takes 9 of the cakes, then turns to you and says: "That poor person is after your cake!"
"When they don't have the same beliefs" is why I always tell people that I'll glady talk politics, but if you're not starting with base assumptions like "all people deserve to be alive" then there's nothing I can say to you
"Conservatives still stand for democracy" I don't know about that. "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”-David Frum
You're projecting. All Democrats and their media have said for the last 2 years (while democrats control everything), is that unless they win, "democracy is over". For one, we've never been a democracy, nor were we meant to be. Second, You're just denying election results as Democrats always do when they lose.
Not just Jan 6th... there were Brazilian troops randomly pulling over vehicles to prevent voters from going to the polls during the election that Lula won
“These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they're gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody's gotta scrub the toilets.” God I love bioshock. That’s pretty much all it took for me to realize unrestrained capitalism is dumb as hell.
Bioshock's dissection of Objectivism was less about any problems with Capitalism, than about the moral philosophy of Ayn Rand, that greed and placing value only on the self are to be celebrated. Bioshock does not condemn capitalism as a whole.
Memicus Icecreamicus Up to a point, but Rand’s philosophy included the tenet that capitalism was the only moral political system, you can’t really critique the one without at least touching on the other. :-)
It starts for this line of monopoly back in the day and how people want to kill this type of thing that was back in the day and go back to the 1800's unfettered capitalism.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" -Ronald Wright
To be fair, Innuendo here is a liberal and not a socialist... Good quote though, from a great writer. Edit: Innuendo clarified below that he's not a liberal and to be honest I'm a little embarrassed at being this reductive, just want to comment that the he's a liberal thing was a bit of a large assumption on my part.
@Kade Daivis "If I believe in democracy it means I believe you can say and do whatever the hell you want" That is literally not at all what democracy means.
Kade Daivis - I suggest watching Peter Coffin’s video on Meritocracy or some of Thought Slime’s videos. The thing is that Capitalism and Meritocracy are fundamentally hierarchic systems. They are not systems of equality. They reshuffle class structure, but they ultimately are a reworking of the divine right of kings. Just now our societal kings are people like Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. Capitalism is another system for creating social hierarchies, and as such is ultimately at odds with the fullness of democracy. To be a true believer in Capitalism is to be at odds with the idea that people are equal.
Kade Daivis - Analysis of the implications of Meritocracy as a basis for Capitalism requires more than dictionary definitions. What or who defines “merit” in a society? How does the concept of merit function in terms of justifying any given instance of extreme wealth or lack thereof? Sorry dude, posting a quote from Miriam-Webster isn’t an argument. It doesn’t say anything about how the concept of meritocracy functions in our society. But glad you can make yourself feel better with a vapid IQ comment. Again, I suggest watching Peter Coffin’s video analyzing Meritocracy and get back to me about the points there if you actually want to talk about this in an intelligent manner.
I have noticed liberals want to sneak me to the top and make me their Black Queen, a benevolent, generous, but firm dictator. I keep waving them off, saying, "No, no! Keep on with this democracy experiment it just might work!" But I am reconsidering taking the throne. Sorry, conservatives, your greatest fears may be realized... 👸🏾 This video was so insightful! I am just disappointed I didn't discover the channel until now!
This video finally, *finally* helped me understand the concept of 'privilege' as many people on the left use it and why it's so damn important. "...to everyone beneath you, you ARE the king. You've got a good job and a good wage; that gives you some power over people who don't, and getting pissed at those above implies that those below have a right to be pissed at YOU." This was an eye-opening video for me. Thank you.
@@FulgurInteritum In some cases, yeah, money trumps race in our society. In the other hand, what are the odds on a rich black guy getting pulled over by the cops for driving an expensive car over me, a white person, in the same situation? I'm guessing I'd be more privileged in that case.
@@vfaulkon well if he wasnt speeding, incredibly rare., probably higher or lower depending on the city. I bet if you lived in a place with a lot of black nba/nfl players a white person would be more likely to be pulled over.
@@FulgurInteritum And in some ways they do. Riches impart economic privilege, but no amount of wealth stops a black man from being pulled over in his car more than some white dude in a racist town. Privilege is a spectrum.
I've had this EXACT conversation with a republican client. He thinks that socialism means taking a billionaire's money and divvying it up among everyone, and that the major flaw we haven't considered is eventually we'll run out of money!!! When I try to explain that I don't want to get promoted, I want to abolish the hierarchy in my place of work, he says there will always be somebody at the top. It's wild.
@Epic Gamer See, that's the thing, in an egalitarian system there _is_ no top or bottom. It passes on the idea that 'there always have to be winners and losers'. Which is why I assume it doesn't mesh well with fascists. Because it's contrary to their worldview.
@Epic Gamer Think of it like this: humans can be encouraged to act in certain ways depending on the society they are living in. You know just like how Germans who participated in the Naz regime weren't evil to their core when they were born. A system like capitalism _encourages_ strife. Because it is a competition and if you have more power or manage to bend the rules or whatnot you can get a leg up and outcompete your rivals. This is not to say that competition can''t technically be beneficial in some cases but the systemic motivation is not about improvement, it is about amassing power. This is why unregulated Capitalism tends to lead to a few having the lion's share of the power (through the natural formation of monopolies). This also means that Capitalism is terrible for ensuring rights or standards and the like if they are not enforced because they cost money/effort which the capitalist in question otherwise woukdn't have had to expend. But there are other human tendencies, other characteristics you can teach, promote, encourage. This can radically alter the way a society functions.
''If everyone is a leader there is no one to be lead'' There is always some hierarchy, the difference is how the leaders are chosen (either by voting or by money).
"But we can pay for college ourselves. We've been doing it since forever." *Suddenly, a large crowd of black adults formed outside of his window and explode with mock laughter. Half of raise an eyebrow while the other half give pity smiles and shake their heads slowly as if to say, "One day, you'll figure it out... I hope...".*
For anyone who does not understand: not everyone is born with a wealthy family who can afford your studies or neither you can scale up the profits because of your social position and standard education. By you logic every school should be private, poors should die because they need to sit where belong to, right? is this your position ?
@BP if you want to know the history, especially the black adult aspect, the first time white americans who weren't the upper class elite went to college was post ww2 on the government's dime through the GI Bill, not hard work in the market, and this was only given to white americans, whilst black veterans were denied these benefits.
Since this came out it's become somewhat less accurate. Specifically the claim that conservatives believe in democracy. Many of them have demonstrated that they do not.
Ah but you see conservatives DO believe in democracy as long as it involves colonizing others and bombing them all for the sake of democratizing them lol
Imean, if anything it proved the point the video was making in the first place - that conservatives favour the model of the natural hierarchy over the model of democracy. They may have both, but they definitely favour one over the other.
This came out in 2019, but it does help explain why masking now is such a trigger issue for many conservatives, and why the "you should all care for each other" arguments fall flat. They really do need to know "what's in it for them" beyond the notion that it's good for all of us.
In the last few years I've seen people link to the "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people" article a lot whenever Republicans went on another rampage. I'm starting to think that "conservatism" is just another euphemism, namely for "sociopathy".
@@cearnicus 1. I wouldn't use "sociopath" as an accusation/insult. I understand what you mean, but Antisocial Personality Disorder (the medically accurate term) is not a fall from grace, or a failure of morality. 2. Conservatism, at its core, is about nostalgia. What conservatism longs for depends on the cultural context. Whether or not conservative values are harmful depend on the country in question, and in the context of American culture, they are undoubtedly quite problematic.
Admitting that there is a virus ravaging everything and that it could infect anyone messes with the social hierarchy. They don't want to admit it's real because it is affecting everyone equally.
@@bananonymoussupreme3345 They'll only admit that it's real if it means that it only affects "lesser people" like the elderly and obese. After all, _they're_ not obese or old, they can't be! Obese people choose to be overweight, and since they didn't choose to be overweight they aren't obese, thus they're not at risk. Maybe those fat people shouldn't have eaten so many burgers! And besides, grandma is getting pretty old, it was only a matter of time anyway. No amount of "healthy people" getting extremely sick and/or having chronic symptoms long after exposure will change their minds. At the heart of it their belief tends to circle back to "I'm a good person, so I'll be fine. If something bad happens to you, it's because you were a bad person and deserved it." It's sickening to see such blatant disregard for the well-being of other people be this prevalent in our society.
@@gamehero6816 I would like to posit that "sociopath" wasn't meant to be an insult, but more of an explanation. Consider Machiavellian personality. Maybe take it as, "the only reason I can think someone would refuse to think of others is that they actually do have a personality flaw, such as antisocial personality disorder, or sociopathy." Machiavellianism might explain why a person cannot understand that another person doesn't want to improve their own position in the hierarchy; doing something to improve everyone's position is genuinely not a behavior that is relatable for the person with the more selfish personality flaw.
I've always _hated_ politics. It never made any sense to me, it always gave me headaches and made me feel shitty about myself and the world, and so I always just called myself a moderate and refused to vote and refused to have opinions because that would mean I'd have to _think about this shit_ and I just wasn't willing to. But the more of your videos I watch, the more sense all of this makes, and the farther left I go. So I guess thanks, lol. Thanks for being the only person in the world who explains this stuff in a way I can understand.
@@DarthFennec That’s ok, because radicalism on both sides of spectrum hurts healthy political discussion. Even this series falls into that problem by generalizing conservatives, and taking some things out of context
That introductory debate about free tuition from the two characters made me laugh a little since, in almost every single case I see, people that speak against government assistance with college fees (or anything, really) and instead promote a do-it-yourself attitude are generally unaccomplished, uneducated people who would really benefit from those kinds of social programs the most.
better than an art major with 200k debt and a useless degree. Someone lacking ambition does not mean they lack understanding. Some people are perfectly happy with the bare essentials.
@@benjaminr8961why is it always the "art degree" with yall? As the video would suggest, for your argument to work the unjustice of that situation has to be entirely of their undoing right? And that if a person were in that same situation but with a degree essential to making the country a better place, well now that's a problem that even you acknowledge should be solved. So you don't acknowledge it. But let's, they do exist. Let's talk about the actual problem here
Well, as it points out, not when it conflicts with hierarchy. When Republicans have something to lose by it, it's easier to put aside the one for the other.
Which is funny as they barely they don't stan it at all, heck, they barely Stand it seeing as conservatives have been taking Ls in the ballots during the majority of history.
"Can't be because they're worthy, someone must've put their hand on the scale" is probably the most apt description of how they're feeling lately. I had the urge to come back and watch this one to remind myself what type of people we're dealing with.
What's funny is that this is how their system works though is someone put their hand on the scale instead of worked towards it. They're just projecting with this one but it's completely accurate though. We just need our heirarchical corporations out of our democratic government though in my opinion
this is such a perfect encapsulation of my thinking when I aligned with conservatism I am honestly astounded at how accurate it is and how well it explains things. I very much believed that liberals just wanted to take power for themselves, genuine empathy for others at a larger scale was always something I was suspicious of, though I always believed I was a kind and caring person who wanted the best for everyone, really there were a lot of contexts I would have left that to the wayside. Especially when my place in the hierarchy was questioned. I was fearful of minorities gaining significant rights because I believed then it would be a matter of time before black people were oppressing whites, etc. Fearmongered about reverse racism a lot. Because I had lived my whole life with white people at the top and black people oppressed and I thought that kind of power structure was inevitable. I would never admit a lot of that to myself because I had an image to maintain as a polite person both to myself and others, but it was very much there and when I was faced with the tragedies and loss of life often hitting people living in poverty, the 'minnows'? Well, I didn't want to be a bad person, it's not like I had no soul. I felt pity for them, sure. A sort of apathetical pity. A pity that required nothing of me. The same pity you might feel towards victims of freak natural disasters. That's such a tragedy, thoughts and prayers, but what are you gonna do? It's the way of things. We can't upend our entire society (read: make even small changes that inconvenience those who benefit from the hierarchy) just because some people get unlucky or aren't strong enough. We can't fight the natural way of things. It's how it should be because it's how it is, it's how it is because it's how it should be
if this video's caricature of conservatism is what you believed when you were a conservative, then that doesn't prove that conservatism is bad/wrong, it just proves that you were a really stupid conservative.
That kind of thinking frustrates me to no end. Thanks for sharing this. As someone who does have empathy for people on a large scale, the idea to allow things to run in an ineffectual manner for so many people seems untenable to me.
@Õ_Õ Shy Guy do i have an argument against "i was a racist 'conservative,' ergo conservatism is racist?" i don't know, i don't think i actually need a better "counter argument" then just pointing and laughing, lmao
@@unperfidious no. They shout lies about cancelling but continue to shop wherever they usually do unimpeded. It's too much work to actually stand by their values. As soon as Conservatism starts to actually hurt them directly as a result of their voted policies, they will change their party and only if they are lucky enough to have a brain with wrinkles, actually change their mind and behaviors too.
@Kazuhira Miller As is any investment that betters society. My children don't exist today and aren't doing anything to earn a better society, why should i improve anything for their sake?
@Kazuhira Miller Ask for government-funded schooling -> Pay higher taxes to government -> Government pays for free schooling -> You get degree without crippling student loan debt -> You get good job to pay taxes as usual -> You raise family without debt because student loans are objectively worse than a higher tax rate that you DO have representation in changing -> The debt does not accumulate as you assumed it would. I don't know any one of my Californian friends (who have a higher tax rate than in my state) that are in debt to the government. -> You're not enslaved by a tyrannical government. -> Your kids get to go to school too, and your family, instead of having the burden of thousands of dollars in tuition per year, and has to pay perhaps 10 or 100 times less (because of taxes). -> Even though the cost can't and never will be completely eliminated, by distributing equally among the population, you've resolved the pressures on each individual family. It's kinda like simple engineering. If your machine has too much pressure in one area, you find a way to distribute the stress forces over more area or over more time. In our world, individual families paying for college is the pressure arising in specific parts of the machine. Those individual parts aren't able to take the pressure and might break (go into lifelong debt). However, if you distribute the pressure (government funding and taxation), each individual part suffers less, each family is able to deal with the costs, and the system remains stable.
The whole, "We've been paying for college ourselves for years!" thing is just straight up wrong. College was extremely cheap and affordable because we subsidized it. You know, like corn?
@@ericfernandez9 regardless it’s ridiculously cripplingly expensive and if it is not fixed our society will begin to lose knowledge it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
@Proxima Centauri Its why you see a bunch of people hard right in several southern states going into specific colleges or not going at all because college (especially cheaper ones!) tends to be a melting pot of backgrounds, ideologies, and cultures, which is something that can open up different world views.
The question is not about what to do with those in college dept its about why college so expensive that it causes them to go into such large dept (and why is that college tuition keeps getting more expensive every year even though goverment spends a nice chunk of taxpayer dollars to colleges that are supposed to make those tuitons cheaper)
@@ericfernandez9 You are factually wrong. Tuition rates for students started increasing across the board when state governments started cutting public funding to higher education in response to economic recession -- especially with regard to the 2008 financial crisis.
"You think you can make everyone the same..." Only the Sith thinks in absolutes. Why can't reactionaries fathom a sweet spot somewhere between "all the same" and "not a billion times different." Something between "everyone gets the same amount" and "6 people have almost everything."
Because it means breaking the system. Slipping down lower in the tier list while your opponent is going higher. Not realizing that you will both meet in the middle anyway.
Even then, Marx and Engels never wanted to do 'Harrison Bergeron' to people. In fact, they thought "...living conditions will always evince a certain inequality which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated." Two workers who are physically able to work different hours peing paid equally for these hours benefits one and not the other, the same for their hours being equalized. Instead, they thought each should work for what they can, and receive what they need. Surplus past this axiom is used to facilitate the abilities and needs of others or those who would further such things like arts or science.
I've got a friend who is veeeery conservative and she really thinks we are having a 'nature vs nurture' discussion when talking about politics. I've tried a billion times to explain to her that *NO! We are talking about humankind as a whole,* not individual humans being born or made into the person you grow up to be (like it isn't obvious that always is a combination of both). Conservatives don't really understand that *YES some people are born more intelligent than others,* but one cannot expand this framework to nations/scincolours/etc. This Girl really thinks it's a nature-vs-nurture-statement to say "black people earn less money, but that is ok, because they aren't good at high payed jobs." WTH?!
11:44 i think it would have been good to mention that the entire study that originated the "alpha wolf" idea is proven incorrect and the original guy who wrote the book has said as such.
Yakob And even more telling is how “alpha” wolves only arise in captivity, effectively making them similar to prison gangs. That’s not unlike how some people, particularly fascists see the world, that we’re in a situation where everyone else is a potential threat, so our best bet is to crowd towards whoever is the strongest and most like us, and ingratiate ourselves to them so they will protect us from the others.
Yakob, yes what you're saying is true but the point of this video is to understand conservatism, not argue all their points. I agree he should mention it, but elsewhere than this video.
@@eileensmyth2505 I think it's more that some conservatives legitimately try to use the Alpha Wolf example as an argument for hierarchical structures, which is flawed because in natural situations wolves don't actually behave like that, they organize around family units in an association largely based on the bonds.
It would be more accurate to say that the study was wrong about what wolf packs are in the first place rather than the idea of an "alpha wolf" being true/false. When you look at captive wolves by example...(which would be more representative of how humans work since we are engaging with a lot of people outside of our families.) The alpha wolf does become a real thing.
I think he deliberately chose it as an example because of this. Like the "consider the lobster" line is a less subtle nod that people like to claim the status quo is "natural" as a post-facto justification for why it shouldn't be challenged. The fact that the study is wrong is his point - ALL of those examples of "natural" systems are wrong.
@BIGINNARDS okay it differences because a billionaire is a billionare because he became a billionare because the consumers wanted it that way so he influencing other is still a form of democracy.
@BIGINNARDS "eliminated competition" Because they did BETTER. "Tell me an alternative to Amazon" There isn't one, why should it be? Amazon is the best and this is why it has no competition. Of course capitalism isn't moral, why would it be? People shouldn't be living their lives with the left's opinion on what is right and wrong.
@BIGINNARDS it is 100% democratic. The only not democratic system is violent socialism. Socialism only works with state violence while capitalism works through voluntary exchange. I suggest you read the book "The road to serfdom".
For everyone else. Literally voting with dollars mean rich children vote for themselves and you literally end up back in the middle ages with inbred kings. That need to be mass guillotined all over again but that won't be that easy this time because now you don't need to rely on your soldiers anymore, you can have automatic weapons shooting and aiming automatically
I returned to this video because a lot of discussions I've had about Israel/Palestine reminded me of "There's always a bigger fish". When pressed, no-one seems to actually deny the Nakba, or the awful conditions Palestinians in the occupied territories live under, they just think the Israelis played their cards better and won. Or basically, "Palestinians lost and they should get over it". The scenario at the beginning of the video is strikingly accurate. The conversation gets to a point where I realise we're not operating under the same assumptions.
More or less. We are all poor bastards with a specific hole preemptively dug for them. It's just that some notice the conveniently placed shovel nearby
Lol the funny part about your alpha wolf and Silverback example is that those are really just the dads of their species' group, and they aren't inherently better than any other wolf or gorilla. SO they make sure the rest if the pack is well taken care of. So maybe we should be like Wolves. We should be well-coordinated groups that works collaboratively with others so that we all get fed...and not the chaotic game of thrones environment the alpha wolf myth presents.
The fact that this video even exists kinda shows the problem with that. We simply can’t work together. Liberals and conservatives are so far dug in their pride holes that wouldn’t even consider the other side as equal, everyone is convinced that their ideas are 100% right and the other side is simply inferior. For example, let’s take abortion. Far-left are idiots for not believing that life begins at conception, and far-right are idiots for thinking there’s absolutely no cases in which it should be performed, but neither of them are willing to admit it because they’d rather die than admit that the other side might have something right.
@@bremjo7929 I'll fight you on that one! whether or not life begins at conception is irrelevant, what matters is whether or not the fetus is made to suffer in the procedure. the very first fetal nerve impulses are sent in the spinal chord around 8 weeks, and the majority of abortions are done within 9 weeks -- the brain is not even developed in these fetuses, so we cannot say that they have a self, or experience suffering. late term abortions are iffy but are rapidly becoming the minority
14:20 One important thing of note here the "I have a right to keep all of my money and be where I am in the hierarchy" mindset exists among those at the bottom too. Bootstrapping and personal responsibility can be internalized anywhere regardless of wealth.
@@donalny Too late. Lesson time! Basically what happened was that Jordan Peterson was asked about the value of the artificial social groups, classes, and hierarchies that make up human society, and responded with how we see hierarchies in nature all the time, citing the lobster as a specific example (He didn't outright say that by extension that humanity's arbitrary boxing system was therefore good, but he gave the implication of it.) I think as a meme specifically, the lobster came from Contrapoints calling him out on using the lobster analogy, and how ridiculous comparing humans to lobsters was.
@@donalny well its kind of a double reference. Jordan Peterson uses Lobsters as a really stupid and innacurate example of how human dominance hierarchies should be, but the phrase "consider the lobster" comes from a David Foster Wallace essay written for a food magazine where he argues that boiling lobsters alive isn't ethical.
Sorry, did you just say that Mark Zuckerberg started with nothing? The dude was at Harvard and hanging out with millionaires. Not the sons of millionaires, but the millionaire sons of billionaires.
@Your average user That's a bit of a bold claim. That same person might have squandered the resources that Zuckerberg put into the video. I'm all for equality, but arguing someone who is successful shouldn't have had their shot to take in the first place because someone else MIGHT have done better is a pretty week argument.
@Saami Zakir That's circular reasoning. He wasn't running Facebook when he was given privilege. There are thousands of ppl who graduate from Harvard and don't "create" Facebook. He didn't *deserve* shit, even by your thinking. Also Facebook sucks. We'd be fine without it. I'd be more than happy to trade Facebook for whatever alternate timeline we'd get where other people got Zuck's head start.
How did he get to Harvard? Probably by being smart. Also, vast majority of people going to Harvard don't become billionaires. He clearly played a huge role in his success and you clearly play a huge role in your miserable life.
@@selfishcapitalist3523 Being smart is not pre-requirement for Harvard by a long shot. The majority of people getting in to Ivy League colleges are "Legacies"--related to, or supported by previous attendees of the school. Another step of the "privilage of position" hiarchies that Conservative love so much.
Oof, that part starting at 14:06 really hits home, as a front desk agent at a hotel. Can't tell you how many people act like they're superior to you, simply because they have a higher paying job, or spent more on a room, or have a government position, or are an X-tier member of the rewards program the hotel is a part of. Someone once came in and yelled at me simply because there was a mild inconvenience, and when I asked him to stop yelling at me so I could actually help him solve the problem he was having, he asked me, "Well who else am I supposed to yell at?" I feel like I understand conservatism a bit better than my friends, and I typically don't really see the problem with the conservative mindset. But god damn am I annoyed when someone who is clearly conservative comes in and decides that treating a person like a person just isn't something anyone should strive for. And I feel that the timestamp mentioned above really highlights that mentality. People who think they are better than you tend to treat you like shit, likely because they are or were bottom of the totem pole, and are/were treated like shit by their bosses/coworkers/family/etc. I feel like we'd have a lot less to argue about if conservatives twisted this one aspect that is so common about themselves. People should be treated like people. That should be the given. Doesn't matter your wage, your age, or your status, if you treat everyone like a person, first and foremost, we'd have a better time. Ironically, that's how you're supposed to treat people based on the 2nd Amendment, which is that anyone you get in an argument or a fight could have a gun on them. Conservatives(typically) love 2nd Amendment rights, so the fact that they don't live by them is pretty hilariously hypocritical. Of course, they believe most Liberals don't carry firearms so they likely just brush it aside as a safe bet.
"You can't have power, because history is rife with individuals abusing such power in the vast majority of cases. I know my own mind, not yours and taking the risk you will use that power to abuse me isn't worth it".
i'm not sure whats happening in the USA, but in Australia, where I live, the conservative government just lost an election and they didn't say it was rigged or anything. It's only some conservatives in the USA which is not a REAL democracy soooooo
Yeah doing a public protest at government land is such an anti-democracy act. Wish it was as leftists describe it as seeing that I'm anti democracy and more importantly anti federal government
@@justinliverpool3658 weird how that sort of thing happens all the time with no repercussions. Hell democrats did it like a week later no problem yet it's the peaceful protestors who were let in that are being demonized. Good example as to why our system doesn't work
@@justinliverpool3658 No, but it involves Dozens vandalizing and Destroying Private Property. Property that cannot affect Systemic Discrimination, yet, Leftist Protestors destroy it anyways.
No, the point is that the apex of the triangle is all the "high up" society. It is indeed equilateral - but the separation lines are much further appart top to bottom.
depends on if you're using the pyramid to illustrate the amount of wealth and power those in the highest segment possess or the amount of people in that segment... Either way I think it highly resembles the societal conceptions of the monarchist philosophers mentioned in his endnotes video
@@Ilikepants90327 The ammount of power in a pyramid (money in this case) is shown the higher up you are. The ammount of people is its size. That's the prospect of a hierarchical pyramid.
Reminds me of a survival game I used to play with friends. In the early game, when everyone is struggling, it's best to just keep anything you find for yourself. Make sure you survive and thrive and then you can help others. But then later on, when you have what you need to be comfortable, you can share your surplus with others, in the hope that they'll help you out in a similar way. I think this is kinda how real-world stuff works, your desire to help others is determined by how safe you yourself feel. And I figure conservatives generally feel like they're not safe, like there's not enough to go around, and someone's gonna have to die anyway so it might as well be the people who're already starving.
Actually there's studies done showing that poor people are way more likely to share money, food and resources with neighbours and their community than their rich counterparts. If you're wealthy, you never need another persons help to survive, so u never consider giving it. However when you're poor, sometimes a neighbours help is the difference between food or starving that night, so you're much more likely to share the little resources you do accumulate. This is how human societies have worked for tens of thousands of years. Capitalism would have u believing that humans are inherently selfish, especially when regarding survival situations. But we aren't, we're by nature incredibly altruistic. People sometimes forgo their own food and resources and choose to die to help a stranger. Humans are incredibly social and we are wired to be kind to one another. Don't fall for the rhetoric of the homoeconomist
The basis of conservatism is that there is a natural social order. Most of what conservatives believe is meant to promote and defend that social order, and to punish those who fail to respect it.
@@jnl3564 This drove me insane when I first tried to understand right wingers. They never say what they really mean. The stupid ones don't have the self awareness to know what they believe and the smart ones know that their beliefs are abhorrent so they lie.
@@jnl3564 you need a (poorly made) video to explain it to you. Conservatives understand people on the left just fine. When there are two groups and one understands the other while one does not understand the other which would you say is the more intelligent of the two?
@@benjaminr8961 "Conservatives understand people on the left just fine" Yeah, nah. A few months ago I watched a Prager U video on whether the right or the left is more extreme, and they unironically claimed that the left is proposing that all people should have an income tax of 70%... the 70% figure he claimed came from someone proposing a new tax bracket for specifically incomes of over 10 million. Conservatism relies on doing its best to make sure nobody on the right even understands their own arguments, let alone the opposition's. If you can claim that vandalizing public Satanist displays is your own religious freedom and should be legal, then clearly you don't understand what religion freedom means.
@@benjaminr8961alright then, describe various positions on the left for me. If there’s too many, then maybe pick Democratic Socialism, C0mmunism {censored because YT would delete this}, and various forms of Marxism. If that would be too much of your time, then pick One.
i come back here every now and then and feel grateful. this video was a huge catalyst in pulling me out of some truly harmful beliefs and im really thankful for it
@@ryandronetekpoliticsstoots1273 bro you are the 'this is literally 1984' meme but unironically. please get a reality check. if nothing else do go actually fucking read Orwell, the man straight up said 'to be clear, everything I have written is in favour of Socialism'.
Anybody else consider the conservative friends long rant to be like, amazing? $80 an hour? Free healthcare? universal high education? Like I want all of that.
Except for everyone working in tech (I don't want a tech job), and everyone living in NY or CA (*I* want to live in NY or CA but I'm fine with there being other states to live in). But, other than that I was like "Yes! Yes! That's exactly what I want!" lol
@@selfishcapitalist3523 and when everyone becomes a doctor, the doctor's pay will be shit, because of suppy and demand. unless they unionize. oh and also they will all drown in waste because no unskilled people taking out the trash. your ideology is self contradictory *and* fails in practice.
“Communist propaganda of the shoddiest kind. What’s gone wrong with the world? I can’t even take a bath without 6 or 7 communists jumping in with me. They’re in my shirt cupboard and Brezhnev and Kosygin are in the kitchen now eating my wife’s jam. Oh, they are cutting off my legs! I can see them peeping out of my wife’s blouse! Why doesn’t Mr. Maudling do something about it before it is too late? Ohhhh…God…” -Michel Palin
@Carnivorus the statistic for how many died under communism is mainly comprised of deaths from starvation. However, The deaths per capita from starvation in communist nations in the last century is lower than that in capitalist nations. From this we can make a one of two conclusions, either a) communism is the superior humanitarian system or b) it’s a bullshit statistic people need to stop using and actually read some political theory instead of basing their views on anecdotal evidence.
I think this video also helps explain why conservatives tend to be nationalists, while liberals tend to be globalists. Nationalism will result in certain nation states being more powerful than others, sorting the world into a social hierarchy based on nationality, while globalism will create an egalitarian world where it's impossible for their nation to compete, and thus be better than, other nations.
That rings true in big powerful nations but not in third world or small weak nations. In Canada, the left is more "nationalist" than the right. The same applies in Latin America.
@@alonsofrancescutti4956 I'm from Canada. You are way off. The right is far more nationalist here, there's nationalist sentiments across the spectrum, but it's not even a competition. This is immediately obvious if you start talking about free movement of people and immigration or bring up China or any number of topics related to nationalism.
@@rileynicholson2322 well the right tends to be US bootlickers while the left shows more pride of Canada's culture and institutions. They also used to like Great Britain a lot more.
God your channel is actually filled with such in depth and intriguing talking points. Compared to other channels in the left sphere, like Hakim, Yugopnik, and Second Thought (though no shade to them), they feel more like the podcast bros… possibly because they are podcast bros. But also their talking points seem much more surface-level or baseline. However one common theme throughout Leftist TH-cam is the ABSOLUTE BOPS of intro-outro songs 😂
their actual podcast, the deprogram, is peak lefty bro culture. it helps to understand that they intentionally started out as 101 introductory programs, branched out into a couple of in depth stuff, and have created news of the day shows and mostly take it easy (as much as a lefty can). no shade to that, as that's just as necessary as niche dives into niche subcultures, pondering on the melancholy of kafka, or on the intricacies of the differences between sociopathy, psychopaths and narcissists.
as an ex "righty" this is definitely the closest ive seen anyone on the left describe the ideology i and many of my friends had, its not quite there, but its very close
As a citizen of an European country that was communist up until I was born and currently identifying myself as a socialist, it annoys me to no end to see that Americans cannot make distinctions between socialism and communism. What the hell are they teaching you in school over there?
It took me literally months of political discourse to understand what the distinction is. It is a difficult thing to find a conversation about, even outside of the classroom.
American elites needed to create a mythology of evil Socialism/Communism to preserve own status against a state that came from violent absolution of established nobility, thus, all that looks like USSR is demonised. USSR wasn't a paragon or even a success of most of its ideas in any way - it formed its own noble caste of politicians, high-end bureaucrats, ambassadors that was very hard to enter for regulars - but it formed in process of upheaval. Those upheaved do not like that. For example, the Red Scare saw US's motto change from "Et Pluribum Unus" to "In God We Trust", to set oneself against anti-religious, at times violently so, USSR. One can consider it a crime to do so in country with no state religion, and there were people who did think it is so. Indeed, public image of Christianity in US is often tied to greedy scumbags and "prosperity gospel" - directly anti-New Testament, which's protagonist was a poor worker, an imigrant in childhood, and preacher against injustices of establishment.
It's really funny, but I had *never* considered the issue to be a completely different worldview. That's what would make the most sense though, isn't it? I kind of feel foolish not understanding that, now that I've heard it.
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I have considered it when it comes to abortion, as I don't believe life begins at conception, while most pro-life believers do. That makes it easier to understand how hard it's to reach a common ground in that debate. I had however not realized it in such a large scale as this video does, and seems like a useful tool to bring along.
It's telling that your automatic assumption is that people with different views are stupid and/or evil. Fun fact: the worst people on the right make the same assumptions about people on the left. No worthwhile progress can be made without putting yourself in the frame of mind of your ideological opponents. Try to understand their thinking rather than writing them off.
if you find that mind-boggling, here's the natural extension. _When you look at countries that suffered under colonialism, the hierarchical thought process dominates harder._ It becomes self-evident by simple nature of how their people suffered _as a whole._ This is why Sub-Saharan African nations are overwhelmingly more conservative, as are most of the Asian nations. And it's precisely because of this that liberalism and egalitarian thought are seen, in those countries, as a luxury of the rich, those who have grown too fat to notice the people that died for them. And then, when you extend that, you realize that many conservatives in rich countries believe what they believe _precisely because they see the poor of the countries that their ancestors abused._ In this line of thinking, they come to terms with the sins of their fathers and tacitly defend them. This is also where the thought process of "you would do the same if you had power" comes from. Finally, you can take this one step further to countries that scoff at the West for having no culture or history (this is most pronounced in China). In essence, the vulnerability of the egalitarian mindset is proof that there are no historical precedents that remind Westerners that it is indeed possible and necessary to hold onto those "left-leaning" thoughts. Because China has _long_ benefited from the egalitarian policy of meritocratic examination (and the subsequent improvements through the ages), it is well understood that a hierarchical thought process must therefore be a falsehood when taken to its extreme. Egalitarianism not only is affordable, it wins over time. And it is not just temporary - it becomes hallmarks of culture and nigh impossible to remove, so long as there is a tradition that *preserves history.* Ergo, cultures that seek to destroy history are _regressive and barbaric,_ because they seek to impose hierarchical behavior through force. When you understand that last point, then you understand why conservatives ultimately believe in "might makes right" while liberals believe in "institutional memory." Conservatives in a blank slate society merely have to argue that the blank slate is the natural state of things. When there is a lot built on that blank slate, _they must tear down the existing institutions._ You are seeing that today in the form of Trump as well as Brexit.
I made it here from FD Signifier’s video on the election, and I found this video great too. It feels like a big underlying aspect of conservatism in the US is white people not engaging with or understanding experiences of true injustice. The conservatism pyramid isn’t that bad if your place within it doesn’t cause suffering, and if being at the top solely brings benefits to society without harming others. Like there’s an assumption that nobody has it that bad, or if they do, then it doesn’t matter because they deserve it; so trying to move up the pyramid without earning it just comes from a place of selfishness and self-entitlement. (Which definitely has a religious component worth analyzing.) Most Americans, or at least enough with political power, do not experience life as part of a true underclass, so they don’t have real reason to scrutinize the system (since it serves them well enough). But people who do experience genuine suffering and injustice due to the hierarchy, or who are at least able to empathize with those who do, are forced to take issue with the system, whether that’s by trying to reach a higher place in the pyramid or by demanding the reconstruction of a new system.
Conservatives that believe this _can_ hold the beliefs that "all citizens are created equal" and "always a bigger fish" at the same time. That's the thing. Not all of them think it through this far, but if you've ever met a conservative that's well-read and well-spoken, but still hit that frustrating wall that you hit in the simulated Facebook argument from the beginning of the video, it's because they _have_ thought it through this far. Their conclusion, however, is to hold those two thoughts at the same time. Here's the logic that I've been told by said conservatives: being created equal means that the _government_ must treat you equally. The law must treat everyone the same, everyone must have the same rights (though often with baffling caveats that stem from the things you've pointed out in the video), and at your core, you are no more or less human than anyone else. Bearing arms, the right to practice any or no religion, and the right to counsel or to defend yourself, they're all _negative rights._ They're things that aren't goods, and therefore that makes them inalienable. The idea is that no matter how tyrannical a government, you're entitled to your rights and justified in fighting for them. But a famine could hit tomorrow and, if food is supposedly a right, then where did it go? Being hanged for opposing an unjust government doesn't rob you of your right to the just government you were seeking because _people_ are the ones who took your rights from you. Recourse can therefore be sought from people. For conservatives, positive rights---or public goods by their standards---cannot actually be rights because forces outside of human control can take them from you, and there is no recourse against famine or disease or natural disaster. For conservatives, rights cannot be goods. Always a bigger fish extrapolates on this idea by concluding that, if rights can't be goods, and resources are scarce, then there has to be some way to distribute those goods. They kind of butcher the idea that some people are naturally talented at certain things, naturally smart, etc, and add to it a dash of Christian "everybody is inherently a sinner (read: bad) and will want to act in their own self interest" to come up with the idea that the only proper way to distribute goods as fairly as possible is to have everyone compete for them. Businesses compete to make them, people compete to buy them, and the result of this adversarial system (where some base rules are enforced but otherwise left to duke it out) therefore must be as fair as humans can be. If someone _distributes_ the goods/money that means someone with bias must choose who gets what, and people are inherently bad, so the outcome will always end badly. But if people _compete_ for what goods there are, then everyone earns with they win, and there's nobody dictating the outcome. Often these are the people that will spit on "corporatism" (what we have now, Rockefeller monopolies, etc) and call it a scourage and that it isn't real capitalism. That, to be capitalism, competition _must_ be preserved and maintained. I could spend hours deconstruction the flaws in logic, but on its surface it makes some sense. I fundamentally disagree with it on so many levels, but that's the gist.
The fundamental problem with this worldview is you are not equal if one person is starving. Wheres the right to life Jefferson wrote about when people die from lack of healthcare? Wheres the free market when companies under capitalism are allowed to monopolize the system? You say the only rights you are allowed to have are negative rights because you view the government as part of the machine that places some people in unnecessary poverty. You are too unwilling to challenge the idea of all people being equal you refuse to go beyond the idea that people cannot be openly unequal (despite women still being denied abortions and people of color being gunned down in the street) rather than putting all people in a truly equal position by giving them shelter, food, and safety. If you believe someone born wealthy on the US is equal to someone born into poverty and therefore there is no obligation to aid the person in poverty, you're a shitty person
@@SaraH-jn5db I promise you don't have to tell that to me. I'm stuck in my parents' house for this quarantine, and I've been trying to argue human decency for weeks.
@@midget_spinner8449 Kind of discounting that a number of Republicans and Conservatives likely don't see you as a citizen of your country and would try to use the system (or at least the aspects they create and control and dictate policy for) to treat you as such. After all: is a white man likely to have their neighbor to call ICE on them because said neighbor thinks that because they think their skin color means they somehow are not American?
well that is almost a good representation unlike the endless cringe this video is providing the thing is if you give people the right to any good that means that someone must be forced to provide that good and with that, you are infringing on the inherit rights of other humans# "They kind of butcher the idea that some people are naturally talented at certain things, naturally smart, etc, and add to it a dash of Christian "everybody is inherently a sinner (read: bad) and will want to act in their own self interest" " well yeah obviously people are born differently and obviously, people are inherently flawed but go on and deconstruct the flaws in logic lmao
I love how this video actually humanizes conservatives. In a lot of video essays I've watched, most conservatives are just portrayed as stupid and unthinking. I think it's a better portrayal of the average conservative.
19:42 "Also, when you vote with your dollar, people with more dollars get more votes". Filing that under "that seems so obvious now that it's been pointed out".
@@jumjalalabash because, at least as of yet, money is not the only factor in an election. This quote was not talking about electoral voting, but voting with your dollars in the capitalist sense of not supporting businesses you don't like. It doesn't matter if the general public hates a company and refuses to give them their business if billionaires throw mountains of money at them. That's what it's talking about.
@@jumjalalabash I remember reading something about how trump got somewhere around half a billion of free media coverage by being Inflammatory. He didnt pay, he knows how to get the spotlight tho and the media companies still paid
9:00 One of the right's greatest victorys has been changing the public perception of the American Dream to "here, anyone can make it". When the phrase was originally coined, the dream was "If you work hard, anyone can own a home, raise a family on a single income, and retire with dignity." This got changed just like your Ship of Theseus video discusses. "Own a home and retire with dignity" became "Make it". "Making it" became "Being a billionaire". And now, people think the American dream is literally "Anyone can become a billionaire", rather than "Anyone can live a simple and happy life".
I am not in favor of the simple life but I guess for some it's what floats your boat. Many revolutions are founded on the concept of just providing bread to everyone. Although I doubt today we are in there is very little chance of famine in the US without some kind of ecological disaster.
Buddy of mine at my old job always said "people oughta know their place" when it came to economic class. Funny thing is that we both worked in a grocery store at minimum wage.
He's right. Know your place. Don't expect to be a billionaire anytime soon working a min wage job all your life.
Jeremy Santos Yeah I have a feeling your buddy wasn’t talking about ECONOMIC class.
It's a very weird socio-economic belief wherein members of a middle/lower Class resent those that seek to raise themselves. "Putting on airs." They see an attempt at improvement/advancement as some form of pretentiousness. Or worse, agitation.
@@dphalanx7465 Exactly
That may mean 'stay in your lane.' As in don't try to tell management how to do their job. Unless (s)he was actually comparing rich and poor.
"Because if you're flipping burgers, you're a minnow, and you don't need 15 an hour to be a minnow. But sharks? They deserve all they can get, because they know what to do with it. They use it to give us Amazon. Don't you want Amazon?"
This reminds me of when I got into an argument with a copyright lawyer I was interviewing in high school. I was working on a podcast about copyright law, and I wanted to make the argument that the law needs serious reform in order to give artists the freedom they need to make art without fear of being sued by large corporations for copyright infringement. I forget the specifics, but I think I started asking the lawyer why copyright protection should last as long as it does (life of the author plus 70 years, which seemed absurdly long to me and still does). I wasn't satisfied with his answer, so we started to go back and forth a little.
After a while, he finally said something to this effect: "You like Star Wars, right? Well, we're not going to get another Star Wars if Disney thinks they won't be able to make a profit on the intellectual property for long enough. And don't you want another Star Wars?"
I didn't know how to respond at the time, so I let it go and moved on with the interview. But that always stuck with me. Now I feel like I have a better framework for understanding how we got into that argument: I was coming at it from a democratic point of view, and he was coming at it as a capitalist. I wanted power to be more evenly distributed among artists, but he wanted it to stay the way it was, because in his mind, Disney had proven that they knew best what to do with it. Don't you want another Star Wars?
Which is, again a contradictory mindset because if the hierarchy really only puts people in the places “they belong” why wouldn’t Star Wars survive on its own profit off sales?
And considering how bad Disney's been handling Star Wars.....no, I don't want another one
If people in entertainment only worked on things that were profitable, the entire video game modding community would never exist. It ranges from devs using Halo Online to port Halo 3 multiplayer to PC for free before MCC was released on Steam to recreating the entire Fallout New Vegas single player in Fallout 4. This doesn't happen with most triple A games since it's more profitable to just sell additional content through microtransactions instead of allowing people to make their own.
@@mattwong5403 absolutely. there's genuinely no group more committed than unpaid creators in fandoms and subcultures. whether it's mods, fan artists and fan fiction writers, they all prove that it isn't profit that creates art, it's passion.
Did you become a journalist later in life? I honestly would not have known what to say at a younger age myself. And... I have unfortunately discovered that no, I do not want another Star Wars. My appreciation of the original remains untarnished, but I have been disappointed by current iterations. Although I do think Bobo Fett series was pretty good! And Mando, but the movies...
The thing about hierarchical thinking is that nobody ever thinks "I'm too high up on the pyramid"
Well of course, capitalism observes the greed and desire of those who are up on the hierarchy, and tries to figure out the best way possible to use that greed and benefit everyone else in the process. As it turns out, we’ve created a system where the best way to earn money and make a fortune, involves creating jobs and financing those below on the pyramid. It also involves creating new products that benefit the quality of life of everyone below.
yeah, even minimum wage workers think they've got it bad (which they do), but they're also higher up than the people who are unemployed
@@parabellum2674 Imagine believing in trickle down economics in 2022.
No, the richest don't create jobs for everyone, they exploit everything and everyone, hoarding their grotesque wealth until they die, at which point they just pass it on to their spoilt children.
If trickle down works, how come the divide between different economic classes have only increased while billionaires increase both in numbers and in wealth?
No, billionaires are a leech on society, sucking both their workers and the state dry while being richer than some small countries.
They underpay and exploit their workers, employ slaves in the form of sweatshops in asia, they recieve disgusting amounts in subsidies from the state and pay, on average, less than a percent in taxes.
Exactly how does it benefit any of us if Elon Musk gets paid tens of billions by the state to do exactly what NASA does but worse? In what way does it improve your life when Jeff Bezos evades taxes by running Amazon into debt, taking a 0% interest loan against his assets, recieves state subsidies to pay for Amazons debt and then uses the billions of dollars he loaned to buy stocks?
As someone living right outside of Washington DC, I felt that
Impostor Syndrome exists
...This is hard to listen to as a disabled person
According to their ideology, I guess my "place" is dead, because I can't hold a job. Or I'm just meant to hope that someone will be kind enough to give me what I need to get by. Because living, for me, in this ideology, is a gift, not a right
Even if they won't admit that to disabled people or to themselves, in practice, what they believe is that people have to earn their right to live. And if they can't, they don't deserve to live at all. The reason they don't have to recon with the reality that they are advocating for the death of people less fortunate than them is because they can always claim those people just "aren't trying hard enough". Which is why they are so commonly bigoted. They have to be, to defend this worldview
Even if they won't admit it to themselves? Perhaps because you are wrong. I believe only a minority of conservatives do not believe in welfare at all. Most people do not fall at the very extreme end of unregulated capitalism.
I'm a conservative. I believe in welfare for people who need it. As far as I am aware, all my conservative friends all believe the same. I have talked about welfare with a few of them, and they all seem to believe it should be available to people who need it.
Where people differ is who needs it. But most people, and all of my friends, I have discussed it with agrees that people who physically cannot work should receive welfare.
@@peterwallis4288 Yeah, politics are complicated, not everyone under one label wants the same things. This series is called "the alt-right playbook", not "the conservative playbook", after all. It's sort of relieving to hear, actually
@@peterwallis4288 Ah, yeah, that's where it gets hard. I'm not physically disabled (past physical weakness from chronic malnourishment which leaves me with a very sedentary life). My main disability is complex PTSD, combined with autism (plus social anxiety, depression, and ARFID - an eating disorder). And the autism wasn't medically recognized until very recently. So it's much easier for people to overlook me and say I'm "not trying hard enough", because my struggles aren't something they can physically see or easily understand. I really hope these misunderstandings can be solved with education, I think a lot of people just don't know how much a mental disability can really mess a person up. I do the best with what I have, and I hope to recover enough to work someday, but for now it's just not possible. But I'm glad they can at least agree that people should receive wellfare
Oh, I should also clarify, when I reference being dead it's because if my mom wasn't caring for me by bringing me food, I wouldn't eat (and it's basically charity that she still takes care of me at age 19... I mean, she owes me for having a part in my trauma and causing a lot of what makes me disabled, but still). Even if I had the money to buy food, I wouldn't be able to consistently go out to buy it. Because of my food apathy, I wouldn't even order doordash. And people may think "if you were starving, you would", but I've starved before, and I didn't. I completely lost my appetite, and I never gained the weight I lost back. So uh, I wasn't just trying to be dramatic, sorry if it sounded that way. I mean that if I was left on my own I would die if I didn't have intervention, and there's nothing protecting me from that except individuals choosing to help me
(the rest of this is personal stuff about my life, you don't have to read it if you don't wanna, I just felt like sharing for whatever reason)
I've been told many times that I just need to push myself. And I've tried many times, it's left me more disabled. It's like the mental equivalent of breaking a bone? Or pulling a muscle while exercising. I have a bunch of mental injuries from trying too hard and hurting myself. So before I can lead a productive life, I have to do the work to fix all of these old injuries that never got the care they needed. Which will probably take years, to get me to a place close to a typical person's functionality. If that makes sense?
And I do small things when I can, that's like uh... you know when someone gets injured, they need physical therapy, they very carefully work with the part of their body to move it, without overdoing it. That's what I'm doing with my productivity and my mental state. My friend recently has started reminding me take care of my teeth morning and night, I can finally do brushing, flossing, and mouthwash... not entirely consistently, but twice a day most days. It's been something I failed at for a long time, I couldn't be more thankful to them for helping me. And last night, I cleaned up my room on my own. Without going into one of those awful manic states (not a healthy place to be in even if it makes me productive, it gives me one of those mental injuries I talked about earlier, when I come down). So I am slowly getting better
I think someday, if I get a job, I'll try to look for one that has to do with data entry or organization. Because I love doing stuff like that. If I have something I'm passionate about, I love collecting images related to it, and I'll put tags and credits in the metadata, it's all complicated and methodical but I can fixate on it for hours, or even days. So once I've recovered enough to do something like that consistently, not just in my own time, hopefully it'll work well, for me. I also know some html/css coding, enough to make a simple website, if I hone that skill I could maybe do that, too. It'll just take a while before I can do these things consistently enough
I think, when I try to explain to people what I can't do (which is a lot), they think I'm not trying, or I've shut myself down to progress. But really, I just have realistic expectations for myself, and I'm trying not to allow others to pressure me into doing something I know will revert the progress I've made
Fun fact my mother paid for her nursing degree by waiting tables for 1 summer in Canada and I am still paying off my student loans from 10 years ago
Maybe the government getting into student loans is why there is such a problem
That fact doesn't seem fun :(
not one bit :(@@TheMellowFilmmaker
When I went to the State University several decades ago, tuition for a semester was $375, now that same university is $8,000 a semester (not including a dorm room, a meal card, or books/e-books).
@@stevechance150 was college more subsidized back then? Or is running a college just more expensive these days. I'm not tryna make a point I'm just curious lol
I remember seeing a comment online somewhere that read something like:
"If I give a homeless man food, I'm called a saint. If I ask why the man is homeless, I'm called a communist."
I just thought of that while watching this video.
Its funny how you people brsistle at being called communists, but have no problems calling your opponents "fascists".
@@ryandronetekpoliticsstoots1273 Because those calling folks Communists have no idea what Communism is.
I remember that quote too. I think it was first said by a South American priest. =O
@@ryandronetekpoliticsstoots1273 If take away bodily autonomy from half the population, you deserve to be called a fascist
Yup, Brazilian bishop dom Hélder Camara.
Something a lot of more conservative people forget is that many classic "blue collar" jobs now require degrees or certs. Mechanics have ASE, Firefighters have fire science degrees to move up, etc etc. Even the "pick yourself up by your bootstrap" jobs need some level of college now.
Edit:spelling
@Brandon Tran watch him come at you for quoting wiki even though they cite their evidence now so people can fact check. This guy real life said neoliberals liked regulations LMBOOOO💀
Elon Musk would completely disagree with you.
If your hose operators need a college degree with a mandatory minor in poetry because the faculty leadership's wife just so happens to teach it, maybe the solution isn't to hide the cost of the bloated system by socializing it. Perhaps the fetid tree needs to be cut down altogether and replaced with a new sapling that isn't built on the elitism of yesteryear's nobility. Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? That's because you haven't really thought about any of it. Maybe you should.
@@Lucy-cl2qk he also invested a lot of money to automate things instead of paying people and the ones he does employ treats them like they are disposable. I'm struggling to understand why that asshole was given as an example in this context.
@@shinysphinx8849 Wikipedia's always cited their evidence, that's the funny part lmao
I really hate the idea of someone's entire life's value being determined by the amount of work they can do. It may not apply to everyone, but our society/culture is all built around work work work and doesn't include for people doing what they love or people who cant work.
Not to mention people who "work" but don't have a "job," like stay-at-home parents, for instance.
Survival, since the beginning of man, has been work. We've merely traded hunting and foraging for jobs and professions to pay us money to purchase the things we need, rather than have to create them for ourselves. It's always been and always will be work to survive.
You cannot survive on feelings when the work you do contributes nothing. A million artists of all kinds put together with nothing but their talents on an island with no external help or resources; will starve or be forced to give up what they love doing in order to survive. You NEED to work. The reason why food is a near universal currency when metaphysical methods die out - is because it is always needed. People NEED to grow food. People NEED to purify drinking water. People NEED housing to be protected from the environment. People NEED resources to turn into fuel to power everything around you. Work is absolutely Necessary. You Need lumber for the homes - or stone masons - architects - etc. Luxury jobs are almost worthless because they can only exist when things are good. So yes, it is sad. But that is life and survival: you NEED to work. The painter who never lifts a finger to help the farmer grow food doesn't deserve the right to take what everyone else worked for.
We are however, a sympathetic society. We are still a social and empathetical species. Those who CAN'T work for one reason or another do get some empathy and extra lee-way into surviving because of group mentality when there are plenty of resources. But should resources become scarce, the super old - the unhealthy - and the incapable are the first ones that will be dropped off to save the overall heard. If you are a strain on resources when they are scarce, you are going to be removed. That is a sad reality. We don't live in an age of infinite resources to just hand out. We never HAVE been in that age. Ever. And until the day of Fabricators or molecule reconstruction machines exist along with infinite sustaining energy to power those machines; we arguably never will get to an age of Post-Scarcity.
Technology has improved. Not as much human labor is required anymore. Besides, even in the past people had more free time than capitalism gives them. Many can't work this much, and no-one should. Would you need to work if food was free? Why would those who provide necessities need to charge you, if their needs were covered?
You're not entirely right, people's value is ofc determined by how much they can work but it is also determined by the "prestige" the job they're doing has; cleaners get paid scraps and are generally regarded as "low value, low skill workers" while working 100x harder that people who get paid 1000x more. Workers are replacable tools without any personal value, no matter how hard you work or how much value you produce your boss can still choose to lay you off without consequences, your life could be ruined overnight just for the sake of profits no matter how good of a job you do or how long you work. It's not fair.
"The good times were always about thirty years ago."
Coincidentally, that's about how long it takes for your children to grow up and start calling you out on your b.s.
We've streamlined the process. Teens or bust.
Virtual Martini this is so condescending I almost vomited
@@virtualmartini People don't grow up more conservatist, society simply starts realizing that their worldview is bullshit making them look more conservative because their viewpoint isn't accepted without question anymore. Have you seen kids? Most kids are definitely not born lover of equality, peace and solidarity. Granted they aren't born a nazi either, but to think growing up means automatically getting more conservative is just wrong as far as I'm aware. You just grow more conservative relative to the shifting society. (And that doesn't mean society automatically shifts on the left, just that things are always going to change and individual viewpoints tend to evolve slower than society).
Every year that passes and that I get older, pigs looks tastier and tastier if you get what I mean.
@@Argacyan I don't have a single clue what you mean honestly, but it sounds bad.
Also, voting with your money, only works when you make enough money to choose where to spend it.
i agree, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try :)
THIS, especially because larger brands with dodgy production methods and low pay and may donate to discriminatory organisations are always the most affordable option
I mean, then again, we don't really think people without money should actually vote
@@adamdawson6700 Well neither hirarchy or egalitarianism are "true". Capitalism serves the state by keeping competition going. As soon as a monopoly exists it's egalitarianism for everyone but one. Then the state has to step in to keep the fight going.
@@adamdawson6700 So, like Apple and Nike using Chinese labor to maximize profits?
"When you vote with your dollar, people with more dollars get more votes"
Why had I never considered this wtf
Under lassez-faire capitalism (or what passes for it) having/earning more money means, in practical terms, having more rights/freedoms than those with less. Equality under the law (on paper) doesn't mean a great deal by comparison.
He didn't directly call this out, but in voting money plays a huge deal: hiring staff, marketing agencies + running ads, travel, etc. The entire field of lobbying is capitalism messing with democracy.
@@AviMarcus Kind of, lobbying also fulfills a deficiency. The reason politicians ask for advice, explanations, and drafting of legislation from private individuals is because they generally aren’t experts in the fields of any individual law, and because they don’t hire enough advisors to realistically have expert advice without private industry. Because having a large, expert Congressional Staff is unpopular and expensive.
It fills the information gap between voters/politicians and actual policy experts
edit: But lobbying isn’t the best way to fill this gap. Public education should be better, news should be better, expert advisors should be more widespread.
@@AviMarcus There's a story that during Detente when a Soviet representative learned how lobbying works in the States, he turned to his host and said 'In my country we would call this corruption.'
Ex-conservative, I can confirm this is true. You're led to believe the hierarchy is an essential part of life
It is. It's just the conservatives pretend to not interfere with it, when they make sure the white males always come out on top.
@@sprockkets
The hierarchical power structure is a human invention.
It is not always been there. And we have destroyed it before.
It's not that it is necessary - it is inevitable. There are always going to be those who climb the ladder and claim dominance as the hierarchy - you can't abolish EVERYONE that climbs up the ranks. Because that inevitably leads to the bar of "What is too high" to be lowered until it is so low that no one is gaining any ground anywhere. Because everyone is greedy. Everyone is looking out for themselves - because we are not a hive mind or a collective serving entity. We never evolved that way. What is often best for society does tend to be that a specific few rise above everyone else for one reason or another: either you are innately and truly better at doing something than everyone else around you - or you were born into a state of wealth and continue to grow that wealth with the ease of opportunity it initially granted you. Everyone CANNOT be at the same level. There is literally no system conceived for that because everyone has drastically different wants and needs from each other. No matter how hard you try - it is inevitable. We can do our best to trim it - we can do our best to even out the field; but there always will be that one sly snake that convinces or will convince the majority around you that THEY are better. Or that THEY deserve more. It's just going to happen. The only way it CAN'T happen - is if Everyone is constantly being pushed to being 100% equally as intelligent. But that also requires everyone to WANT to be intelligent and strive to be intelligent. And far too often - even with College students, College graduates, and the Common Folk; we see that they will choose to elect their intelligence into being TOLD what is right or wrong - what is smart or dumb - rather than strive for true intelligence and independent research. These are the people who will always without fail; fall victim to the snake-oil salesman tactics of the liars and deceivers. No political party - ethnicity - or tribal mentality is safe from it. It WILL always happen.
Edit: Found a couple of typos
@@Nai-qk4vpwhen we destroy it we tend to recreate it as there is a demand for leadership. French Revolution is the worst case scenario but it’s clear people don’t wish for a higher power but unfortunately easily fall for one.
o7 good job
The most infuriating thing about the "where people deserve to be" thought process is that the single greatest indicator of financial success, is the amount of wealth you were born into.
Sure, things like work ethic, creativity, and business savvy matter, but that really only determines the outliers and exceptions to the rule. The vast majority of the time, people who were born rich either stay rich or get richer, and people who were born poor stay poor or get poorer.
Capitalism: feudalism with extra steps
This is actually factually incorrect and I'm not sure why people keep parroting it. It's easily disproven by looking up data on upward mobility in the United States. Generational wealth is one of the biggest myths that needs to die. If you're born in the bottom percentile of income, then the probability of you out-earning your parents is about 79%. If you're on the higher percentile of income, then the probability of you earning less than your parents is about 92%. In fact, about 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% lose their wealth by the third. The reality is, wealth is constantly changing hands. People move from the middle class to the upper class and then back down again. While it is true that upward mobility in the United States is "stagnant" (in the sense that in the 1940's your probability of out earning your parents was 98%), that's not the same thing as saying "the rich keep getting richer".
@@xero964 Wow, it's almost like those who end up being able to maintain their generational wealth due to reason often beyond them end up doing better than those who end up losing it...
And calling generation wealth a myth is just plain conservative retardation.
@@Speedojesus Wow, it seems like those who end up losing their wealth appear to regain their generational wealth all again due to reasons that might possibly be outside of their control. The same argument could literally be made the other way around.
@@xero964 That's a lot of words without any relevance whatsoever. Also, sources?
Bold from you to assume i had friends in high school
Same here
That’s sad 😔
@@oyo4629 not at all, better alone than with a bunch of assholes
@@oyo4629 I love to be alone
He said for the sake of argument
I have a friend who is super Conservative, and he's going to law school. His family was always super rich, but he has recently been treating me like I'm an inferior species. I'm not exactly the most...respectful person when it comes to being talked down to, and that frustrates him to no end. Like at one point he flat out called me stupid, because I'm not as successful as him (I'm a librarian, I want to be a librarian, I don't want to be rich, and I enjoy what I do). I pointed out he's only successful because his parents paid him through law school, and he freaked out saying I don't understand what I'm talking about.
It's always fun to knock people down a notch when they talk about this hierarchy, because they can't comprehend when people are not conforming to their pyramid. Don't think of yourself as lower than anybody.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe your friend is just an asshole? And that maybe that has nothing to do with his political standing?
That's not a friend.
That doesnt sound like a friend, it sounds like an insecure bully who needs to feel superior to someone
@@madmanmapper One is an accident, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern.
@@MsOdale7 There is a pattern here. Many libs are assholes, many conservatives are too. I don't see what political views has to do with it.
I had a falling out with an old coworker as we ended up on different sides of the political spectrum. He said something to me that I didn't get why he thought this until watching this video. We were talking about equal rights and why he was actually against it. He said "You don't understand. In order for everyone else to get rights, it means I have to lose. There always has to be a loser." Ppl on the right believe there always has to be a loser so they're against anything that could be considered a "handout' as someone else will lose unfairly. What they fail to see is that that shit's being going on since America was a country. Ppl have won and lost unfairly due to patriarchy, class warfare and all sorts of shit.
The unfortunate thing though is that they still silently feel as if that is "fair game". Rather than searching deep in their soul and finding that darkness, they deny it even exists.
As Malcolm X said, they'll deny that the knife is ever there.
A not so insignificant chunk of the conservative population look back at that dark time with FONDNESS, as the time they were "winning". While I still believe that there can be converts from the right( me being one of them) I recognize that I am the exception that proves the rule that they simply cannot be reasoned out of their beliefs, considering they were never reasoned into them in the first place.
You cannot play fair with someone who believes the way to play the game is to cheat.
We simply must stop playing their game, and start playing ours. That means really free markets, that means antifascist action, that means abolishing not only capitalism, but the state as well.
Huh…. It makes so much sense why trump is their guy. He sees everything as a zero sum game.
Actually what they fail to see is that that logic makes absolutely no sense. Someone else having rights doesn't take away mine. In fact, everyone else having rights is the only way to ensure I will always have rights. Because so long as there is any situation where someone is deemed undeserving of rights, I will have to argue that I deserve my rights (against people who believe that I don't deserve them for idiotic reasons). Even though in fact, no one can *deserve* rights but it isn't about what anyone deserves. Like it says, they are "endowed by our Creator" and "inalienable". The whole point is that we get them whether we deserve them or not. But conservatives are only capable of agreeing with that line of thinking when it is applied to a foetus.
@@golwenlothlindel you clearly know nothing about the Conservatives if you think the only rights they care about are fetuses.
In the truest or most technical sense, your coworker is correct. Everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING, is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. And everything suffers a loss of available, usable energy. It's expressed in many different ways, but one such way is inflation due to a loss of resources, energy in various forms, etc.
What it comes down to, is that conservatives just make sure the losers are POC, the poor, LGBTQ, women, etc, and the winners are white males. Aka, the hierarchy, falsely claiming they let the "invisible hand the market" determine "winners and losers".
As the video states, Conservatives assume the "smart liberals" know the hierarchy exists. But Ian also notes they don't live up to their ideals, because they need money from the rich elites to fund their campaigns, so the working class still suffers.
You cannot break the laws of thermodynamics, and as such, cannot solve really the fundamental problems that cause humans' problems. Of course, you could live within the world's means, but since when have humans been content with that?
“No socialist would call that Socialism.”
Truer words are rare, out here. They will never understand.
That tends to be because Socialists romanticise their ideology and are incapable of viewing it from a "Warts And All" perspective.
Just because you wouldn't call it Socialism doesn't mean that it isn't. But the 23 times that Socialism/Communism has been implemented before weren't real Socialism right?
But you'll still try and claim that conservatives and moderates, are in some way delusional.
Not delusional. Dishonest.
@@th3b1rdbra1n3 - Well that's rich.
@@goawayleavemealone2880 Nobody is really arguing for pure Socialism; most people realize that the free market is great for consumer goods and most of our day to day spending.
But some things, like public health, are demonstrably better provided by socialism than capitalism. Compare US per capita health care spending with UK, and then see who lives longer - NHS is cheaper and provides better outcomes than our free market health care.
The problem is that special interest groups like the insurance companies and drug manufacturers have enough influence to persuade you that any socialism is bad, and that nationalized health care would turn us into Venezuela somehow. And you trust them.
@@johnschwartz1641 - I live in the UK and you think you can present the NHS as a shining beacon of a successful nationalised service. The NHS is underfunded to a point that's frankly absurd, the wait times are staggeringly bad and the treatment received often barely adequate. Medical advancements are never born in the NHS, they seem to be born in privatised health care.
I wouldn't even want a competent government to nationalise any sort of service, let alone a Corbyn lead government.
When Rail Services were nationalised in the 70s, it catastrophic omnishambles and there are people advocating for pure Socialism.
"look at alpha wolves" alpha wolves were disproven by the scientist who originally published the book on them
That shits hilarious too, cause alphas dont even exist. People think that an alpha, say, chimpanzee. Is like the chad of the group. But no. The alpha is more comperable to the leader of the group. Anybody can be an alpha Chad, but anybody could also be the leader of the pack.
@@a.bagasm.7253 Uhhhhhh
Yeah.
@@a.bagasm.7253 I actually cant see your comment. But i hope you realize that, uhh, i was literally saying that an 'Alpha' person doesnt exist. And the fact that anyone can be an 'alpha chad' means that literally anyone, even the opposite of what you would think is an 'Alpha chad' could be this hypothetical non existent 'alpha' creature.
@@eila2635so the word"alpha"loses all of its meaning
@@a.bagasm.7253 Yes. It is a nothing word that has no bearing on anyone.
A leader can exist yes, but a leader does not have to be an 'alpha'
The fake conservative debated way, WAY better than any conservative I’ve ever met in real life.
It was more articulate than most idiots i see online, but as an actual conservative, it still felt like a strawman.
He gets the general picture though, we do care a lot about capitalism and laissez faire economics, and we only support reformation when we agree with liberals that its absolutely necessary (otherwise, its just a matter of us being out-voted).
Another thing he sort of misses is that independents may become conservative over time when liberal politicians begin to fail them or their communities with their policies. After all, politics can be very personal in some cases. "Law and Order" is a phrase constantly tossed around. Though thats circumstancial since conservative politicians are just as likely to fail their voters or communities as well. Its why the antithesis of Law and Order, "ACAB", even exists to begin with.
@@four-en-tee If anything it was a steel man. He gave the conservative much more awareness of where they were coming from than most conservatives have. Most conservatives are reactionary who put little thought into why they feel a certain way. There are also conservatives who are intellectually curious and can find a breadth of philosophies and (mythologized) histories that back their preconceived notions. "Facts and logic" are on their side, and Innuendo put their conservatives more on the latter end in terms of articulating their own beliefs, but still repeating bad faith talking points about liberals they would have heard on TV.
There are also leftists/liberals (combining them for the sake of simplicity) who operate like the former conservatives. They're bothered by war, poverty, racism, homo/trans phobia, environmental destruction, etc. and just think a lawful good government needs to come in and make the bad people stop being bad. I'd say they're more liberal than leftist because they think there's nothing wrong with power as long as the people who have it are "good." Most people on either side operate out of somewhere between gut feeling and intellectual rigor.
@@patstevenswhohatesbuttermi5861 I used to be moderate leaning right and slowly leaned left throughout the course of Trump's presidency. It became very clear that so much of the rights politics are based off religion, misinterpretation of the constitution, and extreme nationalism all while serving only the intrest of big corporations and not the actual nation. In left politics I found more freedom to my beliefs that I would be destroyed for even considering in right political circles. I can be pro-second amendment while still supporting regulation, I can be anti-abortion while still supporting the right to choose, I can be pro border security while not being anti-immigration, I can support tax cuts for lower classes but not for billionaires, I can support the Rittenhouse verdict while not praising the dumb fucker. The US right has become way to radical and has gone from free market proponents to religious nationalist as evident in its biggest platform the Grand Old Party. Of course this is generalizing from my experience and not every righty is the same way but alot of the moderates I know feel the same way and so do millions of right leaning Americans who sadly had to vote against their beliefs this past election because they didn't want this platform to represent their ideology.
@@four-en-tee Just chiming in to say that I appreciate this comment! You've clearly written it to clarify your position and help others understand you, without attacking/belittling those who disagree or assuming bad faith on the part of Innuendo for mischaracterizing your stance. I wish more political discourse could be like this.
For real I've never heard a republican be so eloquent.
Suddenly arguments with my dad about minimum wage make so much more sense
For me the whole vid was just like very long "ahhhhhhhhh" :)
minimum wage is a scam it hurts everyone except the biggest corporations. it hurts small/medium bussines and employees.
i'm dying at "consider the lobster" because i've actually heard that argument before
good old peter jordanson. i’ve been trying to replicate his accent, i still have no idea how olly thorn does it.
@@Hazel-xl8in Just try doing Kermit. It'll be close enough.
@@patrickmattin9609 haha Jordan Peterson go 🎶de luvers,🎵de dreemers,🎶and miiiiiiiiiii🎵
Well, yeah. But I always thought Jordan was just being theoretical, not directly saying that "reject society, become lobster".
I've literally heard "Don't you WANT amazon?" before. A couple times actually.
And, uh, NO. I DON'T want amazon! I don't want "easy shopping that has cheap shipping!" I don't want workplace abuse! I want communism! I want to each according to his needs, and from each according to his ability! Fuck amazon, I DON'T WANT amazon lmao
idk how many times I've viewed this before realizing that in the hypothetical conversation, the friend dodges the "why is what happens to poor people not your problem but what happens to rich people is" question.
@@KovaXCX I agree, but when the millionaires start changing laws against the little guy (us) how are we supposed to ever get "in the right place"
@@KovaXCX unless, somehow, other people gained control of your life, then you're not exactly in control like you said.
@@KovaXCX - This assumes the we are all 100% in control of our lives. Bit funny, that notion. What policies the government lays out directly affects my life, even if I make the best possible decisions at the time. And, aside from voting (which has been proven to have relatively small impact compared to say, having enough money to donate and get your desires through Congress), I have little control over what policies government implements.
Take bankruptcy as an example. Let's say that I, through no fault of my own, have a horrific accident or develop a life-threatening medical condition. Perhaps I caught COVID-19 when I went to work and was one of the 20% of people who had a severe version of it. I end up spending weeks in the ICU. I survive. I had good insurance through my job, but even one day in ICU is incredibly expensive. I am now hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and will not be able to pay this back for decades, if at all. So, my best option is to declare bankruptcy.
Well, turns out, bankruptcy laws were changed in 2005. It's now much harder and much more expensive to declare bankruptcy. I am still recovering from COVID-19. I have no money and I'm not yet fit enough to work. By the time I'm back at work, I have fallen behind on rent/mortgage and necessary bills. I'm having to pay back the deductibles I missed while away (at least my job let me do this rather than cutting my insurance immediately). I won't have the several thousand dollars necessary to declare bankruptcy anytime soon. I'll be lucky if I keep a roof over my head. Maybe, if the economy recovers, I will reach a point where I can declare bankruptcy. Maybe not. Of course, depending on the actions of government when the pandemic began, maybe I wouldn't have caught COVID-19 at all. After all, several countries managed to keep their cases much, much lower than the US did, even without a total shutdown.
Or maybe I'm a Texan who was on the ERCOT power grid this past February. My power stayed on for most of that severe storm, but my electric company was one of those that charged me the current market rate. My next electric bill is over $100k. Had Texas changed certain regulatory rules to prevent this, or had they simply forced companies to properly weatherize after the 2011 storm that caused Texas to institute rolling blackouts (though was not severe enough to freeze natural gas wells), my bill would not have been $100k. My elderly cousin in another part of the state wouldn't have frozen to death. The family in my town who used their car to try to keep warm during a power loss wouldn't have died of CO2 poisoning.
Or perhaps it's not my personal bill that's the problem. Maybe I'm in charge of a power company. My customers paid an average rate, rather than the current rate (quite common in Texas power companies). But the producers of power at the time charged _me_ the current rate. My company, which serves several million Texans, is boned. It's millions in debt. And if it goes under, that's millions of Texans without power.
These are just a couple of examples. There are hundreds I could point out, just off the top of my head. From economic policy, tax policy, trade policy, patent laws, medical regulations, etc. All of it has an impact on people and, depending on the circumstances, can send your life from 'this is fine' into 'I'm screwed' territory. Government, and the decisions it implements (or in Texas's case, fails to implement), has a massive impact on our lives. It is a complete fantasy that we are 100% in control. It may make you feel better to think that way, but it is in no way accurate.
@@KovaXCX Because "Everyone is responsible for their own life" is nonsensical when it is impossible for a human to live, much less have a good life, unless they are handed things. Every single person who has a decent quality of life only has it because they were handed a lot.
@@KovaXCX then why do billionaires get their money from our work?
There aren’t enough high paying jobs for everyone. Someone has to clean the toilets. And that’s why it’s so important to have strong social safety nets and government provided education and healthcare! Why should the fact someone is a custodian be the basis for denying them the right to higher
education? Learning is an admirable end goal in and of itself, even if they never have to use what they learned in their professional life
That's a pretty cool liberal take. I would say that custodian need not be a career, maybe just a specialty. If everyone had input in their place of work, and were trained to be a functioning and flexible part of that specific place of work, then there wouldn't need to be high and low paying jobs necessarily, as each person in the functioning body would have a well-enough understanding of their own and other's contributions to distribute their total earnings accordingly.
But I certainly agree about the education. Knowledge isn't something that really needs to be restricted, it's not like there's limited access to it or that a history or math major could be given to someone unjustly.
@@smallman9787 your first paragraph is incoherent nonsense. "i dont think essential jobs will be careers so they wont be"
@@tofupowda it is worded confusingly, but I think they’re talking about balanced job complexes (where the people in a democratic workplace share both empowering and wrote work). On another note, it’s so weird how education is supposed to be a job factory. Academia is a wonderful place all on it’s own, and education for education’s sake is good for people and society
The more educated people are, the less likely they are to be religious. As their religious beliefs diminish they become less conservative and more democratic in their thinking.
@@NoodleBerry Agreed. Education is a goal in itself! For me, Life is about finding happiness, and money is just a means to happiness, and jobs are just means to money, and education is just a means to jobs. But if you have the tuition and can get happiness from education itself, well you're cutting a lot of middlemen to your happiness.
Never have I seen a progressive describe conservative viewpoints in such an effective manner. Your videos are gems.
this video really helped me understand what is going on in my dad's head. being a leftist in a family of conservatives can be really confusing when i actually just don't understand the world they see.
@Donald Hysa You understood nothing.
@@SilenceOase this clown you keep bumping onto honestly
well that's because they don't see the world. They don't see anything. Because they're literally blinded by how fucking stupid they are.
@@SnoFitzroy this is why it is important to know what they believe. If you just write it off as bullshit but don't actually dig, you're in a different type of denial, I would say. I know plenty of conservative people who I respect. I don't have to agree with every one of their beliefs. The problem, really, is that people have their reasons for believing what they do, and to them, their reasons feel just as (if not more) valid than your reasons for feeling how you do.
But, how? Every point this video makes is false to make you buy into a certain narrative.
1. Sharks don't produce anything of value for the minnows. CEOs (via their companies) organise the production of stuff and their existence at the top depends on them producing stuff of value. Nobody thinks there is a rigidly defined pyramid like in the animal kingdom, thinking so is silly.
2. Countries would be lost without their rich. Look at countries such as Venezuela that decided to get rid of their rich: they ARE lost without them. Venezuela doesn't even have a stable electricity supply anymore, even with perfect weather. Because nobody goes the extra mile to make it happen, because electricity production is all run by government employees who are being rewarded a prescribed amount of money regardless. There is no Edison or Westinghouse there, incentivized to produce as much electricity as possible (because the more electricity they sell the more money they'll make). Not to mention the production of cars and computers.
3. Liberals DO try to use diversity and inclusion as a tool to sneak people into good-paying jobs, based not on relative merit but by how much those people supposedly "need" that position. You don't see any liberals complaining that white men are overrepresented in the sewage works or garbage disposal sector. Not as much as they do about Silicon Valley jobs anyway. It's all about "redistributing" the good-paying jobs regardless of merit (productivity).
If corporations are people
Do they bleed?
They will. And then we’ll kill them.
Let’s find out!
ask twitter's Jack Dorsey or TH-cam's Susan Wojakcziec
And that’s the start of the debate of Corporate Libertarianism.
justin nutter let's find out together, comrade.
“No shame in being cog in the machine, if the machine makes something beautiful.” *shows pretzel machine.
Me: no shame at all
lol
being a cog in a machine that destroys human life is nothing to be proud of.
Harold Sparrow- but pretzels are nice
Evil machine that produces pretzels. Sign me up.
@@devs9979 I mean if the pretzels are good I'm up for almost anything. How evil is this machine again?
All work is dignified. My kids were academically gifted and would report teachers threatening struggling students with, “if you don’t learn this, you’ll be flipping burgers and asking people if they want fries with that.” Those teachers would melt into a pity puddle if they couldn’t swing through the drive-thru for some of that “useless labor”.
Pay the burger flippers a living wage, make it possible for surgeons to acquire the needed education no matter their families’ finances.
Every time a conservative calls Fascism "left-wing", an angel loses its wings and plummets to its death.
The GOP then mentally rewrites the Bible again to say that all angels are secretly in covenant with Satan.
Anyone remember ‘love thy neighbor’?
@@goroakechi6126 everyone knows modern Christians are an extremist version of actual Christians. It’s a small part of why I am no longer Catholic. I’m not an atheist though, more agnostic. The world’s an interesting place
@@apollo1573 _"everyone knows modern Christians are an extremist version of actual Christians."_
That really depends on the angle you look from. Early christians would stone each other's spouses for cheating and let the men go, just like the bible tells them to. And the ingrained us and thm mentality is actually more diluted now and people don't at all remember that "neighbour" is Palestinian Jews and now one else.
Come to think of it, I actually don't know what behaviour or beliefs are actually more extremist. I was inclined to agree, but can you first tell me what you're talking about?
_" I’m not an atheist though, more agnostic. The world’s an interesting place"_
It sure is. Just the other day I was talking with a friend about why she celebrated christmas and she intuitively said it's because it breaks up the dark months of hard work and she wants to spend time with the people she loves, and sending a card to a friend she can't see during that time shows that she does think about them, and giving gifts to her parents, paid for with her own self earned money and having elaborated dinner just feels like a natural thing she really wants to do to show how happy she is, how well she's doing and how grateful she is for everything she has and does, with, for a large part to, and for her proud and loving parents.
The church will find this a show of arrogance and decadence.
The pagans, whose celebrations were shoved out and assimilated by the church celebrated the winter solstice as a turning point in the dark months, and celebrated it's mid point, the darkest day, after which optimism is justified and days will get more sunlight (in the northern hemisphere, but history is nothing if not Eurocentric), and sang and danced and ate exorbitant amounts of (stored) foods with loved ones to break up the cold dark months of hard work, to motivate and remember why we even care that we are alive and work so hard: to love and enjoy.
I find this human nature so interesting and beautiful, and I am an enormous misanthrope when I'm out getting my groceries. I fucking hate it that people are in my way, especially if it's windy and cold. But I remember growing up outside a tiny village too, where it's even colder. There was no internet or warm water unless you chopped wood. There was no central heating and we had 3 channels on the tv and with good weather some German channels that showed some movies as well. I remember people saying the world was getting over crowded and people starving because of it and not seeing a soul on my 15km way to school and back. I remember a teacher explaining that the amount of people on the planet sky rocketed when we started cross breeding and genetically modifying crops.
Population grew because people weren't starving anymore. The "god given" plants allowed for a lot of death and starvation. People changed that. Medicine improved. Not because a god stopped giving children cancer and gave us solid advice. No. God still wanted us to not wash our hands but watch our language instead. People changed that.
My life, and yours and everyone else's, is (on average) pretty fucking comfortable compared to what sick and starving people go through. Those people that I hate seeing when I am getting my groceries are the reason why my life is so good. If I'm feeling under the weather, the world will go on just fine and the baker will bake bread, and the farmer will grow crops and if they can't we have wheat storages, the truckers will supply the stores, my neighbour will buy me a bread and I can just take my time to get my shit together again. How awesome is that? And because I helped him pour out a pan of oil once he said: "You helped me out and I can finally help you out, keep your money, enjoy the bread and get well soon."
If there was a god worth worshiping or even thinking about, do you think it would stay invisible, let millions die while we struggle to find cures, improve food production, and still want us to spend time on that god instead of the awesome fucking reality around us? A god worth worshiping would have no room or need for growth or learning, so there's no purpose to letting people suffer for a feeling of accomplishment and it would definitely have found a way to still teach us such valuable lessons without the amount of suffering we see now and make our brains a lot bigger and less prone to fallacious thinking, so we would've ended slavery millennia earlier and cure all cancers and aids centuries ago.
Wouldn't a god that was worth your time just reward you for concluding that you have a lot to be grateful for and all of it is because of people and of how the universe functions? Without ever considering a role for a god that is just not evident in anything at all? All human behaviour can be explained by the fact that we're social animals. The good and the bad and everything in between and that overlaps.
My friend loves her family and wants to show it, and churches will have her believe that it's arrogant of her and decadent and that we are sinful and that we should remember the birth of a boy who bled to death because that's somehow a loving thing to let someone do on your behalf. It's beyond perverted and I can see why the church finds nothing about christmas celebrations to be in line with it's intended meaning.
I'm poor as shit and I know that the gifts they give to each other are practically unnecessary, but they are specifically thought out to make their leisure time more enjoyable and getting those things as a gift will remind them every time of their love. The food is extra fancy and expensive, and they feel that everyone around them is more than worth it and they save up for it, just for that reason. It's decadent for sure, and for good reason and I support it fully and I designed a christmas card especially for her because of it.
I told her that she should never feel guilty for spending so much money on things they don't actually need when she knows I'm poor. I live in the same society. Because she and other people with more to spend do spend it, it made my internet more affordable and it made it more affordable to order things online so I don't have to travel the whole country in search for an affordable rare thing that would help me a lot.
But more than that, I want her to remember what the solstice celebrations are for.
She never told her parents about this, but her parents, like millions of other people, intuitively celebrate christmas for those exact reasons and not because of some religious tradition. They are not arrogant in their intentions and the decadence is deliberate and proportionate. Don't feel guilty because of what the churches tell you. Remember that you know better, that you love and show your love and that millions of other people do that as well. You don't have to convince anyone that this is true, but please, for yourself and as a christmas gift to me, think about it and enjoy your christmas/solstice like people did before christainity came along and perverted it to take away earned pride and the gratitude for what people mean to you and focus it onto the god and church. You already do what's in your heart and so do your parents. All I ask you is to see that you do.
If statistics shows our intuition to be wrong, we're probably wrong. If the church says our intuitions to be wrong, they're probably lying to get you to give your attention and gratitude to the invisible narcissist instead of to the people who earn it, who do the science, who improve the medical care, who fight for equal rights, who learned to become a teacher, or a baker.
So I want to ask this of you: will you please think about what kind of a god would be worth considering and might it be one that doesn't want and consideration for itself unless it showed itself and showed a pattern of helpful actions that we don't see from a god but that we do see from people? And I know, catholic doctrine specifically warned you against valuing human behaviour over god's. I know that what I ask of you may hurt you deeply and make you aware of the abusive doctrine that you can't just shake off but have to slowly outbalance with new learned behaviour and thinking patterns. I know and it's okay. We'll still be here and the world will spin on as it always has. I just hope that you will see us slightly differently than you do today, slightly more beautiful than you ever thought we were. And I hope it will hit you like a truck filled with flowers that you are the same as me, beautiful and amazing. Everything that is good in this world is because people are just like you, loving and looking for something fun to do.
@@stylis666 I’m sorry but I’m not reading all of that. Also I said actual Christians not past Christians. Because they’re even worse
@@stylis666 k
Just reminds me of playing card games with people who are conservative and leftist. If the game was mostly up to chance, then I would occasionally complain when I got a really bad hand. With my leftist friends, they would usually say "yeah, the game is pretty random chance based" even when winning. They might also fall silent, but they would never insult me. However, when playing with conservative I noticed that they always will say something along the lines of "you're just upset cause you're not good enough at the game". They always had a tendency to believe that any advantage they had must have been because of their strategy and never from random chance even if the game was rooted in random chance
Sounds about right... what I've gathered is that their entire philosophy is based in extreme arrogance and selfishness. Insane thoughts like "I can't possibly be wrong and nothing you can say will convince me" and "as long as my family and I have got ours, screw everyone else, if they didn't also get theirs then they're just lazy"
In general, that is to say, the majority of the time, Conservativism is genuinely plagued by the Just World fallacy. They believe the system, that the world is inherently good and will reward optimal choices while punishing bad ones.
Mf probably says this after loosing chess. Also that’s an insane generalization.
@@loganwittman803 did I OFFEND you!?!? Sorry, I had to, lmao. The conservative party is based in the principal of generalizing everything and everyone as much as possible. This is an anecdote, I said it was an anecdote, and it's clearly meant to be a reflection of me. I'm not under your (or any) obligation to ensure that my anecdotes are research quality
Edit: btw, it's losing, not loosing
@@loganwittman803
How do you "loosen" chess? Do you like, loosen the threads off of a foldable board?
It is very clear to me, each time I have a conversation with a right-winger, that they confuse being equal with being identical, having the same rights and having the same lives.
How do you define equality?
@@dfmrcv862 A system is equal if all acting participants operate under the same set of parameters. That is to say, it is a system without any form of arbitrary bias. It does not mean that everyone gets the same outcome, only that work is compensated at the same rate.
Imagine an office: when we say pay is equal we don't mean that everyone gets an identical cheque regardless of work, we mean that they get paid in direct accordance with how many hours they worked. You can't get more money for being white, or male, or whatever. The only way to get more money is to do more work. Consequently society must be constructed in a way that allows everyone to do the same amount of work: the only different is how people choose to spend their time.
Are we talking Equality or Equity? Equality is everyone getting the same regardless of other factors, equity is summed up best by "to each according to their needs." It's that picture of the kids and fence at a baseball game. Everyone getting 1 box is equal, and still screws over the little guy. Equity is the tall person getting no box, the medium person a single box, and the short child two boxes. Now they can all see and therefore participate the same.
I mean right-wingers get pissed over equality, and if my experience has taught me anything is that they literally shit their pants in anger over the idea of equity.
@BP Those rights are not treated equally, nor viewed equally, especially by the system. A white person's right to bear arms or right to petition their government for redress of grievances are treated completely differently than a black person's or a hispanic person's 'same' rights.
SleeplessRonin that’s not true I’m Hispanic and I have the same opportunities as a white man. Stop kneeling for people just cus of skin color it’s anti progressive
"Consider the lobster"
That could be the funniest sh*t I've ever heard.
What got me was "This hierarchy is not democratic, it's Birth by sleep a fragmentary passage"
This reminds me of the argument:
"Without landlords there would be no housing to rent"
And all I can do is die inside to the idea that someone out there legitimately believes that houses - structures that have been around since we were trading seashells and learning how wheels work - can only exist through major investments.
I would assume they're mostly talking about apartment buildings. Still not entirely true since a developer could choose to sell apartments rather than rent them, but the point is that no single person in that building would have the capital to build that building, thus no housing.
Because building homes in and of itself is a major industry now. We arent all out there building our homes by hand, they're far too complicated nowadays for most people to do so. You would need to have expertise in at least electricity, plumbing and architecture in order to build a serviceable home thats up to stuff with the needs of today's society.
If you want to go live in a log cabin in the woods and live off the land, then thats your deal, but most of us arent up for that. You probably arent either if you've still got good enough internet to watch TH-cam videos.
@@four-en-tee I agree landlord's are essentially necessary in today's society but his logic makes more sense when the parameter landlord is equal to a single large owner of land. When a hand full of single entities own the majority of private land it leads to price gouging, scarcity and hoarding of land. If these factors didn't make land so expensive and scarce it's logical to assume that more people are more likely to buy their own land and build their own houses.
I like capitalism but land owning is where it starts to show some of it's problems. The fact that "go out and try to build your own house" sound rediculous enough to be used as a valid argument in favor of landlords is just sad honestly.
@@ihswap Ever read little house on the prairie? Part of a western pioneer family, Laura extols her father's ability to build cabins and wagons from scratch. They planted farms, made tools, even mined. She praised their INDEPENDENT living.
Nowadays DIY is frowned upon and we're all CULTURALLY told to be dependent on landlords, manufacturers. I decided a while ago I'm gonna build my own fuckin house. Don't need landlords and real estate agents if I have engineering experience and a brain.
And the Engels family had to leave the prairie, because it wasn't viable in the long-term. Those first sod busters were not going to make anything like a reasonable living.
Speaking as a formally trained economist, these right wing economic views are so old they have been disproven by the idea of what we now call "empirical economics" or econometrics time and time again. This is the idea that we now have better ways to test to see if our models are born out in real life, and it has helped us use the actual scientific method to prove how people make decisions in markets and how those markets function as a result. This field is still in it's infancy and is only about 30 years old. It has systematically destroyed these people's talking points about capitalism and shown that even if you want capitalism to work "as it should" you need to actually understand how it is supposed to work. These people who talk about the "free market" don't realize or choose to ignore that an entirely unregulated market (as you have pointed out in this video) leads to undue influence in government and politics that leads to power, which in turn leads to the destabilization of the market. The "guiding hand of the market" as some of these right wingers talk about actually works in some cases to improve how efficient the market is at meeting needs, but only if the first welfare theorum holds true:
- There are no externalities
- There is perfect information
- There is perfect competition
- agents are rational
This to me has been eye opening. The most important thing about discussing a model you are using honestly is being transparent about the assumptions you have to bake in for that model to prove accurate. This is the big myth of republican "economics". They chose to adopt this model while pre-supposing that all of these conditions are met and while building a framework that makes it impossible to try and verify in an actionable way if they hold suitably true or not. To sum it up, nearly zero of the 4 conditions for the first welfare theorum hold true when there are massively destabilizing forces in the market like Amazon, or religious extremists who gain undue influence in that market. The "free market" isn't free if people can't act on those freedoms in meaninful ways. If you are free to shop wherever you want by law, but there is only Walmart then do you have a choice to use your purchasing power elsewhere? Is that effective and efficient for competition's sake or for the sake of innovation? I would say not. I think when it comes to talking about our economy with people who label themselves capitalists, it is very important to make sure if you are talking about these things you are clear about what is empirical and what is theory, and if you are trying to equate the two that if you want to have intellectual honesty (or for others to) you need to bring attention to these assumptions and challenge them. Use this capitalist framework, the actual one that is studied by the real scientific method, to debunk these decades-old talking points that come out of half-baked understanding of what we are actually even talking about.
+
To simplify and weaponize it against them, I have found it best to paraphrase that one quote, "the law, in it's infinite wisdom, has prevented both poor and rich alike from sleeping under bridges." But then again, no discussion can truly be weaponized against conservatives, because their values aren't based on logic, observation or any sense of universality. Their based on violence, hierarchy and impulse.
regulation leads to corruption not the lack of it. Without politicians having the ability to contort the market people have no need to pay them off.
economics is a soft science. It is entirely theory and you can never account for all the variables and thus never prove what caused any given affect.
Any good sources about Empirical economics where you can learn about it that are easy to understand yet as accurate as possible to the actual belives?
My argument is still this: highschool used to cost money. People used to have to *pay* to be educated past 13. Now, why did we change that? Well, a lot of reasons, but the most relevant answer is because we realized that more educated people are more productive and capable of doing more complex things with their time. For capitalists, they are a "better return on investment". Sure, they have a higher initial input value, but they have higher, much higher, returns. Same goes for college and university.
Income share agreements say hello. Capitalists will indeed pay for your education, with terms that are based on how productive they think you'll be.
Nanofuture87 True. This arguemtns works for the “hard sciences”, but likely wouldn’t work with them on philosophy or any of the arts or social sciences.
@@longliverocknroll5, which is because a capitalist doesn't care about what makes us human, only what makes us productive.
Rules for rulers, by CGPGrey, brings this point up, that in democracies, their value is mostly vested in their population. In states in which the vast majority of the value lies in products or even a single product (such as oil), you have greater opportunities for fewer civil rights (especially education), since having happy, educated subjects doesn’t necessarily raise the value that flows into the nation’s coffers.
@Carnivorus I’m pretty sure the video title made use of the alliteration: Rules for Rulers. CGPGrey likes his pithy titles.
The hierarchy becomes very visible when you inhabit multiple spots on it (i.e being queer or disabled). When I pass as male (being already white) the deference I get is shocking. When I don't pass and am viewed as a white woman, I'm treated as a human being at the least. When I'm clocked as trans, it's like i've got an open season sign hanging around my neck
Im sorry to hear the as a black straight man i dont really have many placements to move up or down on that scale.unless i go into entertainment of course
You heard it here first ladies, gentlemen and variations there-upon! Leo da Vinci officially came out as a trans person!
Left: "Yes! Another of the greatest minds confirmed to be politically aligned with us!"
Right: *inhale* .... "fUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU(etc.)
As an aryan brother i am at the top
Another W for me
@@youraveragehistorian578 lame
Wow. This totally illuminates an argument I got into where I lamented the influence of donors in politics as "wielding 1000x the power I will ever wield." I meant it in an egalitarian way -- I think we should all wield the same power in politics. The conservative assumed that I just wanted to replace that rich donor and have me be the one in control over others, and I was so confused where that jump in logic was coming from. But this video does such a good job explaining it! He thought that I wanted to move up the pyramid and I was using the language of equality as a trojoan horse. He couldn't fathom that I actually want real democracy and equality. He was able to accept the rich donor's control because he's a shark. Damn. Conservatism is some cynical and social darwinist shit.
Yeah, it really is some morally repugnant shit. Most of them assume that everyone is an irredeemable piece of shit just because they are.
It sheds a lot of light on the “white replacement” conspiracy. The amount of sheer terror at the thought of whites becoming a minority reveals how they regard minorities and their place in society.
Andrew Pillion That’s what we’re seeing right now in Trump. He’s always assuming that everyone else must be running frauds and scams and screwing him over because it’s the only set of values he has himself.
It’s also a perfect example of how your beliefs shape your world.
I don’t know if this is just generational but my parents and everyone else’s around me are seemingly OBSESSED with collecting physical things and securing them physically (alarms, guns, shutting down the fucking wifi when it’s not being used because wtf, etc.) while my generation perhaps has realized that physical things often provide very little actual value and in the long term ONLY sentimentally.
@@chrisbardolph White replacement theory is strongest among Democrats.
Conservatism would make a lot more sense if we all started out at the same place. A genius born poor might not ever be able to overcome their circumstances, but the idiot child of wealth can walk right into the whitehouse with no aptitude or qualifications. It's hard to imagine that that's the idea distribution of power.
Yep. The concept of individual responsability is in direct contradiction to the concept of inheritance.
Yep! The entire "meritocracy" system is destroyed after one generation.
Hi! I grew up in poverty, got great grades, joined the military, joined Mensa. I'm still in poverty. Meanwhile a lot of rich kids with half a brain are running multi-million dollar companies.
@@TheHighSpaceWizard This might depress you. Judging by your photo, the difference between you and me is about 30 years. I think it was far easier in the 80's than it is now. The other thing is that fewer people went to college and even fewer got advanced degrees. It was easier to get scholarships and once you got out of college, there was less competition.
That’s why billionaires pretend it doesn’t exist. Donald Trump’s “Small loan of a million dollars” comment sounds dumb, like a million dollars isn’t a “small loan”, and he got much more than his father in actuality. But by spewing crap, it makes it harder to find the truth.
Shit, maybe if we started pushing for an $80/hr minimum wage they'd pass 15.
So true Lyla
I've been convinced this strategy is crazy enough to work for years lol
That's called the "Door in the Face" technique -- intentionally highballing the other party in a transaction to get them to offer something that "feels lower" to them but is more than they would otherwise have accepted
"We can't do 80, that's awful! How about 39..? ... Wait a minute..."
@@thegreatusername2355 It's literally why people start off sueing others for outrageous sums, typically no-one ever gets the outlying sum, typically the range narrows.
You're sat between a rich person and a poor person, at a table with 10 cakes on it.
The rich person takes 9 of the cakes, then turns to you and says:
"That poor person is after your cake!"
"When they don't have the same beliefs" is why I always tell people that I'll glady talk politics, but if you're not starting with base assumptions like "all people deserve to be alive" then there's nothing I can say to you
And even then, gotta go over base assumptions over what "people" includes...
Also, there's a question that popped in my head and trouble me since then for a while now.
What do you want to protect?
Life, or the living?
@@youtubeuniversity3638 Ah yes, the abortion discussion. My favorite, lol
guys, i know a way to solve all these political issues in one go
glass the planet
@@politecat9183 your statement and username combo is killing me
The alt-right playbook is actually one of the most important series on TH-cam. I come back to it every year and it just keeps being true.
You should check back in again!
@@Deadflower019 yeah I watched the new ones already
"Conservatives still stand for democracy" I don't know about that.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”-David Frum
You're projecting. All Democrats and their media have said for the last 2 years (while democrats control everything), is that unless they win, "democracy is over". For one, we've never been a democracy, nor were we meant to be. Second, You're just denying election results as Democrats always do when they lose.
Something similar happened on Brasil, the conservatives were unhappy with the results, most of them defend a military dictatorship
Not just Jan 6th... there were Brazilian troops randomly pulling over vehicles to prevent voters from going to the polls during the election that Lula won
>Conservatives stan for democracy
Monarchists amd Tradcunts: Ooga booga!
@@RedSunUnderParadise DEUS, PATRIA, REI!
The conservative friend in the argument here is 100x more lucid than any Facebook friend any of us have had this discussion with
“socialism is when the government does stuf”
itssgalactix “the more stuff it does, the socialistier it is” -carl marks, probably
"and when it does a lot of stuf, is called communism"
@@jaumeblanco5632 *Insert Daft punk music!!!
-Carlos Markers, "the commie book lol"
@@stuckonaslide Mark Karlton: Crapitalism
“These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they're gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody's gotta scrub the toilets.”
God I love bioshock. That’s pretty much all it took for me to realize unrestrained capitalism is dumb as hell.
Indeed, as well as the understanding that Libertarian ideology is stupidly dangerous and dangerously stupid.
Bioshock's dissection of Objectivism was less about any problems with Capitalism, than about the moral philosophy of Ayn Rand, that greed and placing value only on the self are to be celebrated.
Bioshock does not condemn capitalism as a whole.
Memicus Icecreamicus Up to a point, but Rand’s philosophy included the tenet that capitalism was the only moral political system, you can’t really critique the one without at least touching on the other. :-)
It starts for this line of monopoly back in the day and how people want to kill this type of thing that was back in the day and go back to the 1800's unfettered capitalism.
And they say video games (/media in general) have no effect on your beliefs.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
-Ronald Wright
To be fair, Innuendo here is a liberal and not a socialist... Good quote though, from a great writer.
Edit: Innuendo clarified below that he's not a liberal and to be honest I'm a little embarrassed at being this reductive, just want to comment that the he's a liberal thing was a bit of a large assumption on my part.
Kade Daivis Then what do you value? How does that inform your politics? How are you different?
@Kade Daivis "If I believe in democracy it means I believe you can say and do whatever the hell you want" That is literally not at all what democracy means.
Kade Daivis - I suggest watching Peter Coffin’s video on Meritocracy or some of Thought Slime’s videos. The thing is that Capitalism and Meritocracy are fundamentally hierarchic systems. They are not systems of equality. They reshuffle class structure, but they ultimately are a reworking of the divine right of kings. Just now our societal kings are people like Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. Capitalism is another system for creating social hierarchies, and as such is ultimately at odds with the fullness of democracy. To be a true believer in Capitalism is to be at odds with the idea that people are equal.
Kade Daivis - Analysis of the implications of Meritocracy as a basis for Capitalism requires more than dictionary definitions. What or who defines “merit” in a society? How does the concept of merit function in terms of justifying any given instance of extreme wealth or lack thereof?
Sorry dude, posting a quote from Miriam-Webster isn’t an argument. It doesn’t say anything about how the concept of meritocracy functions in our society. But glad you can make yourself feel better with a vapid IQ comment.
Again, I suggest watching Peter Coffin’s video analyzing Meritocracy and get back to me about the points there if you actually want to talk about this in an intelligent manner.
I have noticed liberals want to sneak me to the top and make me their Black Queen, a benevolent, generous, but firm dictator. I keep waving them off, saying, "No, no! Keep on with this democracy experiment it just might work!" But I am reconsidering taking the throne. Sorry, conservatives, your greatest fears may be realized... 👸🏾
This video was so insightful! I am just disappointed I didn't discover the channel until now!
This video finally, *finally* helped me understand the concept of 'privilege' as many people on the left use it and why it's so damn important. "...to everyone beneath you, you ARE the king. You've got a good job and a good wage; that gives you some power over people who don't, and getting pissed at those above implies that those below have a right to be pissed at YOU."
This was an eye-opening video for me. Thank you.
by that logic rich black people have more privilege than poor whites
@@FulgurInteritum In some cases, yeah, money trumps race in our society. In the other hand, what are the odds on a rich black guy getting pulled over by the cops for driving an expensive car over me, a white person, in the same situation? I'm guessing I'd be more privileged in that case.
@@vfaulkon well if he wasnt speeding, incredibly rare., probably higher or lower depending on the city. I bet if you lived in a place with a lot of black nba/nfl players a white person would be more likely to be pulled over.
_The Phantom Fucking Menace_ is life. _The Phantom Fucking Meance_ is love. 😍
@@FulgurInteritum And in some ways they do. Riches impart economic privilege, but no amount of wealth stops a black man from being pulled over in his car more than some white dude in a racist town. Privilege is a spectrum.
I've had this EXACT conversation with a republican client. He thinks that socialism means taking a billionaire's money and divvying it up among everyone, and that the major flaw we haven't considered is eventually we'll run out of money!!! When I try to explain that I don't want to get promoted, I want to abolish the hierarchy in my place of work, he says there will always be somebody at the top. It's wild.
@Epic Gamer See, that's the thing, in an egalitarian system there _is_ no top or bottom. It passes on the idea that 'there always have to be winners and losers'. Which is why I assume it doesn't mesh well with fascists. Because it's contrary to their worldview.
@Epic Gamer Think of it like this: humans can be encouraged to act in certain ways depending on the society they are living in. You know just like how Germans who participated in the Naz regime weren't evil to their core when they were born.
A system like capitalism _encourages_ strife. Because it is a competition and if you have more power or manage to bend the rules or whatnot you can get a leg up and outcompete your rivals. This is not to say that competition can''t technically be beneficial in some cases but the systemic motivation is not about improvement, it is about amassing power. This is why unregulated Capitalism tends to lead to a few having the lion's share of the power (through the natural formation of monopolies). This also means that Capitalism is terrible for ensuring rights or standards and the like if they are not enforced because they cost money/effort which the capitalist in question otherwise woukdn't have had to expend.
But there are other human tendencies, other characteristics you can teach, promote, encourage. This can radically alter the way a society functions.
And he is right. As long as there is more than one person in any system there will be a hirerachy
Okay it’s not wild that he doesn’t understand it..
..
''If everyone is a leader there is no one to be lead'' There is always some hierarchy, the difference is how the leaders are chosen (either by voting or by money).
"But we can pay for college ourselves. We've been doing it since forever."
*Suddenly, a large crowd of black adults formed outside of his window and explode with mock laughter. Half of raise an eyebrow while the other half give pity smiles and shake their heads slowly as if to say, "One day, you'll figure it out... I hope...".*
@Eye Patch Guy That crowd's name? Albert Einstein.
For anyone who does not understand: not everyone is born with a wealthy family who can afford your studies or neither you can scale up the profits because of your social position and standard education.
By you logic every school should be private, poors should die because they need to sit where belong to, right? is this your position ?
@BP if you want to know the history, especially the black adult aspect, the first time white americans who weren't the upper class elite went to college was post ww2 on the government's dime through the GI Bill, not hard work in the market, and this was only given to white americans, whilst black veterans were denied these benefits.
@BP I hope it is as doable as you said
@BP Community college will NEVER give you an advantage over someone who could simply pay more
Since this came out it's become somewhat less accurate. Specifically the claim that conservatives believe in democracy. Many of them have demonstrated that they do not.
Ah but you see conservatives DO believe in democracy as long as it involves colonizing others and bombing them all for the sake of democratizing them lol
Liberals constantly ignore whatever law they want and its conservatives who don't believe in democracy.
Imean, if anything it proved the point the video was making in the first place - that conservatives favour the model of the natural hierarchy over the model of democracy. They may have both, but they definitely favour one over the other.
This came out in 2019, but it does help explain why masking now is such a trigger issue for many conservatives, and why the "you should all care for each other" arguments fall flat.
They really do need to know "what's in it for them" beyond the notion that it's good for all of us.
In the last few years I've seen people link to the "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people" article a lot whenever Republicans went on another rampage. I'm starting to think that "conservatism" is just another euphemism, namely for "sociopathy".
@@cearnicus 1. I wouldn't use "sociopath" as an accusation/insult. I understand what you mean, but Antisocial Personality Disorder (the medically accurate term) is not a fall from grace, or a failure of morality.
2. Conservatism, at its core, is about nostalgia. What conservatism longs for depends on the cultural context. Whether or not conservative values are harmful depend on the country in question, and in the context of American culture, they are undoubtedly quite problematic.
Admitting that there is a virus ravaging everything and that it could infect anyone messes with the social hierarchy. They don't want to admit it's real because it is affecting everyone equally.
@@bananonymoussupreme3345 They'll only admit that it's real if it means that it only affects "lesser people" like the elderly and obese. After all, _they're_ not obese or old, they can't be! Obese people choose to be overweight, and since they didn't choose to be overweight they aren't obese, thus they're not at risk. Maybe those fat people shouldn't have eaten so many burgers! And besides, grandma is getting pretty old, it was only a matter of time anyway. No amount of "healthy people" getting extremely sick and/or having chronic symptoms long after exposure will change their minds.
At the heart of it their belief tends to circle back to "I'm a good person, so I'll be fine. If something bad happens to you, it's because you were a bad person and deserved it." It's sickening to see such blatant disregard for the well-being of other people be this prevalent in our society.
@@gamehero6816 I would like to posit that "sociopath" wasn't meant to be an insult, but more of an explanation. Consider Machiavellian personality. Maybe take it as, "the only reason I can think someone would refuse to think of others is that they actually do have a personality flaw, such as antisocial personality disorder, or sociopathy." Machiavellianism might explain why a person cannot understand that another person doesn't want to improve their own position in the hierarchy; doing something to improve everyone's position is genuinely not a behavior that is relatable for the person with the more selfish personality flaw.
I've always _hated_ politics. It never made any sense to me, it always gave me headaches and made me feel shitty about myself and the world, and so I always just called myself a moderate and refused to vote and refused to have opinions because that would mean I'd have to _think about this shit_ and I just wasn't willing to. But the more of your videos I watch, the more sense all of this makes, and the farther left I go. So I guess thanks, lol. Thanks for being the only person in the world who explains this stuff in a way I can understand.
Leaning far left is as bad as leaning far right. Two sides of the same coin
@@davidchaladze1082 I definitely wouldn't consider myself _far_ left, just squarely left.
@@DarthFennec That’s ok, because radicalism on both sides of spectrum hurts healthy political discussion. Even this series falls into that problem by generalizing conservatives, and taking some things out of context
@@davidchaladze1082 you're a fool, but thats no issue to us
@@swallowtail3860 You don’t have to insult me, even if you disagree with my opinion, man
That introductory debate about free tuition from the two characters made me laugh a little since, in almost every single case I see, people that speak against government assistance with college fees (or anything, really) and instead promote a do-it-yourself attitude are generally unaccomplished, uneducated people who would really benefit from those kinds of social programs the most.
And the kids who want free school get worthless degrees that no employer wants.
@@natebreivik6607 what?
Thanks Reagan!
better than an art major with 200k debt and a useless degree. Someone lacking ambition does not mean they lack understanding. Some people are perfectly happy with the bare essentials.
@@benjaminr8961why is it always the "art degree" with yall? As the video would suggest, for your argument to work the unjustice of that situation has to be entirely of their undoing right? And that if a person were in that same situation but with a degree essential to making the country a better place, well now that's a problem that even you acknowledge should be solved. So you don't acknowledge it. But let's, they do exist. Let's talk about the actual problem here
The argument of "We need the rich" or "Rich people are smarter than us" can be debunked with two words: ocean gate.
“And, conservatives still stand for democracy”
Hmmm… that didn’t age well.
Stan, not stand, which honestly still works since that song is all about a perverse idea of being a supporter of something
Well, as it points out, not when it conflicts with hierarchy. When Republicans have something to lose by it, it's easier to put aside the one for the other.
Which is funny as they barely they don't stan it at all, heck, they barely Stand it seeing as conservatives have been taking Ls in the ballots during the majority of history.
How exactly
@@riptidegaming2823*cough*Jan, 6*cough*
"Can't be because they're worthy, someone must've put their hand on the scale" is probably the most apt description of how they're feeling lately. I had the urge to come back and watch this one to remind myself what type of people we're dealing with.
What's funny is that this is how their system works though is someone put their hand on the scale instead of worked towards it. They're just projecting with this one but it's completely accurate though. We just need our heirarchical corporations out of our democratic government though in my opinion
this is such a perfect encapsulation of my thinking when I aligned with conservatism I am honestly astounded at how accurate it is and how well it explains things. I very much believed that liberals just wanted to take power for themselves, genuine empathy for others at a larger scale was always something I was suspicious of, though I always believed I was a kind and caring person who wanted the best for everyone, really there were a lot of contexts I would have left that to the wayside. Especially when my place in the hierarchy was questioned. I was fearful of minorities gaining significant rights because I believed then it would be a matter of time before black people were oppressing whites, etc. Fearmongered about reverse racism a lot. Because I had lived my whole life with white people at the top and black people oppressed and I thought that kind of power structure was inevitable. I would never admit a lot of that to myself because I had an image to maintain as a polite person both to myself and others, but it was very much there
and when I was faced with the tragedies and loss of life often hitting people living in poverty, the 'minnows'? Well, I didn't want to be a bad person, it's not like I had no soul. I felt pity for them, sure. A sort of apathetical pity. A pity that required nothing of me. The same pity you might feel towards victims of freak natural disasters. That's such a tragedy, thoughts and prayers, but what are you gonna do? It's the way of things. We can't upend our entire society (read: make even small changes that inconvenience those who benefit from the hierarchy) just because some people get unlucky or aren't strong enough. We can't fight the natural way of things. It's how it should be because it's how it is, it's how it is because it's how it should be
if this video's caricature of conservatism is what you believed when you were a conservative, then that doesn't prove that conservatism is bad/wrong, it just proves that you were a really stupid conservative.
@@gearygears4996 I have not seen a better argument for American conservatism philosophy, only worse.
That kind of thinking frustrates me to no end. Thanks for sharing this. As someone who does have empathy for people on a large scale, the idea to allow things to run in an ineffectual manner for so many people seems untenable to me.
@Õ_Õ Shy Guy do i have an argument against "i was a racist 'conservative,' ergo conservatism is racist?" i don't know, i don't think i actually need a better "counter argument" then just pointing and laughing, lmao
@@cautemoc4624 then you haven't spoken to many conservatives lol
"you take tour money elsewhere"
we're not even allowed to do that anymore, that's "canceling" and it's evil
Isn’t that all the conservatives do? Cancel everything? Bud Lite, Disney, Target etc.
@@unperfidious no. They shout lies about cancelling but continue to shop wherever they usually do unimpeded. It's too much work to actually stand by their values. As soon as Conservatism starts to actually hurt them directly as a result of their voted policies, they will change their party and only if they are lucky enough to have a brain with wrinkles, actually change their mind and behaviors too.
I always was wondering about the "goverment don't owe you anything". But if they don't, why am I paying taxes? Shouldn't I not pay a dime then?
@Kazuhira Miller As is any investment that betters society. My children don't exist today and aren't doing anything to earn a better society, why should i improve anything for their sake?
@Kazuhira Miller you seem to be pretty nihilistic about the government.
@Kazuhira Miller That's not a very good understanding of how the debt works imo - we don't "owe" the government anything.
To provide necessary funds to carry out their explicitly enumerated constitutional powers.
@Kazuhira Miller Ask for government-funded schooling -> Pay higher taxes to government -> Government pays for free schooling -> You get degree without crippling student loan debt -> You get good job to pay taxes as usual -> You raise family without debt because student loans are objectively worse than a higher tax rate that you DO have representation in changing -> The debt does not accumulate as you assumed it would. I don't know any one of my Californian friends (who have a higher tax rate than in my state) that are in debt to the government. -> You're not enslaved by a tyrannical government. -> Your kids get to go to school too, and your family, instead of having the burden of thousands of dollars in tuition per year, and has to pay perhaps 10 or 100 times less (because of taxes). -> Even though the cost can't and never will be completely eliminated, by distributing equally among the population, you've resolved the pressures on each individual family. It's kinda like simple engineering. If your machine has too much pressure in one area, you find a way to distribute the stress forces over more area or over more time. In our world, individual families paying for college is the pressure arising in specific parts of the machine. Those individual parts aren't able to take the pressure and might break (go into lifelong debt). However, if you distribute the pressure (government funding and taxation), each individual part suffers less, each family is able to deal with the costs, and the system remains stable.
I had to look up that picture of Jordan Peterson with the lobsters in his jacket to make sure it's real... it is. This made my day. Thank you.
it's wild how he's taken people mocking one of his dumber arguments and made it into part of his personal brand.
What's sad is I never questioned the fact that Jordan Peterson would take a picture with his pockets full of lobsters. It just seems natural.
@I Control My Fate Ditto
Knowing Better hey! Do you think you can debunk some Anti-SJW TH-camrs? (I hate SJW’s and anti-SJW’s by this point)
Knowing Better oh shit, i thought that was just a really good photoshop job
The whole, "We've been paying for college ourselves for years!" thing is just straight up wrong. College was extremely cheap and affordable because we subsidized it. You know, like corn?
no, it got expensive when we really subsidized it. like now.
@@ericfernandez9 regardless it’s ridiculously cripplingly expensive and if it is not fixed our society will begin to lose knowledge it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.
@Proxima Centauri Its why you see a bunch of people hard right in several southern states going into specific colleges or not going at all because college (especially cheaper ones!) tends to be a melting pot of backgrounds, ideologies, and cultures, which is something that can open up different world views.
The question is not about what to do with those in college dept its about why college so expensive that it causes them to go into such large dept (and why is that college tuition keeps getting more expensive every year even though goverment spends a nice chunk of taxpayer dollars to colleges that are supposed to make those tuitons cheaper)
@@ericfernandez9 You are factually wrong. Tuition rates for students started increasing across the board when state governments started cutting public funding to higher education in response to economic recession -- especially with regard to the 2008 financial crisis.
Realizing that 3yrs ago, we were still fighting for just $15 an hour and even then it wasn't enough
"You think you can make everyone the same..."
Only the Sith thinks in absolutes. Why can't reactionaries fathom a sweet spot somewhere between "all the same" and "not a billion times different." Something between "everyone gets the same amount" and "6 people have almost everything."
Because it means breaking the system. Slipping down lower in the tier list while your opponent is going higher. Not realizing that you will both meet in the middle anyway.
Even then, Marx and Engels never wanted to do 'Harrison Bergeron' to people. In fact, they thought "...living conditions will always evince a certain inequality which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated." Two workers who are physically able to work different hours peing paid equally for these hours benefits one and not the other, the same for their hours being equalized.
Instead, they thought each should work for what they can, and receive what they need. Surplus past this axiom is used to facilitate the abilities and needs of others or those who would further such things like arts or science.
@@triadia7059 Which vastly benefits them both.
Because they're reactionaries lol.
I've got a friend who is veeeery conservative and she really thinks we are having a 'nature vs nurture' discussion when talking about politics. I've tried a billion times to explain to her that *NO! We are talking about humankind as a whole,* not individual humans being born or made into the person you grow up to be (like it isn't obvious that always is a combination of both).
Conservatives don't really understand that *YES some people are born more intelligent than others,* but one cannot expand this framework to nations/scincolours/etc. This Girl really thinks it's a nature-vs-nurture-statement to say "black people earn less money, but that is ok, because they aren't good at high payed jobs." WTH?!
11:44 i think it would have been good to mention that the entire study that originated the "alpha wolf" idea is proven incorrect and the original guy who wrote the book has said as such.
Yakob And even more telling is how “alpha” wolves only arise in captivity, effectively making them similar to prison gangs. That’s not unlike how some people, particularly fascists see the world, that we’re in a situation where everyone else is a potential threat, so our best bet is to crowd towards whoever is the strongest and most like us, and ingratiate ourselves to them so they will protect us from the others.
Yakob, yes what you're saying is true but the point of this video is to understand conservatism, not argue all their points. I agree he should mention it, but elsewhere than this video.
@@eileensmyth2505 I think it's more that some conservatives legitimately try to use the Alpha Wolf example as an argument for hierarchical structures, which is flawed because in natural situations wolves don't actually behave like that, they organize around family units in an association largely based on the bonds.
It would be more accurate to say that the study was wrong about what wolf packs are in the first place rather than the idea of an "alpha wolf" being true/false.
When you look at captive wolves by example...(which would be more representative of how humans work since we are engaging with a lot of people outside of our families.)
The alpha wolf does become a real thing.
I think he deliberately chose it as an example because of this. Like the "consider the lobster" line is a less subtle nod that people like to claim the status quo is "natural" as a post-facto justification for why it shouldn't be challenged. The fact that the study is wrong is his point - ALL of those examples of "natural" systems are wrong.
"When you vote with your dollar, people with more dollars get more votes."
Thank you for succinctly making this point so well.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
@BIGINNARDS okay it differences because a billionaire is a billionare because he became a billionare because the consumers wanted it that way so he influencing other is still a form of democracy.
@BIGINNARDS "eliminated competition"
Because they did BETTER.
"Tell me an alternative to Amazon"
There isn't one, why should it be? Amazon is the best and this is why it has no competition.
Of course capitalism isn't moral, why would it be? People shouldn't be living their lives with the left's opinion on what is right and wrong.
@BIGINNARDS it is 100% democratic. The only not democratic system is violent socialism. Socialism only works with state violence while capitalism works through voluntary exchange. I suggest you read the book "The road to serfdom".
For everyone else. Literally voting with dollars mean rich children vote for themselves and you literally end up back in the middle ages with inbred kings. That need to be mass guillotined all over again but that won't be that easy this time because now you don't need to rely on your soldiers anymore, you can have automatic weapons shooting and aiming automatically
I returned to this video because a lot of discussions I've had about Israel/Palestine reminded me of "There's always a bigger fish". When pressed, no-one seems to actually deny the Nakba, or the awful conditions Palestinians in the occupied territories live under, they just think the Israelis played their cards better and won. Or basically, "Palestinians lost and they should get over it".
The scenario at the beginning of the video is strikingly accurate. The conversation gets to a point where I realise we're not operating under the same assumptions.
Might makes right is a disgusting principle.
Woah woah woah, as a sadist I take offense in being lumped together with the fascists.
As a BLANKITY BLANK
@Libertus Primus I reeeeeally hope that was a joke
Do you mean a sadist in bed or in public? What I mean is, do you want to crack the whip or make people’s lives difficult?
Bushwhacker 1278 don‘t worry, he‘s probably just a serial killer...
As a sadomasochist I'm half offended
“This is my place in society!!”
“This is my hole! This hole was made for me!”
DRR DRR DRR
Oh god oh no
More or less. We are all poor bastards with a specific hole preemptively dug for them. It's just that some notice the conveniently placed shovel nearby
@@2dollarchickenwings689 Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is a reference to a Junji Ito comic. Its, uh, a rather disturbing piece of body horror.
I yeet my kids from what I know it’s a fairly wholesome comic with mild existential dread and horror
Lol the funny part about your alpha wolf and Silverback example is that those are really just the dads of their species' group, and they aren't inherently better than any other wolf or gorilla. SO they make sure the rest if the pack is well taken care of. So maybe we should be like Wolves. We should be well-coordinated groups that works collaboratively with others so that we all get fed...and not the chaotic game of thrones environment the alpha wolf myth presents.
Aye, this what a significant portion of ultra-far rightists believe. In a patronly society.
I believe he was sarcastic about those points as everyone already knows that they are untrue
The fact that this video even exists kinda shows the problem with that. We simply can’t work together. Liberals and conservatives are so far dug in their pride holes that wouldn’t even consider the other side as equal, everyone is convinced that their ideas are 100% right and the other side is simply inferior. For example, let’s take abortion. Far-left are idiots for not believing that life begins at conception, and far-right are idiots for thinking there’s absolutely no cases in which it should be performed, but neither of them are willing to admit it because they’d rather die than admit that the other side might have something right.
@@bremjo7929 I'll fight you on that one! whether or not life begins at conception is irrelevant, what matters is whether or not the fetus is made to suffer in the procedure. the very first fetal nerve impulses are sent in the spinal chord around 8 weeks, and the majority of abortions are done within 9 weeks -- the brain is not even developed in these fetuses, so we cannot say that they have a self, or experience suffering. late term abortions are iffy but are rapidly becoming the minority
@@johnes4882also, the thing that would prevent abortion reliably is proper sex education and access to methods of birth control
14:20 One important thing of note here the "I have a right to keep all of my money and be where I am in the hierarchy" mindset exists among those at the bottom too. Bootstrapping and personal responsibility can be internalized anywhere regardless of wealth.
When I heard "consider the lobster" I clutched my desk and reeled back in an automatic response
I immediately groped desperately for my trashcan haha
I know it's a Jordan Peterson reference, but I refuse to learn what exactly it means.
Donal Murphy well, what does it mean exactly?
@@donalny Too late. Lesson time! Basically what happened was that Jordan Peterson was asked about the value of the artificial social groups, classes, and hierarchies that make up human society, and responded with how we see hierarchies in nature all the time, citing the lobster as a specific example (He didn't outright say that by extension that humanity's arbitrary boxing system was therefore good, but he gave the implication of it.)
I think as a meme specifically, the lobster came from Contrapoints calling him out on using the lobster analogy, and how ridiculous comparing humans to lobsters was.
@@donalny well its kind of a double reference. Jordan Peterson uses Lobsters as a really stupid and innacurate example of how human dominance hierarchies should be, but the phrase "consider the lobster" comes from a David Foster Wallace essay written for a food magazine where he argues that boiling lobsters alive isn't ethical.
Sorry, did you just say that Mark Zuckerberg started with nothing?
The dude was at Harvard and hanging out with millionaires. Not the sons of millionaires, but the millionaire sons of billionaires.
it's about the narrative that's sold about them.
@Your average user That's a bit of a bold claim.
That same person might have squandered the resources that Zuckerberg put into the video.
I'm all for equality, but arguing someone who is successful shouldn't have had their shot to take in the first place because someone else MIGHT have done better is a pretty week argument.
@Saami Zakir That's circular reasoning. He wasn't running Facebook when he was given privilege. There are thousands of ppl who graduate from Harvard and don't "create" Facebook. He didn't *deserve* shit, even by your thinking.
Also Facebook sucks. We'd be fine without it. I'd be more than happy to trade Facebook for whatever alternate timeline we'd get where other people got Zuck's head start.
How did he get to Harvard? Probably by being smart.
Also, vast majority of people going to Harvard don't become billionaires. He clearly played a huge role in his success and you clearly play a huge role in your miserable life.
@@selfishcapitalist3523 Being smart is not pre-requirement for Harvard by a long shot. The majority of people getting in to Ivy League colleges are "Legacies"--related to, or supported by previous attendees of the school. Another step of the "privilage of position" hiarchies that Conservative love so much.
Oof, that part starting at 14:06 really hits home, as a front desk agent at a hotel.
Can't tell you how many people act like they're superior to you, simply because they have a higher paying job, or spent more on a room, or have a government position, or are an X-tier member of the rewards program the hotel is a part of.
Someone once came in and yelled at me simply because there was a mild inconvenience, and when I asked him to stop yelling at me so I could actually help him solve the problem he was having, he asked me, "Well who else am I supposed to yell at?"
I feel like I understand conservatism a bit better than my friends, and I typically don't really see the problem with the conservative mindset. But god damn am I annoyed when someone who is clearly conservative comes in and decides that treating a person like a person just isn't something anyone should strive for.
And I feel that the timestamp mentioned above really highlights that mentality. People who think they are better than you tend to treat you like shit, likely because they are or were bottom of the totem pole, and are/were treated like shit by their bosses/coworkers/family/etc.
I feel like we'd have a lot less to argue about if conservatives twisted this one aspect that is so common about themselves. People should be treated like people. That should be the given. Doesn't matter your wage, your age, or your status, if you treat everyone like a person, first and foremost, we'd have a better time.
Ironically, that's how you're supposed to treat people based on the 2nd Amendment, which is that anyone you get in an argument or a fight could have a gun on them. Conservatives(typically) love 2nd Amendment rights, so the fact that they don't live by them is pretty hilariously hypocritical. Of course, they believe most Liberals don't carry firearms so they likely just brush it aside as a safe bet.
"you can't have power because if I had power I would abuse it, so you would abuse that power too"
"You can't have power, because history is rife with individuals abusing such power in the vast majority of cases. I know my own mind, not yours and taking the risk you will use that power to abuse me isn't worth it".
6:15 "conservatives still stand for democracy"... welp, that aged poorly.
i'm not sure whats happening in the USA, but in Australia, where I live, the conservative government just lost an election and they didn't say it was rigged or anything.
It's only some conservatives in the USA which is not a REAL democracy soooooo
Yeah doing a public protest at government land is such an anti-democracy act. Wish it was as leftists describe it as seeing that I'm anti democracy and more importantly anti federal government
@@shoelessbandit1581 a public protest dosent have 4 people and the breaking and entering in a federal goverment building
@@justinliverpool3658 weird how that sort of thing happens all the time with no repercussions. Hell democrats did it like a week later no problem yet it's the peaceful protestors who were let in that are being demonized. Good example as to why our system doesn't work
@@justinliverpool3658 No, but it involves Dozens vandalizing and Destroying Private Property.
Property that cannot affect Systemic Discrimination, yet, Leftist Protestors destroy it anyways.
The near equilateral triangle is misleading. The degree of the top corner should be 0.001 degrees and at least 30 ft tall.
The equilateral triangle fits the conception they have... For conservatives the fact its extremely stacked is not a common awareness
No, the point is that the apex of the triangle is all the "high up" society.
It is indeed equilateral - but the separation lines are much further appart top to bottom.
depends on if you're using the pyramid to illustrate the amount of wealth and power those in the highest segment possess or the amount of people in that segment... Either way I think it highly resembles the societal conceptions of the monarchist philosophers mentioned in his endnotes video
@@Ilikepants90327 The ammount of power in a pyramid (money in this case) is shown the higher up you are.
The ammount of people is its size.
That's the prospect of a hierarchical pyramid.
So instead of a triangle it should be like a Hershey's kiss lol
Reminds me of a survival game I used to play with friends. In the early game, when everyone is struggling, it's best to just keep anything you find for yourself. Make sure you survive and thrive and then you can help others. But then later on, when you have what you need to be comfortable, you can share your surplus with others, in the hope that they'll help you out in a similar way. I think this is kinda how real-world stuff works, your desire to help others is determined by how safe you yourself feel. And I figure conservatives generally feel like they're not safe, like there's not enough to go around, and someone's gonna have to die anyway so it might as well be the people who're already starving.
Actually there's studies done showing that poor people are way more likely to share money, food and resources with neighbours and their community than their rich counterparts. If you're wealthy, you never need another persons help to survive, so u never consider giving it. However when you're poor, sometimes a neighbours help is the difference between food or starving that night, so you're much more likely to share the little resources you do accumulate. This is how human societies have worked for tens of thousands of years. Capitalism would have u believing that humans are inherently selfish, especially when regarding survival situations. But we aren't, we're by nature incredibly altruistic. People sometimes forgo their own food and resources and choose to die to help a stranger. Humans are incredibly social and we are wired to be kind to one another. Don't fall for the rhetoric of the homoeconomist
The basis of conservatism is that there is a natural social order. Most of what conservatives believe is meant to promote and defend that social order, and to punish those who fail to respect it.
I think it's so funny that we have to figure out what they believe for them, because they have no idea
@@jnl3564 This drove me insane when I first tried to understand right wingers. They never say what they really mean. The stupid ones don't have the self awareness to know what they believe and the smart ones know that their beliefs are abhorrent so they lie.
@@jnl3564 you need a (poorly made) video to explain it to you. Conservatives understand people on the left just fine. When there are two groups and one understands the other while one does not understand the other which would you say is the more intelligent of the two?
@@benjaminr8961 "Conservatives understand people on the left just fine"
Yeah, nah. A few months ago I watched a Prager U video on whether the right or the left is more extreme, and they unironically claimed that the left is proposing that all people should have an income tax of 70%...
the 70% figure he claimed came from someone proposing a new tax bracket for specifically incomes of over 10 million.
Conservatism relies on doing its best to make sure nobody on the right even understands their own arguments, let alone the opposition's. If you can claim that vandalizing public Satanist displays is your own religious freedom and should be legal, then clearly you don't understand what religion freedom means.
@@benjaminr8961alright then, describe various positions on the left for me.
If there’s too many, then maybe pick Democratic Socialism, C0mmunism {censored because YT would delete this}, and various forms of Marxism.
If that would be too much of your time, then pick One.
I don't know what the fuss is about Alt-Right.
Personally, I always use Alt-Left, Ctrl-Left, and Shift-Left.
Shift left is a good combo.
Don't forget Ctrl-Alt-Delete
*sip*
Elizabeth Gomez LMAO
Because you give [neo-]NAZI's legitimacy.
i come back here every now and then and feel grateful. this video was a huge catalyst in pulling me out of some truly harmful beliefs and im really thankful for it
That is good, another video I watched got me out of crazy place. This video probably will help me little more.
@@RavenGamingOverLord glad to hear both of you are 'sobering up', so to speak. Ian has helped many grow out of their harmful beliefs :)
You still have harmful beleifs, but now they're directed towards a group that you get pats on the back for hating.
@@akashpisharody Do you peolpe have any idea how Orwellian you sound?
@@ryandronetekpoliticsstoots1273 bro you are the 'this is literally 1984' meme but unironically. please get a reality check. if nothing else do go actually fucking read Orwell, the man straight up said 'to be clear, everything I have written is in favour of Socialism'.
Anybody else consider the conservative friends long rant to be like, amazing? $80 an hour? Free healthcare? universal high education? Like I want all of that.
Except for everyone working in tech (I don't want a tech job), and everyone living in NY or CA (*I* want to live in NY or CA but I'm fine with there being other states to live in). But, other than that I was like "Yes! Yes! That's exactly what I want!" lol
You can get it easily if you acquire an in-demand skillset.
@@selfishcapitalist3523 and when everyone becomes a doctor, the doctor's pay will be shit, because of suppy and demand.
unless they unionize.
oh and also they will all drown in waste because no unskilled people taking out the trash.
your ideology is self contradictory *and* fails in practice.
@@selfishcapitalist3523
_Reads bio_
Hey, at least you're honest.
Yes please i want it now if you dont give it to me my friends and I will take it ourselves
Comparing sharks to capitalist overlords is unfair. Sharks hardly ever kill or maim humans.
"Consider The Lobster" should be a shirt, completely out of context.
My God, I want one... xD
We already have "Consider the Lilies", isn't that close enough?
@@weareallbornmad410 Me too.
Came here for a fishing video, now I’m a communist. dammit
“Communist propaganda of the shoddiest kind. What’s gone wrong with the world? I can’t even take a bath without 6 or 7 communists jumping in with me. They’re in my shirt cupboard and Brezhnev and Kosygin are in the kitchen now eating my wife’s jam. Oh, they are cutting off my legs! I can see them peeping out of my wife’s blouse! Why doesn’t Mr. Maudling do something about it before it is too late? Ohhhh…God…” -Michel Palin
same thing happened to me a couple months ago and now I'm really into politics
@Carnivorus how many do you think capitalism has killed?
@Carnivorus the statistic for how many died under communism is mainly comprised of deaths from starvation. However,
The deaths per capita from starvation in communist nations in the last century is lower than that in capitalist nations. From this we can make a one of two conclusions, either a) communism is the superior humanitarian system or b) it’s a bullshit statistic people need to stop using and actually read some political theory instead of basing their views on anecdotal evidence.
@Carnivorus everyone with a curable but life threatening illness who can't afford healthcare...... 🙄🙄
I think this video also helps explain why conservatives tend to be nationalists, while liberals tend to be globalists. Nationalism will result in certain nation states being more powerful than others, sorting the world into a social hierarchy based on nationality, while globalism will create an egalitarian world where it's impossible for their nation to compete, and thus be better than, other nations.
That rings true in big powerful nations but not in third world or small weak nations. In Canada, the left is more "nationalist" than the right. The same applies in Latin America.
@@alonsofrancescutti4956 I'm from Canada. You are way off. The right is far more nationalist here, there's nationalist sentiments across the spectrum, but it's not even a competition.
This is immediately obvious if you start talking about free movement of people and immigration or bring up China or any number of topics related to nationalism.
@@rileynicholson2322 well the right tends to be US bootlickers while the left shows more pride of Canada's culture and institutions. They also used to like Great Britain a lot more.
Globalism is a bit too idealistic in my opinion but regardless nationalism will always result in conflict.
@@rileynicholson2322 ok, I heard from a Canadian youtuber that the left are more nationalist but maybe you’re right
God your channel is actually filled with such in depth and intriguing talking points. Compared to other channels in the left sphere, like Hakim, Yugopnik, and Second Thought (though no shade to them), they feel more like the podcast bros… possibly because they are podcast bros. But also their talking points seem much more surface-level or baseline. However one common theme throughout Leftist TH-cam is the ABSOLUTE BOPS of intro-outro songs 😂
their actual podcast, the deprogram, is peak lefty bro culture. it helps to understand that they intentionally started out as 101 introductory programs, branched out into a couple of in depth stuff, and have created news of the day shows and mostly take it easy (as much as a lefty can). no shade to that, as that's just as necessary as niche dives into niche subcultures, pondering on the melancholy of kafka, or on the intricacies of the differences between sociopathy, psychopaths and narcissists.
as an ex "righty" this is definitely the closest ive seen anyone on the left describe the ideology i and many of my friends had, its not quite there, but its very close
I’d be curious to understand this too, from an Irishman this point of view seems literally insane to me...
Can you elaborate on what the video didn't get right? I'm curious.
im here for the same question.
Very far off
@@brickvideos4851 I second this. Curious to know what he left out, as Alex implies that it wasn't incorrect.
As a citizen of an European country that was communist up until I was born and currently identifying myself as a socialist, it annoys me to no end to see that Americans cannot make distinctions between socialism and communism. What the hell are they teaching you in school over there?
Our schools haven’t changed since the 1880s. Frankly, I’m surprised we made it this far.
It took me literally months of political discourse to understand what the distinction is. It is a difficult thing to find a conversation about, even outside of the classroom.
American elites needed to create a mythology of evil Socialism/Communism to preserve own status against a state that came from violent absolution of established nobility, thus, all that looks like USSR is demonised. USSR wasn't a paragon or even a success of most of its ideas in any way - it formed its own noble caste of politicians, high-end bureaucrats, ambassadors that was very hard to enter for regulars - but it formed in process of upheaval. Those upheaved do not like that.
For example, the Red Scare saw US's motto change from "Et Pluribum Unus" to "In God We Trust", to set oneself against anti-religious, at times violently so, USSR. One can consider it a crime to do so in country with no state religion, and there were people who did think it is so. Indeed, public image of Christianity in US is often tied to greedy scumbags and "prosperity gospel" - directly anti-New Testament, which's protagonist was a poor worker, an imigrant in childhood, and preacher against injustices of establishment.
American schools lump them together. They do this on purpose in order to obfuscate facts and push the capitalist narrative.
@@goroakechi6126 Did Communism even Exist in the 1880s?
Besides the Paris Commune.
It's really funny, but I had *never* considered the issue to be a completely different worldview. That's what would make the most sense though, isn't it? I kind of feel foolish not understanding that, now that I've heard it.
I have considered it when it comes to abortion, as I don't believe life begins at conception, while most pro-life believers do. That makes it easier to understand how hard it's to reach a common ground in that debate. I had however not realized it in such a large scale as this video does, and seems like a useful tool to bring along.
UmbreonMessiah try reading the righteous mind by Haidt.
It's telling that your automatic assumption is that people with different views are stupid and/or evil. Fun fact: the worst people on the right make the same assumptions about people on the left.
No worthwhile progress can be made without putting yourself in the frame of mind of your ideological opponents. Try to understand their thinking rather than writing them off.
I realized it when people were saying "He's hurting the wrong people".
if you find that mind-boggling, here's the natural extension.
_When you look at countries that suffered under colonialism, the hierarchical thought process dominates harder._ It becomes self-evident by simple nature of how their people suffered _as a whole._ This is why Sub-Saharan African nations are overwhelmingly more conservative, as are most of the Asian nations. And it's precisely because of this that liberalism and egalitarian thought are seen, in those countries, as a luxury of the rich, those who have grown too fat to notice the people that died for them.
And then, when you extend that, you realize that many conservatives in rich countries believe what they believe _precisely because they see the poor of the countries that their ancestors abused._ In this line of thinking, they come to terms with the sins of their fathers and tacitly defend them. This is also where the thought process of "you would do the same if you had power" comes from.
Finally, you can take this one step further to countries that scoff at the West for having no culture or history (this is most pronounced in China). In essence, the vulnerability of the egalitarian mindset is proof that there are no historical precedents that remind Westerners that it is indeed possible and necessary to hold onto those "left-leaning" thoughts. Because China has _long_ benefited from the egalitarian policy of meritocratic examination (and the subsequent improvements through the ages), it is well understood that a hierarchical thought process must therefore be a falsehood when taken to its extreme. Egalitarianism not only is affordable, it wins over time. And it is not just temporary - it becomes hallmarks of culture and nigh impossible to remove, so long as there is a tradition that *preserves history.* Ergo, cultures that seek to destroy history are _regressive and barbaric,_ because they seek to impose hierarchical behavior through force.
When you understand that last point, then you understand why conservatives ultimately believe in "might makes right" while liberals believe in "institutional memory." Conservatives in a blank slate society merely have to argue that the blank slate is the natural state of things. When there is a lot built on that blank slate, _they must tear down the existing institutions._ You are seeing that today in the form of Trump as well as Brexit.
I made it here from FD Signifier’s video on the election, and I found this video great too. It feels like a big underlying aspect of conservatism in the US is white people not engaging with or understanding experiences of true injustice. The conservatism pyramid isn’t that bad if your place within it doesn’t cause suffering, and if being at the top solely brings benefits to society without harming others. Like there’s an assumption that nobody has it that bad, or if they do, then it doesn’t matter because they deserve it; so trying to move up the pyramid without earning it just comes from a place of selfishness and self-entitlement. (Which definitely has a religious component worth analyzing.) Most Americans, or at least enough with political power, do not experience life as part of a true underclass, so they don’t have real reason to scrutinize the system (since it serves them well enough). But people who do experience genuine suffering and injustice due to the hierarchy, or who are at least able to empathize with those who do, are forced to take issue with the system, whether that’s by trying to reach a higher place in the pyramid or by demanding the reconstruction of a new system.
The last video I'd expect a Kingdom Hearts reference to show up in.
@Voice of Reason okay, i believe you
13:59 reminds me of the person that said "if your job calls you a 'hero' thats because they aren't paying you enough"
Conservatives that believe this _can_ hold the beliefs that "all citizens are created equal" and "always a bigger fish" at the same time. That's the thing. Not all of them think it through this far, but if you've ever met a conservative that's well-read and well-spoken, but still hit that frustrating wall that you hit in the simulated Facebook argument from the beginning of the video, it's because they _have_ thought it through this far. Their conclusion, however, is to hold those two thoughts at the same time.
Here's the logic that I've been told by said conservatives: being created equal means that the _government_ must treat you equally. The law must treat everyone the same, everyone must have the same rights (though often with baffling caveats that stem from the things you've pointed out in the video), and at your core, you are no more or less human than anyone else. Bearing arms, the right to practice any or no religion, and the right to counsel or to defend yourself, they're all _negative rights._ They're things that aren't goods, and therefore that makes them inalienable. The idea is that no matter how tyrannical a government, you're entitled to your rights and justified in fighting for them. But a famine could hit tomorrow and, if food is supposedly a right, then where did it go? Being hanged for opposing an unjust government doesn't rob you of your right to the just government you were seeking because _people_ are the ones who took your rights from you. Recourse can therefore be sought from people. For conservatives, positive rights---or public goods by their standards---cannot actually be rights because forces outside of human control can take them from you, and there is no recourse against famine or disease or natural disaster. For conservatives, rights cannot be goods.
Always a bigger fish extrapolates on this idea by concluding that, if rights can't be goods, and resources are scarce, then there has to be some way to distribute those goods. They kind of butcher the idea that some people are naturally talented at certain things, naturally smart, etc, and add to it a dash of Christian "everybody is inherently a sinner (read: bad) and will want to act in their own self interest" to come up with the idea that the only proper way to distribute goods as fairly as possible is to have everyone compete for them. Businesses compete to make them, people compete to buy them, and the result of this adversarial system (where some base rules are enforced but otherwise left to duke it out) therefore must be as fair as humans can be. If someone _distributes_ the goods/money that means someone with bias must choose who gets what, and people are inherently bad, so the outcome will always end badly. But if people _compete_ for what goods there are, then everyone earns with they win, and there's nobody dictating the outcome. Often these are the people that will spit on "corporatism" (what we have now, Rockefeller monopolies, etc) and call it a scourage and that it isn't real capitalism. That, to be capitalism, competition _must_ be preserved and maintained.
I could spend hours deconstruction the flaws in logic, but on its surface it makes some sense. I fundamentally disagree with it on so many levels, but that's the gist.
The fundamental problem with this worldview is you are not equal if one person is starving. Wheres the right to life Jefferson wrote about when people die from lack of healthcare? Wheres the free market when companies under capitalism are allowed to monopolize the system? You say the only rights you are allowed to have are negative rights because you view the government as part of the machine that places some people in unnecessary poverty. You are too unwilling to challenge the idea of all people being equal you refuse to go beyond the idea that people cannot be openly unequal (despite women still being denied abortions and people of color being gunned down in the street) rather than putting all people in a truly equal position by giving them shelter, food, and safety. If you believe someone born wealthy on the US is equal to someone born into poverty and therefore there is no obligation to aid the person in poverty, you're a shitty person
@@SaraH-jn5db I promise you don't have to tell that to me. I'm stuck in my parents' house for this quarantine, and I've been trying to argue human decency for weeks.
I’m Hispanic and vote republican. There’s nothing stopping me from accomplishing something a white man can do in this country
@@midget_spinner8449 Kind of discounting that a number of Republicans and Conservatives likely don't see you as a citizen of your country and would try to use the system (or at least the aspects they create and control and dictate policy for) to treat you as such.
After all: is a white man likely to have their neighbor to call ICE on them because said neighbor thinks that because they think their skin color means they somehow are not American?
well that is almost a good representation unlike the endless cringe this video is providing
the thing is if you give people the right to any good that means that someone must be forced to provide that good and with that, you are infringing on the inherit rights of other humans#
"They kind of butcher the idea that some people are naturally talented at certain things, naturally smart, etc, and add to it a dash of Christian "everybody is inherently a sinner (read: bad) and will want to act in their own self interest" "
well yeah obviously people are born differently and obviously, people are inherently flawed
but go on and deconstruct the flaws in logic lmao
I love how this video actually humanizes conservatives. In a lot of video essays I've watched, most conservatives are just portrayed as stupid and unthinking. I think it's a better portrayal of the average conservative.
I thank the gods for this gift bestowed upon me on this lazy friday.
Also Virgil Texas on Sam Seder. Truly Blessed Leftie Friday
🙌Hallelujah
I couldn't even *tell* you how happy I was to see this video on my main page.
I like your name
Uhm.... shouldn't we be worried about this people over at New Zealand or whatever?
Man. I've been there. It's why I don't go on Facebook much anymore.
cuz you got slain intellectually by conservatives?
19:42 "Also, when you vote with your dollar, people with more dollars get more votes". Filing that under "that seems so obvious now that it's been pointed out".
how come the candidate who spent more money lost
@@jumjalalabash because, at least as of yet, money is not the only factor in an election.
This quote was not talking about electoral voting, but voting with your dollars in the capitalist sense of not supporting businesses you don't like. It doesn't matter if the general public hates a company and refuses to give them their business if billionaires throw mountains of money at them. That's what it's talking about.
@@jumjalalabash there is a 90% chance that the candidate who spends the most wins the election.
Solid reason why both laissez-faire and pure democracy are terrible systems that must be regulated.
@@jumjalalabash I remember reading something about how trump got somewhere around half a billion of free media coverage by being Inflammatory. He didnt pay, he knows how to get the spotlight tho and the media companies still paid
9:00 One of the right's greatest victorys has been changing the public perception of the American Dream to "here, anyone can make it". When the phrase was originally coined, the dream was "If you work hard, anyone can own a home, raise a family on a single income, and retire with dignity." This got changed just like your Ship of Theseus video discusses. "Own a home and retire with dignity" became "Make it". "Making it" became "Being a billionaire". And now, people think the American dream is literally "Anyone can become a billionaire", rather than "Anyone can live a simple and happy life".
I am not in favor of the simple life but I guess for some it's what floats your boat. Many revolutions are founded on the concept of just providing bread to everyone. Although I doubt today we are in there is very little chance of famine in the US without some kind of ecological disaster.