I was always taught that a big reason England managed to be relatively liberal was that the army was always small. And that was due to the accident of Geography that made Britain an island nation. A navy can't suppress the population in the same way that an army can. I genuinely never came across the idea of "inevitable" liberal democracies in my education.
The navy could have cut off all international trade and fishing as well as control the most important rivers. If anything the navy could have done a much much better job at cutting off the population from key ressources if they ever wanted to.
@@KT-pv3kl IF it wanted to. Which is why when the prime minister during the great potato famine ordered Ireland blocked from foreign aid (because "it would bring shame upon Britain to accept foreign aid" and also undercut his agenda of starving the irish into accepting industrialization) the navy did one heck of a shitty job stopping vessels filled with food from reaching the starving irish.
Funny enough, this argument is flawed in a similarly oversimplified way. Just as other country's magna-carta equivalents did not lead to liberty, living the island life was not necessarily a recipe for freedom (Japan comes to mind). Though perhaps they are both correlated with liberty, being on an island certainly keeps empires at bay (Japan, once again, comes to mind).
@@lardo1990 Well, England was unified, so it could afford to have a smaller army, while Japan was in basically constant civil war and/or a proto-military dictatorship, so it had to had a big army. I agree with you that both arguments are flawed, but neither is entirely wrong.
Republicans in the USA are actively working to destroy the democratic aspect of our democratic republic. That fits into the theme of this video very well
Just one slight correction: the Golden Bull of 1222 wasn't actually forced upon the king by the aristocracy. In fact, András II willingly signed the document because he wanted to raise a new noble class that wasn't as entrenched as the old aristocratic families and thus would need to rely on the king to counterbalance the influence of those old houses. Anonymus's Gesta Hungarorum is actually a "complaint" from the old aristocratic houses towards the king saying that he shouldn't rely on these new upstart servients, rather the old, entrenched noble houses as they came in with Árpád during the conquest of the Carpathian Basin. The problem with this plan was that it significantly lowered the income of the crown (since tax exemption was one of the most important privileges of the nobility) which is why András's successor, Béla IV tried to revoke many of the lands András II had given out to the servients. This backfired spectecularly since the new servients felt their newfound positions threatened and the old aristocracy feared that they would lose their won posessions as well. The two classes of the nobility thus united against the king which is why the first Mongol invasion of Hungary was such a devastating affair: Nobody with power actually wanted to help the king protect the kingdom. This unity among the nobility was later codified in the Golden Bull of 1351 but that's another matter entirely.
He also kind of overlooked a much more relevant reason for Venice's decline which is the ability of many other European nations to go around it. The main reason the noble families hoarded power so much was because there was less and less of it so they tried to hold on hard to what little was left. However by doing that they only accelerated the decline even further. It's the classic case of an empire falling and warlords fighting for the scraps but just in economic terms.
@@novastar6112 American left wingers are basically right wingers elsewhere. At least in major parts of Europe. In Finland I think Democrats would be right of all our current parties
I recall watching a video about the ottoman invasion that broke the nation some years ago. It was just shortly mentioned how the nobels had weakend the nation to the point of no return at that point and that even the ottoman sultan felt bad for fallen boy king. It was so absurd to see and then read about. It stuck with me like nothing else. It made me extremly hostile to anything that seems to weaken a nation for "profits". It has become a cornerstone for my national conserns. Really glad Kraut took this subject up
I wish the US still broke up monopolies. We came close to breaking up Microsoft, but they agreed to change. Now huge tech companies are so all consuming, and nothing is being done to stop it.
@@krazykris9396 according to my reading, the Sherman antitrust laws would be more than applicable to break up Google. I just don't think there's the political will to do so. Maybe the Democrats will pick up on it as a mobilizing force for voters... Hahahaha sorry I crack myself up
Not just tech companies, the entire economy is more or less in the hands of just a few people through a series of parent companies. Media, pharmaceuticals, real estate, food production, etc. all being prime examples of essential aspects of society being centralized under private ownership and control.
We Americans call that time the Gilded Age. I’m surprised that you didn’t mention this, as it aptly describes the country at the time. Overall a very interesting video and topic.
I've also never heard it referenced in a positive light either. Nor was the expansion of government reach seen as a win for the people but a changing of concentrated power into different hands.
I also think the Magna Carta, though interesting, is a highly overrated document (when it just enhanced the power of Feudal lords in a slowly modernising Feudal system). The Magna Carta did not really spell the end of English/British Feudalism, like many historians often claim. The massive erosions inflicted by the Black Death and Hundred Years War did.
@@hoi-polloi1863 Yeah, the UK somehow struck a balance between mostly figure head monarch and a relatively healthy parliamentary gathering (while France had a far too strong king ending in riot and revolt, while Hungary had overly strong/corrupt aristocrats weakening the state to the point of mass rioting, if not for the Ottoman annexation).
The real birth of modern democracy was the English Civil Wars, and the development of compromise between fundamentally incompatible political worldviews into a single political system. The Magna Carta could have been that point, but the conflict really only formalised the previously informal relationship between the barons & the nobility.
I think the biggest proof of your argument is the fact that the feudal system would continue to exist largely unchanged with the exception of the addition of a parliament for another 200 years, only breaking down in 15th century England with the combined whammies of the Black Death, Hundred Years War, and the War of the Roses, with the rise of the centralized Tudor dynasty. And even then it wasn't until the English Civil War where the compromise between Parliament and the Crown came to be in regards to sharing power.
The problem is, most people don't see beyond their self interest. Short term (few years or few decades) benefit for a group of people could mean a burden for all others and, after a while, even a problem for those who initially benefited from the change.
@@Kraut_the_Parrot Hi Kraut! Still waiting a video on the thought of European Sphere of Influence (to finally break free from the Anglo-American influence) and the decay of American dominance on the liberal world (although it seems to be on the rise again).
@@hughlevantjames905 why would he make a video about something that's not happening tho? The US has remained a stable 1/4 of the world's economy for a long time and been 1 of 2 or the only superpower also for a long time, and Europe (who are not the only ones) relies heavily on the US for certain things like military. Meanwhile Europe has been becoming a smaller portion of the world economy, its geopolitical prominence has been shrinking, and the only parts of Europe which aren't 100% in the American sphere of influence are those which have some influence of Russia and/or China as well or instead. The only ways in which Europe projects any influence on the rest of the world at all is that the French and British still desperately try to cling on to their former empires in the British commonwealth and whatever France calls its whole deal of filling West Africa with their military
@@kevincronk7981 Dunno where you're getting your data but the US has had a similar fall in share of the world GDP as the EU. (Excluding the dip from the UK.) The EU is constantly forcing their own rules onto huge multinational corporations and EU corporations still have an (unfair,) stranglehold over much of Africa's and South America's resources with a good part of Asia as well. Chinese growth appears to be peaking with their construction industry for one finally starting to fall. (Construction industry is usually a good economic health indicator.) US influence in Europe has certainly declined massively, especially due to the previous president sabotaging many things. Less and less the EU looks to the US while more and more they criticise it.
as a korean myself i gotta say, good luck tea_bag, military service is kinda brutal, but i have faith you can make it through, and i look forward to seeing your art again.
For all the Takos in the chat, Kraut's artist is the Takodachi not Kraut himself. Tho we can neither confirm nor deny if he allowed it in because he is also a Tako or because he didn't know who Ina was and just thought it looked neat
There's also the fact that using an octopus to represent encroaching power and influence has been a thing in political cartoons for almost 2 centuries.
Don’t you think the Venice part is a bit…Monocausal? Just the invention of high sea capable ships, the discovery of the new world and the expansion of European trade oversees could be argued to greatly influence Venice decline. You mention in your Turkey video how geography of the eastern Mediterranean and the trade in it made its owners superpowers, until the discovery’s of 15th century hit that is. This is equally true for Venice is it not?
Also, Hungary’s geography made it much more vulnerable to outside invasion than England, which is surrounded by water, and famously expanded its naval might through the very lucrative art of piracy, rather than any monarch’s efforts.
The argumentation is a copy of the argumentation from the book Why Nations Fail. The writers, and Kraut, only focuson the existance of inclusive institutions to create a healthy and prospering society. This is indeed a bit monocausal
This is ESPECIALLY true for Venice and Genoa, whose declines in the wake of the discovery of the Americas is well-observed. Kraut’s videos often suffer from this phenomenon of turning complex issues into mono causal events that respond exclusively to whatever he’s arguing, even if they contradict each other.
@@vitorboldrini6337 So the equivalent of expanding the english navy, for hungary, would be expanding it's army. But hungary cut it's army budget by lowering taxes.
Black Army: Stop Ottomans from conquering Hungary Aristocrats: Get rid of the Black Army Ottomans: Conquer Hungary Aristocrats: *surprised Pikachu face*
Not to mention that the heavy handedness of the aristocracy towards the common people caused a large scale rebellion headed Gyorgy Dosza. And that fatally wounded national unity, which led to the catastrophe at Mohacs.
Wanna know the best part? Even after Hungary was conquered by the Ottomans, the aristocracy still managed to extract taxes from almost all their former lands. Villages were forced to pay taxes to their Hungarian hereditary landlords (in exile in Austria), their Ottoman direct overlords, and often to the Catholic church as well. The noble families even managed to negotiate an even better deal from the Habsburg monarchy after their lands were reconquered in the eighteenth century, so much so that they repeatedly obstructed attempts by the emperors to end serfdom and guarantee civil rights! Aristocrats are scum.
Quick correction, the Associates were the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, not the Union Pacific Railroad. Union Pacific was created and funded by the federal government. The Union Pacific Railroad built the track on the east side from Missouri, the Central Pacific Railroad built the track on the west side from San Francisco, and then they met in Promontory Summit, Utah.
The point about the Magna Carta is, what people THOUGHT it said became a real political fact, even when it didn’t actually say that. We know that Magna Carta entered the popular imagination in England quite soon after it was signed. Moreover, in 1225, Henry III’s new version of Magna Carta extended certain rights originally only granted to “free men” to unfree peasants. From this time on, there are several cases of peasants attempting to sue their lords in the royal courts, citing Magna Carta. The document was also cited during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The peasants’ idea of what their rights OUGHT to be became attached to Magna Carta, even when the document did not actually grant those rights. It became a document about liberty because that’s what ordinary people WANTED it to be.
@@adamlakeman7240 The term "peasantry" refers to the class of rural, agrarian workers who typically live in a hierarchical society and work the land, often under some form of tenancy or servitude. In medieval England, peasants were generally classified into different groups such as villeins (serfs), cotters, and free tenants, based on their legal and economic status. The assertion that England did not have a peasantry before and during the time of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 is incorrect. Historical records and scholarly research clearly indicate that a peasantry did exist in England during this period. The Peasants' Revolt itself was driven by grievances specific to the peasantry. Issues such as the imposition of the Poll Tax, restrictions on wages following the Black Death, and the general exploitation by landlords were central to the uprising. The revolt saw peasants from various regions of England, including Kent and Essex, rising against their feudal lords and the government. Numerous historical documents, including chronicles, tax records, and manorial court rolls, provide detailed accounts of the lives of peasants during this time. These records mention the roles, responsibilities, and conditions of the peasantry, confirming their existence and significance in medieval English society.
@@georgesdelatour Just because you call them peasants doesn't mean they are peasants. The social system of England was quite different to that of the continent as confirmed by the "including chronicles, tax records, and manorial court rolls" you blithely cite. Read your Alan Macfarlane, disregard your Marx.
@georgesdelatour The Peasant's Revolt is irrelevant. It wasn't even called that until 1874 because the people revolting weren't peasants. Serfs are not peasants. Artisans are not peasants. Priests are not peasants. Hired farmworkers are not peasants. A peasant was someone who was very much tied to their family's land in a way that was common across Eurasia but didn't exist in any meaningful sense in England.
Absolutely Lovely surprise to find a fellow Takodachi Hiding in plain sight 23:16 I know not wether it was you or one of your artists but regardless it was a pleasant surprise, thankyou
As a Swiss, I actually enjoy being in a country which does not have a large bias as we didn't really take part in imperialism or expansionism and like the small village in Asterix and Obelix stayed for ourselves, mainly fought with each other or with invaders and primarily grew by territories wanting to join us. At least that's how I remember it. Unfortunately we are inevidably less important in the grand scheme of war history and politics, so there isn't much content out there to challenge those memories that stuck with me from the unusually boring history lessons. (our own history always felt a bit boring and between 1291 and the french occupation, not a lot has happened besides some quarrels between regions and churches) Anyways, because of this lack of bias, I tend to believe we don't receive a distorted image like Russia teaches about Stalin being a great guy and enemy of Hitler rather than being a Russian version of him that just got backstabbed before backstabbing him or America as the great sole savior of Europe during WWII rather than just being a part of the Allies.
And that the ottomans literally prohibited trade with the east which is the main reason why the Americas were discovered. It's crazy how he didn't mention that before the ottomans there were the Arabs who allowed trade and then the ottomans came and forbade it, which negated the main reason for Venice's existence. Then ottomans conquered many venecian outposts, the Portuguese discovered a new route around Africa and the Spanish literally discovered a new continent. Now the Mediterranean's importance was fading away as a new model of trade, the triangular trade, became the norm. Yet he managed to blame it all on free markets somehow...
@@benismann England also had a channel between them and all their enemies, making it much harder for enemies to actually sack England and deal serious damage ti the mainland
No one taught history like this when I was in high school or college. Venice and Genoa are spoken of in hagiographic-like tales of heroes and masters of business. History is basically "Storytime for kids" in the US.
@@ludgeisatmcdonalds Pretty much. The unsavory origins of history education is as state propaganda to justify the state and society in its present form.
A fairly large channel like yours using the final 4 minutes of one of your not often released videos to say "see ya later" to a friend and coworker was pretty heart warming.
A really great video. As an Irish Catholic the Glorious Revolution being taught as the pinnacle of liberal democracy is a laugh and I’m glad you so eloquently critiqued it.
A Liberal Democracy is just as capable of being cruel to foreign nations/people as Dictatorships. More to the point, the Glorious Revolution was touted as a starting point for Liberalism. It having immense inequalities doesn't diminish that.
@@stephenjenkins7971 That’s fair enough, I understand that ultimately the Glorious Revolution did end the attempt to bring Absolutism to Britain and that it’s constitutional monarchy would be built on those foundations. But you’re more than correct to say it’s inequalities are much more apparent under an apparently democratic parliament than they are under a feudal monarch. For example, Catholics and Jews had to wait until the Victorian age to be granted the same rights and freedoms that Protestant Englishmen were granted by the Glorious Revolution.
The people who set the Glorious Revolution in motion were of course hypocrites as the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland so proves but it doesn't detract it's historical importance in the evolution of parliamentary democracy in the British Isles, the US (it was an important source of inspiration their founding fathers) and elsewhere
@@vatsal7640 As far as I know Cromwell merely allowed Jews to return to Britain, specifically England during his regime. Daniel O’Connell, the leader of the Catholic Emancipation movement, even advocated for a law ordering Jews to wear a Star of David on it to be removed.
Love your vids man, hope you continue pumping out more. They feel very professionally done and are very interesting. You are one of my favourite youtubers and especially ones that talk about serious topics. Keep it going, you are great
I think it's important to mention that Rockerfeller actually made a profit from the breakup of standard oil, as he owned massive shares in all of the new companies that were formed and which were taxed collectively less than standard oil was.
The general problem with government intervention and regulation that a lot people choose to ignore is that it can just easily be used to hurt the general populace as help it.
@@guppy719 Argentina is a good example of this. On top of that you gotta add that the spam of so many supports to the poor through use of Welfare State policies, plust the regulation and manipulation of the market that messes up the prices, creating desemployment and raising the poverty line, created a culture of expecting always help from the govertment, which ultimately establishes absolute support to the party whom benefits you the most. There is nothing more vile than this, because it causes a lot of people who work and pay taxes(Be bussiness owners, non-irregular workers. Yes we pay high taxes as if we were in a nordic country) to be hateful or agaist of such policies, which makes a lot of the supporters of the party that promotes this bs, in turn, to mark those who protest as "Gorilas", or basically, people who hate the poor.
@@guppy719regulation is often only applied so far that it actually destroys competition for large corporations and banks rather than disrupt the bad business practices. Its a terrible balance.
The strength of England was that the king had lots of power but was controlled socially by the idea of English common law. Essentially he did not create law, law was set by tradition. The king's where also restrained by the fact that it was easier to tax the nobility by negotiating with them through parliament rather than just taking what they wanted at sword point. Parliament was the most functional under a powerful king as he had more bargaining power to get the nobility to do what he wanted. the king was very powerful, but had a lot of incentives to not be a massive tyrant and rule by consent. Parliament was never meant to rule, thats the kings job, parliament was just an institution to negotiate with the nobility. Even to this day the prime minister uses the devolved power of the monarch, they ask the queen to form a government on her behalf and use her powers. In theory she could refuse and choose whoever she wanted, in theory she could rule herself. The prime minister is essentially a second monarch who uses parliament to manage and negotiate with the nobility. There is no separation of powers in England.
It is tempting for most political ideologies to try to justify themselves in a scientific reading of history where history has predictive power. The irony is that the best reading, and therefore the most useful, comes when we try our best to accept information as-is. Shoutout to the fellow takodachis who caught the reference. If you know, you know -w-
Jedes Mal, wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht. Ich lerne viele neue Dinge, er schafft es jedes Mal, mich zu überraschen. Top quality content as always my man.
Jedes Mal, wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht, lerne ich viele neue Dinge. Er schafft es jedes Mal, mich zu überraschen.* The words are all correct, but german punctuation is sometimes a little tricky. The Problem with your version is, that the first sentence says:" Everytime, when Kraut releases a new video." And your second sentence:" I learn many new things, He always manages to surprise me." As you can see, you merely need to move the "I learn many new things" to the first sentence and adjust the word-order accordingly. A trick, that is taught to us germans, is to check if the mainclause makes sense without the subordinate clause, as the subordinate clause is only meant to give more information. In this case it would be:" Jedes Mal lerne ich viele neue Dinge"/"Everytime I learn many new things" and the additional information is:" wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht"/"when Kraut releases a new video".
Excellent video Kraut. I'd like to mention two things: The entirety of Thai history (at least from the Ayutthaya period (1351-1767) onwards) can almost be simplified to pre-1767: too much aristocratic power leading to a failure of a theoretically absolute monarch to organize its armed forces from a massive foreign invasion and a post-1767: too much monarchial power/the monarchy, military, religion, and aristocracy all combing their powers, eventually leading to the failures of Thailand to implement a true Parliamentary democracy up until the present day. I also wonder how close are the parallels with late 19th/early 20th century America's attempts to regulate the business conglomerates were in Britain, like why did Churchill side with Labor early in his political career (perhaps something you should consider investigating). Lucy Worsley's documentaries, particularly on the Glorious Revolution, introduced me to the concept of "Liberal History", a concept which, as an American, I have never heard of until watching Worsley.
Concepts don't need to be known by name. Sometimes just living their spirit, thinking alongside their lines is enough for that concept to influence how you see the world. This happens because we don't live in a vacuum and constantly take info from the surroundings, getting our worldview changed by the speech communities we partake in. So even if you knew liberal history late in your life, it probably influenced much of your interpretation of the world in the years prior. It's the prevailing narrative of history in the west of today.
@@8kuji The problem with "A History of Thailand" by Baker and Phongpaichit is that it skips much of the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya periods, although it is understandable considering their themes with the book.
@@8kuji For books (recommended to me on askhistorians): "Thailand: A Short History" (3rd edition) by David K. Wyatt. and "A History of Thailand" by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit (4th edition for this book is coming out very soon).
I feel thoroughly informed, slightly overwhelmed and more than a little intimidated. Definitely just finished a Kraut video Hope you feel better an we'll miss you Teabag
15:16. Venice didn't collapse because lack of inclusivity. Venice was Mediterranean, and Atlantic powers INCLUDED themselves in world trade making Venice unimportant. Literally the opposite of lack of "inclusivity" happened.
How dare you point out an inconvenient fact which contradict the narrative< Its not like the starting premise (the fall of Hungary and the Golden Bull) was not a straight-up oversimplification of the story and at best honest but gross mistake (and at worst outright rewriting history). The Hungarian nobolity resented and hated the Black Army, because it was the very embodiment of going toward the other extreme - the king, Mathias Hunyadi who basically founded it was very literally the first absolute monarch, who trampled over ANYONE who opposed him, put ridicolously high taxes on the peasentry to finance he's dreams to become the Emperor of the HRe though conquest etc.). For ALL (i repeat, ALL) fabric of Hungarian Society the Black Army was the symbol of oppression - even though the rest of society jsut got a other tyrant back, namely the nobility. That and the Hungarian nobolity was basically in a 120 year long constant civil war, where the Western half of the nobolity wanted a Habsburg ruler and the Eastern half wanted a Polish/Hungarian one. And Kraut CONVENIENTLY left out a very important detail in this regard too: the King of Hungary is elected by the nobility since its foundation. Its the legacy of the Magyar tribal Confederacy, where the 7 tribes elected its Tribal High Chief AND the High Priest (the Kende and Kundu in Hungarian - dont ask which one is which, that is lost in History). And the most invonvenient fact of all: Hungary is NOT destroyed by the Ottoman invasion. It was split into three (the Transylvanian Principality, which claimed itself to be the legitimate claimant of ALL of Hungary and the Throne of Hungary), the Austrian controled Royal Hungary and the ottoman occupied territory. Besides the occupied territory Hungary de facto existed up until this very day - its institutions remained, the nobility's right to elect the king remained until the Pragmatica Sanctio was passed by Maria Theresia, the Hungarian Diet remained up until 1848 and the Austrian Emperors are almost every year forced to call it. In fact Hungary was the ONLY continental European nation which didnt experienced Absolutism for more than a decade or two thought history. And all of that is actually thanks to the Hungarian Golden Bull, the doccument which allegedly killed the country. Despite the country bascially existed in all except name until 1848. Andeven then a short year after the Habsubrg Empire is basically forced to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire... Hungary ceased to exist for 20 year, what a tragedy... in exchange of avoiding ALL the absolutism shit the rest of the continent suffered and up until WW1 having the EXACT SAME legislative developments as the UK or the US. And even that is only stopped because the Western powers screwed us over. Hard time. Personally i didnt even bothered watching further than the 7:30 mark. If by that point the premise is wrong on SO MANY LEVEL i dont see the point of hearing it out further.
I would love it if you did a video dedicated to fully exploring the saga of Hungarian history, in more detail than just stating the basic events at the beginning and end. Also describing Hungary's history with just a single sentence referencing the Arpad dynasty is such a disservice to how influential they were to Hungarian history. Btw this isn't coming from a Hungarian, just an American interested in Hungarian history.
just be careful not to use only Hungarian sources, their neighbours have quite different view of history than them. For start do not use that map. Greetings from Croatia :-D
England is somewhat unqiue in it's geography in that it's an island nation which throughout it's history has largely been safe from outside invaders. Seems incredibly obvious at first, but it's an obvious fact that this video is glaringly missing. When people refer to the magna carta or glorious revolution, they are not implying that these events could occur elsewhere, so much of English public and common law history developed over hundreds of years because of the stability of that country. When a country like Hungary is invaded, all is lost. The libraries are sacked, knowledge is destroyed, and the nation itself is in ruin. English law is law, because we know what it is. We have hundreds of years of case law from thousands of cases archived and able to be viewed, some of which are still precedent to this day. England is unique in this sense.
I always appreciate it when TH-camrs such as yourself take the time to adequately explore and explain topics such as this. It’s often far too easy for people to grossly oversimplify complex topics such as this, and your genuine analysis is refreshing. So thank you!👍 Also, WOW! First oil burns on your arm & chest, then a bout with COVID? That’s rough. Hopefully things improve from here on out.
My understanding of the Founding Fathers was that they'd carefully studied not just how democracies successfully functioned, but very much how they fell. I mean, everyone was thinking of that if they had a classical education. They frequently claimed that the internal enemy as deadly to democracy as the external one was corruption. The Whiggish view of history is something I see as a consequence of nineteenth century idealism and optimism, belief in progress.
fantastic video! Thank you so much. American Here, and this was a great overview of early American Industrialization. It was quite gross, and no sector of the American market was safe from big cooperation stomping all over peoples personal liberties. There's endless stories about this. Like textile workers burning to death in a tall buildings with no fire escapes, to the coal worker crackdowns, to the meat packing industry. Just lots of crazy things that were ok before regulation created some reasonable standards. Anyway, I enjoyed this!
I don't know much about coal workers, but I know with your other 2 examples those were cases where there was such public outrage that the government made changes so that was no longer the case
Those are almost all cases with immigrants. Guess where such things happen in the modern day? The exception is the coal mining region where the process of taking power from business and moving it to the civil service was followed by vigorous attempts to eliminate the coal mining business. Power doesn't disappear and if you give it to people with no stake in anything they will burn everything down just to use it.
That type of thing was common everywhere in that era. Not a dismissal or justification, but shit conditions in factories and such was par for the course and not uniquely American.
@@M414-q6o But plenty of authoritarian leaders are stupid. At least in democracy there’s a higher chance of holding those in power responsible. There are more incentives for competent leadership in democracy than authoritarianism
Your narrative is impressive man. I have never faced a video about history that makes me want to hear a specific sentence several times just for the pleasure of enjoying the pronunciation, the pauses, the strength in words, the tempo and the particularly choosen vocabulary. For example the ending sentence at 9:19. Maybe I'm so impressed because at the same time I'm listening, I'm also reading the subtitles, and maybe that is what gives an extra strength to the narration.
Kraut I know this video took another of time to make and it was delayed slot but remember this man you make amazing and great videos so already put slot of effort in the and it shows you made a whole community around countryballs history channels and I love that and I love being part of this amazing community slot of great people but remember when you upload you make my day thank you so much for that I really do appreciate you as a person keep it up champ
The Magna Carta, when written, was a somewhat conservative document. What it did was put down in writing the rights the aristocracy already had in feudal law that John violated during his time as king. The actual rights themselves werent revolutionary. It my position that the european enlightenment was a fluke. What can be seen by studying history is that oligarchies usually dominate developed systems. Everybody is scared of monopoly but nobody understands the cartel. The cartel is more stable and profitable than a monopoly because it can externalise costs. In many cases a cartel is the collusion of multiple local monopolies, the government itself actually being a local monopoly that gets captured by cartel. The antitrust movement in america broke down the industrial cartel but built the banking one. the federal reserve (1913) is itself the largest financial monopoly-cartel in history.
While this video makes some very interesting points, I believe its reasoning for opposing the existence of large corporations and restricting the market in order to prevent their appearance is faulty. You set two very interesting examples - that of Venice and of the USA - and you mentioned how the unrestricted free market led to monopolies in both; however, you contradicted your own argument while explaining how these monopolies formed. This becomes very apparent when talking about the Union Pacific and the Associates. They were men who had failed in the free market - two failed miners and a failed businessman - who then utilized the regulatory power of the state to create a monopoly of their own and forbid anyone else from "entering their turf". They might have technically been a private company, but, as you yourself said, their money came almost entirely from the State, and their power also came from their government-enforced monopolies; it was not the free market who created this monopoly, but rather corrupt politicians who diverted funds towards this corporation and made legislation restricting the free market to its benefits. This is not free market economics; this is simply cronyism; free market for me, and regulation for everyone else. You yourself explained how Union Pacific relied entirely upon the State, and used the State's power to limit the free market; therefore, using it as an example of how the market naturally leads to monopolies is absurd. I agree with your point that big corporations can potentially be dangerous; but not because of their potential to form monopolies (which, under the free market, are extraordinarily rare and generally not very long lasting). Rather, what makes them dangerous for the institutions of economic inclusivity that make a society prosperous is their potential and tendency to get very close to the government in power. The Venetian example is much better, because it shows the true danger of large businesses; having them use the power of the State to restrict the access to the market of anyone but these already established corporations. In my opinion, therefore, the problem is not large business by themselves; the problem arises when these corporations try to utilize the power of the State to expel everyone else from their turf. Therefore, regulation should primarily target this problem, rather than the existence of these large businesses by themselves. I find your videos wonderful and very interesting, and really hope you continue creating more informative content; I just wanted to explain why I believe you might have made a mistake in your reasoning in this video. On the other hand, your comment on the non-deterministic nature of history, and how similar events can lead to very different outcomes, is indeed very interesting. I really hope you continue to make videos like these, you are one of the best content creators that I know of!
Finally got round to watching it and is a great video as usual. Also honoured to wish Teabag a farewell & I think I speak on behalf of your community, production team & anyone fortunate enough to know Teabag we all look forward to seeing him again some day.
Brietannia the legend! Loved your video on why Wales & Scotland have parliaments and the possibilities of devolution etc. Really wish more people watched your videos 🙌
@@lordgemini2376 Appreciate the kind words! tbf my channel has only been posting content since mid September 2021, so to be on over 2k subs is pretty good imo.
Whig historicism can't reasonably be separated from Liberalism. One can't critique the idea of inevitable progress without also critiquing the movements which have affected the changes which are then held up as examples of progress.
@@rwatertree popper was an explicitly liberal writer whose critique of historicism is ultra foundational. I think you can absolutely criticize any teleological historicism without throwing liberalism as a whole in the trash, lmfao.
Great video as always but can we take a moment to appreciate the arts in this video I mean look at 13:30 & 14:00 these are so good especially for countryballs standards. The artist have really improved
If Whig history was true, nothing would ever become worse, and that was dispelled with the first societal crisis after the Whig history concept was first thought up. It's insane that this idea has even persistent until today.
First off, love the video, love the channel. Easily one of the best political channels out there. This is a very weird video for me. In America, we have a very common saying - "Freedom isn't free". It's generally understood by most Americans that liberty is the exception, not the rule, and that it is fragile and must be protected. Violently, if necessary. The longstanding tradition of protesting in the USA is very much a result of this. I've never heard the term "whig history". If it's a real concept, than the UK and the US have VERY different understandings of the inevitability of liberal democracy. I think the section about companies being "too big to fail" ignores the very large, glaring, obvious elephant in the room. Globalism. Global markets changed the dynamics of economic trade dramatically. The robber barons gained their wealth by monopolizing and exploiting domestic markets. That isn't how current major corporations like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc are wealthy. That wealth comes from a MUCH broader reach, and a much smaller footprint needed to maintain that reach. It also ignores the very real phenomenon of "consumer-selected monopolies". Amazon and Google aren't actively squashing their competitors. The reason they're large is because consumers generally prefer using the most convenient option - Amazon for online shopping, Google for search engine results. You COULD use Bing (I personally do), or shop at another online retailer if you wanted; but you probably don't. Breaking up these companies, currently, would be explicitly worse for the consumer than letting them be. Anti-trust legislation exists to protect consumers, not to hurt them. Again, love the video and the exploration of history.
Agreed, but many of these companies do share similarities with the robber barons(corporate lobbying and illegal union-busting come to mind). Not to mention that some industries(like online shopping and space travel) are only accessible to very large corporations due to the expenses required to ship items overseas or to build rockets. Many of these new industries, just like the ones of the 1800s, are monopolized by billionaires because you need money to make more money, and this holds especially true for new or expensive technology.
@@nepdep1945 The union-busting thing, to me at least, is complicated. Unions have a bit of a mixed history in the US. On the one hand, they're responsible for several of our current labor laws, which is undoubtedly a positive. On the other hand, the UAW (United Autoworkers Union) is almost directly responsible for the suppression of electric cars. They correctly assumed the electric powertrain of a battery electric vehicle requires none of the competencies of an internal combustion engine. In the interest of protecting jobs, they vigorously fought against electric vehicles - and still do somewhat to this day. It's not hard to see why Tesla would be wary of the UAW. To expand on that, the teachers union and police union are both widely regarded as being a net negative - since they block the firing of bad teachers and bad cops. Europe, I think generally, has had a better experience with unions - though with the recent Volkswagen scandals I'm not sure if that's actually true.
Try to take comfort in the fact that things could always be worse. Chances are that you live a vastly more comfortable lifestyle than about 99.999% of all the total humans who lived in the past or present
@@gregbors8364 This. Fact is that humanity's current state is about the best it has ever been in its existence. The point is not to despair, but be aware and not allow it to degrade.
@@gregbors8364 nowadays (in first world countries) is definitely better than just about any other time since the invention of agriculture, but I've seen pretty plausible arguments that life may have been better back when we were all hunter-gatherers. I don't personally think that's true, I think life may have been worse after the advent of agriculture than before it, but I still think living in the US today is better than any life as a hunter gatherer. But it's a pretty interesting idea.
@@stephenjenkins7971 The only path that leads not to degradation is the willing graceful and respectful decay. The one free from malice and the clinging to power. All attempts to preserve and continue on are ultimately identical to choosing a violent malevolent degradation as that is all that awaits you in the end.
Hungary is such an interesting countries like we mostly know about the time with Austria and then independent ww2 then the Russian then independent again and today but it's medieval history is also very interesting and should not be ignored but we can say that for all of easten Europe
I came up with a saying last decade. "No matter what Race, Religion,Ideology, Nation, Creed, Ideals or Identity you have, we all have a great capability to dissapoint" I call it my "Cosmopolitan creed"
Whole lot of words to say something simply banal. Beings fail, and beings succeed. It must be studied the why, factual dialectics are central to seeing progress. Proportionality is important too, your determined creed unfortunately does matter as matter does exist.
If the English didn't live on an island separated from mainland Europe, the same thing could have easily happened to them that happened to the Hungarians and Poles.
I love kraut videos because they just kick ass, it’s a real treat that drops out of the blue sometimes and I’m always excited to watch them. Thank you for always putting out excellent work!
love the vid. at 23:36 though. I think someone managed to sneak in Ina (the vtuber) into there. Could be wrong. Don't think I am though. Like the tentacle monster has the ears on top, the halo, the crown. the saying "I'm human". All of these line up.
I think, for me as an English person, Magna Carta somewhat serves as a reminder that power structures can be changed and have good outcomes sprout from that change. The irony of current UK and US conservatives citing it as their inspiration is just exquisite.
The current Uk conservatives have a long history of change and enfranchisement. They gave the women the vote and they also gave all men the vote in 1918 with the liberal PM Lloyd George (thatchers favourite PM after churchill) and David Cameron passing the same sex marriage Act. People like to pretend they don't change anything or like they are anything in comparison to the American republicans but they aren't. They are the most successful conservative party in Europe for a reason. They generally don't believe in radical change same as the majority of the country but their deeply held liberalism unlike the American religious conservatism means they naturally believe in change albeit at a slower, less radical pace. Thatcher being the exception as she was a Conservative radical
The Golden Bull should then serve as a reminder that changes in power structures are not always positive developments, no matter how it looks on the surface.
Excellent, timely video. I'm sorry to hear about everything you went through trying to finish this video, but you should know that your work is very much appreciated.
Not a mistake, but I've noticed, especially in the "what is whig history" section, that the music is just slightly too loud compared to the spoken audio. A good score for the video, but I'm more interested in hearing what you have to say. XD Anyways, very interesting stuff as always! I look forward to whatever else yall produce for us!
This video touches one of the topics i always try to explain to Anarcho-capitalist. That even if you have a perfectly even playfield for everyone in a free non-regulated market eventually most of the assets/resources/rights/privileges will gravitate towards smaller groups of people which will almost always inevitably try to secure such assets/resources/rights/privileges by creating a form of centralized government institution (Which can be their own private mercenary army enforcing their laws) to undermine the competition and preserve their assets/resources/rights/privileges which will become the status-quo. Obviously outside the vacuum theoric society of anarcho-capitalism, when a monopoly or corporation grows beyond the control of an existing government they will "marry" said government to preserve themselves. This "marriage" with the goverment is more prevalent in latin american countries where the owners of land, banks and businesses that monopolized the assets are also members of the ruling class with a government always there to stop them from ever failing, going bankrupt or stopping any challenge from the competition. I really liked your breakdown with historical references outside the USA (The Robber Barons are the only ones i use). Curiosity 1: Robber Baron term originated in Germany (Raubritter), they were noble barons inside the Holy Roman empire that will put their castles along the Rhine and tax/toll/steal/confiscate any trader's property that might sail too close to their castles, they thrived due to lack of Imperial authority. Curiosity 2: If you manage to read this Kraut, get some vitamine C either in supplements or as ointments/cream (L-Ascorbic acid), clinical trials show they help a lot in skin burns and even more in severe burnt victims during their recovery.
Anarcho capitalists aren't interested in equality or the greater good. Their idea of a level playing field is that everyone (and particularly themselves) should not be hindered by the state to create monopolies.
The problem is that those monopolies in US were created or legitimized with the help of the government. We don't know what markets would look like or develop without the government as a third party. The example of corporate owners asking state forces to crush strikes is a perfect example of this
@@cv4809 we have a pretty good idea during the gilded age though. Corporations with no regulation, free to do whatever they want. So they hired mercenaries to kill dissidents, replaced men, women, and children when they got injured or died in the dangerous factories. And to make sure they kept making profits they put guns to their employee’s and debter’s heads to vote for who they want in power. That all happened because the government refused to get involved in the free market until Roosevelt.
The Carta Magna is an overhyped meme. It was simply the result of the weakness of the king, that had to give in to the demands of the nobility, basically moneys. But then the english, experts on the fine art of selling themselves and their stuff as wonders, twisted it as to make it the pillar of liberty and parliamentarism. There were lots of Magnas Cartas all over Europe before the Magna Carta, and way more significative, from the icelandic thing to the courts of Leon, which included the common people, not just the clergy and the nobility, in an assembly restricting the powers of the king. The idea that a medieval king could do as he please is plain nonsense, there were all over Europe lots of charters, binding contracts of different sorts that regulated the powers and the relationship of the King with a town, a region, a set of people, a set of rights, laws etc. The fact that it was actually England the very place in Europe were, until the XIII at least, the King had more unrestrained dominion and unchecked power over lands, taxation and people's rights only makes this Carta Magna claim of wonder more insidious. About Venice, that's all very nice and interesting and so on, but that doesn't explain the fall from grace of Venice. Nope. The italian wars and the turkish advance do. Whatever else there is is absolutely secondary. Same with US capitalism in the late XIX. It was a given. The exact same shit happen everywhere, starting with Germany, and Germany was fuckall liberal in the age of Bismarck. It all just had to do industrial revolution, accumulation of wealth and let's call it natural evolution of capitalism throughout different phases. What does that have to do with a whatever political system, be it republican liberal (US) or imperial autoritarian (II German Reich)???? It has fuckall to do. That's the thing with most of your lectures. You either totally miss the point, ignore the more relevant factuals to fit your narrative and/or reach absurd conclusions.
I mean, at the end of the Roman Empire, AFAIK, there were high strata that didn't pay taxes in periods in which a need for a stronger border army was essential. As always, the Fall is a complex, centuries-long phenomenon but for sure it didn't help.
I can't imagine the amount of work you put into the animation, thumbnail, and the editing. Your channel overall is the best and wish to see more interesting videos :) Also as a Korean, for a couple months in the south korean military you have to go through boot camp. Meaning he'll be able to have free time once he finishes his few months of boot camp.
Funny how the companies like Union Pacific that took advantage of “the unregulated market” and led to the monopolies was so dependent on government programs (that paid for the railroad) to gain such a dominant position. It’s almost like allowing the government interference in market forces in the first place was the issue. . .
Fucking this. Every example of companies abusing the free market by amassing wealth and using it to crush competition and establishing monopolies was done by USING government Every. Single. One. Free markets don't create monopolies. Government interference does.
One of the valid criticisms that the dissident right (Hoppe, Moldbug etc) is their skepticism towards the idea of Whig historiography. I’m glad to see a liberal critique of the same concept.
11:48 you should avoid using the term "dark age", my understanding is most historians have ceased using it since its a misnomer. it should be referred to as the early medieval period as far as i know.
I really like this video because it succinctly lays out the inherent danger of allowing any sort of concentration of power which is not answerable to citizens. Look at Rupert Murdoch, people would be crying and shidding themselves if a government minister in Australia controlled the editorial policy of huge swaths of media in Australia, the USA and the UK. Yet, because it is in private hands we are to avert our eyes and not think about it? This can be seen with the tech giants, mining giants and etc as well. To hell with that, bring on the new wave of anti-trust measures.
Funny you'd elect Murdoch as your bogeyman to enact such policy. Time Warner/Disney/NBC/Google are much larger media companies with much more reach than Murdoch.
Actually, I don't think Rupert and his rags are the worst example. His media empire is awfull yes but he's more of an enabler. It's easier to sell bombastic reactionary headlines. That's been his schtick. They are also far from the only actor in their respective market. But if you look at Hungary! Then there is a horror story! They weren't bought out by ONE guy, but by a group represeting Orbans party. The Sinclair in the US is also pretty scary, because they target local news buyout and their Editorial Interference is much more blatant.
At 11:00, makes me vaguely think of bad-faith libertarians who push notions of "freedom" but mostly seem to want to remove whatever authority might stop them creating their own autocratic fiefdoms (IE, a strong goverment).
Standard Oil qualified as a Monopoloy under Sherman anti trust law (75% market share) for well over 20 years. Between 1890 and 1904 Standard Oil controlled close to 90% of the refined oil market in the United States. Yet despite that Standard Oil wasn't able to charge extortionate prices. Their prices went down almost every year because of the very real prospect of reigonal competition. For example, between 1869 and 1885 the price of oil fell from 30 cents per gallon to 8 cents. During this same period of time Standard Oil's market share rose from 25% to around 85%. Furthermore, if Standard Oil were the unrestrained monopoly everyone makes it out to be why was it not broken up at it's peak? By the time Standard Oil was broken up in 1911 it's market share had already dropped from 90% to 64%. It was in decline- due to several reasons. Competition was on the rise. But no, Government needed to step in there and protect everyone, right? There could not be a clearer case of the fact that you cannot actually have a monopoly in a free market. It simply doesn't work. Companies can never become so successful they escape the feedback loop that gives them their success. A monopoly can only be established through force because force is the only thing that can prevent competition. Private government contracts establish monopolies. Private contracts like those in Kraut's railroad example. Once you introduce government intervention, _then_ you have business utterly untethered from supply and demand. Unbeholden to the customers who rely on it. That is the true issue- this mixture of state and business we disgustingly applaud and advocate for today.
A critique of the critique: 1. Winston Churchill claimed that liberal democracy was basically the least worst system of governance. Liberal history might be a folly but it is less so than other systems of governance. 2. Liberalism has showed an ability to adapt. After Karl Marx's criticism of rampant liberalism the working classes produced the social democracy as a compromise. Maybe there's an argument that social democracy is no longer liberalism - I'll leave that to personal preference if you want to argue that way. 3. Liberalism was conceived with human nature in mind and therefore it may turn out to be the most sustainable when compared with its competitors. That doesn't mean it won't be subject to folly though. 4. If liberalism has not become the dominant system of government maybe we just haven't waited long enough. I'm not saying I think it will, but it has only been around a few hundred years. Thanks for the ideas. Made me think.
A very timely video for us viewers in the UK. As the workers are beginning to stand up (rail workers on strike, NHS, and Criminal barristers may join soon, hopefully, others too) against a government that is constantly mired in shame, and is blatantly there to serve the interests of only the rich and powerful. Let me elaborate; in the midst of the living cost crisis, the Tory government refuses to at the very least bring up wages near the inflation rate, let alone match them. All the while they want to lift the bankers' max. wage cap, and they already increased their own (parliamentary members') wages. And those energy companies that are making unprecedented profits (Shell made more this year than ever in their history), well the government refuses to windfall tax them, arguing that it will halt these companies from further investment (even though shell openly stated that this won't be the case). America's Neoliberal shift in the last 50 years is much worse, in fact, it was the template that the British Tories learned from, ever since the reign of Thatcher going forward. Thank you for addressing a matter, that should be very important to everyones' consideration. Especially now.
Thank you for the attention to my little country! :D It warms my heart. In my opinion England went a different path also, because they didn't have an agressive neighbour, who wasn't separated by sea, that had the economical resources 10 times than England.
That could also have allowed the barons to really take controll over the nation sice it wasnt any "enemys at the gates" keeping people from growing to greedy and lazy Every nations has a million factors at play that is diffrent. Best we can do is look at them one at a time and try and pull somthing generaly usefull from them. Here its simply "if you let a few take everything, then they will take everything and more"
It's an extremely well-made introduction to the power dynamics of the government. Most of the time, people think the fact that monarchy is the most dangerous threat to the public but the sinister ways of the oligarchy are often more destructive to people. Most of the monarchs are next to nothing if their countries are ruined. As it wasn't enough often they are the biggest threat to occupiers so monarchs inherently have to think about their subjects.
I think democracy can sometimes lead itself to anarchy. There is a story in India of ancient Republic of Vaishali which was crushed by a monarchy. It was an anarchy street Republic which spent most of time discussing who or how the war will be fought while they were subjugated. The story goes that when the news got to a meditating Buddha, it seems, he frowned in disapproval. Meaning that to keep the peace, a kingdom has to be fully prepared for war, or it will meet Vaishali’s fate. This story formed the basis for code 'Buddha is smiling' for success of indian nuke program. P.s I copied some parts from a news article since I was to lazy to type.
I would love to see a video on on the political development of Britain and Ireland. We dont get taught much about it at all in Britain, and I really want your interpretation of the development of liberalism in Britain, as i feel it did get a little left in the dust this video. I'm not actually super into history other than its aesthetic merits (old shit looks really cool) but your videos are always super enjoyable to me. Also, pls do a video on the history of the Celtic nations of the UK, I'm Scottish and I'd love to learn more and your stuff is always super digestible. Not sure how political a video like that would be though, so maybe it wouldnt be your thing .__.
The problem with most criticism of the American Gilded Age is that people compare it to today, as opposed to some period prior. There had never been greater economic growth ever achieved in history. The US went from many living on dirt floors to the richest country on earth by the 1890s.
Only as tiny few people went to being the richest country on earth. What is the point of being the richest country on earth if your workers are working 16 hour days and being killed by their machinery? Or starving a large portion of rural poor farmers as the corporate farms rapidly won competition with them. Sure the long term result has been better accesss to food but it took a lot of starving and people becoming destitute to then fluctuating dangerous food prices to finally intervention in the market to stabilise crops to make it worth while for anyone who isn’t the owner of the corporate farm.
I'm currently listening to the wealth of nations and your video sounds a lot like the end of the first book (Book I, Chapter XI, coclusion of the chapter; if you wanna look it up). Smith devides society into those who make their money from wages, from rent and from stock and goes on to say that the interest of the first group is always aligned with that of the society, since a growing society also has a growning need for labour which improves the compensation and conditions of the labourer via supply and demand. The second group's intrest is also aligned with that of the public, because their income originates as a part of and therefore rises with that of the labourer, however since rent doesn't take a lot of work to collect (even less back then) they don't really understand what their intrests are and how to achieve them, so are easily duped into accepting unfavorable regulations. The third group however is thriving when society at large is declining, as he puts it: "[the rate of profit] is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are fastest going to ruin.", and: "To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it", which is basically the anti trust point you made at the end there. I just heard that part yesterday so maybe he pulls a complete 180 in the other books but it always facinates me that when you look back at the people who formulated the basis of capitalism they are very reasonable people who were very aware of the dangers of a completly free market. Now that those dangers are reality the modern day econimists want to convince us that it's all in our own best intrest because economist are by now almost all part of that third group who as smith acknowledges hold "a very simple but honest conviction that their intrest,[...], [is] the interest of the public"
Have in mind that several schools of economic thought have over time corrected some of adam smith's mistakes (in favor or against liberalism, depending on the school of thought), so don't take his word as final.
Did the Hungarian parliament represent non-nobles in a separate chamber like the English one? Because if not then it's not really comparable. Having two houses from the 1300s that had to agree with one being elected by the land owners is a very, very slowly expanding franchise that could be seen an inevitably expanding liberty over time.
I don't think there really is any medieval country comparable to post-magna carta England and I'm guessing Hungary was chosen because it was one of, if not the closest one to that, albeit they have some differences, but so do a lot of other things. I am not an expert on history though, and in no way will I claim to be one, so if I got something wrong I would like to know, just don't be overly aggressive about it.
Well if I'm not mistaken in the early days (which he uses for the comparison) The House of Commons didn't exist and it's first iterations essentially comprise of the slightly poorer nobles + rich cities.
@@blastermanr6359 And even then, the burgesses (the representatives of the boroughs and shires) were knight. It's only in the 19th century that the House of Commons even vaguely started to represent anything other than gentry.
@@talideon while true. I think the time the House of Commons became a bastion of liberal ideals was the time shortly before, during, and after the English Civil War.
There was the Diet of Hungary was developed in a more organic manner as presented in the video. the earliest predecessor of it was the law seeing days, which were events when the nobility (from the lowest to the highest) could be present and advise the king to make new laws. The later diets were a kind of two chamber affairs. The so called Upper Table consisted of the "barons of the realm" (the high aristocrats) and the bishops of the country, while the Lower Table consisted by the minor and landless nobility (Hungary never had an explicit knightly class thus landless nobles filled that role) and the burgers of the royal free cities (equivalent to the chartered cities of England). In fact John Hunyadi and more importantly his son (the real creator of the black army) Mathias Hunyadi (also know as Mathias Corvinus or King Mathaias, as he was later elected king of Hungary) revived most of his support from the lower table. I say most as the Hunyadi family was the richest and the most powerful aristocratic family in 15th century Hungary with similarly powerful allies in other families like the Szilagyi and so on. Still Mathias as king largely relied on the burgers and landless nobles to support him. Long story short the Diet of Hungary wasn't that different of an institution as the Parliament of England was at the same time.
I really appreciate a liberal, that understands that liberalism needs to curtail too much power in the hands of few, in order to uphold itself. Let alone its stated ideals. No, this is not intended as a backhanded anything. I just wished more liberals cared about this.
@@lostkin4910 Well, no offense, but I dont think that counts for liberals in many places. At least in modern times. Australia, America, and Japan are notable examples. Luckily yes, most liberals, think monopoly busting is a social good. Though elected officials often have the issue of needing party funds, and going against monied interests is often an uphill battle, when who you are targeting, are the biggest economic power houses within your jurisdiction. Its easier to just take the money and look the other way.
Problem is, that it can be a contradiction to itself. When you need a central government to curtail monopolies you also give lots of power to a few people that can act in their own interests, and the result could be similar to what happens in a monopoly.
I personally like to thing of political and social structures and the like as of solutions to a problem. I personally like to thing of solutions as a result of a darwinian evolution: -The most successful solution at the time wins and dominates. -Tensions, frictions and struggles are the breeding ground for new solutions. -Every failure is a success in the sense that it allows observers not to apply the same solution under the exact same conditions. So... coming back to Liberalism... After watching Krauts video I can say with full confidence: Shit seems to work, yo! Until it doesnt anymore. Which causes suffering and tension and strife and friction and conflict. Which allows the invention of new ideas and the adaption of old ones. So, yeah, one day this evolution might end with the perfect solution and that might be some form of Liberalism. Although it most likely will not. End at all, I mean.
Hey man I love your videos as they are so well researched and thought out. The quality is just awesome. However I feel that they tend to constantly be a loosely connected bundle of multiple interpretations of history. For example in this video I felt it was divided into a critique of aristocratic rule on a governmental and economic background which were held together by a weak segway. It didn't feel to support the title of the video and with that the main topic at hand. By the time you got to the issue of american monopolies I couldn't help but wonder if I was even watching the same video as the one with the critique of misinterpretation regarding the English democracy's beginnings. I wish you'd make the spine of the video more centered on the topic or made it clearer how the discussed parts are connected to it.
Corrections and Notes:
1: Taft didn’t create income tax, Wilson did
will you ever do a video about ireland?
Video on the european importance of the UK ?
Kazakh* not Kazakstani
Preparation
6:07 Wasn't it Mátyás Hunyadi/Matthias Corvinus who raised taxes and formed the black army
As a Pole, I am always livid that our magnates (high aristocracy) destroyed our chance to brag about being the first functional democracy.
@Anhedon It is good thing then because we had mercantilism at the time
The first functional democracy would be athens,but of the citizens and not the slaves
@@Cecilia-ky3uw yes sorry i forgot to add modern
Funny my dad(family is polish American and still celebrating) call these nobles “ tsar wannabes” or “traitors”
@@Cecilia-ky3uw the ancient Greeks also didn't let their women vote. Thank you ancient democracy!
I was always taught that a big reason England managed to be relatively liberal was that the army was always small. And that was due to the accident of Geography that made Britain an island nation. A navy can't suppress the population in the same way that an army can. I genuinely never came across the idea of "inevitable" liberal democracies in my education.
The navy could have cut off all international trade and fishing as well as control the most important rivers. If anything the navy could have done a much much better job at cutting off the population from key ressources if they ever wanted to.
@@KT-pv3kl IF it wanted to.
Which is why when the prime minister during the great potato famine ordered Ireland blocked from foreign aid (because "it would bring shame upon Britain to accept foreign aid" and also undercut his agenda of starving the irish into accepting industrialization) the navy did one heck of a shitty job stopping vessels filled with food from reaching the starving irish.
Funny enough, this argument is flawed in a similarly oversimplified way. Just as other country's magna-carta equivalents did not lead to liberty, living the island life was not necessarily a recipe for freedom (Japan comes to mind). Though perhaps they are both correlated with liberty, being on an island certainly keeps empires at bay (Japan, once again, comes to mind).
@@lardo1990 Well, England was unified, so it could afford to have a smaller army, while Japan was in basically constant civil war and/or a proto-military dictatorship, so it had to had a big army.
I agree with you that both arguments are flawed, but neither is entirely wrong.
@@12D_D21 and one Japan unified It did become somewhat democratic for a time.
"The aristocrats destroyed their own country for a tax cut"
*immediately transitions to photos of the USA*
Republicans in the USA are actively working to destroy the democratic aspect of our democratic republic. That fits into the theme of this video very well
Why they aren't equivalent.
Too true, but both left and right will claim the other side is the aristocrats so nothing ever gets done.
@@kordellswoffer1520 the destruction isnt as obvious because there are no mongols around to teach people a lesson.
Yep thats what aristocrats are for to be leeches.
Just one slight correction: the Golden Bull of 1222 wasn't actually forced upon the king by the aristocracy. In fact, András II willingly signed the document because he wanted to raise a new noble class that wasn't as entrenched as the old aristocratic families and thus would need to rely on the king to counterbalance the influence of those old houses. Anonymus's Gesta Hungarorum is actually a "complaint" from the old aristocratic houses towards the king saying that he shouldn't rely on these new upstart servients, rather the old, entrenched noble houses as they came in with Árpád during the conquest of the Carpathian Basin.
The problem with this plan was that it significantly lowered the income of the crown (since tax exemption was one of the most important privileges of the nobility) which is why András's successor, Béla IV tried to revoke many of the lands András II had given out to the servients. This backfired spectecularly since the new servients felt their newfound positions threatened and the old aristocracy feared that they would lose their won posessions as well. The two classes of the nobility thus united against the king which is why the first Mongol invasion of Hungary was such a devastating affair: Nobody with power actually wanted to help the king protect the kingdom.
This unity among the nobility was later codified in the Golden Bull of 1351 but that's another matter entirely.
Thanks for the additional detail it helps explain what happened
He also kind of overlooked a much more relevant reason for Venice's decline which is the ability of many other European nations to go around it. The main reason the noble families hoarded power so much was because there was less and less of it so they tried to hold on hard to what little was left. However by doing that they only accelerated the decline even further.
It's the classic case of an empire falling and warlords fighting for the scraps but just in economic terms.
“The aristocratic oligarchy basically destroyed their own country... for a tax cut” don’t you just love rich and powerful?!
Well, you won't be surprised by that at all if you listen to modern right wingers at all
@@tj-co9go Same with American left wingers
@@novastar6112 American left wingers are basically right wingers elsewhere. At least in major parts of Europe. In Finland I think Democrats would be right of all our current parties
I recall watching a video about the ottoman invasion that broke the nation some years ago. It was just shortly mentioned how the nobels had weakend the nation to the point of no return at that point and that even the ottoman sultan felt bad for fallen boy king. It was so absurd to see and then read about.
It stuck with me like nothing else. It made me extremly hostile to anything that seems to weaken a nation for "profits". It has become a cornerstone for my national conserns.
Really glad Kraut took this subject up
@@tj-co9go no fucking way the Democrats are to the right of True Finns
I wish the US still broke up monopolies. We came close to breaking up Microsoft, but they agreed to change. Now huge tech companies are so all consuming, and nothing is being done to stop it.
we need to do that
@@sstff6771 Especially Google.
@@krazykris9396 according to my reading, the Sherman antitrust laws would be more than applicable to break up Google. I just don't think there's the political will to do so. Maybe the Democrats will pick up on it as a mobilizing force for voters... Hahahaha sorry I crack myself up
The US is doomed. I really wish it wasn’t, some Americans are really nice 😢
Not just tech companies, the entire economy is more or less in the hands of just a few people through a series of parent companies. Media, pharmaceuticals, real estate, food production, etc. all being prime examples of essential aspects of society being centralized under private ownership and control.
We Americans call that time the Gilded Age. I’m surprised that you didn’t mention this, as it aptly describes the country at the time. Overall a very interesting video and topic.
I've also never heard it referenced in a positive light either. Nor was the expansion of government reach seen as a win for the people but a changing of concentrated power into different hands.
Not to mention right now too
Certainly a bad thing on his part
@@clbrans1 The Muckrakers are the only thing I can think of that are talked about in a positive light. That and Teddy Roosevelt.
@@atticusroot8016 that’s the progressive age. The guilded age was before that
I also think the Magna Carta, though interesting, is a highly overrated document (when it just enhanced the power of Feudal lords in a slowly modernising Feudal system).
The Magna Carta did not really spell the end of English/British Feudalism, like many historians often claim.
The massive erosions inflicted by the Black Death and Hundred Years War did.
The MC didn't destroy feudalism, but it did curtail royal absolutism, as opposed to what happened in France. So that's something, right?
@@hoi-polloi1863 Yeah, the UK somehow struck a balance between mostly figure head monarch and a relatively healthy parliamentary gathering (while France had a far too strong king ending in riot and revolt, while Hungary had overly strong/corrupt aristocrats weakening the state to the point of mass rioting, if not for the Ottoman annexation).
So the events of 200 years prior?
The real birth of modern democracy was the English Civil Wars, and the development of compromise between fundamentally incompatible political worldviews into a single political system. The Magna Carta could have been that point, but the conflict really only formalised the previously informal relationship between the barons & the nobility.
I think the biggest proof of your argument is the fact that the feudal system would continue to exist largely unchanged with the exception of the addition of a parliament for another 200 years, only breaking down in 15th century England with the combined whammies of the Black Death, Hundred Years War, and the War of the Roses, with the rise of the centralized Tudor dynasty. And even then it wasn't until the English Civil War where the compromise between Parliament and the Crown came to be in regards to sharing power.
"They destroyed their own country for a tax cut"
Yup I have no problem believing that.
Two ways to take that:
1. Right: "Ah-ha! We must ensure a large well funded military!"
2. Left: "Ah-ha! We must have 95% tax rate!"
:)
The problem is, most people don't see beyond their self interest. Short term (few years or few decades) benefit for a group of people could mean a burden for all others and, after a while, even a problem for those who initially benefited from the change.
@@bozimmerman other way around
Glad to see you're still out there 😎 You really succeeded as a historian; hard work paid off
hope you are doing well too
@@Kraut_the_Parrot I'm trying brother 🥰
@@Kraut_the_Parrot Hi Kraut! Still waiting a video on the thought of European Sphere of Influence (to finally break free from the Anglo-American influence) and the decay of American dominance on the liberal world (although it seems to be on the rise again).
@@hughlevantjames905 why would he make a video about something that's not happening tho? The US has remained a stable 1/4 of the world's economy for a long time and been 1 of 2 or the only superpower also for a long time, and Europe (who are not the only ones) relies heavily on the US for certain things like military. Meanwhile Europe has been becoming a smaller portion of the world economy, its geopolitical prominence has been shrinking, and the only parts of Europe which aren't 100% in the American sphere of influence are those which have some influence of Russia and/or China as well or instead. The only ways in which Europe projects any influence on the rest of the world at all is that the French and British still desperately try to cling on to their former empires in the British commonwealth and whatever France calls its whole deal of filling West Africa with their military
@@kevincronk7981 Dunno where you're getting your data but the US has had a similar fall in share of the world GDP as the EU. (Excluding the dip from the UK.)
The EU is constantly forcing their own rules onto huge multinational corporations and EU corporations still have an (unfair,) stranglehold over much of Africa's and South America's resources with a good part of Asia as well.
Chinese growth appears to be peaking with their construction industry for one finally starting to fall. (Construction industry is usually a good economic health indicator.)
US influence in Europe has certainly declined massively, especially due to the previous president sabotaging many things. Less and less the EU looks to the US while more and more they criticise it.
Okay, making Veniceball into a semi-octupus was freaking brilliant. Kudos to the artist.
That's a Polandball thing
Why an octopus?
@@frituurpan31 it represents the trade routes, something along those lines.
Tea bag ftw
@@luisnemecioaguirreflores2284 Nah, it's because the Venician flag has tentacle-like fringes/pennants
as a korean myself i gotta say, good luck tea_bag, military service is kinda brutal, but i have faith you can make it through, and i look forward to seeing your art again.
Did you also have to do military service?
@@DimesAndNichols it’s required
@@DimesAndNichols all Koreans do, BTS apparently got drafted and in the north they also do but much longer
@@edp4463 BTS went against the wishes of the government, afaik
@@edp4463 wait can we send BTS to North Korea?
For all the Takos in the chat, Kraut's artist is the Takodachi not Kraut himself. Tho we can neither confirm nor deny if he allowed it in because he is also a Tako or because he didn't know who Ina was and just thought it looked neat
There's also the fact that using an octopus to represent encroaching power and influence has been a thing in political cartoons for almost 2 centuries.
@@SeruraRenge11 That would be true, but it has head flaps and a halo, and her headband, and says "wah", so it's 100% a hololive reference
@@CSDragon No I know it is, I just mean it works as a double reference.
@@SeruraRenge11 ah yeah. That's why it was an octopus in the first place, but the artist decided to make it _our_ octopus :D
23:15
I laughed my ass off when Hungary showed up and said "It's hungry time" and hungered all over Europe
Truly the moment ever
Epic hunger moment
Hungary Hungary hippos
The Hungary Games?
Don’t you think the Venice part is a bit…Monocausal? Just the invention of high sea capable ships, the discovery of the new world and the expansion of European trade oversees could be argued to greatly influence Venice decline.
You mention in your Turkey video how geography of the eastern Mediterranean and the trade in it made its owners superpowers, until the discovery’s of 15th century hit that is. This is equally true for Venice is it not?
Also, Hungary’s geography made it much more vulnerable to outside invasion than England, which is surrounded by water, and famously expanded its naval might through the very lucrative art of piracy, rather than any monarch’s efforts.
The Golden Book - which restricts government control to the oligarchy - predated the decline of Mediterreannean Trade.
The argumentation is a copy of the argumentation from the book Why Nations Fail. The writers, and Kraut, only focuson the existance of inclusive institutions to create a healthy and prospering society. This is indeed a bit monocausal
This is ESPECIALLY true for Venice and Genoa, whose declines in the wake of the discovery of the Americas is well-observed.
Kraut’s videos often suffer from this phenomenon of turning complex issues into mono causal events that respond exclusively to whatever he’s arguing, even if they contradict each other.
@@vitorboldrini6337 So the equivalent of expanding the english navy, for hungary, would be expanding it's army. But hungary cut it's army budget by lowering taxes.
Black Army: Stop Ottomans from conquering Hungary
Aristocrats: Get rid of the Black Army
Ottomans: Conquer Hungary
Aristocrats: *surprised Pikachu face*
what is a Hungry? There's no way you misspelled it twice
Ok it's fixed
Not to mention that the heavy handedness of the aristocracy towards the common people caused a large scale rebellion headed Gyorgy Dosza. And that fatally wounded national unity, which led to the catastrophe at Mohacs.
Wanna know the best part? Even after Hungary was conquered by the Ottomans, the aristocracy still managed to extract taxes from almost all their former lands. Villages were forced to pay taxes to their Hungarian hereditary landlords (in exile in Austria), their Ottoman direct overlords, and often to the Catholic church as well. The noble families even managed to negotiate an even better deal from the Habsburg monarchy after their lands were reconquered in the eighteenth century, so much so that they repeatedly obstructed attempts by the emperors to end serfdom and guarantee civil rights!
Aristocrats are scum.
@Kraus von Grat Fair point since aristocracy basically is a subset of timocracy
Kraut -> literally deep fries his arm
Also Kraut -> spends more time talking about his buddy going into conscription.
chad
imposter. im the real joe carr
I think you should be given honourary scotish citizenship, for deep frying your arm :)
Quick correction, the Associates were the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, not the Union Pacific Railroad. Union Pacific was created and funded by the federal government. The Union Pacific Railroad built the track on the east side from Missouri, the Central Pacific Railroad built the track on the west side from San Francisco, and then they met in Promontory Summit, Utah.
The point about the Magna Carta is, what people THOUGHT it said became a real political fact, even when it didn’t actually say that.
We know that Magna Carta entered the popular imagination in England quite soon after it was signed. Moreover, in 1225, Henry III’s new version of Magna Carta extended certain rights originally only granted to “free men” to unfree peasants. From this time on, there are several cases of peasants attempting to sue their lords in the royal courts, citing Magna Carta. The document was also cited during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
The peasants’ idea of what their rights OUGHT to be became attached to Magna Carta, even when the document did not actually grant those rights. It became a document about liberty because that’s what ordinary people WANTED it to be.
England didn't have a peasantry.
@@adamlakeman7240 The term "peasantry" refers to the class of rural, agrarian workers who typically live in a hierarchical society and work the land, often under some form of tenancy or servitude. In medieval England, peasants were generally classified into different groups such as villeins (serfs), cotters, and free tenants, based on their legal and economic status.
The assertion that England did not have a peasantry before and during the time of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 is incorrect. Historical records and scholarly research clearly indicate that a peasantry did exist in England during this period.
The Peasants' Revolt itself was driven by grievances specific to the peasantry. Issues such as the imposition of the Poll Tax, restrictions on wages following the Black Death, and the general exploitation by landlords were central to the uprising. The revolt saw peasants from various regions of England, including Kent and Essex, rising against their feudal lords and the government.
Numerous historical documents, including chronicles, tax records, and manorial court rolls, provide detailed accounts of the lives of peasants during this time. These records mention the roles, responsibilities, and conditions of the peasantry, confirming their existence and significance in medieval English society.
@@georgesdelatour Just because you call them peasants doesn't mean they are peasants. The social system of England was quite different to that of the continent as confirmed by the "including chronicles, tax records, and manorial court rolls" you blithely cite. Read your Alan Macfarlane, disregard your Marx.
@@adamlakeman7240 How would you re-name the Peasants Revolt, then? Who was revolting, and what was their grievance?
@georgesdelatour The Peasant's Revolt is irrelevant. It wasn't even called that until 1874 because the people revolting weren't peasants. Serfs are not peasants. Artisans are not peasants. Priests are not peasants. Hired farmworkers are not peasants.
A peasant was someone who was very much tied to their family's land in a way that was common across Eurasia but didn't exist in any meaningful sense in England.
Absolutely Lovely surprise to find a fellow Takodachi Hiding in plain sight
23:16
I know not wether it was you or one of your artists but regardless it was a pleasant surprise, thankyou
I was looking for this comment!
wahnderful
Truly WAHnderful!!!
W A H!!
And oh my, the WAH, the tenticles, the world domINAtion, and the FLAT tax. Why it's so perfect fitting. Maybe all billionaires are TAKOdachi XDXD
Humu humu
Don't deep fry stuff at home!
That's why I always use air fryer 😁
@@Zeyede_Seyum clearly you own an air fryer
Good health to you bro🥂
You can't tell me what to do
I DO WHAT I WANT
As an American, it’s fascinating to see how different countries educate people about history and politics.
Most interesting is that, they actually do!
As a Swiss, I actually enjoy being in a country which does not have a large bias as we didn't really take part in imperialism or expansionism and like the small village in Asterix and Obelix stayed for ourselves, mainly fought with each other or with invaders and primarily grew by territories wanting to join us.
At least that's how I remember it. Unfortunately we are inevidably less important in the grand scheme of war history and politics, so there isn't much content out there to challenge those memories that stuck with me from the unusually boring history lessons. (our own history always felt a bit boring and between 1291 and the french occupation, not a lot has happened besides some quarrels between regions and churches)
Anyways, because of this lack of bias, I tend to believe we don't receive a distorted image like Russia teaches about Stalin being a great guy and enemy of Hitler rather than being a Russian version of him that just got backstabbed before backstabbing him or America as the great sole savior of Europe during WWII rather than just being a part of the Allies.
@@HighFlyer96 As an American. I was never educated on history in such a way. I believe you’re talking mostly about rural America lol.
@@conlanvanhook2452as a rural American, we’ve always labeled it as the “arsenal of democracy”, but never as the “savior of democracy”
@@americannightmare425 Because theirs a lack of intelligence
Well, the fact that Venice suffered various decades of constant conflict with its neighbours might have had a big part in its decline
as if england didnt
And that the ottomans literally prohibited trade with the east which is the main reason why the Americas were discovered.
It's crazy how he didn't mention that before the ottomans there were the Arabs who allowed trade and then the ottomans came and forbade it, which negated the main reason for Venice's existence.
Then ottomans conquered many venecian outposts, the Portuguese discovered a new route around Africa and the Spanish literally discovered a new continent.
Now the Mediterranean's importance was fading away as a new model of trade, the triangular trade, became the norm.
Yet he managed to blame it all on free markets somehow...
Might’ve been able to turn it around, if not for _FUCKING NAPOLEON_ showing up.
@@benismann Thing is is that England was huge, Venice was not.
@@benismann England also had a channel between them and all their enemies, making it much harder for enemies to actually sack England and deal serious damage ti the mainland
No one taught history like this when I was in high school or college. Venice and Genoa are spoken of in hagiographic-like tales of heroes and masters of business. History is basically "Storytime for kids" in the US.
That is true. Just nobody likes talking about the end.
Not storytime. Propoganda.
Well the fact that Christians have created their own creation museums in challenge to the scientific method does show what U.S. education has become.
@@ludgeisatmcdonalds Pretty much. The unsavory origins of history education is as state propaganda to justify the state and society in its present form.
that's not just the US, as @joe lee said, it's propaganda, and every modern state requires constant propaganda
A fairly large channel like yours using the final 4 minutes of one of your not often released videos to say "see ya later" to a friend and coworker was pretty heart warming.
A really great video. As an Irish Catholic the Glorious Revolution being taught as the pinnacle of liberal democracy is a laugh and I’m glad you so eloquently critiqued it.
A Liberal Democracy is just as capable of being cruel to foreign nations/people as Dictatorships. More to the point, the Glorious Revolution was touted as a starting point for Liberalism. It having immense inequalities doesn't diminish that.
The personal is political, as ever. How tedious. You're as guilty of the "whiggism" the English author of the concept was trying to convey.
@@stephenjenkins7971 That’s fair enough, I understand that ultimately the Glorious Revolution did end the attempt to bring Absolutism to Britain and that it’s constitutional monarchy would be built on those foundations. But you’re more than correct to say it’s inequalities are much more apparent under an apparently democratic parliament than they are under a feudal monarch. For example, Catholics and Jews had to wait until the Victorian age to be granted the same rights and freedoms that Protestant Englishmen were granted by the Glorious Revolution.
The people who set the Glorious Revolution in motion were of course hypocrites as the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland so proves but it doesn't detract it's historical importance in the evolution of parliamentary democracy in the British Isles, the US (it was an important source of inspiration their founding fathers) and elsewhere
@@vatsal7640 As far as I know Cromwell merely allowed Jews to return to Britain, specifically England during his regime. Daniel O’Connell, the leader of the Catholic Emancipation movement, even advocated for a law ordering Jews to wear a Star of David on it to be removed.
Love your vids man, hope you continue pumping out more. They feel very professionally done and are very interesting. You are one of my favourite youtubers and especially ones that talk about serious topics. Keep it going, you are great
He's not bad on stream either. I wish he did more content.
Dog this vid came out 5 mins ago how do you know what the video is like
@@glue6143 I dont yet, I just wanted to say that I loved all his previous videos :)
Kraut post a video I have to share to all my friends and like it with 5 different TH-cam accounts that i created to like his videos
It's amazing how this known liar is still around lol.
I think it's important to mention that Rockerfeller actually made a profit from the breakup of standard oil, as he owned massive shares in all of the new companies that were formed and which were taxed collectively less than standard oil was.
The general problem with government intervention and regulation that a lot people choose to ignore is that it can just easily be used to hurt the general populace as help it.
@@guppy719 Argentina is a good example of this. On top of that you gotta add that the spam of so many supports to the poor through use of Welfare State policies, plust the regulation and manipulation of the market that messes up the prices, creating desemployment and raising the poverty line, created a culture of expecting always help from the govertment, which ultimately establishes absolute support to the party whom benefits you the most.
There is nothing more vile than this, because it causes a lot of people who work and pay taxes(Be bussiness owners, non-irregular workers. Yes we pay high taxes as if we were in a nordic country) to be hateful or agaist of such policies, which makes a lot of the supporters of the party that promotes this bs, in turn, to mark those who protest as "Gorilas", or basically, people who hate the poor.
@@guppy719regulation is often only applied so far that it actually destroys competition for large corporations and banks rather than disrupt the bad business practices. Its a terrible balance.
The strength of England was that the king had lots of power but was controlled socially by the idea of English common law. Essentially he did not create law, law was set by tradition.
The king's where also restrained by the fact that it was easier to tax the nobility by negotiating with them through parliament rather than just taking what they wanted at sword point. Parliament was the most functional under a powerful king as he had more bargaining power to get the nobility to do what he wanted. the king was very powerful, but had a lot of incentives to not be a massive tyrant and rule by consent.
Parliament was never meant to rule, thats the kings job, parliament was just an institution to negotiate with the nobility. Even to this day the prime minister uses the devolved power of the monarch, they ask the queen to form a government on her behalf and use her powers. In theory she could refuse and choose whoever she wanted, in theory she could rule herself. The prime minister is essentially a second monarch who uses parliament to manage and negotiate with the nobility. There is no separation of powers in England.
It is tempting for most political ideologies to try to justify themselves in a scientific reading of history where history has predictive power. The irony is that the best reading, and therefore the most useful, comes when we try our best to accept information as-is.
Shoutout to the fellow takodachis who caught the reference. If you know, you know -w-
Kraut videos are not complete with out ravignon in the comments
Never thought I'd find a fellow Takodachi on a Kraut video.
Edit: Just spotted it!
nah historical materialism ftw
@@solgato5186 Historical materialism is just looking at history in a very narrow way to justify your ideology
WAH!
Jedes Mal, wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht. Ich lerne viele neue Dinge, er schafft es jedes Mal, mich zu überraschen.
Top quality content as always my man.
indeed, my man kraut need more respect for his work, its top tier
Jedes Mal, wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht, lerne ich viele neue Dinge. Er schafft es jedes Mal, mich zu überraschen.*
The words are all correct, but german punctuation is sometimes a little tricky.
The Problem with your version is, that the first sentence says:" Everytime, when Kraut releases a new video."
And your second sentence:" I learn many new things, He always manages to surprise me."
As you can see, you merely need to move the "I learn many new things" to the first sentence and adjust the word-order accordingly.
A trick, that is taught to us germans, is to check if the mainclause makes sense without the subordinate clause, as the subordinate clause is only meant to give more information.
In this case it would be:" Jedes Mal lerne ich viele neue Dinge"/"Everytime I learn many new things"
and the additional information is:" wenn Kraut ein neues Video veröffentlicht"/"when Kraut releases a new video".
True
@@koschmx i love your comment
@@koschmx Damn, I just wanted to Help him improve. I guess you really are right about that aspect of german culture. xD
Excellent video Kraut.
I'd like to mention two things:
The entirety of Thai history (at least from the Ayutthaya period (1351-1767) onwards) can almost be simplified to pre-1767: too much aristocratic power leading to a failure of a theoretically absolute monarch to organize its armed forces from a massive foreign invasion and a post-1767: too much monarchial power/the monarchy, military, religion, and aristocracy all combing their powers, eventually leading to the failures of Thailand to implement a true Parliamentary democracy up until the present day.
I also wonder how close are the parallels with late 19th/early 20th century America's attempts to regulate the business conglomerates were in Britain, like why did Churchill side with Labor early in his political career (perhaps something you should consider investigating). Lucy Worsley's documentaries, particularly on the Glorious Revolution, introduced me to the concept of "Liberal History", a concept which, as an American, I have never heard of until watching Worsley.
Concepts don't need to be known by name. Sometimes just living their spirit, thinking alongside their lines is enough for that concept to influence how you see the world. This happens because we don't live in a vacuum and constantly take info from the surroundings, getting our worldview changed by the speech communities we partake in.
So even if you knew liberal history late in your life, it probably influenced much of your interpretation of the world in the years prior. It's the prevailing narrative of history in the west of today.
Man Thai history sounds interesting, you get any books or sites I could search to find + learn this information
@@8kuji The problem with "A History of Thailand" by Baker and Phongpaichit is that it skips much of the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya periods, although it is understandable considering their themes with the book.
@@8kuji If you're into lectures, check out the TH-cam channels FCCT (Foreign Correspondents of Thailand) and the Siam Society.
@@8kuji For books (recommended to me on askhistorians): "Thailand: A Short History" (3rd edition) by David K. Wyatt. and "A History of Thailand" by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit (4th edition for this book is coming out very soon).
I feel thoroughly informed, slightly overwhelmed and more than a little intimidated. Definitely just finished a Kraut video
Hope you feel better an we'll miss you Teabag
15:16. Venice didn't collapse because lack of inclusivity.
Venice was Mediterranean, and Atlantic powers INCLUDED themselves in world trade making Venice unimportant.
Literally the opposite of lack of "inclusivity" happened.
How dare you point out an inconvenient fact which contradict the narrative< Its not like the starting premise (the fall of Hungary and the Golden Bull) was not a straight-up oversimplification of the story and at best honest but gross mistake (and at worst outright rewriting history).
The Hungarian nobolity resented and hated the Black Army, because it was the very embodiment of going toward the other extreme - the king, Mathias Hunyadi who basically founded it was very literally the first absolute monarch, who trampled over ANYONE who opposed him, put ridicolously high taxes on the peasentry to finance he's dreams to become the Emperor of the HRe though conquest etc.). For ALL (i repeat, ALL) fabric of Hungarian Society the Black Army was the symbol of oppression - even though the rest of society jsut got a other tyrant back, namely the nobility. That and the Hungarian nobolity was basically in a 120 year long constant civil war, where the Western half of the nobolity wanted a Habsburg ruler and the Eastern half wanted a Polish/Hungarian one. And Kraut CONVENIENTLY left out a very important detail in this regard too: the King of Hungary is elected by the nobility since its foundation. Its the legacy of the Magyar tribal Confederacy, where the 7 tribes elected its Tribal High Chief AND the High Priest (the Kende and Kundu in Hungarian - dont ask which one is which, that is lost in History).
And the most invonvenient fact of all: Hungary is NOT destroyed by the Ottoman invasion. It was split into three (the Transylvanian Principality, which claimed itself to be the legitimate claimant of ALL of Hungary and the Throne of Hungary), the Austrian controled Royal Hungary and the ottoman occupied territory. Besides the occupied territory Hungary de facto existed up until this very day - its institutions remained, the nobility's right to elect the king remained until the Pragmatica Sanctio was passed by Maria Theresia, the Hungarian Diet remained up until 1848 and the Austrian Emperors are almost every year forced to call it. In fact Hungary was the ONLY continental European nation which didnt experienced Absolutism for more than a decade or two thought history. And all of that is actually thanks to the Hungarian Golden Bull, the doccument which allegedly killed the country. Despite the country bascially existed in all except name until 1848. Andeven then a short year after the Habsubrg Empire is basically forced to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire... Hungary ceased to exist for 20 year, what a tragedy... in exchange of avoiding ALL the absolutism shit the rest of the continent suffered and up until WW1 having the EXACT SAME legislative developments as the UK or the US. And even that is only stopped because the Western powers screwed us over. Hard time.
Personally i didnt even bothered watching further than the 7:30 mark. If by that point the premise is wrong on SO MANY LEVEL i dont see the point of hearing it out further.
Well having an entrenched oligarchy certainly didn’t help.
Youre entirely misunderstanding the use of the word, in this instance, bwcause of your odd sensitivities. Illiteracy
I would love it if you did a video dedicated to fully exploring the saga of Hungarian history, in more detail than just stating the basic events at the beginning and end. Also describing Hungary's history with just a single sentence referencing the Arpad dynasty is such a disservice to how influential they were to Hungarian history. Btw this isn't coming from a Hungarian, just an American interested in Hungarian history.
And in Ivan Nagy, the premiere danseur par excellence.
@@lizannewhitlow1085 sorry I only know English, what does that mean?
@@kevincronk7981 Ivan Nagy was a handsome famous male ballet dancer and a Hungarian hero. World class!
just be careful not to use only Hungarian sources, their neighbours have quite different view of history than them. For start do not use that map. Greetings from Croatia :-D
@@ivanjovic6287 maybe Hungary's neighbors are in wrong and need a history lesson
England is somewhat unqiue in it's geography in that it's an island nation which throughout it's history has largely been safe from outside invaders. Seems incredibly obvious at first, but it's an obvious fact that this video is glaringly missing. When people refer to the magna carta or glorious revolution, they are not implying that these events could occur elsewhere, so much of English public and common law history developed over hundreds of years because of the stability of that country. When a country like Hungary is invaded, all is lost. The libraries are sacked, knowledge is destroyed, and the nation itself is in ruin. English law is law, because we know what it is. We have hundreds of years of case law from thousands of cases archived and able to be viewed, some of which are still precedent to this day. England is unique in this sense.
I always appreciate it when TH-camrs such as yourself take the time to adequately explore and explain topics such as this. It’s often far too easy for people to grossly oversimplify complex topics such as this, and your genuine analysis is refreshing. So thank you!👍
Also, WOW! First oil burns on your arm & chest, then a bout with COVID? That’s rough. Hopefully things improve from here on out.
21:45 I like the nudge at NFTs, so much of the Crypto sphere follows the tactics of these robber barons like they were gospel.
My understanding of the Founding Fathers was that they'd carefully studied not just how democracies successfully functioned, but very much how they fell. I mean, everyone was thinking of that if they had a classical education. They frequently claimed that the internal enemy as deadly to democracy as the external one was corruption. The Whiggish view of history is something I see as a consequence of nineteenth century idealism and optimism, belief in progress.
@@novinceinhosic3531 They were put through the typical Classical education which was rigorous.
Love how Hololive is now so mainstream Kraut makes a reference to them in one of his videos
Wait what
23:14 Oooohhhh.
Kraut is a Tako confirm?
Kraut, I gotta say that I love your content, and I watch it every time one comes out
fantastic video! Thank you so much. American Here, and this was a great overview of early American Industrialization. It was quite gross, and no sector of the American market was safe from big cooperation stomping all over peoples personal liberties. There's endless stories about this. Like textile workers burning to death in a tall buildings with no fire escapes, to the coal worker crackdowns, to the meat packing industry. Just lots of crazy things that were ok before regulation created some reasonable standards. Anyway, I enjoyed this!
I don't know much about coal workers, but I know with your other 2 examples those were cases where there was such public outrage that the government made changes so that was no longer the case
Those are almost all cases with immigrants. Guess where such things happen in the modern day?
The exception is the coal mining region where the process of taking power from business and moving it to the civil service was followed by vigorous attempts to eliminate the coal mining business. Power doesn't disappear and if you give it to people with no stake in anything they will burn everything down just to use it.
That type of thing was common everywhere in that era. Not a dismissal or justification, but shit conditions in factories and such was par for the course and not uniquely American.
As a person who's normally inclined towards liberty, this was a valuable video for me.
As a person inclined towards authoritarianism, the video was still valuable for me
@@jensjensen9035 What makes you inclined towards authoritarianism?
@@Fractured_Unity (domination fetish)
@@Fractured_Unity seeing how stupid the majority of society is for one
@@M414-q6o But plenty of authoritarian leaders are stupid. At least in democracy there’s a higher chance of holding those in power responsible. There are more incentives for competent leadership in democracy than authoritarianism
Your narrative is impressive man. I have never faced a video about history that makes me want to hear a specific sentence several times just for the pleasure of enjoying the pronunciation, the pauses, the strength in words, the tempo and the particularly choosen vocabulary. For example the ending sentence at 9:19. Maybe I'm so impressed because at the same time I'm listening, I'm also reading the subtitles, and maybe that is what gives an extra strength to the narration.
Kraut I know this video took another of time to make and it was delayed slot but remember this man you make amazing and great videos so already put slot of effort in the and it shows you made a whole community around countryballs history channels and I love that and I love being part of this amazing community slot of great people but remember when you upload you make my day thank you so much for that I really do appreciate you as a person keep it up champ
The Magna Carta, when written, was a somewhat conservative document. What it did was put down in writing the rights the aristocracy already had in feudal law that John violated during his time as king. The actual rights themselves werent revolutionary.
It my position that the european enlightenment was a fluke. What can be seen by studying history is that oligarchies usually dominate developed systems. Everybody is scared of monopoly but nobody understands the cartel. The cartel is more stable and profitable than a monopoly because it can externalise costs. In many cases a cartel is the collusion of multiple local monopolies, the government itself actually being a local monopoly that gets captured by cartel. The antitrust movement in america broke down the industrial cartel but built the banking one. the federal reserve (1913) is itself the largest financial monopoly-cartel in history.
It's frickin hilarious that everyone agrees that Venice is a tentacle monster
Lads kinda walked into it making their flag like that.
spaghetti monster could also work
While this video makes some very interesting points, I believe its reasoning for opposing the existence of large corporations and restricting the market in order to prevent their appearance is faulty. You set two very interesting examples - that of Venice and of the USA - and you mentioned how the unrestricted free market led to monopolies in both; however, you contradicted your own argument while explaining how these monopolies formed. This becomes very apparent when talking about the Union Pacific and the Associates. They were men who had failed in the free market - two failed miners and a failed businessman - who then utilized the regulatory power of the state to create a monopoly of their own and forbid anyone else from "entering their turf". They might have technically been a private company, but, as you yourself said, their money came almost entirely from the State, and their power also came from their government-enforced monopolies; it was not the free market who created this monopoly, but rather corrupt politicians who diverted funds towards this corporation and made legislation restricting the free market to its benefits. This is not free market economics; this is simply cronyism; free market for me, and regulation for everyone else. You yourself explained how Union Pacific relied entirely upon the State, and used the State's power to limit the free market; therefore, using it as an example of how the market naturally leads to monopolies is absurd.
I agree with your point that big corporations can potentially be dangerous; but not because of their potential to form monopolies (which, under the free market, are extraordinarily rare and generally not very long lasting). Rather, what makes them dangerous for the institutions of economic inclusivity that make a society prosperous is their potential and tendency to get very close to the government in power. The Venetian example is much better, because it shows the true danger of large businesses; having them use the power of the State to restrict the access to the market of anyone but these already established corporations. In my opinion, therefore, the problem is not large business by themselves; the problem arises when these corporations try to utilize the power of the State to expel everyone else from their turf. Therefore, regulation should primarily target this problem, rather than the existence of these large businesses by themselves.
I find your videos wonderful and very interesting, and really hope you continue creating more informative content; I just wanted to explain why I believe you might have made a mistake in your reasoning in this video. On the other hand, your comment on the non-deterministic nature of history, and how similar events can lead to very different outcomes, is indeed very interesting. I really hope you continue to make videos like these, you are one of the best content creators that I know of!
Finally got round to watching it and is a great video as usual. Also honoured to wish Teabag a farewell & I think I speak on behalf of your community, production team & anyone fortunate enough to know Teabag we all look forward to seeing him again some day.
Brietannia the legend! Loved your video on why Wales & Scotland have parliaments and the possibilities of devolution etc. Really wish more people watched your videos 🙌
@@lordgemini2376 Appreciate the kind words! tbf my channel has only been posting content since mid September 2021, so to be on over 2k subs is pretty good imo.
When criticizing Whig history, it shouldn’t exclusively be an indictment against liberalism itself.
That’s the path reactionaries are taking now.
Whig historicism can't reasonably be separated from Liberalism. One can't critique the idea of inevitable progress without also critiquing the movements which have affected the changes which are then held up as examples of progress.
@@rwatertree popper was an explicitly liberal writer whose critique of historicism is ultra foundational. I think you can absolutely criticize any teleological historicism without throwing liberalism as a whole in the trash, lmfao.
@@Pasta_watcher eh, there aren't any serious alternatives that have been founded yet.
But Kraut *is* a reactionary.
@@Pasta_watcher The way forward after liberalism is for a work in progress that's still going on for, idk, about 200 ish years or so?
Great video as always but can we take a moment to appreciate the arts in this video
I mean look at 13:30 & 14:00 these are so good especially for countryballs standards. The artist have really improved
The people you hired for this one really knocked it out of the park in terms of artwork, great job from them and great video altogether as usual
If Whig history was true, nothing would ever become worse, and that was dispelled with the first societal crisis after the Whig history concept was first thought up. It's insane that this idea has even persistent until today.
First off, love the video, love the channel. Easily one of the best political channels out there.
This is a very weird video for me. In America, we have a very common saying - "Freedom isn't free". It's generally understood by most Americans that liberty is the exception, not the rule, and that it is fragile and must be protected. Violently, if necessary. The longstanding tradition of protesting in the USA is very much a result of this. I've never heard the term "whig history". If it's a real concept, than the UK and the US have VERY different understandings of the inevitability of liberal democracy.
I think the section about companies being "too big to fail" ignores the very large, glaring, obvious elephant in the room. Globalism. Global markets changed the dynamics of economic trade dramatically. The robber barons gained their wealth by monopolizing and exploiting domestic markets. That isn't how current major corporations like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc are wealthy. That wealth comes from a MUCH broader reach, and a much smaller footprint needed to maintain that reach.
It also ignores the very real phenomenon of "consumer-selected monopolies". Amazon and Google aren't actively squashing their competitors. The reason they're large is because consumers generally prefer using the most convenient option - Amazon for online shopping, Google for search engine results. You COULD use Bing (I personally do), or shop at another online retailer if you wanted; but you probably don't. Breaking up these companies, currently, would be explicitly worse for the consumer than letting them be. Anti-trust legislation exists to protect consumers, not to hurt them.
Again, love the video and the exploration of history.
Agreed, but many of these companies do share similarities with the robber barons(corporate lobbying and illegal union-busting come to mind). Not to mention that some industries(like online shopping and space travel) are only accessible to very large corporations due to the expenses required to ship items overseas or to build rockets. Many of these new industries, just like the ones of the 1800s, are monopolized by billionaires because you need money to make more money, and this holds especially true for new or expensive technology.
@@nepdep1945 The union-busting thing, to me at least, is complicated.
Unions have a bit of a mixed history in the US. On the one hand, they're responsible for several of our current labor laws, which is undoubtedly a positive. On the other hand, the UAW (United Autoworkers Union) is almost directly responsible for the suppression of electric cars. They correctly assumed the electric powertrain of a battery electric vehicle requires none of the competencies of an internal combustion engine. In the interest of protecting jobs, they vigorously fought against electric vehicles - and still do somewhat to this day. It's not hard to see why Tesla would be wary of the UAW.
To expand on that, the teachers union and police union are both widely regarded as being a net negative - since they block the firing of bad teachers and bad cops.
Europe, I think generally, has had a better experience with unions - though with the recent Volkswagen scandals I'm not sure if that's actually true.
Can't wait to see this one. I already am going trough despair and depression as it is.
Try to take comfort in the fact that things could always be worse. Chances are that you live a vastly more comfortable lifestyle than about 99.999% of all the total humans who lived in the past or present
@@gregbors8364 This. Fact is that humanity's current state is about the best it has ever been in its existence. The point is not to despair, but be aware and not allow it to degrade.
@@gregbors8364 nowadays (in first world countries) is definitely better than just about any other time since the invention of agriculture, but I've seen pretty plausible arguments that life may have been better back when we were all hunter-gatherers. I don't personally think that's true, I think life may have been worse after the advent of agriculture than before it, but I still think living in the US today is better than any life as a hunter gatherer. But it's a pretty interesting idea.
@@stephenjenkins7971 The only path that leads not to degradation is the willing graceful and respectful decay. The one free from malice and the clinging to power. All attempts to preserve and continue on are ultimately identical to choosing a violent malevolent degradation as that is all that awaits you in the end.
Hungary is such an interesting countries like we mostly know about the time with Austria and then independent ww2 then the Russian then independent again and today but it's medieval history is also very interesting and should not be ignored but we can say that for all of easten Europe
23:13 I see you're a man of culture as well
Wah!
Oligarch takodachi
I came up with a saying last decade.
"No matter what Race, Religion,Ideology, Nation, Creed, Ideals or Identity you have, we all have a great capability to dissapoint"
I call it my "Cosmopolitan creed"
Isn't that just another way to say that humans will always be flawed in some way?
Whole lot of words to say something simply banal. Beings fail, and beings succeed. It must be studied the why, factual dialectics are central to seeing progress. Proportionality is important too, your determined creed unfortunately does matter as matter does exist.
If the English didn't live on an island separated from mainland Europe, the same thing could have easily happened to them that happened to the Hungarians and Poles.
Well it did in the 300s by the anglosaxons, in the 800s by the danes, and in 1000s by the normans..
23:30 Never expected to see a hololive reference in a Kraut video
I love kraut videos because they just kick ass, it’s a real treat that drops out of the blue sometimes and I’m always excited to watch them. Thank you for always putting out excellent work!
Video was still great. Good job with this topic. Loved it. Hope you feel better
love the vid. at 23:36 though. I think someone managed to sneak in Ina (the vtuber) into there. Could be wrong. Don't think I am though.
Like the tentacle monster has the ears on top, the halo, the crown. the saying "I'm human". All of these line up.
Yeah it’s an ina reference, she even said Wah! After she died lol
I think, for me as an English person, Magna Carta somewhat serves as a reminder that power structures can be changed and have good outcomes sprout from that change. The irony of current UK and US conservatives citing it as their inspiration is just exquisite.
The current Uk conservatives have a long history of change and enfranchisement. They gave the women the vote and they also gave all men the vote in 1918 with the liberal PM Lloyd George (thatchers favourite PM after churchill) and David Cameron passing the same sex marriage Act. People like to pretend they don't change anything or like they are anything in comparison to the American republicans but they aren't. They are the most successful conservative party in Europe for a reason. They generally don't believe in radical change same as the majority of the country but their deeply held liberalism unlike the American religious conservatism means they naturally believe in change albeit at a slower, less radical pace. Thatcher being the exception as she was a Conservative radical
The Golden Bull should then serve as a reminder that changes in power structures are not always positive developments, no matter how it looks on the surface.
@baconsir1159 sure, look at France on their 5th Republic, clearly their doing something wrong by abandoning their institutions everytime it gets tough
Excellent, timely video.
I'm sorry to hear about everything you went through trying to finish this video, but you should know that your work is very much appreciated.
Not a mistake, but I've noticed, especially in the "what is whig history" section, that the music is just slightly too loud compared to the spoken audio. A good score for the video, but I'm more interested in hearing what you have to say. XD
Anyways, very interesting stuff as always! I look forward to whatever else yall produce for us!
Although I don't think the background music is too loud but rather the voice is too low.
Agreed. While subtitles would be fine, I'd like if Kraut upped his own volume
or, idk, add such simple thing called "subtitles" :/
This video touches one of the topics i always try to explain to Anarcho-capitalist.
That even if you have a perfectly even playfield for everyone in a free non-regulated market eventually most of the assets/resources/rights/privileges will gravitate towards smaller groups of people which will almost always inevitably try to secure such assets/resources/rights/privileges by creating a form of centralized government institution (Which can be their own private mercenary army enforcing their laws) to undermine the competition and preserve their assets/resources/rights/privileges which will become the status-quo.
Obviously outside the vacuum theoric society of anarcho-capitalism, when a monopoly or corporation grows beyond the control of an existing government they will "marry" said government to preserve themselves. This "marriage" with the goverment is more prevalent in latin american countries where the owners of land, banks and businesses that monopolized the assets are also members of the ruling class with a government always there to stop them from ever failing, going bankrupt or stopping any challenge from the competition.
I really liked your breakdown with historical references outside the USA (The Robber Barons are the only ones i use).
Curiosity 1: Robber Baron term originated in Germany (Raubritter), they were noble barons inside the Holy Roman empire that will put their castles along the Rhine and tax/toll/steal/confiscate any trader's property that might sail too close to their castles, they thrived due to lack of Imperial authority.
Curiosity 2: If you manage to read this Kraut, get some vitamine C either in supplements or as ointments/cream (L-Ascorbic acid), clinical trials show they help a lot in skin burns and even more in severe burnt victims during their recovery.
Anarcho capitalists aren't interested in equality or the greater good. Their idea of a level playing field is that everyone (and particularly themselves) should not be hindered by the state to create monopolies.
Adam Something did a series of videos highlighting what happens in an Anarcho-capitalist society.
The problem is that those monopolies in US were created or legitimized with the help of the government. We don't know what markets would look like or develop without the government as a third party. The example of corporate owners asking state forces to crush strikes is a perfect example of this
@@cv4809 we have a pretty good idea during the gilded age though. Corporations with no regulation, free to do whatever they want. So they hired mercenaries to kill dissidents, replaced men, women, and children when they got injured or died in the dangerous factories. And to make sure they kept making profits they put guns to their employee’s and debter’s heads to vote for who they want in power. That all happened because the government refused to get involved in the free market until Roosevelt.
I think anarchy in general has this criticism that eventually some kind of state will form, be it left or right wing anarchy.
The Carta Magna is an overhyped meme. It was simply the result of the weakness of the king, that had to give in to the demands of the nobility, basically moneys. But then the english, experts on the fine art of selling themselves and their stuff as wonders, twisted it as to make it the pillar of liberty and parliamentarism. There were lots of Magnas Cartas all over Europe before the Magna Carta, and way more significative, from the icelandic thing to the courts of Leon, which included the common people, not just the clergy and the nobility, in an assembly restricting the powers of the king. The idea that a medieval king could do as he please is plain nonsense, there were all over Europe lots of charters, binding contracts of different sorts that regulated the powers and the relationship of the King with a town, a region, a set of people, a set of rights, laws etc. The fact that it was actually England the very place in Europe were, until the XIII at least, the King had more unrestrained dominion and unchecked power over lands, taxation and people's rights only makes this Carta Magna claim of wonder more insidious.
About Venice, that's all very nice and interesting and so on, but that doesn't explain the fall from grace of Venice. Nope. The italian wars and the turkish advance do. Whatever else there is is absolutely secondary.
Same with US capitalism in the late XIX. It was a given. The exact same shit happen everywhere, starting with Germany, and Germany was fuckall liberal in the age of Bismarck. It all just had to do industrial revolution, accumulation of wealth and let's call it natural evolution of capitalism throughout different phases. What does that have to do with a whatever political system, be it republican liberal (US) or imperial autoritarian (II German Reich)????
It has fuckall to do.
That's the thing with most of your lectures. You either totally miss the point, ignore the more relevant factuals to fit your narrative and/or reach absurd conclusions.
I mean, at the end of the Roman Empire, AFAIK, there were high strata that didn't pay taxes in periods in which a need for a stronger border army was essential. As always, the Fall is a complex, centuries-long phenomenon but for sure it didn't help.
23:14 I came here for tako, stay for the quality of the content.
All hail the priestess
Thanks for all of the updates while making these videos!
23:17 nice reference to the v-tuber Ninomae Inanis. Whoever did the art for that section is a huge closet weeb
I can't imagine the amount of work you put into the animation, thumbnail, and the editing. Your channel overall is the best and wish to see more interesting videos :) Also as a Korean, for a couple months in the south korean military you have to go through boot camp. Meaning he'll be able to have free time once he finishes his few months of boot camp.
Funny how the companies like Union Pacific that took advantage of “the unregulated market” and led to the monopolies was so dependent on government programs (that paid for the railroad) to gain such a dominant position. It’s almost like allowing the government interference in market forces in the first place was the issue. . .
Fucking this. Every example of companies abusing the free market by amassing wealth and using it to crush competition and establishing monopolies was done by USING government
Every. Single. One.
Free markets don't create monopolies. Government interference does.
When it rains it pours, I hope you're coping well. I appreciate you and your crew's work, hope Tea's service goes well and he comes back safe.
One of the valid criticisms that the dissident right (Hoppe, Moldbug etc) is their skepticism towards the idea of Whig historiography. I’m glad to see a liberal critique of the same concept.
This Hoppe you mention, is Hans Herman Hoppe?
Love your videos please keep them up
I was actually taught this in high school history class. That everything will become more liberal over time naturally.
Which is blatantly false, of course, but a useful lie to tell when they're trying to facilitate the implementation of an agenda.
after the cold war legit everyone took this as fact. So odd.
@@CarlMarxPunk because it seemed like authoritarianism had almost died out. Apart from China, that is.
Or the other 40% of states that arnt liberal democracies
@@stevenschnepp576 love it when conservatives misinterpret this video and use it for their own purposes
11:48 you should avoid using the term "dark age", my understanding is most historians have ceased using it since its a misnomer. it should be referred to as the early medieval period as far as i know.
It’s a term used to shit on Christianity so of course he will use it.
The irony is that much of Europe was still pagan in the so called Dark Age
I really like this video because it succinctly lays out the inherent danger of allowing any sort of concentration of power which is not answerable to citizens. Look at Rupert Murdoch, people would be crying and shidding themselves if a government minister in Australia controlled the editorial policy of huge swaths of media in Australia, the USA and the UK. Yet, because it is in private hands we are to avert our eyes and not think about it? This can be seen with the tech giants, mining giants and etc as well. To hell with that, bring on the new wave of anti-trust measures.
Funny you'd elect Murdoch as your bogeyman to enact such policy. Time Warner/Disney/NBC/Google are much larger media companies with much more reach than Murdoch.
@@0w784g I am speaking from the Australian perspective, and the choice of a smaller example does not invalidate larger ones.
@@Xerxes17 Good to see another Aussie
Actually, I don't think Rupert and his rags are the worst example. His media empire is awfull yes but he's more of an enabler. It's easier to sell bombastic reactionary headlines. That's been his schtick.
They are also far from the only actor in their respective market.
But if you look at Hungary! Then there is a horror story! They weren't bought out by ONE guy, but by a group represeting Orbans party.
The Sinclair in the US is also pretty scary, because they target local news buyout and their Editorial Interference is much more blatant.
@@0w784g Fuck em all tbh
At 11:00, makes me vaguely think of bad-faith libertarians who push notions of "freedom" but mostly seem to want to remove whatever authority might stop them creating their own autocratic fiefdoms (IE, a strong goverment).
Standard Oil qualified as a Monopoloy under Sherman anti trust law (75% market share) for well over 20 years.
Between 1890 and 1904 Standard Oil controlled close to 90% of the refined oil market in the United States.
Yet despite that Standard Oil wasn't able to charge extortionate prices. Their prices went down almost every year because of the very real prospect of reigonal competition.
For example, between 1869 and 1885 the price of oil fell from 30 cents per gallon to 8 cents. During this same period of time Standard Oil's market share rose from 25% to around 85%.
Furthermore, if Standard Oil were the unrestrained monopoly everyone makes it out to be why was it not broken up at it's peak?
By the time Standard Oil was broken up in 1911 it's market share had already dropped from 90% to 64%. It was in decline- due to several reasons. Competition was on the rise. But no, Government needed to step in there and protect everyone, right?
There could not be a clearer case of the fact that you cannot actually have a monopoly in a free market. It simply doesn't work. Companies can never become so successful they escape the feedback loop that gives them their success. A monopoly can only be established through force because force is the only thing that can prevent competition. Private government contracts establish monopolies. Private contracts like those in Kraut's railroad example. Once you introduce government intervention, _then_ you have business utterly untethered from supply and demand. Unbeholden to the customers who rely on it. That is the true issue- this mixture of state and business we disgustingly applaud and advocate for today.
Cope
@@aturchomicz821 Good argument
A critique of the critique:
1. Winston Churchill claimed that liberal democracy was basically the least worst system of governance. Liberal history might be a folly but it is less so than other systems of governance.
2. Liberalism has showed an ability to adapt. After Karl Marx's criticism of rampant liberalism the working classes produced the social democracy as a compromise. Maybe there's an argument that social democracy is no longer liberalism - I'll leave that to personal preference if you want to argue that way.
3. Liberalism was conceived with human nature in mind and therefore it may turn out to be the most sustainable when compared with its competitors. That doesn't mean it won't be subject to folly though.
4. If liberalism has not become the dominant system of government maybe we just haven't waited long enough. I'm not saying I think it will, but it has only been around a few hundred years.
Thanks for the ideas. Made me think.
A very timely video for us viewers in the UK. As the workers are beginning to stand up (rail workers on strike, NHS, and Criminal barristers may join soon, hopefully, others too) against a government that is constantly mired in shame, and is blatantly there to serve the interests of only the rich and powerful.
Let me elaborate; in the midst of the living cost crisis, the Tory government refuses to at the very least bring up wages near the inflation rate, let alone match them. All the while they want to lift the bankers' max. wage cap, and they already increased their own (parliamentary members') wages. And those energy companies that are making unprecedented profits (Shell made more this year than ever in their history), well the government refuses to windfall tax them, arguing that it will halt these companies from further investment (even though shell openly stated that this won't be the case).
America's Neoliberal shift in the last 50 years is much worse, in fact, it was the template that the British Tories learned from, ever since the reign of Thatcher going forward.
Thank you for addressing a matter, that should be very important to everyones' consideration. Especially now.
Yeah! Both the US and UK are going through a rough shift and i hope the US takes a few similar actions that what you are doing.
Communists.
@@Steyr32 you don’t even know what that is.
@@shcdemolisher communists: dumb poor people who want to kill the rich and get free money instead of working hard.
Thank you for the attention to my little country! :D
It warms my heart.
In my opinion England went a different path also, because they didn't have an agressive neighbour, who wasn't separated by sea, that had the economical resources 10 times than England.
That could also have allowed the barons to really take controll over the nation sice it wasnt any "enemys at the gates" keeping people from growing to greedy and lazy
Every nations has a million factors at play that is diffrent. Best we can do is look at them one at a time and try and pull somthing generaly usefull from them. Here its simply "if you let a few take everything, then they will take everything and more"
babe wake up, new Kraut video
I see Takodachi!! @23:45 hololive's ina reference, nice!
Wah
It's an extremely well-made introduction to the power dynamics of the government. Most of the time, people think the fact that monarchy is the most dangerous threat to the public but the sinister ways of the oligarchy are often more destructive to people.
Most of the monarchs are next to nothing if their countries are ruined. As it wasn't enough often they are the biggest threat to occupiers so monarchs inherently have to think about their subjects.
Just ask the Qajar dynasty of Iran on how well it went for them when they sold off Iran’s national assets to foreign powers.
I think democracy can sometimes lead itself to anarchy. There is a story in India of ancient Republic of Vaishali which was crushed by a monarchy. It was an anarchy street Republic which spent most of time discussing who or how the war will be fought while they were subjugated. The story goes that when the news got to a meditating Buddha, it seems, he frowned in disapproval. Meaning that to keep the peace, a kingdom has to be fully prepared for war, or it will meet Vaishali’s fate.
This story formed the basis for code 'Buddha is smiling' for success of indian nuke program.
P.s I copied some parts from a news article since I was to lazy to type.
I would love to see a video on on the political development of Britain and Ireland. We dont get taught much about it at all in Britain, and I really want your interpretation of the development of liberalism in Britain, as i feel it did get a little left in the dust this video. I'm not actually super into history other than its aesthetic merits (old shit looks really cool) but your videos are always super enjoyable to me. Also, pls do a video on the history of the Celtic nations of the UK, I'm Scottish and I'd love to learn more and your stuff is always super digestible. Not sure how political a video like that would be though, so maybe it wouldnt be your thing .__.
The problem with most criticism of the American Gilded Age is that people compare it to today, as opposed to some period prior.
There had never been greater economic growth ever achieved in history. The US went from many living on dirt floors to the richest country on earth by the 1890s.
Only as tiny few people went to being the richest country on earth. What is the point of being the richest country on earth if your workers are working 16 hour days and being killed by their machinery? Or starving a large portion of rural poor farmers as the corporate farms rapidly won competition with them. Sure the long term result has been better accesss to food but it took a lot of starving and people becoming destitute to then fluctuating dangerous food prices to finally intervention in the market to stabilise crops to make it worth while for anyone who isn’t the owner of the corporate farm.
I'm currently listening to the wealth of nations and your video sounds a lot like the end of the first book (Book I, Chapter XI, coclusion of the chapter; if you wanna look it up).
Smith devides society into those who make their money from wages, from rent and from stock and goes on to say that
the interest of the first group is always aligned with that of the society, since a growing society also has a growning need for labour which improves the compensation and conditions of the labourer via supply and demand.
The second group's intrest is also aligned with that of the public, because their income originates as a part of and therefore rises with that of the labourer, however since rent doesn't take a lot of work to collect (even less back then) they don't really understand what their intrests are and how to achieve them, so are easily duped into accepting unfavorable regulations.
The third group however is thriving when society at large is declining, as he puts it: "[the rate of profit] is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are fastest going to ruin.", and: "To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it", which is basically the anti trust point you made at the end there.
I just heard that part yesterday so maybe he pulls a complete 180 in the other books but it always facinates me that when you look back at the people who formulated the basis of capitalism they are very reasonable people who were very aware of the dangers of a completly free market. Now that those dangers are reality the modern day econimists want to convince us that it's all in our own best intrest because economist are by now almost all part of that third group who as smith acknowledges hold "a very simple but honest conviction that their intrest,[...], [is] the interest of the public"
Have in mind that several schools of economic thought have over time corrected some of adam smith's mistakes (in favor or against liberalism, depending on the school of thought), so don't take his word as final.
I could wait a whole year for any of your videos and still watch them on the first 2 hours of being posted. Love your content, and be well Kraut.
Trying to pay attention to the Venice segment while you drew him as a terrifying octopus beast is making me sweat
Did the Hungarian parliament represent non-nobles in a separate chamber like the English one? Because if not then it's not really comparable. Having two houses from the 1300s that had to agree with one being elected by the land owners is a very, very slowly expanding franchise that could be seen an inevitably expanding liberty over time.
I don't think there really is any medieval country comparable to post-magna carta England and I'm guessing Hungary was chosen because it was one of, if not the closest one to that, albeit they have some differences, but so do a lot of other things. I am not an expert on history though, and in no way will I claim to be one, so if I got something wrong I would like to know, just don't be overly aggressive about it.
Well if I'm not mistaken in the early days (which he uses for the comparison) The House of Commons didn't exist and it's first iterations essentially comprise of the slightly poorer nobles + rich cities.
@@blastermanr6359 And even then, the burgesses (the representatives of the boroughs and shires) were knight. It's only in the 19th century that the House of Commons even vaguely started to represent anything other than gentry.
@@talideon while true. I think the time the House of Commons became a bastion of liberal ideals was the time shortly before, during, and after the English Civil War.
There was the Diet of Hungary was developed in a more organic manner as presented in the video. the earliest predecessor of it was the law seeing days, which were events when the nobility (from the lowest to the highest) could be present and advise the king to make new laws. The later diets were a kind of two chamber affairs. The so called Upper Table consisted of the "barons of the realm" (the high aristocrats) and the bishops of the country, while the Lower Table consisted by the minor and landless nobility (Hungary never had an explicit knightly class thus landless nobles filled that role) and the burgers of the royal free cities (equivalent to the chartered cities of England).
In fact John Hunyadi and more importantly his son (the real creator of the black army) Mathias Hunyadi (also know as Mathias Corvinus or King Mathaias, as he was later elected king of Hungary) revived most of his support from the lower table. I say most as the Hunyadi family was the richest and the most powerful aristocratic family in 15th century Hungary with similarly powerful allies in other families like the Szilagyi and so on. Still Mathias as king largely relied on the burgers and landless nobles to support him.
Long story short the Diet of Hungary wasn't that different of an institution as the Parliament of England was at the same time.
I get so excited when he posts!
I really appreciate a liberal, that understands that liberalism needs to curtail too much power in the hands of few, in order to uphold itself. Let alone its stated ideals.
No, this is not intended as a backhanded anything. I just wished more liberals cared about this.
I feel like no one should be pro monopoly, not even the monopolist.
Isn't that the whole idea of liberalism?
All liberals understand that, its a major point of liberalism. The problem is figuring out how to do it properly
@@lostkin4910 Well, no offense, but I dont think that counts for liberals in many places. At least in modern times.
Australia, America, and Japan are notable examples.
Luckily yes, most liberals, think monopoly busting is a social good. Though elected officials often have the issue of needing party funds, and going against monied interests is often an uphill battle, when who you are targeting, are the biggest economic power houses within your jurisdiction.
Its easier to just take the money and look the other way.
Problem is, that it can be a contradiction to itself. When you need a central government to curtail monopolies you also give lots of power to a few people that can act in their own interests, and the result could be similar to what happens in a monopoly.
I personally like to thing of political and social structures and the like as of solutions to a problem.
I personally like to thing of solutions as a result of a darwinian evolution:
-The most successful solution at the time wins and dominates.
-Tensions, frictions and struggles are the breeding ground for new solutions.
-Every failure is a success in the sense that it allows observers not to apply the same solution under the exact same conditions.
So... coming back to Liberalism... After watching Krauts video I can say with full confidence:
Shit seems to work, yo! Until it doesnt anymore. Which causes suffering and tension and strife and friction and conflict.
Which allows the invention of new ideas and the adaption of old ones.
So, yeah, one day this evolution might end with the perfect solution and that might be some form of Liberalism.
Although it most likely will not. End at all, I mean.
Hey man I love your videos as they are so well researched and thought out. The quality is just awesome. However I feel that they tend to constantly be a loosely connected bundle of multiple interpretations of history. For example in this video I felt it was divided into a critique of aristocratic rule on a governmental and economic background which were held together by a weak segway. It didn't feel to support the title of the video and with that the main topic at hand. By the time you got to the issue of american monopolies I couldn't help but wonder if I was even watching the same video as the one with the critique of misinterpretation regarding the English democracy's beginnings. I wish you'd make the spine of the video more centered on the topic or made it clearer how the discussed parts are connected to it.