So the poor shouldn't think of themselves as poor, they should call themselves "Relatively Wealthy!"
She never addresses the actual quality of life for people in either time period and I think that's the main problem I have with the argument. All that apparently matters is wealth, which is important, but not everything.
The average person made 3 dollars a day adjusted for inflation? Please tell me how the modern equivelent of 3 dollars a day, today, affords for a house, food, and varying other shit. How did 3 dollars afford for those things back then?
Maybe I just don't get the concept of 'real money'. But it seem they did't make "three dollars real money" if they could afford what, today, would be waaaaay more expensive products.
[editline]29th April 2014[/editline]
Also this video pretends that colonialism and slavery weren't a thing.
An order of steak used to cost 25 cents in the 1950's, where it's now 20 dollars. Keep that in mind.
The title is over-sensationalized and the video hardly taught me anything.
this just doesn't make sense.
you can't compair the pre-industrial agrarian world to the modern industrial world in terms of wealth
[editline]29th April 2014[/editline]
also she's assuming 3$ a day production from the beginning of human history to now, which just isnt right, you had romans who lived a fairly modern lifestyle with access to goods from around the world, and then there were port cities like alexandria which were massive trade centers for litterally thousands of years. to say that everyone lived 3$ till the invention of the steam engine is just false, and very shortsighted
I don't really understand economics well but if the population's growing and you're accurately adjusting for inflation where did all this money come from? Unless the increase of cost of living is also rising substantially faster than inflation. Because she herself said you wouldn't be able to afford a coffee so like wtf
even britains in the 1700s lived off of more than 3$ a day
actually by her meteric, that would only assume a constant even population density until 1800 when suddenly the real world existed, no cities would ever exist if people were evenly distributed like that
Are my speakers fucked up or did she have a weird reverb that made her sound like Tali from Mass Effect?
[QUOTE=omarfr;44679651]Are my speakers fucked up or did she have a weird reverb that made her sound like Tali from Mass Effect?[/QUOTE]
She has one of those speech aids embedded in her chest.
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;44679572]Because she herself said you wouldn't be able to afford a coffee so like wtf[/QUOTE]
Well it was a luxury good reserved for the wealthy. I think she was just giving contrast to how much 3$ a day can get you in the modern world.
Strange video but the point isn't really something you can disagree with. Hating on merchants and inventors doesn't get a society very far.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;44679953]Well it was a luxury good reserved for the wealthy. I think she was just giving contrast to how much 3$ a day can get you in the modern world.
Strange video but the point isn't really something you can disagree with. Hating on merchants and inventors doesn't get a society very far.[/QUOTE]
yes you can, you can totally disagree with the premis, poor people today are still poor, compairing them to rich or middle class from any period in history and saying they are rich is a stupid comparison since they are poor in their society.
its like compairing poor people in philidelphia to poor farmers in kenya, they both are poor and need help, while one objectively owns more than the other being in an industrialised nation, they still both are equal in terms of their societies
[QUOTE=Sableye;44679997]yes you can, you can totally disagree with the premis, poor people today are still poor, compairing them to rich or middle class from any period in history and saying they are rich is a stupid comparison since they are poor in their society.[/QUOTE]
The rich always do that to justify them hoarding the wealth. The title for the video is really misleading in my opinion. The problem with LearnLiberty is that they always assume that its the the innovators and the honorable businessmen making the money. They act as if inheritance and money corrupting the government doesn't exist.
And when they do the answer is to destroy the government.
[quote]The rich always do that to justify them hoarding the wealth.[/quote]
but the vast majority of the world's wealth is not actually horded by the rich at all...
the vast majority of the world's wealth is concentratedin nation's banks and finances, of which, is provided by bonds which in the case of most western nations, is actually owned mostly by the middle class.
also im just pointing out that you can't objectively compair wealth from an agrarian society to wealth from a global industrial society, and she assumes that the entire world was agrarian with even population and wealth distribution until the industrial revolution, which is just completely wrong
To be honest people are getting richer more rapidly than any other time in history.
Africas and China in particular are now developing booming middle classes, and absolute poverty keeps dropping.
[editline]30th April 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Bootlord;44679426]So the poor shouldn't think of themselves as poor, they should call themselves "Relatively Wealthy!"[/QUOTE]
Since when was this the argument within?
I don't think she was arguing that, but that economic progress in the past two centuries has been immense, and that it is largely down to innovation and allowing people the liberty to produce, think, sell, and do things without interference from the sovereign.
The quality of life widely varied over history, with good years and bad years. The main point is that little innovation meant that there was little in the way of growth. For about 10,000 years, some people farmed their entire lives, seeing marginal changes over centuries to basic living standards and conditions.
Since about the mid 18th century, peoples lives have changed rapidly within lifetimes. Already the year 2014 is nearly unrecognizable to the year 1984.
[editline]30th April 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Sableye;44679523]this just doesn't make sense.
you can't compair the pre-industrial agrarian world to the modern industrial world in terms of wealth
[editline]29th April 2014[/editline]
also she's assuming 3$ a day production from the beginning of human history to now, which just isnt right, you had romans who lived a fairly modern lifestyle with access to goods from around the world, and then there were port cities like alexandria which were massive trade centers for litterally thousands of years. to say that everyone lived 3$ till the invention of the steam engine is just false, and very shortsighted[/QUOTE]
when you have a three minute video to discuss your views and have to talk to a wide audience, generalizing usually happens
she would already know your argument, considering her background in economics and history, it's just that she needs to find a simple and effective way to demonstrate the point that most economic progress is preceded by giving people the liberty to do trade and business
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;44679572]I don't really understand economics well but if the population's growing and you're accurately adjusting for inflation where did all this money come from? Unless the increase of cost of living is also rising substantially faster than inflation. Because she herself said you wouldn't be able to afford a coffee so like wtf[/QUOTE]
Coffee and Sugar were so fucking expensive that they populated the shit out of Brazil to plant that crap and get rich. Subsistence was quite common for the families that had the [B]luxury [/B]of having enough plantable spaces, so much that the simple promise of that made a fuckton of famine-affected families from the EU to imigrate here to Brazil.
I'm not sure about economics either, but from my basic understanding, money comes from your ability to pump out products, technology and services, and mind me say it, you can sure do a lot more of that nowadays when compared to 1800's.
Learn Liberty? More like Learn Density. Because after watching these videos, you're going to be feeling a lot more dense in the head than before.
After watching this video I've formed my own, totally non-influenced opinion about those lazy, propaganda spewing poor people. Maybe if they stopped having that negative attitude about being poor, they would notice all that trickled down wealth that the incredibly generous rich white man has gifted them for centuries. Bunch of ungrateful lazy sacks of shit. Three dollars a day is more than most of them deserve, what with their welfare fraud and food stamps to buy drugs, taking all that tax money that come from us hard working tax payers, the nerve of those poor people, I tell you.
I think this is kinda accurate, but I think you should look at it in this way:
Because of manufacturing and mass production, the amount of wealth which is "generated" has increased. This means that every "commoner" can have more wealth because the amount of wealth that exists.
This doesn't mean that the very rich aren't as much richer today than they were then in percentage. Probably the distribution of wealth is even worse now. But I'm too lazy to look that up at the moment.
i'm assuming this totally ignores the different modes of production and economic systems across history and ignores that most people grew their own crops in the feudal era and had various necessities provided for them by their super-duper-overlords, so it isn't literally "3 dollars"
[QUOTE=draugur;44684989]Learn Liberty? More like Learn Density. Because after watching these videos, you're going to be feeling a lot more dense in the head than before.
After watching this video I've formed my own, totally non-influenced opinion about those lazy, propaganda spewing poor people. Maybe if they stopped having that negative attitude about being poor, they would notice all that trickled down wealth that the incredibly generous rich white man has gifted them for centuries. Bunch of ungrateful lazy sacks of shit. Three dollars a day is more than most of them deserve, what with their welfare fraud and food stamps to buy drugs, taking all that tax money that come from us hard working tax payers, the nerve of those poor people, I tell you.[/QUOTE]
where did you even come to this conclusion from the video lol
i mean for fucks sake, it's a video saying things are getting better
this is true
we live in the most peaceful, healthy, wealthy, equal, freest period in the entirety of human history
[editline]1st May 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=CheeseMan;44692033]i'm assuming this totally ignores the different modes of production and economic systems across history and ignores that most people grew their own crops in the feudal era and had various necessities provided for them by their super-duper-overlords, so it isn't literally "3 dollars"[/QUOTE]
considering living standards it pretty much was
the peasantry did have necessities provided by their overlords, but this was largely in the form of protection from foreign soldiers, and law courts
the peasantry on the other hand, had to spend up to half of their time working on the lords land, and because he held local monopolies on the bakeries, windmills, blacksmiths, etc he could charge considerable fees for the services of those (lords had these monopolies as feudal rights).
on top of that, you had the church tithes, indulgences, the kings taxes, tariffs, trade duties, tolls, special payments to conduct trade, etc, and whatever the peasant had left would most likely be spent on things like salt and beer
for all intents and purposes they would have had 3 dollars, and that would have been considered well off if you were a free man who owned his own land (good luck finding those in the middle ages), (because we have to account for the fact of the people who rented the land, the serfs, slaves, etc)
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;44692049]where did you even come to this conclusion from the video lol
i mean for fucks sake, it's a video saying things are getting better
this is true
we live in the most peaceful, healthy, wealthy, equal, freest period in the entirety of human history[/QUOTE]
It's a video put out by a libertarian organization that's clearly designed to state that free market principles are responsible for a higher standard of living and that poor people shouldn't complain about the free market
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;44692164]It's a video put out by a libertarian organization that's clearly designed to state that free market principles are responsible for a higher standard of living and that poor people shouldn't complain about the free market[/QUOTE]
since when was a non-profit education institution peddling propaganda
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Humane_Studies[/url]
[quote]and that poor people shouldn't complain about the free market[/quote]
where does this assumption even come from
what would you even complain about the free market? does having a free market rule out the possibility of having social welfare programs?
Since it was chaired by Charles Koch and had this video series fundraised by Rand Paul
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;44692217]Since it was chaired by Charles Koch and had this video series partially fundraised by Rand Paul[/QUOTE]
right, and where does it say that poor people shouldnt complain about the free market, or better yet, say that social welfare is out of the question?
the point of the video is that giving people the freedom to innovate is what is responsible for much of the economic progress we have seen in the past two centuries
It's not outright stated, it's subtext. If you take everything she says at face value, current poverty rates are better and it's all thanks to "economic liberty". Social welfare necessitates taxation which is the enemy of "economic liberty", or at least it is from the libertarian viewpoint which I guarantee this video is coming from. Therefore from the viewpoint she's providing, economic liberty is responsible for improving the standard of living and social welfare would only hinder that progress
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;44692273]It's not outright stated, it's subtext. If you take everything she says at face value, current poverty rates are better and it's all thanks to "economic liberty". Social welfare necessitates taxation which is the enemy of "economic liberty", or at least it is from the libertarian viewpoint which I guarantee this video is coming from. Therefore from the viewpoint she's providing, economic liberty is responsible for improving the standard of living and social welfare would only hinder that progress[/QUOTE]
except the viewpoint isnt coming from taxation
the point is that up until the 18th century, merchants were extremely restricted in what they could do, and the fact that they were often socially looked down upon, meant that few people were willing to go into it as a career
governments also put heavy restrictions on who could produce what, when, in what quantity, and what price it may be sold for. the easing up of these restrictions was what fuelled the chaotic growth of the industrial revolution, because goods and capital could flow around rapidly and new ideas spread
you can have taxes, and economic liberty, and social welfare
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