Okay, the title is misleading. He he
I'm referring to this video on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLQdzhSIS9E
Any criticisms in this video you can think of? I think I could point out some errors, and while I'm a strong libertarian, I'll let the more articulate members of this board comment.
I realize it is lengthy, perhaps I'd just suggest watching the first 8-10 minutes if you dont' have the time.
She has a nice voice and is actually quite informed. I would love to debate her on fundamentals. She's really good on the subject, imo.
The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is.
Are you on Youtube?
I have an account, yes. If that is what you mean?
Kinda, I was just wondering if you uploaded original content or not.
She seems to be just painting the picture and context as clearly as possible, which is good. She pointed out she was not talking about the mechanics and will cover them later. That is where criticism can be raised. That said, she may have a catastophically mystic view of the word "rational" (and possibly the words freedom and equality as well).
As usual, she entirely ignores economics and her argument rests on pure equivocation:
Typical incoherent gibberish.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
She has converted me into her idea of anarchy... not... this whole video is about how 'anarchists' are against capitalism. My first criticism is to her three types of collectivism. She defines authoritarian collectivism as a leader that leads the rest of the group. And she says the 'will to power'' of these leaders is by using a stick to punish the subordinates. Libertarian collectivism is means that there is a leader that leads the group without coercive means. And irrational collectivism is when a 'whole bunch of retards run around in total ignorance' because they do not have information to make rational decisions.
Authoritarian Collectivism
She then says Capitalism is part of the authoritarian branch. Apparently, we greedy capitalists love to grab a stick and beat our workers!!! But under her definition on authoritarian collectivism, Capitalism shouldn’t be considered part of this branch. . Oh God, I wish Menger, Bawerk, or Mises were alive today to educate this poor girl on Capitalism and put her in her place. Businesses do not beat their employees to succeed in the market. It is in fact due to competition that employers strive to achieve reasonable working conditions for the employee. Capitalism's 'will to power' is not using a stick to beat employees but rather the 'will to power' is the market itself through competition.
She then goes on to say that Capitalism releases this irrational information that affects the world indirectly. She gives the example of buying oil. According to her, by buying oil, she is indirectly saying that she would somewhat support the war in the middle east, I am assuming she says this because many are calling the war in the middle east, the War for Oil. But, did private businesses send out soldiers in the Middle East? I'm pretty sure it is the Government's fault for the start of the war, not Capitalism. If this world embraced Capitalism to its full potential, we would live in a society that would be a lot more peaceful than the society we live in today. Again, Capitalism is not to blame here, it’s the Government.
Then she brings up the argument that Capitalism causes society to be degraded, or in her terms, Capitalism is what makes people "fucktarded" because Capitalism strives on meeting up with people's desires. Then she claims that this is why less and less kids listen to Miles Davis and listen to Lady Gaga or hip hop. Well let me debunk this whole argument by saying that I have a Miles Davis album the music label for this album is from a company called Sony! Apparently, since Sony is still selling Miles Davis albums, we can say that people still desire to listen to the great Miles Davis. Regardless, I do not get her argument, is she saying that because most kids do not listen to jazz, they are ''fucktarded?'' or by listen to Lady Gaga or Hip-hop, this makes you a less intelligent person? Don’t get me wrong, I agree with her on music tastes, I love Mr. Davis and I hate Hip hop and Lady Gaga but I am not going to say that by listening to Lady Gaga or Hip-hop, you are stupid. But my hatred of Hip Hop or Lady Gaga is subjective, thus it cannot be an objective truth. Therefore her statement "People like shit because they buy shit when in fact they are shaped by shit" is her own subjective opinion and cannot be held as a universal truth. I suggest reading Mr. Soren Kierkegaard if you are still confused about subjective truth and objective.
She calls the market filled with a bunch of irrational people, so the capitalist is just producing for the market for a whole bunch of irrationals. I do not know where she gets this claim from. (Maybe she is suggesting that listening to Hip Hop or Lady Gaga is irrational, but that claim in general is absurd to hold as an objective truth for obvious reasons). Now I truly wish to wake Mises from the dead to tell her how wrong she is. I am not going to go into detail to explain why there isn’t a bunch of irrationals in the market; instead I just want to say READ HUMAN ACTION!!!!!
Thus, her whole conclusion on the fact that capitalism is a form of her view of authoritarian collectivism should be dismissed because she is relying on assumptions of what Capitalism is instead of explaining what Capitalism really is. According to her, anarchists believe in Libertarian collectivism or rational collectivism. I just debunked that Capitalism was part of the Authoritarian branch, so it has to fall under Libertarian collectivism or rational collectivism, therefore, there can be room for Capitalism in Anarchism. This is just a critique of the first 7 minutes if the video. I will further critique her video if people really want me to, but I just had to stop right there, I do not have the patience to listen to anymore of this video today.
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
Maybe I missed it, and I don't feel like watching the video again, but wasn't she "just putting the world view" and "setting the context" in that video. I don't think she gave an actual argument, in fact I think she mentioned a couple times that was for future podcasts. She was setting the stage, right?
The only thing I could note might be to have crazy words like "rational", "freedom", and "equality" as mystic higher things in themselves
maybe by argument, i should have said claim... I wrote this while listening to the video, and just really wrote down what first came to mind
She has a nice voice and is actually quite informed.. She's really good on the subject, imo.
I see no reason not to think otherwise. While it is probable in the end that I will be non-cognitive to anything she states, I think she is trying and succeeding to communicate her "world picture" as clearly as possible. Plus I'm a sucker for a nice voice, if I were Odysseus my journey would have been over when I heard the Sirens.
I also am wondering if it is possible to "refute" or "prove" political groups. It seems kind of pointless to think in these terms to me. Affirming or refuting logical and mechanistic descriptions seems to be the way to go. Maybe I am just focusing on semantics though.
I will further critique her video if people really want me to, but I just had to stop right there, I do not have the patience to listen to anymore of this video today.
Please, do go on if you don't find it too encumbering!
I think the basic problem with her video is that she is trying to make this into a morality play without showing a simple grasp of economics. She mentioned that she is "for abundance." Well, I have to ask, what the hell does that mean? Sure I'm "for" abundance, but that wish alone will not actualize it into reality. Scarcity will *always* exist, no matter how well-off a society is. If you want some form of abundance, you have to incentivize it. It seems like market economies will get greedy people doing good things for themselves with good people doing good things for the sake of it, whereas in a purely socialistic society, greedy people will not have an incentive to help out society out of the goodness of their hearts. One of the major issues I have always had with socialism is that it does not take into account incentives (well, at least it doesn't do it very well). Another thing that is being glossed over is that everything is a transaction of sorts. You enter into a relationship with somebody else because of the quid pro quos involved. You value the feeling that arises from a romantic relationship, and so does your partner. It puts a damper on it, but there is profit and loss at work as there is with all human action.
I'm actually a pretty snobby person when it comes to things that are "cultured", even though I'm a pretty gentle person in reality and would never be so arrogant as to call people "fucktarded" if they have different preferences. It pains me that society doesn't read anything deep or listen to actual artistic music, but even saying that, I have Lady Gaga and Kanye West in my music library . Of course that's immersed in between John Coltrane and Animal Collective and experimental bluegrass .
And regarding that, she thinks that capitalism dumbs down our culture. Okay, but I'd rather have a well-fed dumb culture than one that can appreciate Miles Davis and have to deal with socialistic planning failures that lead to famine. Besides from being a totally irrelevant point, if those people are too stupid that they follow the characters from Jersey Shore with much attention, that's their problem. I don't care.
Also I think the buzzword of "equality" is one that is loaded with all sorts of authoritarian connotations. If I don't believe a person is worthy of my respect, I will not give them my respect. I don't owe them respect. She did say that an-caps would be free to develop their own little society. So I don't really see where the disagreement is. I assume an-caps would allow communal or syndicalist societies as well. If she values all people equally and truly finds that much utility in equality, then she is absolutely free to value everybody without preconditions, and that would just factor into the demand curve.
Anyway I kind of rambled, but I think there's a coherent rebuttal somewhere in this body of text!
She likes Miles Davis, thus we should like Miles Davis. The fact that we don't somehow proves that we're all mind-controlled by the evil and materialistic capitalist system!
The act of liking Miles Davis is one that ought to be the case, even if you don't understand jazz and it doesn't generate a pleasurable internal brain state, you see.
It's a superiour aesthetic! Like it, you uncultured fools!
Edit: On another note, her intermittent (and useless) cussing ruined it for me.
What's interesting about this video is her use of the term irrational. She seems to be aware of market signals, but considers them a bad thing because they coordinate society in a way that we don't intend them to. As she puts it, "consumers are not activists". In other words, irrational means "uncontrolled" or "unplanned".
I agree on that score, Nero. Does Wikipedia suck as a resource thanks to its unplanned and uncoordinated nature? I'd say no. It's not 100% reliable, but then again I doubt very many things are. This is an example where the more esoteric elements are best left to those who have a passion or an interest in the subject, like you would probably see on a market.
I think what annoys her most is a) she doesn't view the capitalist as providing anything important to the structure of production (ignoring that you need capital, land, and labor in order to produce anything and not merely land and labor unlike what Proudhon posited) and b) she is against commercialism. You can be anti-materialist and still be a "right"-libertarian. There's nothing contradictory on that score. It stems from a conception of property and if she accepts the idea of property (she may be anti-property, so maybe not), then I don't really understand her beef with property exchanges. It would be like any other type of exchange. If she's not against individual property and she's not advocating the use of force in the form of a State, then it sounds to me more like a complaining about the type of people she's surrounded by and not the political structure.
For the record; I'm not saying she is world's best economist. I'm saying that her worldview kind a makes sense. Given some assumptions, most of her conclusions follow pretty logically. I'm also impressed by her reasoning concerning market signals. She actually accepts them, but that denounces them. I really think this is one proof that someone smart can be really wrong.
I also like the fact that she says some pretty 'libertarian' (as we look at it) stuff themselves. The only thing she needs, is a better grasp of economics. But all in all; probably the best exposition of the argument I've ever seen.
Eric080: Kinda, I was just wondering if you uploaded original content or not.
Not really. I've got some in Dutch on my facebook. :p Why?
@Adrian, I was just wondering since you said you'd like to make a rebuttal or have a conversation with her. I was thinking a video response back and forth would be interesting to see!
I could actually do that. :p I'm not that good with all the drawings and stuff, but I could do that.
This is extremely rambling and isn't an especially powerful argument.
She says that people make irrational decisions, yet isn't showing what an irrational decision is outside of what SHE considers to be irrational. She constantly treats Capitalism as Corporatism. She criticizes the Capitalist economic system on basis of her opinions as to what is rational and what is not, and furthermore doesn't even provide a plausable alternative.
I don't see how she is any better than the average anarcho-communist hack. Her entire argument could be refuted using just quotations from Human Action, or even Socialism. When your argument cannot stand against a book written decades ago, that is a bad sign.
When your argument cannot stand against a book written decades ago, that is a bad sign.
what do you mean by that?
Have you debated the aveage anarcho-communist hack? I mean; if all the anarcho-communist hacks had her brain, it would have been awesome and interesting.
Her entire argument could be refuted using just quotations from Human Action, or even Socialism.
Once again, she didn't make an argument. She was trying to show context and set terms. She said she would cover the mechanics of things in her next video.
She opposes anything that sounds bad to her, too bad she doesn't care about consistency.
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
I agree with you William, but there was some identifiable points in the video that could constitute, or take the form of, an argument. If her "set-up" video is flawed, I think the mechanics video will be a little off-key. But I think the rest of her videos will not rely on attacking capitalism but rather trying to show the logistics of anarcho-syndicalism (I think she's a syndicalist anyway).
So, capitalism is to be blamed and denounced for the many people today that listen to hip-hop and Lady Gaga over Miles Davis... but what about 30-60 years ago, when more people were listening to Miles Davis? Don't we have "capitalism" to thank for that? As Paul Cantor likes to point out, it's hard to characterize capitalism/the market as a poor judge and sponsor of talent, when it made Charles Dickens the most successful novelist of the 19th century.
"This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed their YouTube account."
Too bad.
Whoops, she left. Guess we will never be enlightened as to how the world can be turned into an anarcho-syndicalist paradise.
Yes, this video was not her argument. However, she is setting up false premises. It is like if a physics professor giving a lecture started by saying that there is no such thing as gravity, or if a math teacher claimed that integers don't exist. It isn't neccesary to see what else they have to offer, because the premises of their theories are FALSE.