Category: Video Link

This category is for posts that include/focus on a video link to a video I made.

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Economics Essay Philosophy Political Video Link

There’s Always Another Awful Idea…

I was inspired by part of a Lew Rockwell speech that was posted at the Mises Institute website last week!

Today, I’m talking about the dangers of positivism in economics. Basically, in complex systems like the economy, you need a logical, causal framework to evaluate ideas. A purely positivist (i.e., each idea must be tested empirically) approach can be disastrous.

Why? Because empirical testing of uncontrolled systems can lead to counterintuitive and non-generalizable results!

The temptation to fiddle endlessly becomes a source of wealth for the fiddler and a source of poverty for everybody else.

Knob Dial GIFfrom Knob GIFs

Not only are there unlimited legions of bad ideas to “test,” there are an equally unlimited number of statistical tests to apply to the subsequent data, and a finite confidence interval means some of those statistical tests will give you false positives!

Anyway, check out the video up top, and the show notes here.

This video is available on Odysee and BitChute.

Categories
Economics Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Two

This video covers chapter two, including an in-depth explanation of Figure 1 on page 48, with additional visual elements to help make it easier to understand.

Continue reading “Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Two”
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Economics Political Video Link

MMT Fatal Flaws: Why Feed an Inferior Machine?

I’ve been reading a bit about Modern Monetary Theory lately, and one argument I’ve seen a few times is that inflation and taxation are merely methods to transfer goods from the “private sphere” to the “public sphere.”

Continue reading “MMT Fatal Flaws: Why Feed an Inferior Machine?”
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Economics Video Link

Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter 1, Part 2

It continues, on a reasonable time scale!

Welcome to the second part of my tutorial/study guide on Murray Rothbard’s seminal book, America’s Great Depression.

Continue reading “Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter 1, Part 2″
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Philosophy Political Video Link

The Conditions of Political Consent

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of consent from a political perspective. It’s easy to simply call every bit of the state evil and coercive, but it doesn’t seem to convince a lot of people.

So, the thing I’m trying to understand is, what does the average person–not a hardcore anarchist–think of when they envision political consent? Where is the line between a voluntary government and a coercive state? Where is the line between dissidence and withdrawal of consent?

In the video above, I consider a few examples that I’ve seen in popular culture as well as a few of my own devising and try to reach some conclusions.

See my notes for this video here.

This video is available on Odysee and BitChute.

Categories
Economics Video Link

Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Ch.1 Part 1

I’m trying to figure out fun things to do for blog entries, and I thought it would be fun to go through books and create video notes or study guides.

Continue reading “Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Ch.1 Part 1″
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Philosophy Political Video Link

The Inherent Instability of the Long March

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately thinking about the boundaries between a coercive state and a voluntary government. A recent article by Wanjiru Njoya over at the Mises Institute threw me into a bit of a rabbit hole and I thought I’d set down some of my thoughts in a video.

Continue reading “The Inherent Instability of the Long March”
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Economics Essay Video Link

Pet Peeves: “Exploitation Theory”

“Exploitation theory” is something I see being constantly used in socialist arguments, even today. What you won’t hear is that exploitation theory is an uneconomic mess that was completely destroyed by advances in price theory that happened while Marx was still alive.

Oddly enough, even Marx’s opponents, like Kropotkin in The Conquest of Bread, use this faulty idea of exploitation to make their arguments, and it’s kind of painful to watch.

Above, in a ~16 minute video, I’ll break down the problems with exploitation theory and provide a concrete example where a person might choose to rent a tool from another without either person exploiting the other, and with no aggression or differences in ability.

The bottom line is this: anytime someone tells you somebody is exploiting someone else without providing evidence, you can simply dismiss them using the arguments in this video. Their attempts to label certain relationships as exploitative is just them trying to steal a base, and you shouldn’t let them.

My notes and script, if you want to read them.

Video also available on BitChute.

Categories
Economics Essay Video Link

Inflationary Expectations

In this article by Frank Shostak, I think he’s made a bit of a mistake. It may be that I’m missing some subtle point, but I really do think I’m on to something here.

Continue reading “Inflationary Expectations”
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Political Video Link

Sources and Propaganda

For God’s sake, cite your sources and watch out for people who don’t cite theirs!

There’s a short clip of Klaus Schwab running around the libertarian social media sphere where he’s talking about the danger of libertarianism.

It’s being touted as this great proof that the totalitarians are running scared, so I tried to find the original video.

I did, and it is not what they’re telling you, as much as I hate to say it.
Link to the original video.
Link to the same speaker, same topic, one year later.

Check the video above, also available on BitChute.