Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts

Thursday, April 07, 2016

Video: Sweden's Prosperity Has Been Due to Socialism. Dead Wrong! Says Johan Norberg

From Free to Choose Network (hat tip Cafe Hayek)
Many people claim the U.S. should be more like Sweden and give more benefits. Should we? In this short video clip, Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explains how Sweden became successful first, and how expanded government actually pulled them down.


I had a post with a similar theme in 2012 




Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Video: Special Interest Groups and Not Voters Influence Political Landscape in America

The following video, originally entitled “Corruption is Legal in America” by represent.us, trenchantly describes not only how corruption is legal in the US, but more importantly, how corruption has endemically been embedded into the system from which corruption became legal.

It is also interesting to see how the popular concept of representative government (seen from academic theory) works in complete departure from reality where voters have little influence on the legal landscape. Instead, the current political economic environment has been dominated by special interest groups via public choice, regulatory capture and revolving door politics.

Because of the enormous windfalls or colossal return of investments when political mandates have been enacted on their favor, many corporations resort to them.

The lesson here shouldn’t be seen only in the frame of US politics but also applies to other representative governments as the Philippines.


Friday, June 27, 2014

Video: Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux on The Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity

Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux explains the hockey stick of human progress.

(from Marginal Revolution)

Video: Mises Institute's Jeff Deist on how the FED Distorts Everything

Mises Institute's President Jeff Deist explains how Fed policies gives rise to the boom-bust cycle (Austrian Business Cycle), as well as, how inflationism impacts prices which in turn affect everything else. 


Thursday, June 26, 2014

Video: Bruce Yandle on The Bootleggers and Baptists

Professor Bruce Yandle explains his Bootleggers and Baptists theory 

From LearnLiberty.org (hat tip Prof Art Carden) 
We all know bootleggers and Baptists rarely see eye to eye. Ask one group and its members will probably tell you they despise the other group. Yet, when it comes to government regulation, both bootleggers and Baptists work together. Prof. Bruce Yandle explains that this happens because both groups actually desire the same outcome. The Baptists benefit, for example, from laws that make the sale of alcoholic beverages illegal on Sundays. Bootleggers benefit because now they can sell alcohol on Sundays. Groups who would never meet together but both desire the same outcome can often be found upon closer examination of many government regulations. Prof. Yandle demonstrates how environmental regulations fit into the bootlegger-Baptist theory.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Video: Ludwig von Mises on "Are Workers In Conflict with Employers?"

When asked to respond on the issue “Are the interests of the American wage earners in conflict with those of their employers, or are the two in agreement?" 

Here is the reply of the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (via Mises Blog)

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Video: Jeff Deist on the Corruption of Economic Language

Mises Institute's President Jeff Deist explains how the mainstream corrupts English, and most importantly, the economic language.(Mises Blog)



A very relevant part is how Philippine media uses the word "sustainable" which is vogue today with reference to the Philippine economy. Mr. Deist says the implicit meaning of "sustainable" is "centralized planning" (2:18) or "Some centralized group of bureaucrats or politicians are going to decide whether some economic activities to be engaged in is permissible". Well, blowing bubbles are "sustainable"?

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Video: Myth of the Rational Voter: Make Progress, Not Work

Econolog economist, professor and blogger Bryan Caplan explains why free markets (and not labor protectionism) leads to progress



From Learn Liberty
As technological developments increased farm yields over the last two centuries, the share of the US population employed in agriculture fell from around 90 percent to around 2 percent. The lay American public supposes that when workers lose their jobs, we become worse off — they suffer from what economist Bryan Caplan calls the 'make-work' bias. But would anyone prefer to live in a society in which many went hungry and no one enjoyed the wealth, financial security, job growth, and innovation created as all those workers lost their farm jobs? Follow Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, as he explains the gap between the public's opinion and the economist's facts. In this video, Caplan talks about the merits and demerits of 'making work' - instead of letting individuals find work. 

► Learn More: 

-Frederic Bastiat contends that to aim to increase the proportion of effort to output is to imitate Sisyphus in his hopeless attempt to move a stone up a hill: http://mises.org/daily/6157/Industry-... 

-Daniel J. Mitchell explains the fallacy that government creates jobs: http://www.cato.org/publications/comm...

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Video: Milton Friedman on the Robin Hood Myth

The late Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman explains via the "Director's law" why the popular perception of the Robin Hood role of governments is a myth. 

(hat tip Cafe Hayek)

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Video: Peter Klein on the Fundamental Flaws of Thomas Piketty’s view of Inequality

Professor and Mises Institute’s Executive Director Peter G. Klein exposes on the fundamental flaws of Thomas Piketty’s view of inequality. From the Mises Blog



I’d like to add more...
image
The above chart is from Picketty’s book. 
Editors of the New York Sun uses Picketty’s chart to expose on a major source of inequality—the fiat money standard—which unfortunately Mr. Piketty fails to account for.

From the Zero Hedge [bold fonts and underline original]
Well, feature the chart that Professor Piketty publishes showing inequality in America. This appears in the book at figure 9.8; a similar version, shown alongside here, is offered on his Web site. It’s an illuminating chart. It shows the share of national income of the top decile of the population. It started the century at a bit above 40% and edged above 45% in the Roaring Twenties. It plunged during the Great Depression and edged down in World War II, and then steadied out, until we get to the 1970s. Something happened then that caused income inequality to start soaring. The top decile's share of income went from something like 33% in 1971 to above 47% by 2010. 

Hmmm. What could account for that? Could it be the last broadcast of the “Lawrence Welk Show?” Or the blast off of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon? Or could it have something to do with the mysterious D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of the plane he hijacked, never to be seen again? A timeline of 1971 offers so many possibilities. But, say, what about the possibility that it was in the middle of 1971, in August, that America closed the gold window at which it was supposed to redeem in specie dollars presented by foreign central banks. That was the default that ended the era of the Bretton Woods monetary system.

That’s the default that opened the age of fiat money. Or the era that President Nixon supposedly summed up in with Milton Friedman’s immortal words, “We’re all Keynesians now.” This is an age that has seen a sharp change in unemployment patterns. Before this date, unemployment was, by today’s standards, low. This was a pattern that held in Europe (these columns wrote about it in “George Soros’ Two Cents”) and in America (“Yellen’s Missing Jobs”). From 1947 to 1971, unemployment in America ran at the average rate of 4.7%; since 1971 the average unemployment rate has averaged 6.4%. Could this have been a factor in the soaring income inequality that also emerged in the age of fiat money? 

This is the question the liberals don’t want to discuss, even acknowledge…
The New York Sun’s conclusion
There is an irony here for Monsieur Piketty. It was France who gave us Jacques Rueff, the economist who had the clearest comprehension of the importance of sound money based on gold specie. He was, among other things, an adviser of Charles De Gaulle. It was De Gaulle who in 1965, called a thousand newspapermen together and spoke of the importance of gold as the central element of an international monetary system that would put large and small, rich and poor nations on the same plane. We ran the complete text of Professor Piketty’s book “Capital” through the Sun’s own “Electrically-operated Savvy Sifter” and were unable to find, even once, the name of Rueff.
The same kind of inequality induced by central banking fiat money bubble blowing policies plagues the Philippines.

It’s funny how the statist mindset works.

Step 1. Statists adapt bubble blowing policies. But when a bust surfaces, they blame capitalism for various societal ills such as “inequality” (straw man). This leads to Step two:  calls for more financial repression via inflationism and taxes which leads back to Step 1.
So the statist logic has all been about circularity or doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Some people call this insanity.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Video: Why Social Justice is a sweeping indictment of a free society

In the following video, Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute exposes the hidden agenda behind the demagogical term 'social justice'.

Mr. Goldberg on the great F.A. Hayek's vehement objection to 'social justice':
Hayek understood that the need for political opportunism and intellectual laziness of the term social justice was a pernicious philosophical claim—meaning freedom must be sacrificed in order redistribute income. Ultimately social justice is about the state amassing ever increasing power in order to do “good things” What are good things? Whatever the champions of ‘social justice’ decide this week.
For me, social justice can be simplified as the politics of envy. 

Hat tip Cafe Hayek, video from Prager University
 

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Video: 1,000 Years of Constant European Border Shifts

The Marketwatch.com writes: (ht: Gary North)
The borders of Europe have been static since the breakups of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and the reunification of Germany, but look set to shift shortly, if the Duma in Moscow ratifies the stated desire of a Crimean majority to quit Ukraine for Russia. But a broader perspective, taking into account the past 1,000 years of European history, shows that change on the continent has been a near-constant.

Watch on Loiter.co as Centennia Historical Atlas software condenses Europe’s history into a 3 ½-minute video representing the shifting borders from A.D. 1,000 through 2003: 

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Video: Communications Sabotage: Why the Missing Malaysian airline has likely been a Hijack

(hat tip Gary North)



Updated to add: There may have been a fourth way fliers of the missing plane used to avoid detection. The MAS 370 was reported by the New Strait Times to have used "Terrain Marking" or flew at an altitude of 5,000 or lower.(ht: lewrockwell.com)

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Video Roundtable Discussion: Why Do People Believe Stupid Things?

I saw this interesting video from Lew Rockwell Blog's Charles Burris who writes
Sit back and enjoy this rousing Boiling Frogs Post Roundtable discussion where James Corbett, Guillermo Jimenez and Sibel Edmonds ask (and attempt to answer) the vexing question of “why people believe stupid things?” Is it willful ignorance? Moral cowardice? Deference to authority figures’ palatable lies and tasty untruths? Intellectual sloth or cognitive laziness? Or is it a self-imposed mental imprisonment of not wanting to face the inconvenient and unpleasant reality outside their comfort zone matrix? So put on your critical thinking cap and join in the reflective conversation.
I may add: is it because of social desirability bias or groupthink? Is it because of the law of least effort? And or is it because of brainwashing?

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Video: F. A. Hayek on J.M Keynes: Keynes Knew Very Little of Economics, Economics was just a sideline to him

In the following interview, the great Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek makes his comments on mainstream economic deity, John Maynard Keynes' knowledge of economics. Hayek has been a personal friend and an intellectual rival of JMK. 

F. A Hayek opens with a strong criticism of Keynes who he says "knew very little of economics"(0:10), except that Keynes concentrated (or tunneled on) "Marshallian economics". 

Hayek further says that despite being one of the most intelligent thinkers he has ever known "economics was just a sideline for him" (2:28). Hayek said that Keynes wanted "to recreate the subject".

Hayek further noted that Keynes "knew very little of 19th century economic history" (0:22) whose understanding had been guided by "aethestic appeal" although paradoxically Keynes "hated the 19th century".

Hayek also noted that Keynes was never interested in the theory of capital (4:28), was "very shaky on the theory of international trade" (4:32) although Keynes was "well informed on  contemporary monetary theory but even there did not know such things are Henry Thornton or Wicksell" (4:37) and Keynes only read French where the "whole German literature was in accessible to him" (4:48)

Interesting.

(hat tip Mark Thornton Mises Blog)

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Video: Hunger Games' Catching Fire: Is Katniss a Modern-Day Spartacus?

My daughter wanted to watch Hunger Games: Catching Fire, so my wife and I accompanied her. I haven't seen the first episode The Hunger Games in its entirety (I saw only the last segment on cable TV) but headed to the movie with a general idea of the plot. Nonetheless, I came out quite impressed by the second series.  Reason? The movie seem like an allegorical portrayal of real world politics; freedom versus despotic political power

Learn liberty has a video explaining the popular appeal of Hunger Games and related movies: (hat tip Cafe Hayek)
Literature and legend often reflect their culture. Some themes, like that of rulers imposing coercive power, or of individuals rising up against tyrants, are as relevant today as they were in antiquity. Suzanne Collins drew on Greek mythology's story of the Minotaur and on the legend of Spartacus in ancient Rome as she created the Hunger Games series. Her hero, like the heroes in these stories, does not seek her own power or profit but is standing up against a violent and tyrannical government. "People everywhere yearn for the freedom to pursue their own goals and dreams," says Prof. Amy Sturgis. Even though the themes are ancient, stories like the Hunger Games resonate with readers because the anxieties and fears they portray are real and relevant. "These stories aren't just entertainment," Sturgis says. "They are reflections of who and what we are." Do the themes in these stories resonate with you? Why?

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Video: This Time is Different 1999 edition: Magical environment for the stock market

The following video interview conducted during the peak of the dotcom bubble or in December 1999 (chart of the Nasdaq below from bigcharts.com), is a classic example of how mainstream ‘experts’ anticipate markets so badly and how the mania mentality (this time is different) operates at the climax of a bubble. 

image
A reminder of the “this time is different” mindset from Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their discourse of the 250+ crisis since 1800: (bold mine)
The essence of the this-time-is-different syndrome is simple. It is rooted in the firmly held belief that financial crises are things that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen to us, here and now. We are doing things better, we are smarter, we have learned from past mistakes. The old rules of valuation no longer apply. The current boom, unlike the many booms that preceded catastrophic collapses in the past (even in our country), is built on sound fundamentals, structural reforms, technological innovation, and good policy. Or so the story goes
The four deadliest words of investing comes in different variations such as “permanently high plateau”, “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance,” and more…

In the video this has been embodied by “Magical environment for the stock market”

Learning from history, it gives me a creep when I hear personalities publicly declare phrases that resembles the above such as: “Rising Star of Asia”, “We have the kind of economy that every country dreams of” and etc…

(hat tip Zero Hedge)



Monday, November 25, 2013