From the many viewer comments below, it appears most folks don't get the parody here. If we were to actually read the much-misunderstood treatise on capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations" written in 1776 by Adam Smith, it is clearly articulated that self-interest plays an essential role in a capitalist economy. However, there are several book passages that were conveniently overlooked by Milton Friedman and his band of free-market fanatics. Among these oversights are: (1) for capitalism to be truly effective and sustainable, genuine competition must exist in the marketplace (not our current excessive corporate consolidation across most major industries), (2) boom & bust cycles are inherent in a capitalistic system, but restrictions are necessary (to avoid irresponsible and insanely high-risk mystery transactions drummed up by banking and the financial sector), and (3) governmental oversight and mandated corporate transparency are absolutely necessary to limit the excesses and abuses of the "unseen hand" of the market (markets are self-serving, NOT self-correcting). Since 1980, when trickle-down Reaganomics was introduced to the American and British economies (thank you David Stockman), our brand of capitalism became perverted by unconstrained self-interest and greed. We have witnessed financial flim-flam like derivatives, securitized debt instruments, and a virtual smorgasbord of pseudo-transactions dramatically erode our economy and this nation. For more than four decades, the middle-class has substantially regressed. American socioeconomics has devolved into a two-tier system of the haves and have-nots --- where the top 1% and corporate lobbyists have literally purchased the best government the uber-wealthy and corporate money can buy. For the past 40 years, it has become abundantly obvious that trickle-down does not work for the masses. Frankly, most of us have been rudely trickled on! Regrettably, this nation has so focused on the accumulation and celebration of personal wealth and corporate wealth that we have totally abandoned any sense of our commonwealth. To this country's peril, the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless" mentality is constantly promoted by the media and has been warmly embraced by much of the public. As the words of Justice Louis Brandeis so wisely illustrated, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Dr. A

@TheBrayan300

5 ай бұрын

Not my fault I can do math 😂 jk jk

@jeb9097

5 ай бұрын

His name is Satan? 😂😂😂😢😢😢✨

@ericchristen2623

5 ай бұрын

Much of the public? I never did. It was always vulgar to anyone with an ounce of morality.

@bensupit8991

5 ай бұрын

I just finished reading both volumes of the Wealth of Nations, and at no point does Adam Smith critique free markets, free trade or liberty. On the contrary, he praised it the entire way through, and any criticism made was always in regards to things that government did (giving special privileges through mercantilist and corporatist policy). He also at no point ever alluded to boom bust cycles being an inevitable part of free markets, and rightly said that depressions would come and go given the frequency of war (spurred by mercantilism which itself was spurred by government) as well as famine (largely the result of uncontrollable weather events or government price controls) which Adam Smith correctly foresaw would be among the woes of nature that free markets and the division of labour would make great leaps in overcoming.

@ramirovillota4468

4 ай бұрын

Sorprendente respuesta..

👌👌👌 So glad to meet you, rational optimizer! I was under the impression that you were a legend, an old wives tale! And, I have to say, you look exactly the way I pictured you in my mind!

We live in a time when this parody is elected president of Argentina.

@Sheeshening

5 ай бұрын

Argentina’s past shows working for the devil may just be the best worst thing 😊

"Use all your well-learned economics, or I'll lay your soul to waste"

The world is burning and I’m cry-laughing, thanks

@Badgerlust

5 ай бұрын

When is the world not burning?

There is no such thing as society and we are all winners...no such thing as losers. Btw did I forget to mention the rest of my dream? It involved the tooth fairy before the planet collapsed.

@thomasbentele2468

6 ай бұрын

Capitalism in its true meaning was exactly the spectacular revolution, that one man can grow rich without another getting poorer. It's done by creating additional goods. Not the world, where Attila robbed Europe to grow rich, why the victims got poorer. Money supply and credit guidance are the key to a sustainable free economy. See Prof. Dr. Richard Werner, "Princes Of The Yen"...). Winners and losers are the world of speculators, who don't create additional goods, and should have no access to credit creation. But excluding them could be called antisemitic, and would therefore be impossible.

but what if i’m self interested in social welfare

What am I looking at...

@Mageroeth

6 ай бұрын

The invisible hand of the market.

@MatthewStinar

6 ай бұрын

Satire, hopefully. Though I doubt it, since the narrator identifies as an economist.

@tuberific454

6 ай бұрын

​@@MageroethAnd ironically Adam Smith's "invisible hand" wasn't intended to embody its popular meaning. Instead it was how he described a merchant's patriotic duty to favor domestic over foreign investment. The invisible hand was thus protectionism, and it's speculated he wrote that language to appease the political climate due to a trade war with the colonies.

@fardeenkhan2889

6 ай бұрын

That's what I'm thinking 😅

@fatman1152

5 ай бұрын

Another sign that ritch people have way too much time and money

You forgot the MOST important part: property rights should be inviolable and unlimited in their power, scale, and accumulation. Self interest profit motive is peanuts in comparison.

@NewEconomicThinking

6 ай бұрын

It sounds like we'll have to ask them about that in the next interview :)

@tuberific454

6 ай бұрын

...and taxing labor discourages productivity.

That's the way humans are rationally detsroying their homeland in the most greedy way.

I will never feel safe again D:

His name is Born. Born in the USA.

It's like listening to a circular argument with no true Scotsman.

You know an idea is wrong-headed when simply stating it qualifies as a parody.

Homo economicus would be a top contestant in who wants to be a bagholder

Starts the video with a classic.

Daft Quant

Thank you, INET, love this!! The God of the market can only be appeased, not negotiated with, and deceives nearly all of mankind, INET viewers, excluded, of course 😊

interesting take

I love how he becomes more contradictory as he continues haha

I can’t tell if this is a parody or not... ...if not, I think we’ve gone through this already Oh, and economy is NOT, *AT ALL* a science I think this was a parody tho

@checosa777

6 ай бұрын

i thought the same

@ogawasanjuro

6 ай бұрын

You know, judging from the how the voice inflected and some of the poses, I think you are correct. This was very likely a parody. But the sad thing about is that it is a parody of how some/many people actually think.

@txoricin

6 ай бұрын

@@ogawasanjuro ...true

@realdanrusso

6 ай бұрын

@@ogawasanjuro yeah some of what he was saying was direct quotes from Friedman

@tiberiusalexander6339

6 ай бұрын

I honestly don't think this is even parody. Parody requires SOME exaggeration or invention. This reads as a completely straightforward defense of neoliberal economics. I think the idea is that the concepts here are so obviously flawed that it gives an overly simplistic explanation for economics, and, at its core, is actually a normative argument (how the world "should" be) with an objective one (how the world "is"). This is one of the great victories of modern neo-liberal economics; to build a justification for a certain set of subjective values which masquerades as an inescapable logical argument.

In a world of big data and AI I am not so sure free market capitalism is the most effective way to grow an economy. It seems bit outdated now.

@stnbch3025

6 ай бұрын

Growing the economy is outdated. It's not even a necessity since basic needs (no a smartphone is not a basic need, it's an artificial compulsory need since it's forced upon you by an artificial system) do not change and we've forever been shite at fulfilling needs without causing harm. The growing economy is a reflection of human stupidity since the growing economy is the result of an increase in stupid wants and crap.

@tuberific454

6 ай бұрын

What often gets overlooked is that free market capitalism was effectively abolished in the 1890s with Sherman Antitrust and progressive taxes. Generally people reflect on the 20th century and attribute its growth and progress to free market capitalism, unaware that western developed nations are in actuality hybrid-Marxist. Per ChatGPT, "Marxism more closely aligns with western democracy than with Stalinism." So, while pathological self-interest taking the form of "economic man" can explain for societal setbacks, he's more the manifestation of misperceptions about markets than of deficiencies of character. That is, a lot of people do think that greed works because that's what they've been told. Trickle-down economics is evidence of that.

@TheDynamicmarket

6 ай бұрын

go to an AI and ask about the prices around lake como. ask about the trends.

Genius right there ❤🎉

AMAZING! 😆

Haw can I meet this guy

Looks like a T-1000 Glitched halfway through?

Basically the machine.

Love it! My sympathy for the devil! Rock'n'Roll, yeah! ];->

I have great sympathy for your sarcasm. Can Homo-Economicus figure out Planned Obsolescence in automobiles? Years ago I asked a PhD economist to explain how an automobile engine worked. He couldn't even start, but he drove a white SUV. Look up the specs for a P-38 Lightning. Designed 30 years before the Moon landing. The first 400 mph US military plane. That is what engineers knew how to do without computers. Notice that our brilliant economists do not provide data on the annual depreciation of automobiles purchased by consumers since Sputnik. The economy depends on consumers being stupid.

@2:50 is why his face is blurred out, he speaks the truth but would be publicly criticized about this opinion.

@tiberiusalexander6339

6 ай бұрын

Except that people aren't always greedy, are they? People act selflessly and we clearly value that. I don't think there is a single religious or ethical tradition that doesn't demand some level of selfless as opposed to selfish behavior.

@ajones8008

6 ай бұрын

@@tiberiusalexander6339 Its in certain peoples nature to be greedy especially when times are tough. I think that its just part of human evolution. The same traits that kept us alive as hunters and gatherers. When there are good times there is less of a need to be greedy but it still happens. It's hard to escape our natural biology, people lived in scarcity for a much longer period of human history than our abundant and technologically advanced society that we live in now.

@tiberiusalexander6339

6 ай бұрын

@@ajones8008 but what he's saying is wrong. People can and do recognize that their own behavior is selfish. And they can and do act in selfless ways that don't align with any obvious selfish goals. So this argument - that everyone is just acting selfishly - is wrong. And the conclusion - that everybody therefore SHOULD act selfishly - is not justifiable as being the "best" outcome for us as a whole.

That 1:16 pause was funny.

I’m glad you’ve changed your preferences and have chosen to step in to the limelight.

This reminds me of liberal foolish younger me or even younger conservative me. Capitalist's brain worms are strong in this.

Ah nice joke the invisible hand of the market.

Are you Patrick Bateman ? aren´t you ?

@eunicec.3984

6 ай бұрын

cause you ain't real

lol

I called economics homo in the 10th grade and got suspended.

@akhbar-leblad

5 ай бұрын

Yeah you want a world with people that are perfect minded people that don't act on their impulse and a world where nobody has a hungry heart where nobody pleasures they're cravings where everybody is like a robot mentally it's messed up that your programming people and leaving them to that kind of life

LOL better than expected

Yeah i love this parody.. there should be more... about why the hell energy doesnt play any not so ever what role in economys, but to be 2% of the market.. well you take all energy out.. tehres still 98% left.. right? or didnt an economist latly state, climatechange isnt that much a problem.. even if we loose 50% of all crops... thats also nothing but a 1-2% money loss. ah yes.. the best one.. in all economic textbooks... those classical circle of households, and companys that creates growth out of it selfe... a perfect perpetuum mobilet without connection to anything but it self.. i could go on and on.. HOly shit.. some of those influece the most powerful people..

Lol!!

😂

Amsrica

What the?😂😂

Im too high for this shit , lol

Dull...

Oh Jesus he moved on the w axis

I failed economics so...

Oh shit HE is riffing on Freidman from 79 interview on Phil Donahue. Let me point out the current state of affairs in a commercialized univiserity system. LOL. It’s far worse than science under the USSR. LOL

Evil

Be quiet poors

Fraud!

*when i read the title I thought it was about leftist Woke economics, the Go Woke Go Broke Theory* 😅🤣😂

All economic systems are flawed and limited as they are made by ideologies and no one of those is comlete and true as they are made people with flaws and limited knowledge Capitalism has the same flaws that human nature has by itself and as such is our best option since it enables more human freedom. Byt no doubt ot needs to be updated because its no longer truly capitalism .the corruption that we see is a results we often see of people cheating the game and we call it capitalism . Yet still the flaws and human injustice that other economic systems require to function are intolerable, its one thing for a system to alllow a possibility of injustice ,and greed.Its onther thing for an economic system to require Injustice ,greed, and supression of the individual to function

@akhbar-leblad

5 ай бұрын

🥰

This is what happens when you do too much coke. 😢 RIP