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>she opens with the "money emerged to fix barter" origin story This is a misrepresentation of Sabine's video. It should be obvious from the generic contemporar

by Aunche 3y ago

>she opens with the "money emerged to fix barter" origin story This is a misrepresentation of Sabine's video. It should be obvious from the generic contemporary products that she chose that she wasn't talking about the history of money, but of course anti-capitalists can't help but smugly inject the ideas of their favorite pop-anthropologist everywhere they can. A gift economy may work in a tribe 100,000 years ago, but most of the goods and services that we rely on today comes from strangers who won't give you anything unless if you give them something that they consider at least equivalent in return. Sabine's point is that money is the most efficient medium of exchange for this sort of equivalent exchange. I didn't bother to investigate most of the other criticisms, but I feel like they're going to be just as bad faith. For example, the penicillin video criticizes Sabine because her 1 minute history of penicillin wasn't as nuanced as a 20 minute explanation of the history of penicillin. Fair enough, and I did find the video interesting. However, judging that the title of the video is "Capitalism would've killed penicillin", I doubt author has the same standards of nuance towards people she agrees with.

runarberg 3y ago
The thing is, the penicillin anecdote was the only evidence she cited as the reason for capitalism being good, which is the main thesis in the video. What people are criticizing that the video isn’t well argued, and that even the only evidence she gives which favors her main thesis isn’t—and doesn’t even directly support it might I add—isn’t even true.
- Aunche 3y ago
  Any video that tries to condense all of economics into 16 minutes is going to be wrong to a certain extent, but I think anyone without a strong negative opinion of capitalism would get the point she makes. Penicillin would be useless without industrialization, and industrialization wouldn't have happened without capitalism, so therefore capitalism is good.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    There are allot of assumptions in your line of reasoning. It can be argued that it is just as likely—if not more likely—that the only people watching this video that came out of it with a positive opinion on capitalism, are the people that already believe these assumptions to be true, don’t need any evidence to further believe them—may even reject the evidence showing the contrary—and already held the faith that capitalism is good. Either way it was a bad video, and not at all to par with the scientific standard she sets in her previous work, in the field she is an expert at.
    - Aunche 3y ago
      I didn't make any assumptions. Most people, including Karl Marx, agree that capitalism is what lead to industrialization. All Sabine did is make the obvious connection between capitalism, industrialization, and the widespread availability of penicillin. "Ackchyually, there was some resistance to pharmaceutical companies conducting research for penicillin production" is something you care about if you're being hypercritical.
      - runarberg 3y ago
        It is still an assumption, and an ahistorical one at that. Many countries industrialized without capitalism, and humanity has seen much greater technological revolutions without this system. And yes, Karl Marx was wrong about many things, if he stated that industrialization would not happen without capitalism, he would be wrong. But there is another—much worse—assumption you made. Even if we conclude that industrialization only happened because of capitalism, and even if we conclude that industrialization and capitalism is what made penicillin useful, we still cannot conclude that capitalism is a good system. You run into the black swan problem here. Just because you can point to a single white swan, and even if you can point to a million white swans, this is no basis to conclude that all swans are white. Similarly, even if all your other assumptions are correct, your anecdote about penicillin is not a conclusive about the quality of the system. This is why scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder usually only take anecdotes at face value, and use them only as hints to justify further research. For some reason Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t do that when she concludes that capitalism is a good system. I wonder why.

by Aunche 3y ago

runarberg 3y ago

The thing is, the penicillin anecdote was the only evidence she cited as the reason for capitalism being good, which is the main thesis in the video. What people are criticizing that the video isn’t well argued, and that even the only evidence she gives which favors her main thesis isn’t—and doesn’t even directly support it might I add—isn’t even true.

Aunche 3y ago
Any video that tries to condense all of economics into 16 minutes is going to be wrong to a certain extent, but I think anyone without a strong negative opinion of capitalism would get the point she makes. Penicillin would be useless without industrialization, and industrialization wouldn't have happened without capitalism, so therefore capitalism is good.
- runarberg 3y ago
  There are allot of assumptions in your line of reasoning. It can be argued that it is just as likely—if not more likely—that the only people watching this video that came out of it with a positive opinion on capitalism, are the people that already believe these assumptions to be true, don’t need any evidence to further believe them—may even reject the evidence showing the contrary—and already held the faith that capitalism is good. Either way it was a bad video, and not at all to par with the scientific standard she sets in her previous work, in the field she is an expert at.
  - Aunche 3y ago
    I didn't make any assumptions. Most people, including Karl Marx, agree that capitalism is what lead to industrialization. All Sabine did is make the obvious connection between capitalism, industrialization, and the widespread availability of penicillin. "Ackchyually, there was some resistance to pharmaceutical companies conducting research for penicillin production" is something you care about if you're being hypercritical.
    - runarberg 3y ago
      It is still an assumption, and an ahistorical one at that. Many countries industrialized without capitalism, and humanity has seen much greater technological revolutions without this system. And yes, Karl Marx was wrong about many things, if he stated that industrialization would not happen without capitalism, he would be wrong. But there is another—much worse—assumption you made. Even if we conclude that industrialization only happened because of capitalism, and even if we conclude that industrialization and capitalism is what made penicillin useful, we still cannot conclude that capitalism is a good system. You run into the black swan problem here. Just because you can point to a single white swan, and even if you can point to a million white swans, this is no basis to conclude that all swans are white. Similarly, even if all your other assumptions are correct, your anecdote about penicillin is not a conclusive about the quality of the system. This is why scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder usually only take anecdotes at face value, and use them only as hints to justify further research. For some reason Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t do that when she concludes that capitalism is a good system. I wonder why.