You Are Witnessing the Death of American Capitalism

Notes, suggested reading, and corrections below 👇🏻

Corrections and notes:
A few things were possibly over-simplified to prevent this from becoming a 170 part Ken Burns series. Please do some searching/reading and learn your butt off! I'll add to these as needed, as responding to comments will just get lost in the ether of YouTube comment pages.

- Futures contracts and options are a bit different. In a contract, the buyer is obligated to buy the asst, and an option frees them of that obligation.

- The wealth generated in the 1950's can also be greatly contributed to much of Europe's destruction and how America used that as leverage to lend money under the condition of the US dollar being standardized for trade. This is a fascinating hour long video in itself.

- I anticipate that a portion of viewers will argue that this is just a new phase of capitalism. I disagree, but delving further into that disagreement requires further analyzing the semantic definition of "capitalism", which is probably a waste of time. So whether this is a new thing that doesn't have a name or a new mutation of capitalism that doesn't have a name, both are correct in describing the circumstances.

- Bitcoin would've been a great answer to a lot of these problems. Unfortunately it's not used as a currency, but as a prospective asset. If it's not replacing the US dollar enmasse, it's not a solution to anything in this video. In fact, it makes a lot of this worse when you consider the insane amount of alt-coins.

Further viewing:
- There is no higher recommendation on YouTube than @PBoyle for anything related to finance or economic history.

- Adam Curtis (BBC, etc) makes films that provide excellent surreal recaps of recent history that absolutely inspire me greatly.

LOTS of books I recommend:
- Technofuedalism is an excellent and accessible book about this from Yanis Varoufakis. It's actually a bit more far-reaching (and scary) than my conclusions in this video.

All of the following inspired this video:
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
- Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek
- The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu
- New Dark Age by James Bridle
- Capital is Dead: Is this something worse? by McKenzie Wark

Finally, there are too many books to name about WWII and the Soviet Union that fascinate me endlessly. There is so much to learn those time-encapsulated parallel economies.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:43 - CH1 Capitalism (A Eulogy)
9:23 - CH2 History Repeats Itself
19:33 - CH3 Post Capitalism
26:27 - CH4 Digital Sharecropping
36:10 - Conclusions

[BennJordan]

Edit: I get it, we don't like sponsors. Let me clear some things up:

A. Like I said, it's a fundraiser for UNICEF Ukraine. I'm not personally gaining any money. I don't even personally gain money from this channel as it's a nonprofit and my salary is $0.

B. This video isn't *anti-capitalism", and Ground News is transparent about their methodology (which is vetted by 3rd parties). It's not a comparable business model to news aggregators that charge you in personal information. It's also funded by subscribers, not private equity or a VC scaling model. YouTube advertising is a good fit for them.

C. We're not getting paid any more or less if you sign up. It's a CPM deal. If it doesn't jive with you, then move on to the next video (that's why it's at the end, not mid-video). If you want to support this channel specifically, Patreon is there. It should be noted that I brought this fundraiser/sponsor up with the community before accepting it

Finally, this puts me in a rough spot. I normally don't work with sponsors for the many reasons and grievances outlined in the comments here, but pulling this will cancel a whole lot of aid to people who desperately need it. I've had plenty of fundraisers and none of them perform anywhere near as well as me working with a sponsor.

I'll weigh all of this before considering working with a video sponsor again.

[CrayCow]

Bailing out the banks because we need to socialise losses but when there's massive profits, it's privatized and you'll never see a cent of it.

[Misksound]

nothing will radicalize you faster then just learning about financial markets.

[GerryRR]

Funny thing about that "you bought a grill so now you get ads for meat subscriptions" joke is that it's more like "you bought a grill so now you get ads for grills because you're a grill collector or something".

[corycarter]

I’m a mechanic and the rent seeking economy you describe is everywhere. It’s no longer profitable to create new machines or innovate technology, it’s about controlling access to it as you said. Recently I put a transmission in a Chevy Malibu. It came out of the same year Malibu. It was the same transmission. However we had to call a computer guy to come out and program this transmission to talk to the engine to make the car work. This transmission is exactly the same, the gears and such that make it work are the same, but General Motors made it so it had to be programmed. Even the diagnostic tools we have to use the shop has to pay a subscription fee to get updated. The internal combustion engine has operated the same since its invention, yet to even be able to diagnose these things we have to ask the manufacturer for permission essentially. Talking about the velocity of money and stuff, they made an entire new market of having a guy have to come out and plug in his software to make it work, when the machine itself hasn’t been improved or innovated at all, in fact only gotten worse and cheaper. But the money found a new place to move.

[morbid.]

if you're rich you get "grants" if you're poor you get "handouts"...

[andresilvasophisma]

You're going to piss off a lot of people by saying that the era when America was more prosperous was when the markets were regulated.

[buriedpet]

“Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor”

[MazeFrame]

We are right back in the middle ages, just with plastic and touch screens!

[antonleimbach]

My dad and uncles were all WWII vets and Roosevelt Democrats. I think if that generation were still around they would burn Washington to the ground. They had zero sympathy for millionaires, nevertheless billionaires.

[Robert-vkje]

When the game of monopoly is over, the last player returns all assets to the bank and a new game can begin.

[HouseRavensong]

I have to laugh at the Kohl's example. I was a loyal shopper for years. When I couldn't find what I was looking for, I asked about it at the jewelry counter. Without missing a beat, the sales associate said, "Have you looked for it on Amazon?"

[MsOudlover]

Historian here... the key outcome of the French Revolution (phase one) was to abolish the feudal structure, in which the first and second estates were exempt from taxes. Yes, they did not pay taxes. As the state debt mounted and hit crisis proportions, the king was forced to ask those elites to "pay their fair share" in today's language. Many said they gladly would and give up lots of other privileges (that's the famous night of August 4, 1789) but many did not want to pay taxes or end coree labor and and and.... thus giving way to the more radical phase of the revolution. Regarding Great Britain, check out how much of the land is still owned by the crown. It's shocking!

[FriendlyDevOps]

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

[buezer]

Corporations realized people will pay, repeatedly, for almost anything while blaming their poorer neighbor for their financial misfortunes.

[eatdapewpews]

They always try to tell you that capitalism is about competition. Capitalists hate competition. Hence the need to buy out the government, protectionist policies, hiring hitmen, etc. Free market enthusiasts imagine a sportsmanship that simply isn't and never was there to begin with.

[NL-fmpw]

I've had a bunch of these concepts rolling around in my head for the past few years, but always kind of struggled to connect them. This video does a really good job connecting them all together for me. IT;s a good one mate!

[StrikeWarlock]

Let's face it, ever since Citizen's United, the US stopped being a democracy, it became a corporatocracy.

Corporations should never be seen or treated as individuals when individuals don't even have the same privileges as they do.

[ZoltanVaci]

Great video! Minor addition: Uber not only raised prices after destroying the cab industry, they also slashed wages for drivers.

[jetfa]

I am a trained data analyst. Ive seen two great bait and switches in my life. You captured them perfectly. I've said this for years. Information is the coin of the realm. We have a term for this: cognative warfare. How do you confuse people's ability to make decisions, hijack their decision making process? I remember back in 2002 when I was in college, I asked: why do people vote against their interests. Well, we have our answer.