Johan Norberg and Henrik Jönsson - The Triumph of Capitalism | THINK 2015

[@MrAceman82]

"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell, then everyone would act irresponsibly, no matter of consequences". Very true Johan.

[@fikamonster2564]

well Mormons dont believe in hell, so not entierly accurate. but nice catchåhrase

[@MrAceman82]

The hell is mentioned 23 times in New Testament.

[@fikamonster2564]

@@MrAceman82 yeah thats true: still mormons dont believe in a literal hell, more like a limbo if you refuse to accept god in life or death

[@actionc8453]

@@fikamonster2564 Mormonism is not christian.

[@MrAceman82]

Nice lecture Johan Norberg. Also liked to hear entrepreneur Henrik Jonsson. Glad to hear two Swedish intelligent man who knows the reality, not some blind empathy people....

[@TheEvilEyeMaster]

Love both these guys, but keep thinking they would make great bond villains.

[@Sigridovski]

That's because they wear all black clothes, which is unusual.

[@allaboutmusicmovies9606]

They would. Dont know Johan that much, but i think Henrik could do anything to the world just to get his way, no matter if its wrong or right

[@moribundmurdoch]

What is this CAPITALIST THUGGERY!…it's it's awesome! LAYING DOWN THEM BARS! DAMN!

[@MrTeeri4]

Marvelous video, Johan a genius as always in explaining econ 101 in a simple easy way to understand.

[@grantcivyt]

Excellent video! I like Henrik Jonsson very much. He sounds like an admirable person, and I wish him every success. Regarding the question about the "vulnerable, disabled, long-term[ly] ill people within a free market who can't add to productivity," I wish Johan had responded differently. I'll take a stab.... I think the question is a very important one, and it clear comes from a compassionate place, but there is a deeply pernicious assumption that needs to be rooted out. The idea that some people are so unfortunate as to be unable to participate in the marketplace is mistaken and dispiriting. Every person on this Earth has something to contribute, and it's incumbent on us to resist pitying those who are less fortunate. We are all more and less equipped in different dimensions, but rather than focusing on what we don't have, we need to focus on what we do have. If you can do nothing else, pick up a broom and sweep; play an instrument; sing a song or tell a story. We are fortunate to live in a world where you can be nearly totally trapped within a withering body and still be among the greatest scientists in the world. It's a terrible disservice to condemn those less fortunate than we to lives absent of contribution to society. We can all contribute.

[@ladysarcastro8101]

Yes someone can be a scientist within a withering body, but only if the mind and brain are functioning at a high enough level. Yes if the brain/ mind are effected someone can pick up a broom - singing and telling stories isn't always so easy. But what about someone who is affected on ALL levels, what would you suggest they do? As someone who works with some of the most severely disabled in society I can 'hand on heart' tell you that it is unreasonable to expect them to perform what most might consider 'simple' tasks on a daily basis. But, I ask you to see this from a different perspective. What this small number of people do is inspire others. The designs of wheelchairs and other aids, custom made footwear, advances in medicine, teaching and caring jobs, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, music and art therapy. There are niches in all these fields specifically for our most severely disabled citizens, so it could be argued that they already contribute simply by providing jobs and creative outlets for others

[@SamKGrove]

@Marten Dekker, most people think money solves all problems, that's why they agree to let government control so much of it. Politicians present solutions as money problems. BTW, he wasn't saying money solved all problems, he was saying freedom allows people to solve problems.

[@giuliom3564]

@@SamKGrove But they imply money save problems. And the problem is that money goes just to a small portion of society.

[@giuliom3564]

@Marten Dekker They don't want to inform but just make propaganda pro Rich.

[@SamKGrove]

@@giuliom3564, money solves the problem of accounting and transmission of information about scarcity.

[@allaboutmusicmovies9606]

Henrik Jönsson "You guarantee safety in employment not the freezying the labor market, by protecting the fixed job, but having a free growing". I wounder if he have any clue to guarantee that :)

[@bluegent7]

A free market is good. However, there must be considerations for people with weaker minds and bodies who end up homeless. People with good health often do not understand how it is to be born into the world with IQ and physical strength above the obviously handicapped but below such levels as to be able to compete for available jobs. It's not good enough to rely on charitable organizations alone since this will have a sporadic effect at best. As wonderful as the American Constitution is, to which many refer, and as vital as it's underlying principles are, it's meant for a federal level not single state countries. Certainly by protecting and encouraging the family unit and not encouraging lazyness much can be achieved, but those among us who simply can't fend for themselves must be remembered in some way so that if there are homeless, it can be said truthfully that they are so by their own volition.

[@bjornfollin5056]

A half windsor knot would have looked better imho. Kidding aside (even if I meant it), great video!

[@Sigridovski]

Those 80 people are the richest, not because they did something others can't - no; because they had connections, people in the know who could tell them what to do and when. Then we have some people who always want to stop others who are cause, they will not alllow another to be cause, not even an executive. They always come with ideas that don't work and cannot be cause themselves. These are not easy to have around for one who is very cause - they will try and stop him all the time. It is incredible.

[@SpicyTexan64]

So explain Steve Jobs

[@SpicyTexan64]

You are describing Socialism and Communism as a fact of daily life. Not an anomaly

[@drakeequation521]

Yesterday's demonstrators became today's corporate heads and it stands to reason. It takes capital investment in order to organize a social movement. They learned where all the cracks exist in their given societies to move the capital more effectively to create a stronger base. But if you invest capital to overthrow capitalism, just what does that make you? "They will sell us the rope we use to hang them with." True, but it takes capital to buy the rope. Today's demonstrators will run tomorrow's corporations and will likely be running the parties that support the free market.

This is great, I dream of having my own business of lap tops, cels, and books. But how can I star my business in Reynosa, MX? I am unemployed and no money yet. What should I start doing?

[@grantcivyt]

First, start working and saving! Maybe you can start selling books and cell phones from your bicycle or on the street side. While I was in Santiago de Chile, I saw many, many vendors on the city streets selling CDs, videos, jewelry, perfumes, and many other things. They would just lay a blanket on the ground and place their items on top. Don't be afraid to start small. Good luck!

grantcivyt Thanks, I am working now in something I don´t like, but the idea is to save money and start soon.

[@grantcivyt]

Moisés Mendoza Good luck, Moises. I hope I hear your name again in the future.

[@MrAceman82]

Good luck, hope to succeed. One advice: first rule for successful business is integrity, you can't keep the business, if you screw someone or don't keep the agreement. That bad news will spread sooner as you think, and your business would collapse.

[@rbalzic]

WOW, you shoul try to run business here in Croatia!

[@miranda8598]

Corona...

[@hookem3768]

18:30

[@aon10003]

6000 flats per yiar 600.000 in que. Thats a triump.

[@Mastersh1t]

What I hear is two small-business owners who just want their businesses to work unhindered by too many regulations and not be forced to make decisions that ARE not in the best interest of their specific business eg. having to let go of the staff that is more educated but came in last thus "leaving first". Allowing their businesses to grow in an environment that is not limiting their potential. I agree. Usually these ideas grow out of ones own experience and because you had to endure them you grow bitter and create a narrative and worldview that fits to your liking; finding a system to adhere to. Running a business is risky, hard and time-consuming as it is without it being weighed down by a nosey government telling you how to run your business. But this is never the whole truth. Everything has flaws, maybe it has to do with the ideology or maybe something to do with the people running the specific system, but probably it is somewhere in the middle. I tend to believe we have good examples that show a fully free and running capitalist society ends up being cynical and selfish. Not taking into consideration, at all, what implications its actions might have on the people it affects. Directly or indirectly. As long as it makes profit to keep the businesses healthy. You often hear the right-wing stab at the left with words such as empathy or naive. I wish that would at least adhere to the right as much as the left. If that were the case I believe we probably would have no problem with capitalism in the same way we have today. Mind you that I have moved away from supporting the claims from the small-business owners onto the big, vast corporations that amass the largest wealth in the world thus controlling it by being able to invest in its own interests and even affect politics. Hence, the selfish part in my argument and doing damage either directly or indirectly (the latter being the most dangerous one where no one is able to take the blame). It is a very complex subject and I am not sure where I stand entirely but generally my point is that as hard as you can argue that a socialist government makes it "incredibly" difficult to run a business it is as important to argue that if you have never been poor, sick or homeless you can never _really_ know what it is like and how it would make you think, feel and act.. These gentlemen can sound very on point and persuasive. In many ways I agree with them but that is what makes discussions like these difficult as it is never black and white. In some regards you are left but in others more right if you want to follow the common left-right scale. Things go hand in hand. One affects the other. Poverty, imo, is the common thread that runs through all societies where if you can solve poverty you have a healthy populous and economy. I am not sure capitalism has a answer to this as it is not just for anyone to pick up a broom and start working. There is something called quality of life here in play as well and some people need a helping hand. I think. A somewhat socialist government aims to do just that. I am not sure if I trust big businesses to do the same thing and we cant really count on a few people like Bill Gates etc to come to the rescue as it would not be viable.

[@sebastianjovancic9814]

I think there is good evidence that supports that fact, and they mention it here, that capitalism is a large part to thank for the minimisation of poverty in the world, the improvent of quality of life. Traders no longer have to walk miles to find out that the price of the product they are selling is very bad in the village they arrived to, now they simply call villages to ask what the price for a product there is. IIRC, in Bangladesh (or Sri Lanka) the banks provide micro loans to entrepreneurial women who buy a loom or a few goats and produce products that they sell. This has proven remarkably successful in improving their quality of life.

[@Mastersh1t]

A cynic would say that what you are referring to as good is actually modern slavery. Being poor and taking a loan that you can never pay back, even a micro loan that keeps growing if you can't make profit out of your product. There are cases where the world bank gains control of an entire country in debt and can control their production to fit their interest. Not considering what would happen to the people if what they force them to produce has any value on the "free" market. I dont know man but it sound to me just argued that the phone would not have been available in third-world countries unless capitalism was around. A healthy dose of capitalism is not bad in some areas of society, but it does not cure poverty. If anything it sustains it because in a competition someone ALWAYS loses.

[@sebastianjovancic9814]

@@Mastersh1t You say that in a competition someone *always* loses, and that's a claim I think we should explore a bit more. I can agree that there will always be cases where some people lose something in a given situation, but if we were to step out and ask "For every action taken in Captalism, is it *always* zero sum?". I have good reason to believe that the answer is no, as a whole, capitalism is *not* zero sum, and I will give a few examples of why I think this is the case. Take 2 farmers. They are essentially neighbours and both produce some form of resource that others require. Let's start with the assumption that they produce equal amounts of the same resource, so whatever they are selling is indistinguishable from the other (a very static market). Say one of the farmers comes up with a new technique that allows him to produce more of his resource at a cheaper cost without any quality loss. The other farmer now does not sell as much of his resource since people would rather have it at a cheaper price. In this situation, one farmer gained, one farmer lost, but *everyone* else gained too! The farmer who lost could realise that he is better off producing a new resource, say livestock. Not only could he produce a resource that can be sold at the market, he could sell the fertilizer to the farmer who got successful. Why would he help him? Well, the successful farmer can in turn provide the other farmer with food for the livestock! This in turn means it becomes cheaper for both farmers to produce both of their resources, and everyone is all the better off, all because one farmer was initially outcompeted by the first! Loans are tricky, if used well they can be the difference between a hopeless and wildly successful life. You have most probably borrowed something from someone at some point and the loan is a formalisation of this on a societal level, money being the most general "something". To say it is slavery is incorrect though, you truly undermine the meaning of slavery then. You are free to take a loan, free to use that money (according the the agreement of course) to gain it back plus the interest, and free to keep whatever you gained after you have payed it all back (except taxable income, VAT etc of course). A slave never has the choice if they wish to be a slave or not, a slave has no say in what, when, how or to who they should or should not do something and a slave often gets to keep nothing, no ownership of anything. In part, yes, mobile phones as we know them, with all their features and apps and all options available at different price ranges at *this point in time* is thanks to capitalism. At least, I would argue that but I am curious what you think?

[@Mastersh1t]

I will admit that I threw my slavery comment in there to make a point and of course you, figuratively, are fully free to make a deal with the devil if you feel like it and are free to do so. No one is forcing you directly. What is complicated is if we want to wander into discussing why you even have reached a point where you would need to make such a deal in the first place e.g the kind of society you live in, monetary system, people, culture etc. So I think you can talk about the benefits of capitalism and agree on many points and when I think about these kind of issues I always feel that we can talk on the surface about things but we never dig deep and question whether all the things we take for granted should be as they are. It becomes a philosophical debate really, and usually that point is never discussed as it is maybe considered redundant. I don't know. So you can argue about different scenarios but when you realise you have a difference in worldview and what you think society should be like I am almost always left to think, now what? If we disagree on such a profound level, what is the next step? Agree to disagree? Might be fine between two friends but not really on a world scale? What do you think? Also, do mind, I didn't respond specifically to your farmer and phone example since it would be silly of me to argue about how the free market works on that level. I just don't think the free market should apply to all aspects of society e.g Hospitals, schools etc.

[@sebastianjovancic9814]

@@Mastersh1t Well, consider that humans did not come to be with a world of wealth at their disposal; everyone was initially poor and some learned over time how to create wealth from the world around us. The fact that there are those willing to engage in a fair exchange of resources under contractual agreement so as to give someone the opportunity to make something out of that resource is a fantastic opportunity, but one that should be taken responsibly. I don't think (atleast the somewhat cynical, conservative person in me thinks so) we can treat all of society as best friends or family who we willingly share everything with freely. Even in a family, if you give money to a family membe who abuses this, throwing it away, even then would you reconsider the kindness of sharing unconditionally. Having not only conditional sharing, but also incentivizing this sharing, I believe is a reasonable means of allocating resources responsibility within a society! Apart from just market mechanisms. I don't at all consider the philosophical debate redundant or pointless, on the contrary, I would love to know your thoughts on these matters on a deeper level! Not everyone spends time to understand better what they think and what justification they have for their opinions, but we should value those who do!

[@arquitecturacalculoestruct994]

What a breathtaking testimony

[@miranda8598]

Hm...

[@Zukatsr125]

Of course capitalism has done a lot of good things, economic growth and so on. But what we also can see is that, a small part of the earths population get around 80-85 percent of the growth. So a few people get even richer and the "normal" worker gets pretty much nothing. And we can also see their interests in natural resources (oil and gas). Their prepared to do a lot to get their hands on it, just look at Syria and Libya. And now you might think that i'm a lunatic. But look at the companies, they don't care about democracy. Iphones are assembled in china. And china is a one-party dictatorship country.

[@mayac.1345]

This is too late. Too basic. It doesn't address the cons of the idea and it doesn't create a dialogue on how to make it more sensible.

[@claeslundin9542]

Two typical naive swedish persons. They live in a bubble. Henrik has a lot of ultra liberal friends, "watch your step". All "Experts" look how things are done today and make statements from that. Expand your thinking.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Kom igen, saklig kritik istället!

[@okyouknowwhatever]

@@user-hu3iy9gz5j Factual criticism? Henrik Jönsson wrote in a post that criminal immigrants in Malmö are well-integrated in the city since two decades ago because they run companies. So in Henrik's mind the only thing you need to do apparently, to become well-integrated into a city or into a society, is to start a company. Uhuh? Apparenty doesn't matter if you run your company as a facade for criminal activities. Probably doesn't matter either, according to Henrik, if you bring with you cultural practices that runs diametrically opposite to those of the host country. Probably doesn't matter much right if you teach your kids that Swedes are infidels, Swedish girls and women are whores and it's fine to degrade 11-year old kids by robbing them, urinating on them and spit on them, because they are Swedes. As long as you run a company. How brilliant.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

@@okyouknowwhatever Länka

[@okyouknowwhatever]

@@user-hu3iy9gz5j 4:05 in i klippet kzbin.info/www/bejne/rofUeJqNh9lqq7s

[@okyouknowwhatever]

Ja, in i det länkade klippet alltså.... inte i Jönssons och Norbergs tramsföreläsning.

[@jeronimotamayolopera4834]

PLEASE.

[@jeronimotamayolopera4834]

WE STILL LIVE IN SOCIALISM, PLEASE DON'T CALL THIS SHIT CAPITALISM.

[@jeronimotamayolopera4834]

PLEASE.