Interesting video; well worth the 17 minutes!
There were a few points that I beg to differ with:
1) He stated that the ONLY barter exchange would be if party A was offering what party B wanted AND party B wanted what A was offering. This ignores circular barter trades -- Party A offers item-A which party B wants, but what party A wants item-C. Fortunately, party C wants what party B offers. To get what party B wants (item-A), he trades his item-B to party C. He then takes item-C back to party A and exchanges it for item-A, which is what party B wanted in the first place. It's a clunky and time-consuming process, but it
does work. Quartermasters in the military are notorious for that kind of wheeling-and-dealing, making circular trades that could extend out to party L or party M before everyone in the circular exchange gets what they want.
2) The lecturer contended that there was only two ways for a government to make money: collect taxes from citizens, or pump up the money supply. There is a third method: tariffs. Goods imported into the nation are charged fees up front from the party selling the goods. This brings in money from
other nations. Understandably, the party selling those goods raises his prices to recoup what was spent on tariffs. This is actually desirable because it limits "cheap goods from overseas" from undercutting the sales price of goods produced and sold locally. Buying local goods keeps the money circulating within the nation. Buying foreign goods just sends money out of the nation and the local Economy makes no gain from the transaction. When the US Founding Fathers established the Federal government, they envisioned that the entire cost of operating the Federal government would be paid for by the tariffs collected. Unfortunately for We The People, the biggest purchasers of foreign goods are Big Businesses and the Very Wealthy (who pretty much own Big Business). In order to reduce how much they pay for those foreign goods, they kept on promoting the reduction of tariffs via legislation. This is why the US has such a HUGE deficit in the Balance of Trade in terms of dollar-value. It has gotten soooo out of balance with the rest of the world that the US is seriously hemorrhaging money. For example, a US-made auto going to Japan pays 22% in tariffs while a Chinese auto going to the US pays less than 5%. There has been talking about raising US tariffs significantly, but in retaliation China and other countries are also talking about significantly raising their tariffs significantly. They have gotten so used to the low US tariff rate that they now feel it is their birthright.
3) The lecturer indicated pretty clearly that he favors monarchy over democracy, suggesting that a monarchy WILL have lower debt than a democracy. However, under a monarchy, all you need is one tyrant or incompetent on the throne and the nation can go from zero to bankrupt in hardly any time at all. (Mad Ludwig of Bavaria comes to mind.) OTOH, once that monarch gets replaced, his successor
might turn it around quickly. In contrast, in a democracy, it takes a majority of elected officials to collectively bollix the Economy. The trouble is, once that Majority is achieved, those incompetent elected officials can modify the government to assure that the Majority stays with those incompetents in control. [Just look at the Economic state of the US and then notice that over half of the elected representatives are out-and-out millionaires. (With most non-millionaires becoming millionaires after they leave office. Why might that be?) Just whose interests do you think those representatives are most likely to represent?]
Other than these points, a fine lecture!
). I'm a packrat too, Fuzion, don't get me wrong, but I don't like when I psychicly know everything in a game. Especially if it's something I've never even heard of before.
