https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=kRQvkdzAo64
The criticism that’s directed at patriarchal structures, let’s say, is predicated on the idea that they’re fundamentally exploitative and that the relationship between people is one of power and the implication of that, especially if it’s arbitrary power, the implication is that anybody who occupies anything but the lowest tiers in a given organization is in consequence an oppressor But Mises insisted that people banded together for purposes of cooperation and multiplication of effort and that’s a completely different view. So can you provide some justification for that? Sure. So the starkest contrast though with Mises responding to that Marxist worldview is he thought that no, ideas are the primary motivation, that human action starts always with a thought. People have a goal and they use their reason to choose a means to try to attain it. They might fail, but that’s what purpose is behavior. That’s what he meant by human action. So we’re rational sovereign actors and we’re trying to chart our own course. Right. And so for him to explain, for example, why is it that it went from feudalism to the industrial capitalist age, Mises would say it’s because ideas of individual sovereignty and people have rights for various historical reasons in Western Europe that emerged, whether it was because of Christianity or just the squabbling and the terrain. But the idea that the king can’t come into your house, you’re the castle, your house is your castle, notions like that, Mises argued, came out of Western Europe earlier than other places and that’s why they took over the world basically. So then scientifically or empirically, why was that idea so potent or powerful? It’s because of what you’re saying that Mises thought it just so happens to be the case that human labor, when you work cooperatively, gets magnified manyfold. That if we special, instead of everyone growing their own food, making their own clothes and everything, being their own god. Okay, so there’s an attractive, there’s an attractive quasi religious notion as well. Okay, so here’s what we do. I’ll tell you a little story about this. I went and stayed at an Airbnb out on the coast of British Columbia one year and it was this nice little cabin perched on the shore of this idyllic island. It was a kind of a log cabin, quite primitive, but very, very beautiful in a beautiful locale. And the people who owned the place were from Europe and they were back to the land types. So, you know, the 1990s equivalent of hippies and they believed that everyone would be better off if they were self-sufficient and that they would be more psychologically healthy if they returned to the land. And so they bought this place. Well, they were trying to be self-sufficient and grow their own chickens and raise their own chickens. You don’t really grow them, but to raise their own chickens and plant their own vegetables and so forth. And what they soon discovered was that that was unbelievably difficult life. That they were struggling every second to stay afloat financially and that being self-sufficient, especially on an island, which is a place that poses its own complications, especially in a harsh climate, they were completely trapped and they couldn’t sell their property for anything near the market value, the value that they had purchased it for. And so their move back to the land was a complete bloody catastrophe. And so, well, I wanted to tell that story because we have these romantic notions, you know, that we should all be self-sufficient and that everyone would be better off individually, in their family, in their town, in their states, if we were self-sufficient. But there’s a different idea, which is that we’re better off trading with someone, generally speaking, even if we’re better at everything we do than they are at anything they do. And so that’s a really crucial point. And so maybe I could get you to elaborate on that. We’re rational people. We don’t band together to tyrannize each other. We band together to maximize our productivity. And we do that to stave off the catastrophes of nature, let’s say, so that we have enough to eat and enough to drink and we don’t die from some bloody miserable disease. That’s where the tyranny is in our subjection to our vulnerability. We band together to maximize our productivity. Why does that work? Why is that justifiable in terms of assessing the nature of our social institutions? OK, sure. And again, just to drive home for Mises how critical this was, for him, that was the basis of civilization. That’s why we need to have property rights. We need to have rules of social order. You can’t go around killing people, he would ultimately say, because civilization, our standard of living rests on the fact that we all specialize in what we do best, produce way more of our thing than we need personally and trade it with others. And so if every certain people specialize in our farmers and they grow away more food than they need and sell the rest to others, and some people just make a bunch of sweaters way more than their family needs to wear and they sell it. Some people just make a bunch of cars way more than they’re going to drive and they sell it. We all end up with more food, sweaters, cars. Because once you build one car, building the second one is a lot easier. Right. A lot easier. Right. So there’s a few reasons to try to understand why is it that specialization magnifies the productivity of human effort. Yeah, well, let’s walk through that. Okay, so there’s a proposition. Specialization maximizes productivity and then trade is of benefit to all. Okay, so let’s justify that from first principles. I’ll give you some obvious reasons. So one is people have different abilities. And so, you know, some people are just like a big burly guy is going to be better as a coal miner than some dainty woman. Right. And so things like that are obvious. Okay. Certain regions around the world just are more hospitable. Right. You’re going to grow more oranges in Florida than you are in Alaska. Doesn’t you know, that’s just so clearly the people in Florida should specialize in growing oranges. Right. So we can capitalize on the unequal distribution of productive resources by trading. Right. Right. Instead of trying to eradicate the inequality, we can capitalize on the fact that it exists, which is in a sense is something that eradicates it. And, you know, what would you say? Practically speaking. And that’s important to note too, because, you know, we have this idea. And I think it’s deeper rooted in our moral intuitions that everybody should be equal. It’s like, well, wait a second. We trade on our inequality. So that’s kind of interesting. You’re better at something than I am at something, let’s say. And that’s an inequality. And you might even say, well, you became unjustly better at that than I did, you know, for historical reasons. But the fact of the matter is that inequality exists. So let’s try to address it. Well, one way of dressing it would be for me to get as good as you are at that thing. But the other way would be for me to do what I’m good at and for you to do what you’re good at and for us to trade. And then if we have money, well, we can transform the value of our labor into something that’s universal. And that is an equalizing force in and of itself. Right. Yeah, that’s all certainly true. Just another quick one, though, is even if people had similar aptitudes up front, like two people who are identical in all respects, if one of them went into studying brain surgery and one of them went into studying chemistry, 30 years later, when you check in on them, the one person is going to be way better at doing brain surgery than the other person is going to be way better at identifying new chemical compounds. Right. So because we have finite resources, each of us, because we have finite time, that means that we can’t be as good as everyone can be at everything ever. And so we end up specializing in something so that we have a comparative advantage. But that’s it’s not see the language here. And you said Mises is very careful with his language. So let’s be very careful with our language. If I study for 30 years, it isn’t exactly that I have a comparative advantage over you. It’s that I comparatively have something to offer you. Right. Because advantage implies that I’ve taken something from you in some sense, or now I can hold something over you, you know, because you say take an advantage of someone. But it isn’t that it’s now that I’m bringing something to the table that you actually desire. And so that’s not an advantage I have. It’s something that I have to offer that’s and if I have any sense, I’ve picked something that I have to offer that I know other people want. And so there’s a kind of altruism that’s built into that specialization.