The Magic Washing Machine
This should be required viewing in the Obama White House. When he gets back from vacation, I mean:
Okay, so there's some environmental nuttiness in this video -- he's a climate change believer -- but ignore that, for a moment. And focus on what his big message is: "Thank you, industrialization," he says. "Thank you, steel mill." "Thank you, chemical processing industry." If you listen closely, you can hear the startled laughter of Hans Rosling's audience.
Some people think these life-altering inventions -- the washing machine, the iPhone, revolutions in the world shipping business -- are the result of some kind of magic pixie dust. They happened just because. Little elves. Random events. Fate. Anything but the truth.
Which is: entrepreneurial capitalism is the spark behind every important advancement in human knowledge, and is the single greatest reason why people's lives are getting better.
And if we have environmental problems to solve -- and, honestly, I think we do; not climate change, but water, for sure -- it'll be entrepreneurial capitalism that will solve them.
This graph, for instance, from Mark Perry's excellent blog, Carpe Diem, tells a great story:
Those are world poverty rates, going down. Not because of the UN, or any of the constellation of useless NGO's and poverty do-gooders.
Because of the move towards entrepreneurial capitalism. It's our only hope.
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Dec '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
What's worse is people like Obama who think that wishing for things will make them happen. If he just says "windmills," why, then cheap efficient wind energy will just spontaneously blow in from the west.
We only see progress when it has crossed a threshold, but most progress is slow and incremental.
Jun '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
Capitalism, it's not a zero-sum game.
Mar '11
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
I got about 1 minute in, then I had to stop.
Mad scientists' and theatrics do not mix well.
EDIT: Finished watching, I'll second that. Thank you industrialization. It's a good thing Hamilton beat Jefferson on this one.
Edited on Mar 26, 2011 at 2:36pmDec '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
I particularly liked the part where he said (paraphrasing) "People who have all of these things shouldn't be telling those that don't that they can't".
But wait! Didn't Joe Biden just say that every important development in history was the result of government intervention? I didn't see this guy address that.
Dec '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
fascinating...I have become very intrigued by this man of late.....way to go ent. capitalism
Dec '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
I'll go with capitalism and the allocation of materials according to markets and scarcity. Governments and environmentalists have no conception of the damage they actually do when they mandate uses of materials. We already have a very difficult time managing and recycling the wastes from electrical and electronic things (collectively known as E-wastes), that have useful purposes. Pushing out more, bad, battery technology, electric motors, and electrical generators is beyond overwhelming our capacity to manage E-waste and is causing devesatation in the places where the raw materials are being mined and processed. Thanks, enviroweenies!
May '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
Any yet apparently smart men like the speaker have bought into the climate change BS. This is really depressing.
Oct '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
It always bothers me to hear people talk about how great it would be to have fewer people.
May '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
Maybe he's just giving it lip service in order to get his message across. Anyway, clean energy isn't a bad idea. Nobody wants to breathe pollution, if it can be reasonably avoided.
Nov '10
Re: The Magic Washing Machine
"Entrepreneurial capitalism is the spark behind every important advancement in human knowledge, and is the single greatest reason why people's lives are getting better."
Great post. But it does seem that societies enjoying the fruits of entrepreneurial capitalism are, in a sense, a snake eating its own tail, no? All those advancements in human knowledge seem to have obscured a deeper, if seemingly more banal, knowledge: a proper understanding of the role of moral habituation. Self-reliance, self-restraint, taming the passions, etc., are the sine qua non of happiness. Or as Joshua Riddle blogged here at Ricochet, society needs a sense of The Immateriality of Wealth.
It's an odd paradox: it's precisely because human beings are different, that they are capable of acting in different ways, that you have moral habituation. Purist libertarians who say that self-interest is what should be the founding principle of society- in other words, who say that there should be no moral teaching- think that there should be policies put in place to teach people this. They’re saying, "let’s order the world according to this understanding." And that means what? That means laws, that means habituation, etc.