Watch 'The March of History: Mises vs. Marx'

"The Definitive Capitalism vs. Socialism Rap Battle" is live!

From the good folks at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) comes "The March of History: Mises vs. Marx—The Definitive Capitalism vs. Socialism Rap Battle."

Watch below or at YouTube and go here for full lyrics and a wealth of resources.

The video was produced by Emergent Order, the crew responsible for the immensely popular (and edifying) Keynes vs. Hayek rap videos.

Comments

[Juice]

Woopsie.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article236237578.html

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Meh. Kinda disappointed in this video. I know it is easy to be a critic, and I should appreciate all the hard work that went into this, and I really do, but I am gonna rant anyway with my first impressions.
1) The main problem is that they should have hired an actual Marxian to write Marx's lines. Now disciples of Marx are going to dismiss this as an misrepresentation. I already see this in the youtube comments.
2) The performers sucked. The reason the Hayek and Keynes rap battle was such a hit is because those two guys were both very charismatic. These guys are very blah. And the Mises guy looks nothing like Mises.
3) The melody is not memorable. But it is very hard to come up with a good melody, so it is not fair to complain about that too much. Hopefully it will grow on me.
4) Ditch the autotune. I personally hate that shit.

[Overt]

The lines were cribbed directly from Marx's writings. That is the MO of Emergent Order. People complaining that this isn't real Marx are the same people who complain that the myriad graveyards dotting history weren't real history.

I would agree that the biggest problem with this video was its Hook. Not very good. I feel like they tried to ape that whole Carl Sagan "We are all made of stars" science video that was popular 5 years ago. You really do need to get the refrain correctly if you want to go viral, and sadly this video lacks that.

It's unfortunate, because I funded their indiegogo. Nevertheless, it is a good piece of work that you can point people to, if not a good attack.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

The lines were cribbed directly from Marx’s writings.

I seriously doubt Marx wrote anything about fossil fuels, aerosols, or climate change.

[Squirrelloid]

No, but modern marxists say that all the time.

[mad.casual]

Generally agreed. I can even stand some autotune but this sounded like garbage, like they were trying to make an old 80s vocoder function like autotune.

[SQRLSY One]

MISES
The pie can get bigger, it’s not zero-sum.
Free markets have lifted the lowest incomes!
If you really want to help out the poorest nations,
encourage peace, trade and immigration!

Can anyone PLEASE explain THAT to all of the conservatards that dump their shit all over this forum every damned day?

If everything good comes from trade wars and border wars and "sending them all back to where they came from", then WHY did multi-culti, free-trading America EVER succeed? Is "now" NOT the time to erect trade barriers and walls between each and every one of the 50 states? Perhaps even every county and city in the USA? Is this NOT the route to prosperity and freedom? If not, why not?

"Good jobs for the good residents of Poughkeepsie, NY!" (All others, go to non-Poughkeepsie HELL, damn y'all!!!)

[LeaveTrumpAloneLibertarian]

Come on, man. Border patrol agents and hysteria about immigrants is part of the freedom loving free market.

[Overt]

I will have to say that the Hayek vs Keynes: Fight of the Century was a better video. First, it had a better hook. A little bit of auto tune, but mixed with some good melodic instruments.

But above that, HvK had some great zingers.
If every worker were staffed in the army and fleet
We'd have full employment, and nothing to eat.
[...]
The economy's not a car, there's no engine to stall
No expert can fix it, There's no "it" at all.
The economy's us, we don't need a mechanic.
Put away the wrenches, the economy's organic
[...]
I don't want to do nothing, there's plenty to do.
The question I ponder, is who plans for who?
Do I plan for myself, or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many, not by the few!

[Chipper Morning Wood]

I completely agree. The writing was much better for both of the Hayek v. Keynes videos.

[mad.casual]

A lot of parts were better. I don't know what was going on with the auto tune in this one but it sounded like it was done with a coffee can.

[mad.casual]

It/They also had less of a horrible moral connotation to it. Hayek v. Keynes is pretty economically centered. If it came out roughly equal (and I don't think it did) you aren't exactly overlooking 100M dead bodies.

This one seemed to come out more equal (with the inclusion of an audience in the narrative) and effectively equivocates philosophies where, by it's own claims, one killed millions and the other didn't.

[Brandybuck]

Economic changes always brings about short term pain to a few. This is where the emotions behind protectionism comes from. And it applies to labor as well. Then throw in the foreigner bias, and some racial bias, and protectionism becomes indistinguishable from anti-immigration.

And its' mostly just finger pointing at the foreigners. The real reason for the economic change is changes at home. But we don't blame ourselves, not yet at least. But I suspect neo-Luddism is on the political horizon. You already see the germs of it in the anti-social-media handwringing.

In centuries past if you weren't in agriculture you were expected to learn a trade of some kind. And we have millions of unskilled workers with no trade and an agriculture sector that needs fewer and fewer workers each year. Of course they're angry. But the solution to that short term anger would result in a long term economic slump. Robots and automation replacing unskilled labor is happening right now, and it's accelerating. This problem isn't going to go away.

Meanwhile we have an education system still geared to producing citizens for the 1919 economy. (Europe is no better, we borrowed our education system from them).

There is no overnight solution to this. But we can start by shrinking government and getting it out of the way. The state just exacerbates and extends that short term economic pain.

[mad.casual]

Can anyone PLEASE explain THAT to all of the conservatards that dump their shit all over this forum every damned day?

I know it might be hard for you to suss out but the line where he says "If you really want to help out the poorest nations," is Mises buying into Marx's premise.

The rest of your screed is the standard pro-Marxist retort. Just because I don't want to help poor nations doesn't necessarily mean I don't think other people could/should. My point is that you're (and they're) corrupting the more core premise to promote falsehoods about equality. If Mises' principles really worked, immigration would be unnecessary. There's nothing magical about foreign soil that prevents capitalism from working there and, if there is, then lots of the rest of Mises' principles come tumbling down (again not to indicate that Marx's principles don't).

Mises says 'peace, trade, and immigration' but, economically, two people can be at peace (or war), two people can trade, but two people can't immigrate to one another (again economically). The acceptance of immigration explicitly requires a state and a social expectation or contract.

[Freddy the Jerk]

Guess you're a libertard instead of a conservatard, because you're still refusing to explain where we'll get the money to pay for all the free bennies we'd be handing out to every slob who manages to set foot on American soil. Maybe you're a MMT-tard?

Or maybe you're just a bog-standard retard and, as such, can't be expected to understand that there's a cost involved with playing sugar daddy to the world...

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That’s the one that will change the tide of the culture war toward right-wing backwardness and intolerance and against the liberal-libertarian mainstream! Why didn’t you guys think of this sooner?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Hi, gecko!

[Brandybuck]

Libertarian mainstream? What the fuck are you smoking and where can I get some?

[Doug Heffernan]

Capitalism vs. Socialism is interesting to consider as abstract theory.

In practice, the US doesn't have (merely) either, and never will.

Money will keep practice towards the former. Because that is what money wants. Eventually, money always wins.

The non-moneyed or low-moneyed would have to be amenable to revolution in order to gain any power. But it still wouldn't be enough power to beat money.

The non-moneyed or low-moneyed are better off just enduring some suffering, taking some solace in the fact that it would be worse if they weren't at least somewhat proximate to money.

[Ken Shultz]

"The Perfect Solution Fallacy (also known as the ‘Nirvana Fallacy‘) is a false dichotomy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution to a problem exists; and that a proposed solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented".

https://yandoo.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/perfect-solution-fallacy/

We should probably define our terms.

Capitalism is industry being privately owned and prices set by markets. Wealth is distributed by markets.

Socialism is when industry is controlled by the government and prices are set by bureaucrats. Wealth is distributed by government.

Because we aren't perfectly capitalist is not a good reason to settle for less capitalism than we have. More capitalism is better, even if we never get to 100%. In fact, a little bit of capitalism can go a long way--see Lenin's "New Economic Policy" for an interesting example of that. Meanwhile, more socialism is worse, and even a little bit more socialism has negative consequences. See ObamaCare for an example of that.

We may not be 100% capitalist, but I'll oppose every attempt to use the government to control more industry and redistribute more wealth. Meanwhile, I'll take every opportunity to get rid of all the socialism I can--even if I can't eradicate all of it. Again, just because we can't solve a problem completely, it is fundamentally irrational to suggest that this means the problem shouldn't be addressed to whatever extent we can or should address it.

[LeaveTrumpAloneLibertarian]

Yeah, Ken, opening up health care markets so people can shop for their health insurance from private insurers sure is socialist all right.

[Ken Shultz]

"Yeah, Ken, opening up health care markets so people can shop for their health insurance from private insurers sure is socialist all right."

Using the government to force people to buy things against their will is central planning--not market capitalism making industry freer from government control. Bureaucrats setting prices is socialist, not capitalist. ObamaCare kicked people off of their insurance plans because their benefits were too generous under the label of "Cadillac" insurance. ObamaCare inflicted taxes on new technology to force providers to treat average customers at the expense of new therapies. It was a socialist plan from top to bottom. Coverage rates fell far short of expectations, and the cost of insurance soared on the exchanges (rather than dropped) because of ObamaCare. The American people elected Donald Trump in no small part to put a stop to it, and the insurance markets have started to stabilize because he got rid of most of it with the stroke of his pen. ObamaCare also did other retarded things like define full time employees' hours down so that employers had to cut people's hours rather than pay soaring costs to insure them. It was a disaster.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, ObamaCare's primary socialist conceit was the expansion of Medicaid.

"In a report to Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimated that the cost of expansion was $6,366 per person for 2015, about 49 percent above previous estimates. An estimated 9 million to 10 million people had gained Medicaid coverage"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Medicaid_expansion_2

The prices Medicaid pays are set by bureaucrats, and private industry is forced to accept Medicaid patients. By the definition that socialism is about government control of industry and prices are set by bureaucrats, Medicaid is about as socialist as anything needs to be.

If you didn't know all of this already, you should ask yourself why. Wherever you get your news, they have failed you. Start reading news sources written from a perspective that disagrees with you, and maybe you won't come across like a flat earther, when you talk about legislation like ObamaCare.

[JoeJoetheIdiotCircusBoy]

Agree with all of this...and would also add that putting severe restrictions on what an insurance plan must and must not include and then allowing people to "shop" among an incredibly small selection of different plans is not even a remotely free market system. If we could truly shop for insurance plans, I would be able to buy my low premium catastrophic care plan.

[LeaveTrumpAloneLibertarian]

Yeah, so people have shitty insurance that doesn’t pay for anything and then the person declares bankruptcy and ends up in the ER. There’s nothing socialist about that! You fucking birds are incredible!

[Ken Shultz]

"The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010), imposes an annual 40% excise tax on plans with annual premiums exceeding $10,800 for individuals or $29,500 for a family starting in 2020, to be paid by insurers.[4][6] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_insurance_plan

They didn't wait for these regulations to go into effect. They started shutting those plans down preemptively.

I knew a woman whose plan was shut down in the middle of her chemotherapy--because her employer's plan was too generous.

LeaveTrumpAloneLibertarian seems to have a lot of strong opinions about things he doesn't really understand.

[Zeb]

No, some people want insurance that is actually insurance and not a pre-paid healthcare plan. There is no reason most people can't plan and budget for basic, routine medical expenses. Catastrophic insurance pays for the more unlikely things you can't easily plan for.

[Overt]

The only other thing I would point out is that this all began with the most socialist of programs- wage controls.

If not for the wage controls put on companies, companies would not have started offering medical insurance in lieu of salary. This would have meant more people spent their dollars on choosing actual health care options, rather than an All You Can Eat Buffet insurance plan.

Go back 70 years and create a Wage Cap exclusion that included HSAs with catastrophic insurance, instead of the HMO, and we would not have nearly the problems we have today.

[Rossami]

"[O]pening up health care markets so people can shop for their health insurance from private insurers" does sound like a good goal. That has nothing whatsoever to do with ObamaCare.

[BigT]

Socialism is when industry is controlled by the government and prices are set by bureaucrats.

That is called fascism. In socialism the government OWNS everything. Perhaps too subtle a difference for many. I’m sure you knew that.

[Brandybuck]

Capitalism is itself not a system. It was a word invented by Marx as a pejorative. Replace it with "free market".

But as a non-system it's one end of a pole, with Socialism at the other. None have ever existed in the "pure" form because we live in the real world. They are rather directions. And we do have historical experience in changing directions and moving closer to one or the other. And the lessons are clear.

On one side there is individualistic and system-less economic freedom (capitalism), and on the other a collectivist system of economic controls (socialism/fascism).

More collectivism is the wrong direction. More top-down systems is the wrong direction. More economic controls is the wrong direction. Instead we need decentralized individualistic freedom to pursue our own economic interests without interference by the state.

[Juice]

Capitalism: "We are extremely disappointed in the inappropriate remarks made by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey." NBA

Socialism: "Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder." Xi Jinping

[Ken Shultz]

Capitalism: Feel free to criticize the Chinese for their misbehavior. Hell, don't buy Chinese products if you don't want to. Don't watch the NBA is you don't want to. But let's not hurt everybody's standard of living over something we can't really control control.

Marxism courtesy of LeBron James: The only reason the NBA fines black players for saying things that embarrass the league and doesn't fine Daryl Morey for criticizing slavery in China is because the NBA is racist and doesn't care about the legacy of slavery.

[Conchfritters]

Don’t watch the NBA

I stopped in 1998.

[Ken Shultz]

Market forces are people making choices.

There's not need for the government to get involved when people are perfectly free to make choices for themselves.

[Eddy]

"Socialism: “Anyone who attempts to split any region from China will perish, with their bodies smashed and bones ground to powder.” Xi Jinping"

Is his name Cantonese for "Abe Lincoln"?

(ducks)

[mad.casual]

Pretty clear to me that Jinping owns more black slaves than Lincoln ever did.

[LeaveTrumpAloneLibertarian]

Ha! Tell that to the Mexicans being placed in cages by the Border Patrol. You’ll get a good laugh down there. Better yet, tell that to all the Iraqis killed by this country’s military.

[Juice]

Border patrol and military occupation of Iraq are the height of capitalism. Just ask any socialist.

[Ken Shultz]

Now that we've dignified the stupidity of socialism with an answer, who's next--the six-day creationists?

[LeaveTrumpAloneLibertarian]

Let’s do Evangelicals who support Trump.

[Ken Shultz]

I know evangelicals who are too smart to believe in socialism.

Socialism is far dumber than creationism because the belief that the universe is so big and complex that it must have been created by an infinite intelligence makes more sense than the belief that Bernie Sanders has the infinite intelligence necessary to make better choices for 350 million Americans than they can make for themselves when they participate in markets.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Not bad, but Remy could have done it better and in half the time.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Don't forget Andrew Heaton!

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Heaton and Bragg are also the man.

[IceTrey]

Capitalism prohibits the initiatory use of force and socialism requires it.

[Conchfritters]

The lady at the ticket booth (00:28) - - hawt.

[mad.casual]

WTH, I thought it was supposed to be Frida Kahlo?

[ismart]

Useful blog. Thank you for sharing valuable content with us.
2020 awards for best movement monitor

[Eddy]

Not as good as Mises v. Hayek, though that's a high bar to clear.

The out-and-out Marxists won't like it, and the "we want Scandinavia not Venezuela" crowd will of course say it doesn't represent their views at all.

How many *avowed* Marxists, or people willing to praise Marx in public, are left in the U. S., as opposed to those to whom Marx is more of an unacknowledged background influence?

[Uncle Jay]

Marx will win.
It's inevitable.
Nothing can stop the march of socialism.
The proletariat will smash the nefarious bourgeoisie and establish a true socialist utopia.
Time, history and logic is on the side of the workers.
Long live the USSR!
Oh, wait...

[TJJ2000]

Marx (Socialism) - POWER (i.e. Force) = WEALTH
Mises (Capitalism) - VALUE(i.e. In-Demand Resources) = WEALTH

The faulty equation really shouldn't be so hard to spot. Power only enables one to STEAL production from another but NEVER creates it. If the whole world was in the Marxist business there would be any Resources to steal. (Say hello to Venezuela)

Mises kind of flouts around the topic with, "Value is in the eye of the beholder".

Top 10% in Marx Economy - Whoever has the biggest guns.
Top 10% in Mises Economy - Those who produce what the people want most.

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