Episode 172: Debating socialism versus capitalism

Quick tour of 7 negative effects of money printing1) Purchasing power declines, we get poorer2) Focus on the now instead of investing for the future3) Boom-bust cycles4) Picking winners and losers arbitrarily (cantillon)5)Increases inequality6) Finances the government deficits too easily7) Favors industrial policy to be set by government instead of left to the market process

Some thoughts about the use of Customer Satisfaction surveys. Plus an alternative.Also check us out at: https://rapidideaimprovement.com

My attempt at summarising Bob Murphy's great episode on banking (mainly from the Human Action podcast)

Some ideas on how the typical debates about capitalism versus socialism go, and what to potentially improve about them.

How the Chicago School of economics will not arrive at the conclusion that central banking may be bad

How malinvestments (investments that go against the time preference of consumers but are undertaken nevertheless) are caused by monetary policy and how they cause in return a transition from boom to bust in the economic cycle

Decarbonisation can (and should) be evaluated in terms of how effectively it reaches its goal, or in other words, how well it solves the problem it purports to solve.

In the science of economics, there are different schools of thought, they all give different answers to economic problems how is prosperity caused in a society, under conditions of scarcity. Some schools will emphasize the role of government more than others, … Each school has a position on the relative importance of production versus consumptions to generate prosperity, .. also they have positions on how consumers behave (rational / contextual behavioural/ choosing means to satisfy ends, ….) Now you can compare all the different positions of each school and then make up your mind what school to follow But there is a more fundamental criterion if you want to figure out what schools are really relevant and which ones are less so, and that criterion is the methodology Austrian Economics is different from all other schools in terms of methodology

We can experience different "states" when working. I distinguish 3 of them here: monotony, politics and problem solving. I argue that only the latter is fun (e.g. allows the experience of Flow to arise) and has the potential to cause progress.

Connecting 3 things: philosophy of (climate) science, the actual climate science and the morality of it (i.e. "What should we do about it ?")