Can we work together to critique this Tedx talk?

A Critique of Anarcho-Communism and the Zeitgeist Movement | by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

..also, Peter probably doesn't get this:

Economics Is A Value-Free Science | by Jörg Guido Hülsmann

If you're interested in Austrian views on the environment, see this playlist.

On poverty: link

Being for central planning and against private property isn't exactly new. He's just good at adding bloated buzzwords and presenting it as science. One of his usual tactics is throwing around emotionally charged claims, such as we're for scarcity and he's for abundance. We're for screwing people, and he's for helping people. We're for people getting sick and dying in the streets, he's for improving the health of everyone and curing every disease! We're for people working every single second of their life in dark, dirty sweat shops, he's for people spending time with their families, creating fine-art, contemplating the wonders of the universe and laughing around a cozy fireplace! You're not against those nice things, ARE YOU??

1. He is creating a false dilemma by stating that the 'Earth' is finite. There is such thing as recycling. With nuclear and solar power, energy is essentially infinite. Plus we will have the ability to move to other planets at some point.

2. He is arbitrarily picking this point in time to be content with the current state of technology. He compares the United States to Norway using the current state of public health as the sole variable. I'm pretty sure people in Norway leverage technology that was developed by market economies. A market economy advances technology like no other system and thus allows for a brighter future. The idea that we should adopt a new system because it increases current public health at the expense of the rate of development of new technology is extremely short-sighted.

EDIT: Restructured point 1

Sorry, but I had to stop watching. Video is full of buzzwords, unsupported assertions and little substance. From what I've seen of him before he's pretty much an Anarcho Communist.

The best way to achieve his Global Economy efficiency is through markets.

TED talks are mostly a random mixture of persons with big names and ability to speak. The quality of the content however is a mixed bag, often a random mixture of propaganda, buzz words, and poorly researched assertions.

There are several TED talks I've heavily criticized, but I'm not really sure it's worth the effort. In the process of fighting them, one inevitably gives them more publicity than they deserve.

Watch this video, which counters the assertion that earth is a finite system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1eSbwe92A

See also: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8E72565F592AEE71 for a full debunking of the Peter Joseph/Venus Project types.

Waste of time. There are plenty of good refutations of their ideas already. And besides, debating people like this is like debating Nazis (with respect to the popularity of their ideas).

semi-relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408481

TEDx is not TED

http://youtu.be/Pg5K07c72Tw

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward - The Freedomain Radio Review

Stefan Molyneux tearing this apart

This view comes from thinking that the free market gives an inordinate power to dumb people (people who don't mind producing pollution since they have only short-term perspectives), when democracy (idiot = 1 vote, genius = 1 vote) in reality gives more power to dumb people to decide who makes decisions than the economic reality that higher IQ people end up with more money than idiots in a free market. Smart people do care about pollution and the long-term self interest of the species, and freedom gives these people - through voluntary exchange - the higher economic means of directing the future, over that of democracy's harnessing of a majority of people regardless of their quality or desire to put skin in the game.

Costless votes by idiots should in any fair system not count. Giving power to someone else should in fact deprive one of power, which voting does not. Voting should cost something, so you have a loss if you vote wrongly. This is how shopping is like economic democracy, where a vote costs you, and this limits the votes to only those who have something to lose (the money they spend), while simultaneously depriving nobody else of power (as politicians do when they win election and increase taxes on others who didn't even vote for them).

He is begging the question, that is, he completely mis-defines our current economy.

He only talks of consumption, when that is only half of our market. The other side is production and savings. Also, what if the product that people want, is a clean environment. Is that not consumption?

Next he defines it as obsolescence, which a vapid miscategorization. He speaks of how optimization is the one true goal, yet the market does optimize. He only looks at material optimization, while yes we could create the perfect bicycle with millions of manhours of work. But do we actually need that, or do we need a bicycle that gets the job done until its job as a means of production is over with and you have used it as a steady investment.

He also defines strategic access as being better than property. How is strategic access more efficient than property, who decides on who gets access? Has he thought of the cost in labor that this strategic access system would cost? You would need a system which makes decisions at the rate of every individual on the planet at all times.

Next, why is infinite growth bad when you have an infinite universe? Imagine a photon traveling at the speed of light, from the photon's perspective will reach it's destination instantly, an outside observer will see it moving at 180,000 M/S. Therefore the faster we travel to the speed of light, the faster we get to our destination from our perspective(sure it will be several hundred thousand years later from everyone else's). Although, others won't be able to communicate with the rest of the population, we can effectively travel anywhere, anytime with the correct amount of energy. Therefore, we have no limits on material to continue capitalism.

Next is him completely misunderstanding what competition is.

After that is him going full retard, thinking capitalism is anti-automation.

Next he says imbalance is bad. That is completely anti-progress. Progress requires change, change requires a non static environment. Hence, imbalance. Q.E.D.