Uploaded March 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video is an animation that displays a discussion between different view points on the continued expansion of the free market. It shows common arguments and counter arguments.
Subreddit:reddit.com/r/viki1999
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
Transcript:
….and that is why the free market is the best possible system there can be. It has lifted millions of people out of poverty and created unimaginable wealth for everyone. And in the future, we will all get to enjoy these new things, which for now only get enjoyed by the rich because the market will grow ever further which will make everything cheaper! Yes every now and then there is a crisis but that’s just a natural cleaning process. The bad businesses get destroyed and the good ones continue. No reason to panic! Any questions?
Yea I have one; You stated that the market will have to keep growing in order to allow everyone to enjoy the advances. I was wondering what happens if the market stops growing, how do the common people enjoy new technology then?
Thank you, The market does not stop growing. Economic growth is an exponential function which means that it grows faster and faster every year, there are many examples of this in nature, like bacteria, they grow exponentially. The market is just natural, and because of that it follows the natural laws of expansion.
But Actually, bacteria don’t grow exponentially forever. If they did that the whole universe would be covered in it already. It actually follows logistic growth which means that at first it grows exponentially but eventually it slows down as it reaches the carrying capacity. That means at some point bacteria stop growing because they have infected the whole host or filled the entire petri dish. Exponential growth actually doesn’t exists in nature at all because all growth is limited by something.
Well, of course, my example was just a slimily to make the growth more understandable. The free market is not bound by the laws of nature because it is manmade. There is no upper limit to the amount of money that can be produced which means that there is no limit to the amount of growth that can happen.
But what about resources? There is only a limited amount of let’s say, germanium. It’s used to make transistors for electronics and it’s on the list of endangered elements which means it could run out in the near future. The same is true for lithium, there isn’t even enough of it around for everyone in the world to get an electric car. Don’t the limited resources of the planet mean that the market eventually has to stop growing?
Ah yes it would seem this way, but the beauty of the free market is that it solves such problems on its own. If earth runs out of, let’s say lithium we can just mine asteroids for it. There are single asteroids in the asteroid belt between mars and Jupiter that contain more lithium than all of earth. If we run out of resources here, we must simply expand beyond our planet.
But isn’t space travel the most expensive industry there is? Doesn’t it cost like 7000 USD to put just one kilogram into space? And that’s just low earth orbit, no talk about the asteroid belt. How would you get whole mining operations up there without creating more cost than value?
Oh, actually the free market is solving this as we speak! SpaceX is making it possible to launch probes at as little as 1.7 thousand USD per kilogram.
But that’s still way too high to be profitable considering that any spacecraft would have to be 90% fuel to get to the asteroid belt AND be able to return to earth WITH the resources it mined.
Yes, but spaceX is making it more and more affordable every year! Soon we will be flying to space for less than we are flying to the Bahamas! And that will make an interplanetary expansion of the free market possible and profitable!
But don’t these rockets all use methane engines? Don’t they completely destroy the environment and use up fossil fuels? Ignoring the environment, what happens if we run out of methane? Won’t rocket launches become way more expensive again?
Yes, you would assume that but there are actually biofuels being developed which would make the fuel cheaper than ever!
But doesn’t biofuel take way more labor and time to be able to be used? Won’t it always be more expensive to grow plants and turn them into fuel than it is to put up an oil well. Isn’t it inevitable that the prices will raise to such a degree that continued growth is no longer feasible? And that’s on top of the moral predicament that is burning thousands of tons of bio fuel while there are millions starving each year.
This video is an animation that displays a discussion between different view points on the continued expansion of the free market. It shows common arguments and counter arguments.
Subreddit:reddit.com/r/viki1999
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
Transcript:
….and that is why the free market is the best possible system there can be. It has lifted millions of people out of poverty and created unimaginable wealth for everyone. And in the future, we will all get to enjoy these new things, which for now only get enjoyed by the rich because the market will grow ever further which will make everything cheaper! Yes every now and then there is a crisis but that’s just a natural cleaning process. The bad businesses get destroyed and the good ones continue. No reason to panic! Any questions?
Yea I have one; You stated that the market will have to keep growing in order to allow everyone to enjoy the advances. I was wondering what happens if the market stops growing, how do the common people enjoy new technology then?
Thank you, The market does not stop growing. Economic growth is an exponential function which means that it grows faster and faster every year, there are many examples of this in nature, like bacteria, they grow exponentially. The market is just natural, and because of that it follows the natural laws of expansion.
But Actually, bacteria don’t grow exponentially forever. If they did that the whole universe would be covered in it already. It actually follows logistic growth which means that at first it grows exponentially but eventually it slows down as it reaches the carrying capacity. That means at some point bacteria stop growing because they have infected the whole host or filled the entire petri dish. Exponential growth actually doesn’t exists in nature at all because all growth is limited by something.
Well, of course, my example was just a slimily to make the growth more understandable. The free market is not bound by the laws of nature because it is manmade. There is no upper limit to the amount of money that can be produced which means that there is no limit to the amount of growth that can happen.
But what about resources? There is only a limited amount of let’s say, germanium. It’s used to make transistors for electronics and it’s on the list of endangered elements which means it could run out in the near future. The same is true for lithium, there isn’t even enough of it around for everyone in the world to get an electric car. Don’t the limited resources of the planet mean that the market eventually has to stop growing?
Ah yes it would seem this way, but the beauty of the free market is that it solves such problems on its own. If earth runs out of, let’s say lithium we can just mine asteroids for it. There are single asteroids in the asteroid belt between mars and Jupiter that contain more lithium than all of earth. If we run out of resources here, we must simply expand beyond our planet.
But isn’t space travel the most expensive industry there is? Doesn’t it cost like 7000 USD to put just one kilogram into space? And that’s just low earth orbit, no talk about the asteroid belt. How would you get whole mining operations up there without creating more cost than value?
Oh, actually the free market is solving this as we speak! SpaceX is making it possible to launch probes at as little as 1.7 thousand USD per kilogram.
But that’s still way too high to be profitable considering that any spacecraft would have to be 90% fuel to get to the asteroid belt AND be able to return to earth WITH the resources it mined.
Yes, but spaceX is making it more and more affordable every year! Soon we will be flying to space for less than we are flying to the Bahamas! And that will make an interplanetary expansion of the free market possible and profitable!
But don’t these rockets all use methane engines? Don’t they completely destroy the environment and use up fossil fuels? Ignoring the environment, what happens if we run out of methane? Won’t rocket launches become way more expensive again?
Yes, you would assume that but there are actually biofuels being developed which would make the fuel cheaper than ever!
But doesn’t biofuel take way more labor and time to be able to be used? Won’t it always be more expensive to grow plants and turn them into fuel than it is to put up an oil well. Isn’t it inevitable that the prices will raise to such a degree that continued growth is no longer feasible? And that’s on top of the moral predicament that is burning thousands of tons of bio fuel while there are millions starving each year.
