WEBVTT NOTE 1. It’s a Jetsons World 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Private Miracles. It's a Jetson's World. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:11.000 In the classic and futuristic television series from 1962 to 1963, 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:16.000 I admit that I adore this show and could watch every episode 100 times. 4 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:24.000 People work only a few hours a day, travel at 500 miles per hour in flying cars that go as fast as 2,500 miles per hour. 5 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.000 And the main job is pushing buttons. 6 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:31.000 The galaxy is their home. 7 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:36.000 Healthcare is a complete free market with extreme customer care. 8 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:43.000 Technology is the best, but of course it still malfunctions and must be fixed, same as today. 9 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:47.000 Business is rivalrous, prosperity is everywhere and the state largely irrelevant, 10 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:53.000 except for the friendly policeman who shows up every once in a while to check things out. 11 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:58.040 The whole scene, which anticipated so much of the technology we have today, but strangely 12 00:00:58.040 --> 00:01:04.360 not email or texting, reflected the ethos of the time, a love of progress and a vision 13 00:01:04.360 --> 00:01:07.160 of a future that stayed on course. 14 00:01:07.160 --> 00:01:12.200 Appropriately, it was the first show ever shown on ABC television in colour, instead 15 00:01:12.200 --> 00:01:14.680 of black and white. 16 00:01:14.680 --> 00:01:18.440 It was neither utopian nor dystopian. 17 00:01:18.440 --> 00:01:23.520 It was the best of life as we know it, projected far into the future. 18 00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:29.160 People did not dress in uniforms or obey some dictator on a monitor in their homes. 19 00:01:29.160 --> 00:01:33.360 The people in the show were as fashion-conscious as any American. 20 00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:38.820 Their food was not embedded in pill form unless they wanted it that way, same now. 21 00:01:38.820 --> 00:01:43.060 They had the equivalent of fast food delivery services in their homes. 22 00:01:43.060 --> 00:01:47.940 The drive was always toward automation, more efficient ways of doing what needs to be done 23 00:01:47.940 --> 00:01:56.420 The Message is a true one. 24 00:01:56.420 --> 00:02:01.300 Human nature and the structure of reality itself doesn't change. 25 00:02:01.300 --> 00:02:05.700 Only the gizmos we use change, and this is the most glorious thing that can happen in 26 00:02:05.700 --> 00:02:07.660 the material world. 27 00:02:07.660 --> 00:02:13.000 We can become poorer or we can become richer, but the fundamental facts of how the world 28 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:16.280 is built are immutable. 29 00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:21.240 Things are scarce, but the possibilities for economic creation are infinite in a world 30 00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:26.920 of trade, boundaries, law and private innovation. 31 00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:29.640 Why is it so fun to watch? 32 00:02:29.640 --> 00:02:34.440 Because it is a cartoon, because neat gadgets are everywhere, but mostly it amuses us because 33 00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:40.280 everyone seems so strangely blasé about all the miracles that surround them. 34 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:44.680 They are living in postmodern houses that seem to be braced on some giant pole in the 35 00:02:44.680 --> 00:02:49.720 the sky, and yet they think and act just like the rest of us who live on the ground. 36 00:02:49.720 --> 00:02:54.360 They aren't surprised by anything, no matter how amazing. 37 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:59.040 And despite the extraordinary conveniences of life, the essential problems are the same 38 00:02:59.040 --> 00:03:04.720 – the human vice is documented since the beginning of the written human language. 39 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:08.280 The kids have the same trouble as our kids. 40 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:10.920 Daughter Judy is spoiled and pouts too much. 41 00:03:10.920 --> 00:03:13.720 His boy Elroy gets into trouble. 42 00:03:13.720 --> 00:03:17.200 George tries in vain to solve all troubles but is mainly concerned about keeping his 43 00:03:17.200 --> 00:03:22.600 job, and Jane, his wife, keeps the home together. 44 00:03:22.600 --> 00:03:26.880 The persistence of choice leads to complaints that there isn't enough. 45 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:30.360 Pushing buttons is the main thing everyone complains about. 46 00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:33.620 When they want to get away and relax, they usually choose some enterprise that offers 47 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:38.800 the experience of a made-up world of the past that seems to take them back to the Old West, 48 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:40.880 the Beta Bar Ranch. 49 00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:43.660 But it is only pretend. 50 00:03:43.660 --> 00:03:48.180 We have the equivalent with our fantasies of returning to nature by shopping at grocery 51 00:03:48.180 --> 00:03:53.600 stores with philosophies, or believing that by not printing this email, we are saving 52 00:03:53.600 --> 00:03:55.560 the planet. 53 00:03:55.560 --> 00:03:59.360 In what other ways is our world like theirs? 54 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:05.540 We too are surrounded by amazing miracles generated by private enterprise and entrepreneurship. 55 00:04:05.540 --> 00:04:11.320 Every day we wake up to some overnight development that makes our lives slightly better. 56 00:04:11.320 --> 00:04:15.580 The advances have come along so quickly that articles on technology written just a few years 57 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:19.480 ago now strike us as old-fashioned. 58 00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:23.700 Boy Elroy has a machine that can conjure up real-time worlds that allow him to play baseball 59 00:04:23.700 --> 00:04:26.140 and tennis with his family members. 60 00:04:26.140 --> 00:04:29.580 We call that the Wii. 61 00:04:29.580 --> 00:04:35.260 The vacuum cleaners work without pushing them, and sure enough, we have those. 62 00:04:35.260 --> 00:04:39.460 Just as the Jetsons' home was in the clouds, ever more of our life is ascending to the 63 00:04:39.460 --> 00:04:45.300 The Digital World of Cloud Computing, where we meet with friends, do our work, spend leisure, 64 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:48.980 seek truth and inspiration. 65 00:04:48.980 --> 00:04:53.980 Videophone is the great dream that this show dreamed up. 66 00:04:53.980 --> 00:04:55.780 You had to pay. 67 00:04:55.780 --> 00:04:59.660 When you call long distance, does anyone remember that? 68 00:04:59.660 --> 00:05:03.040 Collect, does anyone remember that? 69 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:05.740 You had to accept or reject the charges. 70 00:05:05.740 --> 00:05:09.780 The videophone was strapped to the ceiling and couldn't be moved, just like telephones 71 00:05:09.780 --> 00:05:13.180 were until the day before yesterday. 72 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:18.340 Peter Seidor, a heavy hitter at the Mises Wiki, recently called my Skype app on my iPhone, 73 00:05:18.340 --> 00:05:21.380 something I downloaded the other day just to test it out. 74 00:05:21.380 --> 00:05:26.660 And I answered and voila, I'm video talking to a colleague in Germany. 75 00:05:26.660 --> 00:05:28.480 I walk around with my phone. 76 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:30.660 The app was free. 77 00:05:30.660 --> 00:05:33.080 Skype begs me to use the service. 78 00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:37.960 The iPhone 4 came with FaceTime built in, not that the appearance of this miracle created 79 00:05:37.960 --> 00:05:40.520 much chatter at all. 80 00:05:40.520 --> 00:05:44.440 All this stuff is amazing! 81 00:05:44.440 --> 00:05:51.320 It is astounding and beyond belief, more outrageously advanced than anything the makers of the Jetsons 82 00:05:51.320 --> 00:05:53.960 could even imagine. 83 00:05:53.960 --> 00:05:59.400 With this tiny box in my hand, I can do a real-time video chat with anyone on the planet 84 00:05:59.400 --> 00:06:03.240 and pay nothing more than my usual service fee. 85 00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:08.700 This means that anyone on the planet can do business with and be friends with any other 86 00:06:08.700 --> 00:06:10.840 person on the globe. 87 00:06:10.840 --> 00:06:17.640 The borders, the limits, the barriers, they are all being blasted away. 88 00:06:17.640 --> 00:06:21.400 The pace of change is mind-boggling. 89 00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:26.480 The world is being reinvented in our lifetimes every day. 90 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:30.960 Israel has only been mainstream for 15 years or so, and young people now regard it as a 91 00:06:30.960 --> 00:06:35.320 dated form of communication used only for the most formal correspondence. 92 00:06:35.320 --> 00:06:40.120 Today, young people are brief instant messaging through social media, but that's only for 93 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:43.720 now, and who knows what next year will bring. 94 00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:49.000 Oddly, hardly anyone seems to care, and even fewer care about the institutional force that 95 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:52.640 makes all this possible, which is the market economy. 96 00:06:52.640 --> 00:06:57.680 Instead, we just adjust to the new reality. 97 00:06:57.680 --> 00:07:05.600 We even hear of the grave problem of miracle fatigue, too much great stuff too often. 98 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:09.960 Truly this new world seems to have arrived without much fanfare at all. 99 00:07:09.960 --> 00:07:12.040 And why? 100 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:15.920 It has something to do with the nature of the human mind, which does not and will not 101 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:19.360 change so long as we live in a world of scarcity. 102 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:23.960 We adjust to amazing things and don't think much about the resource or the system that 103 00:07:23.960 --> 00:07:26.160 produces them. 104 00:07:26.160 --> 00:07:29.840 The Jetsons' world is our world. 105 00:07:29.840 --> 00:07:36.060 Explosive technological advances, entrenched bourgeois culture, a culture of enterprise 106 00:07:36.060 --> 00:07:40.000 that is the very font of the good life. 107 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:45.280 But there is one major difference, and it isn't the flying car which we might have already 108 00:07:45.280 --> 00:07:49.280 were it not for the government's promotion of roads and the central plan that manages 109 00:07:49.280 --> 00:07:58.080 Transportation, it is this, we also live in the midst of a gigantic Leviathan state that 110 00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:04.360 seeks to control every aspect of our life to its smallest detail. 111 00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:11.680 The government is still Flintstones, an anachronism that operates as this massive drag on our 112 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:13.920 lives. 113 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:20.480 With its money manipulations, regulations, taxation, wars on people, products and services, 114 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:26.740 prisons and injustices, we similarly look the other way. 115 00:08:26.740 --> 00:08:30.200 We try to find the workaround and keep living like the Jetsons. 116 00:08:30.200 --> 00:08:35.960 Oftentimes things don't go right, and the reason is the anachronism that rules us. 117 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:41.320 And yet, unless we understand cause and effect in the way that the old liberal tradition 118 00:08:41.320 --> 00:08:45.320 If you've explained it, we can miss the source.