Maggie's Farm

I agree. The printing money part and "getting it right" are insane. It can never be 'gotten right'.

I think this is a good video for early stage students studying economics, mainly because it's a good first step to see how the system is perceived to work.

I agree with most of the other critiques on here, though.

Bird Dog, I'll agree with your contention that "Nobody can make sense of economists." But mainly because economists themselves typically do themselves a disservice by trying to predict outcomes in multi-variable situations, leading to wildly outlandish real outcomes.

My view of economists, having studied the science (and it is a science, though not like engineering or physics are) is that people misunderstand what it is about.

Moral Philosophy is what Economics is. Adam Smith was a Moral Philosopher - seeking to determine what leads individuals to make the decisions they do to achieve the particular outcomes which benefit them.

His insights, even today, remain far-reaching and fundamental to any understanding of the science he created.

But there is a part to the science which people misunderstand - the moral aspect. Bastiat took up this cause in an unusual way by explaining that having the right to do something doesn't mean everyone must behave the way others, or even larger ill-defined groups like "society" insist they must. We must have the right to make bad decisions.

As Smith pointed out, over the broader population the 'bad' decisions are overwhelmed by the good ones, leading to the eventual positive outcome for most.

Moral outcomes can't be forced via fiat or law, as Bastiat points out, they must be achieved via spontaneous order.

Unfortunately, spontaneous order is messy and confusing and scares people. Oftentimes, people mistake order as something that is imposed on them. A friend of mine once said he has never done anything in a totally anarchic situation. I told him he has walked down a crowded street - which is, realistically, quite anarchic but achieves a remarkable order simply because most people follow 'rules' regarding space and etiquette.

He claimed 'tradition', until I reminded him that he'd done the same thing in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - with the same outcomes. This implies the 'tradition' he referred to is simply human nature and order can come without hard and fast rules.

Ultimately, economists become nonsensical because they want to make their science like other sciences - predictive. They can't, to any large extent. Some rules, like supply and demand, can be scientifically predictive when you control the inputs, as in any other lab experiment. But with so many other variables in real life, it's hard to really see what motivating forces exist.
http://cafehayek.com/2015/03/massaging-theory.html

People make decisions for weird reasons. I have stayed at my current job because my wife does not want me to leave. I have had better offers, but after a few bouts with unemployment, she craves stability. Is that a good decision on my part? Financially, no. But in terms of maintaining family peace and sanity, yes.

Economics is about how to best match limited resources to unlimited wants and needs. Every time we find a way to 'release' more resources to fill a need and we are told that we've reached a new 'level' of wealth, our wants begin to grow again.

Economics is a science because a science seeks to explain why things happen. This video did that. I wouldn't say it did it very well, or without bias, but it did explain the cycle.