a video about mars, musk, and marx

I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon Customer because you guys paid for all this because you guys paid for all this you guys paid for all this you guys paid for all you guys paid for all that you guys paid for all paid you paid for all this The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars is the 1998 direct to video sequel to the 1987 Disney animated film The Brave Little Toaster which is based on the children's Novella The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas M dish it was followed up by The Brave Little Toaster to the rescue which technically takes place before The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars but due to scheduling and production issues was released after the great Little Toaster goes to Mars it follows a ragtag group of personified home appliances who with the assistance of the world's largest supercomputer and a bag of microwave popcorn Traverse the universe far and wide in search of their Master's new baby who got himself beamed up to the red planet by a mysterious Alien Force now I don't know how it escaped my attention but I always thought that The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars was the only Brave Little Toaster movie and so in order to provide you with an authentic viewing experience that appropriately mirrors my own personal warped perspective and biases and not at all because the Brave Little Toaster is not available on Disney plus I have decided that I will not be including any information from either the sequel or the prequel to The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars in this video I have elected to go on as I have for the last 165 years and engage with The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars in its rightful place as the only important piece of toaster related media which means when you hear me refer to the toaster movie toaster movie toast on Mars Mars toast Appliance toast Extravaganza you can rest assured that I am talking about the lowest rated Brave Little Toaster movie on Rotten Tomatoes The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars and not its predecessor The Brave Little Toaster or its sequel slash prequel The Brave Little Toaster to the rescue understood why am I talking about this children's movie so much in a video that's supposed to be about space capitalism well thank you for asking it's why we're in this mess in the first place this was this would be a short and sweet Elon Musk versus The Brave Little Toaster Space Race for the ages thing I was gonna make jokes about him buying Twitter I was gonna make jokes about the toaster being smarter than him and we were gonna call it a day and a half an hour and then I watched the movie again so uh so that's not gonna work so I tried to find another angle right I went and I started watching all these documentaries on Elon Musk and I was like maybe we'll just do like a SpaceX thing only to find that he is super boring like like extremely extremely average to the point where I almost started to see him as sort of like a tragic figure this creature facilitating all these incredible scientific achievements with the personality of a Saltine cracker on a rainy day but then I started pitying Elon Musk and I don't want to be there so then I decided I would watch Cole Sprouse and moonshot because Cole Sprouse feels like if you tried to trace Elon Musk on an overhead projector or like if you if you ordered Elon Musk from like an essay bank and then you had to change him enough to beat the plagiarism Checker and that movie was like fine it was also remarkably unremarkable and then I remembered this Mars fiction class that I took in college when I was getting the degree that I don't use and will probably never be able to pay off in my lifetime and I thought you know why not commit to the bit so I just started watching Mars movies I watched Mars Attacks I watched The Martian I watched Dune well okay I watched like half of Dune I think they forgot to color grade it so I quit halfway through I did watch War of the Worlds and despite my long-standing beef with Edgar Riceboro as a Princess of Mars I watched John Carter and it sucked I watched the Jimmy Neutron episode where they go to Mars I watched Mission to Mars I watched Marcy's moms Mars ghosts I rewatched the Waters of Mars and I watched the stowaway I watched the red planet I watched the small Angry Red Planet at this point I'm in it right I'm so far down the rabbit hole that I'm coming out the other side I watched this movie called Stranded which is just the Martian but Russian I came across this movie called devil girl from Mars but the only way that I could watch it on Amazon Prime was this like version with these two women giving commentary on it so I watched that I found a 2010 animated movie called Mars with Liza wheel a 2017 Japanese live-action movie called terraformers and absolutely wonderfully bad 2015 movie called Martian land which is absolutely everything that I love about bad movies and it was gay Lobster Man From Mars Escape From Mars it Terror beyond space star Crystal race to Mars Santa Claus Conquers the Martians a 1918 silent film called a trip to Mars the only mars-related media that I did not watch is Total Recall and that's because I'd already watched this movie and all of the YouTube comments and the Wikipedia page describe it as virtually a low budget remake of Total Recall so give me a break oh my God all of that to say that this is a video about Mars okay it's a video about how I raised my blood pressure with eight months of research into 20th century political Theory and space economics it is a video about capitalism and Mars related media and toasters and it's it's gonna be fine it's gonna be Mars and money money and Mars that's the whole video so just to suck it up settle in and try not to throw your computer across the room best of luck part one a brief history of NASA and by extension capitalism in the year 1610 no I'm kidding we're not doing that this time lower your expectations so World War II right 1939 to 1945 pretty much a category 19 [ __ ] show like all around everything is [ __ ] apart from the simple fact that Hitler is insane and the Nazis are evil everything about World War II was very very complicated and we are not getting into it what you need to know is that it is the second massive International conflict in the 20th century and we are not even halfway through okay it is still considered to be the deadliest military conflict in human history including the genocide that was carried out by Nazi Germany that targeted and murdered six million Jewish people considering other various War related factors like disease and famines the total casualties military and civilian worldwide are estimated to be somewhere between 60 and 85 million people okay that is three percent of the total population at the time that is not a value judgment that's just to say that this was awful and people needed this work to be over they needed this word to be over with a capital oh they needed it to be over and they needed it to be over quickly and so that meant a few things one a lot of crazy [ __ ] up science experiment [ __ ] that leads to the creation of things like the atom bomb nuclear weaponry in general and the teaming up of two countries who very much did not like each other whatsoever who end up on the same side by the end of it that side being the winning one well I say winning nobody won World War II it wiped out three percent of the population but you know what I mean the way that we tell the story The Ally versus the Axis powers the U.S and the USSR the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of vibe they end the conflict temporarily sort of this has the benefit of turning both the US and the USSR into very powerful countries countries however they are not exactly um friends so what begins is more or less like a pissing match only one where both parties are capable of wiping out most of the planet on a bad day now the United States had a no-chill during this time no one did really but particularly not the United States and particularly not when it came to things that go boom and make big fire so the Department of Defense is looking into trying to make rockets and so they hire literal Nazi Verner Von Braun who developed weapons for the Nazi party and was like a Nazi they hire him to help get them to space and then they go to President Eisenhower and they're like hey could we for a few months in 1958 send like a satellite up to orbit the earth and President Eisenhower is like I don't know what any of that means [ __ ] go for it whatever unfortunately however a full-scale crisis occurs on October 4th 1957 which is just a few months before they are set to launch their Explorer one satellite in the United States because the Soviet Union launches Sputnik one into orbit first this has what NASA themselves describe on their website as a Pearl Harbor effect on American opinion a mere 16 years after actual Pearl Harbor but where 2 500 people were killed but anyway that's a big big old bummer big old big old bummer I haven't figured out this microphone yet and this just keeps happening by the way like throughout the 60s they just keep beating us to [ __ ] by like a like a couple of months and the United States hates it so the United States does what we always do in a crisis which is throw money at it until it either disappears or gets worse at which point you blame someone else and run the American way it takes three more months for the United States to launch their Explorer one and then a mere 362 days after the Russians launched Sputnik on October 1st 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration begins operation which means that Mars and space related movies that came out in the 1950s don't have NASA it's just no NASA fit tear her from Beyond Space comes out in 1957 and it just has the science advisory committee division of interplanetary exploration and like to their credit Sac D just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way anyway so the United States hires a Nazi and NASA just kind of absorbs all of the smartest cookies in the military science box including the entire National advisory committee for Aeronautics Aeronautics is just like air flying it's it's flying which comes with three Research Laboratories two Test Facilities 8 000 employees and a whopping 100 million dollar budget that's the equivalent of twenty thousand and four of Elon musk's definitely not a flamethrower flamethrowers off of eBay in the year of Our Lord 2023. so NASA starts they send the Nazi to Disney to teach children about space and they set to work proving that the United States is more technologically advanced than the Soviet Union by putting cowboy boots on the moon and thus We Begin the Space Race what does any of this have to do with capitalism I'm so glad you asked the space race is one of the manifestations of the cold conflict that emerges between the United States and the USSR after World War II and by Cold conflict I mean Cold War spoiler alert and the important thing about the cold war is that it's not just a war between countries right it is not just about which country is better it is about which way of living is better right which economic or political structure is better boot stopping hair flowing freedom fighting capitalism or communism now the United States did and continues to do a very very good job of making communist a dirty word but it's not but if it makes you uncomfortable I encourage you now to unclench your [ __ ] take a seat take a breath have a snack and get the [ __ ] over it communism ugh communism according to Merriam-Webster communism is a system in which goods are owned in the common and are available as needed and usually involves an elimination of property law it is not what was happening in the USSR after World War II I don't know what was happening in the USSR after World War II there are a lot of people much smarter than me who spend a lot of time trying to figure that out but I know that it wasn't communism thus Begins the drink every time someone tells you that communism is great in theory and not in practice game and I will see you in therapy but the word itself is derived from the French music out of the Latin root Communists semantically meaning like of the community and the suffix Isme which is like relating to Doctrine action or Community the concept as we know it today though that comes to us in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto where Karl Marx and Frederick Ingles lay out a very specific form of Communism as a political and socioeconomic theory that is an alternative to capitalism now Karl Marx Marx was a German philosopher Economist historian sociologist political theorist journalist critic of the political economy and a socialist revolutionary so obviously he was very chill Marx did like a [ __ ] ton of writing okay he did a function of thinking and a [ __ ] ton of writing and was super influential on other people who did a [ __ ] ton of thinking and a [ __ ] ton of writing especially in the 20th century because everything was uh how do you how do you say like um falling apart every everywhere all the time constantly everything was falling apart so people got really into marks because he had some really good ideas about how to maybe possibly fix everything and eventually the people who did like a [ __ ] ton of thinking and reading and writing started to do like a little bit of implementing like actual doing of things and so we start to enter this really complicated intersection between Theory and Praxis Praxis is just a fancy way of saying practice this intersection is uh awful it it's horrible it is a horrible horrible place to be I wish I had never even thought about entering it is a million years long it is the darkest hour 24 7. it is a nightmare a nightmare land and I do not pretend to understand it however it is in fact where Marxism flourishes like a zombie virus okay because Marxism is just so thorough it's there there's so much of it Marx has been dead for like 17 years before the 20th century even begins he was born in 1818 and died in 1883. he did not have opinions on 20th century politics okay and capital is like 3 000 pages I am not a Marxist scholar I am not nor do I pretend to be an authority on the works of Karl Marx however I am very annoying very annoying and because I did not learn my lesson when I baited the Nietzsche Bros I now present to you Marxism abridged so here's Basics the world is full of people people are humans who do things and labor is the things that the humans do specifically the things that the humans do that result in the production of other things Commodities are those other things specifically and typically those that fulfill some kind of need of ours the mode and means of production are the way and how that those things Commodities are made by the people of the world doing the labor see it's not rocket science Commodities and values a commodity has a value usually it fulfills some kind of need that you have and so it is then worth trading something else that you already have if you have say three toasters but you only really want one toaster and someone else has a mop that they don't really like they might decide that their shitty mop is worth two of your toasters and you might for some ridiculous reason and agree with that and so you agree to trade two of your three toasters for one shitty mom but if it's a super shitty mop you don't actually really want that mop that badly that's where money comes in money is also a commodity money is what we use to facilitate the exchange of Commodities therefore it is also a commodity in itself because it fulfills the need that we have of allowing us to acquire other Commodities that fulfill needs and you know how shopping works I'm mansplaining shopping to you mode and means of production however is a little the factory and the machines in it the skyscraper building the slack Channel whatever it is that is the motor means of production and whoever owns that they own the means of production and they have the power because they get to control the output of the things that are made inside of it the Commodities they get to say you do not get to have this toaster until you give me that copy of Sara Bareilles I'm not going to write you a love song being performed by Kermit the Frog at the 1913 Academy Awards having been pressed into vinyl By Hand by a series of nepotism babies desperately trying to appropriate having a job I don't make the prices the appliances in the toaster Universe they all produce Commodities right like toast and food and pretentious musical opinions how about some rap they don't call them golden oldies for nothing they do this at different speeds and rates and they they put in labor right they serve a purpose and they have these Prime directives that they talk about so they feel in the movie like they function as employees to the humans they function as the working class but at the same time they are also owned by the humans right they are the things that get bought and sold by companies like wonderlux where there is a factory that they are produced in and owned by this guy but they also produce commodities for the people who own them which surprisingly does not complicate the metaphor at all because your labor is also a commodity yes it's very exciting thing because things don't get made without it but it's a it's a special kind of commodity though right because you sell your labor more specifically your labor time to a capitalist someone who owns the means of production I.E the materials that you need to make like a very cool t-shirt you sell your time to them they give you all the materials you make the shirt you give it back to them they pay you for that time that you spent doing that they pay you for the time and then you use that money to buy the shirt that you just made only you have to make like four shirts in order to make enough money to to buy one shirt which doesn't smell in capitalism and um where is it I actually have this book right in Anthony gidden's uh capitalism and modern social theory a analysis of the writings of Marx durkheim and Max Weber Anthony giddens notes that on average Marx holds that the capitalist buys labor and sells Commodities at their real value as he puts it the capitalist must buy his Commodities at their value must sell them at their value and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more from the circulation than he threw into it at starting someone's got to get exploited right because the capitalist has to then value the labor time that they are purchasing at less than the value of the product they are selling in order to make any profit because if you buy and sell Commodities at their at their value their real value only one of those two things has any like special wiggle room right only one of those things is necessary for the person to be doing right a t-shirt doesn't care if it gets bought it does doesn't need to be bought a person needs money to buy a t-shirt at least in capitalism they do obviously this is exploitation and it is the only way that capitalism Works capitalism does not exist without exploitation that's just that's a fact that's not there is no capitalism without exploitation it doesn't happen so all of this exchanging the facilitating of goods this happens on the market is what we say and the market only exists because we let it laws specifically property laws property being like what you can and cannot own in general not necessarily like land specifically property laws are what allow this right you have to be allowed to have a free market and not everything has a market not everything has an open free market for example Health Care Health Care in the United States has a free and open market you are allowed to charge whatever you want for health care services and the insurance companies are allowed to charge you to pay them to pay for the expensive services that is the whole evil scam right and it is perfectly legal because people are allowed to own health care and medicine and when they own it they get to decide who gets it and when this is not the case in every country this does not always have to be the case not everything has an open and free market not everything in the United States has an open and free market you know what didn't have an open and free market in the United States for the first 50 some years of its existence NASA space travel according to NASA historian Joan Lisa Bromberg NASA administrator James L Webb believed that National Space policy should not be turned over to private firms it was government acting in the public interest that had to determine what should be done when it should be done and for how much money up until the 21st century NASA the functional Chimera of shady government operations and ghosts of Nazis past has what the finance Bros today would call a centralized Market ooh centralized what does that mean that just means that there is no competition right it means that the only people who are allowed to walk into NASA throw money on the table and say take me to space are the United States government whereas in a free market anyone can at any moment walk it and literally buy everything in a free market anyone can sell their labor anyone can sell their Commodities anyone can buy their labor anyone can buy Commodities and everyone is so focused on themselves and increasing their rate of exploitation I mean sorry increasing their profit margins that sometimes things get lost things like human decency and basic respect also uh basic science National Security and national pride so part of the reason that NASA was given so much money during the Cold War and especially at its start wasn't because it was bringing in any kind of monetary value to the United States they weren't bringing back precious gems they were however providing a great deal of ideological and scientific value moon rocks and bragging rights proved that capitalism was better than communism but like why is that valuable who who would that be valuable to everybody has nukes who cares well it's valuable because the more that people believe in capitalism the less likely they are to overthrow it right because that's the big thing in Marxism and like Marx's theory is this inevitable heavy air quotes inevitable Revolution where the working class individuals or the class of the proletariat the people who work and sell their labor in exchange for Commodities they take back the means of production from the owning class the bourgeoisie and they basically restructure the entire economic system so that no one owns anything everything is communally owned and available and no one gets exploited for their labor anymore or as the United States government in 1965 probably would have told you restructure the entire system so that everyone is poor and starving and dying of disease which for the record that's not communism that's just mean so like a revolution would be bad right a revolution would be really bad if you make money off of capitalism so it is in the best interest of the bourgeoisie the ruling class the people who own the means of production and make a lot of money exploiting other people's labor through capitalism it is in their best interest to equate capitalism to something like national pride because it then equates capitalism to America's favorite disambiguation freedom freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom of the press freedom of the market the formation of NASA and more specifically putting a man on the moon winning the Space Race provides Rock Solid evidence of that sweet sweet American exceptionalist Escapist fantasy that capitalism is not just the best way of living it is the only way one giant leap for mankind brought to you exclusively by the United States government [ __ ] terrifying you know now I put inevitable in air quotes earlier when I was talking about a Marxist Revolution and that is because for a very long time from my understanding there was this scientific mechanistic mathematical understanding of Marxism as as a historical science of economy and people in society Revolution was assumed to be a necessary and inevitable consequence of the development of economic contradictions of the capitalist mode of production basically if capitalism keeps going it will snap it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't snapping and things that looked a lot like revolutions were happening and instead of moving into socialism and then communism we were ending up with things like Fascism and totalitarianism another nightmare dictatorships there were coups and reichs and marches on Rome okay and everyone was looking around like what the [ __ ] is going on what the [ __ ] do we do Mark starred in 1888 we can't ask him what the [ __ ] Mass academic Panic as the world is falling apart so everybody is [ __ ] panicking everybody is scrambling and one of the people affected by this Mass academic Panic was Antonio gromshi right gromshi was an Italian Marxist who was imprisoned in Mussolini's fascist Italy from 1926 until his death in 1937 which meant that he had like a lot of time on his hands and so he just starts writing like he's [ __ ] Alexander Hamilton as seen by lin-manuel Miranda in 2016 right like he writes a lot and his writing is incredible and it gets published as these prison writings after his death and in those writings he develops this concept of hegemony hegemony how to pronounce it no one knows it's a big word it's a big word and it has lots of meanings it existed before gromshi it will continue to exist after gromshi but for all intents and purposes as far as I understand it it is leadership right and dominance dominance of one social group over another and for gromshi specifically it was a cultural moral and ideological leadership which brings us to part four aliens or Worse communists so gromshi's aim was to understand how class nomination becomes obscured through the ideological and political mechanisms at a superstructural level allowing the ruling class to spread its hegemony throughout Society I can't multitask basically he wanted to know how exactly humans have been able to keep such tight control over their appliances for so long especially since half of them [ __ ] off to Mars at one point we are talking about the toaster movie again and gromshi at the same time I think this video has really gotten away from me let's see because the appliances like love being appliances right they really do and I like being used which if you're a human is great because it would be a huge bummer if your ceiling fan suddenly decided she wanted to be properly compensated for spinning or if the hearing aid that you don't need and didn't buy it still changed the batteries for on a regular basis suddenly decided to [ __ ] off to Mars or something like that when we're talking about ideology we're talking about a lot of different things right it's a system of ideas especially one which forms the basis of economy or political Theory or policy according to Google or a set of beliefs and philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic epistemic just means knowledge basically it's a system in which the Practical elements are as prominent as the theoretical ones it is that nightmare land between practice Praxis and Theory God I am I am drunk and I'm trying to craft I don't know why I'm doing this I'm trying so hard t-e-r-r-i oh that's supposed to be in red whatever so ideology is not propaganda it is more of a like through line it's like a filter something that you can see across the board when looking at a society and the things that it creates propaganda is usually like intentional it's usually deliberately manipulative content used to disseminate a specific ideology that ideology is then voluntarily or you know even unconsciously reflected and even challenged in the media that is produced by the consumers of the initial propaganda or whatever it is it if you cover the subway floor with glitter that Glitter is going to end up all over the city but not everybody who tracks that Glitter around the city is going to be intentionally tracking that Glitter so they're not quite the same thing but propaganda supports ideology propaganda helps make ideology ideology is not propaganda in itself the 1958 movie it terrify on Space he's a team of military astronauts who go on a mission to rescue the Lone Survivor of the first mission to Mars because there was some [ __ ] that went down there but they accidentally bring back with them an evil alien stow away and that evil alien stowaway starts infecting and also murdering the crew on their whole journey back it's a huge bummer and at one point one of the other military astronauts turns the other one and literally suggests that its Origins are you say it's Manchester humanoid Rapture was once a civilization on Mars it ended disease War something terrible the Martians what was left of them went back to barbarism Savage murderously maybe that's what we've got on board the small angry red planet that came out in 1959 follows the events of the Mars One spaceship that also returns to Earth with one Lone Survivor stand by to check interior radiation hold it look recovery squats oh someone's alive the girl the hell with radiation let's go and a huge chunk of that film is trying to figure out what the hell happened on Mars from this one Lone Survivor who is super traumatized because it is a matter of National Security right and any and all measures must be taken to extract such information from the feeble woman mind kill her if you must for her blood will stay in the streets in red and warding to our enemies is that too far that might be a little too far anyway they're not calling these aliens Communists but like they're not not calling them Communists do you know what I mean because these films these films all come on the heels of McCarthyism which was basically where like Joseph McCarthy just kind of put a [ __ ] ton of people on trial for no reason and just was like you're a communist bad and it created a Big Red Scare that had people convinced for decades that there are these evil radicals and Communists specifically Russian Communists hiding and lurking in the dimly lit street corners of America applauding to take your bandstands and your soda pop and your freedom freedom that is to sell your labor for less than it's worth and constantly be trying to keep your head above water in the hopes of one day being one of the lucky few who will at one point be able to exploit others for their labor but you know semantics I need an s in 1968's Mars Needs women literally depicts martians as coming to the United States to kidnap women in order to repopulate their Planet a plan that is thwarted by none other than your friendly neighborhood United States military thanks boys these movies give us a version of Mars and specifically martians that these both violent and dangerous and full of these these ominous scary creatures who feel threatened by human and by context American technological advancement skill and general presence we come back from all these alien encounters with fear we should be scared right we should be scared of what we don't know so therefore it is in our best interest to know absolutely everything we can about absolutely everyone else on planet and off in a piece on Kim Stanley Robinson's red Mars Trilogy as part of a book on utopians studies Dr Eric C Otto writes that sci-fi is the intersection between science-based facts and cultural changes it's how we talk about the ethical concerns and issues in our world I don't think that these films are propaganda I don't right I think that they are reflections and reinforcements of the ruling classes ideology and expressions of fear that makes its way into the culture it makes its way into the media makes its way into the fiction to the movies the civilization has not progressed Beyond destruction or violence against yourselves and others do not return to Mars H.G Wells War of the Worlds was published in 1898 almost 30 years into a Second Industrial Revolution at a time when the threat of physical invasion was heavy on everyone's mind monarchies for falling and political and economic structures were revving up like lawn mowers okay and now Wells was a socialist and you can see that reflected in the way that his Martian Invasion story plays out it is a terrifying Martian Invasion that very nearly wipes out humanity and the only thing that saves humanity is the fact that the Martians are not immune to our everyday germs they all die of sickness the only thing that protects humanity is something that we humans have no control over and that every single one of us has access to the humans in War of the Worlds don't win because they are in any way better or more Superior than the Martians they're not smarter they're not more capable they're not stronger their military efforts actually fail and it's the industrial cities that fall first in the invasion it is just the fact that we are used to our own germs it is the air and the environment that we are in that saves us the story interrogates and advises against a lot of the popular ideologies of the times like social Darwinism and imperialism and exceptionalism and this idea that we are meant to conquer and that we should be exerting our strength it places Humanity as subordinate to the biosphere in Rocketship XM a group of astronauts land on Mars Only to encounter the survivors of a nuclear war who are sick and have like a bodily uh deformities and are kind of miserable and almost inhuman creatures as a result of the nuclear Activity The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is another cautionary tale that was published in 1950 which which also shows humans who inevitably destroyed Earth in a nuclear war and then escaped to a version of Mars that is only empty because the last time that humans were there they killed off all of the aliens with chickenpox because we don't learn lessons and all of this to say that post-world War II the United States is exploding like economically politically sociologically things are getting way bigger in a lot of ways they're getting better in a lot of ways but they're they are getting bigger and they are getting bigger quickly be it population economy waste political paranoia the threat of nuclear destruction while it doesn't necessarily end the Space Race completely getting to the Moon does kind of put a cap on it for a little while right like NASA starts focusing on shuttles and trying to send things to Mars they still get beat by the Russians Mariner 9 beats Russia's Mars 2 to Mars by like a few weeks and just in general it all kind of slows down from there because like we one and also the United States does not have infinite money to spend on NASA when it could be spending it stockpiling weapons sending soldiers to Vietnam and education and paying the mail people Douglas E Williams in ideology and dystopia an interpretation of Blade Runner writes about the period of the 70s and the 80s it has fallen largely to the art of our time to explore and clarify the sense of dissolution fragmentation simultaneity and decomposition that proved so subversive of earlier Notions of reality and contemplate what the future might hold so we start to get a lot of dystopian work and eco-feminist work environmentalist work queer literature afrofuturism and all of these movements that are happening in the United States are being reflected in a lot of the literature mostly the literature the films and music right David Bowie's Life on Mars is pretty much a direct critique on capitalism and consumerism not to mention the 70s is when we find out that for sure Mars is like pretty much a cold dead lifeless Rock there's not aliens there like we've seen it um so it starts to bring a lot more attention to this argument that has already been made quite strongly by activists mostly people of color that we should probably not be spending all of this money on space travel when we have a [ __ ] ton of problems here there was a whole ass protest outside of NASA during the moon landing well during the launch for the moon landing and no one talks about it no one paid attention to it because everyone was so focused on the moon landing I did it okay sick that's a long time that it needs to be done though okay so like going to space is like super [ __ ] expensive which is great news for NASA though because in 1981 Reagan gets elected and he brings with him the root of all evil neoliberalism which according to Encyclopedia Britannica is an ideology and policy model that emphasizes the value of the free market competition although there is considerable debate as to the defining features of neoliberal thought and practice it is most commonly associated with laissez-faire economics in particular neoliberalism is often characterized in terms of belief in sustained economic growth as a means to achieve human progress confidence in free markets as the most efficient allocation of resources its emphasis on minimal State intervention in economic and social Affairs and its commitment to a freedom of trade and capital neoliberalism is basically the idea that like Willy Wonka did everything right like we should all be running chocolate factories under Trade Secrets with slave labor and picking random children to run our companies now Reagan knew capitalism better than anyone and if we remember remember the 70s as being a period of progress or from a political perspective on arrest I suppose then coming in in 1981 he knew the value of establishing and securing a successful capitalist hegemony that cultural moral and ideological leadership which means a couple of things it means one taking over and redefining productive relations at their base and two acquiring control of the political or state structure and becoming president is like a super super great way to do that because you can't own the means of production if the law doesn't allow you to do so you can't just force people to submit to you not in this economy literally that's totalitarianism that's fascism that's what Reagan would probably have called communism but anyway Reagan comes in and just starts like slashing government regulation over Private Business he it is it is like scream five out here he is just hacking through all of the red tape freeing the [ __ ] out of that market which is super great for the bourgeoisie not so great for the working class which in theory could piss people off right and could probably start one of those pesky revolutions that we really don't want and so what gromshi observed and Reagan essentially proved is that a successful hegemony needs to be able to control not just the political and economic aspects of a society but the ideological as well that way the dominant class is able to diffuse thought throughout a society such as to obscure the nature and character of class domination other classes accept and consent to it as a natural view of the world thus engendering a new type of social integration when the appliances of the Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars go to Mars they find that it is already inhabited by a group of appliances called the wonderlux appliances who were built in a factory and found out about planned obsolescence right they found out that they were being deliberately manufactured to fail and they were not stoked about that so they dipped out to Mars but because hurt people hurt people they sort of like trip and fall into their own pseudo-fascist government system where they're being ruled by a giant fridge there is actually a lot of nuance to it but for now just know that they have an election every single day and no one is brave enough to run against the fridge except for of course The Brave Little Toaster so after lying to their faces about planned Ops lessons not being a problem anymore the toaster and the fridge have this musical argument trying to convince all of the appliances to love humans and the fridge is trying to convince them not to and the toaster says things like this hated us why would they employ us there which is a wild thing to come out of the mouth of someone who's never been paid for their work but not even close to the most insane things she says in that song that would probably be this without humans there'd be no you my point is that the toaster is Reagan okay the toaster is Reagan and she knows that she cannot convince these appliances not to blow up the Earth because they want to blow up the earth I don't know if I mentioned that that's their thing they are mad that they're planned to be obsolete so they are going to destroy the planet anyway the toaster is Reagan the toaster knows that she can't just come in and say please don't do that that's they're never going to listen to her that why would they why would they do that she knows that the best way to convince them not to blow up the Earth is to fundamentally change the political structure by becoming part of it by running and giving a moral speech about how it is only right that appliances wear out it is the natural way of things it is good actually right and it totally works too totally work the gang of Earth appliances are able to take over and alter the political and socioeconomic structure of the Mars appliances their means of production altered political structure altered ideological structure altered by the time that they leave the wonderlux appliances have decided that they are not only going to not blow up the Earth they are actually going to stay on Mars and fix themselves up in preparation for the human's arrival a successful hegemony is one that can create a collective National popular will where they appear to represent the national interests but align their specific hegemonic principles and goals with the ideals of the nation the dominant class is able to transform the ideological Elements by articulating a hegemonic principle which differs from the one they are presently articulated with make America great again prove that the best thing for the nation is your new thing not the other thing it has to be made a great again because things were not so great for a minute I.E 200 years probably because of this natural side effect of capitalism where overproduction and extreme exploitation lead to the inability for consumers to buy things bubbles form and then they burst and people are laid off and then there are recessions which are just opportunities for other businesses to come in and open up jobs and they're able to pay people for Less because they've been out of work and so they're desperate so they'll work for less and then the whole thing starts over again Look So Reagan gets sworn in in January of 1981 and that is the same year that NASA launches the Columbia shuttle for the first time and [ __ ] is great right Reagan is like [ __ ] yeah NASA go to space shuttles are awesome they are basically Yankee clipper ships whatever that means and they are going to open the horizons of our nation and make the nation feel safe and smarter and happy and be enslaved to capitalism and it's all great NASA thank you this is sick but NASA is like oh Reagan thank you this is sick we will continue to send people up to space the Challenger shuttle explodes and it is awful and horrible and it takes the lives of the astronauts and it is really horrific and it's not a great look for NASA because they seems like they can't keep their astronauts safe it's also not a great look because that shuttle costs like two billion dollars to make which is terrible news for NASA because Reagan gets reelected and the president's commission for the implementation of the United States space exploration policy comes to the conclusion basically that NASA's role needs to be limited to doing things that they will irrefutably be able to perform successfully basically this is too expensive for you to be failing be better your war is on the table and it is getting colder by the minute you know it's not getting any colder though the [ __ ] planet forget nukes right it is becoming Apparent at this point that we might destroy the planet all on our own which means get in [ __ ] we're going terraforming so what exactly is terraforming terraforming is a process of planetary engineering by which the extant environment of a planet is manipulated so as to produce an Earth-like ecosystem and Mars is like kind of perfect for it at least some people thought so basically what you would do is since Mars's mean temperature is below the freezing point of water one of the first steps is needing to thicken up the atmosphere possibly by literally encouraging a greenhouse effect to warm up the planet so that water can be collected on the surface and then an ecosystem can begin from there so like we have to heat up the planet and if there's anything that humans are good at it is heating up a planet so we get a lot of terraforming on Mars stories after we find out that Mars is like kind of perfect for it and by far the most Monumental and influential of those being the red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson it's basically a world where humans go to Mars capitalism gets the best of them there is a war there's a political caucus there's love story it's great they're fantastic I highly highly recommend reading them you don't have to though if you didn't it's fine here's everything that you need to know so it's red Mars green Mars and blue Mars in red Mars the first 100 settlers are sent to Mars by the United Nation office for Martian Affairs unoma they are sent to terraform Mars and they're sent to do it quickly because we need help on Earth our Environmental Protection policies are crumbling and humans are drilling into Antarctica for oil it is a whole big mess there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens in the second book and then the third book is basically the government one and we will talk about that later in Cole Sprouse's oscar-winning movie moonshot one of the main dilemmas that we have between our main girl and her boyfriend who is already on Mars is that he is a brilliant scientist using algae and [ __ ] to terraform Mars and she is a brilliant scientist who wants to use algae and [ __ ] to fix Earth because Earth is their only spaceship which is categorically not true right because if we have the ability to terraform another planet and make it so that it can safely sustain life then like what do we need Earth for we live on this beautiful planet we need to take all Heavy industry all polluting industry and move it into space it feels like in fiction and literature we always end up in this dichotomy this sort of Earth versus Mars whether it's aliens and humans or the environment versus the humans or do we terraform another planet and leave this other one to rot right we always seem to run this risk of Dipping out into the rest of the universe and turning Earth into a trash dump or you know dipping out into the rest of the universe and like turning some other rock into a trash dump but like who cares really who cares and more importantly why American philosopher and conservationist Aldo Leopold was born in 1888 and died in 1948 about a year or so after his death in 1949 his son Luna edited and completed his father's life's work and he published it entitled a sand County Almanac and sketches here and there it is a collection of essays and descriptive Works describing his hometown area of sock Sauk County Wisconsin including an essay called the land ethic Leopold defines ethic in general as having its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of cooperation sometimes people don't kill each other ethical systems can integrate social organization into the individual like democracy or integrate the individual into society like the Golden Rule and one of the things that Leopold was concerned with particularly was the lack of consideration for the environment and the land in our more common ethical systems fact that it wasn't really being considered at all so he coined the term land ethic as a theoretical framework for how humans interact with the land and what I'm told is essentially a martial arts remake of Total Recall the 1998 movie Mars is set in a mining Colony on Mars and a main guy is like kicking butt and taking names and trying to find out how his dead brother ended up his dead brother and not his alive brother anymore so in Mars movies there's a lot of like mining gets people killed and there are consequences plot lines and this one specifically is like a very direct corporations are a problem critique right everything is run by the Company the company has these little like foot soldiers who keep everything in order and they are very very dedicated to the company right after all of our employees as one big family you know loyal to the company the company is God orders your family impressed by any of it they are like toaster level brainwashed don't forget about the toaster movie [Music] and what we find out is that the mineral that they are mining the Silex is actually killing people right it is killing people in the colony and I'm 78 sure that that is why the brother was killed and the company just like doesn't care the essence of product ivity is a dedication commitment to a healthy bottom of unitary on top and that and that will keep us here in the red Mars Trilogy while they tried to like put regulations in place to Bar companies from mining on Mars while they're trying to terraform it obviously companies do it anyway because what what anyway they do it anyway and that combined with the fact that they are rapidly heating the planet so as to speed up the terraforming is making the planet very unstable there are like landslides the the waters are dangerous there is Mass waste there is you know stockpiled metals that are supposed to be entering the market and Kickstart this amazing new economy but now the land is too dangerous for anyone to even travel or trade or settle on to like do [ __ ] it's a whole it's a whole mess it's a whole mess and it's something that Aldo Leopold would call a penalty of violence right the Silex in Mars making the people sick the land becoming uninhabitable these are penalties of violence they are consequences that come as a result of an economically based land ethic where everything is not centered around what is best for the environment or even the people living in the environment but rather what is best for the economic system that is in place which in these instances is of course capitalism the land ethics simply enlarges the boundaries of community to include soils Waters plants and animals or collectively the land a land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror of the Land Community to plain member and citizen of it it implies respect for its fellow members and also respect for the community as such basically a a land ethic capital L capital E land ethic we have to completely shift our ethical system as humans and extend the boundaries of what we consider Community to include the land itself to include things like Soil and Water and plants which is a pretty tall order considering that we can barely get community to include things like people the company is fully aware of what is going on in Mars they absolutely know that their mining activity is killing people and they do not care because their employee employees just like the land are just another commodity and they value the safety of their employees and the land that they are on as less than the commodity that they are producing which is the Silex mineral those people employees who are selling their labor time they are expendable they are replaceable they from the capitalist ruling class perspective are not part of the community and thus do not need to be accounted for and protected at the expense of profit Silex once refined is the most efficient natural fuel found anywhere in the system because the individual's labor time is valued at less than the commodity that they are producing it is literally fine that they die it is in the ethic and the ideology of the ruling class so it is what goes their lives are just not as valuable on Mars they literally kill babies on Mars by the way because they can't work and that is just a direct result of the evolution of capitalism and the shift in idea ideology away from what John tort Mill called a theory of dependence where the poor labored worker was seen as sort of childlike and needing to be protected and governed and not allowed to think for themselves or vote into this sort of jungle ethic this like social Darwinism that is what H.G Wells was critiquing in War of the Worlds and he chooses the biosphere the air itself as the Saving Grace to put everyone on the same level where we are all slaves to the environment and it is not something that we can control you know until we can so as we move into late stage capitalism and it's disastrous effects on Earth and self-awareness combined with our knowledge of Mars and space travels we start to get some of the best Mars related sci-fi ever from the the 90s onward because now Planet fights back and this can look like a lot of things right you know Martian land oh we don't have a long time doll face just give us the Highlight the gist and how with their new home treat them if it hasn't been active in two million years we have nothing to worry about the small colonies don't have domes right the worst of the storm is over mny right now latest satellite Telemetry shows the eye of the storm hitting the MLA Dome oh [ __ ] oh she could install the EMF emitter and that will buy them enough time to catch up with Zeus now what you already ruined one planet don't miss this one up too the red Marsh Trilogy and Martian land it is this sort of standard flooding and sandstorms earthquakes damage that are the results of human activity illnesses caused by mining things that happen on Earth as a result of human greed as well but like on Mars some of them though some of them are way more fun what a perfect creation in Ghosts of Mars we have another mining plot where they awaken an evil ancient Martian ghost Army of spirits that invade everybody and then they have to fight the monsters that are also their friends and they're humans that have been turned into these Martian Ghost spirit things and they decide ultimately that they have to blow up the minds to kill the spirits and it doesn't work obviously there's also a ancient Martian Spirit ghost thing being awoken in the 2001 movie Mission to Mars there is a violent dust monster ghost lady on Mars who basically tells the humans to get the [ __ ] off my sand only to later take them on like an Interstellar road trip because it's actually ancient humans that were on Mars and then the the biology awoke the the spirit it's a bit like Moana but with ghosts Martian ghosts [Music] I don't know it doesn't matter I don't know I'm pretty sure Doom also has like an oh no we accidentally woke up ancient martians by [ __ ] with Mars kind of plot line those are very fun I love I love a good like National Treasure Indiana Jones ghost me baby I love ghosts anytime we can bring a ghost into things I think that's great I think that if you can't add a ghost into your story that you don't have a good enough story I'm not saying you have to put a ghost in I'm just saying if you can't find a way if you can't see a point where you're like that could be a ghost then maybe you need to be more creative in your writing it's like a like the Bechtel test but for ancient ghosts can you imagine succession with ghosts can you tell me you don't want to see Greg during an exorcism in the Doctor Who episode the Waters of Mars the Waters of Mars come alive and the only way that they are able to combat the humans who have encroached on their place is to be like all evil and and watery I love Doctor Who but I don't fully know the plot of that species 2 has the first humans on Mars get infected by like an evil goo and the movie Red Planet also has like crazy iced storms and evil insects which Speaking of speaking of evil insects uh terraformers I don't I don't have much to say about terraformers except that you should watch it because if we're looking for metaphors of Leopold's penalties of violence in Mars media [Music] there you go so most of these things work as metaphors for penalties of violence if we're looking at Mars media throughout oleopold's land ethic lens but not all of these penalties of violence are direct results of exclusively economically based land interactions right wanting to save Humanity even if the reason that we need to save humanity is because we ruined Earth it still still seems like a pretty good idea to be you know one of the more recently made movies that I watched for this video was called stowaway where the first manned mission to Mars essentially turns into one big trolley problem when this guy not unlike the baby in the toaster movie we haven't forgotten about the toaster movie accidentally stows away okay on the ship to Mars and they don't have enough oxygen for four people which is a problem because there are now four people on board and Mission Control is like you should probably kill the stowaway and they're like okay but then the girl from Twilight is like can we should probably not do that and then the other people are like oh well now I look shitty for being willing to throw the other guy out the airlock and so the captain is like hey didn't you have to bring like a [ __ ] ton of algae with us so that when we get to Mars we can see if the algae will make oxygen and terraform it and he's like yeah I've got all this [ __ ] algae for when we go and spend two years on Mars with the algae and she's like could you use that algae to fix the oxygen carbon dioxide problem we're having now and he's like I could but then what am I gonna do on Mars for two years and they have to have this debate they have to be like is it worth it to to sacrifice this this algae in this two years of science work that we're gonna do so that you know all four of us can at least get to Mars alive ultimately they decide to sacrifice the algae they decide that the plant is the one to go it is the weakest link and that's probably the right choice you know like I can't speak for auto Leopold because the last time I talked to him was 1925 and this movie didn't come out until like 2018 so I don't know his specific opinion on this but based on the time that we spend together I do think that he would agree with me because out of Leopold is not and was never advocating for a complete abandonment of self-preservation and human existence he is advocating for an expanse of what we call Community an expanse of our awareness an ecological Consciousness terraforming another planet would provide valuable lessons for the intelligent management of Earth's biosphere environmentalists have for some time maintained that the acquisition of this kind of knowledge is a moral duty if there is no life already present on Mars and we don't do everything we can to help the people who are living on Earth is that morally wrong is that permissible is it right is it fair of us to say that we [ __ ] our planet so therefore we don't deserve the opportunity to make a new one after all the dinosaurs didn't get wiped out because of fast fashion the Ice Age wasn't triggered because Taylor Swift flew a private jet whether we like it or not the Sun is going to explode one day we might not be here for it but someone else might be and if we have the technology to terraform another planet or to begin the process of terraforming another planet and create an alternate safe place to go in the event that the planet we are on now is no longer safe are we not obligated to try and do that in favor of leaving a cold Rock alone because we made some bad choices here or does the rock itself have an intrinsic value does it have an a natural value and a right to exist on its own as a cold dead Rock if our trajectory is to wipe ourselves out or to be you know hit with a solar flare or a meteor or something like that are we morally obligated to accept that or are we morally obligated to do everything that we can to survive and that is kind of the debate that happens in the red Mars Trilogy you have the red Mars people who are like we should leave Mars red leave it as it is because that's how it was meant to be and we shouldn't be messing with it and you have the green Mars people who are like we should turn Mars green like Earth and they both kind of have a lot of reasons for for this towards the end of red Mars the first one there is an incident where there are eight passengers who are trying to escape a flood that is caused both by the green terraforming efforts and also the Reds having sabotaged the space elevator because there's a space elevator and it's very cool while one of the characters who is an activist a red Mars activist is distracted by the beauty of the planet she gets the Rover there on stuck on a rock and when another character goes out to try and free it he dies in the effort both World Views are inadequate ethical paradigms the flood that drowns Frank is a direct result of the capitalist efforts to terraform the planet as quickly as possible overall but on a more like literal moment-to-moment basis he dies because she gets distracted by a rock developing an understanding of this complexity developing an ecological Consciousness involves acknowledging that many human alterations of ecological systems result in violent releases of the land's energy that destabilize the environment making it sick but Leopold also holds that it requires some level of developing a scientific understanding of the land and of acknowledging our history with it in order to gain this ecological Consciousness we can't just leave it alone we have learned a lot from space and we are in need of resources here not going to Mars is not going to reverse deforestation but at the same time if Mars had trees what do you think we would do with them we might not be terraforming Mars today but we will get there probably sooner than we think and we do need to hopefully bring with us an ecological Consciousness that doesn't see Community as just people and purchases Dr Eric see Otto writes that we need to see Community as a complex Ecology of ideas of people and of places certainly ecotopia Utopia is such an ever-evolving ecological State the big consensus of the red Mars Trilogy is not don't go to Mars that is probably the last thing that Kim Stanley Robinson was thinking he loves space everybody loves space space is cool point of something like the red Mars Trilogy and any of these films or or cautionary tales is to work through our fears and concerns over how we humans treat not only the planet that we are on but other planets that we may enter so that hopefully we can do a better job next time right the thing about sci-fi though is that someone comes out with a story right that is like wow wouldn't it be awful if and then 20 years later some [ __ ] in Silicon Valley makes it [Music] part six we can and we must you know how they say if you can't beat them join them Elon Musk was like yeah no I'm pretty sure I can beat him American historian and journalist Jill lapore coined the phrase muskism as a descriptor for a specific brand of capitalism that found its roots in the later 90s in Silicon Valley what she describes as a sort of extreme extravagant form of capitalism really extraterrestrial capitalism which is a great phrase one where stock prices are driven less by earnings than by fantasies from science fiction it really is engaged with selling the public on the idea of futurism as a way to impose economic conditions that come from of the very deep past writes in an article for the New York Times that tech companies started talking about their mission and their mission was always magnificently inflated transforming the future of work connecting all of humanity making the world a better place saving the entire planet muskism is a capitalism in which companies worry very publicly and quite free versatile about all manner of world-ending disasters about the all too real catastrophe of climate change but more often about the mysterious existential risks including the extinction of humanity from which only the Techno billionaires can save us they offer up these metaverses and these Martian colonies that on one hand feel like they might actually be able to save our skins but on the other hand seem to kind of completely miss the crucial fact that these nightmare scenarios that they want to save us from are how do you say their fault their fault their fault absolutely their fault the fault of private property and people hoarding wealth and people stamping their stupid [ __ ] names over everything and charging people to breathe like these books and these stories like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the culture Neuromancer snow crash Thomas am dishes 334 in Camp concentration these are critiques of capitalism in a very cool and interesting vibey way sure but critiques of capitalism nonetheless and these billionaires these capitalists these exploitative monstrous douchey people are hiding behind this cool nerdy sci-fi futurism smoke screen because it allows them to be impartial and and apolitical in a way and it makes you wonder how much of it is genuine and how much of it is just like spaced nerd facade right how much of it is just that hegemonic process that we talked about when we talked about groundshi that process by which the ruling class convinces the subordinate lower class that they have their best interest in mind they have the national popular will they are what is best for them in order to gain their consent to be led that's the real bipartisanship right is being a billionaire who smokes weed but before we can worry about what Elon Musk will do on Mars first we need to get there to Mars is easy and it's so easy why hasn't anybody else gone there huh nobody ever asked me to get them there NASA's shuttle program rocket launches are so expensive they take massive amounts of energy and money and material just to get to space and they are extremely extremely wasteful because you have to throw everything away as soon as you're done for an Expendable rocket the propellant cost is less than one percent of the total cost of the flight compared to an airline where it's usually 30 to 50 percent so that means that a lot of time and money is being spent paying people to figure out how to minimize the cost of these launches so the rocket that launches the very fancy expensive satellite must be very very good so it does not drop the very expensive fancy satellite or whatever into the ocean but more expensive activities get done less frequently than expensive ones do not to mention that NASA is already down one shuttle as of 1986 and another in 2003 and less frequent launches means less frequent scientific data and that was not even the most valuable commodity that NASA was providing in the first place that was national pride which considering that NASA has to start launching astronauts to the ISS with Russia well remember when I said that to be good at going to space you had to be good at capitalism well let's just say that having a centralized market for literally the most expensive thing you could possibly be doing is not being very good at capitalism because one of the vulnerabilities of a centralized Market is a lack of competition that leads to a lack of investment and thus a lack of innovation obviously there is not no incentive to innovate and to do science well we got to the Moon after all and there are obviously people in it for the science usually you know the scientists but you know they don't exactly have endless funding to do the science okay but these billionaires right these billionaires they can spend money on whatever they want all that they have to worry about is getting what they want something that they historically are very good at so the toaster movie comes out in 1998 just as Elon Musk is passing the threshold into multi-millionaire dumb and then four years later in 2002 he founds SpaceX do with that information what you will I'm not saying that he founded SpaceX because the Brave Little Toaster went to Mars don't put words in my mouth however this movie comes out the.com bubble bursts and Elon Musk becomes a man on a mission or rather a man wanting a mission and nothing says American space travel like growing political tensions with Russia right so after a failed negotiation with Russia for something to do with like rockets right military Rockets or something like that I don't know Elon Musk basically decides that he should probably just build rockets and [ __ ] on his own and then in 2004 George Bush is like okay we have determined that we will go back to the moon so NASA get it together because you are making us look bad and NASA was probably like we would need more money for that and George Bush was like no I'm assuming so in 2005 this guy basically puts together a literal competition where NASA is like look this is what we need let us know when you put it together and so a bunch of companies just start trying to make the best space [ __ ] and compete for a contract with NASA because the United States government is built on capitalism the United States is built on capitalism so everybody knew they were like we need to open this Market or else nobody is going to be willing to build us Rockets because we can't pay them enough so oddly enough it was like the US government knew that people wouldn't build them Rockets if they weren't paying them adequately that's a weird sad sad way to look at it but the commercial orbital transportation services cots kind of program was where they gave contracts to private companies that were making equipment that NASA agreed was up to Snuff and NASA could use it so NASA didn't have to develop the equipment on their own and these companies got to compete and innovate and everybody got to make a lot of money and it was fine and this was for like the space travel equivalent of like a wicker basket for your bicycle but the real Holy Grail here is and always was reusability particularly a reusable rocket everyone knew that that was what was needed no one had the resources or the ability to put it together so while they are working together with NASA on little projects the real competition is going on outside of NASA contracts because the real billionaire Space Race was not who could get up there first it was who could get back down because NASA can't afford to just keep testing Rockets right their Rockets are expendable they they can't even afford to actually send them up for actual reasons let alone just start sending Rockets up for funsies to see if they can get them to come back down but you know who can Elon Musk rapid unscheduled disassembly Elon Musk can at is totally willing to blow zillions of dollars to build this rocket and you know of course I still love you we have a falcon in 2015 SpaceX successfully touched down the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on its tail no one had ever sent an orbital class rocket into space and landed it back on its booster before this is like shooting a spitball out of your straw chucking the straw into outer space and then getting it to land back down on top of the pin this is a big deal and it is very very cool okay by May of 2021 one of its boosters had been flown 10 times they also started to be able to recover their payload fairings which are like the nose cone things at the top and that saves them six million dollars per reuse okay as of like 2021 the only thing that SpaceX couldn't reuse was the upper stage bit that like delivers the payload into orbit but even now and this article was written in 22 21 but even now they're testing a fully reusable transport system that I think they're calling super heavy Starship or something like that that is supposed to be used by NASA to return astronauts to the Moon in 2021. I don't think they did that but we're gonna chalk it up to covid this is very cool okay this is very cool I am not saying that it's not cool because it is it is super [ __ ] sick and watching them succeed in this launch and watching it touch back down and watching Everybody lose their minds is awesome it is a technological feat and it is probably a net good for Humanity I am not here to yuck your yums about space travel I am not even here to yuck elon's yums about going to Mars I am however interested in pointing out the fact that the leadership seat on the big SpaceX inspiration for a three-day trip into space where they filled these four seats with people who they thought represented values that they thought were important for Humanity and the leadership seat was filled by a billionaire who privately funded the launch look it might all be fun and games now teamwork NASA private space but the only thing that billionaires hate more than poor people is the government specifically government regulation so they're kind of in the perfect place to make themselves indispensable to government-funded space exploration which means that they get to be on the ground floor of decisions that are being made about who can do what in space so part seven the implication of the government being indebted to private individuals in the space race in 2015 Martin shkreli becomes the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and he raises the price of the life-saving drug diaphragm by five thousand percent overnight it goes from like 13 to something like 750 a pill why does he do this because he can because there is nothing in the legal system that prevents him from doing so he did not need this medication and if he did he could afford to pay for it at whatever price necessary so when we're thinking about hegemony class dominance and relationships of subordination who is the ruling class and what are they doing with the power that they have we need to think Beyond just the economic impact and the economic aspects we need to be worried about the political and moral and ideological elements because when we are not we end up with people whose brain is wired to maximize their own personal Ben benefit deciding the prices of medication that they don't take and facilitating Interstellar travel in the 1995 movie Special Report Journey tomorrow so we see a fictionalized live news report and feed from the first ever landing on Mars it is being simultaneously interrupted by an environmentalist activist group who is accusing the whole thing of being a political distraction from the problems on Earth and they are using this massive audience of this first Mars Landing for a peaceful demonstration meanwhile the crew starts experiencing problem after problem after problem and everyone assumes that it is this environmentalist activist group that is to blame this later uncovered that the whole mission has been sabotaged by the corporation who are losing out on government contracts and thus their only solution was to take down the whole government by ensuring that this launch this taxpayer-funded launch fails miserably and then they can come in and save the government the IRC which is the big company in this film they are not indebted to any specific government party or system out of loyalty or political belief they are only looking to secure their own place in power and continue being able to influence policy to allow them to make more money whatever Elon Musk says publicly whatever Jeff Bezos says publicly as far as political support they have both been giving money to the Republican and Democratic parties almost equally since the early 2000s that is public information on opensource.org you can look it up capitalism doesn't care about politics any more than it cares about the environment Beyond property law and sucking the Earth for every natural resource that it has the only thing that capitalism and capitalists care about is profit so why style it is an incredible technological and Engineering scientific math aeronautic accomplishment feat for the ages that SpaceX is able to land a rocket back on its booster that is not why Elon Musk wanted a reusable rocket that is not why NASA wanted a reusable rocket that is not why any of those guys wanted a reusable rocket they wanted it because it would make launches cheaper but cheap launches are still expensive if there is nothing to do in space when you get there that can generate a profit whistle writes for example cheaper and more frequent rocket launches might facilitate short-term tourism along with industrial and scientific experimentation on sub-orbital and orbiting spacecraft if these activities become routine demand might rise for commercial habitats to support longer flights in turn these habitats could generate demand for resources in space increasing opportunities for workers and residents if you want to charge rich people for leisure time on the moon somebody is going to have to fold their towels right no matter how many black gay cancer survivors these [ __ ] send up to space for three days it will not change the fact that that is not why they are there it will not change the fact that that is Recreation for them that is getting a beer with Captain Spock it is how they get celebrities to hang out with them they are not going to space for great human achievement they are going to mine asteroids don't believe me here is a quote from the executive order signed by President Donald Trump in 2020 in support of development of space resources Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration recovery and use of resources in outer space consistent with applicable law outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity and the United States does not view it as Global Commons accordingly it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space consistent with applicable law here is a NASA approved lesson plan for elementary schoolers in 2006 that teaches them how to mine the moon or this benefits of mining the moon brochure but hey these guys aren't going to let us use their fancy technology to go to space if there's not money to be made there if Earth is in desperate need of resources and someone finds them on a mysterious planet or asteroid do you think do you think that they will just bring them back to save planet Earth for free be realistic do you really think that if we find infinite energy on some other planet hypothetically do you think that they will bring that back to Earth and be like here be honest right be honest with yourself because if you answered yes then you are wrong you're wrong I'm sorry but if you think for a minute that any of these people the man who literally thanked his underpaid and exploited employees for paying for his 45-minute trip into orbit if you think that they will find a precious resource on another planet and do anything other than auction it off to the highest bidder then you are fooling yourself because we already have precious resources they're called vaccines and medicines and half of the world doesn't have them because they can't pay the price tag half of these billionaires have the power to end suffering and illnesses and hunger in other countries and the United States in a genuinely meaningful and impactful way without even noticing the change in their bank statements and they just don't do it and I don't want to hear it's in shares it's in profits it's in it's not all liquid cash there's all these these implications I don't I don't want to hear anything about the corporate nature of it because these are individual people in boardrooms across the world individual people with families and children and allergies they are normal people They are normal people who make the choice every single day to continue to pursue profit at the expense of their employees and the rest of the world that is what I mean when I say that no one needs to be a billionaire being a billionaire is a selfish Choice what is concerning about a National Organization like NASA being indebted and reliant on the private sector for space travel is that they already have an insane amount of power in their position as the owners of the means of production the ruling class by simple means of resources and privilege already has an advantage at law that is not news right rich people don't go to jail they do fancy tax gymnastics they start weird secret companies they find ways to work in above and around the law whenever they need to and if they can't find a way to do that then they just change it they run for president they financially support individuals in office who are then incentivized to do whatever it is they want they already do this so if commercial interest in asteroids conflicts with the Public's interest in them for scientific exploration or space settlement for example because mining destroys material of interest to scientists while extracting material that is useful for settlers how are such conflicts to be sorted out in a blog post for Oxford press about Trump's executive order approving Moon mining in 2020. space philosopher Schwartz writes free market principles have an incredibly poor track record on earth when it comes to ensuring the long-term sustainable and genuinely life enriched extraction and use of Natural Resources we should be skeptical not hopeful that the same principles will suddenly have better consequences when it comes to space resources a future where space resources genuinely benefit Humanity which to me means benefiting its least fortunate members and not just the wealthy few who will operate space mining firms is a choice not an inevitability for the time being it seems though the United States has chosen a path that is not likely to realize this future if they say that they want to do something in space there is no incentive for most of the countries that these businesses operate under to stop them because they can't afford to go to space without them what do we do then pass a law to stop them from going these are Rockets not SUVs they'll probably just go anyway or find a country like Luxembourg that will happily let them go and what are we going to do then shoot down their Rockets with civilians in them they'll get there absolutely probably faster than we ever could without them and they will bring with them the same beady-eyed profit-seeking capitalist ideology that pushed them to leave in the first place in toast on Mars a toast to a toaster strudel extravaganza the Wonder Lux appliances before they went to Mars were living on Earth and they found out that they were being deliberately manufactured to break so that customers would replace them land obsolescence and they kind of didn't have a choice but to roll with it because the socioeconomic system that they existed in required that they take any price for their services that price being nothing but you know they can't just like [ __ ] off to Mars yet when the existing productive forces meaning the technology to make the things and the relations of production meaning that the people who own it and the people who sell their labor to it when all of that's in balance and are growing equally they can stimulate each other right and everyone can kind of develop happily and naturally right but since the relations of production develop more slowly and conservatively compared to the existing forces things start to get way out of balance there's overproduction we start to get layoffs recessions disruption of the status quo and the attitudes and the actions of the socioeconomic classes the proletariat and the bourgeoisie start to reflect that disruption according to Marx this consciousness of exploitation and the unrest is what begins this revolutionary period which ends either in the victory of a new socioeconomic formation or in the fall of a given civilization when you play the game of thrones you win or you die now I don't I don't know what the appliances were doing before they dipped out to Mars I don't know if they like unionized or tried to overthrow capitalism in a violent revolution of the proletariat we could uh probably go on for like six and a half years about what qualifies as a Marxist Revolution but we won't because they are animated appliances who end up on Mars it's not gonna be a perfect allegory but for simplicity's sake let's imagine that they started going at it like the Newsboys with this wonderlux dude and they uh lost so they fail and they [ __ ] off to Mars let's call that the fall of a given civilization right and everything continues on as normal until our toasters Masters baby gets beamed up to Mars meanwhile the wonderlux appliances get to Mars so from that perspective they kind of win right like the world is their oyster and yet they immediately dive headfirst into fascism immediately fall back into a system of dominance and subordination the biggest meanest strongest person takes charge of the means of production the political system and the ideas and beliefs and who was the their leader here he comes now [Music] how did this happen why did this happen probably because it's all that they've ever known even Marx acknowledges that the Revolutionary takeover of the proletaria class is going to be different than any other revolutionary takeover by any other social classes or groups because whereas the previous revolutionary classes once they have acquired power have sought to protect the position that they have acquired by subjecting Society at large to their conditions of appropriation the proletariat cannot come to a position of domination except by abolishing its own previous mode of production and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation capitalism existed in the United States before Reagan that was a move from one hegemony to another one dominant class to another dominant class that wasn't a fundamental change whereas in this Marxist Revolution when the proletariat the whole of the working subordinate class overthrows the bourgeoisie a full overhaul of the system rather than just becoming the bourgeoisie right rather than me just putting musk to work cleaning my house we want to change the whole system so that nobody gets exploited again the supreme leader fridge was not a proletariat he was a hearing aid from a German War weapon manufacturer who was hopped up on war aggression and instead of abolishing the modes of production as they knew them prior he just sort of hops in the fridge and takes ownership of them himself while convincing every other Appliance to continue to work to improve themselves and turn themselves into war toasters because they are exceptional and special and deserve to rule the world because he's a fascist you aren't going to listen to him are you why he's not even a Wonder look now earlier I called the third book in the red Mars Trilogy the government one and I meant it blue Mars is literally just a post Revolution Martian humans try to figure out what the [ __ ] they're gonna do and how on God's red planet are we gonna come up with a system that is not capitalism and they're really bad at it at first it is really really hard people keep being like I have an idea and someone else is like nope that's capitalism because capitalism is easy capitalism is very very easy spend as little money as possible trying to make as much money as possible that's it so the beauty of the red Mars Trilogy particularly blue Mars is that it's not utopian by any stretch of the word in fact it sounds very stressful it sounds like a lot of work because you have to come up with something totally new you have no blueprint for in separating his own position from that of utopian socialism marks refuse is to offer a comprehensive plan for the Society of the future the social order as the dialectical Transcendence of capitalism will be organized according to principles which can only be vaguely glimpsed by those who live in the present form of society because we're all a little brainwashed right we're all a little wrapped up in this idea that things have to be a certain way or another way it has to be either capitalism or communism it has to be either Earth or Mars that has to be all planet or all space the characters in the red Mars Trilogy like the wonderlux appliances and later the toaster and gang spend years living under capitalist hegemony believing in that system and the ideas infused by that ruling class just like out of Leopold suggested that we need to completely shift our concepts of things like Community value Justice we need to do away with this either or mentality completely in blue Mars they say set up this huge Congress group thing where representatives of literally every single group that you could possibly think of gets to come and participate they all make decisions about literally everything all together all the time they completely reimagine how societies function as opposed to how societies are run they spread out power amongst as many groups and people as possible so instead of people voting for people who vote on policies or voting for presidents who appoint judges and pushing all of the power up to the top anyone is allowed to have a say in this caucus I'm pretty sure that you only need to have like one person in your group to be a represented at the big caucus like the world becomes something that they all Steward together the environment the planet Mars is taken into account it is given its own Advocates who have just as much power as everyone else the economic model that they end up with in blue Mars definitely leans socialist with workers owning the means of Productions and hiring Capital rather than the other way around stewardship becomes everyone's responsibility and environmental courts are put into place to review and veto all laws passed by the Congress in regards to their effect on the environment this sounds exhausting and it sounds stressful because living on a planet with 8 billion other people is gonna be exhausting and stressful power is a dangerous thing it allows for the domination of individuals and social groups over others and a consolidation of wealth in a capitalist Society is a consolidation of power what happens when these private companies go and make themselves ourselves invaluable to governments in any way space travel or otherwise is that they become the governments they become the holders of all the power and swapping out one supreme leader for another is not the solution it is not equality it is not egalitarianism it is neoliberal natural order hegemonic conspiracy brainwashing of subordination [ __ ] instead of trying to restructure the society that the wonderlux appliances have fallen into and trying to help them create a better world for everyone involved the toaster just indoctrinates them into accepting their status as slaves to humanity as the natural order of things and yet and yet it is only when that stupid human baby who has been doing [ __ ] off for his own cause up until this point touches the big ass fridge that is the moment when change really happens that is what really changes the fridge's mind maybe fascism is bad then they find out that the fridge is just the hearing aids brother who got brainwashed by a Nazi war doctor into hating Humanity only after this [ __ ] baby touches his fridge and the toaster sings the song about how she loves being a slave does he decide not to blow up the Earth poor tinselina tinselina is the Christmas angel that someone snuck onto one of the Martian Rover satellites things and she gets painted as this oh dumb blonde nagging wife who breaks up with her boyfriend the Rover so that she can leave with the other appliances all the way back to Earth while the rest of the Martian appliances prepare for a lifetime of servitude but then but then then oh no they only have enough popcorn for one more trip so they better go quickly but whoops they forgot to turn the death ray off so the toaster and the hearing aid even though they have already technically solved all of the problems by talking now have to have a big action sequence where they sacrifice themselves in order to turn it off and save Humanity because we must preserve the current political structure and not at all unlike that scene in The Martian her friends decide that they're gonna be brave and try and come back and rescue her which requires that vanity obsessed tinselina sacrifice her organic hair in order for them to float back down to earth just in time to celebrate Christmas this is a Christmas movie by the way and I just I just can't explain to you how frustrating it is because of the the legacy of Mars related fiction in that I have consumed in the last six months well not always good or even comprehensive has always at the very least attempted to ask some sort of question about the world and our place in it and while that is not a requirement for all media for the follow-up to a movie based on a book by Thomas M dish children's book or not Thomas M dish the author of 334 and Camp concentration I expect more because here's what I didn't tell you I didn't tell you that the Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars is not just the sequel to the movie The Brave Little Toaster which is based on the children's Novella The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas M dish The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars is in fact based on The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars the literary sequel to The Brave Little Toaster also by Thomas M dish and I didn't tell you because I couldn't find a copy of it so I wasn't gonna talk about it I was gonna end the video here with some profound point about how as we humans begin to expand our presence in the universe as we Trek forth into universes far and wide how it is important that we are conscious of our own history of exploitation of the environment and of each other that we acknowledge where power lies and remember the consequences of its abuse I was going to talk about how this newly except accessible opportunity to expand our physical Horizons presents us also with an opportunity to expand our mental emotional and spiritual Horizons our intellectual Horizons how we can start thinking of new different better ways to live on our planet and off I was going to talk about radical hope and how we we do have the opportunity to be better and to do things right and if we can't decide what's right we have the opportunity to at least try and then I was going to talk about the sources for this video and how this one and all of my other bibliographies are available on my newly formed patreon totally free you do not have to be a patron to access the bibliographies or the sources ever they will always be completely available for free you are more than welcome to join my patreon perks are very limited now because I still have a full-time job but I'm open to suggest questions I don't know what you would want me to do on there but I'm happy to do it you also don't have to I don't care do what you want with your money I was gonna do all of that and then I was going to thank you for supporting me and for being so cool because the last two videos I had published with less than 100 subscribers and now there are more than that and I feel very chuffed I am very grateful and I was gonna do all of that that was all gonna go right here and then I found a copy of the 1988 children's Novella The Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars by Thomas M dish and now I have to write another section this film is neoliberal capitalist propaganda before you tell me that I can't just call something propaganda because I don't agree with the ideology presented wanna know what happens in the book [Music] what a friend is nowhere to be seen now she walks through her song and dream to the shade with the clearest View and she's hooked to the Silver Screen the films just shut me bore before she's lived it ten times more she could spit in the eyes of fools as they ask her to focus on sailors fighting in the Dancehall oh man look at those cavemen goals [Music] take a look at the Lord man speeding up the wrong guy oh man wonder if they'll ever know [Music] he's in the best-selling show foreign [Music]

Channel: biz

Views: 58,583

Keywords: Biz barclay, Bop the poppop, Critical theory international relations, Elon musk, Gramsci hegemony, Mars needs musk, Red mars kim stanley robinson, Science fiction, Sociology, Terraforming mars, The brave little toaster, The brave little toaster goes to mars, capitalism, communism, elon musk news, elon musk twitter, ideology, karl marx, mars, marxism, marxism explained, science fiction books, science news, spacex, spacex starship, video essay, what is marxism

Id: uYKhROEASn0

Length: 109min 27sec (6567 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023