How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

I don't know where you're getting this idea. There are coherent and accurate ways to measure how liberalized an economy is.

> standard of living measurements tend to be optimized for particular economic structures

They are optimized for measuring human welfare, through measures like access to and quality of food, healthcare, education, life expectancy, incidence of disease, cost of goods and services, infrastructure, etc. That they empirically end up favoring economic liberalism speaks to the effectiveness of the latter.

> not comparable across significantly different economic systems without problems

How so? If the very same country historically fares better under periods of economic liberalism, and worse under periods of economic authoritarianism, how is that not a valid data point for the effectiveness of economic liberalism versus authoritarianism?

Why do you think it's false? I can't fathom why you think Denmark is not a market economy. Have you ever been there? How do you think the Danish economy functions?

> The housing market lives and dies by fanniemae/freddiemac federal subsidies, mortgage insurance, and lending policies.

Which contributed to the subprime mortgage bubble and subsequent financial crisis.

> The healthcare market--given that many ailments and infirmities are ones of old age--is primarily driven by medicare and would go into freefall without it.

What makes you think healthcare would go into "freefall" without Medicare? Medicare is primarily funded by payroll taxes and premiums paid by enrollees. Where did you think this money came from? Thin air?

> Many of the higher branches of engineering are, directly or indirectly, dependents of the military industrial complex.

Ok...

> The educational complex would shrivel and die without federal loan programs and heavy state subsidies.

The U.S. spends a fortune per student relative to other OECD countries, yet has mediocre outcomes. I have no idea why you think education would "shrivel and die" without this wasteful spending, inefficiency, and corruption.

Between 1970 and 2012, the full amount spent by all levels of government on the K–12 education of an individual public school student graduating in any given year, adjusted for inflation, increased by 185%. The average funding by state governments increased by 120% per student. However, scores in mathematics, science and language arts over that same period remained almost unchanged. Multi-year periods in which a state's funding per student declined substantially also appear to have had little effect.

> As for Argentina, ask someone who went through the 2001 crisis what they think.

Can you point to the relevant liberalization policies which you think made the situation worse?

Example?

"Nominally"? What planet do you live on?

The definition of a market economy, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is an economic system in which decisions regarding resource allocation (including investment, production, and distribution) are determined by price signals created by supply and demand. In particular, the factors of production (land, labour, and capital) are guided by production markets, not government diktat. In other words, this is the bulk (greater part, vast majority) of all economic activity.

> Typical medicare recipient blows through his entire lifetime contribution in two years.

If this is true (I don't have a source for this claim), where do you think this money is coming from?

> It is propped up through progressive taxation and gobs of public debt.

Precisely... debt and taxes. Mostly taxes.

> Medicare spending for 2017 was around $700B[0]. US healthcare spending for 2017 was $3.5T[1]. That's roughly 20% of the market. It is totally a socialist program.

You seem to be confused about what socialism is. An economy with a social safety net is not the same as a socialist economy. The fact that Medicare comprises 20% of healthcare spending doesn't make the United States a socialist economy. (This is not even addressing the question of whether it would be better to have a less authoritarian system.)

> As for post-secondary ed, when the whole thing is propped up through state and federal monies, what would happen to that market if it were limited to earned money, and cut off from other peoples' money?

What do you think would happen?

> This was Argentina's economic policy prior to the crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Menem#Economic_policy

You're dodging the question, so I'll repeat it: Can you point to the relevant liberalization policy which you think made the situation worse?

> Most of these economic theories and belief systems are just cover for raw power.

Quite the contrary. Economic policies have real-world consequences. There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that some economic policies are better than others. One would have to engage in some intense self-deception to believe that all economic policies are equally effective.