Early Access: Always a Bigger Fish

Ian, I REALLY, REALLY, like the preview for the new video for "Always a Bigger Fish." I realize that most conservatives are going to dismiss anything you have to say out of hand. However, this is the kind of video that I'd like to get their opinions on. Is there any chance of putting together a slightly edited version that doesn't outright say that conservatives are misinformed or delusional?

I had a lot more difficulty following the thought process of The Card Says Moops compared to your previous work. That could have been because the content was difficult to articulate. This piece does not have that issue.

Question. If conservatives are all about the capitalist hierarchy, then why are they anti-immigration? It makes sense for liberals to be pro-immigration because immigrants are people too and deserving of the same inalienable rights as all of us. It makes sense for fascists to be anti-immigration because "they" aren't "us" and don't deserve what "we" have. But if capitalism is about the rich benefiting at the expense of the poor, then wouldn't introducing a significant number of poor, desperate people to a country be a good thing for those at the top? Is this just one of those cases where fascist thought has infiltrated conservative thought, or is there a legit reason why conservatives would want to seal the borders?

9:56 there's a typo, the word "and" instead of the word "an"

Loved the video. I’d say my only note is that, around 15:08, you go straight from “conservatives are afraid of being pushed down the hierarchy” to “race plays a factor” without a good transition sentence between those points. The points you make are fine, but a better transition than “Also...” might make the essay flow better.

may have already caught this but at 1:34 the second line of text has two "then"s

"git gud" haha!

Thanks for another amazing video! You put into words all the things that I experience as frustrating feelings. In this one your friend must be a very nice conservative, because the conservatives I know live in the pyramid world simply because they want to feel better than. They can't imagine the equal linear world not because it doesn't seem real, but because of this deep seated need to just have someone beneath them in a hierarchy. So they allow that someone will be above them, like you say, but the ones I know do it because they are desperate to know they themselves are above others. It's an ego thing. A superiority complex. They detest equality not because they don't think it can exist but because they couldn't stand it if it did. I don't talk to my conservative friends either these days lol

I have to say, all the recent videos in this series, in the first two minutes I’m in a place of not understanding the concept, but by the end it all comes together for me. This seems rather obvious for an essay, but compared to a lot of video essays on YouTube, in which I grasp the main point of the video within the first thirty seconds, it’s incredibly refreshing.

Garbage men make pretty decent pay. Nothing great (median pay is about $16 per hour), but I wouldn't call it crap pay.

yeah i started to watch this Video and thought: this Explanation of conservatism makes a lot of sence and also it realy underlines the arguement that fascism is just revolutionary conservatism and then you went right into that direction. Good job

Great video! It's a really useful framework to think things through. It does feel really weird to talk about the conservative mindset and never talk about religious faith, though. I'm not sure there's room for it in this video, but I really hope you talk about that at some point in this series.

The sharks are just a bunch of minnows animating a shark-suit, right down to the flexible teeth. So, uh, death to hierarchies, I guess. Good video, though.

Great discussion of the conservative worldview. There's one, at least for me, frustrating part. Your "in the abstract" description of capitalism (of the free market variety we're generally familiar with) may be what conservatives believe capitalism to be, but it's juxtaposed with a description of democracy as a theoretical ideal. The whole "big fish get to eat little fish" may indeed be the way conservatives think the world should work, and perhaps those same people would tell you that that's the theory too, but they'd also tell you that the USSR in reality was how socialism is *supposed* to work in theory, and that's trash. I'm not gonna put on my PhD hat and give you an intro to welfare economics, general equilibrium, or capital markets, so instead I'll say I think this video would be stronger if you made it clear that you're describing capitalism as conservatives (and plenty of leftists, it seems) believe it to be.

This is great, like the rest of the series.

Fantastic video. You’re one of the best modern political writers I’ve found.

Just a drive by to say thanks again for this series. It's very genuinely my go-to teaching tool.

And at 17:18 the words said don't appear in the order with which they're said: "undemocratic, hierarchical..."

Having never played any of the Kingdom Hearts series, the "Mickey with his shirt off" metaphor kinda lost me. Other than that, this is fabulous. I guess I had been operating under the assumption that conservatives were unaware of the fact that unregulated capitalism leads to social inequality. But it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Typo at 10' "and underclass" should be "an underclass." Love your stuff!

We're all just gonna keep slipping Jordan Peterson jokes into things from now until the end, huh? Good