Welcome to Pinnacle TV, your source for video collaboration news. I'm Jamie Scato-Cutaya. With me today to talk about the complexities and challenges and next generation opportunities for business video use, we've got Mr. Dan Tonnell, he's the CTO of Pinnacle. Pinnacle, as you know, is a company hyper-focused on delivering best-in-class video collaboration solutions to its customers, as well as Mr. Jordan Owens, he's the Vice President of the Americas of Pexip. Pexip is an award-winning vendor of enterprise-grade communications infrastructure. Also, we should note, recently certified by Microsoft. Gentlemen, welcome to Pinnacle TV. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. And recently, it's been announced that Pinnacle has earned its gold partner status for both its service provider as well as resale partner businesses with Pexip. Could you describe, and Dan will start with you first here, the long-standing relationship between the two companies? Absolutely, and we're very proud of this accomplishment. We've actually been together with Pexip since 2013, so it's a five-year long-standing relationship where we work very closely at putting together solutions for our customers, both from a cloud perspective as well as an on-prem. And when we look to deploy the first note across our global network with Pexip, some of the key things that were very important from our perspective was certainly the business culture that Pexip brings to the party in terms of focusing on the user experience, the technology itself in terms of its interoperability and the evolution of that, and lastly the rapid development to respond to the market demands in terms of a next-generation platform. Yeah, absolutely. So in a similar fashion, you know, we really enjoyed our relationship that we've had with Pinnacle as they've evolved as an organization as well. One of the key things is, you know, we started this relationship from as a young company just kind of emerging and trying to bring some of the game-changing technology that Dan just referred to in his discussion. And then we also were looking for organizations that were willing to evolve as well, that wanted to grow and wanted to help change the game inside the industry. And we looked at those organizations, such as Pinnacle, who had a large global reach, who had a 24-7, 365 services operation that could not only just stand behind the technology that they were running behind the scenes, but also focus on the end user and making sure that the end user had connectivity, making sure that the end user had the support and services that they needed as well. So it really truly formed a nice marriage between the two organizations with us both focused on the exact same problems and solving them using our own expertise across the board. And how does the relationship impact the industry and your customer communities? Jordan, would you like to take this one first? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's somewhat, it always evolving, right? I mean, the impact to the user is one of those things that is this somewhat nebulous term that a lot of organizations use and a lot of companies use that doesn't necessarily truly mean anything when you translate it into day-to-day activity. However, in this case, I think it actually is truly accurate. And it's really about focusing on simplifying the joint experience, simplifying the meeting experience, simplifying the interaction with the technology. Both Pinnacle and Pexit truly believe that technology is nothing more than plumbing behind the scenes. It shouldn't be something that end users ever interact with, right? People don't want to buy technology anymore. They want to buy solutions to their problems. They want to interact better as a community. They want to make decisions faster. They want to reach more people with less time. They want to get on the road less. Whatever the actual driving reason behind the adoption of technology is, doesn't truly matter. And I think both our organizations are focused on that. How do we abstract technology from the actual end user consumption and focus on what they truly want and what they truly need in a day-to-day basis and help them execute better within their business, with their customers and their partners, and so on? I think one of the things I want to highlight on what Jordan just said was, customers aren't necessarily interested in that technology. They need it to perform absolutely, but they're really buying an experience. And they're very much focused on we're trying to drive a digital transformation strategy with an organization. We're trying to support the mobile workforce. How do we do that? And they're looking for a solution provider that has the proper operational support model. And obviously, the underlying technology, the next generation, the ability to interrupt because customers have very diverse environments in terms of the endpoint technology they have, the infrastructure that they have, and they're looking for platforms like Paxip that can take care of the interoperability organizations like Pinnacle that can take care of the managed service wrap around that 24 by 7 around the clock so they can deliver that best experience to their end users. Yeah, the reality is that collaboration technology is no longer just a nice to have. It's now a mission critical application for every organization around the world, right? And in order to do that, you have to have technology on which you can rely. You have to have the user experience that is simple and straightforward. You have to have the organization standing behind that technology that when something does go wrong, they're there and they can pick up the phone and they can answer whatever it is that you need to answer. And without three of those things working in true unison, the solution doesn't actually perform. And what's the point at that point? And the other thing I would add is if you think about the industry, even five years ago, Jordan, this video application was this silo off to the side outside of the IT governance. It was procured differently. It was supported differently. And now you take that and you kind of put it on its side, slice it inside of a UCNC stack. So all of the integration points with the rest of the UCNC applications is critical and that's where the future is. So we're very excited about what this platform can do for us and our customers. Now let's talk Microsoft. Jordan, what impact has Microsoft had on the evolution of the video collaboration industry? You know, they've changed it all. They've changed everything about it. And I think one of the most important factors of what Microsoft has truly brought to the table is a different view on technology away from the technology back to workflow, back to the user. You know, you think about it from the everyday interaction. When everybody starts their day, what's the first thing that they look at, right?  All of these different things that you want to enable you to do your job better and then seamlessly escalate that into other conversations. And that's exactly what Microsoft has brought to the table, is they've shifted the focus in its entirety away from a meeting being a meeting being very structured, very controlled, very, I'm going to schedule this to happen from 1 to 2 p.m. and at 1 the meeting is going to start and at 2 o'clock the meeting is going to end and we're all going to go back to our everyday lives. Microsoft has blurred that line in its entirety. And now what they're talking about is an interaction. You know, you and I may interact for 15 minutes in the morning, for 30 minutes just before lunch, for 20 minutes at the end of the day. And we should have that flexibility to interact in smaller bits and bytes so that we can actually solve real problems rather than go into a meeting to talk about work, leave the meeting and all go our separate ways to do the work. This way we can actually interact throughout the day. And that's what they've done, right? You look at it from the ability to schedule a quick meeting inside Outlook, to escalating a meeting from a point-to-point chat to video to small multi-party conference. You look at the ability to go in and out of the various forms of technology, go from word into a video meeting, go from a video meeting into an email, go from an email into a chat session. All of those minutias, if you will, are now one and the same and break down those barriers. So, you know, I know it's a bunch of different things, but the reality is they've changed everything and they've shifted it from talking about the technology in and of itself to talking about workflow and user experience. Dan, Microsoft a game changer, do you agree? Absolutely a game changer. I think if I think about the last game changer, I would say it was John Chambers years and years and years ago who started to talk about telepresence and immersive telepresence. And it basically took the conversation outside of that board group and traditionally that's where video has been used, elevated it up into this immersive experience. And, you know, here we are years later and now it's what's the next change in Microsoft, absolutely I agree with Jordan, is changing the game in terms of now moving this down into the desktop, moving it into the masses where people are using this as a day-to-day interaction, enhancing that communication like we're doing here today, right? We're all in three different cities and we're having this dialogue, you know, for a number of folks to kind of listen into and get some insight into our industry. I find it really interesting that when you look at the rollout of any type of technology, there's technology, there's business processes in this culture. And I think the technology is there, I think the business process, Microsoft's doing a fantastic job in terms of the workflow, the scheduling, making it easy for people to engage. But one of the interesting things now starting to surface is actually the business culture. And what are we going to do to get people to turn on those cameras, right? You go into a number of meetings and you're like, why am I the only person that has my video on, right? And you start to think about the folks that are working from home and all of a sudden now they're, they need to be business ready. That remote office worker needs to be business ready.  We're talking to people around the globe and we're basically virtually visiting countries around the world day in, day out by just sitting at our desk. But there is a risk that people don't turn those cameras on. So as part of an overall usage and adoption program, and we've got to take in the box with some great technology. We've got to take in the box around workflow and applications that are integrated. The next one we really need to focus on from an industry perspective is turning that camera on, getting people to be the advocate to want to use video and get all the benefits, you know, from that type of interaction. Companies in all sectors are really facing this rapid digital transformation internally, which is causing a lot of complexity and change in daily business. So Dan, I'll start with you first. How does Pinnacle and Pexip really help to ease those pressures and changes and complexity for your customers? Yeah, I think when you look at our customers and where they are in their digital transformation strategy, you know, they're really looking at how are they going to take their workforce and drive more efficiency, increase the collaboration requirements to connect people around the globe. And that virtual workforce is, you know, very beneficial in terms of getting access to talent from around the world, accessing that talent when required, giving people the work-life balance that they're also looking for. And there's challenges that IT are facing. The human resources folks are facing as well as the facilities folks who are figuring out what they're going to do with their physical footprints in their offices. So customers are looking for a partner for the journey. They're not looking for point solutions. They're looking for some, you know, a company that can lead in front, but have an ecosystem as Jordan just mentioned that can deliver all the bits and pieces, right? We're all experts in certain elements of the overall solution. And the good news for the customer is when you see those partnerships being formed and you see those teaming relationships, then they're going to get the best of the best. And customers are really looking for an end-to-end service for their user community. And it's really now at the conferencing level. So independent of various components, whether it's some infrastructure, whether it's some endpoints, whether it's the network, they're just looking at it from a, hey, I had a meeting and it was very successful, and I would do that same meeting again, right? That's what the users are looking for. And they're really excited about the solutions that Pexip and Pinnacle are bringing forward to help them solve those business initiatives. Jordan, final words? Yeah, I think Dan, you hit the nail on the head with that one, right? And I think it does somewhat bring the conversation itself full circle, where we started off talking about how people aren't buying technology, they're buying solutions. And I think digital transformation and this concept of how do I actually augment my solution or my organization, I should say, with technology is a perfect example of that. That nobody, the reality is that integrating technology into business processes, integrating technology into solutions that organizations provide, increases complexity by an exponential amount. Every time you add a single piece of technology, complexity certainly goes up. That being said, the value that you get for that increased complexity can far outweigh the costs. And it's not only a cost from a typical view of cost, where I'm writing a check for x number of dollars or what have you, but also the view of cost from what does this mean to me, the end user in terms of my day-to-day life? Is my scheduling experience going to get more complicated? Can I still have ad hoc calls? Can I still enable email to work in a better way or chat or social media or what have you? How can I evaluate the total cost of my day-to-day life? And I think what these organizations are now doing, these apps, if you will, if you want to look at it from that perspective, is we are all about solving the complexity problem down to the end user level. We're not trying to hide behind the fact that adding PECSIP into a solution is going to increase complexity. It does on some level, that's no doubt. But the value that you get for that complexity and our work to minimize the amount of complexity that is there far outweighs any of the costs associated with it, the licensing costs, the user costs, the workflow costs, the flexibility costs, the travel costs, all of that stuff that you save as an organization far outweighs the additional complexity in there. And I think that there's a lot of value that's being created in that, then as a result, enabling businesses to look at things. And granted, we're just a small cog in the greater wheel to progress, right? I mean, we're just part of a greater solution. And that's what's so exciting about organizations like Pinnacle is they're not looking at it solely from a collaboration perspective. They're looking at the holistic view. And so what we can come in is we can come in and be our experts. We can solve a specific problem. We can help organizations leverage their technology and their communications architecture in a greater way. And then we can work hand in hand with Pinnacles of the world. And Dan and his team are phenomenally good at this to then say, but that's not all, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, we can do so much more as well. And here's how we can solve a lot of that other complexity around it, right? And then, oh, by the way, if it ever does break in the future, give us a call. We'll make sure it gets fixed immediately. Thank you, gentlemen. Such an exciting time in the video collaboration industry. A lot of challenges, but also a lot of really great opportunities. Thank you for your insight and thank you viewers for tuning in to Pinnacle TV.


What I'd like to do in the lecture today will be somewhat different, fortunately, from the Praxeology lecture that I gave on Monday. I say, fortunately, it doesn't follow, but you'll like this lecture. That could be equally bad, but even worse. What I want to do in this lecture is first discuss a feature of capitalism, of the free market, that Mises stressed especially, and he thought this feature was important not only in explaining how the free market operated, but also as a justification for the market. Then I want to go on to consider various types of interference with the free market measures, such as price and wage control, and the way in which Mises criticized those. Since I find it difficult to stay away from philosophy for long, I'll say a few things about the role of value judgments in economics and how particularly Mises approach here. Now, one of the main criticisms of the free market that has been advanced by socialists, I'm sure you've heard this, is that in the capitalist system, a few wealthy business people, few capitalist bankers and others, control what's being produced. And the claim of so-called democratic socialist is in a system of democratic socialism, it would be the people as a whole who decided what would be produced. Just as in a democracy, it's the people who elect the political leaders in an economic democracy, it would be the people who decide what's being produced. So Mises had a very ingenious way of responding to this argument that was also, but not only a response to the argument, it was very important as an explanatory feature of how the free market works. What he said was in capitalism, the consumers, the people who buy the consumer goods, control what is produced. Now, why is that? Why is it that consumers are controlling what's produced? Well, business owners are trying to make money, otherwise they wouldn't be in business. That's their purpose. If you own an operated business, you want to make a profit. So the way you do that is to provide consumers with what they want. And Mises speaks in this respect of what he calls the dollar votes of consumery. He says that when you spend money on a product, you're in effect voting for that product, you're voting that that product be produced, and he calls this system one of consumer sovereignty. So you see how in using these phrases of consumer sovereignty and dollar votes, he's really responding to this criticism that I mentioned that the socialists raise against capitalism. They said that under capitalism, it's the rich businessmen who decide what's being produced. And Mises said, no, it isn't that at all. It's the consumers who decide what's being produced. Because the business people are trying to make a profit, so they want to produce what the consumers favor what they want. Now, there's an object. There's objections that could be raised to Mises's argument. One of them was raised by the communist economist, Maurice Daub, DOBB, who was taught at Cambridge University for many years. He was a, there were some suggestions, some hints he may have been involved in the famous Cambridge spy rings, but I don't think that's been proved. But DOBB in one book said, well, Mises is talking about dollar votes, but don't rich people have a lot more dollars than other people? So can't they really still control what's being produced? It reminds me of the story once about Abraham Lincoln. There was a meeting of his cabinet in which Lincoln made a certain proposal and then he put it to a vote of the cabinet. Everybody in the cabinet was against the proposal itself, but he was in favor. So he, Lincoln said, well, the vote is one in favor, seven against the guys have it. So he was the one who decided because his vote counted for more. So you see this criticism is, well, don't rich people have more votes? So they can, if Mises is talking about the consumer sovereignty in dollar votes, isn't it the rich people are still controlling what's being produced? But Mises answered this, that although individual rich people have more votes than individual poor person, the masses as a whole still have the most votes. And he calls capitalists and mass production for the masses. And even more important, I think, is another feature that of the consumer sovereignty that Mises stressed in a political democracy, especially one where you have a majority vote principle. One candidate wins and other people lose. Sometimes in proportional voting, you can have more than one winner. People are getting votes in proportion to the number of votes their political party receives, but still there are losers. Some people are outvoted. But under capitalism, as long as a small number of people want a certain product, the products will be produced even if most people don't want it. There are products that appeal to only very specialized markets. And as long as it's profitable to produce those, they will be produced even if the most people wouldn't want the product. So Mises is then saying, not only do we have an effect to democracy of the market that guides production, but this is better than political democracy. Because in political democracy, you have just some people win, others lose. But in the democracy of the market and the consumer sovereignty, practically everyone will get what he wants produced because it's in the interest of producers to give them what they want. Now Murray Rothbard certainly accepted the basic idea that I've been explaining that Mises gave. In fact, if you read Manny Kahn's state, he explains in detail how the choice of the consumer's guide production. But he didn't like the phrase consumer sovereignty. And his objection to the phrase was this is a sovereignty is a political concept. It's usually applied to government. So the sovereign has the power to tell people what to do the sovereign. But this isn't the case in the market. In supposing the owner of a business doesn't want doesn't care about the consumers. He said, I'm going to produce this my way. I don't I have a restaurant. I don't care if people don't like the way I cook food. You're going to get the people here going to eat it my way or not at all. He won't be put in jail for doing that. But so whereas under if it were a political matter, he could be ordered by the government to do that. So it isn't the consumers could say to this person, we order you to produce what we want. It's just rather that if he doesn't, he'll lose money. So Rothbard didn't like the phrase consumer sovereignty. Incidentally, this phrase consumer sovereignty comes from the another free market economist, W.H. Hutt William H. Hutt, who was a British economist but taught in South Africa for most of his life. And he used the phrase consumer sovereignty in his book. Economists and the public, I think, came out in around 1936. And also in some articles in South Africa, Journal of Economics. Now, I should say Hutt, if somebody would be much more vulnerable to Rothbard's criticism that means it is because what Hutt said was really people who don't produce what consumers want are really doing something bad. They should be forced to do so. For example, he thought that supposing, let's say you were very talented people, obviously you all are because you're attending the Mises University, but supposing you could earn some very high salary, let's say you could produce, say you work in as lawyers and you make a whole lot of money. This is what consumers want. So suppose you said, though, I don't want to do that. I'd rather just not make much money and be a beach bum. That's not a politically incorrect term. I don't keep up with these things. But supposing somebody said, well, I just don't want to bother doing what the consumers want. Hutt thought you could really be forced to do that. He actually gave an example of an artist who didn't want to produce very many pictures, didn't want to paint many pictures. He thought this would rain because he thought that, say, the artist thought that if he didn't paint very many pictures, he could get higher prices for the ones he did paint. Hutt said that's withholding supply, so he shouldn't be allowed to do that, but Mises doesn't say anything like that. Mises is just emphasizing that in the interest of the producers to satisfy consumers because that's how they make money. If they don't, then the consumers will purchase products from other people and they'll tend to lose money, the ones who don't produce what consumers want. So money will flow from the ones who don't give the consumers what they want to the ones who do. Mises goes so far as to say, and this is one point that Rothbard differed with it, is that Mises goes so far as to say that in effect, the consumers are the real owners of the means of production. And in general, Mises was not sympathetic to Lockean or natural rights views of property ownership. Where Rothbard was, where Rothbard said people acquire property by mixing their labor with previously unowned land or other natural resources. Mises didn't like that. He didn't think natural law arguments had any basis. So that was one difference of Mises and Rothbard. So as I've explained so far, we can understand how those who produce consumer goods will respond to consumer demand. They'll be trying to produce what the consumers want. But as you know, not all goods on the market are consumer goods. What about producers goods? What about the other, say, some goods are not bought by consumers at all? You don't go down to the store and say, buy a ton of steel, unless it's a very unusual store. So what about these other goods? And this you will already understand in lectures that have been previously given on imputation, we can understand how the price, how the demand by consumers really will determine all of production. This operates in this fashion. Those who produce consumer goods will demand first level production goods. Let's say they'll want goods that will enable them to produce the consumer's goods and they'll try to get these the least cost that they can. So the producers of these first level production goods will be trying to meet the demands of those who produce consumers good just in the same way we have at the initial level, the ones who sell consumers goods, they're trying to satisfy the consumers, the ones who have the first level production goods are trying to satisfy those who produce consumer goods. And we can keep going on this till however many stages of production, there are the producers of the second level production goods will try to meet the demands of those who produce the first level production goods.  And then the consumer goods will produce the ones who sell the consumer goods will then demand production goods in accord with the demands of the consumer goods and this will keep going on to higher and higher stages. Now, one mistake to avoid here in this notion of imputation where you have the you get once you get the demand for the consumer goods that will enable you to get the demand and prices for all the other goods. One mistake to avoid is to think that this process is automatic. Joseph Schumpeter was a great economist from Austria, although not a member of the Austrian school, used this point about imputation to criticize Mises' socialist calculation argument. What he said was, look, once you get prices of consumer goods and we could imagine a socialist economy doing that and Mises accepted that, then you could get by imputation all the price of all the production goods. So there wouldn't be any problem of calculation. But what we have to realize to see the fallacy here is that this process isn't automatic. The adjustment of the supply to demand at each level is something that undertaken by entrepreneurs and they display their entrepreneurial judgment in anticipating what the demand is. It isn't it isn't something that just happens automatically. Now, so far so we have then this notion that Mises has defended. It's really in the capitalist system. It's really the consumers who determine what's being produced. It's really a system of democracy that's much better than political democracy. But some people, whether or not they accept that or they would say, even if that argument is right, there's still a problem that in the system, as I've explained it, the key factor that enables the system to work, the motivating factor, is that the business people are trying to make as much money as they can. Because of that, that's why they they adjust production to the demand that the consumers want. But there are some people who say people shouldn't be motivated exclusively by trying to make money. This is not a good thing. Instead, people should act by moral standards. For example, they should always pay workers a living wage, avoid charging high prices for necessity. The people should follow certain moral standards in their economic decisions, rather than be motivated by the desire to attain money. Remember, Karl Marx in Das Kapital makes fun of the capitalists who are motivated by trying to get as much money as possible. And he says, accumulate, accumulate. That is Moses and the prophets. So by Moses and prophets, he's referring to the Bible. So he's saying, well, the capitalists just believe in accumulating money as religion and suggestion is this isn't very good. Of course, I ran would probably say it is very good. And people who deny it are bad, but that isn't what the Mises responded. If let's suppose people did operate according to the moral standards, then such as always paying a living wage and avoiding charging high prices for necessity, if they did that, production wouldn't be responding to consumer demands because the producers would be following certain they would be producing according to these moral requirements. So one way to challenge that would be just to say, try to come up with, say, are they really moral requirements and try to argue on the basis of ethics, moral philosophy. But Mises had a very different type of criticism of this objection. The objection is, look, according to you, this is a capitalism in capitalism. The producers are trying to satisfy consumers. So we have a system of economic democracy. But the motivation is businessmen are trying to make as much money as they can. That isn't a good idea. People shouldn't do that. So Mises, and we'll see this also later in the lecture, tries to avoid appeals to moral judgments and we'll see why does that later. But so what he says is not that these critics have the wrong view of morality. But he says people who say that businesses shouldn't be seek profit don't have an alternative criterion on what businesses should do. They just have certain vague ethical requirements as they can see them. They don't really say, this is what the businesses should do. So if they don't, if businesses don't charge market prices, supposing, say, there is some necessity, say, they think bread is a very important thing for people to have, so they charge very low prices for that. Then there'll be a shortage of bread. People will demand more bread than is produced at that price. And the system, the economic system won't work. So Mises, unless you can come up with some way of determining what the prices are, you won't have economic calculation. You won't be able to know what good should be priced at what price. When he says this, he's not making a value judgment. He's not saying what's good or bad, although pretty obviously he thought going against the market was bad from his point of view. But he's just pointing out what's required for economic calculation. We have to have some way of setting prices and under capitalism we do. And we have the motivation that people are trying to make as much money as possible and under this alternative where we say or people say the people shouldn't be motivated by making as much money as possible. We don't have an alternative criteria. You can see this pretty directly because if you say people shouldn't be motivated by making, trying to make as much money as they can, that's just saying what they shouldn't be motivated by doesn't say how they should act. It isn't giving any specifications on how they should act. So he wouldn't be able to determine prices just by saying they shouldn't be motivated by making money. Now, this leads to the more general topic of interventionism. And one way the government can act is trying to supplant the free market completely. Say under socialism, we have the government trying to just take over production of goods and services. But there's another way the government can interfere with the free market other than just getting rid of it all together. It can pass laws that restrict market transactions in certain ways such as price control, which would include minimum wage laws and rent control and tariffs. These if you have these measures, they don't get rid of the free market. We still have private businesses that are making their pricing decisions in response to consumer demands. But the process is being interfered with by government regulations. So Mises as criticizes various types of interventionism, but he follows a characteristic pattern of argument in all of these. The pattern is that we first take whatever the goal is the interventionist wants, at least the ostensible goal, what he says he wants, then we show that the intervention won't achieve this, that you won't get what you want. If you do this in what's important to see in this pattern is this is a value free method of arguing. It isn't that Mises is saying, I don't like intervention or this is bad. It's that he says you won't get what you want. That isn't a value judgment, whereby value judgment would mean the expression of certain preferences about what should or shouldn't be the case. It's just a factual claim saying this is what's going to happen. If you do such and such. Now, let's take price control as an example. Supposing the government thinks that the price of milk is too high. At the high price, the poor find it hard to buy milk. They don't have enough. They don't have enough money for the milk, so the government isn't going to be cowed by that. That was supposed to laugh at that point. The government then says, we're going to impose a maximum price on milk. So then it'll be easier for the poor to buy milk. So one way you could criticize that is if somebody said, well, I don't think that's appropriate or it's wrong of the government to do that. That's interfering with the private property rights of the milk producers. And that's ethically wrong to do that. That would if you criticize price control in that way, that would be an appeal to a value judgment. But that isn't what Mises does. He just wants to say, well, suppose they do the government does that, what's going to happen is making asking a strictly factual question. He said, at the lower price, more milk will be demanded by consumers. But suppliers won't supply more because at the lower price at the amount they supply and there will be at a certain price will depend on the particular supply curve. And we wouldn't expect that if the price gets lower, they're going to supply more, quite the contrary. And marginal sellers, those who are making the least return will leave the business of selling milk. They'll say, with these new low prices, it's not going to be profitable for us to produce milk anymore, so we're getting out of the milk supply business. Now, you notice here that Mises is assuming that when he says the marginal sellers are going to leave the business, he's assuming that people in the business aren't all earning the same return. If that were the case, then the low price would make everybody leave. But he said, no, just the marginal sellers will leave. So it's only in equilibrium, which we never really attain that every all the businesses are in the same return. So there's some businesses that are not do it. They're just barely making a profit at existing prices. So then the new governmentally imposed lower prices will make them leave. So what has happened here? Well, the suppliers aren't supplying more. And in fact, some milk suppliers have left the business altogether. So there's less milk available. And this wasn't what the price control was supposed to do. Because remember the purpose of the price control was to make milk available to poor people at a lower price. But the result is you have less milk available than before. So here what Mises is saying is that the measure, the price control has failed to achieve its purpose. It's failed from the point of view of those who favor it. And when he says that he's not making a value judgment, this is a strictly factual claim. This is what's going to happen if price controls are imposed. And we can see exactly the same process with rent control. Just go through the same stuff. Under rent control, the purpose is to make more housing available to the poor. But at the rent control price, more housing is demanded that is available. It's exactly, you see exactly parallel arguments, the one I gave on the price control for milk. So people at lower rents, more people will want to rent apartments or houses than before. But the landlords won't be willing to supply more. On the contrary, those who aren't going won't be making money under the new rent control will withdraw housing from the market and they'll avoid making repairs. So the result will be that the housing situation for the poor is worse. So again, the result is the aims of rent control aren't achieved. It's amazing how many sometimes you see people falling for this fallacy. There was a law professor, Margaret Raiden, who was quite influential, who had had a suggestion that she thought that people who've lived in an apartment for a long time, number of years should get property rights in the apartment so that the landlord would be unable to kick them out. And she didn't realize that if that if such a law were passed, then it would be in the interest of the landlords to make sure they got out before they set number of years by which the tenants could acquire ownership. So you have the same pattern where somebody proposes a law. It's supposed to have certainly goals, but the measure doesn't attain what the goal suggested as it has just the reverse. So this again is the characteristic pattern that Mises uses. Now, I'll just go through another case, which is very important. I'm from Los Angeles and we just had in Los Angeles, there's new minimum wage laws. These are very popular and these are supposed to raise wages for workers. They're not intended to harm workers, but a minimum wage is a price floor saying wages can't go below a certain point. So if the minimum wage is above the market wage, then more workers will want to work at the minimum wage and employers are willing to hire. So workers who aren't worth the minimum wage employer will either be fired or not hired. So again, the intervention fails to achieve the goal. And we can see this also with tariffs, where tariff is a tax on goods that are coming into the country, supposed to help domestic producers. But a result of having a tariff is to make a product more costly for consumers. And by decreasing competition, they enable cartels to be produced. So one of the the people who favor tariffs say, well, this will help, say, American prosperity if we have tariffs, but the result will be we'll have higher prices for consumers more cartels, less competition. So again, the results of the interventions measure is counter to what the advocates support. Now, what happens when the intervention fails? Well, one thing that could happen is, say, the government, people in government have read their Mises or Henry has it says they say, oh, we made a terrible mistake. We're not going to we're going to repeal the measure. But that rarely happens. They instead very likely say, we have to have more intervention to cure the problems caused by the first intervention. For example, to take the case I started with, we have the milk suppliers have compulsory lower prices for milk. So suppose the milk sellers say, well, we can't make a profit under these new low prices, then the government might respond by imposing price controls on the suppliers of the milk sellers to lower their costs. We can see if they do that, these interventions will also fail. And supposing the government keeps doing this, they just say, well, this intervention didn't work, so we'll try another one. If they do that, then it'll lead to total government control of the economy because you'll have price controls for everything and you won't have any free market prices. This actually took place in Germany during World War One. You had a so-called Hindenburg plan, which was named for the general Paul von Hindenburg. Remember, he was the general who was very long lasting. He had fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, but he was still around in. He was the one who appointed Hitler Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. So he lasted a very long time. He did a lot of damage over a long period. But under this Hindenburg plan, it was really one of total control of the German economy by the government by having price and wage regulations of everything. And this was a method of having government take over the economy just by price and wage control. It was also used in Britain during World War One and World War Two. And in this connection, Mises makes one of his lectures, makes it somewhat rather startling claim that socialism didn't come to England after 1945. Remember 1945, the Labour Party, the British Socialist Party under Clement Antley replaced Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. Churchill was the Conservative Prime Minister. But Mises said it was Churchill who brought socialism to government, not the post-war Labour government, because it was under Churchill that price control was imposed. And this is rather surprising because Churchill had praised Hayek's road to serfdom. He was a reader of Garrett Garrett, who was a great American supporter of free enterprise. But Mises said, well, whatever he thought, whatever his professor believed, he was the one who brought socialism to England. And this type of control by the government where the government sets all prices and wages is a type of socialism. You have private property that people, the businesses are still owned in some sense by private people or their private corporations, but the government is telling them what to do at each stage. And this was characteristic of the Nazi system that Mises considers this a type of socialism. Socialism is not just a system where the government directly owns the means of production, but can be one where the government controls production, even though the forms of private property are kept in place. This, when Mises points this out, he's making an important counter to the Marxist, because under the Marxist interpretation of Nazism, for example, you find in a book by Frantz Neumann Behemoth, it was published by Oxford University Press, the claim is that under the Nazi system, because the big businesses were in control, Hitler was in some sense a puppet of the big business people. But actually, as Mises points out, it was the government that ran things. The Marxists were wrong. It wasn't the businessmen in control because they weren't the ones who were setting the prices and wages. The government was telling them what to do. Now, there's another, and this will be, I think, the last type of intervention I want to consider is taxation. Many people favor very high taxes on the rich. You'll find, for example, this book that came out by Thomas Piketty, the French economist, he thinks it's really terrible that some people earn much more than others. Very wealthy people have hundreds of times more in salary than poor people. The government should really do something about that by having very heavy taxes on the rich. So Mises, again, doesn't make a value judgment say, well, I don't think there's anything wrong with inequality. Instead, he says, what happens if the government does this? Well, if you have such taxes, it'll make it very difficult for the rich to save and build up accumulations of capital. But if you have large accumulations of capital, this raises workers' productivity. So this will make wages rise. So if you have taxes on the rich, this hurts the poor. It's supposed to say, well, you're supposed to say, well, you're having these taxes because they supposed to make incomes more equal. But if you have them, they'll worsen the position of the poor because it's through capital accumulation that the poor get more money because wages on the free market are determined by the marginal productivity of labor. And if you have an increase in capital, this will enable the marginal productivity of labor to rise. Again, this is, I think, perhaps the big point I'd like you to take away from this lecture if you just remember one thing that's more than I would remember, oops, so much. Well, that's water under the floor now. OK, so remember, Mises here is not saying, I don't like taxes on the rich. You're claiming these taxes are more than a ban. He's not making a value judgment. He's saying, here's the consequence of high taxation. So this is a strictly scientific value free claim. Now, you might think, well, it's value free, but it sounds like there's a trick involved here because wouldn't almost everybody think that something that hurts the poor is to that extent ban. So is the judgment really value free? Something that's supposed to say, well, socialist calculation is impossible. So if you have a socialist economy that's going to lead to chaos, is that really a value free judgment?   Now, just end then by reminding you of a story of the man who read so much about how bad smoking is for your health that he gave up reading. OK, thanks very much.


Getting ourselves set the angle elevator drop notice the double-band legs. You're gonna see me kind of wind flat So I feel that It's coach Johnson and we're back and we're gonna be focusing on going through pre-block now Remember the pre-block is a isolated pillar six throw. The idea is we're gonna have a flatter orbit We're gonna be staying down pre-blocked here That always means locked up here at the hip locked at the knee staying down, right? So what we're gonna do is learn how to turn everything through we're already in that pre-block position So all we want to feel is that and then right at the very end it straightens up So we've kind of refined this over the years is why we're throwing to your interaction 4.0 We keep making nuances and adjusting and the things that we test and what are the cues that work better? And what are the technical things that we keep seeing translating the bigger throws so? Staying here. We've always talked about sinking deep my first 72-foot shop putter was a kid named Matt Katnick in 2015 and one of the things to cue we used to use was sink and so we want to really focus on that So the first thing that we're gonna do again is teaching that pre-block and you'll notice again I keep my wrist wrap. I have small wrists You definitely gonna want to do it keeps that Support behind the wrist and it's gonna help you create more stretch against your fingers really important now One of the things is we're again. We're gonna line up our 12 o'clock I'm setting up our pre-block because I'm throwing and I'm going this way just to demonstrate But you're gonna notice when I'm here and I Be setting it up bring it in and getting that elbow into position. That's really key So we look from this angle. You're gonna see this You're gonna see how as I come down and I bring it in I'm gonna get that shot higher up on the neck And I'm always trying to get that crease the elbow down We talked about this again in the week one and we want to get that elbow back And we're gonna see this so we're gonna see getting ourselves at the angle Elevator drop notice the double-band legs. You're gonna see me kind of wine flat So I feel that separation and stretch reflex So again, you'll notice when I'm throwing on this 12 to 6 line and I put everything into position this way I'm here and You're gonna see that my hips are facing about 8 o'clock my knees at 9 my hips are at 8 This is about 6 37 probably more 6 30 and so as I'm in here, and I feel the lock We want to make sure that the head in the shoulders are over the knee and we're gonna be winding flat And we're feeling that motion here. So in the pre-block, we're holding that block here 6 30 turn the hips through so you're gonna want to feel that but typically you'll feel this type of position And that's what we're looking for So again, what we're gonna be doing in these throw sessions is teaching you do a throw add in your specific pillar drills If you always watch your your video and your heels always low You're gonna be doing the heel up push.    We'll see you for your stand throws next


This is an introduction to Bench Plains by the Small Workshop Guy, one of our three-minute overview series. Hola woodworkers, Paul Carlson here. As we said in the introduction, we're going to talk about planes today, basically for beginners, very high level, not a lot of detail, but we obviously link you to more detailed presentations. So look for those links down below. The first plane you want to get is not a bench plane, but actually a block plane, and that's a very handy one-handed little device. It's lower angle. It's designed to work on the end cut of boards. It's also designed to put a nice camper on the edge of a board or to soften the edge and many other uses, and it's the least expensive of all of the planes running anywhere from $30 at the bottom end to $100, $120, and even more.  This is a number five, and it's, or a number five and a half. The difference between the five and a half and the five is the five and a half is wider, and therefore the blade is wider, and therefore it's heavier, and so it's used for faster cutting and so forth. So the five and the five and a half are your essential tool in your plane toolkit. Next, when you're ready to add more planes, you would want to get the number four or the four and a half smoothing plane, and then when you really flesh with cash, because these monsters are expensive, you step up and get your number seven or your number eight. Number eight again is wider, heavier, but this is pretty heavy already. I don't know if I would go beyond the number seven. So the order you use these, when you're doing your work, is you use the number five to get the board kind of ready to a great extent. That's your jack plane. Then you go to your number seven, which is your jointer, and to get it level over a long space, and then you really want to get it nice and smooth. You go to your number four smoothing plane, or four and a half. So that'll get you started. The link's down below to much more extended presentations, but we hope you enjoyed having at least an introductory overview.


Welcome back, everyone. This is Brian. We're going to talk about the main function in Python. Now in case you're wondering what a main function is in most programming languages, you'll have something like this. And all this is is a function literally called main. And when your application execute, it's going to be the first function or the entry point to run. And without a main function, your application simply won't work. Well, as we've seen with Python, you don't need a main function. This works just fine. So how do you get your code to run automatically? That's really what we're going to be talking about in this video. Let's go ahead and take a look at this. So first thing we need to do is determine how our script is running. If you've been following this series in the playlist on YouTube, you know that you can run your script directly and your script can be imported. So we want to make sure we know exactly how the script is being run. So let's go ahead and go print. And we're gonna say F sort of format this out, say name equals. Now we're going to use a special variable underscore underscore name. Whenever you see that double underscore, this is built into Python. We're going to take this and print this out. Let's go ahead and change this to file. And I stated in a previous video, this may or may not work. So if you have problems with underscore underscore file, you're going to want to watch that previous video where I talked about using the system arguments that are handed to your script. This should just work just fine. Most of the time. Let's go ahead and run. You can see how our name is underscore underscore main. So remember, double underscore means it's built into Python. And the file is well the file name that we're currently running. This spoiler alert could change. So don't depend on this. And what I mean by that is if we are calling our code based off an import in a special way, the file name will not actually be the name of the script we're currently in. So you got to be a little bit careful there. But I want to highlight those things. The big takeaway from this is our name is underscore underscore main, which means we know Python is running this file directly. This is the main script file. Now let's go ahead and create some code here. Our script really doesn't do anything. So we want to do something. We're just going to make a test function. I don't really care what it does just as long as it prints something out on the screen so I can see it's running. Now we're going to make a main function here. Notice the name is main. Go ahead and print this out. And let's just for giggles, go ahead and call our other function here. So really what we want to do is we want this script to run automatically run this main so we know what we're doing and then call this other function and start some chain of events do some code processing and things like that. So let's go ahead and let's clear all this out. And let's see what a lot of people who are new to Python make a mistake they go oh I know what I'm doing and they go ahead and run and nothing happens. Oh that is a bummer. So yes in Python the main function really isn't called automatically we have to call it specifically. Now you may be thinking I know what I'll do I'll just go down here and then call main directly. And it will work watch we'll run it and it runs this is the main function this is the test function so we are calling it. The problem comes in with this name right here. We're going to demonstrate right after this section. We're going to show you what happens if we run this from a different script we don't necessarily want this code execute, meaning if we take this file and import it as a variable in another file I don't want this function firing off. So we want this to run automatically but only if a certain condition is set. Go ahead and say main. And we're going to print this code out automatically this is my ID you may have to type this we're going to say if underscore underscore name equals main then and pass it's just going to do nothing. So I'm going to take this call our main function directly. Go ahead, save and run. And sure enough, it runs our main function. So it's saying the name is equal to main. So we know Python's running this directly a main, go ahead and call this. Once you've wrapped your head around the difference between underscore underscore name equals underscore underscore main. And you know that means that Python is running this directly. We can do something a little bit different. We can actually take this code file. We grab some notes here. And we can run this from a different script just to see the difference here. So we're going to create a file called test.py. And I'm going to make some mistakes just to show you what's going on. I often make mistakes but legitimately this time I am trying to show you what's going on. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to import this file here. So let's go back here. And I want to say import Python. Notice how IntelliSense is helping us out as code. Now from our previous video you know that what we're doing is we're taking this file in its entirety and converting it into a variable which we can use. Before we go any further let's run this. Notice how we get an invalid syntax. It's got this little it's called a carrot right here is pointing up at this bracket. So what it's telling us is it doesn't like this. It's simply our files naming convention needs to change. So what we can do is let's right click this and call this code file.py. The functionality has not changed. So for example we'll run code file which used to be the Python 3-28. And you see it's working as expected just the file name has changed. So the functionality hasn't changed just the name. We're going to have to go back in here and change the name. Clear this out. And let's run this test.py. You can see how right off the bat what's happening here is name, code file, file name, code file. What is going on here. We ran testpy. But it's printing this out. So when we hit import, it's going to go through and start reading our file from the top down and it's going to actually take some actions. So this is a little bit dangerous here. And just for illustrative purposes, I'm going to grab this go in here. And let's say let's call this test name and test file just to separate those out. Clear this and rerun. Now you see they're both firing off even though I'm running test.py. Import is happening first. So it's saying import code file it's going over to code file executing this code it's not executing our functions. And because the name is different it's not executing this see name is code file. So the name is no longer underscore underscore main the name is well simply the short version of the file name code file doesn't have the directory doesn't have the extension of dot py. That's why we need this if name equals underscore underscore main. So now in here, we can actually call this directly. Save run and see it in action. Sure enough. This is a test function main never fired off. This may seem a little bit confusing. So quick recap, you have to be a little careful how you name your files if you're going to use them as an import. Some characters are just simply illegal like the dash you saw earlier. If you're going to run automatically you want to check the name is equal to underscore underscore main because if we're running this file as an import, it's going to give us the name of the file with no underscores in it. This is not guaranteed to be the name of the file Python considers anything we want. The point being underscore underscore main means that Python is running this directly and just illustrate that we're going to run the code file again and see name is underscore underscore main. I hope you enjoyed this video. You can find the source code out on github.com. If you need additional help myself and thousands of other developers are hanging out in the void realms Facebook group. This is a large group with lots of developers and we talk about everything technology related not just the technology that you just watched. And if you want official training I do develop courses out on udemy.com. This is official classroom style training. If you go out there and the course you're looking for is just simply not there. Drop me a note I'm either working on it or I will actually develop it. I will put a link down below for all three of those and as always help me help you smash that like and subscribe button. The more popular these videos become the more I'll create and publish out on YouTube. Thank you for watching.


And I see what Tyrese is talking about. You got five million off of black culture. Culture, vulture.  He gonna talk about the man, child support. What part of me going through a divorce? It's funny.   And Tyrese, man, I support you, man.  He didn't answer my phone call. So, you know, at the time I was young, I told you about that.   You know what I'm saying, nigga? You know what I mean? I don't, I don't know how to be diplomatic at this time. I didn't have pro-con. You was young, man, you was young.    I don't have to be on black.  You know what I'm saying?  That's what I'm saying.  Did he get asked to do, see, it was so crazy. I'm glad that we brought this back up because the time that he asked Boosie was, did he know me and was the tape real? Boosie was already scheduled to go on Drink Champs the week, the next week, and go on to go on 85 songs. With you. And on Beehive. So how you gonna ask a man that signed to my literary agency, do he know me?  Like I'm lying about this man. And then when the man get on Drink Champs and say, yeah, Ken and Steve gave me the book deal, they put me on, they put me on a game.  But see, that's what Vlad do.  You know what I'm saying?   So they can say, yeah man, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.   And then he gets the names and he make money. You know what I mean? And that's where a lot of black people don't like about Vlad TV. It's like he's an instigator. He's instigating our people to try to pit our people against each other. Now, if Bootsy would have said something negative towards me, that would have created a range between me and him. Or Bootsy would have said something. You see what happened with him and Tia? Well, he asked Tyrese about, he asked Bootsy about Tyrese after he offered Tyrese $10,000 according to, allegedly, according to Tyrese that if he would come on the show.  Tyrese turned the $10,000 down and going to get your money. He offered me $10,000. And then he asked Bootsy, have you heard about this with Tyrese? And Bootsy didn't, he couldn't speak on it. Look at the Tia situation. Bootsy and Tia had a record coming together. Him and Tia had a relationship that kids experienced. And you know what I'm saying?  He gonna speak his mind. You know what I'm saying? He gonna try to inoculate that in the conversation to create this problem. And that's the problem I have with you Vlad. You got to quit trying to cause confusion in our community and all my brothers and sisters. You know, if you want my opinion until you get it right, I urge y'all to boycott Vlad TV. Boycott Vlad TV.  The man. Don't watch. I got, and I got the what they call that DM to prove his team. Yeah, you see that too man. Yeah, his team. You seen it? You got his team hit me up, asked me do I want to come on the dance.  I said, yeah. So he didn't let me on there.  So they do like man, Vlad, I don't want the interview. I'll take the interview. You know what I'm saying?   And then why would you not have me on your show? But the only time you talk about me is when you action another person about, you know, is I'm telling the truth. Like Bootsy knew what was going on. Bootsy went there with me and pimps, he was there. So why would you ask Bootsy? Is that true? That ain't nothing that he should be asking Bootsy. Do he know me and do, is it true that Pimp and King got seen a sex tape? How would he know that? That's circumstantial. How would he know that? You know what I'm saying?  And I see what Tyrese is talking about. You got five million off of black culture, culture vulture.  He gonna talk about the man of child support. What part of me going through a divorce is funny?   Talking about some, you know, this man, you know, is this, this, that, another. And Tyrese, man, I support you, man. You know what I'm saying? A thousand percent. Hey, I'm teen motherfucking Tyrese.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was at Tyrese's house, we did the campaign. We did the campaign with your guy who was just ran for mayor. Oh my gosh, on the tip of my tongue. Oh man. But we did all his whole, his whole campaign. And we did a launch party at Tyrese's house. Oh yeah. That's me. Kaseem Reid. Kaseem Reid, please forgive me. Kaseem Reid, we did this whole campaign when he ran for mayor. And Tyrese was one of the people who supported Kaseem Reid all the way through. So he always went through.  He's been in the music industry. DJ Vlad is what they call him.  And then you got Charlemagne the God. You got different people who rock out with him, you know, different people who support that, you know, like, like I've seen them rock with him. But at the end of the day, I don't know how deep they, I don't know how they relationship go, but I just know the people I see that rock with him.  But I got a question too. Kaseem said you were invited on the show, but he just, it didn't falter? No, they invited, I sent it to your husband. Right. So they invited me. So you were going to go on there, right? I was going to go on there and I was going to, you know, speak my mind. I was going to check Vlad. Okay. I was going to check him and tell him, like, look, you know, anybody that know me, no, I'm real.  I mean, I check gangsters. You know what I'm saying? I check killers every day. You know what I'm saying? So Vlad, you know, what is he to me? You know what I'm saying?  So you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I want to go on the show.  Do you know what's going on in the black community? Do you know all the great things that we're doing? Do you know about all the kids that we let perform for free? You know what I'm saying? But you want to talk about all this negativity. Of course I wanted to go on there. You know, and if they would have aired it so big, but he know me. Yeah. I speak my mind. And I'm going to tell you something that he, and it's been done by a few people, you know, I got friends that have been on there just for the smoke. You know, I got people who go to Vlad. You know, a lot of times you don't do it. You be in a room somewhere, not even at his place. He won't even get in the room with you. Man, that dude, I was there when he did the gradey. You know, grading Steve was my business partner. Yeah. So we bought Grady on to Vlad. Steve bought Grady on to Vlad. I was there with him. We was in the room and Vlad was behind the camera. I looked at him on the camera. What's up Vlad? He seemed like he's seen a ghost. And then his assistant at the time, this before I made the comments. His assistant at the time said, say, man, Vlad can want to call you. So I talked to him. I said, so what's up, man?  You know what I mean? Woo, woo, woo. Hey, man, you know, I'm busy. That's what he said. I'm busy. How are you not going to interview Ken Ivy when I got, you know, millions of views on TV? I mean, in the last, in the last what? Say, maybe three, four or five months, I probably did about 15 to 20 interview, 20 million views on YouTube are better. So you know what I'm saying? That's content for your platform. But like I said, you know, he probably still traumatized from when I checked him. I know Rick Ross had to go upside his head a couple of times, you know? And I know if I would have, you know, been younger, if I would have called him, I probably went upside his head too. You know what I mean? I'm just being honest. When I was 31, I would have peeled Vlad head when I was 31. But, you know, I'm much older now. So, you know, I wouldn't never, You know, I would never do that, you know, at this point in time.  Like he was being disrespectful. And I went in on him. You know what I'm saying? And he know what happened. I know what happened.  But, you know, I mean, the dude's just a coward, man. You know what I'm saying? He's scared to talk to me.