How desperately ignorant this country is: BBC word games

[Baron von Lotsov]

Hmm, my delving are starting to reveal truths.



Out of all of that lot, Modigliani is pretty modern by BBC standards. He won the 1985 Nobel prize in economics to do with his various theories, the most famous being the one about value of firms with reference to their debt to equity ratio. A chap in the City I used to chat to on a forum said he swears by his theory on this and uses it to pick investments. So I ran through the first two of the links, and the first one was on a medical issue and was an historical letter, so nothing to do with him there. The second one I would like to quote as it illustrates the temperament of the BBC.







"Oh yes, we must begin with Modigliani and Miller; M&M sound like a postmodernist jewellery company but they are in fact the 1950s doyens of capital structure theory.



Capital structure is, as we are about to find out, highly relevant this week - because it decides the order in which bloke A pays blokes B, C and D to whom he owes money, and whether they get all, some or none of it back."



That's from BBC Newsnight. I'd say that was kind of said is a highly contemptuous manner, but that's just my view.

[Baron von Lotsov]

er..... we BBC has plenty of documentaries showing how factories work and about the supply chain - sounds more like a case of confirmation bias here.

If you can show any bias in my method then please point it out. I'm looking at pioneers of both schools of thought re capitalism and socialism. If i've left something out then please tell me. Peer review it. It's not as musical score, so we are not interested in sound here!

[Baron von Lotsov]

I've also done a site search on each full name to see how popular they are on the BBC. Spot the odd one out.



Marx 4680

Smith 3150

Keynes 450

John Stuart Mill 401

Friedman 273

Hayek 100

William Philips (Keynesian) 65

Ricardo 39

Mises 34

Franco Modigliani 3

Isis 16 000



Terrorism beats the lot hands down.

[Javert]

er..... we BBC has plenty of documentaries showing how factories work and about the supply chain - sounds more like a case of confirmation bias here.

[Baron von Lotsov]

There has always been one.

I know, but it watches everyone but itself!

[papasmurf]

 



I'm forming a view that we need a BBC watchdog! It's barking mad.

There has always been one.

[Baron von Lotsov]

So what did the world think Ludwig von Mises had to say about inflation?

Top quotes are as follows:



"The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard."



"Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe."



"The illusiveness of this concept of national income is to be seen in its dependence on changes in the purchasing power of the monetary unit. The more inflation progresses, the higher rises the national income."



"Inflation is essentially antidemocratic."



"Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism ."



"Inflation is the true opium of the people and it is administered to them by anticapitalist governments and parties."



https://www.azquotes.com/author/10190-Ludwig_von_Mises/tag/inflation">https://www.azquotes.com/author/10190-L ... /inflation">https://www.azquotes.com/author/10190-Ludwig_von_Mises/tag/inflation



And so on. To say the man didn't like Marx is like understatement of the year -



So we have a classic case of misrepresentation. I have no idea where the BBC got that quote from, but it appears to be highly selective and out of context, if it is genuine in the first place, especially considering the two parts are different quotes. One is drawn to the conclusion that capitalists support inflation because they make money by overcharging.



I'm forming a view that we need a BBC watchdog! It's barking mad.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Now today we try its counterpart, and again we land on a page with links where one must sign in.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Socialism">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Socialism



It's quite clear what the format is though. With socialism we have a load of history programmes on Karl Marx. With Capitalism though we do not. If we did, we would be looking at names like:



Adam Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith

David Ricardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo

Ludwig von Mises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises

Friedrich Hayek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

Milton Freidman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman



but instead the BBC gives us the goings on in a shop up north selling various foreign plates of food. It's hardly representative of capitalism. I mean if I were doing it, I would at least end up in a British factory producing products in a market and reinvesting in the latest machinery to become more competitive. That was, after all, the essence of the industrial revolution. It was not a shopping revolution, even though blondes of the BBC would imagine it to be that.



Presumably the programmes on Karl Marx are like pseudoreligious broadcasts where BBC personnel line up to worship the great man. It's the usual format with these things.



Further research reveals that if we plug Ludwig von Mises into our site search then we get the top reference on the BBC as follows:

"The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague," said the Austrian philosopher and economist Ludwig von Mises.



"Inflation is a policy."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30778491">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30778491



As you can see, it is hardly representative of the man. This is of course prodigious BBC research!

[Baron von Lotsov]

Yes and this is exactly what we got in the schools as well. Teacher starts the lesson and writes a word on the board. Naturally they would not ever write the word capitalism, but if they did, the next step is to go around the class and ask the ones who are trying to bloody well find out!!!



I think these dumb asses are not so much intentionally dumbing it down, but are dumb themselves, hence they copy the ways they were taught. In the olden days it was described as being passed down from father to son, but now it is woman teacher to daughter. They never ever thought in school that the method was why they were not learning anything.



Compare to Wikipedia, which carries a page entitled capitalism. This page is edited by the world for the world, so it is a comparison of world vs Blighty. We sample the first paragraph.



"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.[1][2][3][4] Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets.[5][6] In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by every owner of wealth, property or production ability in financial and capital markets, whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.[7][8] "



It's like comparing to a leper colony run by the same.

[papasmurf]

That is the Biased Broadcasting Company for you.

[Baron von Lotsov]

This is the game. We use Google to find the top reference in popularity to a word on the BBC. We use the site http://www.bbc.co.uk">WWW.BBC.co.uk so that we are measuring this country, not BBC Outer Mongolia or anything.



Google's advanced search means you can search just one particular website for an exact word, as per letter for letter. The game is to think of a pithy word and see if you can guess what you will get. I try capitalism because like say you are young and don't know what it means. You might well go to the  BBC. What are you going to get though? Here is the way to do the search on Google:



"capitalism" site:http://www.bbc.co.uk">www.bbc.co.uk



and likewise you can just copy that line and change the word for any you think up.



Straight away I am aghast at what I find.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lnk20/episodes/downloads">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lnk ... /downloads">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lnk20/episodes/downloads



You can't click on the bleeder unless you sign into the Ministry of Love's central database, so we try downloading episode one. The series is called This is Capitalism. First you get a woman reporter type try and explain it and then you move on to prole experiences. Quotes like it's important how i feel about it and whether he understands me and reams of bus stop talk on anything but what is capitalism. Recall Auntie Beeb has a royal charter commitment to education.



Anyway, your call. This is lucky dip time. What other wisdom can we find using the identical procedure, in the interests of unbiased experimentation?