 If you're a follower of our behind-the-scenes podcast, you'll know that I wasn't particularly impressed with Black Widow. I didn't hate it, but from its poor character development, forgettable villain, and Natasha's invincible plot armor, to its surprisingly mediocre CGI and illogical storytelling, there was a lot wrong with that movie. On top of that, its release was easily five years too late for it to be much more than a two-hour promo for Disney+. So, it wasn't really the moving send-off that character deserved. So, this video isn't really going to be about Black Widow, nor will it be about Scarlett Johansson's lawsuit, or even the disconcerting decline of the MCU in general, so no need to worry about spoilers. However, there is something that I think is really important to talk about that is connected to the movie. David Harbour's bafflingly poor decision to confuse the ideology of his fictional character with good real-world ideas. So, today, I'm going to explain exactly why socialism and communism are just the absolute worst on this short edition of Out of Frame. Oh, also, be sure to stick around to the very end of the video for a cool announcement. You won't want to miss that, but with that out of the way, let's get into it. For those who haven't seen it yet, Black Widow adds a layer to Natasha Romanov's backstory. We've known since Age of Ultron that she was trained in a brutal environment called the Red Room. But in this movie, we learn that she also spent some of her childhood in Ohio as part of a fake family of Russian spies. Black Widow's opening scene set up a lot of the plot and introduced us to Natasha's sister, Elena, her mother, Melina, and, most importantly for our purposes, her father, Alexei, played by David Harbour. The four of them were sent to America in order to steal something from a government laboratory. And once they do, they mount a daring, but ultimately very confusing escape to Cuba so they can bring that MacGuffin back to Russia. We also learn that Natasha's fake father, Alexei, is actually a super soldier codenamed Red Guardian. When we meet back up with Alexei later in the movie, we learn that in spite of his successful mission, he was unjustly sent to prison where he spent the last couple decades recounting stories of his supposed glory days. He's also got Karl Marx tattooed across his knuckles. Meanwhile, the young girls he'd raised as his daughters for three years got brainwashed and tortured into becoming elite assassins working for a man named Drakoff. Great fake parenting, Dad. Even so, I can appreciate that Alexei believed he was doing the right thing for the girls and for the socialist ideals he had been fighting for. As Red Guardian, Alexei probably had to be a true believer in the communist promise of the USSR. From a character standpoint, that part makes sense. But you know what doesn't make sense? David Harbour, the actor, supporting the same ideas. During the marketing lead-up to the movie's release in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian, Harbour expressed agreement with his character's political philosophy, saying, I don't know that there's anyone who could disagree with socialist ideology. If you work at Starbucks and you make the coffee, then you should own it. You're the one making the coffee. Ugh. Now, to his credit, David Harbour does manage to bring some charm and sympathy to the otherwise dumb and essentially useless character of Red Guardian. Frankly, I think it's a shame that he got relegated to comic relief, and in spite of being the only person in the movie with superpowers, he was easily defeated in hand-to-hand combat by somebody who should definitely have been destroyed by a guy who can throw around cars. Worse still, his character was never given a chance for redemption as a failed father figure. You got something to say? Let's just mess it up. But as much as I've enjoyed Harbour's acting in both Black Widow and Stranger Things, and as much as I'm an advocate of separating my view of the art from my opinion of the artist, for me, his whole statement was pure unadulterated cringe. Here's why. Marxist communism is often described as an ideal end-state by those who subscribe to the philosophy. Under communism, there's supposed to be no private property, no need for currency, no class division, and no need for estate. It's literally defined as a utopia where everyone will work for the good of their comrades, and everyone will receive everything that they need because of this. Moreover, thanks to Marx's idea of dialectic materialism, which would take me all day to properly explain, communism is believed to be a historic inevitability. But in order to get to this utopia, capitalism must first collapse and be replaced with socialism. So let's define that term as well. Traditionally, socialism refers to the collective ownership over the means of production. By this, Marxists usually mean worker-owned factories and collectivization of land and resources, all guided by a centralized decision-making process that gets to dictate which goods and services get made, in which quantities, and to whom they are distributed. This is seen as very similar to, but still distinct from, full-blown communism, because it's not yet the perfect, stateless utopia they dream about. There's also no agreement on exactly how to do this. Some socialists want decisions to be made democratically. Others want power to reside in the hands of experts. Some people claim that a combination of big data and sophisticated AI will handle all the calculations needed to run the economy. Quoting the Guardian again, David Harbour's version of socialism is much more simplistic. The idea of a kindergarten-type society where we share things, as opposed to this world where we're hunting and killing and destroying for our own personal hoarding, our own personal greed. Sounds nice, but when you actually think this through, you'll start to see some major problems. Firstly, the only way you can do any of this is by creating an incredibly powerful state that can first rest control of the land, machinery, money, and raw materials needed to make things, that is, capital, from the individuals who previously created and owned them, so that people in power can then decide how that capital will be used. Once they do that, they'll have to constantly work to prevent individuals from making choices that conflict with the goals of the collective. Even in kindergarten, you can help kids learn to respect each other and value generosity, but if you want to force them to share their toys, the teacher needs to ignore their property rights and assert authority over them that explicitly denies their right to consent. That's not actually a good lesson to teach little kids. Believe it or not, Jen, right away. Doing this on a national or international scale is horrific. Handing a small group of people an enormous amount of power is never a good idea, and what we're talking about can become incredibly totalitarian very quickly. A fact Harbor acknowledges in the interview, but never bothers to explore. However, I and most of my colleagues have explored it. Fee's president was born in Soviet-controlled Lithuania. Our director of Outreach's family is from Ukraine. My assistant producer Pavel is from Russia, and another of my favorite co-workers' family came from Cuba. Even this series' former editor, Arash, had to flee from Iran as a little kid. And our vice president's grandfather was a saddlemaker in Soviet-occupied Poland who spent several months in prison for buying a few strips of leather on the black market so he could work and feed his family. This is what state control over people's economic decisions actually looks like, and it's disgusting. But as bad as all that is, it's not the only problem. Socialism is also entirely based on a completely faulty conception of reality. Economies aren't machines that can be run. They are living, breathing organisms made up of billions of individual people, all acting to satisfy their own unique wants and needs. They're a product of emergent order, and they're far too complex to be controlled from the top down. And no matter how they've tried to approach the task, socialists or communist central planners have never been able to do what they've claimed. You can even see this fairly clearly simply by thinking through David Harbour's idea that the people who make the coffee should own the Starbucks. The core premise isn't even true. If you work at Starbucks, you don't actually make the coffee. Sure, you brew the coffee, you combine the ingredients to make various drinks, but you don't make it. You probably didn't even coordinate with suppliers to make sure the ingredients were there when you needed them. The fact is, an incalculable number of people all over the world are needed in order to produce a single latte. And all those people are being ignored when guys like Harbour make their ignorant pronouncements about socialism. There are the farmers who grow the beans and others who raise the cows which produce the milk. There are the people who make, transport and sell all the raw materials and machinery those farmers need to do their jobs. There are the distributors and retailers who coordinate getting the milk and coffee from the farms to the coffee shops. There are people who produce the coffee machines and steamers, the cups and napkins, and even the baristas' uniforms. And as hard as this is for most socialists to hear, at each step along the way, there are also the inventors, entrepreneurs and investors whose unique knowledge, ideas and experience started this whole party in the first place. They're the ones who had the vision for the business and risked their own resources bringing it into existence. They're responsible for the difficult problem solving that goes into selecting the right mix of products, putting together the right team and training staff, building relationships with suppliers, developing processes that improve quality control, speed up production and reduce the possibility of shortages, managing budgets, marketing the business, and a lot more I don't have time to cover. Not to be harsh, but the average 18-year-old working their first or second job ever isn't doing any of that. Just because you've been hired to play a specific role in the operation of a business doesn't mean you're doing all the work, or that you should be allowed to seize control of a company you didn't build. I really wish that didn't need to be said. The point is that all of the various factors of production that matter are created by people with highly specific sets of skills and information that only they possess. None of us can know how to make something as simple as a cup of coffee all by ourselves, let alone run something as infinitely complex as a major economy. No single person, group of experts, voters, or even the most sophisticated of computer programs would be able to know exactly what consumers need, which is constantly changing for every single person on the planet in time to make it and get it to them when they need it, because we all have different ideas and values and can imagine married ways of using the same resources to achieve different ends. This is often called the knowledge problem or the economic calculation problem, and it completely demolishes any valid argument in favor of socialism or communism as those terms are normally defined. Beyond the grotesquely authoritarian nature of the ideology, it simply doesn't work. But sadly, David Harbour, like his character Alexi, is clinging to a rose-colored fantasy of an ideology that has consistently failed wherever it's been put into practice for reasons that aren't even hard to understand. And yet, he can't even imagine why someone wouldn't support socialism. Well, I struggle to imagine why anyone does. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. I'm sure a lot of you are going to have things to say about my definitions and arguments and everything else, so feel free to get into the comments and have at it. I'll be there. But remember at the beginning when I said I have an announcement? Well, normally this is the part of the video where I just tell you to do all the things, but today we're giving away a free iPad and some other awesome prizes as part of a campaign to encourage you all to share Out of Frame with your friends. Check out the link in the description for all the details. There are several ways to enter the raffle, and when you get there, be sure to use the secret word that's on screen right now for an extra chance to win. If this goes well, maybe we'll do more giveaways in the future. Who knows? In the meantime, I want to thank every one of you who supports the show on Patreon and SubscribeStar, and remind y'all to like this video, hit that bell icon, and join our email list, so you never miss an episode. I'll see you next time.