this video is brought to you by betterhelp [Music] what's up guys michael here with a quick and dirty take on the latest from the parker stone brain trust the new south park special the streaming wars left us equally delighted and disturbed delighted because this is some top-notch south park content i'm gonna go hang out at tolkien's house for a bit karen no you're not yes i am karen you better knock that off i don't want you playing with tolkien karen just come back inside and disturbed because of [ __ ] like this but beyond that this episode was just plain clever using unexpected metaphors to critique two very annoying things one the proliferation of streaming platforms and the avalanche of mediocre content that is wrought we may or may not have talked about this recently and two climate change the history of water commodification and consumption and more specifically the current droughts in california and colorado but is there something deeper going on here are the platform wars in the water wars ideologically linked either on or off screen and most crucially are we all floating our own crappy little popsicle stick boats when we engage with global capitalism let's find out in this wisecrack quick take will we all be drinking pee pee soon but before we dive in we want to thank this video sponsor better help if you're feeling depressed anxious or overwhelmed these days better help can be an excellent resource for feeling better and i know from personal experience when you're feeling those types of things therapy can be a godsend now betterhelp's network of more than 20 000 therapists are ready to listen to and help after taking a brief questionnaire you'll be matched with a therapist whose expertise fits your unique needs and what's so cool about a platform like betterhelp where everything is done remotely is that you can work with a therapist whose skills might not otherwise be available in your area within 48 hours you can start messaging with your therapist at any time and when you do you'll receive timely and thoughtful responses in return additionally you can schedule your choice of secure phone or video sessions to receive counseling in real time again like i've said before i myself have been to therapy i have found it beyond useful and i just can't urge you to consider it enough if you're dealing with things like depression and anxiety now if you and your therapist aren't a perfect match it's easy and free to switch to a new one so join the more than two million people who have taken charge of their mental health with better help by visiting betterhelp.com wisecrack or just click the link in the video description when you do you'll get 10 percent off your first month that's betterhelp.com wisecrack and now back to the show let's start with what south park is critiquing it revolves around a bitter war over streaming amongst various south park landowners a couple of small streamers start out find increased competition and eventually are basically wiped out by the largest streamer of all i intend to be the amazon river this obviously mirrors the absolute explosion of streaming platforms we've seen since netflix moved beyond dvds in 2007. hulu got big the following year but netflix set a new playbook when it started releasing original content in 2013. competitors like disney plus would later emerge proliferating in the form of amazon prime peacock paramount plus incidentally south park's new streaming home and so on the growth of streamers led to an increasingly ruthless fight to see who could own our attention and netflix's recent fall from stock market grace marks an important turning point in the streaming wars as chris morangie of gamco investors explains act 1 was the land grab phase now we're in the middle act we see that first act land grab well underway in this special it's personified by golf magnate mr kusler who scrambles to acquire lots of land so he could catch up on the streaming wars not unlike what amazon prime did at the same time the streaming wars in real life and in south park have brought a fierce competition to land top tier talent to produce ever more content and those proverbial boat builders are left in the middle just trying to deliver a good product we're just in the middle doing our thing sidebar this feels pretty meta with matt and trey identifying with the boys as independent creators in their own crowded and highly demanding field of content so clearly the metaphor works but there's also something really interesting about the episode's more literal central conflict the idea of water wars in the american west especially california isn't just a tv fantasy you know the show is invoking the century-old california water horse from the way the water inspector character evokes the famous noir chinatown if that was too subtle for you there's also some shot for shaq recreations from the film after all water has always been a hot and rare natural commodity in both california and south park's home state for example back in 1904 los angeles had the fastest growing population of any american city and not nearly enough water to support its anticipated growth so engineer and water supervisor william mulholland and wealthy former mayor fred eaton hatched a plan to buy land 200 miles north on the owens river in a region with plentiful water flow so as not to let the current residents know what he was really up to eden lied and claimed he just wanted to start a cattle ranch and was able to acquire much of the land along the river not unlike one golf magnate oh yes it looks absolutely ideal when residents were reluctant to sell eaton lied again hinting that the government might seize their property if they didn't comply meanwhile the owens river area government was busy planning their own irrigation project that would serve hundreds of thousands of acres of local farmland but eaton eventually bought so much river adjacent land that this plan became impossible he sold the land to l.a county who built an aqueduct that eventually brought thousands of gallons of water to the city each year la would continue to buy more property by the owens river which saw its once plentiful land run arid its community collapsed its farmers ruined its schools closed and so on a few locals fought back by bombing the aqueduct and various other acts of protest but were simply no force for the city of la the city that birthed both billy eilish and buffalo chicken pizza we see a similarly nefarious game of foot in south park where mr kessler snatches up all the river adjacent land in hopes of banking a considerable profit by selling it to drought afflicted city dwellers meanwhile back in real life the california water wars continue as the wealthy wield their power to monopolize water flows the resnicks a powerful billionaire couple who own huge produce companies in california currently use more water than every home in los angeles combined i hope they're at least well hydrated much of that water is provided directly by the country or state via decades-old contracts and the other nine percent is purchased on the water market that's a significant enough amount to drive prices up making it harder for smaller farmers to compete what's more the couple reportedly secured land primed for water storage via secret meetings with water officials in the 90s and they're allowed to store their water and sell it back to the city in times of drought this is exactly what we see happening in this special where folks fortunate enough to own valuable land and lots of it are able to profit off a surrounding drought that's making everyone else miserable the only material difference between real life and the special then is that mr kusler dies before he gets to become a whole lot richer in contrast the real-life resnicks are making bank off their sweet setup according to research by the contra costa times from 2000 to 2007 the resnicks purchased tons of water for prices as low as 28 per acre foot then sold of the california for up to 196 dollars these shenanigans earned them over 30 million dollars all while the rest of the city suffered in a drought now that we've set the stage for the new south park specials focused on the proliferation of platforms in the ongoing water wars it's worth asking why do these make for such an apt metaphor we think we know why and the answer leaves us increasingly convinced that contemporary capitalism has gotten to be too capitalism-y even for our libertarian pals matt and trey we'll explain by its very nature capitalism demands a limitless economic growth indeed one study found that a steady state zero growth economy is simply not feasible within the social relations of capitalism as economist william strauss writes of life under capitalism economic growth is the bottom line we expect sustained and continuous growth if an economy is not growing there's something wrong with it incidentally every time someone reads that quote out loud a little ronald reagan gets its horns and according to scholar wendy lynn lee in her book econism profit is not only its object but its existential condition commodities form the oxygenating corpuscles of its bloodstream money the bone marrow of its ligature hence the object of every business plan is not merely growth but to grow the body of capital forever or die say what you will about wendy lynn lee but she has bars we see this mentality at play in this special when stan and tolkien are asked to produce ten thousand boats for their ruthlessly ambitious custler i want ten thousand of your little boats and i'll pay you fifteen thousand dollars they set to work and somehow managed to reach their goal but they gotta know popsicle boats can't scale forever that's because the mentality of growth runs up against a very simple reality we live on a finite planet as lee explains this then is capital's irresolvable contradiction it must grow beyond what the planet can sustain and it cannot do so that the planet is a found of endless resources is a myth no future worth wanting can sustain or even reform its inherently rapacious conquest for marketable commodities while the productive capacity of our planet is limited the consumptive desires of the homo sapiens on it are not after world war ii america sustained its wartime levels of production which created a problem businesses needed to generate enough consumption for everything that was being made advertising balloon using tools gleaned from psychoanalysis to ferment endless desire for consumer goods or fancy astroturf lawns to surround your ranch-style house the consumption spurred on by this process has since become responsible for over 70 of america's gdp the book affluenza invites us to contrast that with say resource scarce 18th century japan during which a culture of contraction emphasized quality over quantity and human knowledge over material things don't waste resources be grateful and respectful was the roughly translated motto the idea of production for production's sake is all over south park's critique of the streaming wars the boys lament that they're just making stuff to make stuff and witness the quality of their product diminishing the more they're forced to scale and cut corners not unlike the way netflix has dropped hundreds of films in recent years most of which are frankly not the most good and here the party never stops eventually a sugar high butters wonders frantically if it even matters what quality of stuff they produce at all and they don't give a [ __ ] how good anything is when the people who made all the deals they don't give a [ __ ] because they're all gonna get fired anyway you know just like production for production's sake the idea of consumption for consumption's sake and a complete disregard for how we use resources is all over south park in recent specials the second the water turns back on we see a wasteful parade of lawn watering car washing and sprinkler prancing with valid reason what about our homeowners association rules this isn't much of a caricature in average lifetime each american consumes 40 million gallons of water for personal industrial and agricultural purposes researchers mathis whackernagel and william reese determined that if all people live like the average american we'd need five more planets meanwhile the demand for even more boats is akin to our demand for ever more streaming content to consume and one of the grand promises of capitalism is just that endless variety endless consumer choice endless ways to consume but as our friend pp quickly learns endless consumer choices may be more dizzying and annoying than anything else infinite options like infinite streaming platforms to pay 10 bucks a month for might not be that desirable after all there's a too many streaming services there's a streaming service for this and a streaming service for that peepee came to find his staffer so where are we left in our world of overproduction and over consumption according to lee nowhere good she writes that conquest capital devours and digests values ethical civic and aesthetic reducing each to that single value without which it can either replicate itself nor grow exchange in so doing it generates a state of affairs that can only rightfully be described as pathologically nihilistic again she has bars according to philosopher elon baju nihilism is fittingly that murderous avatar of desire for the west meaning that when capitalism erodes all values and aren't connected with profit and consumption we end up in a culture of nihilism where nothing means anything except the bottom line that's certainly what stan's thinking when he quickly agrees to kessler's deal despite probably knowing that it's not in the best economic interest of his family when we have no tangible values beyond the logic of capital we're left in pretty grim straits at the same time we know we're using up our planet's finite resources yet we can't stop pursuing constant growth in this way according to lee capitalism destroys its own existential conditions through the wholesale commodification of the finite ecosystems upon which it depends i.e capitalism sets the ladder it's using to get to heaven on fire in the scramble for south park's water these landowners aren't fixing any long-term problems caused by global man-bearing they're merely capitalizing off of a resource shortage that's been caused by big industry in the first place they don't see this crisis as a crisis but has an opportunity if we wanted to depress you we'd mention that this is happening in real life scholar mackenzie funk documents the rise of private business finding ways to profit from our dramatically changing planet in his book windfall the booming business of global warming that's right corporations have destroyed the earth and now they're going to make bank off of it see also our video on carbon capture in which a stanford scientist explains how companies are making profits off our climate disaster take water which is going to become an increasingly valuable commodity conservative economists are already proposing the creation of a more robust water market that relies on well pure market rules rather than continuing to have the state or federal governments subsidize it this is enticing to investors as citigroup's chief economist says water as an asset class will in my view become eventually the single most important physical commodity-based asset class dwarfing oil among other valuable commodities the very wealthy are already investing in and water-based hedge funds like summit global management are pouring billions of dollars into it as they also buy up billions of gallons of river water and other privatized water utilities as they plan for a future where we're all really [ __ ] thirsty as historian mark reisner puts it water flows up hill to money this approach profiting off of an ecological crisis is exemplified in the presumably pasta loving character of pee-pee the amusement park owner knows very well that man bear pig will get him one day but gleefully points out man pig eventually he's gonna kill everybody he's just gonna kill you first and the nihilism of unchecked capitalism there's no truth behind your bottom line and there's nothing else to do but accumulate more wealth and when all the water is gone there's only one thing left for people to use the one thing that a pee-pee have more than everybody huh and wait for the day man bear pigs send you out for one final ride down the water slide unless of course you're eric carpenter don't worry we didn't forget about him carmen's tireless desire for something cool to happen also makes him something like the id of capitalism in his longing to upgrade his life by moving into kessler's mansion he tries to convince his mom to get just just stupidly big breast implants this is not unlike the way so many advertisements target women's bodily insecurities convincing them they're just one brazilian butt lift away from the life they dream of and if cartman is pure unbridled capitalism cartman's mom functions as a kind of avatar for the american consumer who's determined not to get swindled or outsmarted again and as a sign perhaps that there might be hope for south park and for all of us she gets the best of cartman this time at least for now and cartman for his part ends up with massive boobs cause you gotta commit to the bid but what do you guys think are matt and trey becoming increasingly skeptical of capitalism the richer they get are we capable of thinking about anything outside of a framework of profit and the accumulation of wealth or is everything just royally [ __ ] let us know in the comments huge thanks to our patrons for all your support and check out our revamped patreon page today and be sure to check out our new stream wisecrack live right here every thursday at 11am pacific maul that subscribe button like you're a man bear pig disemboweling a water supervisor and don't forget to ring that bell and as always thanks for watching later [Music] you