The Inescapable Neoliberal Bias Behind ‘Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell'
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The YouTube channel Kurzgesagt [kurts·guh·zaakt] — In a Nutshell advertises itself as a science-based educational platform. It has over 17 million subscribers, and each one of its videos averages millions of views. It's one of the most-watched science channels globally, and it covers every topic, from the origins of consciousness, to how to create solar engines. CEO Philipp Dettmer claims that the channel's goal is "to spark curiosity….to inspire people to do very, real research for themselves." This aim is undeniably a good thing. We should encourage people to learn more about our world.
It should also be noted that the quality of these videos is beyond superb. Each one involves a narrator breaking down complex topics as cutesy animated ducks act as our visuals (seriously, I love these ducks). I have found their videos to be an excellent place to start for certain topics. The research underpinning them is far more in-depth than your average YouTube video — something that should be applauded.
However, there is a philosophy underpinning most of these videos that's more than simply "the scientific method." While they claim to be science-driven about the positions they have taken, the Kurzgesagt company that makes these videos has a worldview that fosters market-based, arguably "neoliberal" solutions when it comes to tackling humanity's biggest problems.
They are not "objective" — if such a thing is even possible — when it comes to the presentation of the stories they tell, and that is something viewers should be mindful of when they watch these videos.
When we talk about science, it's very easy to devolve into a "well, that just what the data says" kind of argument. This position is where proponents try to divorce the philosophical assumptions baked into how people interpret the data from a particular source, and we see that sort of reasoning happening here with Kurzgesagt videos as well. As the narrator in the video Can You Trust Kurzgesagt Videos? says of the company's process when forming opinions:
“When we express an opinion, we market it as such. That’s not saying that we don't draw conclusions from the research. Homeopathy does not work and meat is really bad for the planet. Climate change is real but organic food is not a good way of solving it. If the facts clearly support a conclusion its OK to present it as such.”
The problem with this assertion is that the use and study of science is never objective, especially when new information conflicts with well-established worldviews. Facts can retrospectively turn out to be very subjective. One infamous example is scientist Charles Darwin's position on sex. Darwin argued that evolution made man "superior" to women (he was an incel before it was cool, you guys). None of his arguments were particularly compelling, even given the information presented at the time, but his ideology warped his reading of the data to reinforce existing biases. In this case, that only Chads could get laid.
No one is immune from this type of distortion. Our ideologies always affect how we see the world, including Kurzgesagt, which uses its platform to often reinforce the current political and philosophical consensus (i.e., the promotion of "neoliberalism" or the belief in free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending.). This stance leads to overwhelmingly technocratic and market-oriented positions, often excluding all dissident opinions out of hand as unrealistic (if they are mentioned at all).
For example, in their video Overpopulation & Africa, the narrator describes how promoting education, better healthcare, and contraception will reduce poverty. The video asserts a direct link between "overpopulation" (a term as nebulous as my dating life) and poverty. This theory is a popular, albeit highly controversial position; we don't have time to go into depth here.
In short, focusing on "overpopulation" is a framing that ignores the impact of those populations' economic systems. Maybe it's not the population itself that's the problem, but how those societies distribute resources. And, you know, maybe how they have been taken advantage of by other societies (cough, cough imperialism) to obtain said resources is also a problem. For those curious about learning more about the problem with the "overpopulation" framing, I recommend reading Martin Empson and Ian Rappel's essay on the topic for more details on why this position might not be so straightforward.
What's noticeable here is how Kurzgesagt describes this reduction in population. The most prominent example given in the video is about the population decline in Bangladesh, which is described as being in service to economic productivity rather than to reduce human suffering:
“This also changed [Bangladesh’s] demographics and the economy. Before, many children were born but died before they got to contribute to society. As fewer kids die and fewer kids are born, things change. Kids get an education and turn into productive adults. The government was able to shift some of their resources from lowering child mortality to boosting the economy.”
The ingrained assumption in this example is that increased economic production in a capitalist economy is a natural good we all should be striving for. The problem presented here is not that children died — although I'm sure they would agree child mortality is awful — but that they died before becoming workers, preventing productivity from "trickling down" to the rest of society. The video touts how Bangladesh is expected to move from being one of the "least developed countries" to "developing" as the successful endpoint of this strategy.
Now you may agree with that as a goal, but the point here is that it's more about pushing towards a particular ideological outcome than about being objective scientifically. Poverty is not like the study of physics: its solution and even its definition are hotly debated by different economic schools (something this video ignores completely).
Some other examples in Kurzgesagt’s repertoire are far more explicit about their support of neoliberalism. In the video What do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale, the narrator goes in length explaining how traits that allow humans to be successful in our current economic system are "natural." They then speculate, with some caveats, about how these traits will most likely be shared by any advanced alien civilization as well, saying:
“We know that humans are curious, competitive, greedy for resources, and expansionist. The more of these qualities our ancestors had the more successful they were in the civilization building game. Being one with nature is nice but its not the path to irrigation systems or gunpowder or cities. So its reasonable to assume that aliens able to take over their home planet also have these qualities.”
This perspective is not in any way scientific. The anthropological and biological data about humans being inherently greedy and expansionist are inconclusive. There have been a diversity of different social structures throughout human history. We have no idea if all of these structures would lead to our present reality, and short of running a simulation of all human civilization and going through all the variables, finding out is impossible. Those sorts of experiments are well beyond our capabilities at the moment (that is unless Elon Musk has some projects he hasn't let us know about yet).
Here, Kurzgesagt is working backward. They are starting with the assumption that humans are inherently greedy and expansionist, using contemporary, western civilization as a template, and then advancing that spurious claim to talk about how all sentient life in the universe will behave this way as well. These assumptions, of course, reinforce current models of colonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism, making them appear natural and commonsense.
This logic not only ends up creating videos that uphold the values of neoliberalism but serves as the mouthpiece of the very powerful as well.
A video Kurzgesagt released recently called Can YOU Fix Climate Change? talks about many of the problems and issues they perceive with the climate change discourse. This video has many good points, such as how the idea of a carbon footprint is conservative marketing, but things get very wishy-washy when we come to the Solutions section. They quickly dismiss any solution outside of capitalism, saying:
“Some argue that a move away from capitalism is the only solution to this mess. Others insist that markets should be freer without any interventions like subsidies. And some suggest that we need what’s referred to as ‘degrowth’ and to cut back as a species overall. But the truth is, at least as of now, no political system is doing an impressive job of becoming truly sustainable and none have really done so in the past.”
This dismissal doesn't make much sense since we only have one major economic system right now. It is not a serious attempt to weigh the merits of different approaches but rather is meant to segue the video to more traditional, neoliberal solutions. Despite claiming that you cannot make an individual difference tackling this systemic issue, the video ends by saying: "So this is basically what you can do. Vote at the ballot, and vote with your wallet." The video further argues that more affluent viewers should spend their money on emerging technologies like electric cars and solar panels. It's using the rhetoric of more radical movements while advocating for very conservative policy proposals.
Unsurprisingly, the sponsor of this video is billionaire Bill Gates's blog Gates Notes, which just so happens to be advertising a book on the front page called How To Avoid A Climate Disaster. And whaddya know? The book advertises many of the same solutions proposed in this video:
“Although we have a number of cost-competitive low-carbon solutions today, we still don’t have all the technologies we need to get to zero emissions globally…[the solution] is [for the government] to invest in R&D when the private sector won’t because it can’t see how it will make a profit. Once it becomes clear how a company can make money, the private sector takes over.”
Here, Gates argues for technocratic, market-based solutions to climate change, ultimately advocating for more investment and innovation. His approach is divorced from any political or economic reforms that would challenge the status quo. Instead, he asks for the governments of the world to simply tweak the market so it can work better — an attitude that aligns very closely with the one that seems to underpin all of Kurzgesagt's content.
In fact, the similarities with Gates don't end here. Gates is an avid supporter of the channel. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a $570,000 grant to the company in 2015, which led to the creation of at least seven videos (one of them being the Overpopulation & Africa video we already mentioned). These videos are rooted in the same philosophical foundation we see prevalent throughout Kurzgesagt's discography. To be clear, CEO Philipp Dettmer and his compatriots are probably not in cahoots with Bill Gates, scheming on ways to enhance this billionaire's chosen narrative. It's more than likely that they share a similar philosophical foundation, which creates a positive feedback loop where they are rewarded for advancing views palatable to the very powerful.
Gates isn't bankrolling other YouTube educators such as PhilosophyTube, and that's because the latter's aesthetic is far more critical of the wealthy as a class. I have seen no BreadTube creators getting a hundred thousand dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We cannot pretend that this is simply about advancing the public's literacy with complex topics. The ideology they are advancing matters too, a reality that is reflected in how Kurzgesagt is funded.
While Kurzgesagt has a Patreon that partially funds their production, they not only get grants from the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but have also opened up an agency that creates video projects for the likes of Audi, NeverThink, and BitDefender. This content sounds educational, but it largely serves as ads for various products such as cars and security systems. Kurzgesagt has a material interest in producing content that doesn't offend these interests. So that limits the types of criticism they can levy — as their climate change video's hesitancy to explore solutions outside the market and voting aptly demonstrates.
Yes, the creators of Kurzgesagt probably aren't going to advance those solutions anyway because of their ideology, but the material conditions around them also reinforce it. This feedback loop leads to the creation of content distorted by our society's current biases (whether those biases are admitted to or not).
Educational content is tricky in our modern information ecosystem because it is often understood as being intrinsically good. We reward creators such as the VlogBrothers and Mike Rugnetta, who demystify topics so that everyday people can understand them. However, the ideology underpinning how that information is explained and demystified is equally important to the information itself.
As a more extreme example, PragerU is a conservative education channel on YouTube that attempts to explain political and economic subjects ranging from the Antebellum South to Climate Change. Their conservative ideology, however, often warps how they present that information. Much of the videos they put out there are wildly inaccurate, as the YouTuber Shaun frequently demonstrates.
Kurzgesagt is not as bad as PragerU — not even close (please don't at me in the comments). They have the genuine desire to demystify science, which is a good goal everyone should be able to stand behind. We need more scientific literacy, and I want to stress that I don't want readers to walk away with the message that Kurzgesagt is no better than other conservative "educators" out there. I bring this example up to highlight that your political philosophy impacts how you break down and simplify information. It's never as simple as presenting the facts — your ideology can sometimes make the facts.
In a nutshell, Kurzgesagt has several biases that they have not accounted for regarding economics and politics, which leads to them prioritizing technocratic, market-based solutions and framings over everything else. This perspective doesn't make them awful, but it does mean that they have noticeable blindspots we should keep in mind when watching their content.
P.S. — In the improbable chance that someone from the Kurzgesagt team has read this essay, know that I still think your videos are pretty cool, and I would love to discuss these issues further with you.