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Thomas Sowell...Why Do Socialist Liberals Always Blame Poverty on the Rich? · Gil I Am

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Quote quoting Bernie Sanders.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: While there are some great corporations, this is the question
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: of causation versus blaying. While there are some great corporations
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: trying to do the right thing. In my view, and
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: I say this very seriously, the greed of the billionaire class.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Greed.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: This is not supposed to be funny. He just I
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: say this very seriously. The greed of the billionaire class,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: the greed of Wall Street, is destroying.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: The lives of millions of Americans. Close quote. What do
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: we make of that?
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: It's astonishing. But I think even more astonishing is how
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: many people voted for Bernie Sanders at a time where
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: in socialist Venezuela people are starving. They're breaking into stores
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: and they're desperation to get some food. They're crossing the
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: borders into the other countries to stay off starvation in
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: a country that as one of the world's largest supplies
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: of oil. That they've managed to do that country and
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: people are so utterly insulated from facts that the fact
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: that Bernie Sanders paints a very beautiful picture is all
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: that matters.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: It is not the origins of poverty which need to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: be explained. What requires explaining are the things that created
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: and sustained higher standards of living.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Well, there are actually books with titles and subtitles about
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: the origins of poverty. Well, the entire human species began
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: in poverty. So I don't know how we're to say
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: what is the origin of this? Perhaps in the guarden
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: of eden Us or someplace. But more than that, more
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: than more than that, you're trying to explain why some
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: countries are poor, rather than try rather than trying to
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: explain why other countries are more prosperous. Uh, there's no
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: explanation needed for poverty. That the species began in poverty.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: So what you really need to know is how what
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: are the things that enable some countries and some groups
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: within countries are to become prosperous?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, further continuing that point, I just wanting to dig
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: out this sort of big overriding theme again. I'm quoting wealth, poverty,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: and politics quote. One of the key implicit assumptions of
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: our time is that many economic and social outcomes would
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: tend to be either even or random. Everybody would finish
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: up in the same place if left to the natural
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: course of events, so that the strikingly uneven and non
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: random rich people, poor people, rich countries, poor country. The
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: strikingly uneven a non random outcome so often observed in
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: the real world imply some adverse human intervention close quote
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: why is that? Why has that become an implicit assumption
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: so common that you need to bat it down again
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: and again in this book?
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Well, why is that? Something you have to ask the
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: people who believe that. But but if you're asking, doesn't
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: have any validity, And the easy answer is no that
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: if you start just with geographic things, geography is not
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: even the rivers of the world are not equally usable
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: by human beings. One example the Zaya River, which starts
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: in central Africa and goes great distances to the ocean.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: It has more water than the Mississippi, but it's not
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: as valuable as the Mississippi because it has all sorts
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: of waterfalls, cascades and so on. So there's only a
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: certain distance you can go on the Zaya River. I mean,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: it's a more picturesque river, but twenty economists it's awful
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: because it means that you've isolated great numbers of people
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: in a period of about one hundred and fifty miles there,
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: I forget some huge number of cascades and waterfalls adding
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: up to a drop of about one thousand feet. On
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: the Mississippi, the river bed goes down four inches per mile.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: Those are different rivers. But everything is different. The ground
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: is different, the air is different, everything.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Okay again, I'm quoting.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Continuing on this theme, the implicit assumption of evenness or
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: randomness of outcomes in the absence of human interventions has
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: been enough to turn a search for causation into a
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: search for blame.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Where do you find that?
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: Well, if all the background conditions are such as would
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: lead to equality of outpop Colm, and you find great inequalities,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: then somebody must have messed with it. Right. But as
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: an economic historian David Landy said, you know, the world
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: has never been a level playing field. Is not a
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: level of playing field, geographically, culturally, politically, you name it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: It's not all right, Tom, I am hoping to use wealth,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: poverty and politics. I'm hoping to use this conversation to
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: apply the lessons of wealth, poverty and politics to the
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: current American scene. And have you tell me what to
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: think about certain statements and certain well you'll get the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: idea Here's a quotation from Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: who nearly won the Democratic presidential nomination.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Quote quoting Bernie Sanders.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: While there are some great corporations, this is the question
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: of causation versus blame. While there are some great corporations
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: trying to do the right thing. In my view, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I say this very seriously, the greed of the billionaire
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: class greed. This is not supposed to be funny. He
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: just I say this very seriously. The greed of the
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: billionaire class, the greed of Wall Street, is destroying.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: The lives of millions of Americans. Close quote. What do
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: we make of that?
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: It's astonishing. But I think even more astonishing is how
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: many people voted for Bernie Sanders at a time where
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: in socialist Venezuela, people are starving, They're breaking into stores
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: and they're desperation to get some food. They're crossing the
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: borders into other countries to stay off starvation in a
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: country that has one of the world's largest supplies of oil.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: That they've managed to do that in that country, and
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: people are so utterly insulated from facts that the fact
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: that Bernie Sanders paints a very beautiful picture is all
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: that matters.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: One of the themes in wealth, poverty and politics isolation.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You talk, You've already spoken a little bit about geography, isolation.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: You do this a dozen different times. You take different
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: aspects of reality, economic reality, and explain how they affect
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: economic development. So here's but of course we only have
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: time for a few but here isolation.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Quote.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Isolation is a recurring factor in poverty and backwardness around
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the world. Close quote, and you note that people who
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: live in mountains Afghanistan, Appalachia. You couldn't ask for more
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: separated mountain communities, and yet you see much the same
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: kind of backwardness, isolation per se leading to backwardness.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: Explain that, Well, I don't so much explain explain it
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: as I simply give enormous numbers of examples of it,
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: the mountain people being one. People who are living in
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: isolated islands like the Canary Islands. Back back in the
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: fifteenth century, when the Spaniards conquered the Canary Islands, they
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: found the people there living as people had lived in
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: the Stone Ages in Australia, very similar things. When the
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: British arrived there in the late eighteenth century, they found
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: the Australian Aborigines living again as people lived had lived
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: elsewhere in the Stone Ages. You find on to wherever
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: they are enclays of groups that are isolated from what
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: other groups are doing. That you find the same thing,
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: socially isolated, politically isolated. For whatever reason. What it suggests
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: to me is that an individual really can do very
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: little without a great number of other things, including what
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: he learns from other human beings. And if you have
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: some group of three thousand or two thousand living in
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: some mountain village, whether in Italy or Cashme or wherever,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: you're not going to find them keeping abreast of people
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: who are living in port cities and in touch with
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: the whole rest of the human race.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, so trade is important, yes, all right,