Latest / Yaron Brook Show / Answering Capitalism’s Critics #3: Hasan Piker — “Technofeudalism” | Yaron Brook Show

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Answering Capitalism’s Critics #3: Hasan Piker — “Technofeudalism” | Yaron Brook Show · Yaron Brook Show

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: This is the Yaron Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to Yaron Brook Show on this Saturday, September 5th. I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: hope everybody is having a fantastic weekend. Um, we are
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: going to do today's show is, is a part of
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: our series on, uh, ancient capitalism's critics. Uh, this is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the third one in the series and, uh, we will
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: keep going. Uh, I mean, the good thing about the series,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the bad thing about the series is there's, there's no
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: shortage of critics. There's just an endless stream of critics.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: There's no end to it. And so we will, we
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: will continue doing this. It doesn't seem to, uh, It
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem possible to educate these people about the value
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of capitalism and the truth about capitalism and criticism. I mean,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: they repeat themselves, so there will be a lot of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: repetition in this series, but they're constantly new people putting
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: new spins and new perspectives, and we will do this
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: once a week for the foreseeable future, taking on these critics.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: If you come across a video uh, of, uh, of
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: a talk, an interview, uh, somebody talking about capitalism, talking
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: about ideas about capitalism and criticizing capitalism in some way
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: or the other, send it to me, send it to me, uh,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: yuran at yuranbookshow.com, yuran at yuranbookshow.com. Uh, if you find
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a video that you think is worthy of, um, commenting on, then, uh, yep, send, uh,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: send it my way. Um, Yeah, so I think I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: know what the next video is going to be. I
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: bumped that one in order to do Hasan Paika this
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: week because this video popped up and it's about a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: week old and it's Hasan Paika's all over the news.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: He is a big shot. He is a kingmaker among
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the far left. And as you'll see, he's well-spoken. He
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: wears a tie. He has a jacket. You know, he
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: looks good. He looks good. And he is probably the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: number one spokesman of the far left today in America,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and therefore worth talking about, worth debunking at every opportunity possible.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of the interview lands up that he's talking
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: about Israel, and he's talking about American foreign policy, which
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: is not what I want to talk about, so I'll
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: be skipping We'll talk about just a few short segments
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: where he goes after capitalism, but the things he says are, again,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: worthwhile discussing because they represent kind of a much larger
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: view out there about capitalism, about the world in which
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: we live, not just about capitalism, because a lot of
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: this is ignorance about life and about the world. And
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: we will see that. Let me just see if everything
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: is on. Yeah, as we do this, please let me
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: know if there's any audio issues. I've been told that
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: there was some echo on the video that I did
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: when I commented on JD Vance. So I want to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: make sure that there's no echo as we listen to Pica.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So put in the chat if the audio is good, bad, echo, whatever.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I can do about an echo,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: but at least we can play around with some stuff
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and see and check it out. All right. Anything I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: need to cover before we jump in? I don't think so.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Let's jump in. This is an interview Hasan Paika did
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: about a week ago, seven days ago. To be exact,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: we're now on September 5th on the Breakfast Club Power.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Breakfast Club Power, 105.1 FM. This was Hasan Paik on techno-feudalism,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: replacing capitalism, anti-Zionism, and more. That's the title of the podcast.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I assume everybody can see it. And sounds
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: and looks good for me. Yeah, I haven't played. My
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: worry is when the video, a pike are talking, if
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: there's an echo then. I know that when I'm speaking,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: the sound is pretty good. So let me know when
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I stop playing, which will be right now, whether you
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: can hear it well, whether the volume is good, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: whether there is any kind of echo or anything of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that nature. All right, let's start the video. Let me
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: just move this. Let me just get this all logistically,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: get everything lined up so we can do this. And there,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: and I'm pressing play. And you should see it when
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I press play. And let me know about the sound.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: The way I put it is... there's a lot of
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: potential in this world and I think we're squandering it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Um, there's a lot of potential in this world that,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: that is never unlocked because of which zip code someone
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: was born into or, uh, at the, at the global level,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: which country someone was born into.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Now, notice how he's facing this. And I think, I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: think this is his strength. I think this is one
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: of the ways, um, About my mic is about to
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: peak sometimes, so I could lower the gain on my mic, certainly.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But how did he sound? How did Hasan Piker sound?
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Was there any echo, anything like that? The echo is present? Okay,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: did all of you hear the echo? I am curious
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: if you guys are hearing the echo. Let's lower the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: gain on my mic. All right. So I'm not getting
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: any response from you guys on the chat, except for
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: one guy. Gail says it's good. Adversary said there was
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: an echo. Let's play this again. I might even rewind
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: it a little bit further back just to get some
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of the context of what he's being asked about. and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: then we can talk about his answer. So if anybody
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: out there is on the chat, has an opinion about
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: whether there's an echo, let me know, one way or
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the other.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: More about being a democratic socialist, because to me, I
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: thought being a democratic socialist meant you want economic power
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: just to shift from corporations to working class individuals. You
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: want the wealthy to be taxed. You want market regulations.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: That's what I would... Yeah, no, for sure. That's definitely
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: one form of it. And there's numerous different designs for
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: how to move this economy in a more productive way.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: The way I put it is there's a lot of
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: potential in this world.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So notice how he's going to phrase this, right? Okay,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: so some of you are hearing a slight echo Some
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of you are saying it's fine. Yeah, Richard says he
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: heard an echo. I don't know why. I've got echo
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: cancellation on. God, I need an audio engineer. Is there
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: an audio engineer in the house? Is somebody out there?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: What can I, how can I put it? Is there
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: somebody listening to this podcast at any point in time?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be live. do we have a, um, a, uh,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: an audio engineer out there somewhere who is willing to
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: consult with me on how to, how to deal with
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: these issues? Cause it is a little ridiculous that I
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: keep facing these issues. I'm using the best software. I'm
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: using the best hardware and somehow I'm not managing to
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: get rid of these, uh, these technical issues. So I'm,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: I'm obviously not doing it right somehow. So, um, If
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: there's an audio engineer out there willing to pay, you know,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: let me know. Echo isn't bad, isn't good enough, right?
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, we need a frigging, I need to get
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: this done right so that the quality of the Iran
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: book show is high, not just not bad. Anyway, here's
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the thing about Assan Paik. Assan Paik is clever about
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: how he presents things, particularly when he's on somebody else's show.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: He's not on his own show. He's not, I don't know,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: zapping his dog. He's not swearing and mulling off. When
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: he's on a show and he's wearing a tie and
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: he's got the jacket on, he's very well spoken. And
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: one of the ways in which he presents the ideas
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: of democratic socialists of America is this. He says, and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you'll see this, right? You'll see this, that he's going
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: to say, Look, there's a huge amount of potential out there.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: among all these poor people in the world. There's 8
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  Speaker 1: billion people on the planet, and they have the potential
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: to do great things. Among the 8 billion people, a
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: lot of them are incredibly productive. He's not going to
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: talk about the geniuses as exceptional because he doesn't believe
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: in that, but there's just a lot of potential for
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: them to be happy and successful and And so on,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: there are lots of, and they're not because they're poor.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And because they, but, so he believes that democratic socialism
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  Speaker 1: is tapping those people, giving them money, capital, which they
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: haven't earned, in order to be able to live happy, successful,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: successful in quotation marks, lives. And that sounds so nice.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: It sounds so benevolent. He cares about the poor. So
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I have a slight echo. That's probably just the room
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I'm in. The echo is just, I can hear it.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: It's just the room I'm in. The question is, is
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: there an echo from Pica, not is there an echo
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: from me? There's nothing I can do about the fact
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that this room is not particularly good when it comes
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to sound. It's just a box, right? All right, so
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: let's listen to some Pica. and uh and pick up
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: pick up on this kind of attempt you know all
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  Speaker 1: we care about is just raising up the poor we
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: just want the poor to be better.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Off old and i think we're squandering it right um
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of potential in this world that that
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: is never unlocked because of which zip code someone was
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: born into or uh at the at the global level
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: which country someone was born into if you're born in
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: on one side of a made-up boundary that we created,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: and you're being dominated by countries like America or even
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Israel in the circumstance, it's a lot harder for you
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: to unlock your full potential.
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  Speaker 1: So notice what he's done here, right? So the fact
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  Speaker 1: that there are poor people in the Congo or there
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: are poor people in all of Africa or in parts
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: of Asia, or there were poor people for many, many decades,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in Mao's China or in the Soviet Union, for that matter,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: their poverty and the fact that they can't rise up
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  Speaker 1: from poverty is not the fault of the system they
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  Speaker 1: live under. It's not the fault of the institutions that
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  Speaker 1: they live under, the government that they live under, the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: oppression that they live under, the dictators that they live under. No,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: those people are never at fault. The reason people around
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the world do not have the kind of opportunity that
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: we would like them to. Look, hey, I want to
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: unlock the potential of the 8 billion people on the planet.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I absolutely want that. I think my life would be
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: dramatically better if 8 billion people around the world were free,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: could live up to their full potential as human beings.
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  Speaker 1: No question in my mind. My life would be better.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Your life would be better. We'd live in a better world.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And from an egoistic point of view, it would be fantastic.
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  Speaker 1: But that requires something. That requires capitalism. Capitalism is the
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  Speaker 1: system that unlocks the potential that people have. Capitalism is
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the system that takes poor people and by providing them
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: with protections, property right protections, and protections, protection from violence,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: from coercion, protecting their rights, their own life, and their
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: own liberty, and their own property. By doing that, it
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: unleashes the entrepreneurial spirit. It unleashes their protective capabilities, and
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: they rise up from poverty, and they live an amazing life.
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  Speaker 1: This is true in every single country that was unbelievably
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: poor and has become incredibly successful and rich, whether that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: country is Hong Kong or Singapore or or to some extent,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to a lower extent, Thailand or China, or certainly Taiwan
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: and South Korea, Japan, and the United States, where we
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: were once really, really poor. So the only way to
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: unlock the potential that is out there in the world,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: which I agree, it's a tragedy that it's locked up,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: is by unleashing capitalism. But you see, Pankaj's perspective is, No,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: the only reason these people are not thriving, the only
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: reason we're not living in a paradise, the only reason
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: we just don't have abundance of food and stuff and
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: money and prosperity and fun and enjoyment is America and Israel. Oh,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: fill in the blank. It's Western civilization. Western civilization is
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: holding people back. We're suppressing them. we're dominating them. And
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: that domination, not their own regimes, not their own dictators,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: not their own socialism, not their own fascism, not their
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: own anarchy, many places in Africa. No, it's all from
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the outside. And it's always the fault of the West.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: It's always the fault of the successful. It's always the
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: fault of America, Israel. America and Israel are just placeholders
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: for Civilization. I hate even calling it Western civilization because
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: somebody will accuse me of, I don't know, being a, what,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: East phobic or something. It's not about geography. It's about civilization.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It's about principles. It's about the ideas behind capitalism. The
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: ideas behind capitalism are what unlock the potential of poor
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: people everywhere around the world to flourish. And you see that, again,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: everywhere you try it, even a little bit, People are
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: better off than they were without it. The richer, happier,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: more productive, more successful. So I agree. Huge amount of
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: potential unlocked out there, and it's tragic, and it's sad.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Let's unlock the potential. But he can only think of
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: it in a frame of they're being oppressed. and this
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: is I don't want to mind you of kind of
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: what I've said about Rousseau in the past Rousseau has
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: this view that what what stops us from being happy
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: what stops us as individuals as human beings from flourishing
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: is civilization it's it's capitalism. It's the institutions of civilization.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: In the wild, when we are naked and not bound
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: by any civilizing processes, we are the happiest. And by
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the way, in the wild, we're also not individuals, we're
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: really collectives. We're groups or tribes. But that's the ideal.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So in order to achieve success, we need to get
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: rid of America. We need to get rid of police.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: We need to get rid of all the civilizing institutions
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that actually bring civilization. That would be Rousseau. And that's
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: kind of what Pica ultimately believes. It's what the Democratic
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Socialists of America believe. Get rid of all the institutions.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Let's all just huddle around the campfire and vote on
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: every decision, on every act that we're going to make, anything.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And anything that's going to happen to us, we'll just
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: vote around the campfire. Democracy, ultimately. It's democratic socialist America.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: They want everything democratized. Everything. I mean, 21st Century Motors,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: those of you who've read Atlas Shrugged, you know what
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Those of you who have not read
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Atlas Shrugged, go read it. And 21st Century Motors is
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: just one of the most amazing stories in that book.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And it's so real and it's so true. What happens
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to a business? What happens to a company? when it
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: shifts to functioning based on, quote, democratic principles, everybody gets
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a vote on every decision. It self-destructs. It has to.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: All right, let's keep going.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: And I see that everywhere that I go, and it's
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: very frustrating for me. So yeah, I want to make
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: sure that there is this real material equality as a
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: starting point that we offer to every single person, as
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: long as we have that capacity.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: So he wants a material starting point. Everybody should have
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: a starting point that's material, monetary. So it's not just
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: about they get a good education, they get that, everybody
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: should get money. Where does that money come from? Where
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: does that wealth come from? How do you make everybody equal?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: How do you give everybody an equal starting point? How
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: does that happen? Well, he's going to tell us, right?
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: He's going to tell us, and he says, look, you know,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: it depends on our ability to actually fund this, but
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: we in America, it's not hard to fund it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Starting point that we all to every single person, as
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: long as we have that capacity, and we certainly do
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: here in the United States of America. This is the
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: wealthiest nation on earth, and yet 700,000 people sleep outside
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: every night. They don't have a house.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So we're the wealthiest nation in the world, and therefore
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: we can give everybody an equal starting point, and yet 700,000
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: people sleep outside. It's not true. He's exaggerating for the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: sake of dramatic effect. Most of the people who are
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: homeless actually don't sleep outside. They have homeless shelters and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: they live in those shelters and they're not sleeping outside.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: A vast majority of the 700,000. So I think it's
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: only 200,000 or something like that sleeping outside, not quite
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: as dramatic as 700,000. But the point is we should be, yeah,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: we should be redistributing wealth and mass because we know
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: we know i mean we know that if we throw
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of money at homeless problem it goes away
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: because homeless problem is just an issue of money this
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: is why california who has spent billions and billions and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: billions and billions and billions of dollars on the homeless
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: problem that's why it solved the problem they're no more
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: homeless and homeless in san francisco and los angeles right
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: i mean no of course that's not right and uh
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: You know, and the money does not solve the homeless problem.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: You need solutions to homelessness. Private property would be one.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Cheap housing would be another. An abundance of jobs would
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: be another. And isn't it interesting that there are certain
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: regions in the country where there are no homeless people
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: or very few homeless people? where there's an abundance of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: jobs and when there's cheap housing, there seems to be
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: a lot fewer homeless people. When you announce that you're
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: going to hand out goodies, including housing, to homeless people,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: guess what happens? You get more homeless people. The more
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: money you throw at the problem, the more they are. Why? Well,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: because they're attracted to the incentives. If you're at the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: margin and you're living in a home, And it's just marginal.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: You're struggling to pay the rent. And somebody says, if
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you become homeless, there's a chance we'll give you a
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: free home. Yeah, I'll do that. Anyway, no solutions, just slogans.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: This is typical of people. And of course, is there 700,000
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: people who are homeless? Is that related to capitalism? Or
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: is that related to housing regulations? cost of housing? Is
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: that related to the fact that we completely destroy cheap housing?
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: You can't build cheap housing in America because of regulations.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Is that maybe somehow related to the fact that we
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: emptied out insane asylums completely in the 1980s? Is it
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: related to the war on drugs and the fact that
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: it's so expensive to have drugs that If you are
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a drug addict, you spend so much money on the drugs,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: you don't have money for rent. But let's not, you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: let's blame capitalism because the world in which we live
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: is a capitalist world and there are rich people over
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: there and there are homeless people over there and it
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: must be the rich people causing the homelessness. I mean,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: this is unthinking. It's no thinking going on. It's just stupidity.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Not stupidity. It's just a vision. Sorry. It's just a vision.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: You know, he's not... I mean, I've noticed this in
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the past about Hassan Taika in other stuff that he's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: talked about. He's both ignorant and not very smart. And
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that is a very dangerous combination. And yet he's articulate.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: He comes across as knowing a lot. He throws out
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of examples and a lot of numbers and
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: pseudo-sophisticated stuff. But it's all garbage. TVX Day says the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: cost of housing is because of capitalism. How's the cost
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: of housing high because of capitalism? Quite the opposite. If
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: you had capitalism, then there'd be more building because there's
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: demand for housing. There'd be more building, more demand for housing.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: An increased demand for housing would decrease the price of housing.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Housing should be much lower than it is, even in
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: places with high demand because supply... should match that demand. So, no,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: capitalism didn't cause home prices to go up. Capitalism is
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a solution for house prices going up to the extent
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that you need a solution. In capitalism, house prices going
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: up is not a problem. It's a signal. It's a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: signal to developers to build more houses. And when developers
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: build more houses, guess what happens to house prices? They
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: come down. This is what happened in Austin, Texas. Rent
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: prices have come way down in Austin.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Because they went way up during COVID. A lot of
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: people moved to Austin, and there was only a certain
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: number of apartments in Austin. So people moved there. Prices
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: went up. Supply and demand. We call it supply and demand.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Pretty basic stuff, right? And as prices went up, that
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: was a signal to developers to build more rental housing.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So they did. So what happened to prices? They came
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: way down. And there's an equilibrium at some point, right?
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: But the shock of suddenly increasing demand that raises prices
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: should not make those prices sticky. It should encourage building
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: more homes. And it takes time to build homes. You
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: can't build them in an instant. But once the homes
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: are built, prices should come down. And they did in Austin.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: They do in every single city that doesn't restrict building,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: like Houston, Texas, same thing. TVXQ says, because the goal
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: of capitalism is to maximize profit regarding other social costs.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: But that is the goal. The goal is to maximize profit.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: But the way markets work is they actually work to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: drive profit margins to basically zero, to excess profits of zero.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Above zero. economic returns to zero. That's exactly a process
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I'm describing. As rents go up, more supply comes on
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the market, which drives prices down and drives the profitability
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: of the rental market down. Competition drives profitability down. So yes,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: capitalism is all about profit. And the beauty of profit is,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: we'll get to that because Hassan Paik has something to
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: say about profit. The beauty of profit is, that I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: don't know what social costs means, but the beauty of
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: profits is that when you let everybody maximize profits, I mean,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: within the boundaries of morality, a morality of rational self-interest,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: not a morality of sacrifice, and within the boundaries of
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: laws against fraud, maximizing profits actually makes everybody who's willing
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to work and is productive in a society better off.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So there's a massive benefit to the profit bond, to profits. Indeed,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: without profits, without profit motive, housing prices would be much, much, much, much,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: much more expensive. Because when Austin, when rents went up
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: in Austin, nobody would have a desire to build more
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: houses in order to take advantage of those rents. They
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: wouldn't go and build more stuff and rental prices would
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: never come down.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: So where did I go? And it's very frustrating for me. So, yeah,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I want to make sure that there is this real
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: material equality as a starting point that we offer to
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: every single person, as long as we have that capacity.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: And we certainly do here in the United States of America.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Notice we have it. We have everything. Everything Hassan does.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Everything these socialists do. Everything these collectivists do. Everything. is we.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: It's all collectivized. There's no individual because there's no private property.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: So there's no they. It's not him. It's we. So
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: your wealth is our wealth.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: This is the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet 700,000
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: people sleep outside every night. They don't have a house.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's crazy. That's a policy failure, right? And
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: we can solve these problems, but the reason why we
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: choose not to It's the same exact reason why we
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: have a surplus of food supply in the world. And yet,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: you know, 14 million people die every year due to
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: famine-related disease.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Not true. 14 million dying due to famine-related diseases. Again,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: worth checking. Maybe ask Chachi PT. But a big number
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to exaggerate and to spike it. We have surplus food.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: What does surplus food mean? I guess people get obese.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: How is it that so many, you know, let's ask
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Chet GPT. Chet GPT. I mean, Hassan could do this.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Trend on global deaths from... malnutrition. When I type fast,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I type with lots of errors. So let's see if
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Chachapiti actually understands malnutrition as the word I actually typed.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: It'll be interesting if he can actually do that. It's
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: still working. Chachapiti takes his time thinking about these things.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: But the reality is, the death from malnutrition have been
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: in decline significantly, right? And why? Why is there an
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: abundance of food? Why is there a surplus of food?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the thing about socialists, the thing
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: about critics of capitalism. They take the state of the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: world as it is today, abundance. We have a lot
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: of food. Food is indeed plentiful in the world. They
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: take the existence of technology, They take the existence of
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the wealth. They take the existence of all the stuff
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: out there, all the material capabilities we have, all the
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: material wealth that we have, and they just assume it
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: was always there. It's assumed it dropped down from heaven
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: like manna. They assume that it just exists. But why
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: is there an abundance of food? There's abundance of food
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: because farmers motivated by, God forbid, the profit motive. The
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: profit motive. Which is... They have to evade all that.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: They have to think that the food just appears. But
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: food companies produce food. You know, they have vast, big,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: wealthy agricultural interests that make sure that we have abundant food.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And they do it to make money on your food.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: They're making money off of you eating something necessary for
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: human life. And they're making a profit over it. And
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: it works amazing. If you ever meet a supermarket in America,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it's stunning the amount of food and variety that we have.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: All a result. of the profit motive. The Soviet Union
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: didn't have a profit motive, and they lacked food. China,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Mao's China, had no profit motive. They had no food.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: You talk about dying of malnutrition? You talk about dying
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: of famine? Mao's China. Stalin's Ukraine. Tens of millions of
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: people died. What was the number he used? So right now,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: here's some numbers from ChatGPT. It's not giving me a
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: kind of longer historical kind of trend, but let me
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: read you what it does say. So deaths attributed to
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: child and maternal malnutrition fell from approximately 7.2 million in
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: 1990 to 2.9 million in 2019. It's about a 60% decline.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Guess why? Starts with a C. In 2021, approximately 2.4
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: million deaths among children under five were linked to child
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: or maternal malnutrition. That was roughly half of all under
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: five deaths under the age of five. The larger historical picture,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: according to CHPT, is therefore a genuine human progress story.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Despite major population growth, deaths connected to undernutrition, have fallen dramatically.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: But the remaining burden is heavily concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: South Asia, and countries affected by war or institutional collapse.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: And the rate of improvement has recently slowed. So, I mean,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Chet Chibiti gets it, right? Affected by war. Now, Assam
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Piker will claim America is responsible for every war out
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: there in existence. and affected by institutional collapse, probably because America,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the CIA, was scheming and forced the institutional collapse. So,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: food abundance. Food abundance is a consequence of capitalism. Food
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: abundance is a consequence of the profit motive. I mean, luckily,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: We don't treat food like we do health care. Oh, God,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: we can't have the profit motive in health care. If
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: we had the profit motive in health care, people would die. Well,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: what's the difference between food and health care? Both are
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: things we absolutely unequivocally need in order to survive. And yet,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: what capitalism has wrought in food is abundance. So, no,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: his numbers are fake, 17 million, completely fake. He makes
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: them up. Maybe he doesn't make them up. Maybe he
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: reads them from somebody else who makes them up. But
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: there's no basis for them in reality.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: And the reality is that as people actually discover property
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: rights and discover profit motive, they raise themselves out of poverty.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: You don't need... external people to solve the problem of starvation.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: The problem of starvation gets solved by changing the system
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: of governance under which you live. I mean, I've told
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: this story many times, but it's always worth repeating. Chinese village, 1979,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I think. Chinese village. I mean, this is a well-documented story.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the village, but you
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: can look this up. Just look, China village. you know,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: late 70s. Chinese village is starving. They can't produce enough
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: food to feed the people in the village. They're sending
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the kids out to other villages to go and beg.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: But of course, the other villages are not much better
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: than they are. And they're literally starving. People are dying
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: of starvation in this Chinese village. Now, it's a Chinese
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: village under communism. All the land and all production It's collectivized.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: And therefore, there's no production. Just ask Venezuela. Ask the
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union. Ask Ukraine under the Soviet Union. When you
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: collectivize farming, when you take away the profit motive from farming,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: what happens? You starve. You don't produce enough. Anyway, so
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the village adults get together and they say, look, we
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: have to solve this problem. let's do this, but it's
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: a secret. They write up kind of a contract in
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: which they say, they divide up the land that the
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: village has into parcels. Each family gets a parcel and
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: are responsible for cultivating that parcel of land. In a sense,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: they create a system of pseudo property rights. And they say,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: you know, everything up to what the Communist Party requires
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: us to send to them, we'll collectively send. But anything
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: that you have above and beyond that, you get to keep.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: You get to sell yourself. Profit motive. Profit motive. Yeah,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: profit motive. And they do that. And the next year,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: they have a harvest that's three times larger than the
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: one they had before. They can send the harvest in
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: to the Communist Party, meet their quota, and they've got
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: leftover stuff. And the Communist Party officials are suspicious. They
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: send the commissars down there to figure out what's going on.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: And they discover this contract. And the local communists are
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: ready to kill. to kill the village, to wipe it
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: off the face of the map, because, hey, they used
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: the profit motive and private property, and it worked, and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: we can't have that. And what happened was, luckily for them,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: is that Deng Xiaoping, who has just become leader of China,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: he was a pragmatist. He had abandoned the ideology of communism.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: He had realized what a disaster and a failure it
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: had been during the Cultural Revolution when you're sent down
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: to the farms by Mao Zedong. And he had realized it,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and he'd visited Japan, and he was blown away by Japan.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Japan blew him away in terms of the progress they
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: had made. And he basically came to the conclusion, we're
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: doing it wrong. And he said, no, leave this village alone.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Let's see if they can repeat it. And you know what?
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Let's try this in other villages. Let's bring the profit
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: motive and let's bring private property to these other villages
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: and see if it works there as well. Maybe make
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: sure it's not an anomaly, right? And they did. And
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: that's how you got a, again, pseudo privatization of Chinese farming.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And China today produces more than enough food to feed
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: its own population. After Mao starved it caused the starvation of,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what the number was, 20, 30 million,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: and people starving throughout Mao's realm, not just during that
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: one period in the 60s, when the massive famine happened,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: suddenly China becomes a place of food abundance because of,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: here's the word, the profit motive. Profit motive. So, yes,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: profit motive is what provides the abundance. It's not, if
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: you get rid of the profit motive, the abundance will, will,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: without any question, disappear.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: It's a matter of logistics. It's a matter of profit.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's, I mean, logistics, profit motive is what
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: solves logistics. Logistics don't solve themselves. Somebody has to solve it.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: And they have to have the right incentives to solve it.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't care about profit. I think it's ridiculous.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: And I think we need to scale that back dramatically
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: in the interim and then hopefully evolve away from our
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: current design, our current understanding of who the economy is
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: supposed to work.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: So here's Hassan Payka being, you know, completely revealing what
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: he's about. He hates profit. It's ridiculous. Profit is ridiculous.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: This is pure Marxism, right? Profit is ridiculous. the exploited
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: value from the workers, which is a complete mythology and
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a misunderstanding of economics and a misunderstanding of voluntary human
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: interaction of the trader principle. And, you know, Hassan Paika
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: is a Marxist. I mean, he's influenced by Marx in
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: significant ways. I mean, a lot of what he says
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: is just rehashed kind of fifth-grade Marxism. It's not particularly sophisticated.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: But what does he want? He wants, in the meantime,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: to reduce profits as much as possible, but ultimately wants
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: to eliminate a society where we eliminate profits. And we've
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: tried this. Soviet Union, Mao's China, tried this in Yugoslavia,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: we tried it in Albania, we tried it in Cambodia,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: we tried it in Vietnam. And all these systems led
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to nothing but death, destruction, starvation, and poverty. Socialism is
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: a system of death, destruction, starvation, and poverty. That's what
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: it is because there's no profit motive. And to have
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: a profit motive, you need private property. You need the
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: ability to retain the profit. Profit is meaningless without a
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: private property and property rights. I mean, it's pretty astounding
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: how ignorant people can be. I mean, again, he comes
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: across very well-spoken. But what he says is nonsense. Now,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: equality is right as a political principle. Equality of rights.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Equality of liberty. But material equality is impossible. Material equality...
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: would violate political equality because it would involve taking from some,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: using coercion of force on some in order to give
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: to others. And, you know, if you're concerned about the
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: potential of humanity, and I am, I am, I hate
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: the idea that there's still people who are poor in
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the world in which we live and in America in
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: which we live. And the solution to that is more
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: profit motives, more private property, more capitalism. Capitalism is the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: solution to poverty. You don't want equality. What you want
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: is to maximize opportunities. And the way to maximize opportunities,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the way to maximize the ability of people, the opportunities
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that people have to get out of poverty, the way
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: to do that is to get out of the way,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: to let markets rip, to let the profit motive rip,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Profit motive is the solution to poverty. It's not what
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: is holding people down. It's what brought people up. It's
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: why America is such a rich country. It's because we
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: have been the most capitalist country. Capitalism leads to abundance.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: It leads to wealth. And it leads to dramatic reductions
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: in poverty. Hey, um, Let's skip to this next section. God,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: we've got a couple of socialists on the chat today
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: who really, I mean, the ignorance of socialists is really stunning.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: It really is stunning, right? There wouldn't be billionaires without
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the workers who did the work for them. Really? I mean,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: here's the difference. Workers are interchangeable. You can replace workers.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: There are lots of workers. That's where their value is
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: relatively low because they contribute, as a unique individual, very
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: little because they can be replaced. Somebody who has an idea,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the passion, the energy, the risk tolerance, the strategic foresight,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: the organizational abilities of a, let's say, Jeff Bezos to
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: construct an Amazon. That's one. There's nobody like that. Nobody
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: else can replace him. You can't switch out Jeff Bezos
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: with somebody else, particularly not at the beginning. That's why
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: he's a billionaire. He's a billionaire because he brings something
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: to the table that cannot be replicated, cannot be replaced.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: And that is, that makes possible His idea, his energy,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: his risk-taking, his organizational abilities are what make possible then
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: millions of jobs. He makes possible millions of jobs. Any
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: particular worker on the line makes possible only his own job.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: That's why Bezos is worth a lot more than a
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: worker on the line. I mean, this is not difficult
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: to figure out. It's not just about risk. It's about ability.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: The walker on the line doesn't have the ability to
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: run Amazon. It's very rare. The ability to run a
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: big company? Very rare. The ability to create a big company? God,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: unbelievably rare. As rare as it is to be a
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: great scientist. The idea that businessmen are interchangeable, that businessmen, oh,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: we can replace businessmen with workers voting, is so ridiculous.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: You can't replace science with students voting. You can't replace
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: an Einstein. Well, people like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: other Einsteins of business. And they cannot be replaced. And
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: they're worth a lot. because of the value they create,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the jobs that they create. They create a lot of value.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: They make a lot of money. You basically own, in
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: a capitalist economy, what you produce, how much value you
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: create as an individual. A worker on the line creates
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: very little value in comparison with the CEO of the company.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: And the CEO of the company cannot be replaced, or
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: it's very difficult to replace him, And a worker on
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the line can be easily replaced. All right. I mean,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: somebody here is concerned about monopoly prices. Who cares? Even
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: if it's true, I don't think you understand what monopolies
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: are or property rights are or whatever any of these
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: things are. But who cares? I have no problem with
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: monopoly prices. All right. Let's listen to this next segment
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: of Hassan.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: And you can reason with them and you can explain
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: to them certain concepts they're going to get on board
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: with it and and they might even become advocates themselves
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: but they also want to have fun and if you're
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: running around telling people like no you are not allowed
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: to have fun because the current capitalist system is actually
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: uh devastating for the working class and if you actually
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: uh enjoy things if you watch a comedy special or
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: something you're participating in bourgeois decadence. Well, most people are
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: going to look at you and be like, that's weird.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Socialism is not a poverty cult. Socialism is not a
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: poverty cult.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Socialism is not a poverty cult. Isn't that interesting? I
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: think it is. It's absolutely a poverty cult. I mean,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: it's not a poverty cult with regards to the people
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: who advocate socialism, they seem to somehow manage. Although, you know,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: we're working on a documentary about Karl Marx, and he
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't very successful, and he had to live as a
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: moocher off of other people and never did very well.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe when Engels started giving him a regular allowance,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: he did okay, but he never did particularly well, not
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: as well as Assange Piker here has done. But socialism
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: is very much a poverty cult for other people. For
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: everybody who is going to live under socialism, socialism is
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: what produces poverty. Every country that has experimented with socialism
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: has either stagnated or reduced its standard of living and
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: quality of life. I mean, it's not true that socialism
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: is a system where everybody can enjoy life. Again, go
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: ask people who lived in the Soviet Union. Go ask
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: people who lived in Mao's China. I mean, it's, you know,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: silly is one way to think about it. But look, yeah,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: I'm all for people enjoying themselves. All for people enjoying themselves.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: I hope that many people find enjoyment in their work.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: And I think many people do. And a worker... receives
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: wages and benefits in exchange for agreed services. It's not
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: being exploited. The owner supplies capital, tools, organization, his skill,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: his time, his risk, his judgment, which cannot be replaced.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: And the products value, the thing that is being produced
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: is not determined by how much labor is being put
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: into it. That ridiculous notion of labor theory of value
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: that Marx held and many economists held before Marx has
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: been refuted. I mean, it's the value of the product
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: is going to be determined by the customer, by supply
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: and demand. Just like the value of their labor is
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: determined by supply and demand, not productive there. So, I mean,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: the idea that socialists just want to have fun yeah
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: at other people's.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Expense or the working class and if you actually uh
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: enjoy things if you watch a comedy special or something
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: you're you're participating in bourgeois decadence uh well most most
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: people are going to look at you and be like
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: that's that's weird it's not a socialism is not a
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: poverty cult socialism is not about taking a vow of
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: abstinence or taking a vow to never enjoy anything. It's
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: actually about making sure that everyone can enjoy things. Everyone
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: can have some autonomy in their workplace.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Except the people, except the capitalists, except the managers, except
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the owners, they don't have any autonomy. They can do
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: what they want, not under socialism. Under socialism, they are
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: under the thumb of the workers, the proletarians. They have
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: no autonomy. They don't get to enjoy anything. We want
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: everybody to have fun. That's the new socialist slogan. Tell
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that to the people of socialist countries.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: Better time off, better conditions overall, and pursue whatever hobbies
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: they want to pursue. Because what the hell is the
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: point at the end of the day? Are we just
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: on God's green earth to work every single day so
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: that someone else can make money off of your labor?
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: And then you So this.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Is, of course, the main Marxist argument, that somebody else
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: is making money off of your labor. No, you're trading.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Work is a trade. Labor is a trade. Trade is win-win.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: The reason you go to work is because you're getting
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: compensated for your time. And your time is worth to
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: you less than what you're getting. If it was worth
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: more to you, if your free time was worth more
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: to you than what you're getting from the employer, you
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: would stay home. So you're actually getting more than what
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: your time is worth to you. An employer is gaining
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: from your time. It's a trade. Win-win. Both parties are
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: better off because of the transaction. And the idea, again,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that there's some kind of exploitation here is so bizarre.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Given What the owner, the employer brings to the table,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: he brings to the table much more than what the
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: worker does. He works, most managers, owners work. Again, they
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: risk capital. They risk the business. They bring technological skills,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: organizational skills, which workers don't have. If they had that,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: they would become managers. And some of them gain those
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: skills and become managers and ultimately owners. That's the beauty
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: of the system. There's nothing to limit you, but those
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: are skills that have to be developed. So it's risk,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: it's time, it's effort, it's work. So there is no
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: exploitation going on here. The capitalist doesn't make money off
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: of the worker. He makes money by paying the worker.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: He makes money by producing stuff. He makes money by
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: organizing the worker. He makes money by providing the capital
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: so the worker can live. You know, when a company
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: is starting out, when a company is starting out, for years,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: a company might never make money. The owner, the entrepreneur,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: might never get any return on his capital. It could
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: go on for five, 10 years. A bio-tech company doesn't
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: become profitable for years and years and years, sometimes decades.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Yet the people who work in the company, every single
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: one of them, all the people who work in the company,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: they get paid. How do they get paid? Where does
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: that money come from? Not from the profits, not from
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: selling product, because for many years there's no product to sell.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: From the fact that the, quote, owner, the profit-seeking capitalist, entrepreneur, manager,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: from the fact that he's risking his own capital so
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: that one day maybe he'll be able to get a
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: return on it. In the meantime, he's funding all of
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: these people, their health care, their pension plans, their families,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: and he's giving them money. Who's exploiting who here? If
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: anybody's exploiting anybody, and nobody is, it's the worker exploiting
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: the capitalists. So yeah, again, rehash.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: You get nothing in return and the best you can hope.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Nothing in return. How about a salary, a wage, benefits,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: health insurance for one case, nothing in return, nothing advancements, knowledge, skill.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's another thing that will provide you knowledge
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: and skill. So you can advance and maybe you can
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: become an owner one day.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Four is like pay off your rent. And, and the
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: only way that you can actually.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Uh, So you can pay off your rents. I mean,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: you don't pay off rent, but pay. Yeah. So you
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: can pay the rent. Yeah, absolutely. She can live because
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: life is not automatic. Life is not just given to you.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Reach, you know, the last level is if you're someone
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: like myself or someone, people like yourselves as well, who
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: have basically won the lottery.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: So you won the lottery. Why? Because they're successful. Now,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: son of Piper comes from a wealthy family, but he's
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: also worked hard. I assume he's, he's, He has some skills.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: He has some knowledge. He's not easily replaceable. A lot
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: of people who'd like to be a Sunpiker can't replace him.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: He's making a lot of money. I wonder how much
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: he gives to charity, but put that aside. He's making
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. He's making a lot of money
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: because he has a unique skill. And he's built a business,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: and he's very good at it. And whoever these people
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: are in the Breakfast Club power, yeah, they're good at
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: what they do, but they won the lottery. So skill
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: is not evolved. Effort is not evolved. Choice is not evolved.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Free will is not evolved. It's just a lottery. We
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: won the lottery. Now, yeah, if you're born to rich
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: parents like Pica was, maybe that counts as winning the lottery.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: But even then, he's successful all on his own. He
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: gets no credit? Just a lottery? Just chance? Just a fluke?
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have to have very, very low self-reliance.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: to actually believe that. I don't think he actually believes it,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: but I think this is what he has to say, right? Right.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: That's the way I describe it to people where it's
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: like I have won the lottery and I continue to
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: win the lottery every single day.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: So every single day that he makes decisions about his business,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: every single day that he makes decisions about his podcast,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: who to speak to, who not to speak to, what
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: to say, what to do, all of that. And what
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: products they endorse and whatever, however he makes his money online.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: All of that. All of that is winning the lottery.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: It's not about choices. It's not him. It's not his
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: ability in any kind of way. He's not particularly articulate.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: He's not particularly, you know, there's nothing about him. He
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't dress nicely, all of this. That has nothing to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: do with it. It's just a fluke. It's just a chance.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's, again, I mean, it's silly. If you
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: actually think about it, what these socialists argue is silly.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't stand up to reality. It doesn't stand
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: up to fact. And it's very, you know, demeaning to
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: human beings, right? If you're successful, oh, you won the lottery.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's his name? One of our socialists says,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the workers exploiting the capitalists is the most ridiculous thing ever.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: How is it ridiculous? The workers have no job. There's
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: no such category in reality as work without the capitalists.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: So what happens to the workers? If all the capitalists
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: went away, what would happen? People would die in the streets.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: If all the capitalists and entrepreneurs and businessmen and business
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: leaders just disappeared. There's a book about this. I think
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: there's a book about this. Disappeared. If the financiers went away,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: if Wall Street just was shut down. Banks disappeared. If
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: all the talent that runs all these enterprises just went
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: away and all you had left were workers, if the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: proletariat had its way and the bourgeoisie, everybody who's, you know,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: the finest capitalists just disappeared, what would happen? Mass starvation.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: The world would go from 8 billion people to under
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: a billion. You would be You would go back to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: absolute poverty. You would all have to grow your own food.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, the whole system in which we live, all
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: the technology we take for granted, would all shut down
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: and would all disappear. So, you know, labor is just
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: the fact that capitalism created something Entrepreneurs create something and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: then offer people a better alternative than what they have today.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: A better alternative than working in the farm. A better
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: alternative than working in the field. Come, work for me.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I'll pay you more than what you can earn over there.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: And they do because it's an improvement in their life.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: And as they become more productive, as they become more productive,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: they earn more. Everywhere, all the time. This is a,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: you know... This is so, you know, you just have
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: to look at the last 150 years, 250 years, and
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: you can see it. You literally have to blind yourself
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: or shut down your mind to not see the relationship
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: between productivity and worker compensation. And if workers don't get
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: paid based on their productivity, what do they do? They
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: go to another... another entrepreneur, another business, another place that
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: will value their productivity. So the whole framing of these
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: socialists is dumb. It's strong. I'm going to show you
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: this clip. It's just a few seconds long. Just to
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: see that Hassan Paika endorses this notion of techno-feudalism. And
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: this is a reference to The ideas of, you know,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: one of the just most awful economic thinkers out there
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: in the world, which is, who is Varoufakis, the Greek Varoufakis.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Yanis Varoufakis.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: Is a technique to shift the conversation away from Israel's
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: crimes against the Palestinians to make it seem like the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: opposition is actually being crazy and they want all Jews
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: to be exterminated, all Israelis to be exterminated, which is
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: not the case. That's not a real point of advocacy.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: It's certainly not my advocacy. What do you think about
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: the concept of techno-feudalism?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: So we're at the tail end of capitalism. Capitalism is
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: morphing into this thing called techno feudalism.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: So another person who's been stopped from traveling around the UK,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: not the UK, but in Germany, Yanis Varoufakis wrote about this.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: He's the man. I love him. And, you know, I'm
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: honored to see him as a peer and a colleague nowadays.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: But I would love to have him on the show.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, he would.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: He would definitely come on.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: I read his book.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: He's so he's so charismatic, too. He's so handsome. He's
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: another one of those rich socialists. Okay. But he was
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: the finance minister of Greece. And anyway, so he's, he's wonderful.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: He's brilliant. And yes, I do agree with his analysis
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: that the, I.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Love the idea that they talk about. He's another one
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: of those rich socialists and he looks good. I mean, yeah,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: but you'd think there would be a problem with rich
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: socialists that there'd be, this would present a challenge to them. And,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: and by the way, Particularly given that it's all a
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: lottery and particularly given that they just won the lottery,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: it's all chance. Why do they stay rich? Why aren't
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: they giving all their wealth away? I mean, it's not
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: their skill. They didn't earn it. They don't deserve it.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: It's just a lottery. So why aren't they giving it away? Anyway,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: it's just his admiration for Vafakis is funny. I mean,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: it's sad and funny and it's a bunch of different things,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: but okay.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Stopped from traveling around the UK, but in Germany, Yanis
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: Varoufakis wrote about this. He's the man. I love him. And,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm honored to see him as a peer
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: and a colleague nowadays. Please tell him I would love
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: to have him on the show. Oh, he would definitely
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: come on.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: I read his book. He's so charismatic, too. He's so handsome.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: He's another one of those rich socialists, okay? Yeah. He
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: was the finance minister of Greece. Anyway, so he's wonderful.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: He's brilliant. And yes, I do agree with his analysis
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: that the new dominion is one that is being fought
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: on the internet, one that is being fought through these
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: tech companies. I'll give you one example that actually.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: So think about techno-feudalism. Think about what this means. What
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: is feudalism? And feudalism was a legal political order of
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: inherited status, compulsory obligations, territorial rule, subjugation. It wasn't an
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: employee-employer relationship. It was a relationship of subjugation. What we
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: have today, first of all, most of the people running
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley are tech companies. did not inherit their status.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: They created their status. There are no compulsory obligations. You
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: can choose to use Facebook or not to use Facebook,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to use X or not to use X. You get
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: to choose. You can have a Mac or a PC,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: or you can not have a computer at all. That's
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: also an option. People survived without computers for a very
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: long time. You could too. So the existence of network effects,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: the fact that some companies have high market shares, the
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: fact that platforms have rules, God forbid, and that it's
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: difficult to switch from one platform to another, that doesn't
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: make you a serf. You know, a company, you have
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: a voluntary relationship with the company. You can walk away,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: so can the company. The company has every right to
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: refuse service under certain conditions. There's a contract. But in feudalism,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: there is no optionality. There is no walking away. Your
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: lord is your master, and he's the law. A state,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: a lord, can, you know, you can't refuse him. They
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: can seize your property. They can imprison you. They can
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: censor you. They can wage war against you. The idea
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: that there's techno-feudalism is, again, it's using a term that
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: they don't understand, applying it in a way that makes
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: no sense, not once you look at the facts. It's
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: just great propaganda. I mean, what power does any technology
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: platform have that is equivalent to feudal laws, legal authority
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: over a person and his land and what he does
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: and his profession and everything about it? Even to the
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: point of some lords having sex, you know, with a
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: new wife before you do because, you know, they have
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: that privilege. I mean, where's anything like that? Anything like that?
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: in our tech world. Can users, creators, advertisers, employees, investors,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: can they exit? Yeah, absolutely. Now, there's a cost, but
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: costs are not coercion. Costs are not force. They're costs.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: And the reason you committed to a particular platform and
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: now you want to switch, there's a cost involved. Yeah,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: but that's because You saw value. You're willing to spend
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: money on it. Now you change your mind. The socialist
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: on the chat says, I mean, this is pure. I mean,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: it's unbelievably funny, right? He says, I do agree that
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: capitalism in some ways is better than feudalism. That's hysterical.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it shows such a level of ignorance. And really,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: not to be overly insulting, stupidity. To even put feudalism
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: and capitalism in the same terms. I mean, Marx understood thoroughly, Marx,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: Paul Marx understood thoroughly how the extent to which capitalism
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: is superior to feudalism. I mean, he saw it. He
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: saw people's standard of living, wages, quality of life, everything rising.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: He lived it. And he recognized that feudalism was barbaric
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: and primitive and oppressive and all of that. But in
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: the 21st century, to look back at what we've achieved
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: through capitalism over the last 200 years and say, yeah,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: it's a little better than feudalism in some ways, is
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: just so frigging ignorant. Come on, people, study a little
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: bit of history. Go read about what life was like
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: under feudalism. I mean, by the way, this is where
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the left and the right agree. Like Michael Knowles, And
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, you know, praised feudalism. It's, you know, it's
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: hard to know what to do with these socialists. Because
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: the sense in which the ignorance out there is so vast.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: What was life like 250 years ago before capitalism? What
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: is life like today? How many options do you have
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: when you graduate from college in terms of jobs and
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: opportunities to do stuff in the world? You're sitting watching
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: a YouTube, a YouTube live stream. I mean, science fiction
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: 30 years ago and now a complete reality. And why
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: do we have this live stream? Because profit-seeking companies developed
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the technology. Profit-seeking companies put fiber optics into the ground
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: to make it possible for us to communicate for a
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: video like this. A company like YouTube created a platform
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: for you to be able to enjoy this video. I mean,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: compare that to living in a hut under a Lord.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: who can rape your wife whenever he wants, and who
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: is going to tell you what work to do, what
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: not work not to do, and you have only one option,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: you can't switch employers, and you're owned by him, to
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: even compare it, even put it in the same sentence,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: is so corrupt. So what powers were created by innovation
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: and voluntary adoption? What are these powers other than the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: powers that we voluntarily agree to trade in? I want
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: to do one more clip. By the way, Super Chat
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: is like nonexistent today. I've got two questions. So, you know,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: no questions. People have no questions about anything in the
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: world out there. And is there interest in me continuing
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: to do these shows on capitalism's critics? And if there
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: is interest in me continuing to do shows on capitalism's critics,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: this kind of show, you tell me, then you have
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: to make it profitable. There's the profit motive again. Show
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: me that you value it. There's one easy way to
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: show me that you value it, and that's by asking
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: a question using the Super Chat or doing a sticker
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: or providing value for value. But if there is no
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: interest in me continuing doing these capitalism critics ones, I
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: won't do it. I mean, I'll do something else that
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: is more renumerating. We will find out. We will find out.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a little surprised. By a few people they are
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: live and by how little interest there is in asking
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: questions and in doing stickers. We'll see. So I'll have
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: to rethink whether I do this. It's Labor Day weekend.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: I think that's probably right. Yeah, I'm not going to
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: come to too big of a conclusion about this because
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: of Labor Day. We'll give this series more chances. I
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: want competition. for workers and for owners. Does that answer
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: your question, evolutionary capitalist? I want competition for everything, but
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: competition does not negate property rights. I want freedom. Oh,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: if everyone, I love this, right? If everyone was provided healthcare,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: food and housing without needing to do labor, they wouldn't
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: be capitalist owners. Oh, the horror. But how are you
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: going to be provided with health care, food, and housing?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Who is going to provide you with that? The government
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: is going to put money and give it to you?
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I think that causes inflation. So how are you going
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: to be provided with that? Don't you need capitalists so
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that you can steal their money, so that you can
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: have housing and health care? Where do you think housing
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: and health care come from? Where does the money come from?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: to provide housing and health care and education and food
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: and all the other goodies you want to distribute for free.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Where does it come from? Somebody has to produce it.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Somebody has to produce it, and people who produce it
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: are motivated by their profit motive. There's capitalism again. And
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: then you have to tax somebody. Now, you can only
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: tax them if they're making money. And the making of
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: money is that capitalist activity again. It's this idea. that
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: there's manna from heaven, that stuff just, housing just drops
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: from the sky, healthcare just arrives fully complete, cures for
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: cancer just show up, that nobody has to actually risk
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: any capital, actually do work, actually do thinking to solve problems. No.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Problems just solve themselves. Stuff just happens. Wealth is just
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: there for the taking. It's stunning. Stunning, stunning, stunning. I mean,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: the more you see socialists on our feed, the more
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: you understand. Just, you know, I don't know how ignorant
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: they are of how reality works, the very nature of reality,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: or how incapable they are of thinking. They live under
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the illusion that we live in a Garden of Eden,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: And everything is just provided for us. All right, one
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: more clip. One more clip. Yeah, maybe two clips. These
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: are not long. All right, let's see. Where are we? 45, 15.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: All right, let's move forward a little bit. 45, eight.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: All right, there we go.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: So that obviously... harms the Cuban economy in a spectacular manner.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: But one of these insidious ways in which American tech
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: companies get to enforce their arbitrary rules over two totally
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: separate independent sovereign nations.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: American tech companies get to impose their rules, arbitrary rules,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: over sovereign nations. Yeah. Because you know what? Tech companies
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: created the tech. It's theirs. They get to decide how
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: it's going to be used, even in other countries.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: Is when, if you were, let's say, an Italian person, right?
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: sending your Swiss friend money, and you wrote Cuba Libre,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: because you went and you got the Cuba Libre drink, right?
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: And you wrote that in your Venmo payment, they shut
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: down your account.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: That is true, by the way. But that has nothing
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: to do with the rules of PayPal, arbitrary rules of PayPal.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with the tech industry. The
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: tech industry doesn't make those decisions. That's because they're regulated.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: That's because the US government has decided that they will
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: penalize PayPal if ever money ever makes its way to Cuba,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: which I think is stupid, right? I'm against the embargo
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: of Cuba. But, you know, the government has told the
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: tech companies that if they ever get caught, they will
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: suffer dearly. So they flag the word Cuba in any
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: message that you send. And, you know, they can't differentiate
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: between You're joking or it's a drink or you're talking
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: about Cuba, the country. So, yeah, they'll stop the payment.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: But that's not capitalism. That's not the tech companies. That's
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: the government.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: This is an American company that gets to impose these
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: arbitrary restrictions that are silly.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: Wow. They are silly. but they're not being imposed by
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: a tech company. They're being imposed by the American government.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: On the entire world that uses these American tech companies.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: And if there's no European alternative, then there's no European
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: sovereignty there, right? If you're on American internet, if you're
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: using American companies and they've provided a lot of new
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: liberties for you, a lot of opportunities for you, you know,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: like YouTube is another one, right? Then in the interim,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: you think, oh, it's fine. You know, I'm just making
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: YouTube videos. It's whatever. At the end of the day,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: it's not a big deal. But you're actually generating value
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: for America.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: You're not generating value. I mean, you are generating value
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: for America. But why? That's just a consequence of the
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: fact that YouTube happens to be an American company. And
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: the fact is that you're using a platform that is
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: in America. And that company will pay taxes to the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: American government. So you're helping America, yes. It's not an accident.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems to be a world of these people.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: But it's not an accident that almost all the big, innovative,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: significant tech companies of the last 50 years are American.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: Is that an accident?
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: It's because America's freer than Europe. It's because America... respects
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: innovation more than Europe does. It's because entrepreneurs can still
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: start companies in America without all the burdens and regulations
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: that exist in Europe. Imagine a world where America becomes Europe.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: PayPal and what other companies did he mention? YouTube disappear.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: Or there's no new companies like that. Not only are
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: Americans poorer as a consequence, but so are Europeans. I mean,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: the reality is that the whole world, the entire world,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: has been free-riding off of America for decades. For 100 years, really,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: since World War II. Less than 100 years. Since World
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: War II. For certain. Not only have they been free-riding
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: in terms of security, they've been free-riding off of American technology.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that's a bad thing. That's a
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: good thing. They pay for it. It's not completely free.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: But imagine a world where you don't have America. Well,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: then they don't have YouTube. They don't have PayPal. It's
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: not like they have alternatives. And it's not like they
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: don't have alternatives because America somehow has monopoly power over it.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: It's complete nonsense.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: So for these other countries, they don't have an alternative.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Why? Why don't you ask that question? Why don't they
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: have an alternative? What is it about their culture? What
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: is it about their system of government, particularly Cuba, that
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: prevents them from having even the most basic of alternatives? Why?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: Because they don't have freedom. And because they resent and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: they reject capitalism. And they work against it.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: Ever design an alternative. So they have this over-reliance on
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: American companies. Sometimes that can lead to these arbitrary restrictions
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: that I just mentioned. And in other instances, I guess
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: the most nefarious way is that it's a bunch of
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: American capitalists that are making money.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a bunch of American capitalists are making money. Why?
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: Because a bunch of American capitalists created these companies. It
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: really pisses me off. These people created something. They built something.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: They made something. And yes, they're making money off of it.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: And the reason that nobody in these other countries isn't
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: making any money off of it is because they didn't
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: create anything. They didn't build it. They didn't make it.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: If you build it, you get to make money off
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: of it. If you don't build it, you don't get
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: to make money off of it. You want to make money? Compete.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: But again, why? Why is America the place where all
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: this got built? Accident? Just random? Probably. They believe their
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: own success is random and then accident. So they probably
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: think that the success of American companies is accident and random.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: So wait a minute. Somebody's saying there's no audio for
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: the clip. Are you guys not hearing the clip? Right.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: I'm asking again. We can hear you, but not the
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: video anymore. Is that right? Is that just one person,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: or is that a general consensus that that is what
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: is going on? Give me an answer, people. This guy says,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: having a job should be a right. It shouldn't be
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: provided by capitalists. Really? And where would this come from?
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: Not hearing the clip. That is bizarre. Let's try this again.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: Let me check. sound all the same there's no mute
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: there all right one two three you can hear me
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: okay i'm gonna try the clip again and uh and
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: see if you can hear it i need i need
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: you know quick responses uh on the on the video
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: here we go oops Oh, I see what's going on. Okay.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: What happened? Huh. It just got shut down. That is strange.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: Why did it do that? All right, give me a minute.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: It's going to look different. All right. All right. Can
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: you see that? You can now see the picture, hopefully.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: And hopefully you will hear it now. All right. Let's
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: see if you can hear it. Let me know in
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: the chat as soon as you can, if you can
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: hear this.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: Off of your output, off of what you are doing.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: And that's part of the reason why, you know, a
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: lot of these other countries, due to national security concerns initially,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: uh have developed alternatives i mean in china you got
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: the cuba liber drink right and you wrote that in
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: your venmo payment they shut down your account this is
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: an american company that gets to uh to to impose
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: these arbitrary restrictions that are silly on the entire world
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: that uses these American tech companies. And if there's no
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: European alternative, then there's no European sovereignty.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: Why is there no European alternative? Why is there no
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: European alternative? I keep going back to the same thing. Right?
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: If you're on American internet, if you're using American companies
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: and they've provided a lot of new liberties for you,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of opportunities for you, you know, like YouTube
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: is another one, right? Then in the interim, you think, oh,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: it's fine. I'm just making YouTube videos. It's whatever. At
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: the end of the day, it's not a big deal.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: But you're actually generating value for America. So for these
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: other countries, they don't have an alternative. They've never designed
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: an alternative. So they have this over-reliance on American companies.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: Sometimes that can lead to these arbitrary restrictions that I
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: just mentioned. And in other instances, I guess the most
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: nefarious restrictions The way is that it's it's a bunch
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: of American capitalists that are making money off of your.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of American capitalists making money off of
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: foreigners because the bunch of American capitalists have actually provided
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: the value to the foreigners. If you provide value, you
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: get to make the money.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: Or labor off of your output, off of what you
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: are doing. And that's part of the reason why, you know,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of these other.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: People make money off of your labor. Like at YouTube,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: they take a percentage of all the super chats and
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: they take a percentage of all the advertising. But how
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: much value are they giving you? Like, could I do
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: this without YouTube? No. Not as easily, not as well,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: not as systematically. No. So YouTube is exploiting? I don't
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: feel exploited by YouTube. I think they take a lot
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: of a high percentage, but I think they provide an
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: enormous value in return.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: Countries, due to national security concerns initially, have developed alternatives.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, in China, I went there, all the applications
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: are Chinese.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Why? Why are all the applications Chinese? Because China bans
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: American applications. It bans American applications.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, I want- There's no- You need a VPN
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: if you want to use American applications. And most Chinese
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: people don't use them. They use a VPN to go
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: on the Western Internet. That's not just so that Chinese
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: people are not brainwashed by American culture or anything.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: Brainwashed by American culture. Like that.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, they have their own robust industry. They have
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: their own cultural output.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: But a big part of the reason is because they
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: want to have financial control.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: So why can't the Chinese view YouTube videos without a VPN?
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: And even then it's hard. Why can't they do Google?
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: Why can't they get ChatGPT? Why can't they access the American, quote, internet? Why?
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: Because then they might find out about how, evil Mao
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: Zedong was. They might discover that what the Chinese government
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: tells them is mostly propaganda. They might actually learn about
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the world. That's why. And why is China being so
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: innovative when it comes to the internet? Because it freed
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: up and it allowed its entrepreneurs, particularly early on in
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: the early 2000s, to start their own companies and build
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: their own brands and pursue the profit motive because China
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: has its own capitalists. Capitalists who exploit their own YouTube creators.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, TikTok. TikTok's a good example, Chinese company. Chinese
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: company has lots of creators on TikTok. Do they do
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: it for free? Does TikTok get a percentage? Of course
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: it does. Is TikTok exploiting them? I don't know if
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: they do. He doesn't complain about it because it's not American.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: He hates America. Ultimately, what all these socialists have in
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: common is a hatred of America. America and Israel, they
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: always linked them together. Much of their ideology is driven
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: by hate. And again, a lack of understanding and a
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: lack of thinking about what is actually going on. China's
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: created a firewall on the internet to keep information out. Now, yes,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: it also wants to control its own people. God forbid
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: somebody in China transfers money out of China without being
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: monitored by the Chinese. So they want their own financial institutions,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: their own financial, in order to be able to control. Yes,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: it's all about control, Assan Paika. You're right. It is
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: that they want to control their own people. Let's see.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's, yeah, let's, let's, let's.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: Or the Chinese, buy the Chinese rather than, you know,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: give all of this, give all this wealth and give
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: all this productivity to American corporations.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: So they want to give all this wealth and productivity
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: to Chinese corporations, Chinese corporations that are private for the
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: most part. China has billionaires. China has millionaires. China has workers.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Chinese workers are much poorer than American workers. Generally, China
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: is much, much, much poorer than America on a GDP
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: per capita basis or any kind of standard of living,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: quality of life basis. And yet he has no problem
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: with that for some reason. Capitalism in China is okay.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: Capitalists in China is okay, but not in America.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: And Europe is now looking for alternatives as well to
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: the American companies.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: See, Europe can't find alternatives because alternatives come from entrepreneurs.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: Not from governments. Governments do not provide alternatives. Companies.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 4: One thing that Giannis talks about in the book is
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 4: he talks about how, you know, these algo bosses is
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: what he calls them.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: They monetize our emotions.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 4: And the greatest currency in the cloud capital is conflict.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: I think we'll call it a day. You know, it's...
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: I keep saying the same thing. I keep repeating myself.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, one of the socials online said, no, no,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: why can't the government just provide everybody with a job?
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: Did the government provide everybody with a job? Again, didn't
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: we try that in Soviet Union, China? It doesn't work.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: What jobs? Doing what? Who decides? Central planners? That's always
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: been a disaster throughout human history. And how does it
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: pay the workers? Where does the money come from? If
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: there are no entrepreneurs to tax, where do you get
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: the money? So, I mean, this idea that the government
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: is some productive entity, the government doesn't produce anything. That
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: the government can guide productivity, productive activity. Well, again, we
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: have lots of experience with that. It doesn't work. It's
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: an unmitigated disaster when the government tries to do it,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: even on a small scale, never mind on a large scale.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: For government to try to employ everybody in the country
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: is a recipe, a recipe for disaster, a recipe for
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: poverty and destruction and famine. It's exactly what you got
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union, in China, what you're getting right
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: now in Venezuela. These are not consequences of American imperialism.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: These are all consequences of what happens when governments start
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: to run the economy. It doesn't work. Economists have shown
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work, and philosophers have shown it doesn't work.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. Government can't provide loads of employment because it
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't have the money to provide loads of employment. It can't.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: Where does it get the money? There's nothing wrong with
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: central planning. Corporations are centrally planned. Yeah. But they're constantly,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: constantly regulated, if you will, by the pricing mechanism, by markets.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: And when they grow too big, and corporations often grow
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: too big, and their planning capabilities diminish because of size,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: the market disciplines them and they have to shrink. They
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: start losing money, which causes them to shrink. So, yes,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: it's true. There's planning. Planning is great. Central planning is
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: an unmitigated disaster because it excludes markets. You know, God,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: read just the basic literature on the role of prices
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: in economy, the role of information in economy, how information
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: gets distributed. It's great to have these socialists on the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: chat because you really get to see it's not a
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: matter of trusting central planning. It's not a matter of
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: trusting central planning. It's a matter of the fact that
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: even a Somebody who has a dominant market share will
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: lose if the quality of their product declines, will lose
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: if they raise prices too much. So there is a
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: constant discipline in the market. It's not a matter of trust.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: It's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: scientific fact. It's a matter of understanding just the basics
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: of how markets work. If somebody gains a, quote, monopolistic
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: position in a marketplace and, quote, abuses it by raising
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: prices or by lowering quality, then the market will discipline them.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: There will be substitute products. People will stop using their product.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: They will lose market share and competition will arise because
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: in capitalism, there's no limit to competition. There's no barriers
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: to entry. So if you abuse your situation, people will
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: replace you. So there's no, the difference between central planning
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: and between planning in a corporate setting is the difference
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: between night and day. It's not the same category of thought.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: Central planning means the exclusion of markets. Exclusion of markets
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: means the exclusion of private values. It means the exclusion
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: of information channels and prices. It means, and look, we
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: have experiments. You don't have to believe me. Just go check.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: Every time it's tried, every single time it's tried, it fails.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: It fails big time. Fails big time. So, you know, just,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's the thing. Reality, history, has provided us
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: with great examples of capitalism and socialism. And you can
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: just go look. Just go look. That should be the beginning.
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: And you can still be a critic of capitalism, but look,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: first look. But to embrace central planning, to embrace government,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: you know, providing jobs, to embrace collectivizing farming or collectivizing
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: food is, I mean... It's just to be ignorant of
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: the facts of reality, to be ignorant of history, to
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: be ignorant of the examples where people have tried this,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: and the results are about as horrific as anything human
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: beings do. As horrific as wars. All right. Let's move
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: to the Super Chats. All right, we got a few.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: That's great. I see we got quite a few stickers.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Bonnie, for the sticker. Thank you, Thought Criminal.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: Let's see. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Normative Randroid. Thank you, John.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Gail. You guys came through. Thank you, Alan.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: Ben Chestnut, $ 100. Thank you, Ben. Really appreciate that. Thank you.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Michael. Let's see. I think I saw Wes
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: here with $ 50. Yeah, there's Wes with $ 50. Thank you, Wes.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: And Mike, thank you. So thank you guys. Really, really
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. And yeah, you came through. So these shows
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: will continue. All right, let's take the questions. Shazbat. What
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: would Hassan Piker say if America became a full democracy,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: but the people voted for capitalism? He would say it's illegitimate.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: He would say it would be, it's illegitimate. That the
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: very act of, let's say, owning something is an illegitimate action,
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: no matter who votes for it. So, you know, leftists
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: are big on democracy. and an opposed, for example, the
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: Bill of Rights, until it gets the rights they care about. So,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: for example, right, I mean, you'll find somebody, you'll find
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: somebody on the left who says, everything should be voted on,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: we should go by democracy, the people should speak, it's
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: all about a majority. And then you say, okay, so
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: if a majority thinks that abortion is wrong, you're willing,
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: you know, you'll accept that. Oh, of course not. No,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: abortion is a woman's right. But wait a minute. It's
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: not about rights. It's about We said it was about democracy. No, no, no.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: And somebody like Assan Paika, these so-called socialists, these democratic socialists,
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: you ask them if people actually choose to. So I tell,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: you know, I often tell them, you know, in the capitalism,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: if you want to be a socialist, you can start
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: your own commune. You can go live in a commune
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: from each according to his ability, to each according to
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: his needs, from each according to his ability, and you
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: can rot away there. You can have a horrible, miserable
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: life in a commune. And under capitalism, that's allowed. Well,
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: would you, under your socialism, would you allow me to
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: start a manufacturing plant and only people who voluntarily agree
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: to come and work for me— they could go to the co-op,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: but they choose to come and work for me— Would
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: you allow that? Oh, no, of course not. No, no,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: you can't do that. You can't do that. And it's
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: the same if we all voted against socialism, for capitalism,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: even at 51 to 49, even if it was 70-30,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: they would say, no, that's not acceptable. That is a right.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: We all have a right to not have private property
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: imposed on us, I guess. Mike, when someone tries to
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: attack capitalism, I try to defend it by getting them
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: to define what capitalism means. But if someone tries to
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: attack a capitalist, is there a defense to that? Or
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: are they different concepts? Well, they're definitely different concepts. A
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: capitalist is a provider of capital. And often with Marx,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: what they mean by that is everybody from the executives
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: in a company to shareholders in Wall Street, the investment
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: banks in between, the shareholders, all of that. They're the capitalists.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: And if they're talking about that, they think that by
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: attacking that, they're attacking capitalism. To some extent, they are.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: But that you have to defend differently, and partially what
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: you have to defend there beyond the idea of the
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: right of people to do what they want and live
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: the way they want to live. But you have to
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: defend the productive function of a CEO, the productive function
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: of a capitalist, of a financier. See, part of what
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: socialists leverage, part of what makes it seem reasonable to
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: people is to take advantage of the fact that finance
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: is viewed with suspicion by the culture, broadly, that financiers
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: are viewed as parasites, that most people don't understand anything
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: about finance and the productive contribution that it makes in
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: our world. And they leverage that. So when Marx says
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: capitalists do nothing, provide no value, Everybody goes, yeah, yeah,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: we knew that. Just bankers, they're paper shufflers. They don't
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: make anything. They don't produce anything. They don't create anything.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: So when they're attacking capitalists, they're attacking financiers. But they're
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: also lumping together the CEO, the entrepreneur, everybody in the
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: process is lumped in, is useless, is not productive, is
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: not doing anything. All mooching off of labor. Labor is
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: the only source of value. Thank you, Mike. Anonymous. Why
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: is small business good and big business bad? Why is
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: local good but far bad? Why is brick and mortar
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: good and internet bad? Seems there are many such arguments
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: from the anti-industrial mentality, but all are arbitrary. Well, think
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: about a concrete bound mentality. Big is hard to understand.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: Big is abstract. Big is complicated. except big government, that
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: they get and that they support completely. But big is ominous. Small,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: I can see. I know small business people. I go
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: to the local grocery store. I see small, right? The
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: same with local. I know the farmers. I can go
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: see them grow the plants. Who knows what farmers in
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: other countries do with their vegetables? Who knows what they
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: add to their produce? It's my tribe. I know my tribe.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: I know the people in my tribe. They are local.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: They are small. Bikimota good. Again, I can see Bikimota.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: I can understand Bikimota. Bikimota is easy, simple, straightforward. And
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: it's my tribe. Internet, those people in Silicon Valley, those
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: weirdos in Silicon Valley, they're going to profit. I don't
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: want them to profit. I want the people in my
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: tribe to profit, the people local to me. So this
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: is tribalism. And it's also an anti-conceptual mentality. It's a
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: perceptual level mentality. So if you combine, I mean, perceptual
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: level mentality will lead you to tribalism. But that combination
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: of having to see it and not being able to
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: conceptualize and belonging, the importance of belonging to a particular tribe,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: that is what is driving this. And so I think
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: it's all the same. It's all the same phenomenon. Richard says,
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: I'm going to sue you for creating addictive content that
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: makes me send all these super chats. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: let's create more work for the lawyers. But I wish
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: I created addictive. Well, some of you are addicted. I
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: have to admit, I mean, don't use this in court
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: against me. I have to admit that some of my, uh,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: viewers are addicted to the Ron book show. I mean,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: they hear every single show almost. And, uh, when I
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: don't do a series of shows, uh, they, they, they
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: have physical, physical symptoms of, of withdrawal. So, yeah, I mean,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: I'm guilty, guilty as charged. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: creating addictive content. Uh, Barry, thank you for the sticker. Really,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Um, Let's see, Richard. I'm petitioning my
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: congressional delegation to write a bill forcing you to dumb
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: down your content so you don't exploit us super chatters.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: I wonder, though, I wonder if my content was dumber
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: if I wouldn't get more money. Not out of you.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: I'd get a different audience and then I'd get, I
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: don't know. Yes, we need more regulations and more controls
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: over the Iran book show. It's getting out of hand.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: It really is getting out of hand. And I keep
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: insulting socialists. There's got to be something about hate speech.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: There's got to be something about me offending them. You'd
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: expect them to be offended. I keep reading these statements
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: by evolutionary capitalists. They just make me laugh. All right, Michael.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: Hassan Paikin did a reaction video to your debate with
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: Sam Seder. I heard that. Good. I mean, he knows
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: who I am. That's a good thing. I'm not going
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: to do a reaction video to his reaction video, but
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: And I can just imagine what his reaction video. I'm
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: going to do a lot of reaction videos to Assan
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: Paika because I think he's going to be here for
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: a while and he is a force out there. He is.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, as horrible as it is, the guy is
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: a force out there. And as long as the Democratic
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: Party is moving further and further and further to the left,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: Assan Paika becomes more and more a central figure within
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: that world. Gail says, do you think it's possible to
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: brainwash people completely like Stalin said? I think so. I mean,
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: I actually think so. I think if you combine enough
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: psychological and physical torture, you can probably brainwash people. You
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: can probably get people to do what you want. You
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: can probably suppress their ability for self-guided action, for agency,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: for free will. You can just eradicate that. It's too painful.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: And they just suppress it. And they become zombies. Richard, seriously,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: thanks for these capitalist shows. We need a break from politics.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: Happy to do it. And we'll do more. The other
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: thing is, how do I do? I need to figure
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: out how to do positive shows. I need another Yuan's
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: Rules for Life kind of series. But if I do
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: Yaron's Rules for Life, I feel like I'm repeating myself.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: And I know repetition is good in this medium. I
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: know that actually doing shows where I repeat myself is
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: not a bad thing. And even these capitalist criticisms, critiques,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: I'm repeating myself. But if anybody has an idea for
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: a series of positive shows about how to apply objectivism,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: then let me know. I will start a series like
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: that tomorrow. if I can come up with a series
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: I think I can actually do. I'm glad, by the way,
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people watched my latest lecture on
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: art that was put up, my talk on art that
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: was put up on the channel. I got a lot
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: of very good comments on that one, so I'll do
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: more of those. But we need a good series like
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: Rules for Life where I get to talk about positive
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: stuff and about applying objectivism to your life as an
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: individual instead of just critiquing everybody else. Paul, I am
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoying this, even though I am a regular contributor.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: Here is a super chat. Happy Capitalist Day weekend. Thank you, Paul.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Enric, off topic, will U.S. bond and
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: treasuries continue to be safe with exploding debt and continued deficits.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: Are there new recommendations for having a good financial future? Look,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: I've never been a big fan of bonds. What does
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: it mean for them to be safe? If you buy
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: a bond, unless it's an inflation index bond, you're going
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: to be susceptible to inflation. And I think there's going
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: to be high inflation in the future. I think it's
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: the only way the United States government is going to
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: be able to deal with its debt. problem. I don't
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: think the U.S. government will default. I think it will
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: inflate away the problem. So I don't, I mean, I
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: have a small portion of my portfolio in bonds because
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: somebody else's manages it and it's well diversified and everything.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: But long run, I would be wary of bonds because
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: of inflation. Stocks do better in inflation than bonds do.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: What else did you, yeah, so I don't know what
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: safe means. I mean, are they going to go bankrupt.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: They won't pay back. No, because they can print money.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: But that's the point. They can print money. Printing money
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: means inflation. MP Creates, supporting the Answering Capitalism Critics Series.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Really appreciate it. Oh, Enricoce asked, what did
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: he ask? New recommendation for having a good financial future.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, no, I still believe that the best way
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: is extensive diversification. Have a portion of your money in
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: in the technologies of the future, even though I think
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: right now they're probably very expensive, and I don't know
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: if now's the right time to be investing in them,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: but generally have money in the technologies of the future, some,
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: but most of your money, the bulk of your money,
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: have widely diversified across the economy. And then it's just
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: a matter of, do you believe that the economy is
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: going to grow? And I think if the economy is
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: not going to grow, I don't know what There is
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: no good investment strategy. The other thing is make it international.
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: Make it global. Invest across global markets. Because even if
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: the U.S. doesn't grow, there's a good chance other countries
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: will grow. Roland says, I actually prefer not to hear
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: Hassan's voice. Well, but I'm commenting on his voice. I'm
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: commenting on what he's saying. Straker, thank you for the sticker.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Roland, my name is Roland, and I
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: am a YBS-oholic. YBS-oholic. I didn't know there was such
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: a thing. But there you go. He's addicted. Ian, did
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: you read the Jacobian article on the calculation problem? It's hilarious.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: Google socialism has a future. Central planning doesn't. Yes, I mean,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: I've debated this socialist thing. Now, I think I've debated
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: it four times, maybe more, who is one of the
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: founders of the Jacobian Magazine. And he believes that central
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: planning is bad. He's anti-central planning. And he thinks that
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: everything needs, so he believes there should be a market.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: He believes in a marketplace. But that all companies, all
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: productive enterprises, all run like co-ops. are run by the employees,
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: that everything is run by 21st century motives, all of it.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: And he really believes in this. So he believes socialism
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: is not, the socialism of the future is not a
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: Soviet or Chinese-style central planet. And supposedly this is what
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: Hassan Paik also believes, that it's not a Soviet-style central planet,
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: that what you have is... All businesses are co-ops. And
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: he believes that there's nothing unique about the CEO. There's
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: nothing unique about an innovator. There's nothing unique about, you know,
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: and capital, for example, is provided by worker-owned banks. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: I've read his book. It's amazing how it doesn't work.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: It really doesn't work. And you can see the lack of,
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: you run it, you can see it, it just, it's
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: completely an international reality. It's like the anarchists. It's like
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: a rationalistic building that they built. But they've convinced themselves
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: that it does work. Florida Nick says, excited about Mike
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: Mensah talk tomorrow. Yes, we got Mike Mensah, not on.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: He passed away, unfortunately. We are going to talk about
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: Mike Mensah tomorrow with Nikos. So the Nikos and Iran show,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: the Iran and Nikos show tomorrow is about Mike Mensah.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: And we're also going to do movie reviews. Shahzbad, is
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: Shahzbad here? Yeah, Shahzbad is here. We're going to review
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: at least Troy. I'm going to try to watch Superman
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: tomorrow and maybe Morton, whatever, the TV show that you suggested.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to try to do all that for tomorrow.
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: But certainly we will talk about, we will review Troy tomorrow. Richard,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: thank you for the sticker. Really appreciate it. Okay. Hill
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Hi, I was having a discussion with a
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: friend and said companies should pay their employees a livable wage.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: If they don't, the government should... I was having a
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: discussion with a friend and he said, sorry, he said,
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: companies should pay their employees a livable wage. If they don't,
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: the government should tax the employer According to the poverty index,
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: the worker falls into, to be fair. Yeah, I mean,
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think that, but what
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: is a livable wage? And a livable wage in every
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: town is different. And of course, a livable wage for
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: every individual is probably different. We all have different values.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: We consider different things to be necessary for our life.
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: There is no such thing as a livable wage. Wages
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: have gone up significantly. for decades and decades and decades
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: and decades. Was the wages back then not livable? I mean,
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: adjusting for inflation. And now it is. So the whole
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: concept of livable wage means nothing. It's a meaningless concept.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: And it can't be objectively determined because it's meaningless. I mean,
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: if literally the wages companies were paying their employees were
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: not livable wages, They would drop dead because they couldn't live. Shazbat.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: If America had been fully capitalist from the beginning, would
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: we have holidays celebrating important inventions or inventors? You know,
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: we would certainly have holidays celebrating business. So we would
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: have businessman days. an inventor or innovator day. Maybe we'd
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: call it, name it after Thomas Edison, and maybe we'd
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: name it after Rockefeller, just to piss off all the
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: people who hate him. Or maybe we'd name it after
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: one of them. But it would be a day to
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: celebrate all, because the reality is there are thousands and
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of innovators and productive people and great
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: businessmen I mean, the very greatest of businessmen, the people
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: who really changed the world, there are only a few.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: But we should be celebrating productivity and we should be
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: celebrating all businessmen. So there would be a businessman day
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: and there will be a celebration of that. So yes,
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: there will be holidays and statues and road names after.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, our priorities in terms of who we admire
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: and who we respect will be very different and who
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: we celebrate would be very different. Kim, I will never
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: forget when Hassan said that his uncle was exploiting him
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: while he was working at the Young Turks. Did he
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: say that? That's pretty funny. What does his uncle think
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: of that? Because his uncle shares his socialist ideals. I
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: wonder if anybody works for Hassan Paika. Like, does he
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: have a maid? Do you have a feeling he has
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: a maid? Does he have a personal assistant? Who books
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: his travel? Buys his clothes. I mean, he probably buys
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: his clothes himself. I mean, he seems like the type
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: that would buy his clothes himself. I, for example, never
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: buy my clothes myself. Who books his travel? Who cleans
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: his house? Who does his dishes? When he goes to
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: a restaurant, is he exploiting the waitress? I can't figure
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: out this system because It doesn't make sense. It's silly.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is what he was saying about, oh,
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: we socialists, we should enjoy ourselves. We don't have to
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: think about poverty. We can still, you know, watch a movie,
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: even though we know people exploited in making it and
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: enjoy the movie. Yeah, really? Really? Adrian says he has
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: someone who literally buys his clothes. I mean, you can't
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: make these people up. You can't make these caricatures up.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, by definition, he's exploiting the person who's buying
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: his clothes. Because it's an employee-employee relationship. Or is it
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: a contract? I don't know. These people, the hypocrisy, I mean,
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: it's too easy to accuse them of hypocrisy, but God
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: are they hypocrites. God are they hypocrites. But you have
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: to be hypocrite. If you're a socialist and you want
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: to survive, you have to be hypocrite. There's no other way. Yeah,
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: and somebody says, I'm sure... Hassan's housekeeper is part of
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: the co-op. Yeah, the co-op that Hassan is part of
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: as well. He shares his wealth with all the people
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: in the co-op. That's why everybody in the co-op has
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: those expensive watches and wear those amazing expensive clothes. All right, guys,
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: this was fun. I will see you tomorrow with Nikos
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: to talk about Mike Mensah, review the movie Troy, maybe
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: other movies as well. On Monday, we'll return to politics
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: and the news. But on Friday next week, I will
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: do another capitalism's critics, critic, criticism, because Saturday there will
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: be no show and there will be no show on
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: Thursday and probably no show on Sunday. So, yeah. We're
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: entering into a period of travel where it'll be interesting
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: to see when I will be able to do shows.
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: But Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, we're on Sunday as well, tomorrow.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: All right, guys, see you tomorrow. Bye, everybody.