Latest / Yaron Brook Show / Is Capitalism Better than Socialism for Human Flourishing? Yaron Brook vs Bhaskar Sunkara

Transcript

Is Capitalism Better than Socialism for Human Flourishing? Yaron Brook vs Bhaskar Sunkara · Yaron Brook Show

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: My name is Stephen Pitts.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: I'm the director of the Center for the Study of
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Government and the Individual here at UCCS, and I'd like
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: to welcome you a on a campus on a very
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: strangely balmy November day, But thank you for joining us
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: today for this important discussion. We are happy to be
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: partnering with the Steamboat Institute to bring you a very
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: timely debate. I think we can all agree on capitalism
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: versus socialism.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: I will soon introduce the.
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  Speaker 2: CEO of Steamboat and she will be introducing the speakers
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  Speaker 2: and the program. But I would like to just take
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: this opportunity to say a couple of things about CSGI,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: or the Center for the Study of Government and the Individual.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: CSGI has been around since the year two thousand, so
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  Speaker 2: we're our twenty five year anniversary now, and CSGI works
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  Speaker 2: to educate and prepare UCCS students and the broader community
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  Speaker 2: for citizenship through three different programs. First is our program
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• 1:05
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• 1:08
  Speaker 2: thousand and In this program, we focus on civil society,
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  Speaker 2: the deliberative virtues that are needed for a democratic society.
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  Speaker 3: And we include in that basic civics education.
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  Speaker 2: And it's really this third program that I think tonight's
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  Speaker 2: event fits most squarely under because debates like this are
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  Speaker 2: the single best way to model civil discourse, the idea
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  Speaker 2: that we can argue and disagree without being enemy or
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  Speaker 2: becoming enemies. And in my view, the university is the
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: best place to practice civil discourse and the liberal the
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  Speaker 2: deliberative virtues precisely because the stakes are relatively low. Honest
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: disagreement and debate is precisely what a classroom is for.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Right we all know that disagreement can be uncomfortable, and
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  Speaker 2: that it's possible to lose your job or become as
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: strange from a family member over a bad or heated
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: political discussion.
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  Speaker 4: That doesn't happen in the university.
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  Speaker 2: Worst case scenario, your teacher professor isn't very charitable and
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  Speaker 2: gives you a worse grade.
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  Speaker 3: They never should do that.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: If there's honest debate in the classroom, it should not
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  Speaker 2: affect your grade.
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  Speaker 3: But that would be the worst case scenario.
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  Speaker 2: So I think that in the university the stakes are
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  Speaker 2: relatively low, and in a university setting guided by academic freedom,
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  Speaker 2: that is where we should get accustomed to having disagreements
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  Speaker 2: and learning from them. Of course, I should say that
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  Speaker 2: by saying low stakes, I don't mean that it doesn't
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  Speaker 2: require current right, debating does require courage, and I think
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  Speaker 2: would say it requires exceptional courage to debate in front of,
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  Speaker 2: you know, approximately two hundred people in front of you.
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  Speaker 2: So I think, even before we begin, our speakers deserve
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: a little credit for that right.
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  Speaker 3: But I also suspect that by the end of.
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  Speaker 2: This debate they won't leave as enemies, but rather as
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: as those who've learned from each other and have a
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  Speaker 2: little more respect for each other.
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  Speaker 3: My prediction could be wrong, but that's just what I predict.
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  Speaker 3: That's what I predict.
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  Speaker 2: Again, we are thankful to the Steamboat Institute for inviting
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: these speakers and for moderating this event.
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  Speaker 3: So I will now introduce Jennifer Schubert Aiken. So, Jennifer
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  Speaker 3: Schubert Aiken is the chairman and CEO of the Steamboat Institute,
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  Speaker 3: an organizations she co founded in the year two thousand
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  Speaker 3: and eight. The Steamboat Into promotes America's first principles and
• 4:02
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• 4:06
  Speaker 3: So they actually do many of these on different topics,
• 4:09
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• 4:13
  Speaker 3: the advisory boards for the Benson Center for the Study
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder and
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the Ed Snyder Center for Enterprise and Markets at the.
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  Speaker 4: University of Maryland.
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  Speaker 3: She also serves on the board of directors of Rebecca's Angels,
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: a nonprofit organization helping children with post traumatic stress disorder
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: founded by Boston Marathon bombing survivor Rebecca Gregory. So please
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: welcome me and join me and welcoming Jennifer.
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  Speaker 5: Good evening everyone, Thank you Steve for that warm welcome.
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  Speaker 5: We love coming to Colorado Springs. I have to start
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: off by saying, when we founded the Campus Liberty Tour
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• 5:17
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• 5:23
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• 5:27
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• 7:30
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• 8:08
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• 8:13
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• 8:16
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• 8:20
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• 8:23
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• 8:27
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• 8:42
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• 8:44
  Speaker 5: more than thirty campuses across the country. Now for tonight's debate.
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  Speaker 5: The debate over socialism versus capitalism centers on how societies
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: should organize their economies to balance freedom, equality, and prosperity.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: Supporters of capitalism argue that capitalism drives innovation, rewards hard work,
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  Speaker 5: and creates wealth through competition and voluntary exchange. Critics contend
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: that capitalism can lead to inequality, worker exploitation, and excessive
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  Speaker 5: corporate power. By contrast, supporters of socialism say that it
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: promotes social justice and economic security for all. Opponents argue
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  Speaker 5: the socialism discourages innovation, limits personal freedom, and leads to
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  Speaker 5: inefficiency or government overreach. Tonight's program will offer a fair
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  Speaker 5: and balanced debate on the following resolution. Be it resolved
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  Speaker 5: capitalism is better than socialism for human flourishing. We invite
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: all of our audience members, including those watching the live
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: stream to respond with your view on the resolution, agree, disagree,
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: or undecided before the debate begins. So right now, if
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: you haven't used the QR code or or a text
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: you may have received if we had your cell phone number,
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: go ahead and vote on the poll in the poll,
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: and then when the debate is over, we're going to
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: ask you to vote again, so be sure to vote again.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: At the end, we want to see if your opinions
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: have changed. So you will see the poll up here
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: and you will see that as people actually vote, the
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: voting or the poll results will change as you vote.
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  Speaker 5: And now it's my great pleasure to introduce our speakers
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  Speaker 5: and moderator for this evening, so let's welcome them to
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  Speaker 5: the stage, and then I will read each of their
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: brief bios to introduce them to you. Come on up, welcome,
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: So each of our speakers will remain seated while I
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  Speaker 5: introduce all of them, and then I will turn it
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  Speaker 5: over to our moderator. Arguing the affirmative on tonight's resolution
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  Speaker 5: is Uran Brooke, chairman of the board of the Iinrand Institute.
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  Speaker 5: In addition to podcasting and podcast and speaking globally, doctor
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: Brooke has written several books, including his most recent in
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: Pursuit of Wealth, The Moral Case for Finance. Doctor Brook
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  Speaker 5: also co authored Free Market Revolution, How Emrand's ideas can
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: end big Government, and another book, Equal Is Unfair, America's
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: misguided fight against income inequality. Doctor Brooke was born and
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: raised in Israel. He served as a first sergeant in
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: Israeli military intelligence and earned a bachelor's degree in civil
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  Speaker 5: engineering in nineteen eighty seven. He moved to the US,
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: where he received his MBA and PhD in finance from
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: the University of Texas at Austin, and he became an
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: American citizen in two thousand and three. Doctor Brook serves
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: on the boards of the Imrand Institute and on the
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: board of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: Let's give a warm welcome to doctor Yurmbrook. Arguing the
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  Speaker 5: negative on Tonight's resolution is Boscar Sankara, founding editor of Jacobin,
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  Speaker 5: president of The Nation magazine, and author of the socialist manifesto,
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  Speaker 5: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.
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  Speaker 5: He is former vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.
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  Speaker 5: Mister Sunkara has been published in The New York Times
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: Washington Post, Vox, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. In twenty twenty,
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  Speaker 5: he was named to Fortune magazine's forty Under forty list
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: in the Government and Politics category. He earned his bachelor's
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: degree at George Washington University, studying history. Please give a
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: warm welcome to Boscar Sankara. Our moderator for this evening's
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  Speaker 5: debate is Hadley Manning. Hadley is director of Steamboat Institute's
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: Fellowship for Public Policy and American Exceptionalism, which supports the
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: careers of principled young journalists. Hadley was a recipient of
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: this fellowship in two twenty sixteen. Had We rites and
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  Speaker 5: provides commentary on a variety of issues, including economics and
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: health care policy, for Fox Business, The New York Times, Forbes,
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: Real Clear Policy, and other outlets. She graduated from the
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: University of North Carolina with a double major in economics
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: and journalism, where she was a Moreheadcane scholar. And now
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  Speaker 5: I'll turn it over to Hadley to begin tonight's debate.
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  Speaker 6: Thank you again for good evening and hanging all of
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: you for joining it. Thank you the young, the live stream.
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  Speaker 6: Thank you to everyone who's voted in the.
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  Speaker 7: Pre debate, Powl. I'm going to review our results.
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  Speaker 6: At this moment, fifty nine percent of our audience agrees
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  Speaker 6: with the resolution that capitalism is better, twenty six percent disagree,
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  Speaker 6: and fifteen percent are undecided. We will take a post
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: debate poll at the end of tonight's discussion to see
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  Speaker 6: if anyone's changed their mind. But I just want to say,
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: as it's been my privilege to moderate many Steamboa Institute
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: debates over the years, that I think there's so much
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: value to coming and hearing a debate. Even if you're mind,
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  Speaker 6: it's not changed, because my hope is that everyone will
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  Speaker 6: leave with a better understanding of both views, both perspectives.
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  Speaker 6: So ticket things started. We're talking about, as Jennifer mentioned,
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  Speaker 6: a huge topic, how we arrange our economy and our society,
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  Speaker 6: and a relevant one because New York has just elected
• 14:16
  Speaker 6: a socialist mayor. It is certainly something that we're talking
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  Speaker 6: about at all levels of government and something that we'll
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: get into very deeply tonight. We will start with five
• 14:24
  Speaker 6: minutes of opening statements, first from Uran and then from Boscar,
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: and during the course of tonight's debate, I want to
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: encourage all of you in the audience to submit questions.
• 14:34
  Speaker 7: You should have a QR code.
• 14:35
  Speaker 6: And a way to do that through your phones. You
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: can do this if you're watching the live stream. Those
• 14:39
  Speaker 6: questions will come to me on this iPad, and during
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: our discussion, I will.
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  Speaker 7: Insert some audience questions.
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  Speaker 6: So you're on opening statement number one sounds good.
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  Speaker 4: It strikes me that this is not a typical college campus.
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  Speaker 4: A fifty nine percent agree with the prop positions, So
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  Speaker 4: I wish that was a state of Amerking colleges. I
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  Speaker 4: don't think it is. So I'm going to argue tonight
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  Speaker 4: that capitalism, both from inistic from a minstoical perspective, from
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  Speaker 4: an economic perspective, from theoretical perspective, and from a moral perspective,
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  Speaker 4: is the system that leads to human flourishing. And indeed,
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  Speaker 4: the socialism destroys human flourishing, destroys human life, and in history,
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  Speaker 4: at least those who've advocated for socialism, those socialism that
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: we try. But in my view, theoretically has to this
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: outcome has to be. The manifestation of socialism leads to death, destruction,
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  Speaker 4: in poverty, so it leads to the exact opposite of
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: human flourishing. But before we get into the details, and
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: I'm sure during the debate we'll get into a lot
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: of the details and will break this down. It's important,
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  Speaker 4: I think, to set our terms, to define our terms,
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  Speaker 4: what we mean by capitalism, what we mean by socialism,
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  Speaker 4: And I'm not sure we're always going to agree on
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  Speaker 4: even up here on stage, never mind in the audience,
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  Speaker 4: about what those terms mean. So I'm going to tell
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  Speaker 4: you what I think capitalism and socialism mean. And so capitalism,
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  Speaker 4: in my view, is a system a private property and
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: volunteery exchange. It is a system in which individuals are
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: left free to interact with others as they see fit
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  Speaker 4: with a role of government is the protection of individual rights,
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  Speaker 4: rights being the freedoms to pursue your own life, the
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  Speaker 4: freedom to pursue your own value using your own reason.
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  Speaker 4: It is the freedom the lack of cousion, the absence
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  Speaker 4: of cousion, the absence of force, the absence of a
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  Speaker 4: gun in human interaction. Government is there only to protect
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: us from people who would violate our rights, and the
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: only way to violate our rights is through violence, through cosion,
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  Speaker 4: through some form of force. So that to means capitalism,
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  Speaker 4: capitalism is the system that it shrines individual liberty, individual
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  Speaker 4: freedom that takes out of society completely. Violence. Violence is
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: monopolized by the government and can only be used in
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: self defense to protect. Socialism is a system in which
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: the means of production owned either by the state or
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: by the workers. That is that it is a course system,
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  Speaker 4: a system that negates private property. It's a system that
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: negates the idea of individual ownership. Everything is collectivized, and
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: different socials would collectivise it in different ways through different mechanisms.
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  Speaker 4: But it is a system based in my view, oncursion
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  Speaker 4: on force. It is a system in which if you
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: wanted to start a company, if you wanted to employ people,
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  Speaker 4: that would be not allowed. Whereas, for example, in capitalism,
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  Speaker 4: if you wanted to start a little commune and share
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  Speaker 4: everything or start a co op, you'll find just compete,
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  Speaker 4: you can do that. So socialism is a system of exclusion.
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  Speaker 4: It's a system that excludes volunteery interaction, it excludes the
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  Speaker 4: idea of private property. And look, we've never had, based
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  Speaker 4: on my definition, we've never had a purely capitalist system.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: We've never achieved it. But the closer we get to it,
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  Speaker 4: the closer we align with it, the more successful society
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  Speaker 4: is the rich it is, the wealthier it is, the
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: more freedom individuals benefit from. If you align economic freedom
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: with GDP per capita, which is not the best measure
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: of human will being, but it's one of the measures
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  Speaker 4: we have, there's a clear correlation. The free er you are,
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  Speaker 4: the more wealth there is, and the more I think
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  Speaker 4: flourishing there is, the more entrepreneurial activity there is, the
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  Speaker 4: more innovation there is, the more progress there is, the
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  Speaker 4: more people are free to pursue their own values in
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  Speaker 4: their own ways. The less economic freedom, the less of
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  Speaker 4: all of that there is. So as we as we
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: get closer to an ideal of capitalism, we get more
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  Speaker 4: and more of those benefits. I think the opposite is
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  Speaker 4: true when we talk about socialism. You know, as we
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  Speaker 4: get closer to the ideals that are being put into
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  Speaker 4: action in the past, what we get is less economic
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  Speaker 4: less economic success, less prosperity, less economic well being. But
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  Speaker 4: we also get real inifestation of human harm in poverty
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  Speaker 4: and often in death and destruction. So capitalism is the
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: system of human flourishing. It's really the only system in
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: human history that has led us to woods human flourishing,
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  Speaker 4: and when we deviate from it, we deviate from the
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  Speaker 4: potential to flourish. Thank you.
• 20:16
  Speaker 8: I want to begin tonight in a place that might
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  Speaker 8: surprise people, and in to day like this with.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Praise for capitalism.
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  Speaker 8: So Karl Marx, the original socialist critic, wrote with real
• 20:28
  Speaker 8: admiration about its achievements. He described capitalism as the most
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  Speaker 8: revolutionary force in human history, a system that shattered feudal stagnation,
• 20:37
  Speaker 8: dissolved inherited hierarchies, and helped realize many Enlightenment ideals. And capitalism,
• 20:45
  Speaker 8: even in the twenty first century, continues to be dynamic,
• 20:49
  Speaker 8: not just in North America but across the world. South
• 20:53
  Speaker 8: Korea I was in the nineteen fifties poor the many
• 20:56
  Speaker 8: Sub Saharan African nations at the time. Today it's a
• 20:59
  Speaker 8: high income democracy and technological.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Powerhousing Around the world, we've seen what happens when.
• 21:08
  Speaker 8: Marketanisms and global trade is unleashed at scale. Hundreds of
• 21:12
  Speaker 8: millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in
• 21:15
  Speaker 8: just the last twenty years alone. These are genuine achievements.
• 21:19
  Speaker 8: Any serious person should acknowledge them. But here's the key point.
• 21:24
  Speaker 8: Being better than feudalism or better than under development is
• 21:28
  Speaker 8: not the bar for human furishing. In the twenty first century,
• 21:33
  Speaker 8: a system can be indispensable for development and still fail
• 21:38
  Speaker 8: to deliver deflourishing its own productivity makes possible. Capitalism opens
• 21:45
  Speaker 8: enormous opportunities, but we could still live in a society
• 21:49
  Speaker 8: that paradoxically yield is paradoxically more dynamic, more equal, and
• 21:56
  Speaker 8: more democratic. Capitalism's shortfall isn't us. It's extreme income and equality.
• 22:02
  Speaker 8: It's capitalism extreme inequality of power. Market exchange helps generate wealth,
• 22:08
  Speaker 8: but it doesn't guarantee that people creating that wealth have
• 22:11
  Speaker 8: real agency in their lives, and that democratic deficit is
• 22:15
  Speaker 8: where my disagreement with Tonight's resolution begins. I'm a socialist
• 22:20
  Speaker 8: because I believe that in a wealthy society, the basics
• 22:24
  Speaker 8: of a decent life shouldn't be conditional on your marketing
• 22:27
  Speaker 8: power in the labor market, or what zip code you
• 22:30
  Speaker 8: were born into. And I'm a socialist because I believe
• 22:33
  Speaker 8: that the people who actually make our economy function, workers,
• 22:37
  Speaker 8: have far too little say over the conditions under which
• 22:41
  Speaker 8: they labor. In political life, we understand that freedom means
• 22:45
  Speaker 8: more than just freedom to leave. It means voice, the
• 22:49
  Speaker 8: ability to participate in shaping the institutions a governor. We
• 22:52
  Speaker 8: don't say that, as Americans we're free because we can
• 22:56
  Speaker 8: leave our country. We say we're free because we have
• 22:59
  Speaker 8: democratic rights within it. Yet in the workplace, where people
• 23:04
  Speaker 8: spend large parts of their waking lives, democracy largely stops
• 23:09
  Speaker 8: at the door. Now, I'm not here to advocate for
• 23:13
  Speaker 8: a centrally planned economy. I'm a market socialist precisely because
• 23:18
  Speaker 8: I think markets are indispensable. They convey information efficiently, they
• 23:23
  Speaker 8: discipline in efficiency, they allow consumer choice. But the market
• 23:29
  Speaker 8: is a fantastic tool that can be used in different ways.
• 23:33
  Speaker 8: In contemporary visions of socialism, markets remain, prices remain, competition remains,
• 23:38
  Speaker 8: but firms themselves will be democratically run, governed by workers,
• 23:43
  Speaker 8: financed by their market sales, and embedded within a social
• 23:46
  Speaker 8: democratic state that guarantees healthcare, education, childcare, and a strong
• 23:52
  Speaker 8: floor underneath everyone's feet. Central planning disastrously failed. Democratic socialist
• 24:00
  Speaker 8: were among its first critics. It failed because no group
• 24:03
  Speaker 8: of planners could gather information or create the incentives necessary
• 24:07
  Speaker 8: to coordinate an entire economy. But capitalism too has failures
• 24:11
  Speaker 8: that are also important to address. First, distribution and markets.
• 24:16
  Speaker 8: One dollar equals one vote over what society produces, and
• 24:21
  Speaker 8: in a society where most essential workers earn very few dollars,
• 24:24
  Speaker 8: their needs and preferences are systematically outweighed by the extremely wealthy.
• 24:30
  Speaker 8: The rich don't just have more power and markets for
• 24:32
  Speaker 8: consumer goods. They use their market power and production to
• 24:36
  Speaker 8: block the kinds of redistribution that would broaden human flourishing.
• 24:40
  Speaker 8: The very success of capitalism at generating wealth creates actors
• 24:44
  Speaker 8: with the political and economic clout to prevent that wealth
• 24:47
  Speaker 8: from being better distributed. Second, democracy workplaces under capitalism are
• 24:53
  Speaker 8: largely authoritarian institutions. You could quit, but quitting is a
• 24:57
  Speaker 8: very thin form of freedom. Chrotic socialism wants to give
• 25:01
  Speaker 8: people both a voice and exit, extend democratic norms into
• 25:05
  Speaker 8: economic life. It lets, in other words, people generate who
• 25:10
  Speaker 8: are generating a firm's profit, get both its dividends in
• 25:13
  Speaker 8: addition to a fixed salary, and have a say in
• 25:15
  Speaker 8: its governance. And because democratic firms still compete in markets,
• 25:19
  Speaker 8: they cannot avoid innovation efficiency or labor saving technology. More broadly,
• 25:24
  Speaker 8: they simply share in its gains. So let me be clear,
• 25:29
  Speaker 8: capitalists perform real entrepreneurial and managerial functions. The socialist claim
• 25:34
  Speaker 8: is simply that those functions can be replicated in a
• 25:38
  Speaker 8: labor managed firm governed by workers themselves. Capitalism transform the world.
• 25:44
  Speaker 8: Socialism's promise is to push further and build upon the
• 25:47
  Speaker 8: world the capitalism has made possible. In the twenty first century,
• 25:52
  Speaker 8: I see no reason why we can't experiment with new
• 25:55
  Speaker 8: modes of creating or society that will be both more
• 25:58
  Speaker 8: equal and more democratic.
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you.
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: To share a note that I encountered earlier today in
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: the Miriam Webster online dictionary. The note on one entry
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: said communism, socialism, capitalism, and democracy are all among our
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: top all time lookups, and user comments suggest that this
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: is because they are complex, abstract terms often used in
• 26:31
  Speaker 6: opaque ways. This is the case in many political terms,
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: and so to get us started, I want to be
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: sure that we are on the same page, that we're
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: talking about these terms with clarity, and I appreciate that
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: both of you addressed this in your opening remarks. We
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: don't have to belabor the point, but Oscar, can you
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: offer a definition of socialism?
• 26:52
  Speaker 8: Well, I think I'll start with saying that it's the
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: inverse of capitalism, in the sense that capitalism is production
• 26:58
  Speaker 8: for the market through the accumulation of surplus, so capitalists
• 27:03
  Speaker 8: convene together workers and other means to produce goods for
• 27:07
  Speaker 8: market production. Workers are in a state of market dependence
• 27:11
  Speaker 8: in which they have to work for the capitalists or starve. Generally,
• 27:17
  Speaker 8: in my vision of socialism, workers would be both guaranteed
• 27:22
  Speaker 8: a floor, so they wouldn't be under the same condition
• 27:24
  Speaker 8: of market dependence. But for those who enter into the
• 27:28
  Speaker 8: market economy because they want to earn more and consume
• 27:30
  Speaker 8: more and achieve more, they would be entering into worker
• 27:36
  Speaker 8: cooperatives essentially, in which even if there's inequalities within the
• 27:41
  Speaker 8: workplace in terms of pay, power, responsibility, it still would
• 27:44
  Speaker 8: be subjected to democratic norms, not the.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Structure of existing capitalist.
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: Firmsan do you agree with this definition of socialism and
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: can you offer a definition of capitalism?
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: I mean no, I mean I agree that this is
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: one form of socialism. Again, I think the essence of
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: socialism is the subjugation of the means of production to
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: some form of collective, whether it's the state or whether
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's the workers. So I mean in that sense,
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: I think I think you know, this is one of
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: the many forms that socialism has taken in the past,
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: UH and and and could take in the future, this
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: is probably the most sophisticated one you will find out
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: there in terms of in terms of UH, the way
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: it's worked out, and the one that acknowledges markets the most,
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: because typically socialists don't write, at least historically capitalism is
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: the system I see. I don't. I don't agree that
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: the focus here is on capital or the focuses on
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: means of production. I think the essential characteristics of capitalism
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: is as a social, political, and economic system in which
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: individuals are protected, in which the individual's freedom is protected,
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: in which cosion is manned is banned, and in which
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: private property is protected by government.
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: Have some comments on that.
• 29:13
  Speaker 8: I would just say that in many ways, capitalism isn't
• 29:16
  Speaker 8: a zero sum game, in the sense that any form
• 29:19
  Speaker 8: of production that produces wealth is not zero sum. But
• 29:21
  Speaker 8: one thing that is zero sum is power and autonomy. So,
• 29:24
  Speaker 8: for example, if you own a workplace and you have
• 29:29
  Speaker 8: a bunch of people who have freely decided to work
• 29:30
  Speaker 8: for you, and you're operating hours from nine to seven,
• 29:33
  Speaker 8: you're not the worst person in the world.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: They're running a fair workplace.
• 29:36
  Speaker 8: No one's getting hurt, there's no child labor, but you're
• 29:38
  Speaker 8: working from nine to seven. This is your arrangement. Even
• 29:41
  Speaker 8: a law comes in that establishes a forty hour week.
• 29:44
  Speaker 8: Your autonomy is a capitalist to do what you want
• 29:47
  Speaker 8: with your place of work, your machinery.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Whatever else is limited.
• 29:52
  Speaker 8: But if those workers are guaranteed the same pay, but
• 29:57
  Speaker 8: now they're working eight hours instead of ten hours, I
• 29:59
  Speaker 8: would are you that in many ways their autonomy and
• 30:01
  Speaker 8: scope of freedom has expanded. So there's all sorts of
• 30:04
  Speaker 8: ways in which is a trade off. This might be
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: a bad policy for developing country going to create all
• 30:09
  Speaker 8: sorts of objunctions to it. But I do think this
• 30:11
  Speaker 8: is where there is this zero sum relationship. So where
• 30:14
  Speaker 8: I would disagree is this idea that socialism at the
• 30:17
  Speaker 8: role of the state is just taking away freedoms, because
• 30:20
  Speaker 8: I think it's a little bit more complicated. In some cases,
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: you're giving freedoms and you're taking away freedoms and autonomy
• 30:25
  Speaker 8: as well.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: So I think every time you take away freedom like that,
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: the freedom of the of the workers and the owners
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: to negotiate how many hours they're going to work and
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: at what pay. Whenever you enforce a regime like that,
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: you're engaged in a negative of some game. That is
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: I think that it is a net It is a
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: destroyer of economic value, and I think ultimately it is
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: a net destroyer of a freedom. That is, what about
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: that worko who actually wants to work the ten hours
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: or what about you know, you're taking away the flexibility
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: of being able to negotiate terms. You're taking away freedom
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: from both a woka and the owner. So it's limiting,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: it's restricting, and any socialist or gumment intervention like that
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: is restricting and limiting. It's taking freedom away, and it's
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: destructive in it's not just zerosome, it's negative.
• 31:19
  Speaker 7: So do you have anything more?
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: We would keep going?
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think we keep going
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: on and on.
• 31:25
  Speaker 8: I mean, obviously, in existing societies where we already have
• 31:28
  Speaker 8: those roles, workers are entitled to time and a half. Generally,
• 31:31
  Speaker 8: reductions and hours have been tied with increases in pay.
• 31:34
  Speaker 8: Often when the state intervenes, the state intervenes to create floors,
• 31:37
  Speaker 8: which which changes the conditions of which workers negotiate and bargain.
• 31:42
  Speaker 8: Your average worker, I hate this term, but your average
• 31:45
  Speaker 8: unskilled worker has very limited avenues to bargain as a
• 31:49
  Speaker 8: as an individual. That's why by nature they're forced to
• 31:52
  Speaker 8: bargain collectively. And I think there is a role for
• 31:55
  Speaker 8: both the state and for organs of collective bargaining that
• 31:58
  Speaker 8: inherently are going to be limited the freedoms of capitalists
• 32:01
  Speaker 8: to act how they want to act with their private property.
• 32:05
  Speaker 8: I think it also just creates other avenues of freedom
• 32:08
  Speaker 8: for the majority.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: But particularly in the twenty first century, in the kind
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: of economy we have today, that is just untrue. I mean,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: in Silicon Valley, who has the power it is the
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: worker or the employer in terms of in terms of
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: flexibility and moving around and determining rates. I mean the
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: number of job hoppers in Silicon Valley among workers, right
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: the worker And of course more and more people are
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: exactly that. Fewer and fewer people are doing the kind
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: of work that maybe the worker, the average worker did
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: in the past. So you know, and yes, workers should
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: be able to legally join together and negotiate jointly as
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: long as it's voluntary, as long as there's no cosion
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: of force being involved there. So I don't see it
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: as any kind of imposition and Look, what we don't
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: have is what we know is when we get freedom,
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: we get increased productivity. The increased productivity we know raises wages.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: And my view is on the capitalism, if you took
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: away all these restrictions and laws and so on, you
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: would get a massive boost in productivity, which would ultimately
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: benefit everybody, both the employer and the employee because of
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: increased productivity.
• 33:18
  Speaker 6: Okay, here, I do want to jump in. And I
• 33:19
  Speaker 6: suspected that simply trying to define terms in this debate
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: would yield great debate, and I was right.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Silly me.
• 33:27
  Speaker 6: I thought the difference between socialism and capitalism was who
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: owns the means of production? But it sounds like it's
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: much more than that. I want to ask to try
• 33:34
  Speaker 6: to get to it.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: But it is that, Yeah, and we agree with that,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: and that's what Barry.
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: Webster said to ultimately, if you read through the definitions online.
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: I want to get to one other term that's in
• 33:43
  Speaker 6: our resolution because I think this will help audience members
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: decide whose side they're on, and that's the term human flourishing.
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: I want to ask both of our debaters to talk
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: about how they define or measure human flourishing if there
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: are particular metrics that you can point to, for example,
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: a decrease in poverty, or an increase in GDP, an
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: increase in happiness as measured by a survey, or an
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: increase in well being however defined, give me some put
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: some flesh on that, and tell me about your definition
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: or your metric for human flourishing.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: Sure, I mean, I think that you'd have to aggregate
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: a number of different things. Certainly GDP, per capital or
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: some measure of wealth is one. I think the levels
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: of poverty, no question, the number of people living in poverty,
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: and defining proper poverty properly would be important. I think
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: measures of you know, people's, people's ability to pursue their
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: own values. And it's not clear how you how you
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: measure those, but but you know, one measure, for example,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: is is both social mobility but also mobility right America.
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: For example, America used to be a country in which
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: people moved all the time. They always sought out better opportunities.
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: They moved city, they move talents, they moved states. And
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: that's that's gone. Americans become a much more passive people.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: We don't we don't move as much for a variety
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: of reasons, mainly related to the welfare state. But we
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: can we can talk about why. I think that that mobility,
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: that dynamism is part of what human flowishing suggests people
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: pursuing values, going out and reaching and trying to achieve things.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: I'm very skeptical about measures of happiness, particularly the one
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: that everybody cites, which is which is one question with
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: a ladder where you are? And it's it's just a
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: it's a very very bad measure. There are the most
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: sophisticated measures where they try to estimate happiness and the
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: result is not the standard result that you get. But
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm not a I'm not a scientist in
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: that field. I'm just skeptical. I'm skeptical of self reported
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: happiness and people measuring. I mean, it would be great
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: if we could measure people's happiness, and that would be
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: the ultimate measure of human flourishing. But I think it's
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: ultimately the opportunities people have. What what tune as do
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: you have to live the kind of life you live?
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: And you know, I'm going to argue that capitalism provides, maximizes,
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: indeed human opportunities to manifest the kind of life that
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: you want to live without other people dictating it. And
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: I'll just say one of the disagreements between us that
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: we should probably get into it is a view of democracy, right.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: I think that's maybe a key difference between us is
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: that I think best places a huge emphasis of democracy,
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: both for human flourishing and for economic activity. I do not.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: I do not view democracy as some kind of holy grail,
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: as something that important for human success, and but that
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: needs to be defined and discussed.
• 36:41
  Speaker 8: I think on the actual definitional questions, we largely agree
• 36:45
  Speaker 8: a particular on the happiness question. On the question of mobility, though,
• 36:48
  Speaker 8: I would actually maybe not social mobility, but but physical mobility,
• 36:54
  Speaker 8: I would actually say that I think what we've seen
• 36:57
  Speaker 8: as a root of people's self reported happiness and other
• 37:01
  Speaker 8: real obvious crises of addiction and helplessness and loneliness is
• 37:06
  Speaker 8: the hollowing out of a lot of our communities.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: And civic constitutions.
• 37:10
  Speaker 8: So I think that's probably where I would say would
• 37:13
  Speaker 8: add another measure of how many friends do you have,
• 37:16
  Speaker 8: how many people do you interact with on a daily basis,
• 37:20
  Speaker 8: how many deep and meaningful relationships.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: Do you have.
• 37:23
  Speaker 8: I believe in a much more robust social safety net
• 37:27
  Speaker 8: provided by the state. But I also believe that we
• 37:30
  Speaker 8: as individual should be able to call upon our friends
• 37:32
  Speaker 8: and family in times of need, and that should be
• 37:35
  Speaker 8: one of our first first calls. And when we look
• 37:38
  Speaker 8: at I think a lot of American history last twenty years,
• 37:41
  Speaker 8: it's been the loss of jobs, the industrialization. It's been
• 37:45
  Speaker 8: increasing addiction, it's been other social indicators. I'm not particularly religious,
• 37:49
  Speaker 8: but declines and church attendance and other things that go
• 37:51
  Speaker 8: on hand in hand with declines and people showing up
• 37:55
  Speaker 8: at the local veterans hall or union halls. And I
• 37:59
  Speaker 8: think all these a lot of the things that make
• 38:01
  Speaker 8: our lives richer. And I think there is something to
• 38:04
  Speaker 8: the economic insecurity that Americans feel in a society with
• 38:08
  Speaker 8: a weaker safety net up pairs in Europe that is
• 38:11
  Speaker 8: tied to these things, and in my view, inhibits.
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: I see it exactly the opposite, right, So I think
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: that it's a social safety net that actually is preventing
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: people from pursuing their values. That is, so, if you're
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: a steel worker in Cleveland, Ohio, and you've lost your
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: job and politicians are telling you the job is coming back,
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: don't worry we're going to reindustrialize. It's coming back, sit
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: around and wait. In the meantime, he will pay your
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: welfare and will fund your sitting on your sofa watching
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: TV and not doing anything. Then yeah, that's going to
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: create real social anngst, and that's going to create real alienation,
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: and that's going to create the real challenges that we're seeing.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: And I think that is prevalent. There's no shortage of jobs.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: For example, in America today, in spite of all economic problems,
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: there's plenty of jobs, but they required people getting off
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: off the sofa and actually going to where the jobs are.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: You know, if you go to West Arkansas, there are
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: plenty of jobs in Western Arkansas. And you know, people
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: moving and engaging. Going to a new place is not alienating.
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: As somebody who's done it many many times in his life.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: It's actually very rewarding, you know, creating new social social
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: contacts and new friendships and new environments. It's actually quite
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: rewarding to be able to do that. And I think
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: what's happened is people are staying in the same place.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: They're not ambitious, They've lost that ambition, and I think
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: the welfare state encourages that supports, that promotes that, and
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: it's very, very damaging to the psyche of the people
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: who actually receive the welfare. I think that's one of
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: the big damages that it causes.
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: It sounds like on my question of what human flourishing is,
• 39:48
  Speaker 6: though we're in agreement that it's not just an economic metric.
• 39:51
  Speaker 6: It's not just about economic prosperity. But it's about moral
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: well being, social well being, the way we relate to
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: one another in society, and so about the welfare state.
• 40:00
  Speaker 6: I do want to move on to some of our
• 40:01
  Speaker 6: audience questions. There are some that actually look like the
• 40:05
  Speaker 6: questions that I brought tonight, so we're of one mind.
• 40:08
  Speaker 7: But in the United States and in.
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: Many countries around the world, there's this question of the
• 40:12
  Speaker 6: role of government and things that the government should do
• 40:15
  Speaker 6: and things that the market should do. And it seems
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: that you alluded to this in your opening statement, Bosker,
• 40:20
  Speaker 6: but I want to ask you both about a story
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: that goes something like this.
• 40:25
  Speaker 7: Capitalism's good for some things.
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: It's good to have innovation and profit and competition in
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: some areas of the economy, but for basic needs, health care, education, childcare,
• 40:36
  Speaker 6: those were a few you mentioned socialisms the way to
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: go so Juran, How would you respond to that.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: I'd say, look at the quality of a healthcare, look
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: at a quality of our education, and judge where the
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: socialism does a good job with either one of those.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: It does a pretty lousy job delivering those products. I
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: don't get it. I don't get the difference between healthcare, care, education,
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: and I don't know my iPhone. I really don't. Nobody
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: I think in this audience thinks the government should produce
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: my iPhone. I mean, just the thought of a government
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: committee designing an iPhone should send shivers down your spine.
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: Then why is it okay? Why do you think you'll
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: get a good result with the government designing your healthcare
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: system or the government designing your educational system. Imagine and
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: I know this is hard because we've never really experienced it,
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: but imagine an educational system that was driven by the
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: same kind of incentives and the same kind of entrepreneurial motivation,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: the same kind of innovation that applies in tech, or
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: that applies in food production. Food is very important. We
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: all rely on food. We would die without food, and
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: yet we leave it completely to private sector, to the
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: little food. Not completely right, We subsidized huge amounts. I
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: wish we lift it completely, but mostly right. As compared
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: to healthcare and education, why can't do that? Imagine competition
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: between schools. Imagine the innovation that would happen, Imagine the
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: variety that would be offered to parents. Imagine what would
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: be possible if we actually brought that same spirit of
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: competition and collaboration and innovation to education. And of course
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: the healthcare and those of you think that's what our
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: healthcare system is, it's private. Our healthcare system is the
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: worst of all worlds. It's a mishmash of the you know,
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: bad incentives with a huge amount of socialization. Like I'm
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: going to turn sixty five soon, and I will get
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: socialized medicine. Right, I'll be just like in Europe. The
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: government will fund all of my needs when it comes
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: to healthcare. And you know, but the private part of
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: it is badly incentivized because of this huge Medicaan and Medicaid.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: So it's a mismaster. That is a disaster. And we
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: regulate insurance companies that we don't get market driven insurance. Again,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: imagine a world in which this was actually driven by
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: market incentives, what a beautiful thing that could be, how
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: cheap health care would be, and how innovative it would be,
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: and how we would all be living to much much
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: longer than we are living today. Now. I can't prove
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: that because I can't point to any way where they
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: have that. But why can't we extrapolate from the areas
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: where the markets work to areas where we don't let
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: the markets work, and you know, see what happens. Just
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: there's a there's a famous graph that the American Enterprise
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: Institute puts out and about the cost of things, how
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: things have changed in terms of cost, and almost everything
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: that is market driven has gone down in cost in
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: terms of inflation adjusted, wage adjusted. However you want to
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: look at it, it's you know, it's ninety nine percent
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: cheaper to buy a television today than it was twenty
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: thirty forty five years ago. The only things that have
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: increased in price are the things that the government heavily regulates,
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: education and health, Kait, right. And you know housing is flat,
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: but of course that's that's super regulated as well. So
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: things that where we allow a market to function, where
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: we allow capitalism to function, I mean somewhat they're all
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: heavily regulated, heavily controlled. Imagine what they would be if
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: there wasn't all that declining prices. Everything else is upward.
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: I'd like to see declining prices on everything and increased
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: quality and everything, And I think that is what's possible
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: if you bring markets into it.
• 44:29
  Speaker 8: So I think if you actually look at all the
• 44:31
  Speaker 8: components in your iPhone, every component can be tied in
• 44:35
  Speaker 8: some way to state research and development. And you know,
• 44:38
  Speaker 8: I'm not saying the state necessarily has to have that role,
• 44:41
  Speaker 8: but it's just a matter of fact that in your
• 44:43
  Speaker 8: particular iPhone example, it did have that role. I would
• 44:48
  Speaker 8: actually agree I'm being excessively generous today. I will come
• 44:51
  Speaker 8: in a very good mood today, but I would actually
• 44:54
  Speaker 8: agree that our healthcing system events is kind of the
• 44:56
  Speaker 8: worst about worlds in the sense that we have subsidized
• 45:00
  Speaker 8: consumption of healthcare, but the state doesn't have the mechanisms
• 45:04
  Speaker 8: like other countries have to control costs. So I would
• 45:07
  Speaker 8: say in a more socialist healthcare system, the state would
• 45:11
  Speaker 8: have more mechanisms, for better or worse, more mechanisms to
• 45:14
  Speaker 8: control costs rather than just subsidizing. Conception, I think the
• 45:20
  Speaker 8: education system in the US as a whole. K through
• 45:22
  Speaker 8: twelve education is actually a radical success story that has
• 45:27
  Speaker 8: been undermined by broader social problems. You know, broader problems
• 45:32
  Speaker 8: of poor kids going to school, hungary and things like that.
• 45:36
  Speaker 8: But America has actually produced innovative education methods. I was
• 45:41
  Speaker 8: better educated than my parents, who are educated in the
• 45:44
  Speaker 8: British style, which Commonwealth system of repetition and education. We
• 45:49
  Speaker 8: were at the cutting edge of all these techniques and
• 45:51
  Speaker 8: they happened in K through twelve. There needs to be
• 45:54
  Speaker 8: strict measures on the performance of schools. There needs to
• 45:57
  Speaker 8: be schools of different types of varieties. But I personally
• 46:02
  Speaker 8: think that education should be guaranteed as social rights. I
• 46:06
  Speaker 8: actually think this is one case in which the state
• 46:09
  Speaker 8: should continue to run areas of public education. In other areas,
• 46:13
  Speaker 8: you might say that the state should guarantee the right
• 46:16
  Speaker 8: to free I say, H two to six childcare, but
• 46:22
  Speaker 8: that these providers should still be private providers. There should
• 46:26
  Speaker 8: be some method of cost control, and essentially the state
• 46:29
  Speaker 8: should just be subsidizing kind of access and enabling everyone
• 46:33
  Speaker 8: to have access. There's many different policy ways in which
• 46:37
  Speaker 8: we could decide what should be a state owned enterprise
• 46:40
  Speaker 8: and what should be a guaranteed right. But in general,
• 46:43
  Speaker 8: I would say that the core of what it takes
• 46:46
  Speaker 8: to live a good life, at the very least, the
• 46:50
  Speaker 8: core necessities of education, childcare, healthcare I should be guaranteed
• 46:57
  Speaker 8: as rights just by virtue of being born. Though I
• 47:00
  Speaker 8: do agree that the way in which we've constructed the
• 47:04
  Speaker 8: US welfare state is often the worst of both worlds,
• 47:07
  Speaker 8: in which we again subsidize demand without controlling cost or
• 47:11
  Speaker 8: being able to produce more goods.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: I think jorder countries do this much better than US.
• 47:16
  Speaker 6: I want to jump in because you mentioned the term
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: social right, and I want to ask you, Busker, what
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: your definition of a social right is and how you
• 47:23
  Speaker 6: differentiate because maybe it's a stretch to say that the
• 47:26
  Speaker 6: government's going to nationalize the creation of iPhones, But there
• 47:29
  Speaker 6: are other areas that are not healthcare, childcare and education,
• 47:32
  Speaker 6: things like transportation or housing, things that you might consider
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: to be basic needs in our economy. And I think
• 47:39
  Speaker 6: this is one of the challenges politically for socialism, is
• 47:43
  Speaker 6: that it seems to be a slippery slope between what
• 47:46
  Speaker 6: are the things that we really need that the government
• 47:48
  Speaker 6: should provide for everyone, and where do we draw the
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: line on that. So I'm going to ask you, where
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: do you draw the line between things that you consider
• 47:54
  Speaker 6: to be social rights that should be socialized and other things.
• 47:58
  Speaker 8: We could draw the line at a policy level of
• 48:00
  Speaker 8: what's sufficient, what works, what doesn't. So at the very minimum,
• 48:03
  Speaker 8: we should say there should be no street homelessness in
• 48:06
  Speaker 8: the United States. That might mean that we're giving people
• 48:10
  Speaker 8: shelter beds that are safe but are not somewhere We're
• 48:14
  Speaker 8: given other choices people would want to spend long term.
• 48:18
  Speaker 8: That's ensuring a basic right to housing an extremely minimal level,
• 48:23
  Speaker 8: a level comparable to other advanced capitalist countries. It's a
• 48:26
  Speaker 8: policy we have in New York and other places. But
• 48:29
  Speaker 8: you can't tell me that this would disincentivize people from
• 48:33
  Speaker 8: wanting to live in nice, stable homes or whatever else.
• 48:38
  Speaker 8: It's often of last resort. I think those other areas
• 48:43
  Speaker 8: where one can argue, what are the policy ramifications of
• 48:47
  Speaker 8: free childcare, of shifting that burden from just private families
• 48:50
  Speaker 8: onto the public large, I would argue that there would
• 48:55
  Speaker 8: be plenty of additional offsets of making easy easier for
• 49:01
  Speaker 8: women to decide to re enter the workforce if they
• 49:05
  Speaker 8: want to re enter the workforce. If they've given these options,
• 49:07
  Speaker 8: there might be other knockdown positive effects. We just have
• 49:11
  Speaker 8: to figure out how to design these these programs. But
• 49:14
  Speaker 8: if you actually look at the countries with the most
• 49:16
  Speaker 8: expansive welfare state, often this has been tied to not
• 49:21
  Speaker 8: stagnation and people just relaxing and sitting back and leaching
• 49:25
  Speaker 8: off this welfare state, but it's actually been connected to
• 49:27
  Speaker 8: having a more dynamic economy. So in order countries, for instance,
• 49:32
  Speaker 8: often you'll have greater rates of firm failure than you
• 49:36
  Speaker 8: do in the in the in the US in terms
• 49:38
  Speaker 8: of uh these firms they emerge, they have to deal
• 49:43
  Speaker 8: with both high wage demands because the workers are are
• 49:47
  Speaker 8: are generally covered by collective bargaining agreement, and they also
• 49:50
  Speaker 8: have to deal with with with with the host of
• 49:52
  Speaker 8: other competitive pressures.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: These firms, feral workers go unemployed.
• 49:58
  Speaker 8: So so a lot of the dynamics that you want
• 49:59
  Speaker 8: to have, but there's a social compact that says, hey,
• 50:03
  Speaker 8: this is the worst thing in the world because we
• 50:04
  Speaker 8: have active liver in market policies to get us into
• 50:06
  Speaker 8: other jobs and other sectors, and we also have this
• 50:09
  Speaker 8: welfare state to rely on, so we know we're not
• 50:11
  Speaker 8: going to destitute. In America, I think people are really
• 50:14
  Speaker 8: afraid sometimes of the consequences of failure, in part because
• 50:18
  Speaker 8: we don't have these welfare state institutions.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: So noted states, I mean, the United States, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: is the most probably the most entrepreneurial country in the world.
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: Sweden is relatively you know, entrepreneurial compared to Europe, but
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: it's less entrepreneurs in the US. List En, entrepreneur of
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: the Israel. Denmark is less entrepreneurs in Sweden. So fear
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: of failure exists all over Europe. You know, a failure
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: is much bigger deal in Europe than it is in
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: the United States. Entrepreneurship rates in the US, particularly if
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: you take Europe as a whole, a much much higher
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: in the United States than they are in Europe. And
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: repeat entrepreneurs that is one of the measures if you
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: fail you start up again. Those measures in the United
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: States blows you're about of the water. So indeed, in
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: spite of the welfare state, or maybe because of it,
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: fear of failure is greater in Europe than there's in
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: the US. And and and social stigma associated with failure
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: is much larger in Europe than it is in the
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: US and Silicon Valley, failure is almost the badge that
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: you wear in in Europe, it's something that if you fail,
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: banks won't deal with you. You know, in even family,
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: there's a stigma around it. I want a few things
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: that the best I said in terms of you know,
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: you have to admit that if you start offering homeless
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: people free housing, at least the the margin, there's some
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: people who are paying rent right now that would rather
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: drop out of rent in order to get the free housing.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: So the margin is always going to be a group
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: that is incentivized, yes, to abandon whatever housing they have
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: in order to accept the free housing of the state.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: And and you see this in Los Angeles. The more
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: free housing they offer, the more homeless people they are.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: I mean literally, the homeless problem is increasing as they
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: increase the number of housing they provide homeless people, which
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: is completely predictable. Any economists would predict that when you
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: offer something free, demand for it increases. So this is
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: the problem. The problem is the government is equipped to
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: only do really one thing. The essence of government is force.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, George Washington has said this, and I think
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: his second in our goal to address. Government is a gun.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: That's the essentral characterist to govern. When government says something,
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: it is imposed on us. When there is a law,
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: somebody shows up and enforces that law, and the consequence
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: are violence. The consequences are forced. Force is good for
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: only one thing. There's only one good use for physical force,
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: and that is self defense. Using force in economic policy
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: is destructive. It always is. So government policies are always
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: going to be destructive, whether we can see it immediately
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: right because it looks like it had positive effects, whether
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: we can see the distortions and perversions or not. Force
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: is always going to be destructive when it is applied
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: to you know, to the economy, to our lives as individuals,
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: anything in which we can have a voluntary exchange. And
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: it's it surprises me the bust I thinks the educational
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: system in the United States is so good. I've experienced
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: three educational system I went to school in England, in Israel,
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: and in the United States, and the United States by
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: far had the poorest education. I went to like a
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: top Brookline, Massachusetts where all the kids of faculty from
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: man my Tea and Harvard went and it was a disaster, right,
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: I fell behind by a year in my two years
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: in that school relative to what they were studying in Israel.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: It was a complete disaster. But more than that, more
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: important than that is the quality of education that poor
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: kids in this country get by government schools. I mean,
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: I think we both care about poverty. Poverties is a
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: real feature of of you know, Minimizing poverty is a
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: feature of a flourishing and successful society. And one of
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: the elements of that is education. And it's it's horrific
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: what happens now. You can blame it all on parents,
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: you can blame it on the environment, you can blame
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: but then it's hard to explain experiments in private education
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: in the same neighborhoods where the result is so much
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: better that it is so superior to what And it's
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: it's not just that one parent is more motivated the
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: other pair, because the differences are so extreme that something
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: is fundamentally wrong with the with the government education that
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: we are providing in these poor neighborhoods. And I believe
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: that the solution to that is is competition. It's it's
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: it's private markets. And the private school is also very
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: inefficient in public schools are very inefficient in terms of cost,
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: So take away that burden of costs the opportunities for
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: real innovation and real progress in poor neighborhoods, and education
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: is a stunding. It's one of the reasons, you know,
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: parents often support a kind of school choice because they
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: realize that what the option they have the government is
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: providing is a really, really, really cool option.
• 55:09
  Speaker 6: Do you think that school choice or private schools is
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: an indictment of the socialized education system in US states?
• 55:16
  Speaker 8: I think that there should be measures to hold public
• 55:18
  Speaker 8: schools accountable. I think we already have a lot of
• 55:21
  Speaker 8: those those measures. See what schools are performing well, what
• 55:24
  Speaker 8: outcomes are going well. I think a lot of these schools,
• 55:27
  Speaker 8: some of them need more funding, some of them need
• 55:29
  Speaker 8: people to get fired and then to get reorganized. But
• 55:33
  Speaker 8: in state owned enterprises, even in let's say how they
• 55:36
  Speaker 8: handle healthcare in the United Kingdom or other countries and
• 55:39
  Speaker 8: socialized healthcare systems, there's core benchmarks and metrics of infant
• 55:43
  Speaker 8: mortality rates, patient outcomes, infection control outcomes. There are benchmarks,
• 55:47
  Speaker 8: and there are ways to make to make these state
• 55:52
  Speaker 8: sectors dynamic and efficient without potentially creating these private actors
• 55:59
  Speaker 8: that will be limiting access in the long run to
• 56:02
  Speaker 8: be sustainable by ability to pay, and that will also
• 56:06
  Speaker 8: be like magnets taking the most. I think a lot
• 56:09
  Speaker 8: of these studies do say often the people that go
• 56:12
  Speaker 8: through the trouble and are able to get their kids
• 56:16
  Speaker 8: into some of these magnet schools or some of these
• 56:18
  Speaker 8: charter schools are those who are most capable as parents.
• 56:22
  Speaker 8: Often maybe their income is very low, but they're d
• 56:24
  Speaker 8: classed immigrants who have a certain background and have the
• 56:27
  Speaker 8: ability to help navigate their kids. I think we should
• 56:32
  Speaker 8: be seeking in this area to have an equital welcome.
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: Then.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: I do think it's in a tremendous achievement.
• 56:37
  Speaker 8: Despite all the problems with education in the US and everywhere,
• 56:40
  Speaker 8: the fact that we know for a fact that if
• 56:42
  Speaker 8: a kid is born in America right at this moment,
• 56:45
  Speaker 8: that we know for a fact that they're going to
• 56:47
  Speaker 8: be if they don't have a developmental issue, they're going
• 56:49
  Speaker 8: to be literate, They're going to have these basic standards.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Of this ability to engage in the world that we
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: can't take for granted.
• 56:56
  Speaker 8: My grandmother, who was born in Trinidebago, was a very smart,
• 57:01
  Speaker 8: witty person, never had the ability to engage with the
• 57:05
  Speaker 8: wealth of knowledge and culture and life.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: And that would not have been the case if she
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: was born in the United States.
• 57:12
  Speaker 6: I want to ask you Ron the converse of a
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: question that I asked bosscre I ask him about social rights,
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: and I know you're on You believe in individual rights
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: and you believe in a much more limited role for government.
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: We do have a question from the audience. Would you
• 57:23
  Speaker 6: agree that the way we provide for our military is
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: a strand of socialism. I also want to ask you
• 57:29
  Speaker 6: about certain areas that we have had the government do
• 57:33
  Speaker 6: for a long time, firefighting, lease, public roads. Is there
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: concern that if capitalism has its way, that we'll go.
• 57:41
  Speaker 7: Into a sort of.
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: Anarchy, that we won't have government order providing for some
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: of these basic services that we as Americans are accustomed
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: to having the government provide.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: So I certainly don't believe in anarchy. I'm very much
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: opposed to the idea of anarchy. I believe the state
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: has an important role to play in protecting those individual rights,
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: and those individual rights basically of freedoms to live our
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: lives based on our own values in pursuit of you know,
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: based on our own thinking in pursuit of own happiness,
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: and you know, freedom from what does freedom mean? Freedom
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: means the absence of coasion, the absence of force. So
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: the job of the government is to catch the croaks,
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: to catch the criminals, to the fraudsters, the people who
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: are clearly you know, you know, abusing other people, and
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: to define those to help define what that means, and
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: of course to help define what property rights means, and
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: to make sure that property rights are not violated. That
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: is the role of government.
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: That is it.
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: Does that mean that a lot of the stuff that
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: you have learned to accept that the government provides to you,
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: you wouldn't have. Yeah, absolutely, so a lot of stuff
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: that government provides today I think in a truly capitalist
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: society it wouldn't be right. You know, again, all that
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: you do three things basically defense, policing, and judiciary. That
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: is it?
• 59:08
  Speaker 6: So that is that a form of socialism for the
• 59:12
  Speaker 6: government to provide policing services or the mill.
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: No, No, I don't think so, because again it's exactly capitalism, right.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: Capitalism is the system to protect individual rights. In order
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: to protect individual rights, one has to have a monopoly
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: over the use of force, which means that government has
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: the monopoly over the use of ittality to a force.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: It has to run a police force in a military.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: It's not you know how you actually run a police
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: force in a military. That is not socialism. That is
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: a legitimate function of a government under capitalism. So you
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: don't run a military democratically. We don't vote to who
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: should be the sergeants and who should be the colonel.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: It is top down. It is hieroarchical. It's different. It's
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: not a corporation. It's a different type of entity. It's
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: a military entity, it's a police entity. I don't think
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: it helps to call that socialism and to call everything
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: else capitalism. I don't think that's a helpful distinction.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 6: I have several Oh, I'm sorry, I have several questions
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 6: that relate to workers and workers' rights and how workers
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 6: exist inside of either of these systems. One of our
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 6: audience members asked, as an unskilled worker, I have never
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 6: felt like I had the power to decide my hours
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 6: worked and pay for those hours. I've always felt my
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: employer has the overall power to decide. As a worker,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 6: how does capitalism give me the power to decide my
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 6: own wage?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 7: Or hours when used in practice.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you're a non skilled worker in an
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: area where there's lots of competition, that is that you're
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: easily replaceable. Is somebody else that can do your job easily?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: Then yeah, you know you're going to be have a
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: difficult time pricing your own labor. And your decision then
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: has to be you know, which employer do I want
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: to work for? How many hours do I want to live?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: What's my standup living going to be given the wages
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: that I'm going to get. Because the wages are kind
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: of set by the market, you're not going to be
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: determining the wage. And but the option, I mean Bascal positions,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: the option has work or starve. And then there's a
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: sense in which that's true. But there's also other options.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: You could become an entrepreneur. There are plenty of unskilled
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: labors who started their own business of gardening, businesses, other
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: businesses and actually started an entrepreneur. And I think even
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: in our heavily controlled banking system as it is today,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: the opportunities to get loans and to start businesses like that.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: You know, you could go and become a subsistent farmist
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: like your ancestors were it's not a great life, but
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: their choices, their choices not die or work for an employer.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: And it's not just one employer. There are thousands employers
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: out there who are employing people. You can also move
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: a different state where they might be different sets of
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: opportunities available to you. Or and here's another alternative, you
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: could learn a skill and become a skilled labor which
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: would automatically raise your wages. I mean, so capitalism provides
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: you with lots of opportunities. They will quiet effort. None
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: of it's going to just be provided to you. None
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: of it's just going to be handed to you. You're
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: going to have to go out there and pursue these opportunities.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: But it does provide you a plethora of opportunities. But yeah,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: being unskilled is you know you're going to face the market.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: You're not in a great position visa vita market.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: Question also related to workers' rights and how workers interact
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: with the owners of businesses. An audience member asked Foscar's
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: vision could be implemented now within capitalism. In other words,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: you could form a commune, as Jeron suggested, where inside
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: the commune people follow certain laws they respect limits on
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: the number of hours works, they provide a certain wage.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: Why is it not capitalism cannot be fully realized if
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: we force this type of market socialism. What means of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: coercion would Boscar implements to move towards his vision?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 8: So, first of all, there are successful worker cooperatives. The
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 8: fifth or sixth largest corporate group in Spain undergrown is
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 8: run as at worker cooperative. There are certain structural reasons
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 8: why it's difficult to form worker cooperatives under capitalism. One
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 8: of course, is access to credit and other resources. But
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 8: one of them is just simply is a matter of
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 8: the choices of workers as rational actors within the current
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 8: set of roles that we have. So for example, if
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 8: I am really good at my job, and I know
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 8: me and my co workers can do a better job
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 8: than our boss, and we could run our workplaces cooperative,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 8: we might stop and say, actually, I don't want all
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 8: my eggs in that basket. I'd rather get my labor
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 8: share of income at fifty percent of my value than
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 8: to having all my limited resources.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Pulled into this new enterprise that that's being set up.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 8: So that's why often these visions of cooperatives involves also
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 8: having a role for public banks and other forms of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 8: financing and legal and financial support to serve as our
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 8: creditors and early investors and enterprises. So simply, I think
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 8: it is very difficult to imagine little islands of worker
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 8: management within a sea of capitalism. It exists, It exists
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 8: with Montregron, it exists with a host of different labor
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 8: managed firms in the United States and elsewhere. But ultimately,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 8: I think in order to create and incentivize the creation
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 8: of new forms, the rules of the game need.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: To be need to be changed, all right.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: I have several questions that relate to the way that
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: these systems interact with human nature and different moral structures,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: and so I want to turn to these very big
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: picture questions. But I did think before this debate, one
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 6: way we might measure which system is better for human
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: flourishing is which one comports better with human nature. And
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: I heard you Ran and his opening statements talk about
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: humans as rational people. I think one of the arguments
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: about capitalism is that it harnesses and takes advantage of
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 6: human's self interest. And so I want to ask each
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 6: of you, and maybe I'll start with you Bosker, how
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: does socialism comport with human nature or take advantage of
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 6: what is good or useful about human nature? Does it,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: does it go against human nature? And yet it is
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 6: still the better system in your view? How would you
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: respond to that?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 8: I have a very just soft view of human nature,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 8: which is that people don't like conditions that subject them
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 8: to extreme forms of deprivation, exploitation, and domination. Beyond those extremes,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 8: I think lots of systems are compatible with.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Human nature. When I think about the rational choice.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 8: For workers, in the case that someone mentioned earlier, being
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 8: an unskilled worker, it actually would be rational to advocate
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 8: for state intervention to create a certain floor, a minimum
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 8: wage that will have other knockdown effects on the economy.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: Some of that might, I would actually argue, be positive.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 8: For example, the firms that are now pursuing the low
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 8: road in development through sweating out labor by paying people
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 8: eight dollars an hour a're now forced to pay twelve
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 8: thirteen dollars an hour. They might actually decide a certain
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 8: point they're going to invest in labor saving technology, and
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 8: that might end up in the long run making the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 8: economy more more productive. But there's following that basic logic
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 8: of people pursuing their own their own interests. There are
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 8: often times when collective action would be a rational choice
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 8: for people. But I think at the bare minimum we
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 8: could say that all people around the world don't like
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 8: being enslaved, don't like being oppressed, don't like being dominated.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: The conditions that prevail in most.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 8: Capitalist economists today don't rise to that level where I
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 8: think there's an immediate rebellion against human nature. And I
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 8: would actually argue the same as a case for my
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 8: vision of a democratic socialism.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: It's all compatible with different aspects of human nature.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: Can I ask you a follow up a question about
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 6: charity and about the moral value of caring for the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: least of these? Let's say in a capitalistic society, and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: I will say in the United States, where we're relatively capitalistic,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: we are also the most generous country in the world,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: and we do have a pretty great industry of philanthropy
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 6: dedicated not just to organizations that engage in politics and education,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 6: but also organizations that meet the humanitarian needs of people.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: Do you think that there's something superior to a system
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 6: that relies on a choice to give charitably to one
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: that really eyes on st redistribution.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: I think charity is great, it has moral value. I
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: think we should all give to teritable organizations. We should
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: give to our friends, we should give to our neighbors.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: I would say that I actually have to look at
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 8: that figure about whether the US is the most generous.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 8: I would say it might be skewed by the US
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 8: tax system and just the power of our NGOs and nonprofits.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 8: I'm very grateful to stem both, so if this doesn't
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 8: apply to them, But in general, a lot of these
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 8: are our institutions that are not always, not always I
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 8: think the most efficiently run. Have you large overheads, YadA YadA,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 8: And especially because we have smaller families, smaller kingship networks
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 8: than a lot of other countries. Maybe we're giving through
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 8: those avenues, but we're not giving through our church type.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 8: We're not giving as much through our broader kinship and
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 8: family and friend networks.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 6: Eron, about human nature, would you make the argument that
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: capitalism is is a better system to harness the realities
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: of human nature, whether they're good or bad, whether it's
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: the self interest piece or other attributes of human nature.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I believe that fundamentally to human nature
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: is that we are a rational being. We're reasoning being,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: and I think that reason is a faculty that cannot
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: be exercised under the threat of force. Couosion is destructive
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: to human reasoning. You know, freedom is necessary for people
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: to be able to think, not just in terms of
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: innovation and progress and big thoughts and science, but also
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: just in terms of figuring out how to live the
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: best damn life you can live for yourself, how to
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: how to achieve happiness. So freedom is a requirement for
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: human nature to flourish, for human nature to actually come forward,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: which is which is you know, the as a rational being.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: So in that sense, now, I also think that what
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: often people view as a negative of human in nature,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: which is self interest, I actually view as a positive.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: I think that, you know, morality should actually teach us
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: how to harness our self interest, our desire to pursue
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: our own well being, to survive, to thrive, to flourish
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: as a human being. I think there's some recognition of
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: that in our founding documents, with the idea of pursuit
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: of happiness, pursuit of happiness as individuals, and of course
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: self interest I think is aligned with the idea of
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: I get to make the choices. Nobody else makes the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: choices for me. And here again want to go back
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: to the idea of democracy. Democracy is an imposition of
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: the majority's choice on me as an individual, and that
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: can be incredibly limiting and constraining and restricting, and it
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: can reject it can deny freedom. I mean, democracy has
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: a long history of subjecting minorities to horrific treatment. So
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: and of course the smallest minority in the world is
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: then individual. The one thing democracy doesn't recognize really fundamentally
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: is individual rights. So capitalism is to one system that
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: recognizes that it is the individual that matters, and they
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: do acquiet freedom in order to floish.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 6: Can you respond to this idea that there is a
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 6: tyranny of the majority that would overcome a socialist system,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 6: that workers would take control of the firm, that citizens
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 6: would take control of the country to the detriment of
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 6: the individual, to the detriment of a minority group.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 8: Of course, terrannies of the majority exist. That's why we
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 8: need strong negative freedoms. That's why we need the ability
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 8: to pursue our own lifestyles, to freedom, to worship, freedom
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 8: to express, freedom in civil society. Now, in my vision,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 8: of a good society are we might spend twenty eight
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 8: thirty two hours a week on average in the workplace,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 8: and within that that's fair the workplace. What I would
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: question is if the right of a of a boss
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 8: to govern their workplace without any sort of democratic accountability.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 8: Right now, that boss is accountable to a board or
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 8: its accountable to a group of shareholders, so there's still
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: a level of accountability. They're still going to be representative
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 8: and not direct democracy. In more workplaces, I would imagine
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 8: workers would elect periodically their top management. Those top management
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 8: would would then or the top manager would then elect
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 8: their slate of managers. I think there would be inefficiencies
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 8: of people who are elected their line managers and whatnot.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: But these workers would be incentivized to produce because they'd
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 8: be receiving a dividend of production, so they're still incentivized
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 8: to actually produce more. And in existing studies of labor
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 8: managed firms, we also see some positive results in the
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 8: areas of like information sharing. So I used to work
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 8: at a actually i won't name the company, at a
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 8: private company, and there was a task that was very
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 8: menial and took me five to ten minutes and I
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 8: discovered that my boss actually thought this was an all
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 8: day task, and I just hit that information from from
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 8: my employer.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: On my way out, I kind of wrote, uh, you know,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I was like earning thirteen hours an hour.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 8: But I still wrote like an exit document, like I
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 8: was a CEO setting off with a golden parachute or something.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: But workers hide information from their employers all the time.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 8: They are lessons centivised to do so at a labor
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: managed firm. I do think there's there's other countervailing forces
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 8: that will encourage people to be efficient, that that will
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 8: overcome any potential democratic deficits or or problems. But right
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 8: now that boss is still is still in most cases
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 8: accountable to someone. If there aren't accountable periodically to their
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 8: to their employees, are now accountable to shareholders or to
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 8: other other investors.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: In one of the ideas, and I'm curious what you
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: think of this. One of there is in which we've
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: seen the socializing socialization of the workforce in large numbers
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: across the world is in the area of farming. Collective
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: farms in Ukraine under under communism, collective farms in in
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: mouse China, collective farms in Venezuela, or even the Kiboots
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: in Israel. Uh. And in every single case they are
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: they have failed dramatically. I mean in obviously in Venezuela,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: China and Russia they failed on on scales of starvation
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: of people starving. Uh. And and in Israel they failed
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: on the scale of It turns out that the government
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: has always been subsidizing the key boots, and as soon
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: as they stopped subsidizing them, uh, they all fell apart
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: and they adopted private uh you know, private property systems.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: You know. One of the most striking examples of this
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: is in China. You know, there's this famous village his
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: names slipped on mind right now, this famous village where
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: people were starving. All property was jointly owned. They in
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: a sense voted and who were you know, what work
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: to do and how to how much to grow and
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: where to grow it and everything like that. Literally they
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: were starving. I mean, they would send their kids out
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: to beg in neighboring villages to try to feed themselves.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: And they got together. This is in nineteen seventy eight,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: and this is Mao's already dead, and you know, nobody
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: show what's coming for China. They got together in this
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: village and they decided secretly, they put it together a
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: secret document where they divided all the land and into
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: private plots of land. They divided it into each family
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: got a pot of land, and each one was and
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: they and whatever. Soaplus they produced above what you know,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: they required as a as a village to prod uce
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: they got to keep as individuals and productions something like tripled.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, they went forward to what they became one
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: of those productive villages in all of China. And indeed
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: the China Communist part us send people to investigate, and
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: of course they discovered this pseudo private property kind of
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: scheme getting away from socialization. And you know, to Dan
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: Chapang was not a good guy generally, but in some
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: areas was good. To Dan Chapang's credit, in spite of
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: the fact that the communists locally wanted to just wipe
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: out the village so that the example would go away
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: and other village wouldn't catch up, then said, no, this
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: actually works, let's spread this. And the deprivatization of farming
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: in China led to massive increases in food production and
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: the disappearance of starvation in China. So you know, at
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: least in this area, we've tried, and I think we've
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: tried in many places and almost always it fails. And
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: even even the collect the co Op in Spain does
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: a lot of capitalist stuff. I mean, it has subsidiaries
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: that are run as capitalist enterprises. It's a little cheating. Granted,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: it lives within a system that maybe requires that. So
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: you know, every time, every time I've seen the experiments,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: they seem to fail, uh, and sometimes in ways that
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: are really horrific to human to human floishing. Why would
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: why do you think the next iteration would somehow be successful.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: So I think this is the only part of the
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 8: debate where you gave in apples to oranges comparison, because
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 8: what you were describing is the failure of these horrific
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 8: large state owned enterprises that were essentially forcing people into
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 8: and to serf them. It was it wasn't democratic socialism,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 8: it wasn't capitalism, it was it was served them. People
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 8: were bound to these collective farms. These farms were owned.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: By the state.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 8: They had lots of failed views about what made agriculture
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 8: more efficient. They thought it was just scale and they
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 8: thought you piece together enough plots of land, you have
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 8: enough scale, and you bring in some tractors, and you'll
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 8: produce a lot of a lot of things. And that
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 8: was the failure of a certain model of central planning
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 8: and agricultual collectivization. Certain other state socialist countries had different
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 8: models of agriculture, like Poland.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: And were more more, more more efficient.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 8: But but this was den Japang's first kind of push
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 8: towards market market socialism. He was again an authoritarian, certainly
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: would have would have thrown.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Someone with my.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 8: Soft playeralist beliefs into into prison. But he did have
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 8: this line u uh looking at these failures of these
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 8: state owned enterprises, which is, you know, I don't care
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 8: if the cat is black or the cat is white,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 8: as long as it catches mice. And I think that's
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: in general my view of both the form that state
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 8: owned enterprises should take in the areas where they make
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 8: sense in my mind, and and and and also the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 8: areas in which we need a robust private sector. But
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 8: I think this is a repudiation of a type of
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 8: the worst version of kind of the command economy that
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 8: that market socialists disagreement black.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 6: Cats, white cats and apples and oranges. I'm going to
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: have to move us here to our closing statements. I
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 6: want to thank the audience members. I hope you'll forgive
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 6: me for scrolling so much on this iPad, but I
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 6: had to do that because of the enormous number of
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 6: questions that you all submitted. So thank you if you
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 6: submitted a question, I'm sorry if I didn't get to yours.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 7: But we covered a lot of ground.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 6: And now it is time for Ran first to give
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 6: his closing statement five minutes, and then it will be
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 6: Busker's last word five minutes of his closing statement, and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: then we will review the post debate poll. So during
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 6: these closing statements, you'll have an opportunity to vote in
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: the post debate poll.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 7: Please do that, Thank you.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: I think over the last two two hundred and fifty years,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: we have experimented with a new economic political system called capitalism,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: and the results are pretty astounding. The close that we
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: get to actual respect for private property, the clothes that
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: we get to real freedom and textan of individual rights,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: the more we flourish, the smaller number of poor people
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: they are in a society, the more opportunities people have
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: in their lives, to experience whatever they choose to experience,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: whatever they choose to do. You know, we have most
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: of the world today is not capitalist. It is a
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: mixed economy. There's a mixture of capitalism, a lot of socialism,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: a lot, you know, some capitalism. Different countries have different
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: variations in place, different weights on this. But it's clear
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 4: that what capitalism produces is an amazing, beautiful thing. And
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: it's sad to me that we're constantly moving away from
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: the thing that has made us as prosperous, as successful,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: as flourishing as we are. We are constantly moving away
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: from it. Instead of embracing the beauty of capitalism, embracing
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: the nobility free them, embracing the factor of opportunities for
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: each one of us to live their life based on
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: their own ideals, their own choices, their own values. We're
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: moving away from that. We're rejecting that socialism wants to
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: collectivize our choices, to collectivize our opportunities. We can create
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: all kinds of sophisticated methods in order to try to
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: minimize the damage that that does, but at the end
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: of the day, the damage that it does is that
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: the damage to individual autonomy the individual's right to live
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: his life the way he sees fit. That is not
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: possible under any kind of socialist system. So again, if
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: you want to if you want to live in a commune,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: I don't suggest it. It's a horrible life and commune's
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: have failed, you know everywhere they're being experimented with. You
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: can do it. Under capitalism. You're free to pursue your life.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: You're free to voluntarily engage with other people as long
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: as you're not using cosion of force in any way
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: you want. You want to start a commune, you want
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: to start a farm, you want to start a collective, anything,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: you can do it. And if socialism people like me
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: are not welcome entrepreneurs who want to start a company
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: and employ people, that is not acceptable. There's only one form,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: which is a collectivized, socialized form of governance, which repudiates
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: individual autonomy, individual freedom, and therefore limits opportunity and limits choices.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: It's I think one of the great tragedies of the
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: twentieth century. In the twenty first century is that we've
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: lost an idealism of capitalism. We've mired in the little
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: detailed of a mixed economy and what we should subsidize,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: and you know who who should bailoued and how bigs
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: the welfare state. That's all boring stuff, and it's all compromised.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: The idealism of capitalism, the idea of individual freedom, individual liberty,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: that is something worth fighting for. It's something worth advocating for,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: it's something worth moving towards. And one of the great
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: tragedies of the world right now is that it seems,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: at least politically, the space for capitalism is shrinking. There's
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: almost nobody advocating for it. Socialists on the left, socialist
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: on the right, or at least status on the left
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: and status on the right. Is what we're experiencing today
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: in America, and we're losing and have lost I think
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: the passion and the interest around something that has really
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: created the modern world. Freedom created the world in which
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: we live, and freedom, the freedom of the individual, is
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: what we should strive to bring back, and that means
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: we should strive to bring back capitalism, to enhance the
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: scope of this wonderful system. Enhance capitalism, not shrink school.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 8: I think I didn't give you a fun debate. I'm
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 8: not an extremist. I kind of wish I was sometimes
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 8: to match the energy and fervor of my colleague. I
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 8: don't want to abolish markets. I don't want to erase entrepreneurship.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 8: I don't want to enforce total equality or pretend that
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 8: complex societies can be run entirely through central commands from
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 8: government bureaucrats. What I believe is both more modest and
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 8: more ambitious, that we could regulate markets wisely, and that
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 8: we could use the power of a democratic state to
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 8: guarantee every person a real floor beneath their feet, and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 8: then in doing so we can build a more dynamic
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 8: and more democratic society, one rooted in our shared interests,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 8: as both the people who produce goods and services and
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 8: the people who consume them. The structure I outlined tonight
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 8: isn't some speculative utopia. It's not a blueprint for tearing
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 8: down everything that exists. In fact, I think it looks
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 8: a lot like what we already have in a lot
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 8: of advanced countries, including the United States and other advanced economies,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 8: a mixed system with a large public sector, some key
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 8: services decommodified in a vibrant market sphere. The difference is
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 8: I'm simply arguing that we should complete that trajectory. We
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 8: should secure a few more basic rights that we should
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 8: extend democracy more fully into economic life, just as previous
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 8: generations fought hard to extend democracy into political life. The
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 8: society that I'm describing is, in many ways an ultimate
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 8: ownership society. Real control by people who actually produce value,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 8: control over the firms in which they work, control over
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 8: the direction of large parts of the economic lives, and
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 8: control over the shared institutions that keep us all secure.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 8: In a moment of widespread helplessness and a breakdown of
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 8: faith over the future of America and its economy. This
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 8: kind of shared ownership is not just morally appealing, it's stabilizing.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 8: It gives people a stake in the world around them.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 8: It gives them voice. It gives them the confidence to
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 8: innovate and reap the rewards of that innovation. This is
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 8: a rejection of capitalism's achievements. It's a natural successor to them.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 8: Capitalism created extraordinary wealth and technological progress, but it also
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 8: created barriers, economic, political, and democratic, to prevent those benefits
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 8: from being fully realized. A more egalitarian, democratic, market based
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 8: socialism would allow us to keep what makes capitalism dynamic
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 8: while spread the agency and security that make a good
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 8: life possible to more people. I don't want to be
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 8: clear about one thing. There's no end of history that
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 8: I believe in. No system, including the one that I'm
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 8: navocating for, will ever be free of conflict, disagreement, or
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 8: the need for ongoing change. Any society worth living in
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 8: will need free speech, independent media, opposition parties, the right
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 8: to dissent. What I'm arguing for is not a final system,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 8: but I definitionly don't believe in final systems, but a
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 8: better framework for human beings to contest power and shape
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 8: their lives together. It's true that in any change there
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 8: are losers. Many bosses will lose some autonomy under a
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 8: democratic economy, but the autonomy gained by the vast majority
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 8: of people, the unherralded real philanthropists to keep our society running,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 8: working class people would be far greater, more secure, more voice,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 8: more control over their work, more freedom to plan their lives,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 8: more ability to pursue their talents. That's what human flourishing
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 8: means in my book, good market outcomes and wealth creation,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 8: but also the spread of autonomy, dignity, and real democratic
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 8: power to the many rather than the few.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you will.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 6: It's been my privilege to probe the philosophies of these
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 6: two distinct speakers who've joined us tonight. So thank you
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 6: for sharing your thoughts with us and allowing me to
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 6: ask some questions. I'm eagerly looking forward to the post
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 6: debate whole results.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 7: Here they are.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 6: It seems that there's been relatively little change. Sixty three
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 6: percent at the end of tonight's debate answered that they
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 6: agree with the resolution that capitalism is better twenty nine percent,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 6: thirty percent disagree.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 7: The numbers are still coming. I feel like Anderson Cooper
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 7: on election night.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 6: Numbers are still coming in uh and eight percent are undecided,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 6: so a few less undecided people out there, and as
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 6: the numbers continue to we will wobble around. It seems
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 6: that we've gotten a great result. So thank you guys
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 6: for responding, Thank you for responding, and thank you for
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 6: listening to tonight's debate. And I'll repeat what I said earlier.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 6: Even if you didn't change your mind, I hope your
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 6: mind was enriched and you're thinking about this topic was enriched.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 5: Let's kind of note round with walls for invaders are boberating, drab,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 5: well got In case you're wondering about the poll changing,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 5: we will when when the voting is finally over and
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 5: it completely stops. It will be posted on our website
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 5: so you can always see it afterwards. Because right now
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 5: it looks like the affirmative has gained two points, the
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 5: negative has gained five points. In my reading that correctly,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 5: the moderator people made up their minds. So that's that's
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 5: where it stands. Down I don't see it changing. So
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 5: once again, thank you to the Center for the Study
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 5: of Government and the Individual. Thank you, Steven, you do
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 5: such a great job here at UCCS with promoting free
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 5: speech and civil discourse. Also, once again, i'd like to
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 5: thank the Adolf Coors Foundation, also the Woodford Foundation for
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 5: Limited Government here in Colorado Springs, which supports the Campus
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: Liberty Tour. If you enjoyed tonight's debate, we would ask
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 5: that you consider supporting the Steamboat Institute. We are a
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 5: nonprofit organization. Go to Steamboat Institute dot org make a donation,
• 1:30:28
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• 1:30:33
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• 1:30:36
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• 1:30:39
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• 1:30:41
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• 1:30:42
  Speaker 4: We hope you will do that.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 5: It should be on our YouTube channel within the next
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 5: forty eight hours. We try to get those up really
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 5: quickly in their entirety. We hope you enjoyed tonight's debate.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 5: For those of you here in person, we have some refreshments,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 5: stick around and visit with our speakers. For those of
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 5: you watching online, thanks again for joining us. Have a
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 5: good evening. Oh I'm sorry step it seven say my apologies.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I should I don't deserve the last word.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: And I know everyone would like to leave, but they
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: want to take the opportunity to just plug a couple
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: of things. So one, if you'd like to come to
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: more CSGI events, please go to CSGI dot COO. That's
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: CEO for Colorado. All of our events are up there.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: But also we have this is through the Dean's office.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: Actually the CSI is co sponsoring it. Ken Burns American
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: Revolution Documentary. It comes out and actually debuts on Sunday.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: We are running it at UCCS six straight days of
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: like three hours with with the with the program and
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: the and the movie.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 4: So like, if you I think you.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: Get some kind of badge if you do all of it,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: but we have like six days of that. Just flyers
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: out there. Please check them out and I will say
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: thank you for coming. I was shocked that no one
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: meant mentioned Zero and Mandami today and I didn't do
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: it in my I didn't do my open remarks. I
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: figured I'd leave it for someone else and it was
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: never It was never mentioned anyway. Thank you all very
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: very much. Thank you again to our speakers
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: At