Socialism Vs Capitalism | Rutgers University Vs Libertarian Institute

Socialist Rutgers University professor Ben Burgis faces off against capitalist Libertarian Institute editor-in-chief Keith Knight. Only on ZeroHedge Debates. Moderated by Erik Townshend of Macro Voices.

Пряма ссылка на видео https://www.youtube.com/live/yWjakQV0rm0

Пересказ видео

Видео — это дебаты на тему капитализма и социализма, модератор — Эрик Таунсен. В дискуссии участвуют профессор Бен Бёрджесс (за социализм) и Кит Найт (за капитализм).

Тезисы профессора Бена Бёрджесса (за социализм):

• Капитализм — система частной собственности на средства производства, где богатые владеют имуществом, а большинство вынуждено продавать рабочее время.
• Социализм — коллективная собственность на средства производства, демократическое участие работников в принятии решений.
• Капитализм провалился в достижении экономического равенства: богатые владеют несоизмеримо больше бедных.
• Исторический социализм, как в СССР или Венесуэле — не справедливое представление социализма, которому он выступает за демократический социализм.
• Экономическое равенство важно для свободы от доминирования, а не только свободы от вмешательства.
• Социализм может обеспечить бесплатное образование, равный доступ к жилью и коллективное управление предприятиями.
• Капитализм часто приводит к эксплуатации работников, поскольку рабочие получают только часть стоимости своего труда.
• Демократия на работе и равенство могут уменьшить социальную несправедливость и бедность.
• Молодые критикуют капитализм из‑за социального неравенства, долгов и нестабильности.

Тезисы Кита Найта (за капитализм):

• Капитализм — система частной собственности и добровольных контрактов, основанная на свободе выбора и защите собственности.
• Социализм — институционализированное насилие над правом собственности и свободным обменом.
• Капитализм стимулирует инновации и повышает уровень жизни благодаря конкуренции и саморегуляции.
• Истории провалов социалистических государств (СССР, Венесуэла) показывают опасность реализации социализма.
• Свобода выхода из трудовых отношений — ключевой механизм контроля и защиты работников.
• Социалистические планы экономического распределения затратны и технически сложны, а рынки обеспечивают эффективное распределение ресурсов.
• Из‑за бюрократических проблем социализм неизбежно ведет к авторитаризму.
• Капитализм предлагает разнообразие выбора для потребителей и работников, что защищает их права.
• Призывает отделять истинный капитализм от кроникапитализма (коррупции и монополий).
• Демонстрирует, что проблемы молодежи вызваны государственным регулированием и вмешательством, а не свободным рынком.

Общие темы дебатов:

• Свобода против равенства: социализм ориентирован на равенство, капитализм — на свободу выбора.
• Стоит ли отдавать экономическую власть в руки общества (социализм) или оставлять в руках частных владельцев (капитализм).
• Вопрос мотивации и инноваций в социализме.
• Исторический опыт государств с обеими системами.
• Влияние обеих систем на мораль и человеческое поведение.
• Сложности решения проблем современной молодежи в рамках существующих систем.

Эти тезисы отражают суть противоположных взглядов игроков дебатов по ключевым вопросам капитализма и социализма.

Расшифровка видео

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good evening and welcome to the Zero Hedge debate on capitalism versus socialism sponsored by JM Bullion I’m
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your moderator Eric Townsen many of you know me as the host of macrovoices the investing podcast that specifically
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targets professional Finance family offices and sophisticated private investors we have an exciting debate
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planned for you this evening on a very controversial topic which is the better way to govern society and manage the
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distribution of wealth capitalism or socialism and we have two excellent Debaters lined up arguing in favor of
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socialism Professor Ben Burgess is a columnist for Jacobin magazine an
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adjunct philosophy an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutter’s University and the
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author of several books in pamp most most recently four essays on Palestine he’s appeared on venues
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ranging from MSB NBC to the Joe roogan experience and he’s also co-author with
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jacoban editor bascar sunara of an economic and economic Professor Michael
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begs of the forthcoming book The Blueprint life after capitalism
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Professor Burgess thanks for joining us this evening
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oh my apologies I was I was just saying uh thank you for having me okay and arguing in favor of
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capitalism Keith Knight is managing editor at the libertarian Institute the author of domestic imperialism nine
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reasons I left progressivism and the host of the don’t tread on anyone podcast Keith thanks for joining us Eric
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I appreciate you having me Zero Hedge asked me to give you a Joe Rogan style
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la long form format that really gets into the meat of this issue so tonight’s
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debate will be organized in four separate parts Part One lays out the foundation of what capitalism and
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socialism are beginning with opening arguments from each debater followed by rebuttal then we’ll move on to four
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foundational questions about these systems Freedom versus equality leveraging human nature the historical
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scorecard of each of these systems and then finally the morality and Humanity aspects of each system part two will be
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a rapid fire series of five Challenge questions to each debater requiring each
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of them to defend some of the most common criticisms of the system that they’re each representing part three
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will focus on what I’m calling the generational crisis the fact that regardless of what ISM you use to
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describe the current systems of governance and wealth distribution the vast majority of young adults agree that
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that system whatever it’s called is broken in need of Reform and I happen to
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agree with them wholeheartedly is capitalism the problem and socialism the solution or have those who blame
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capitalism for the injustices in today’s society misdiagnosed the problem needless to say our Debaters will have
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strong views to argue on either side of that subject then finally in part four
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our Debaters will make their closing arguments and each will have the opportunity to briefly rebut their
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opponent’s closing arguments we couldn’t possibly get through all of that without setting some time limits
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but in the spirit of zuro hedge’s commitment to passionately telling the story and the whole story each of our
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Debaters have G been given an overtime budget of 20 minutes each that they can use to embellish answers to any
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questions where they feel they need a little bit more time than what we have scripted in the outline so that means
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this could be a long one probably running at least a couple of hours but I’m confident it’s going to be a good one since there’s no shortage of passion
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on the part part of either of our Debaters so let’s Dive Right into part one starting with opening arguments from
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Professor Ben Burgess arguing for socialism Professor Burgess please include what the words socialism and
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capitalism mean to you in your answer and make your case for why you believe socialism is better you have four
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minutes for your opening arguments and Ben the floor is yours thank you uh so
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when I was invited to this the title that I was given was is capitalism a failed system and that’s not a simple
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yes or no question it depends failed at doing what capitalism is an economic
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system where what marxists call the means of production things like factories Farms grocery stores and
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warehouses are privately owned put more evocatively that means this a system where people with enough money can buy
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and sell those things like any other commodity or leave them to their children like family heirlooms meanwhile
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the majority of the population that can’t afford them has no real way of supporting themselves except by selling
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their working hours to those who can and thus following orders all day from an unelected boss capitalism is different
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from feudalism or slavery in that people at the bottom of the society doing the work aren’t surfs or slaves they aren’t
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you know the poor aren’t the property of the rich but they are forced by what markx calls the mute compulsion of
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economic necessity to rent themselves out to the rich by the hour uh socialists think that the the transition
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from feudalism to capitalism what we call the bgea Revolution was a huge leap forward in human freedom but we also
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don’t think it goes anything like far enough a better system would be one uh
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where um working people collectively own the means of production and decided together
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how to divide up the proceeds that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone would have a totally equal share some
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people might need to be incentivized with a somewhat greater share for taking in particularly demanding jobs with lots
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of stress and responsibility or conversely for taking particularly dirty and dangerous jobs that nobody wants but
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you wouldn’t get Executives making hundreds of times the salary of the average worker like you do right now you
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wouldn’t get some individuals you know accountable only to wealthy shareholders
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authorized to make decisions like closing down plants and throwing hundreds or thousands of people into unemployment and destroying entire
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communities uh everyone could have a reasonable level of democratic input into the decisions that shape our
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Collective lives that’s the possibility that I’m naming when I talk about
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socialism I’m not talking about recreating the Soviet Union Democratic socialists like me were always opposed
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to that kind of authoritarianism I’m talking about extending democracy into the economic
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sphere so has capitalism succeeded or failed depends if the mission was bring
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about economic equality and equal human dignity for everyone it failed it’s
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raised the floor but the distance from the floor to the ceiling is immense and morally indefensible we live in a
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society where some people sleep on park benches and some people fly around on private jets Amazon warehouse workers
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are subject to non-stop electronic surveillance and routinely skit bathroom breaks to make sure they can make quota
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while they’re making so much money for their boss that he literally owns his own spaceship and they’re grateful to
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have those jobs right terrified of losing them that’s your mute compulsion but one of Marx’s most basic insights is
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that capitalism isn’t an avoidable moral mistake but a necessary stage in historical development right he goes on
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and on about how much material abundance capitalism has created the point though is that in doing so it creates the
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possibility of something better for the first time in human history we could have economic equality without that just
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being the equal sharing of crumbs but to achieve that we need to say good job capitalism
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you succeeded in your mission now it’s time to go thanks Ben Keith Knight please make
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your o please make your opening arguments including what socialism and capitalism mean to you and why you
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believe capitalism is better the floor is yours and you have four minutes for your opening remarks to clarify when I
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say communism I’m referring to the abolition of private property and voluntary contracts socialism is most
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accurately described as the institutionalized aggression against private property and voluntary exchanges
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capitalism is a social system based on the explicit right of private property
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and voluntary contracts between consenting adults in advocating capitalism I’m simply affirming the
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truism that human beings are self-interested this is why we are devastated when someone close to us dies
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but have trouble getting worked up over the 100,000 deaths that took place during the Franco Prussian War human
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beings do not stop being self-interested just because they are elected to public
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office or because they enter a voting booth the key difference between capitalism and socialism is the
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constraints faced by self-interested actors under a system of private
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property and voluntary exchange no one can get a penny out of your pocket or a second of your time unless you
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voluntarily agree to it this freedom of Association and disassociation is the
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ultimate check and balance against the inevitable self-interest and greed all human societies operate within
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politicians and state employees are not unpaid volunteers or people who only demand to be paid the bare minimum in
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order to survive they too are self-interested socialism allows greedy
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people to take property without consent or without creating any value in exchange through taxing the money other
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people have acquired voluntarily this vitally important check and balance the freedom of Association is also critical
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to raising living standards if you don’t value a product or service that I create
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you have no legal obligation to allocate your scarce time or money to my Endeavor
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if you want a society where the least will off have the most opportunities you would want a system which gives those
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very people the most amount of opportunities to trade and contract with other people in order to raise their
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living standards far from just being theoretical capitalist Enterprises such as Amazon and Walmart have given more
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people access to lowcost products and services than our ancestors ever could have imagined companies like apple have
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succeeded not because they make products only billionaires can afford but because they make computers the average person
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can afford Henry Ford did not invent the automobile but in channeling his
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self-interest to meet consumer demand he made the Model T car affordable to the average worker Cornelius vanderbelt
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lowered the cost of steamship travel from $7 to6 primarily through capital investment because he wanted to profit
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by creating something many people valued Andrew Carnegie lowered the cost of Steel from $56 a ton to
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$11.50 a ton in 27 years by experimenting and investing in efficient
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production methods which everyone else in society benefited from by having an increased access to Goods which steel
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was used to make grock Twitter’s artificial intell elligence Wikipedia
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Zoom YouTube the Con Academy internet archive all provide more free access to
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education than any socialist program any government has ever produced on a larger
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scale we see the same result in dividing up the Korean Peninsula we see that the Koreans with more freedom to exchange
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have higher living standards for the average person just as we saw West Germans have a Higher Living standard
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than East Germans just as we saw the DraStic increase in the growth of CH when Den Xiao ping allowed more people
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to voluntarily trade and contract in the late 1970s capitalism harmonizes the
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self-interest among human beings not only resulting in higher living standards but is the only moral System
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since it rejects the Socialist double standard where some people have a right to initiate violence and others do
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not wow I have to say that at least Mr capitalist knows how to allocate resources because we gave him four
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minutes and he used 350 937 So within a half a second of budget
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I I got to give Keith credit for that one but let’s give Ben the opportunity to rebut Keith’s arguments Ben you have
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three minutes to respond to Keith’s opening arguments sure so uh Keith spent
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a lot of time talking about the price of various Goods that are cheaply offered
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on uh markets uh and I think that it’s interesting to think especially because
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one of his examples was Amazon of course you know is a primarily delivery company
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uh about the cheapest way uh that you can uh you can get things delivered
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which is by the United States Postal Service that uh will take a letter from
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Southern California to rural Alaska for 73 cents uh and in fact uh keeps on
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having legal limitations imposed by Congress on what it can do out of fear
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that if it’s allowed to offer too many Services uh this will be dangerous for
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uh private competitors that you know that they won’t be able to compete with the uh the prices that the uh post
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office can offer uh now that’s a striking example I wouldn’t conclude
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from that example that you know that every single aspect of the economy uh can be uh you know can be run in the way
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the USPS is that we don’t need sort of you know Market competition or Market mechanisms uh for you know for anything
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I think that that would be you know I think that would be much too much to conclude from that case but we also do
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want to separate the issue about markets from the issue about capitalism markets
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have existed long before capitalism uh existed in fact you know for most of
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settled human history right since the uh since the Agricultural Revolution uh what makes capitalism distinctive is not
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that there are markets going on but again the private ownership of the means
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of production uh that’s the distinctive feature of capitalism and I I find it
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very telling that in sort of stories like the one that you just heard Keith tell this is something i’ very commonly
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hear from Libertarians they describe capitalist economies as if the only sort of you know interesting economic
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relationship happening where between Sellers and consumers uh in the sphere
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of distribution and what happens in the sphere of production how most of the population have to has to spend half
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their day simply gets disappeared from the picture and Keith you now have three
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minutes to respond to Ben’s opening arguments claiming that what makes capitalism unique is the private
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ownership in the means of production assumes that what we have are some people who are not necessarily
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accountable please correct me if this is not an accurate characterization um we have a very few number of people making
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decisions for a very large number of people when it comes to the FDA the Department of Education the Pentagon the
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NHS in uh Britain we see the same thing in government institutions the
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difference is those few Elites don’t have to respond to Consumer demand they
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don’t have to get money voluntarily so it’s not unique to capitalism that very few people make the vast amount of
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decisions that apply to a large number of people so if we look at someone like Donald Trump would you rather him
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operate in a free market where he can’t get a penny out of your pocket unless you voluntarily give it to him or have
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the right to make executive orders we can see that if we take one person and just change the incentives that they
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face it turns what could be a very good person into a totally greedy person
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because you Shield them from free market accountability as far as the poor staying poor and only having jobs to
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work at of course we have statistics on income Mobility the more capitalist is the more income Mobility there is as a
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cause result of there being more capitalists demanding employment for your services the employees have more
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options they therefore have more leverage just because you enter the workforce getting paid minimum wage once
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you acquire skills you’re not getting paid minimum wage 10 20 30 years after
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when it comes to uh collective decision making this is called the iron law of
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oligarchy where if you have a union and you’ve executed all the bosses if you
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have a union not everyone wants to go to the union meeting not everyone’s going to speak up at the meeting not
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everyone’s an equally good communicator and anyone who spreads their ideas is
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not going to be equally as persuasive to the Union as a whole so you end up with a very small number of people having a
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disproportionate amount of power the same criticism applies there is no such
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thing as a democracy because you always get a few number of people having much
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more institutional power than everyone else this is why AOC is significantly
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more powerful and has more social status and money than all of her constituents combined probably in the case of
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inequality obviously ushering in a state that gets to coercively fund operations
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increases the amount of inequality in society the government spends like 6.27
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trillion doll a year and socialists want it to grow even bigger that is much more
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equal to whatever the biggest company in the world is one note on Amazon and the
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post office in 1844 Lysander Spooner created the American mail letter company
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and it was outlawed because it was comp a competitor to the US Postal Services
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Monopoly on first class mail so when the Socialist tries to go against the
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voluntary sector by saying it could potentially lead to monopolies they inevitably create a situation where the
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state grants some people a monopoly which comes at the expense of consumers
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that’s my response now we’re going to move on to four foundational questions starting
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with freedom versus equality capitalism is often associated with individual
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freedom and choice while socialism is linked to equality and fairness is freedom versus equality the right way to
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frame this issue would Ben admit that socialism might admit might limit some
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freedoms to achieve equality and would Keith concede that capitalism’s freedom can sometimes lead to Big inequalities
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and how do each of you balance freedom and equality in your ideal system let’s again start with Professor Ben Burgess
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Ben you have two minutes yeah I think the whole idea that moving from capitalism to socialism
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would sacrifice freedom for equality is very common but I don’t actually think it makes any sense to see why let’s
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start by thinking about what people who say this mean by Freedom they mean freedom from interference I have a right
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to do with what I like with my person and my property so long as I’m not infringing on the right of others to do
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likewise the problem with this is that as an argument for in defense of capitalist property rights an argument
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against the redistribution of wealth or nationalizing Fortune 500 companies or any of the other things socialists like
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myself might propose it’s hopelessly circular um Libertarians and socialists
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typically agree that we have a right to our persons that’s why many Libertarians and nearly all leftists believe in a
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women’s right to choose for example but the controversy is about property rights
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when the libertarian says you have a right to uh against having your property interfered with what does your mean they
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can’t mean the property you have a legal right to otherwise if a future socialist government passed the nationalizing
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Amazon act Libertarians couldn’t object on the grounds that Jeff bezos’s property was being taken away because it
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would no longer be property that was legally his so they have to mean that you have a right to whatever property
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you’re morally entitled to but now they’re just saying you have a moral right to whatever property you have a moral right to it’s completely vacuous
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and uninformative the real argument has nothing to do with freedom from interference it’s what property do
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people have a moral right to what’s the Right theory of Justice in the distribution of property and once we put
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aside this red herring about freedom from interference that’s what the real argument is entirely
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about and Keith how do you balance freedom and equality in your ideal system you have two minutes to
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respond I would compare the amount of equality to government services and the
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amount of equality in generally referred to as Market Services socialists are
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constantly claiming that well there is huge inequality in schools some schools
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uh don’t get enough money and some schools have very bad outcomes well these are more commonly uh owned by the
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state when it comes to the justice system the courts have a legal Monopoly on issuing justice as well as a legal
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Monopoly on the police not just any company has the right to go around arresting people so when the state
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provides something we clearly see the massive inequality that’s created compare that to the market inequality
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yes Bezos I’m sure has a better car and a better computer and better line and a better microphone than I do but is it
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that much better it’s still absolutely amazing that I have access to things
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that our ancestors never could have dreamed of primarily as a cause result of capital investment and the
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competition that the marketplace provides so that is how I would weigh if
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I said equality was my goal I would look at whether or not the state provides equality in the first place and then
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compare it to the amount of equality that a cap Capital system has yielded in
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certain sectors so I don’t see the state as a solution to the inequality I see it
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as primarily the cause of much more inequality because when they make laws they don’t ring up my phone they tend to
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ring up someone who’s very influential someone with a lot of institutional power so this increases the disparity
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between the rich and the poor um any regulation that is implemented Walmart
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would have no problem paying it’s local grocery chains which it makes it harder
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for them to compete with the Walmarts and the Amazon this is why uh H Lee
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Scott and Doug McMullen the SE former CEOs of Walmart explicitly came out and said oh yeah we support raising the
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minimum wage they’re on Ben burgess’s team when it comes to raising the minimum wage because they know what it
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will do to their competition so statism socialism institutionalizing aggression
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increases the amount of inequality not just uh the IM immoral aspect of it
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being unequal for some people to have rights that other peop don’t basically socialism ushers in an a parde state
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where different groups have different rights and and uh as well as the standard of living approach where if you
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want more equality make sure that people have the most amount of options of where to work and where to purchase products
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and services from the next question is about human nature critics say that capitalism works
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with human nature by harnessing self-interest whereas socialism goes against human nature by expecting people
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to share and sacrifice Ben you’ve argued that human nature and socialism can be
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compatible why do you believe people can Thrive under socialism without selfishness derailing it you have two
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minutes okay so first issue is human nature basically kind and Cooperative or
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basically cruel and selfish probably the only honest answer is that it’s a bit of both but my basic point would be that
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the more worried are about the selfish and cruel aspects of our nature the more
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concerned you should therefore be about economic inequality and this by the way connects to something I didn’t have a
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chance to say earlier in my answer about uh the relationship between freedom and equality which is that while I certainly
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wouldn’t deny that freedom from interference is important I actually don’t think it’s the most fundamental
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kind of freedom I think the most fundal kind of freedom is freedom from domination and the more inequality you
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have the more subject those with less are to the arbitrary power of those with more the same way authoritarian
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political systems might not be quite as objectionable if we could all somehow trust dictators not to abuse their power
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the fact that we can’t trust those with concentrated economic power not to abuse
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that um you know not to treat those under their thumb the way Jeff Bezos treats workers in his warehouses or
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Harvey winstein treated as spiring actresses um is exactly why we need to
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extend democ to the economy saying people are by Nature selfish and cruel therefore we should allow some people to
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have vastly more economic power than others is like if I were to say my eyesight is bad therefore I don’t need
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these glasses uh it’s exactly backwards if people were Angels by their nature I
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wouldn’t worry about those with nothing being left to sleep on the streets by those with the wealth to house them or
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capitalists abusing their power at the workplace but we’re not Angels so we need to be economic egalitarians instead
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Keith do you think that socialism is doomed by human nature greed laziness and so forth in a way that capitalism
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isn’t you have two minutes yes because of the assumption that Collective ownership in the means
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of production would mean that all these people have a huge incentive to allocate
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their scarce time on Earth to really inform themselves about something they’ll get a one in a million vote uh
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on the outcome the reason that people are so ignorant with regard to politics it’s not necessarily because it’s so
27:02
hard to understand things it’s that they would have to bear the cost of thousands of hours of a reading and at the end of
27:09
four years they’d get a one in six million vote depending on how big their state is so because uh people when the
27:18
means of ownership are collectivized when they get such a small say they’re not willing to Bear a large cost and
27:24
really figure out what is an efficient way to meet consumer demand how do we make employees happy where do we locate
27:31
our buildings what should our training practices be that those incentives just do not Mash match up so I would say that
27:38
socialism is in opposition to human nature when it comes to the mistreatment
27:44
of employees this might be the greatest contribution that socialists have to the
27:50
world and nothing in capitalism uh or a free market system would stop them from
27:55
voluntarily unionizing creating competitors or buying stock if you want the
28:01
employees to own the means of production you wouldn’t want them to own the place they already work at you’d want them to
28:08
diversify their portfolio work at one place and own stock in another place in case your business goes out of business
28:15
so the Socialist doesn’t even care to diversify you could still own the means of production through purchasing stock
28:21
or some other form of contract the way we can judge whether if we just care about the well-being of the workers we
28:28
could look at the employment methods of the state and compare it to the working
28:34
conditions that the market provides there are a number of terrible horror stories in the private sector and I
28:41
totally support Mr Burgess doing anything within his voluntary means to persuade people to negotiate or get
28:48
different positions anything peaceful that’s what I support including boycotts I totally respect uh things like that
28:55
when it comes to what governments do to employ conscript them by the millions get their
29:01
limbs blown off in wars that are based on lies or complete Fabrications it’s
29:07
not even close when it comes to the death count you can look at the American Civil War where they involuntarily had
29:14
workers performing to the tune of 600,000 deaths the first world war the second world war all these governments
29:21
when they were shielded from the free market accountability enslaved people and got them murdered because those
29:26
people did not have the freedom to dis associate the next foundational question
29:31
for our Debaters is on the historical scorecard each side points to history to
29:37
prove their case capitalists say that free markets drove the Industrial Revolution and lifted billions from
29:43
poverty socialists fire back that unfettered capitalism gave us the Gilded Age injustices and crashes like the
29:51
Great Depression meanwhile socialists claim that true socialism hasn’t even been tried while capitalists list the
29:58
Soviet Union and Venezuela as cautionary tales whose historical evidence is more
30:04
convincing which system’s track record gives you confidence and how do you answer the other side’s examples be it
30:11
the Soviet Union or the Great Depression Ben let’s start with you again you have two minutes to
30:17
respond yeah so I’ve already said what I mean by socialism the Soviet Union obviously wasn’t that but sure if all
30:24
you mean by socialism is State ownership the Soviet Union was socialist just like if all you mean by capitalism
30:30
is a society where most people are employed by regular capitalist companies Hitler’s Germany and M Lees Italy was
30:37
capitalist but the same way I understand that’s not the kind of capitalism Keith Advocates the Soviet Union isn’t the
30:43
kind of socialism I advocate if you do want to call it socialism I’d say no country in the world has achieved
30:48
socialism in the sense I advocate just like I’m sure Keith would acknowledge that the libertarian Utopia he dreams of
30:54
hasn’t been achieved anywhere now I would say that the absolute horror show of 19th century capitalism came closest
31:01
to pure libertarianism and the countries that have come closest to what I want are the nordics they obviously haven’t
31:07
gone all the way to getting rid of capitalism entirely and instituting workers control of the means of production but they have come closest
31:14
the really bizarre case to me is the attempt to shoehorn Venezuela into this because not only is so Venezuela not
31:21
socialist in the sense I advocate there’s no definition of socialism that would make Venezuela more socialist than
31:29
the nordics are even if all you mean by socialism is State ownership countries
31:34
like Norway and Sweden are way more socialist than Venezuela is look it up
31:40
the percentage of the population that works for the public sector in Venezuela is way lower than the percentages in
31:45
Sweden or Denmark or Norway or Finland so you have two choices you can say that
31:50
all these places are socialist after all uh which is you know really good to screw with the uh historical argument
31:57
against it uh or you could drop the Venezuela argument from your repertoire but if
32:03
you’re interested in logical consistency you do have to pick and Keith what’s your take on who
32:09
has history on their side you have two minutes I have not visited the Nordic
32:15
countries what I do is I go by the economic freedom index a number of places provide this the KO Institute the
32:21
Fraser Institute and they measure the percentage of gross domestic product
32:26
that is spent by the State and that which is spent by the private sector or the voluntary sector and in all of those
32:33
places you mentioned they are more capitalist than the United States having
32:39
fewer barriers to entry when it comes to opening a business more school choice more free trade and lower taxes in
32:46
general depending on what your income bracket is so I would not consider those
32:52
places to be examples of socialism I do see socialism as the instit tionalized
32:58
aggression against private property so I would see whether it’s a state or it could not be a state it could just be a
33:05
regular committee which does not recognize the right to acquire private property but the problem that I see with
33:12
the Soviet Union the Venezuelans whether it’s East Germany or you could look at
33:17
uh China under chairman Ma you could look at North Korea what makes all of those things immoral is they explicitly
33:24
do not recognize the right of people to acquire proper and exchange it voluntarily and that is what I’m
33:31
criticizing when it comes to Mr burgess’s ideology of democratic socialism that is what they share in
33:37
common I of course am not saying that he is you know responsible for the holla dear and trying to Usher a second one in
33:44
but the primary uh criticism does still apply they don’t recognize people’s
33:49
right to make voluntary exchanges they say they represent the workers but when the workers try to make choices they
33:56
actively restrict those choices is in all aspects of the economy whether it’s
34:01
trade or whether it’s those workers starting their own business to compete with other capitalists they constantly want more taxes and regulations so when
34:10
I look at history I try to verify where was the most amount of free exchange and
34:16
how do those areas how do those people compare to those with the least amount of voluntary exchange the pattern that
34:22
I’ve come up with is that the more time people have the right to acquire property exchange it the more they have
34:28
the right to exit countries the more they have the right to choose where to work or start their own businesses the
34:33
wealthier they are than they otherwise would have been if those opportunities were restricted okay uh can I I actually
34:40
withdraw a minute or so from from my overtime budget because got okay uh I do
34:46
want to just say something very briefly about uh the rankings uh that Keith has
34:51
mentioned a couple of times uh from The Frasier Institute and other places uh so
34:56
I wrote about this for jacket a few years ago the title of that article is uh the economic fre Freedom rankings
35:03
don’t tell us anything about capitalism and I took a hard look at how the Frasier Institute rankings actually work
35:10
and I think even a cursory glance at the results those rankings spring up show
35:15
you that something extremely fishy is going on uh you know that so you know Sweden uh is more capitalist uh than uh
35:24
than than Haiti uh for uh for example uh you know so despite the fact that in
35:29
terms of all of the issues that you know somebody like Keith and somebody like me would actually disagree on in all of
35:35
these right Sweden is clearly much much further in my direction you know that socialized medicine you know the uh the
35:43
the way labor laws work etc etc it still somehow comes out as uh as more
35:49
socialist well what’s going on here and I think you get a lot of insight in that when you start actually zeroing in on
35:56
the way the rankings work which is that they arbitrarily throw together all sorts of different considerations that
36:02
don’t go together a lot of the considerations even on their face have absolutely nothing to do with issues in
36:09
dispute between um you know between Defenders of capitalism and you know
36:14
social Democrats or socialists uh like you know for example you lose capitalism points if there’s inflation uh you know
36:21
you lose capitalism points uh if the uh if you don’t have civilian control of uh
36:26
of the military etc etc so all sorts of things that are not in dispute are illegitimately poured in uh and you get
36:33
some really absurd results I mean the phaser The Frasier numbers will actually tell you that Ukraine became less
36:40
capitalist from 1980 to 2005 right so in other words the Ukrainian Soviet
36:45
Socialist Republic in 1980 was more capitalist than Ukraine in 2005 I think
36:52
all they really show the only things these rankings demonstrate are how creative Think Tank hacks could be when
36:59
they’re putting a bunch of numbers into a blender and blending again and again and again until they get the results
37:04
they want when it comes to something like the Department of Defense is that a
37:11
socialist institution again if what you mean by socialism is just State ownership then
37:19
sure they have a that’s not the definition of socialism I’ve given but I could at least understand what somebody
37:25
who uh you know who who uses it that that way means but of course Frasier
37:30
Institute rankings don’t track that at all right there there are lots of countries they’ll say are more
37:35
capitalist despite having smaller public sectors when it comes to inflation if
37:41
there is a state created Central Bank such as we have the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and they actively participate in
37:48
the economy by increasing the money supply through quantitative easing would that make a country more or less
37:55
capitalist if they had a Central Bank and that Central Bank was engaged in quantitative easing I don’t think the
38:01
quantitative easing would make it either more or less capitalist I think the existence of the central bank I could understand what you might mean if you
38:07
said that made made it less less capitalist but I think all of this is just an attempt to smuggle the cart
38:13
before the horse to say that they have a oh here bad consequences that we predict
38:18
from the opposite thing therefore if that happens that’s less capitalist that doesn’t prove
38:23
anything thank you for clarifying I’m ready to proceed alrighty our final
38:29
foundational question is on morality and Humanity does capitalism or socialism
38:35
make us better people Keith it’s been argued that capitalism created conditions for humans to treat each
38:42
other more humanely that Rising wealth made compassion affordable why would a
38:47
profit-driven system make us more Humane you have two minutes a profit driven
38:53
system is not necessarily something that makes you more humane all government
38:58
employees or all employees under a socialist system would still be looking to profit they’d still want more money
39:06
they would want more access to resources there’s nothing about profit which makes capitalism unique look at all the
39:12
politicians look at all the bureaucrats they’re constantly profiting they want more money just like everyone else what
39:19
makes capitalism more Humane is the freedom to disassociate with people who you don’t want reaping the benefits of
39:26
monetary profit so you need the freedom to disassociate with them if I’m a
39:31
worker who was terrified of being mistreated or heavily controlled over what I would want is a system where I
39:39
had so much capital investment that made my labor more valuable because I could work with machines which made my
39:45
employer want to pay me more and I would want so many employment options
39:51
something that does not come about as a cause result of socialism but as a cause result of competition so if you just
39:58
care about the well-being of the workers and them getting treated with dignity give them the freedom to disassociate
40:04
with Bad actors and the freedom to not fund things they totally oppose Mr
40:09
Burgess rightfully called the Israeli ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza what
40:14
it exactly is it’s basically a mass murder campaign but the Socialist does not recognize our right to freedom to
40:20
freely disassociate from funding something because he sees it as the potential savior against the inequality
40:27
created by the volunt sector so if you’re worried about people getting mistreated or people being inhumanely
40:35
treated give them the freedom to disassociate with Bad actors something only capitalism allows Ben do you buy
40:41
that argument or do you believe that socialism’s emphasis on cooperation and Community would bring out the best in
40:48
human behavior instead of the worst in short which system aligns with moral values and brings out human decency you
40:55
have two minutes I don’t buy that argument no uh I have four basic reasons why not uh the first
41:02
is that I know this might sound weirdly conservative coming from a socialist but honestly I’m way less interested in some
41:08
Grand utopian project to uh remake human psychology to be more benevolent that I
41:13
am in designing institutions that can limit the damage we can do to each other given the kind of nature that we already
41:19
have ADD like I said earlier just like I think humans are too flawed to be trusted with dictatorial power in
41:25
politics I think the same thing is true in the economic realm that’s why I want
41:30
economic democracy and I think we can have that and Rising economic trans Prosperity like I talked about in my
41:37
opening I don’t think that those goals have to be in Conflict at this stage of History I think we can have both second
41:43
even if we are going to focus on the goal of making people better I think few things are as bad for our ability to
41:49
feel empathy for each other as economic inequality capitalism creates so much
41:54
inequality uh that we have to learn to step step over homeless people and not make eyee contact just to function from
42:00
day to day in a society like this under a better system we might not have to harden our hearts like that finally uh
42:07
this goes back to my first point about human nature one of the reasons that I want a system where we can all
42:14
collectively and democratically decide how to divide up the fruits of our common labor is that I don’t want those
42:20
with less to have to throw themselves on the mercy of those who have more and hope that they just decide if their own
42:27
free will to be more Humane that concludes part one of our
42:32
debate part two will be a rapid fire round of Challenge questions designed
42:38
specifically for each of our Debaters after conducting a thorough review of their writings and past interviews on
42:44
this subject we’ll have five Challenge questions for each debater and that’s coming up next right after this message
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gold and we’re back let’s dive into part two our Challenge questions for each of
44:01
our Debaters we’ll start with the first question designed for Professor Ben Burgess real socialism and historical
44:08
failures Ben whenever socialism is attempted and ends in economic collapse
44:14
or tyranny supporters say well that wasn’t real socialism but Keith as but
44:20
as Keith and others point out the 20th century saw multiple brutal socialist
44:26
regimes and they all brought impoverishment and loss of freedom from the Soviet Union to mous China to more
44:33
recent examples like Venezuela we’ve seen food shortages repression even mass
44:39
killings done in socialism’s name so why do you believe that those disasters
44:44
don’t indict socialism as an idea were they doing something fundamentally wrong
44:49
is it not your style or your kind of socialism and how can we trust that a new socialist experiment won’t end up
44:56
the same way you have two minutes so the most basic mistake you can make in
45:02
probabilistic reasoning is something called the Hasty generalization fallacy which happens when your sample size is
45:08
too small or too unrepresentative of the population so for example if we pulled
45:14
the audience for this debate and found that at least 40% of them had watched at least two previous debates about capitalism and socialism it would
45:21
obviously be crazy to conclude that 40% of all people have watched at least a couple debates about capitalism
45:27
socialism so in the argument we’re considering we have exactly one example the entire history of the world where
45:33
something that even might be seen as an initial attempt to create a democratic form of Socialism turned into an
45:40
authoritarian system that’s the Russian Revolution where there was an attempt to Leap Frog all the way from semi feudal
45:46
Agricultural Society all the way to socialism which as I discussed in my opening statement Mark certainly didn’t
45:52
think would be possible that was a disaster but it’s also literally the only one all the other examples are ones
45:59
where people who uh who took power were Capital C Communists who were
46:05
self-consciously trying to replicate the Soviet model of what they called socialism people who want to claim that
46:13
there’s a second example in the history of the world of an attempt to create a more democratic form of Socialism that
46:18
turned authoritarian typically site Venezuela but as I said if you care even
46:23
a little bit about logical consistency you cannot say that Venezuela is socialist without therefore saying that
46:29
Sweden and Norway are even more socialist so let’s please be more serious than that meanwhile
46:36
capitalism especially when not restrained by a strong labor movement a regulatory state has generated massive
46:43
inequality and human misery in hundreds of Nations for hundreds of
46:49
years let’s move on to our first challenge question for Keith the inequality question Keith the richest 1%
46:56
keep getting richer under capitalism while many others struggle a handful of
47:02
billionaires have more wealth than billions of the world’s poor Keith does
47:07
capitalism inherently create extreme inequality and if so is that just the
47:13
price that we have to pay for overall progress or is it a problem that the free market will eventually fix critics
47:19
say this inequality is a moral failing of capitalism how do you respond I don’t
47:25
think it’s Unique to capitalism every society that I’ve looked into start with the ancient pharaohs of Egypt there was
47:31
massive inequality in Greece the average person was very unequal to Aristotle in
47:37
China the average person was very unequal to chairman mauo in Cambodia the average person was very unequal to popt
47:45
in Argentina the average person is very unequal to Javier Malay in all of these
47:51
examples every society we see massive amounts of inequality because of the
47:57
iron law of oligarchy that I mentioned earlier very few people very domineering
48:02
personalities are willing to allocate the time and resources it takes to really mobilize people it’s an
48:08
inevitability in any society what makes capitalism different is it creates the
48:13
incentive for those Elites to meet consumer demand and worker demand as which I appreciate Ben you know
48:21
reprioritizing in my mind to not just think of people as consumers but there’s nothing inconsistent about thinking of
48:27
people as consumers and workers I both want them to have more options I want them to have more time to allocate
48:33
whether it’s to family to just reading to relaxing or whether they want uh
48:39
higher incomes so no inequality is not unique to capitalism at
48:45
all our next challenge question for Ben pertains to
48:51
authoritarianism try that again our next question for Ben pertains to Authority
48:57
arianism versus democracy critics warn that socialism even if started
49:02
democratically leads to authoritarianism because the state gains massive control
49:07
over the economy and thus people’s lives they say power corrupts and a socialist
49:12
government might trample individuals rights free speech poty and so forth in
49:18
order to reshape Society Ben how would your vision of socialism avoid devolving
49:23
into a dictatorship of bureaucrats or a brck or a big brother state for instance if the government or worker councils or
49:31
were to control resources what checks and balances would ensure that we don’t get a new ruling class in the name of
49:38
equality put another way how do so how does socialism with how or how do you
49:43
have socialism without the secret police and the breadlines you have two minutes oh I absolutely agree that power
49:51
corrupts that’s why Democratic socialists like me were so ferociously critical Solin ISM during the 20th
49:57
century but it’s also why we object to a boss having dictatorial power over his
50:03
Workforce okay but the question wasn’t about economic authoritarianism of the kind that’s foundational to capitalism
50:09
it was about authoritarianism in the political sphere how do you prevent political authoritarianism if you have
50:15
socialism at the base of the economy I’d say exactly the same way you prevented if you have capitalism at the base of
50:20
the economy a quick glance around the world shows that newspapers or television stations being privately
50:26
owned for example is no obstacle whatsoever to them being censored by the government conversely there are
50:32
democracies with state-funded broadcasters that have pretty strong institutional protections of their
50:37
editorial independence from the government and of course the form of Socialism I advocate could have plenty
50:42
of media Outlets that were totally independent subscriber funded news collectives as I’ve said we have exactly
50:49
one example the whole history of the world of something that can maybe be seen as an attempt to create a
50:55
democratic form of Socialism giving rise to an authoritarian regime and that was a country uh what was the Russian Empire
51:02
and then the Soviet Union where you had no prior tradition of democracy not even a single year of Russia B and democracy
51:08
in between pre-revolutionary authoritarianism and post-revolutionary authoritarianism and sorry I I am gonna
51:15
have to take a minute or two out of my overtime budget here because I really want to point out just a few more things about this case and the broader
51:22
issue um Russia is a place that started with a backward semi feudal economy where World War I had ravaged it to the
51:29
point of absolute State collapse and then 14 foreign countries invaded them after their Revolution that’s your one
51:36
and only example of a socialist experiment to generating into authoritarianism rather than just
51:41
starting out that way meanwhile there are many many examples all around the world of capitalist democracies
51:46
backsliding in some form of political authoritarianism while staying capitalist in fact often the dictators
51:53
come to power with the support of big capitalists precis L because capitalists worry that the alternative will be
51:59
socialism that’s how Germany got Hitler and it’s how Chile got P so the idea
52:05
that this is more likely to happen under socialism than capitalism is just not supported by any historical evidence but
52:12
either way how do you stop it what’s the guarantee in any country that once you’ve achieved democracy uh you won’t
52:18
backslide into authoritarianism constitutional protections of civil liberties multi-party democracy are important of
52:25
course but the the sad truth is that at the end of the day words and constitutional documents are only as
52:31
good as the appetite of Institutions and ordinary citizens to stand up to protect those rights when authoritarian
52:37
politicians start to chip away at them but I do want to make one last point about this I think if we’re going to ask
52:43
what kind of economic system is more likely to give you the kind of citizenry that would fight to protect their
52:49
Democratic rights and the political sphere one where people are accustomed to democracy in their own lives or one
52:55
where they’re habit Ed every day to obedience to an unelected boss I think the question tends to answer
53:03
itself the next challenge question for Keith is exploitation or Fair exchange
53:09
socialists often argue that capitalism is essentially exploitation owners reap
53:15
the profits while workers get paid a fraction of the value they actually produce Keith why do you disagree with
53:22
the claim that wage labor under capitalism is akin to a form of theft or wage slavery what’s your argument that a
53:30
voluntary paycheck is fair exchange and not exploitation you have two minutes
53:36
when someone signs up to take a case a class by Mr Burgess they will inevitably
53:43
spend thousands of hours doing hard work for 0 and0 cents an hour this could be
53:51
seen as totally exploitative Mr Burgess is getting paid and they’re not only not
53:56
getting paid they have to take out big loans in order for the school to make tons of money that could be exploitation
54:04
or you could say that’s a choice that someone made because given the Alternatives they had they thought this
54:10
was a valuable use of their time and money I see nothing wrong with this at all so when we see someone in a
54:17
vulnerable situation maybe taking bad working conditions or a bad wage it is
54:22
tempting to say let’s Outlaw that once that is outla the people don’t end up
54:28
owning mansions and skipping through Meadows singing The Sound of Music soundtrack they end up being in a worse
54:34
position than they previously were because you took away the one option they had so given the fact that people
54:40
can constantly experience exploitation in their everyday life let’s assume exploitation exists and it’s when one
54:47
person with more power exploit someone with less power because if it’s just
54:52
money you would have to say that stay-at-home moms exploit the Surplus value of their husbands welfare
55:00
recipients exploit the Surplus value of net taxpayers we could play that game or
55:06
we could just say if human beings a good default position is if human beings
55:11
arrive at a mutually beneficial actually let’s scratch that any voluntary
55:17
exchange where one person has the recognized to op out or the uh choice to
55:23
contract with other people without the the threat of violence being used
55:28
against them I think that’s a much better default position to have because of course I think the state claiming the
55:34
right to take 30% of your income is very very exploitative or you could say that
55:39
the employees are exploiting the bosses they just go to a place uh only because
55:46
those employees want the money from the bosses if they don’t like the job they’ll just pick up and quit they don’t care if the company is operating at a
55:52
loss the worker doesn’t have to you know pay the money that the company loses and most companies are unprofitable and most
55:58
companies go under are they exploiting the employer the employer has to do tons
56:05
of unpaid investment research and development coming up with the concept of an idea of what to sell training
56:11
people on the job before ever getting paid from the product they’re selling you could say that the employer is being
56:18
exploited by the employees who are just there selfishly for their own paycheck and the customers who just walk into the
56:24
store maybe I’ll buy something maybe I won’t I just care if these people can give me resources that’s I don’t see
56:30
anything nefarious about that so while it could be seen as unequal I still
56:35
respect people’s right to freely associate Ben I have another prepared question for you but I’ve got a feeling
56:42
you want to take a minute on exploitation yeah thanks uh so if if you
56:48
read uh Carl Marx’s uh Capital which is all about exploitation Marx’s point is
56:56
absolutely not that what goes on in the labor market isn’t a fair market exchange never mind that you know people
57:01
are being selfish they don’t care about each other anything like that his whole claim is that precisely that even if
57:08
what goes on in labor market does follow the laws of Market fairness it’s still a form of exploitation here’s how that
57:15
argument goes what’s the commodity that workers are selling in the labor market Marx thinks it’s their labor power in
57:21
other words their General capacity to work for some period of time if you rent a margarita machine for a party what
57:27
you’re paying for is the use of the machine over a certain length of time not necessarily the number of margaritas
57:33
that you end up using it to make same deal when you rent a human being for 40 hours a week and Mark says okay what’s
57:40
the fair market value of renting a human being whatever it takes to maintain that humid and or reasonable level of
57:45
subsistence but even if they’re paid that much so market exchange fairness isn’t violated it Still Remains the case
57:53
that some of the revenue the worker is making for the firm pay back their wages uh but there’s also part of it that goes
57:59
beyond that that’s the capitalist profits otherwise why hire the worker so just like the feudal surf the modern
58:06
worker spends part of his time working for himself and part of it working to
58:11
enrich the ruling class and since most people don’t start out with enough funds to start to own their own means of
58:18
production they have no realistic choice but to submit to this arrangement to make a living that’s what Marx means by
58:25
exploitation for forced extraction of Labor by a ruling class I want Mr
58:30
Burgess and I to go back and forth on this because I I feel like we’re very close to settling the capitalism and
58:36
socialism debate that’s been going on for centuries but if we could at least get this down just for points of clarity
58:44
if I work at a company and the company’s operating at a loss as opposed to a
58:49
profit is there exploitation going on so I think that the uh I think that
58:55
the CL about exploitation is going to be not that like you know at any given
59:01
moment right uh it’s you know that you know you’re you’re necessarily making a profit I mean just the same way that I’m
59:07
sure from your perspective you know if if it turns out that any given year
59:13
right the um you know the government is you know let’s say spending more on its
59:18
tax collection service that it’s actually making in taxes I’m sure that wouldn’t
59:24
like detract from your feeling that there was theft going on right you know the uh the point is that the system runs
59:31
on the extraction of surplus labor from uh from the working class not that at
59:36
any given time it’s necessarily successful assume I’m a consumer under
59:43
Democratic socialism and I don’t necessarily it’s not that I don’t care
59:49
about the well-being of the workers I just don’t have the mental energy to say all right how many people went into
59:54
making these airpods I don’t know them I’m just going to a place because I want
1:00:00
a product for myself and I will only pay an amount of money that I am willing to
1:00:06
give because I value this product more than the money I’m exchanging am I as a consumer under Democratic socialism
1:00:13
engaged in monetary or uh philosophical exploitation uh no Al also not if you’re
1:00:20
doing that under capitalism uh you know you’re not actually extracting anything
1:00:25
uh from from PE from from workers because you don’t own the place but I do I do just want to pause on this example
1:00:32
to note that what you just gave is a really excellent explanation of why just
1:00:38
people making consumer choices isn’t a good strategy for remedying Injustice uh
1:00:44
that you know that that people are not when they’re you know when they’re buying the airpods or whatnot right it’s
1:00:49
just not realistic to think that in that scenario people are going to be thinking
1:00:55
about exactly who’s being paid what or anything like that right which is why to solve that kind of collective action
1:01:01
problem you need people to come together in the political sphere in order to enact those kinds of
1:01:08
preferences if assume that I am a huge admirer of Liam crosgrove which I
1:01:14
absolutely am and I want to see him in person just eviscerate Matt Miller as he
1:01:20
did so many times at the state department I want this so much but he’s not a rich guy so I’m willing to inter
1:01:27
for Liam at 0 an hour would I have the right to do that under Democratic
1:01:33
socialism would you have unpaid internships uh maybe I mean that’s that’s the kind of question that’s so
1:01:40
that’s so fine grained you know I I I don’t think that there’s a sort of General answer uh answer to it that they
1:01:46
have a uh you know or indeed you know I mean look you could even have outright uh wage labor you know in some uh in
1:01:53
some parts of the economy the objection is to you know I mean certainly you know
1:01:58
if you have somebody who’s uh who performs some minor service you know for
1:02:05
uh for a firm but you know it’s not really their job they might provide this service for any number of different
1:02:11
firms it might not be realistic or reasonable to think that they’re going to get voting rights you know at uh at
1:02:17
all of them or even necessarily any of them but the objection is not do you
1:02:23
have a single internship going on anywhere in Theon e do you have a single instance of wage labor going on anywhere
1:02:29
in the economy it’s is the overall economic structure such that most of the
1:02:35
population has no realistic means of supporting themselves except to submit
1:02:40
to economic dictatorship through wage labor under Democratic socialism
1:02:45
wouldn’t I have to submit to the collective of the grocery store I I used
1:02:52
to work at a grocery store so would I um wouldn’t they only hire me or vote to
1:02:59
hire me if they thought the value I brought exceeded the cost of employing me how is that any different how is that
1:03:06
any different well I think that as a worker owner right you uh you have you
1:03:11
have a a say in dictating wage levels in other words that they have a that uh
1:03:17
that you know that you could actually vote on what the wage scales are right so the you know the fruits of your
1:03:23
Collective labor right you have a say in deciding right it’s a private sector
1:03:29
version of no taxation without uh you know without representation so you know
1:03:35
presumably uh you know they you know they think that you know they think in voting to hire you that you know that
1:03:40
the result of this will be that all of you including you right will will make more for all of them right but the point
1:03:48
is that it’s not being extracted from you by virtue of just the class power of
1:03:55
owners rather you yourself have a reasonable voice and vote in setting the
1:04:00
distribution of the proceeds when I look at the things in the world that I really value whether
1:04:06
it’s the show Seinfeld whether it’s the computer that I’m using whether it’s books that I like or houses that I live
1:04:12
in a lot of those did not come about as a result of a democratic vote it’s a few
1:04:17
people employing scarce resources other people more or less following orders while being employed if I like that kind
1:04:24
of arrangement because I don’t want my life filled with meetings where we’re all debating every little piece of minutia couldn’t you just allow people
1:04:33
to engage in capitalist acts between consenting adults without coercively democratizing them if people just think
1:04:39
it’s a more efficient way of organizing well I think I heard two different arguments there one was about the
1:04:46
production of the products themselves that you know that these things were produced by the this system where
1:04:52
there’s a sort of implicit worry that you know a different system you wouldn’t generate the same the same results and
1:04:58
of course that’s an argument I’m very happy to have but I think it’s a little bit different from the point that we’re pursuing here about uh about
1:05:05
exploitation and voluntariness and I would say that you have a problem here
1:05:10
because sure there could indeed uh be you know be people who you know who
1:05:16
prefer not to prefer not to have a choice now I don’t think that you know I don’t think that workplace democracy
1:05:22
means that you have to spend all day in meetings people who work at mandron don’t have to spend all day at meetings you know you uh you could basically have
1:05:29
like you know a big annual meeting or two where you uh you elect a council
1:05:34
that runs the place the rest of the time and you know and might even hire managers where it’s more appropriate to
1:05:41
use that kind of process because they have particular you know maerial or technical skills and you could also vote
1:05:46
on an operating agreement which would be much like a Union contract except you don’t have to negotiate it with a
1:05:52
separate boss but look putting all of that aside uh I’d say the problem with that right
1:05:58
is that uh you know if you have too much right of that capitalism between consent
1:06:04
and adults is and I’m sure you’d recognize we just draw opposite conclusions from this the basic structure of the issue is the same for
1:06:13
any right workplace regulation right that they have a you know whether we’re talking about minimum wage workplace
1:06:19
safety laws child labor sexual harassment all of them right that it
1:06:24
could be right that there are people who to whom it would be worthwhile given the choice right to uh to accept you know to
1:06:32
accept the uh you know that uh Arrangements that would violate any of those things right but the problem is
1:06:40
that uh you know that if you just say if you’re just sort of focused on that micro level and you say oh say whatever
1:06:46
it’s all voluntary uh then you end up with circumstances where most people have no realistic Choice except to
1:06:53
submit to those things that’s the problem so I I’m sorry Eric can I ask one more
1:06:59
thing just to see if Ben and I can get on the same page about something is that okay go for it this issue of
1:07:05
exploitation is explicitly why we gave you the you guys the extra 20 minutes we knew this is where you were going to use
1:07:11
it when I think of okay let’s forget the state owning the means of production
1:07:17
let’s forget the capitalists what I would want to look at in order to see if democracy everyday democracy worker
1:07:24
democracy if that’s something design what I look at tell me if these are Straw Men Please do uh is I look at what
1:07:31
issues were most heavily debated among the population people don’t talk about
1:07:37
agricultural subsidies but so we can exclude stuff like that the two things
1:07:42
that come to mind to me are 911 and covid-19 these were heavily debated and
1:07:50
discussed among people in your average day you could put probably the existence of Donald Trump on there something
1:07:55
people were constantly talking about it seems like the average person who brought George Bush’s approval rating to
1:08:02
91% after he didn’t keep us safe on 9911 the average person was advocating lockdowns and mask mandates even though
1:08:10
there was no correlation between states that locked down and had Mass mandates and states that had lower death rates so
1:08:15
it seems like when the average person attempts to get democratically involved we still get absolutely terrible results
1:08:23
in the two examples where people were most democratically involved in society should this make us more skepticism of
1:08:30
people’s willingness to debate in good faith with democracy are my examples valid what are your thoughts on this
1:08:37
yeah I think that one of those examples is one that we broadly agree on the other I suspect there would be more
1:08:42
disagreements but you know I I also suspect it wouldn’t be a good use of our time here to go down that Rabbit Hole uh
1:08:48
but um but I think that you know the general point that there’s no guarantee
1:08:55
that if you let people you know engage in Democratic self-government right you know uh you know make their own
1:09:01
decisions about you know how you know how policies that affect them are going to be of course there’s no guarantee
1:09:09
that they’re going to to make good decisions right any more than when it comes to things that we that you and I
1:09:14
would actually agree you know are in the private sphere right they’re things that mostly affect just me and you know and
1:09:20
and it’s fine for you know for me to make that decision without anybody else’s input uh there’s no guarantee
1:09:26
that I’m going to make decisions that you know that end up being good for me of course you know humans are fallible
1:09:33
but I don’t think the case for democracy rests on uh on some sort of
1:09:40
guarantee that people when they’re allowed the right to self-government will always govern themselves
1:09:47
wisely thank you for clarifying that is uh the extent to which I wanted to go on
1:09:52
this issue uh thank you Eric and I want to thank our producers at Zero Hedge for allowing me the
1:09:58
latitude to allow that exchange rather than trying to enforce rigid time limits that’s exactly why I value the Zero
1:10:05
Hedge debate series we have however used up a lot of our uh overtime limit guys
1:10:11
so let’s try to tighten this up move on to Ben’s Next prepared question which is on economic coordination and Innovation
1:10:18
so let’s talk nuts and bolts in a socialist economy who decides what gets produced in what quantity and at what
1:10:25
price price capitalists argue that without the price signal and a profit motive a socialist system cannot
1:10:32
efficiently allocate resources leading to shortages or waste and that and also
1:10:38
that that stifles Innovation since investors and entrepreneurs can’t reap rewards Ben what’s your response how
1:10:45
would a socialist system figure out say how many shoes or microchips to produce
1:10:50
and keep innovating new products do you envision markets still exist like Co-op
1:10:56
businesses competing with one another or something like Democratic planning replacing supply and demand in short how
1:11:03
will socialism deliver the efficiency and Innovation that we see from free
1:11:08
market capitalism delivering uh uh in its own manner you have two
1:11:14
minutes so I do take the calculation problem right that’s the problem of how to efficiently coordinate production
1:11:20
with fine grain consumer needs seriously and it does shape how I think about how
1:11:25
viable so socialism could or couldn’t work but I also think that Libertarians often wildly overstate the scope of that
1:11:32
problem to the point where they seem to suggest that it means that even the kind of expansion of the public sector you
1:11:37
get under social democracy um you know can’t possibly work well and at that point in the
1:11:44
argument I always think about the scene in the Christopher Nolan movie Oppenheimer where the Title Character
1:11:50
demonstrates step by step with equations on the chalkboard that it must be physically impossible possible to split
1:11:56
Adams and his colleague you know politely waits for him to finish and then says Yeah we actually just split
1:12:02
one in the lab next door uh come check it out right we know for example that it’s possible to do a good job of
1:12:08
planning sectors like healthc care and education and getting better results than the free market does because we’ve
1:12:13
been running this experiment for decade after decade and by any standard socialized healthc care is a Smash in
1:12:19
success uh Finland has the best education system in the world they don’t even have private schools and so on so
1:12:26
there are things we can plan effectively but the Soviet experience also shows there are some very real limits I think
1:12:32
at this stage in history we haven’t figured out how to get rid of markets entirely without unacceptable
1:12:37
inefficiencies but if we still do need a market sector for consumer goods it can at least be a market sector of competing
1:12:44
internally Democratic worker owned firms um which I think would have to be financed with grants from nationalized
1:12:50
Banks that’s the model that uh boscar and Mike and I advocate in that fourth coming book that you plugged when you
1:12:56
were introducing me the blueprint our next challenge is for
1:13:02
Keith booms busts and bailouts capitalist economies have produced
1:13:07
incredible growth but also boom and bus Cycles recessions panics the 2008
1:13:13
financial meltdown when things go wrong we often see big Banks or companies get government bailouts which hardly seems
1:13:20
like free market being in action Keith do do frequent crises and bailouts mean
1:13:26
capitalism is unstable by nature or were those crises actually caused by government interference in capitalism in
1:13:34
your view explain why capitalism shouldn’t be judged by events like the 2008 great financial crisis or if it
1:13:41
should why we should still stick with capitalism despite that kind of turbulence you have two minutes the
1:13:48
concept that a crisis exists and the solution is to decrease the amount of
1:13:54
voluntary exchanges is the classic psychopath test anytime a psychopath
1:14:00
sees a crisis they attempt to reap benefits from it at the expense of others instead of creating voluntary
1:14:07
avenues for people to resolve the issue if you have a famine you could say well
1:14:13
that was the causal result of capitalism because that’s shrinking the economy do famines only happen under capitalist
1:14:20
societies absolutely not nor do you have just Financial recessions occur in
1:14:25
capitalist Societies or Wars are a great example of crises that come into
1:14:31
existence as a cause result of a deviation from the private property ethic you coercively fund the wars with
1:14:37
Taxation and you violate the private property rights of the people and the buildings you blow up in exchange so
1:14:43
crises are not unique to capitalism specifically with financial crises people will always leave out the
1:14:50
existence of a central bank which has a legal Monopoly on the money supply why
1:14:55
they would ignore half of every exchange or half of most exchanges which do include money and the central bank which
1:15:02
creates that money is a bit of an indicator as to whether or not we’re getting an actual culprit when it comes
1:15:09
to financial crises essentially the central bank will artificially lower the interest rate the rate at which banks
1:15:16
lend money to each other to increase the money supply or the amount of money that Banks take out as loans this increase in
1:15:24
the money Supply means that some things are funded to such a heavy extent that
1:15:31
that creates a bubble that would not otherwise exist if the interest rate
1:15:36
changed as a result of people choosing to postpone consumption and save more money when the interest rate is lower
1:15:43
and people spend more well then that’s okay because you could always raise the interest rate and give people the
1:15:48
incentive to save more so they could earn money off that interest what the state created Central Bank does is
1:15:54
manipulate the interest rate in such a way to where it’s the price of money
1:15:59
that has changed think of the price as a signal wrapped in an incentive if
1:16:04
something has a very high cost it sends a signal and a potential profit
1:16:10
incentive for people to allocate time money and resources toward producing that good that is the closest I could
1:16:17
come to approximating one crises are not unique to capitalism and even specifically Financial crises are not
1:16:24
the result of too many voluntary exchanges and a respect for our private property our next challenge for Ben is
1:16:32
on incentives and hard work if under socialism the goal is to equalize wealth
1:16:37
and have workers collectively own everything what incentive is there for someone to work harder or to innovate
1:16:43
more than the next guy does in capitalism the carrot of profit or a
1:16:48
promotion or striking it rich motivates Innovation and effort Ben How would
1:16:55
socialism keep people motivated to do unpleasant but necessary jobs or just to
1:17:00
Excel and invent if there’s no billionaire jackpot waiting do you worry
1:17:05
about losing the dynamism that competition brings or do you think that cooperation can be an even stronger
1:17:11
motivator when people share the gains you have two minutes well like I talked about in my
1:17:17
last answer there our sectors the economy and where I’d acknowledge the best practical solution would be to
1:17:23
retain an element of Market compe ition even after moving to workers control the means production but even apart from
1:17:30
that very basic ideological concession I actually don’t think this challenge is quite as formidable as it might look
1:17:37
first on Innovation and invention think about your uh smartphone right and all
1:17:42
the things that make it smart the GPS the touchscreen technology the internet
1:17:47
itself every single one of these elements were innovated in the public sector in the defense department in
1:17:53
public universities in Labs funded with public grants so we should take the
1:17:58
corporate world self- mythologizing about Innovation with quite a bit of salt second let’s talk about the half of
1:18:05
the question about hard work at the bottom of society about getting people to do the dirty and unpleasant but
1:18:11
necessary jobs you alluded to and I’d make just two quick points about that first this incentive to hard work
1:18:17
doesn’t exist for people who are born into money and that’s always struck me as a massive contradiction in hard work
1:18:24
rhetoric in defense of capitalism second even worker co-ops don’t have 100% flat
1:18:29
wage scales right now and I’m sure in a socialist system where a worker worker
1:18:35
ownership was standard and whatever sort of Market sector we still had to have they still wouldn’t for a lot of the
1:18:41
dirtiest and most dangerous jobs you would have to offer people more money to take those jobs you know given greater
1:18:49
background economic egalitarianism uh than you would to get people to take more pleasant rewarding
1:18:54
in ually stimulating jobs of course that’s the opposite of how we do it now since under capitalism the way we fill
1:19:01
those positions is by having the lowest wage part of the workforce at the bottom of society be desperate enough to take
1:19:07
any job they’re offered our next challenge for Keith is crony capitalism versus free markets
1:19:14
many critics especially young people say that what we have today isn’t true free market capitalism at all but rather
1:19:21
crony capitalism a rigged game where corporations and government Elites scratch each other’s backs Keith how do
1:19:29
you distinguish between real capitalism from the cronyism that we see with lobbyists subsidies and bailouts is it
1:19:36
fair for people to blame capitalism for the sins of cronyism and if true capitalism hasn’t been tried because of
1:19:42
all this government meddling well how can we ever be sure that it actually works it’s much like saying how can you
1:19:49
really Advocate voluntary relationships if rape will inevitably exist
1:19:55
well what you do is you have a principle of volunteerism that you enter into such relationships so if you have a
1:20:01
consistent definition of free markets or capitalism you can clearly see that cronyism comes about to the the extent
1:20:09
which companies or individuals or any organization acquires property outside
1:20:15
of the voluntary exchange or homesteading or Contracting ethic so
1:20:20
because you have a definition you can have a true dividing line between crony ISM and capitalism which I uh would
1:20:29
closer I would much more closely Define as socialism I’ll use the rest of my time just to say one thing about hard
1:20:35
work Japanese Americans came to America basically not speaking a word of English
1:20:40
and were put into internment camps by Franklin Roosevelt from his 9066 executive order by 1959 they had equaled
1:20:47
the incomes of whites and by 1969 they were earning 33% higher incomes than the
1:20:53
average American family absolutely hard work pays off in the long run not in
1:20:58
every single case as you corrected me with the intern case not every single case comes about in the way that we
1:21:05
would like but these are General Trends which we can appreciate I hope that answers both questions we’re down to our
1:21:12
final questions in this round our final challenge question for Ben is on worker
1:21:18
cooperatives Ben you advocate for firms to be owned and run by their employees
1:21:24
but under today’s capitalism worker co-ops are already legal and they do exist mondregon in Spain for example yet
1:21:32
most businesses are still traditional companies with owners and wage workers
1:21:37
if a worker run company or if worker run companies or a superior model why haven’t they naturally outcompeted
1:21:44
capitalist firms when they could in today’s existing system are there structural barriers to capitalism that
1:21:50
prevent cooperatives from thriving or to Simply or to people simply prer the capitalist business model in other words
1:21:57
is the Rarity of co-ops in today’s society evidence that capitalism actually works better or is it just that
1:22:05
capitalism’s playing field is tilted against worker ownership how would socialism change that equation you have
1:22:11
two minutes to me asking why didn’t Market competition produce workplace democracy
1:22:18
if workplace democracy would be better um is no different than asking why if
1:22:23
it’s better to have minimum wage laws and workplace safety laws and sexual harassment laws and laws against child
1:22:30
labor and the rest widen the Invisible Hand to a free market just raise wages and eliminate unsafe labor practices and
1:22:37
fire groping bosses and get children out of coal mines without the state having to get involved and notice there’s an
1:22:44
exact parity of reasoning here after all before minimum wage laws employers were legally allowed to pay that higher wage
1:22:51
before child labor laws coal mining companies were free to only hire adults uh no law stop secretaries who are tired
1:22:57
of being harassed by their bosses from starting competing companies with uh strict harassment policies the basic
1:23:04
lesson in all of these cases is just that because something is better in human terms it obviously doesn’t follow
1:23:11
that doing it gives you an edge in Market competition in fact sometimes the opposite is true there’s a reason
1:23:17
slavery wasn’t transcended in the South by having free labor cotton Farms out compete slave plantations uh in the
1:23:24
worker Co-op example it’s a lot easier for a firm for example to move from place to place in search of Better
1:23:29
Business conditions uh higher profits if the people who get a vote about whether
1:23:35
to do that aren’t people who would act either lose their jobs or have to pick up their entire lives and move if the
1:23:42
firm moves similarly being able to pay subminimum wages and cut corner on safeties for example makes companies
1:23:49
that can do these things more profitable without the state stepping in to even the playing field Market incentives will
1:23:54
actually tend to punish these things and I’m going to eat I know I I know I don’t
1:24:01
have much left but I’m going to eat just a little bit more into my overtime budget here to say two things and uh
1:24:06
first saying that making a change doesn’t give firms an edge is very different from saying that the state
1:24:12
coming in to make the change happen will crash the economy and anyone who thinks that would happen in these cases has a
1:24:17
heavy burden of proof uh since the exad evidence from those few really existing worker co-ops that you know we do under
1:24:24
capitalism doesn’t give us an obvious reason to suspect this is the case second what the state coming in to bring
1:24:31
you know what the state coming in to bring about workplace democracy like a future socialist government in collaboration with the militant labor
1:24:38
movement what that might look like uh could involve a few different policy tools from the blunt instrument of for
1:24:44
example nationalizing Fortune 500 companies and turning them over to their workers uh to just changing the funding
1:24:50
mechanism for new firms so the primary mechanism was getting grants from nationalized Banks and notice that everything I’m talking
1:24:57
about nationalizing right now are Economic Institutions that are the cronous part of actually existing crony
1:25:03
capitalism institutions propped up by Massive State intervention so even from a Libertarian perspective I’m not sure
1:25:09
how many TI you could cry for their lost property rights if this ever happened our final challenge question to
1:25:16
Keith is about people over profits a common critique is that capitalism puts
1:25:21
profits before people for example companies might pollute the environment or squeeze workers to cut costs hurting
1:25:28
communities Keith what’s your response to the charge that capitalism by Design
1:25:33
values money over Humanity do Market forces eventually punish bad actors like
1:25:39
consumers boycotting a polluter or do we need something Beyond capitalism to
1:25:44
protect people and planet from greed in your view can capitalism solve problems
1:25:49
like climate change or does addressing such issues require moving away from pure free markets you have two minutes
1:25:57
again it is not about profit which makes capitalism unique because socialists
1:26:03
syndicalists Communists fascists are always looking to increase the amount of money or property or social status that
1:26:11
they have so again profit is not unique to capitalism but the freedom to disassociate with Bad actors is unique
1:26:18
to free market capitalism what I’m advocating here if you look at the earliest computers microphones radios
1:26:25
and printers that were ever invented they took many many more resources out of the environment than that which
1:26:31
occurs today this was not the result of the state saying you have to save more money in the vast majority of examples
1:26:38
it was entrepreneurs responding to the voluntary profit incentive through competition which resulted in more
1:26:45
efficient products available to more people in more countries than ever before if you care about the environment
1:26:51
make sure that environmentalists have tons of options in where they can buy their products and how they can spend their scarce money
1:26:58
and make sure that it’s profitable for employers to respect the environment by using um by using very green energy
1:27:06
which can save on steel iron aluminum the number of inputs that go into the
1:27:13
final production process so people over profit I see as a false dichotomy it’s
1:27:19
extremely difficult to make profit in the voluntary sector if you’re not meeting the demand of other people in
1:27:27
the economy and now it’s time to move on to part three of this evening’s debate
1:27:34
which I think is probably going to be nearest and dearest to many of our listeners Hearts this is where we’ll
1:27:40
focus on the generational crisis of the vast majority of young adults feeling
1:27:46
that our current system of governance and wealth distribution regardless of
1:27:51
what ISM you want to call it whatever it’s called it’s corrupt in its in serious need of Reform I’ll ask four
1:27:58
questions on this topic for both Debaters to respond to the first topic is youth versus capitalism polls show
1:28:06
that young people today are deeply frustrated by the status quo in Britain
1:28:11
nearly 8 in 10 young adults blame capitalism for the housing crisis and
1:28:17
two3 say that they prefer a socialist economy in the United States gen Z and
1:28:23
millennial have far lower opinions of capitalism than older Americans with
1:28:28
many viewing socialism positively to both debators why do you think that so
1:28:34
many young adults have turned against capitalism are there grievances such as
1:28:40
stagnant wages student debt high rent and climate fears a direct result of
1:28:45
capitalism’s failures as they believe or are they scapegoating the wrong culprit
1:28:51
and what would you say to the allegation that Capal ism is the problem coming from today’s youth we started with Ben
1:28:57
in the last round so let’s let Keith kick things off in this round Keith you have two minutes to respond I am 29
1:29:05
years old so I think I am in this demographic of who you are referring to
1:29:11
when it comes to the things that create the most amount of economic insecurity among me and my friends it’s the big
1:29:18
three almost always schooling housing and Healthcare the three things that the
1:29:23
state is constant intervening in and increasing its amount of regulations and
1:29:28
increasing the amount that it subsidizes when it comes to schooling the state in the last 50 years has drastically
1:29:33
increased the amount of involvement in education you could imagine if the Catholic church had compulsory education
1:29:40
you wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of Catholics going around so the fact that the state controls education I’m
1:29:46
not too surprised that we see a lot of staus uh going around when it comes to the concept of healthcare people in my
1:29:52
generation are extremely furious with the outrageous cost of healthcare we had a schooling system and a Department of
1:29:59
Agriculture which was telling us in order to be healthy you’ll want to eat between six and 11 servings of grain per
1:30:06
day that’s what socialized medicine has produced in the extent that it currently
1:30:12
exists according to Paul krugman’s book The Conscience of a liberal he says that before Medicare Part D and the
1:30:18
Affordable Care Act the government paid for 44% of health care expenses through the VA through Medicare through Medicaid
1:30:25
the state is very heavily involved the problem is not too many voluntary exchanges in the case of housing people
1:30:32
like Elvis Summers and Jay Austin were creating tiny houses for people so they could just get their foot in the door to
1:30:38
have a place to rest to combat homelessness and the state of course confiscated these because they weren’t
1:30:44
up to code that’s how socialism tries to reflect the needs of the working masses
1:30:49
by confiscating the one opportunity that they choose to live in so Healthcare housing and education and the other
1:30:55
healthare example of course is co they attempted to lock us down and stop us from interacting in public for years on
1:31:03
end based on absolute ridiculous science while the Eco Health Alliance was funding gain of function research the
1:31:09
problem is not too many voluntary exchanges the problem is a lack thereof
1:31:14
Ben your turn to address young adults objections to capitalism you have two minutes well I think that young adults
1:31:22
are probably aware that if you want want to talk about the effects of socialized medicine it’s probably you know uh less
1:31:27
relevant to talk about uh you know nutritional advice nobody remembers from
1:31:33
elementary school than to talk about where in the world uh you have more
1:31:39
successful Health outcomes by every single measure uh you know where in the world you have to uh you have the option
1:31:47
of leaving your job without worrying about losing your health insurance Etc but putting that aside uh
1:31:54
I would say that um one of the things I find most striking about this question
1:32:00
is how it connects with the question earlier about the relationship between capitalism and socialism in economics
1:32:05
and democracy or authoritarianism in politics because what’s really striking to me how little the sentiments
1:32:11
reflected in those polls are represented in the political sphere and I don’t think it’s just because the generation gap and older people voted more I think
1:32:17
it’s because the way economic inequality distorts democracy but as far as what the polls mean I don’t want to over
1:32:23
interpret them but I do think those numbers are rooted in some uh really Grim realities in the ground we might
1:32:30
not have real capitalism from a Libertarian purist perspective but in the last 50 years of neoliberalism uh we
1:32:36
have gone a lot closer to that than we were and every step we’ve taken in that direction the privatizations the
1:32:41
deregulation the Giga every bit of it has made our society worse uh more
1:32:47
stressful more precarious uh so whereas I’m under No Illusion that most young people in these polls have a clear idea
1:32:53
of what a socialist economy would even mean and I’m sure a lot of them really just mean Nordic style reforms I do
1:32:59
still think these sentiments reflect a real and well deserve dissatisfaction with the massive economic inequality and
1:33:06
economic precarity that they’ve grown up with and a desire to renegotiate the social contract in a better Direction
1:33:12
one that gives more resources and dignity to the working class my long-term Horizons obviously go beyond
1:33:17
that but I do think the majority of young people are on board with at least taking some steps in what I would see as
1:33:23
the Direction our next topic relating to the generational crisis is capitalism versus
1:33:30
crony capitalism a lot of young people use capitalism as a catchall for
1:33:36
everything they see wrong unaffordable education corrupt politicians in bed with billionaires Wall Street bailouts
1:33:43
you name it but some argue that much of this is cronyism or corruption not free
1:33:48
not true free market capitalism Keith you’ve noted that after years of schooling and media pushing anti-market
1:33:55
ideas it’s truly remarkable that anyone still values free market Freedom do you
1:34:01
think do you think that youth have been taught to blame capitalism for problems
1:34:07
actually caused by government intervention and chony Elites how do you explain the difference between free
1:34:13
market capitalism and the mixed economy that we currently have to a generation that just sees one big system failing
1:34:20
them you have two minutes you would want want to extract a definition of what
1:34:27
you’re referring to when you come to capitalism so what I would do uh with them and say if capitalism is just about
1:34:33
making money does that apply at all to non-c capitalist Enterprises do those
1:34:39
people just exist as unpaid volunteers of course not they’re profit seeking so
1:34:44
it’s not about the concept of making money is it about a few people making decisions for many other people well we
1:34:51
see this in politics all the time where a very few amount of people make uh decisions for tons of people who not
1:34:58
only don’t get a say don’t even know what’s taking place and the information is frequently classified so because of
1:35:05
their very shallow understanding of capitalism I would say that that could be an explanation and the fact that the
1:35:11
state gets to coercively fund its schools whereas other schools have to get money voluntarily and it has a
1:35:18
unique compulsion aspect to school the last Democratic uh presidential
1:35:23
candidate was bragging about the enforcement of treny laws this is coercing kids to spend their time
1:35:30
performing child labor for zero dollars an hour in government schools so yeah of
1:35:36
course I you could even ask them so the number of pages in the Federal Register
1:35:41
have drastically decreased in the last 50 years since we’re you know just under capitalism they’d probably say yes even
1:35:47
though the opposite true so government spending has been drastically decreasing because we used to have you know
1:35:53
somewhat of mixed economy and now we’re just totally capitalist they might say yeah that there’s uh less government
1:35:58
spending than ever before there’s you know no education budget every everyone always thinks that these things are shrinking when of course education
1:36:06
housing and Healthcare government spending has increased in every aspect so yes they’re against it because
1:36:12
they’re ignorant because they have no incentive to get informed because of democracy they could spend tons of time
1:36:17
getting informed and yet they would only get a one in 10 million vote every four years so I don’t necess necessarily
1:36:24
expect that to change my goal is just to increase the amount of insecurity socialists feel when they’re advocating
1:36:29
their ideas hopefully that would do a better job than really informing people Ben do you accept the distinction
1:36:36
between capitalism and crony capitalism or do you believe that what free marketeers call crony capitalism is just
1:36:43
an inevitable outgrowth of capitalism itself is saying that’s cronyism not
1:36:49
real capitalism just an excuse to dodge blame you have two minutes
1:36:54
yeah uh first I just want to express my astonishment at the idea that the American educational system is pro
1:37:01
socialist uh I think this is so at odds with the experience of every human being who’s ever been through it that I I just
1:37:07
don’t even know what to say about that uh this is it relentlessly glorifies capitalism we all know this uh but no I
1:37:15
don’t expect I I don’t think that that’s a meaningful distinction I think that thinking you can have massive economic
1:37:20
inequality without it translating into massive inequality in political influence is like thinking water can uh
1:37:26
be taught to flow Upstream the usual libertarian Dodge that oh we make the state less powerful so therefore it’ll
1:37:32
be less desirable for moneyed interest to capture spectacularly misses the point for two reasons and this all goes
1:37:39
double for any fantasy of anarcho capitalism just having capitalism without a state entirely first think
1:37:46
about the regulatory capture aspect of the issue saying oh well corporations
1:37:51
are going to use their influence to uh to weaken the regulatory agencies that protect workers and consumers therefore
1:37:57
let’s get rid of those agencies is like saying that if half the gangsters in some City are getting away with their
1:38:03
Crimes by paying off cops and judges saying oh I’ve got a solution let’s stop Prosecuting gangsters entirely so none
1:38:10
of them will then pay anybody off second capitalism can’t exist without a very
1:38:15
large state in fact functioning markets of any kind at a large scale couldn’t exist without a big state um if
1:38:22
Libertarians want to any kind of ideological credit for the successes of real world capitalism they can’t just
1:38:28
ignore all the ways every flourishing capitalist economy ever has been propped up by the state ranging from public
1:38:34
roads and utilities to stateb currency to limited liability corporations to all
1:38:40
that basic R&D the public sector does that I was talking about earlier not to even mention that protecting private
1:38:45
property rights in a wildly unequal Society is going to take a lot of coercive power do you want companies to
1:38:51
just have to spend half their budgets on private militias otherwise you’re going to need a big state to protect those
1:38:57
property rights and that state is going to get captured crony capitalism is just capitalism in the only form it could
1:39:03
ever take in a material reality next let’s talk about addressing
1:39:09
youth’s grievances let’s get specific with issues fueling this discontent
1:39:15
Skyhigh housing costs crippling student debt jobs that don’t pay a w a living
1:39:20
wage and the perception of alum climate crisis many young people feel that the
1:39:26
system we have now is robbing them of the future their parents enjoyed I want
1:39:31
to hear from each of you how would your preferred system fix or at least
1:39:37
seriously address these problems Ben why would moving toward a more socialist
1:39:42
system make College affordable housing accessible and jobs decent for young
1:39:47
people and can it tackle big challenges like climate change better than capitalism you have two
1:39:54
minutes sure I think even very modest baby steps in the Socialist direction
1:39:59
would be huge on all of these fronts but I do slightly object to the framing about making College more affordable
1:40:05
education shouldn’t be a commodity at all we should have tuition free public education at all levels from preschool
1:40:11
to graduate school paid for by progressive taxation and free at the point of service just like public high
1:40:18
school is paid for that’s not some utopian socialist fantasy that’s just Finland uh widely held by the way to
1:40:24
have the best education system in the world similarly on housing when people in America think of public housing they
1:40:30
might think of housing projects that were exclusively for the poor and were extremely undesirable or maybe think
1:40:37
even think of housing in the USSR certainly not a good model but looking around the world we do have lots of good
1:40:42
models from Singapore to Sweden of very successful systems where big portions of the population at all income levels live
1:40:49
in high quality Municipal housing or homes on public land and and these systems get the job done in a way that
1:40:56
I’m very deeply skeptical that zoning deregulation could ever be enough to do
1:41:01
um on climate change trying to do an energy transition you know by just
1:41:06
hoping that you know enough people Express their green values in their buying decisions um you know is is just
1:41:15
not going to be sufficient for anything like the scale of what we need right what we need is a massive New Deal style
1:41:22
Public Works program to a rapid energy transition and of course that also ties into the part about the jobs because we
1:41:29
could create lots of good unionized public sector jobs in the process and these are just the reformist baby steps
1:41:35
actually achieving democracy at work so people could decide together on how to run the place and who gets how much of
1:41:43
the revenue would be a Quantum Leap Forward in the dignity autonomy and
1:41:48
material well-being of the vast majority of the population Keith how would a p form of
1:41:55
capitalism or free market policies make life better for young Generations
1:42:00
specifically for example would deregulating housing and education or embracing Innovation solve these issues
1:42:07
faster than government-driven socialist ideas convince our young Skeptics out there and there’s plenty of them that
1:42:13
are skeptical of capitalism in this audience how is capitalism going to deliver the goods for them you have two
1:42:19
minutes we can look at the free education that cap ISM provides when it comes to websites online as I mentioned
1:42:27
in my opening statement YouTube Odyssey internet archive the Con Academy using
1:42:32
Gro thanks to people like Elon Musk we can access more education than we ever could have if you Advocate something
1:42:41
like the need for uh college to be coercively funded by the state that is
1:42:47
an admission that the last 12 years that the kids spent learning absolute nonsense is created people who are in
1:42:54
such dire need of Education that they absolutely need four years and we need the state to coercively fund it I would
1:43:01
think that you’d want to brag a little more about public education considering it’s five days a week six hours a day
1:43:07
for 12 years you’d think that these kids were so brilliant that no politician could ever trick them with propaganda
1:43:14
that they would be immune to falling for logical fallacies and such but the reality is that the teachers do not have
1:43:21
the incentive to create a very good product or service so after 12 years kids know so little that the Socialist
1:43:27
is demanding oh gosh we really need four more years of this because the last 12 years was such an unequivocal waste in
1:43:34
the case of healthcare look at the most regulated vers least regulated things something like Cosmetics is much less
1:43:41
regulated and the cost has gone down more people are able to access it than previously before because there was
1:43:47
Market competition because there was Innovation if you go to Walgreens you could look at the stuff that the state
1:43:53
does not require a prescription for versus what the state does require a prescription to get less regulation more
1:44:00
options and lower costs as a cause a result of competition and with housing
1:44:05
as I mentioned earlier people like Elvis Summers Jay Austin it’s not that these those are two people who were building
1:44:12
tiny houses for the cost of between $1,200 and $5,000 this would have come about just
1:44:18
as smartphones Gordon gecko’s brick phone in Wall Street was impressive 40
1:44:23
years ago and now no one would be caught dead with that that’s the Innovation that capitalism can yield us or you
1:44:30
could say well actually it’s not the profit incentive it’s people just wanting better things for the future
1:44:35
that’s totally fine then just fund those voluntarily just let us opt out of what
1:44:40
frankly we think are just disasters such as you know State schooling I think it’s a complete waste of time and it’s unpaid
1:44:47
child labor and I would much rather kids have jobs when they were much younger getting their foot in the door and
1:44:52
getting on the job job experience so they could gain skills in the workplace just let us opt out that’s the only
1:44:58
capitalism response that I have our final Topic in this round will be an
1:45:04
elevator pitch to The Next Generation imagine you’re speaking directly to a 22-year-old who’s watching this debate
1:45:11
and feeling frustrated and cynical about their economic future they’re asking
1:45:16
what does your side have to offer me personally why should I believe in
1:45:21
capitalism or social ISM Keith what hope can capitalism give to that young person
1:45:27
who’s worried about inequality climate and living standards you have two minutes to sell your case before the
1:45:34
elevator arrives at your Executive Suite on the top floor for the same reason we
1:45:39
should have religious freedom we should have economic freedom people should be free to make voluntary exchanges with
1:45:46
their friends their co-workers their employers with potential customers in the absence of a third party coercively
1:45:54
intervening and attempting to exploit both consenting parties I’m very happy
1:45:59
that the me too movement has brought consent uh front and center in the discussion consent is what
1:46:06
differentiates slavery from work rape from love making theft from trade and kidnapping from spending time at a
1:46:13
friend’s house consent is the root of morality we should extend the principle of consent to the economic sphere
1:46:19
allowing the average person to have the most amount of job opportunities the most amount of access to products and
1:46:25
services that they could have embracing consent is not only the moral approach it gives people a higher standard of
1:46:31
living because you have entrepreneurs competing for the dollars in your pocket don’t make it easy for them don’t give
1:46:38
them a big state that they could just tax the money away from you make them work for it Ben what hope can socialism
1:46:44
give them that it won’t just become another failed experiment but that it will genuinely improve their lives in
1:46:52
closing this segment tell the younger generation while your V why your vision
1:46:57
isn’t just an abstract ideal but something that could actually make their lives and Futures brighter and why the
1:47:04
other side’s vision would not you have two minutes well as those polls you quoted
1:47:10
earlier show a majority of young people already understand that what we’ve got right now has failed them the thing
1:47:16
that’s failed them isn’t uh the fact that they get to go to uh to public
1:47:22
school I’ll note by the way that that argument we just heard against public school would equally be an argument against private schools because in fact
1:47:28
a much higher percentage of people in private schools feel the need to get four more years of education at the end
1:47:34
and somehow no rich people anywhere right encourage their kids to drop out at 16 when uh you know when when they’re
1:47:40
allowed to so that that’s interesting to me right but they know that what’s failed them is what is increasingly a
1:47:48
form of capitalism that however long the legal code is however many uh you know however many dollars are in
1:47:55
the overall government budget uh has fewer uh has has fewer protections of
1:48:01
workers and consumers uh against capitalists doing whatever they want they don’t
1:48:08
necessarily know what could or should replace them uh this system and many of them don’t really believe deep down that
1:48:13
anything could replace it capitalism just feels like the only way things could be uh like it’s part of the
1:48:19
permanent fixture of reality but slavery felt like that you’d be hard pressed to find an abolitionist in ancient Rome for
1:48:25
example even most slaves wouldn’t have thought that slavery was something that we could ever get past entirely they
1:48:30
might have dreamed of escaping or earning their individual freedom but some people being Masters and some people being slaves was just how the
1:48:37
world was now we know it didn’t have to be and I would argue that some people being wealthy business owners and other
1:48:43
people having to do what those people told them all day isn’t how things have to be either but here’s maybe the most
1:48:49
essential point maybe you can’t stretch your imagination to the point thinking we could ever get rid of this system
1:48:55
entirely but even so I think the majority of young people are realizing
1:49:00
this part every incremental step we’ve taken in the direction of taking over Society from wealthy business owners and
1:49:06
running it in the interest of everyone makes our society better we’re better off we take some of the wage setting
1:49:11
Authority away from capitalists with minimum wage laws uh when we take some of their authority to decide how work
1:49:16
processes get done with workplace safety laws when we create those public schools and public libraries and public Fire
1:49:22
Department departments meanwhile every step we take in the direction of a Pur more libertarian form of capitalism
1:49:28
makes our society worse uh makes it cruler and stupider and more unequal every privatization every round of
1:49:34
deregulation every tax cut for rich people at the expense of Slash in services for the poor so whether or not
1:49:41
you believe that we can make it all the way in my direction let’s at least hurry up and go some of that way and that
1:49:48
concludes part three in part four the final round of tonight’s de debate we’ll hear closing arguments from each debater
1:49:56
along with their rebuttals to their opponent’s closing arguments and that’s coming up next right after this message
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only at JM bullan at JM Bull and we’re back for closing
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arguments in tonight’s debate on capitalism versus socialism in this final round each debater will have five
1:50:40
minutes to make their closing arguments I I started with Keith in the last round
1:50:46
so let’s start with Ben in this round Ben you have five minutes to make your closing arguments the stage is yours
1:50:54
thank you uh so I think that when we’re thinking about the sort of big issue
1:50:59
here about capitalism and socialism it’s important to take a long step back and
1:51:05
think about all the different ways that Society could be organized uh in 1861
1:51:10
Abraham Lincoln was given a speech about why the Free Labor system in the north was better than Southern slavery which
1:51:16
is of course something that you know Keith and I can get together on but uh the interesting part uh is that even in
1:51:23
1861 Lincoln was sensitive to worries that the emerging system of industrial
1:51:28
capitalism left something to be desired he said that there is no such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the
1:51:35
condition of a hired labor that line makes him sound like a socialist he wasn’t uh his political Vision was
1:51:41
limited to you know replacing slave labor with wage labor um he but he
1:51:47
acknowledged that capitalist system wouldn’t be a system of deep and genuine Freedom if workers had to spend their
1:51:53
whole lives as workers and could never afford to break out of that but he insisted that this wouldn’t be how it
1:51:58
would go uh The Prudent penniless beginner in the world could work as a hired laborer for a while then he could
1:52:05
save up a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself work on his own account for a while and eventually
1:52:12
hire uh another new beginner to help him and as much as I admire Lincoln If we’re
1:52:17
honest about this the idea that everyone who’s sufficiently hardworking and prudent can be upwardly mobile mobile
1:52:22
through the class hierarchy was already wishful thinking in 1861 even then there
1:52:27
were only so many lifeboats out of the working class in 2025 I hope it’s obvious to everyone
1:52:33
that things can’t work out the way that Lincoln was talking about for the majority of the population the
1:52:39
arithmetic doesn’t work in any technologically advanced modern economy
1:52:44
most labor is going to be done by groups of people working together the world of small farmers and independent Craftsmen
1:52:51
is not coming back and while class Mobility you know certainly exists I wouldn’t deny that
1:52:57
it’s just not structurally possible for most of us to be capitalists any more
1:53:02
than the laws of gravity would allow the majority of cheerleaders forming themselves into a pyramid to be at the
1:53:07
top level our choices are that most people will work communally but be ruled
1:53:13
by capitalists right private business owners who can manage their little economic feom like kings and queens uh
1:53:20
or that will continue to work communally but extend democracy uh to the half of
1:53:26
our waking lives that most adults spend at work through some form of collective ownership Now Keith has argued
1:53:33
throughout the debate uh that you know the sort of check that on capitalist you
1:53:39
know power in the workplace is our freedom of exit right you could always quit and get another job but I would
1:53:45
really suggest that this isn’t going to take you that far um that in a lot of
1:53:51
ways this would be similar if you think back to the way marriage laws used to work there was something called coverture where a lot of a married
1:53:57
woman’s rights would go to her husband after they got married and she couldn’t build up her own property and all of
1:54:03
that um and if we still had that but we also made divorce really easy that would
1:54:08
mean that sure it would be easy to go from one husband with that kind of
1:54:14
authority over you to a different husband with that kind of authority over you you’d have that freedom of exit but
1:54:20
you wouldn’t have voice uh in the arrangement itself and that’s a really
1:54:26
crucial distinction uh never mind of course that you know in both cases you
1:54:32
know uh workers now or wives back when this system was in place had to find a
1:54:37
new master very quickly uh before their savings uh their savings ran out um and
1:54:44
of course in the workplace case uh if uh if you apply your freedom of exit too
1:54:49
many times you’ve got a lot of embarrassing gaps on the resume and it’s going to be difficult to uh to find your
1:54:57
next position so again I think realistically this is just not that kind
1:55:03
of check that can do the level of work that Keith wants to make it do now he talks a lot about voluntariness right
1:55:09
the the voluntary sector for example right you know as his name for the private sector um but again
1:55:18
voluntariness in this context is just going to be a red ha and any possible distribution of scarce resources is
1:55:26
going to involve some sort of coercion to enforce that against people who are
1:55:32
encroaching on whatever Arrangement you’ve ended up with so the real question is never voluntary or not
1:55:38
voluntary it’s always what’s our theory of who should have what is it a loan Theory where if you know you mix your
1:55:44
labor with the you know with nature you thereby get rights to it which I got to say has never been very compelling to me
1:55:51
I mean it’s it’s sort of uh it often feels like my dog’s theory of property rights which is that you know which is
1:55:57
that she she acquires rights to things by relieving herself on them uh or is it
1:56:03
going to be for example a rosian theory According to which the right distribution the just distribution of
1:56:08
resources is the one that you would choose if you end up having the short end of the stick I think it’s the second
1:56:15
one or something much closer to that is going to be the more plausible Theory but this is the point I just want to end
1:56:22
on I think that’s where the real debate lies right it’s not about coercion
1:56:27
versus new coer no coercion you’re always any kind of exclusion of some
1:56:33
people from scarce resources is always going to rest on coercion the important point is what’s the distribution that
1:56:40
should be enforced and I think a much more equal one is going to be much
1:56:46
better for human dignity and flourishing and Keith you have the last
1:56:51
word five minutes to make your closing arguments the floor is yours when you look at the great crimes
1:56:58
of let’s just stick with American history it’s commonly recognized that there were atrocities against the Native
1:57:05
Americans some people initiated violence against other people and we had an
1:57:10
unjustifiable double standard well it’s not our fault they were just Savages and
1:57:15
we improved on the land so initiating violence wasn’t that big of a deal yeah it’s okay that we coer some people into
1:57:23
performing labor against their will whether it’s because they’re less intelligent because they come from less
1:57:28
primitive societies there was another blatant double standard that we are still paying for to this day what
1:57:36
capitalism is advocating is US dropping this double standard and not allowing
1:57:41
some people to initiate aggression at the expense of others regardless of what your theory of property rights is it’s
1:57:47
still inconsistent if there’s a socialist state where one group has a uni ique right to initiate taxes against
1:57:55
the rest of the population that’s what makes this an inconsistent Theory even if you said well it’s just about making
1:58:01
sure there’s enough for everyone well then why is it that the state has a unique monopolistic right to initiate
1:58:09
taxes if it’s something totally legitimate allow everyone to initiate taxes this was the great disagreement
1:58:16
between George Fitz Hugh in his book The sociology of the South and Abraham Lincoln Mr Fitz Hugh wrote in his book
1:58:24
that slavery is a great paternal institution instead of the slave being
1:58:30
free and then having to compete in the doggy dog profit seeking voluntary sector the slave is taken care of he’s
1:58:37
given a home for free he’s given a place where he can have a shower he’s given
1:58:43
Health Care he is under the ownership of the slave owner this this concept of
1:58:49
volunteerism we should ignore and focus about really caring for people to the point of enslaving them this is what I
1:58:57
refer to as domestic imperialism the progressive will rightfully say that
1:59:02
America should not be using the government to enforce laws on people in
1:59:07
Haiti the government of Britain should not be forcing itself upon people in
1:59:12
South Africa yet they say that that same government has the right to initiate
1:59:18
coercion against its domestic population it’s the very principle of imperialism
1:59:23
that they reject in a distant geographical area they embrace it when it comes to people who happen to live in
1:59:31
a closer geographical area this is today’s double standard that we need to reject this is the double standard which
1:59:38
allows people to fund mass murder campaigns in Gaza in Ukraine in Iraq in
1:59:43
Libya in Yemen in Afghanistan because we haven’t taken this principle of voluntary exchange and extended it to
1:59:50
members of the state I’ll end with a story out of Kansas City Missouri the
1:59:56
health department is speaking out after it poured bleach on food intended to be given to the homeless Nelly mcul who
2:00:03
helps Run free hot soup Kansas City has been helping the homeless for years until Sunday quote officers and Health
2:00:10
Inspectors demanded we destroy our food and we were violating the health code violations by sharing meals with our
2:00:17
friends said mol the department said the group wasn’t following the law about service
2:00:22
the homeless quoting Dr Rex Archer the director for public health in Kansas
2:00:27
City Missouri they were notified back in a meeting in September that they needed to get a permit and they just outright
2:00:35
said they refused to do that mul disputes that claiming someone in their group got upset and threw food on the
2:00:41
ground inspectors then poured bleach on the food to make sure no one ate it that
2:00:47
is the domestic imperialism you get with the state when some people literally believe they have a better claim to the
2:00:54
property you’ve justly Acquired and your time and your body and they separate themselves in an apartheid state where
2:01:01
they have rights to do things to you you don’t have rights to do to them that is the nature of our problem in society we
2:01:09
keep embracing double standards it’s time to embrace free market capitalism and reject double standards Zero Hedge
2:01:15
and Mr Burgess thank you guys for your time and before we wrap up tonight’s debate I want to personally thank both
2:01:23
Debaters for their maturity and professionalism we had no ad hominum attacks I didn’t have to do anything as
2:01:29
moderator to moderate any disputes and I really respect both of you for coming to such a heated topic with such a
2:01:36
respectful approach before we close I want to invite both of you to share your X handles website URLs and so forth for
2:01:44
the benefit of any listeners who may want to follow your work Professor Bren Burgess where can people follow your
2:01:50
work and what will they find when they get there uh sure you can read me at jackan
2:01:56
magazine where I’m a columnist or at my substack which is called Philosophy for the people that’s uh Ben
2:02:19
burgess.is where they can follow your word and what they’ll find when they get there for people interested in the
2:02:26
libertarian philosophy or the philosophy of Social cooperation in opposition to violence and coercion they can check out
2:02:33
libertarian institute.org where we have a free educational online archive you can use our search engine to type in any
2:02:41
issue you’re interested in agricultural subsidies central banks Israel Ukraine
2:02:46
and you can check out all the free materials we have there you can also find free PDFs of my two books one is
2:02:52
the voluntarist handbook the 50 articles and essays that I read which took me from being a progressive to being a
2:02:58
Libertarian as well as a speech I gave titled domestic imperialism nine reasons
2:03:04
I left progressivism that is where I quoted uh the uh previous article from
2:03:09
thank you guys so much for your time you can also check out my podcast don’t tread on anyone on YouTube and
2:03:16
odyssey and for my part in this macro voices is the only investment in macroeconomics podcast that specifically
2:03:23
targets professional Finance family offices and sophisticated private investors we differentiate from other
2:03:30
podcasts by asking all of our guests not to dumb it down to a retail level you
2:03:35
can subscribe to macrovoices wherever you get your podcasts or find more information at macro voices.com and for
2:03:41
those of you and I know you are who’ve been eyeing that beautiful zeroedge ball cap over my shoulder you can find that
2:03:48
and a whole bunch of other really cool Zero Hedge merch at zh store.com for the
2:03:54
zeroedge debate series I’m Eric town
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