What is Morally Right About Economic Freedom | Daniel Lapin

[robzrob]

"Atheists Are Parasites", says this guy. Hmm, do I want to listen to this?

[jazzbo66zz]

The living conditions of the bottom 20% of the US are morally indefensible. Capitalism is as much a cult as any other system of belief that ignores the realities of the present to contrive compliance with the unseen in the hereafter.

[Hashishin13]

This last bit is retarded. The exact same zookeeper argument could be applied to God as zookeeper.

[jazzbo66zz]

The last time I checked there was no respectable theologian prepared to argue that God rewards virtue in cash or securities. If something like this is threatening to pose as an established doctrine within Judaism this is the first I have heard of it. I believe the Torah will bare me out on this. This is precisely why greed is considered so dangerous is because it is so seductive. When God comes to be esteemed as if we were visiting a ready teller machine we are probably loosing our way.

[jazzbo66zz]

It finally dawned on me recently that Fascism first of all represents the expropriation of language. Fascism subverts democracy in the same terms that capitalism does by conflating them when vices like greed undergo ethical transposition by attributing them to virtue. When words undergo corruption ideas loose their shape. After a time we are rendered incapable of thinking and some time later, then we become dead. It was Hannah Ardent who observed that Adolf Eichmann was incapable of thinking.

[jazzbo66zz]

Capitalism has the built in moral strength of a mass movement established to celebrate the privilege of some to witness the spectacle of others starving. If you envision Ebenezer Scrooge as a moralist by this method you can also justify many other terrors including war concentration camps and homelessness as..."moral".

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz Wow, you want to see peopel starving? Go look at socialism. Far less people have starved in twice as long under capitalism as starved in Communism in half the time. Free markets are nothing other then free exchange. What is immoral about offering someone a job and them willingly accepting it? Or offering a good at a certain price and someone willingly paying it? Your argument is against a straw man.

[jazzbo66zz]

@Hashishin13

Capitalism is your religion it is not mine. The righteousness of one person of your faith to enjoy the destruction of another is called "liberty". The US prison population now exceeds 2.5 million and in this sense you might with some justification be considered your brothers keeper. A quarter of the US population is poverished. In terms of material living conditions, life expectancy, access to employment, legal representation, medical care and housing, the US is at the bottom.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz It isn't a religion, calling it one is nonsensical. Your main problem is that you don't understand the meaning of free market capitalism. It is free exchange, throwing people in jail for anything other then property violations is immoral, and drugs prostitution and gun "crime"(actually ownership) probably makes up more then half of the prison population, these prisoners have NOTHING to do with the free market. You think the US is a free market? It's closer to fascism.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz Fascism is when corporations(another invention of government, not the free market) gets too close to the government and they start influencing each other and eventually colluding. The government regulates, bans or subsidizes the majority of the private sector, this is literally the economic model of Hitler and Mussolini. A lot of the rest of it they have taken over, which is communism.

[jazzbo66zz]

@Hashishin13

Fascism is the political corollary of monopoly Capitalism militarized for violent expansion, sometimes referred to as the surplus liquidity problem. Capitalism failed along an offset time line with Communnism/ USSR. Conditions in the US now are similar to urban conditions in the USSR in the early eighties w/ pervasive poverty amid a ruinous military build up. Liberty remains an abstraction, invoked as an ideological trope removed from any consideration of living conditions.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz You keep throwing this word capitalism in there like you know what your talking about. Capitalism is the free exchange of goods and services, what does this have to do with a massive military budget? I have tried to tell you that what we have is not capitalism and you just ignore me, when markets are regulated or controlled by the government it is a form of socialism, end of story. Socialism isn't capitalism.

[jazzbo66zz]

@Hashishin13

Unfortunately reality has dimensions that cannot be circumscribed by ideology. Capitalism as you describe it sounds perfectly fine as a prescription for social relations in an imaginary world removed from history. Capitalism is easier to defend certainly if we agree to pretend it does not yet exist, but unfortunately historical experience is working against us.( I suspect the end of capitalism will not be the end of history.)

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz So what is your alternative? Socialism? That is what is currently failing. Communism? It killed millions of people. Capitalism is the best system there is, life isn't perfect but the closer we get to a free market the better our lives are. History bears this out.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz If you were brought up in a western country you most likely went to a socialist school(public school) that taught you all about how capitalism was bad and how government saves us.

Everyone points to children working in mines, you know what those children were doing before there was a mine to provide them with work and pay to buy food with? They were starving on the family farm. You think their parents were so greedy that they were happy to send their kids there? No, they were hungry.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz part 3

"the US is at the bottom"

Of what list, show me ONE list on which the US is at the bottom for how well the poor live. Everyone in the US is MUCH better off then the average person was under the soviet state, most of south America, virtually all of Africa and also most of Asia. You really haven't taken a look around at the world if you think American poor are doing badly, at least by world standards.

[jazzbo66zz]

@Hashishin13 America's poor are dying of exposure sleeping in cardboard boxes & eating out of garbage bins. Homelessness in the US is now in the 4-5 million range. To defend the existing economic hierarchy you are forced to compare conditions in the US to the worlds worst third world dictatorships. The disparity between top 1% incomes in the US & the bottom 20% have not been seen since the 19th century. Capitalism & Communism produce similar disasters. The US, being the latest train wreck.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz virtually nobody would be unemployed in a true free market, the reason why there is unemployment of these desperate people is that there is a minimum wage which has the basic affect of un-employing everyone who can't produce more then the minimum wage. Basically all these people in California living in tents and unemployed are sitting there while at the same time tons of illegal immigrants are working for less then the minimum wage.

[Hashishin13]

@jazzbo66zz Minimum wages boost the wage of a small fraction of competent people while un-employing the most desperate people. See if people in California hired californians at below minimum wage they would be putting them selves at risk of being sued by the native worker for breaking the law, the illegals are already breaking the law so the employer knows he is safe as an illegal will be deported if caught, working for an illegal wage or not.

[RedsNMaduroMan]

@King100Joe Shut up, asshole bigot.

[truevoice08]

Part of the market process depends on belief because if I had all the relevant knowledge then it would be too late to make a profit. ---- Interesting new insight

[icfnord]

@truevoice08

the term you are looking for is arbitrage. If there was perfect information, there would be no arbitrage

[fleabeard]

I'd prefer to have seen/heard a condensed version. Much of it was worthwhile, but some of it was redundant, or too wordy; and some was just filler. I do love the idea of a mutually beneficial economic model; though the world governments will -not- be adopting that. However, I'm sure many individuals will.And I'd expect most people to do well by following the speaker's advice.

[Hashishin13]

@fleabeard If you take free markets and free exchange to the natural conclusion you don't need government at all. Government is a combination of a monopoly on violence and legal theft. The alternative is called anarcho-capitalism. There are lots of videos done by the Mises Institute about it. I think Walter Block is the best speaker on this subject.

[JohnScott700]

Not to disrespect Rabbi Lapin, but the Mises Institute usually has much more intellectually inclined speakers. I wish they would stick to non-religious speakers.

[RunLiberty]

War is natural selection at the nation state level?

"The State reflects our instincts without our restraints?

[praxe0l0gist]

Żydowski Święty Mikołaj? No kurwa!

[nellapegues]

Hey jbo5112, risking capital, not bodily destruction is what the investor MAY EARN a profit for. Imagine your laborers with no materials, no machine tools, no buildings, etc. They would not have jobs. They would have to make the capital investment. I agree that driving recklessly would be a poor investment in your health.

[whoo689]

It's sad that us Austrian economists and proponents have to now align ourselves with such nutjobs as Daniel Lapin and Gary North, 2 religious fundies.

[1Familyful]

really?

[sbuttgereit]

This is why Objectivists tend to work hard to differentiate themselves from Libertarians. Libertarianism identifies a political system with which Objectivists can accept (free market capitalism), but fails to identify a moral foundation for the position which leaves itself open to influence by irrationality derived moral constraints such as those Rabbi Lapin espouses. Once to allow irrational beliefs to dictate your core moral framework, irrationality will often times seep into other areas.

[blackacidlizzard]

Unfortunately, Objectivists must root out some irrationality within their philosophy as well. And once they do, they are no longer Objectivists.

[Hashishin13]

@sbuttgereit Libertarians have a moral foundation, what are you talking about? I think your trying to say that they don't have a BELIEF STRUCTURE or aren't an all encompassing philosophy, and I would say that is their strong point. It doesn't matter if people want to be irrational in their personal lives as long as they share the common belief that everyone is allowed to do as they please as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's property.

[sbuttgereit]

@Hashishin13 I guess I'm missing your point. How then would you differentiate what constitutes a 'moral foundation' vs. a 'belief structure'? Holding moral precepts as opposed to holding recognized axioms from which those precepts derive, in other words, a 'foundation', simply means that your morality is arbitrary and no more valid than any other. The likelihood that immoral positions opposed to individual rights may rule the day increases as less rational ideas float without real challenge.

[Hashishin13]

@sbuttgereit I messed that up, I meant religion.

The government(or set of rules without a government) that would best support individualism and therefor freedom, which has been proven to increase the quality of life, is one that allows people do do whatever they want as long as they don't violate other people's property.

I think Washington summed it up nicely here:

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

[evangrogers]

This Rabbi said a lot of great things. His last argument is completely ludicrous.

"If God made us, capitalism works! but if Evolution is true, then capitalism doesn't work". THIS IS COMPLETE NONSENSE!!

Just because I came from a monkey some thousands of years ago, doesn't mean that i don't care about helping my fellow man, or even fellow animal, or even fellow plant.

He said some great things, but then he makes himself look stupid by adding that on to the end.

He is thus refuted.

[sinitskyd]

The XX century was a jewish century in many ways, where the jews were in the center of many key events, like Russian revolution, German holocaust, Israel/quarrel with Islam, physics and general science, and US financial dominance, and fall of Western civilization via liberalism/socialism/fading of Christianity/welfarism . I think the next century will be Chinese though.

[TracyII77]

What is morally wrong, is when those involved on the stock market lie and decieve (such as happened with Enron). What does it matter how much someone profits, if they raise the living standard of society at large? Profit is not immoral. Deception is.

[delyshBB]

And the government is the biggest deciever usually.

[Steenville]

TracyII77; I agree 100%. While Washington bail out their Wall Street crook friends they blame and punish the people who have been profiting from the market downturn.

[Husky217]

tbudha, do you have more info on alternative currencies and merchants that accept them? I'd like to be a part of the solution.

[MartinFarrows]

Well, the video is OK. But there are other things that involve taking care of other people and behaving in a moral way that don't render profit. So, I think what Rabbi says is a part of the problem. Of course economic freedom is great, but there are more to that.

Moreover, it's easy to see the relationship between profits and helping others when you're a salesman and take care of your consumers. But it's not so clear when you make huge profits trading in the stock market, for example.

[MtnDwarf2]

Wrong. Those that are able to choose winners in the stock market are those that make this country run efficiently. Part of having a vibrant, efficient, effective and dynamic free market is having a system for allocating capital. That is what the stock market does. Those that fail lose their money and those that pick winners make money. The better investers are at picking winning companies the more good companies are able to get funding anc compete which increases competition.

[DarthKazi]

There is nothing "free" about markets created by bureaucrats to cartelize industry.

[jbo5112]

If you're making profits from trading in the stock market, then it's not all that far from slavery. All your doing is profiting from buying a stake in the hard work of another. Because of all the laws, regulations, fees and debt-based financing, it's difficult for people to open their own businesses. When they become so faceless, it's easy for temporary profits to drive unjust decisions.(e.g. employees cannot accept tips for excelling because it creates some paperwork or raises customer cost)

[latewire]

You are a moron. You're wrong on so many levels.

[DarthKazi]

Yes. Corporations and stock markets are creatures of quasi-mercantilist government policy. Corporate law allows the very wealthy to run companies that they do not have to directly capitalize. It eases the risk of business off the elite and onto the base of the stock investors. Big deal, right? The regulatory policy of government simply makes competing with the big boys harder.

Corporations are not "free markets". Jefferson fought to prevent the creation of corporate law and lost.

[Lamnont]

No you are allocating money to a company in hopes that the company will grow.

[rrp1973]

I thought alot about this. What value have I added to the world when I make a profit by shifting money around in my brokerage account. Then I realized, the value I add is that I am accepting risk that others were not willing to take. Profit is my reward for taking that risk. Any worker can participate in the same way. If they dont want to risk their savings on such a thing I respect that. But don't say I exploited your labor profitng from taking a risk you were not willing to take.

[jbo5112]

You exploited my labor by taking your pay from it and not doing the work yourself.

With established corporations, workers do everything to generate revenue. A stock holder typically gets paid income (dividend) as a cut of the income the workers generate or the workers make the company appear more valuable to make your stock appreciate. Usually, the only work the stockholders did was decide who to get to earn money for them.

[jbo5112]

Taking a risk does not add value by itself. Driving my car recklessly along a cliff and scaring my passengers provides provides no value.

Venture capital and other loans are a different matter from stocks. Except for rare cases like an IPO, where the corporation itself is selling stock, stock trades provide zero money to the corporation. Normally, you just buy the stocks from another individual, which provides no service to the corporation or worker generating your wealth.

[pretorious700]

@rrp1973 Yes you are right, but there are acceptable, reasonable, and morally supportable risks and there are what Wall Street has been doing. Risk taking without fear of repercussion is not only oxymoronic, it's morally indefensible.

[d2004piney]

@rrp1973

that is called ratiionalization

ergo, its a risky job but someone has to do it??????

I think you are not being intellectually honest. would you rather rely for your daily bread on speculation, or labor. i think without labor there is nothing to speculate about.

and you can't eat money in the bank. you, my friend are about 3 days from riots in the streets. and that is the likely outcome, dude.

[phroto13]

@d2004piney (1) but without the risk and speculation who will answer how that labor will be employed... labor by itself is a limited commodity and must, like every other resource, be allocated cost efficiently... now someone who allocates his own labor (self-employeed) is taking a risk by selling a commodity, but an entrepeneur or business owner who hires a worker is leveraged in his risk because not only is he allocating his own labor, but also the labor of his employees...

[phroto13]

@d2004piney (2) thus since he has a contractual agreement to pay his employees he, or his balance sheet, eats any losses but consequently wins the leveraged gains on the product of that labor... speculation in the stock market is assuming risk in the labor hours of employees... thus those who bet on the profitability in the market are the ones owning the risk that the laborers time may in fact be misallocated...

[phroto13]

@d2004piney (3) the trading of the commodities of labor on the market are complex ways of assuming the risk of loss or profit and anyone who assumes those risks will thus gain or loss accordingly, without someone assuming those risks, everyone would be self employed and thus may or may not be able to allocate his own labor to generate profit

[phroto13]

@d2004piney im with you about the fact that you cant eat money in the bank... there is a blog called 'surviving in argentina' by a guy named ferfal who explains just that when the banks go on "holiday" the riots happen and its game over

[selfrealizedexile]

@rrp1973

The better way to justify what value you bring is the organization of resources to where they're most desired for a more prosperous future.

[ProLansPl]

don't know why my previous comment hasn't been posted... a SIGN?;)

again:

You're a good man rabbi:) Keep it up:)

[spikeslawson]

The simple expression of ideas here is so wonderful.

[herbs814]

His jokes (perhaps because they are awkward) demonstrate the absurdity of "political correctness" and "racial sensitivity" and "identity politics". How many fruitful discussions, how much promising research would become suppressed because people cannot acknowledge the difference between edification and insensitivity? Rabbi Lapin's humor and optimism is reassuring, especially from a religion with a reputation for stuffiness or legalism. It teaches that walking with God offers joy and prosperity.

[Brassmouth]

Were they serving alcohol in that room? Seriously those circumcision jokes did not deserve that much laughter, if any. Let's stick with economists instead of clergymen at the Mises Institute.

[Mechanized0]

Actually, his lecture was quite enlightening. It should be of particular interest to Christians and Orthodox Jews since so many, particularly the former, have embraced socialism, willingly or otherwise, as the only moral economic system.

[learninglemur]

However, if you put economic science on a religious moral footing the result is economic pseudo-science.

[evangrogers]

i entirely agree!!! This is nonsense!!

His final argument "capitalism only works if we're created by god! If evolution is true, then helping your fellow man, and trying to have a living while helping each other is impossible"

He said some great things, but trying to say that economics and religion go hand in hand just absolute nonsense

[viewingiseasy]

Could have done without the circumcision tangent. I mean really, that was just awkward

[MRSketch09]

I thought it was pretty funny.

@Media

Anyways, great video. But it honestly felt longer than the recent Peter schiff video that was posted a bit ago. I guess because of the heavy topic.

[spikeslawson]

I also thought it was funny. Of course as an American I am circumcised but I am not a Jew.