 to some discussion before Q&A and it strikes me at least that on the one hand Josh is saying many of the states we associate with socialism aren't actually socialists and on the other hand you're really making a case that capitalism as you would like to see it isn't currently in existence but if you each have to choose one state one society that comes as close closer than others to your ideal destination what would it be today or in history right now right now this is the advantage of being here I mean I think that it's a really difficult question to answer because we live in what I would call a mixed economy world a world in which there are elements of capitalism there's some private property but that private property is heavily controlled by other authorities and maybe 20 years ago I would have said Hong Kong but given China's takeover Hong Kong political takeover Hong Kong I hesitate because what a horrible place China is turning Hong Kong into by bringing in its collectivization its collective you know attitudes and the inability to speak freely the places a lot of places that are relatively speaking economically free are socially unfree like Singapore's I hesitate to even mention Singapore because I don't support the socialism there so it's hard so if I had a pig right so I've got my head the economic freedom index right so number one and number two we've crossed out for two weeks for China and social freedom I think number three is New Zealand which I happen to love because it's the most beautiful place on the planet and I think number three number four number five in New Zealand Switzerland and Ireland and number six is the United States the United so I would say New Zealand uh Switzerland Ireland would be my top three that I would choose where you get a good balance of both social freedoms and quite a bit of economic freedom at the same time okay and now that island is passed a law line for abortion I'm good with that too okay three for the price of one third of one Josh well look as I already mentioned first of all capitalism is the self-proclaimed system so identifying specific countries and saying that is a vision of of the society we want to see is I don't think it works as a method I'm going to try and question you and that plays all the war for socialism the whole basis of at least my vision of socialism meant most of the socialists I've spoken to is the socialism is international or it's nothing that requires the international cooperation of workers and nations everywhere and otherwise he is simply not going to work so picking a socialist nation which often the kind of socialist revolutions that take place are taking place in formally colonial subject to colonial subjugated countries we should try to liberate themselves in order to do that and then expropriate the the factories from often foreign companies or the mines and so on and then have had to try and find their own way often those regimes have degenerated some of them have degenerated extremely quickly and so would hardly conform to an ideal picture of society perhaps in anyone's mind although one thing they have done sometimes that often they've actually been able to develop the economy develop literacy and things like that often at quite a big cost though but instead of talking about specific countries one which currently still exists which is trying to move in a socialist direction I don't think it's there yet I don't think socialism's ever built been built anywhere incidentally and many of the people who try to build socialism people like Leina Trosti explicitly said this is what we're trying to do it's not what we have succeeded in building but in terms of a case study for a country with those caveats and I will hopefully take those into consideration I would like to talk about Cuba because Cuba is a tiny island with an even smaller economy basically a tourist and tin economy and production of sugar and what not just off the coast of the greatest superpower economic and military that has ever ever existed in the world history not the best place to really start building socialism to be honest they had a revolution in order in terms of like Castro and his movement then the purpose of their revolution was for democratic independence was a nationalist revolution to kick out foreign intervention politically to kick out a tainter as an entity who once he'd gone he didn't take all of the American-Canadian intervention with him and so inevitably in order to basically defend the revolution itself they started nationalizing and planning the economy which I think was a step forward it's not the end point it's not they haven't reached socialism simply by nationalizing economy and what floats around is first of all the increase in literacy for the entire Cuban population which was which was a very low level even for the region at that time to basically own percent the creation of the best healthcare system in the region one in which Richmond Americans lead and try to keep up to have their own operations which frankly is miraculous as far as I'm concerned free education also including university education which is better than here which is quite embarrassing considering how rich the United Kingdom is and a political regime which definitely has a problem is actually I would say the whole of Cuban society has problems that needs to be solved and I would not consider Cuba to be workers democracy but I think we could probably all agree that it was a lot healthier than other regimes that attempted attempted to go in the same direction such as North Korea so I would say that is a good example of what can be achieved on a very limited basis so just think about what we could achieve on a global basis okay well we have reading week coming up so you can choose between Cuba or New Zealand I mean nobody has swam out into the ocean in New Zealand to find freedom but they certainly have in Cuba all you have to do is look at population flows and you can tell which is a which is a good country which is a bad