 Hey everybody tonight we're debating socialism versus capitalism and we're starting right now with Dr. Ben's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us, Ben. The floor is all yours. All right, thanks James. So I thought before we start talking about capitalism and socialism, it might be useful to take a step back and think a little bit about the economic systems that existed before either of those ever did. Under feudalism, peasants are legally bound to the estates of aristocrats and of course in slave societies the relations of domination are even more direct and crude than that. And there are different analyses you can give of why these systems went away and were replaced by capitalism. And to be clear, real history is always messy and complicated and multi-causal so I don't want to claim that what I'm about to say is 100% of the story but even so certainly at least one massive element of the story is the one that Marxist historians honing on which is that at a certain point all those rigid feudal rules, those networks of rights and obligations, tying peasants to aristocrats and kings or furry towns and all of that stuff became a hindrance to the development of the forces of production. What does that mean? Very roughly the idea is that in traditional agrarian societies those feudal structures were important to keep the peasants in a place while they did the backbreaking work of growing and harvesting crops on a day-to-day basis. As technology progressed though and society became increasingly complex and increasingly industrialized what factory owners needed was a labor force that was what Karl Marx called doubly free. What does that mean to be doubly free? That they weren't bound by feudal obligations to a particular estate so they were free to move around and make contracts with any employers that's the first kind of freedom but also that they were free in the sense of being free from any means of supporting themselves except for agreeing to go to work at the kind of early factories that William Blake called dark satanic mills. Even in the heartland of capitalism in England that was only possible through a bloody and violent process of enclosure whereby peasants were driven off their lands they had no choice but to go to work in factories and of course in much the rest of the world colonialism operated like a bigger and bloodier version of the same idea. Now as violent and oppressive as the process was in some very real ways the advent of capitalism was a massive step forward in terms of both human prosperity and human freedom that's what their first few pages the communist manifesto are all about is essentially prose poetry about that exact point. Once those feudal shackles were torn off the economy the forces of production developed so wildly that they created at least the possibility of a world where everyone's material needs could be met and while the justifying ideology of feudalism was a narrow heresy hunting version of christianity where everyone was supposed to obey both kings and priests because they were representatives of god the justifying ideology of at least the best versions of capitalism has been a kind of enlightened secular pluralism that's obviously an improvement but what socialists have always pointed out is that the kind of freedom and the kind of democracy that's compatible with capitalism both come in with severe built-in limitations that's true in the political sphere because the wealthy capitalists are obviously going to exert more political influence than ordinary workers and it's true on an even deeper level in the workplace under capitalism freedom and democracy both largely come to an abrupt halt for the majority of the population as they spend at work during those hours most people have to take orders from unelected bosses and depending on what kind of job you have that can involve a level of control that goes beyond what even most totalitarian dictators demand of their subjects in most contexts when you go to the bathroom is up to the boss when you have to smile is up to the boss and it's only eight hours because of past workers struggles because of the natural tendency of capitalist markets to reduce workers to total powerlessness to what marks called appendages of flesh to machines of steel was counteracted to some extent by the efforts of labor unions and the regulatory state another problem with capitalism is that while it does allow the productive forces of society to be developed to the point where there's a lot to go around in practice it comes around in just a wildly and grotesquely unequal fashion even in the united states the average ceo makes hundreds of times as much as the average worker never mind the kind of differences that exist in capitalist societies less hindered by labor unions in the regulatory state look at brazil or Haiti or Honduras to get some sense of what that can be like even in the united states some people can fly around the world to be cared for by the best doctors and the best clinics when they get sick and other people die because they're diabetics and the go fund means they started by insulin weren't fully funded of course some people who were born at the bottom end of the economic hierarchy do end up being upwardly mobile and ascending to a different class position but it's structurally impossible given capitalist ownership relations for everyone to be upwardly mobile if everyone was upwardly mobile there'd be no one left to grow the food or stock the shelves or grocery stores and we'd all starve to death to meaningfully empower the great mass of the population you need to change the system so what would that look like i don't think the kind of top-down state command economy that existed in the soviet union is a good model it was often economically dysfunctional and at least some important ways and it was held together by denying people important rights but rejecting the idea of any kind of alternative to capitalism because the problems with that alternative would be ridiculous that would be like saying that one proposed course of treatment isn't promising so you should just give up and let the the cancer spread through the patient's body instead of either giving control of the economic machine to a tiny handful of state bureaucrats or a tiny handful of wealthy capitalists the goals of human flourishing and human freedom can best be served by finding ways to create a society that's more democratic rather than less democratic than the one we live in right now figuring out exactly what such a society could look like in practice is difficult but we can find elements that have been beta tested under capitalism for that could be put together to come up with a system that does away with the need for capitalists we can look at successful worker cooperatives like spain's mandragan corporation we can look at democratic governments that have nationalized key industries and successfully run them in the public interest like the healthcare sector in britain for evidence that we don't need to divide society into a class of workers the class of capitalists to have a functioning economy now you know we could argue more about the details of what that could look like later on uh you know but i just want to make one last point here because that if you want to argue that capitalism is better than what existed before capitalism or that some proposed alternatives to capitalism are flawed hey we agree but if you want to give me any reason at all to accept the council of despair and says that capitalism is the best that humanity can possibly do all your work is still ahead of you you got to thank you very much ben for that opening statement and want to let you know folks if it's your first time here welcome to modern day debate i'm your host james coons and we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics and we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from we're glad you're here and with that we're gonna kick it over to tom thanks so much tom the floor is all yours yeah i just wanted to say ben i'm hearing like a little echo from you i don't know what that is i think it's picking up two of your mics or something oh it wasn't just me then i wasn't sure if it was just my imagination i did hear that too ben there might be i think about halfway through your opening i didn't want to interrupt because it was subtle but there is a bit of an echo and halfway through just at the same time the echo started there was kind of your volume seemed to change that seemed like it changed mics changed to a different mic it's it's at least subtle so that's why i kind of let it go for the opening in case it was uh in case anybody else could even hear it but we'll kick it over to tom here opening and then we'll bring it into open conversation so thanks so much the floor is all yours tom all right so uh if people want to start work worker coops that's totally fine and it's already an option in capitalist systems like capitalism doesn't stop you from creating a worker co-op but people don't want to do that people who start businesses don't want to start a worker co-op they have the option they choose not to so the only way to institute a socialist government is by government force because people aren't going to do it on their own because they don't want to and that's wrong if you want to have the option of worker co-ops which i think is a good thing we already have that under capitalism so the question here is what exactly are you arguing for when you're advocating for socialism are you are you arguing that we should force people to start worker co-ops without their consent because i definitely think that's wrong if you're arguing that we should allow people the freedom to start worker co-ops they already have that so i don't know what the benefit here is uh by adopting socialism you're just essentially using government oversight to force people to adopt a system you prefer without their consent which is bad this leads to tons and tons of problems the centralization of power to cause people to do stuff they don't want to is why most socialist governments fail and become china and venezuela and cuba and all the bad countries because too much power gets easily corrupted and taken advantage of and so this is not a good system if the way that you're going to adopt it is by forcing people to do what they don't want to do on their own so allowing workers to decide what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the profits is stupid most employees are not qualified to make these decisions it's like a business that would be a majority vegans in a meat industry would probably shut down the meat plant like obviously if you started a business to produce meat or whatever and you have a whole bunch of vegans who get hired unbeknownst to you and then they all decide they want to like cut out the meat and or just do only grass vet or only humanely grown meats that just destroy your business like well there's nothing you can do about it because well democracy rules under socialism and so this this is a bad idea what if a bunch of muslims become the majority in a country and they want only halal meat well then your business is kind of screwed because that's not something the market necessarily wants so the people who are qualified to make the decisions about what you should be doing with the company like what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do the profits is not the employees they're not the ones who are best qualified to do this you hire specific people who are qualified to do this and let them make the decisions so this system of allowing the workers to decide isn't a good system I mean we've made similar arguments for politics that only educated people should vote so we don't end up with Donald Trump as president um democratic rule isn't always a good thing when it's put into systems there's there's bad consequences to it especially allowing all of your workers to decide how the companies work because they're probably going to make things easier for them which can have good benefits but it can also have really bad benefits too so it's it's not a good system to adopt in the first place um moreover if there is any problem that socialism is trying to solve it can be solved better with other systems that don't involve socialism like any problem socialism wants to solve you can do it better without socialism there's there's nothing that socialism is inherently good at solving that you just can't do with just modified capitalism okay I agree with what Ben said capitalism is not the best humans can possibly do like I don't know if anybody who would actually claim that but it's better than socialism because it doesn't have as much of centralized power it doesn't have as much corruption it has a much better track record in human history um there's lots of negative side effects to socialism because of these core issues um that make it a significantly worse prospect than capitalism so like for example uh the main disadvantages of socialism is that it's slow economic growth less entrepreneurial opportunity and competition the lack of motivation by individuals lesser rewards it creates distorted and absent price signals results in reduced incentives causes reduced prosperity has low feasibility and has negative social and political effects and we can see this by just looking at the majority of socialist countries throughout history like if we just go through the wikipedia list of current countries that are marxist marxist linus states you got china cuba laos and vietnam um non marxist linus communist states that reference socialism in the in the constitution be like algeria bangladesh itiria uh genevus uh guana uh korea india nipal nicaragua the portuguese republic the sahari arab dematic republic Sri lanka tanzania um mark former marxist linus states there's a ton of those all of them same general area um you can go down the list to non marxist linus socialist states berma kverde chad kongo jibouti egypt equatorial guinea gana uh guinea iraq libya madagascar mali cynical syria syria syri alone syria leon uh sudan syria tunisia zambia current states with governing communists or socialist parties algeria and gola argentina bangladesh port of barbedos bolivia kongo jibouti etc etc like notice that i haven't said any of the good countries in this list like none of the good countries are on this list all the good countries that are usually falsely attributed to be socialist are actually um mixed economies so norway denmark ireland meadowlands brazil idly france uk germany all mixed economies just like the u s the u s is a mixed economy also and mixed economies maintain a private ownership of control of the means production um and none of these mixed economies have a majority socialist parties in government because nobody in those countries wants socialist parties in power this is not a not a thing that people want um just for those who don't know the difference in market socialism prices are determined by the government and the goal is to achieve market equilibrium while in a mixed economy prices are determined by the market shifts although the government can intervene to protect the citizens and to prevent economic inequalities mixed economies market socialism mainly differ in the degree of interference of the government in economics fear the government plays a bigger role in market socialism while it mainly acts as a safety net in the case of mixed economies moreover private properties protected mixed economies where common cooperative public ownership remains one of the main features of market socialism both systems allow for competitive competition among enterprises but in market socialism firms are not or in very few cases privately owned so uh in essentially we can already do socialism we can already have co-ops in the capitalist system people just don't choose to do it so what is the means by which you're going to adopt the system it seems like you have to use government power to force people to adopt this because they just don't want it and doing that causes a centralization of power which leads to the downfall of essentially every socialist government that has ever existed because it's so easy to corrupt so it's not a very well-ordered system it doesn't have a good track record of success in theory it's a great theory like i think that giving everybody more rights and more freedoms is a great thing but there's a limit to the ability to do this in a pragmatic way that doesn't cause the collapse of the economy and that is something that we just don't have the ability to overcome yet so maybe in the future when we have our ai overlords and they can just solve everything then we can all become communist socialist pandas and ai takes care of us totally fine i'm pro socialism once we have ai overlords but since humans have to do the ruling currently we need some kind of a system that can mitigate humans to some extent and giving all the power to government is not a good way to do that so my question to bin would be is what what things can socialism solve which can't be solved in a better way without the problems associated with socialism because i think there aren't any i think that anything you could do with socialism can be done better without socialism you got it we will jump into open conversation want to let you know folks we are absolute sorry james that i thought we were going to do the same time since with humor you said oh you're right but i was totally wrong with that so we do have timed rebuttals and so then forgive me i am totally dropped the ball on that in terms of putting a post at romea myself how long were the rebuttals you got it thanks so much ben sorry about that and so we will kick over to ben for that rebuttal and want to let you know folks we are absolutely thrilled about many more juicy upcoming debates here including folks it's going to be a juicy one we are bringing back flat earth tomorrow night so don't miss it with fight the flat earth and don't forget to hit that subscribe button and that notification bell that way you don't miss it alive so with that thanks so much ben the floor is all yours yeah so uh that was uh that was a very strange opening statement uh because most of it seemed to be devoted to uh arguing against not only nothing that i'd said but things that i'd explicitly disavowed and explicitly said that uh that i wasn't saying that i think about half of it was reading from wikipedia a list of of countries that were either marxist leninist or had socialism in the constitution which has apparently taken as a reason to think that these are countries that have socialism in them uh even if it's even if it's an entirely private economy if the word socialism is mentioned in the constitution i guess that makes it a socialist uh in uh in in tom's estimation which strikes me as a very strange methodology i think you'll find if you use the same one for democracy you're going to get some very strange results uh the uh the you know people's democratic republic of korea the german democratic republic and and lots of of other examples so obviously just having the word socialism uh you know mentioned at some point in the constitution is going to tell you less than nothing about the economic system um you know that's i think that more than enough to to deal with that otherwise we're talking about countries that have the the economic system there was the alternative to capitalism i explicitly said that i was not arguing for uh in the in the open made a point of saying that for a couple minutes uh and which is the kind of top down state command economy that you know that was pioneered in the in the ussr and then replicated in other places the there was an implication at one point that the way that the that that kind of capitalism come about in other countries was because of attempts to create socialist democracy attempts at you know workers control of production but somehow workers just didn't want to have a voice to vote in the workplace so they uh so uh they had to be forced on everybody and then suddenly you had Stalinism needless to say that there's no relationship whatsoever to what happened what actually happened was that uh was that communist parties that were ideologically committed to the soviet model long before they took power replicated the soviet model which was the uh which was the explicit intention all along now that's not my model for what a post capitalist society should look like what is the what is the model that i advocated for a socialist kind of post capitalist society should look like well i mentioned i mentioned two two examples of elements that have been successfully beta tested under capitalism but that could be put together to form a society that didn't have capitalists one is the democratic governments have successfully nationalized some industries like healthcare the u k and run them in in the public interest uh the the other was a successful private sector worker cooperatives like mondra gone um we also got uh the you know in that recitation the first three countries were mentioned were china venezuela and cuba i thought it was a little funny to include venezuela in there especially if we're going to uh you know say oh well there's nothing socialist about the nordics uh because the public sector in venezuela at the height of hugo chavez's welfare state was actually smaller much smaller than the public sector in any of the mordic countries they amounted the chunk of the economy that was that was directly controlled by the state in fact the number of venezuelans the percentage of venezuelans who worked for the public sector even at the height of hugo chavez's welfare state was smaller than the percentage of frenchmen who worked for the french public sector uh it's not that much higher than in the united states uh so uh i'm also a little confused um you know putting aside all this you know the stallionist uh the stallionist strawmen uh by the uh the combination of two claims that i both uh that i've heard both of in there one is that any problems of capitalism can uh can be solved with um you know regulated uh capitalism with modified capitalism uh with the the sort of stuff that uh that socialist parties by the way who absolutely are elected to democracies all the time i have implemented in countries like sweden and norway and denmark and finland all of which got their welfare states under labor socialist party governments um so that uh so that was one claim uh that uh that that kind of nordic halfway station you know was was good enough that we can have you know modified capitalism could solve anything that socialism could solve the other claim uh was that it's a terrible terrible injustice to say that uh that as a result of a majority of working class people voting into power socialist party uh you could have requirements uh that that firms give a voice and a vote uh to uh to workers um because this was forcing people and of course you can use the exact same force argument against any of the things that would go into modified capitalism uh minimum wage hey if people wanted to hold out and only work for for firms that would pay them that wage or above uh nobody's stopping them that's allowed uh in countries that don't have minimum wage laws so uh if you want to impose that higher wage floor on them that's that's force uh you could you know you could say the same thing of course as libertarians do about uh about things like the nationalized healthcare systems that exist in some of those countries uh etc etc etc it seems like you can praise modified capitalism or you can use the force argument uh against uh against uh socialist socialist government extending democracy to the workplace uh but you really can't do both uh when uh final point i guess uh when i was hearing about uh how uh most um you know most people uh aren't uh you know aren't qualified to uh to make democratic decisions that you know that if uh if you had workers uh do what they do very successfully at Mondragon uh very successfully uh at the cooperatives in the Emilia Regano no region of of Italy uh which is to elect managers uh to vote on a uh on an operating agreement which is the equivalent of a union contract but with no boston negotiated with that workers just aren't qualified to do those things or what if the workers want the wrong things like uh like what what if you know what if they the firm wants to wants to sell meat but you know but most of the workers are vegan and i guess they just can't find people who aren't vegans to uh to work for them uh then uh then all i could think immediately is man this sounds like exactly the kind of argument that could be used against political democracy we all agree i would assume that every you know that 99.999 percent of people listed to this have the correct position that democracy is good in the political sphere uh so wow would i get what i get my chance to speak that's what i'll point out that this is uh that the same argument could be applied to that we all agree that's wrong and then i was very surprised when tom embraced the conclusion uh that democracy is a bad thing in the political sphere um all i have to say about that is if you think that the problem with donald trump is that the united states has too much democracy um i mean i don't know where to start with that that's a that's a very strange claim if um if you look at polling data on most americans preferences about things things like what kind of health care system we should have whether we should be continuing all these wars in the middle east uh and a lot of other questions uh the results would be very very very untrumpish uh the uh you know the choices that people have are very limited by the two-party system but even there uh if we had just a little bit less democracy trump would still be president as he tried very hard to override the will of the voters so the connection between trump and too much democracy is lost on that you've got to thank you very much ben and we will kick it over to tjump we want to let you know folks both of our guests are linked in the description if you want to hear more from our guests you certainly can by clicking on those links down below and that includes if you're listening to the modern data bait podcast you can find our guest links there as well in the description box for that podcast episode with that we'll kick it over to tom for his rebuttal as well thanks so much tom the floor is all yours uh yeah so first thing ben confused an opening with a rebuttal like my opening wasn't meant to refute his position it has nothing to do with his position it's my position um so it's my opinion wasn't meant to rebut things he said in his opening obviously i didn't mention soviet russia at all in anything i said i just mentioned that of the current mixed economy states the majority political parties in power are not socialists the people in those countries don't want majority socialist parties in power they vote them out of power they are very rarely in power almost never um so the i wasn't mentioning russia at all that wasn't the point so i don't think he actually refuted anything i said there so socialism has a terrible track record of failure the fact that you can cherry pick a few cases where it's actually worked is fine like yeah i mentioned work worker co-ops yes they can work do they always work no so is that a good example that this is a way that something we should implement on a government scale no cherry picking examples is not that we can cherry pick all kinds of crazy stuff and claim that that's somehow a good way to judge what our government should be it's not the point about people people are stupid people can make stupid decisions the fact that like donald trump is an example of that doesn't mean that it's always bad or that it's necessarily the case in all that democracy itself is bad it's just obvious that people can make stupid decisions so we should probably not let a bunch of random people make all the decisions for every one of the companies that's not a good idea again cherry picking a few examples that work not a good example or not a good basis to conclude that this is a good policy that should be adopted for every country company no definitely bad um so yeah if people want to adopt socialism that's great like if they vote in socialist parties and those socialist parties choose to adopt socialist uh government policies that's that's fine i'm okay with that people don't do that so how would you adopt it because that's not going to happen like mixed economies are fine and mentioning that other companies have adopted mixed economy policies that are not socialist economies yeah that's good i'm for mixed economies the us is a mixed economy but again this is not in any way evidence of socialism or that we should adopt socialism so i don't know why you mentioned that at all kind of irrelevant um so again my question is is what can socialism do better that capitalism or any other modified system can't do without all the problems of socialism because i don't see any we will get into open discussion mode want to say folks thanks so much for your questions so far if you haven't have a question feel free to fire it into the old live chat if you tag me with at modern day debate that makes it easier for me to see that question and then super chat is also an option and with that thanks so much gentlemen the floor is all yours yeah so i mean i guess as far as what socialism can can do better than capitalism uh we can you know uh talked about that very extensively and uh in the opening statement uh capitalist societies produce obscene levels of economic equality those produce obscene levels of uh of political inequality that you know that you're just not going to have uh jeff bezos is not going to have the same level of uh of political influence uh that that that you and i do there seem to be unsolvable problems under capitalism uh poverty so can we stick with those for a second how exactly would you solve those under socialism because under socialism it seems to be more the case that there's more economic inequality and more political equality in all of the different socialist countries that currently exist even though you think they're not socialist no true scotsman well i mean okay first of all that's not what true no true scotsman means that's a really that's a bizarre way to use the phrase no true scotsman no true scotsman is when you start out with a definition and then there are examples that meet your original definition uh and then you say oh no those don't count and you know you move the goalposts in this case uh socialists going back to martin engels uh you know we're talking about a radically democratic alternative to capitalism had talked about workers control of the means of production as the essence of what they meant by socialism there are socialists going back to rosa luxembourg the year after the russian revolution saying hey that's not what we're talking about uh so you have an uninterrupted uninterrupted tradition so i mean given that that's not historically what socialism meant uh you know i'd say this is less like no true scotsman than like somebody saying that uh oh you're doing no true scotsman if you said somebody who was born in nova scotia wasn't born in scotland it might use the same word but that's just a different concept okay that didn't answer my question so i mean obviously i think that's false i think that socialism why the premise of your question was just flatly false well that wasn't the premise of the question that was more the question was that those countries are socialist if not the question was just irrelevant to the discussion at hand so your opinion of socialism i don't care i don't care about your opinion of socialists every economist agrees these are socialist countries they're founded on socialism whether you disagree i don't care so so so so so give me give me give me any examples how can you solve economic inequality and political inequality with the socialist government because all the mixed economies do it with capitalism just fine i don't see any examples of socialist companies or socialist countries that have produced more economic equality or more political inequality it's all capitalist mixed economies yeah so i mean the answer was already given in the opening statement by the way i know the difference between the opening statement and rebuttal i'm just surprised that after the in the opening statement i can answer because you can answer that question that was not in fact yeah i already answered your question i'm going to point this out then i'm going to answer your most recent question i clarified in the opening statement that that what i meant by socialism what socialists have always met by socialism has absolutely nothing to do with that model that you're talking about but nevertheless your response was your your opening statement was entirely about that model which struck me as odd to just go ahead with it even after finding out that that was irrelevant to the debate but sure i think that how could how could socialism not generate the economic inequality that the capitalism could generate i think that if you look at actually existing worker cooperatives the the gap between between the highest paid and the lowest paid worker is unsurprisingly a tiny fraction of what it is in in normal firms because you have to convince people to democratically vote on wage scales in mandra ghan it's something like 11 to 1 is the as the maximum as opposed to hundreds to 1 in regular spanish spanish firms and the claim that there's that modified capitalism has solved economic inequality seems very strange to me that no you still have in in any kind of capitalist system on no matter what reforms are enacted and by the way reforms that are enacted while keeping the basic structure of capitalism in place are always very vulnerable politically because wealthy elites will always try to reverse those when they get a chance but if you look at those countries yeah you absolutely still have a class of people with the financial means to own businesses and a class of people whose financial means give them no realistic choice except to work for the first one economic and quite inequality is not solved even in the nordic social democracies which are you know the best societies that exist in the world today because of the past successes of elected socials governments okay the thing here i didn't say they were solved i said they're better than all socialist examples so you cherry picking a few worker cops isn't good i can just cherry pick the bad worker cops like in minnesota there was tons of worker cops that had riots and wars with each other had worse policies so picking a few worker cops and saying ah here are some cherry picked examples of where my my model works and ignoring all of the misses is just is not evidence you've just cherry picked a few successes and ignored all the misses clearly that system as a whole system doesn't work in its entirety and it will lead to equal or greater inequality than the capitalist systems now i don't say capitalism has solved these problems never have i said that they're just better than the alternatives for the time being and obviously we're getting better as time moves on we're making improvements to capitalism to try and solve these problems but that's the correct path not adopting socialism isn't there's no reason to do that here so you're just saying here's a few cherry picked worker cops that it works doesn't give me any reason to accept that we should adopt socialism to solve political or economic inequality because i can just look at the bad examples of worker cops and show oh they also fail at a higher rate than capitalist systems also okay they don't fail at a higher rate the the existing research on on worker co-ops shows that they get started at a lower rate but once they're up and running they tend to last about as long as regular capitalist firms it's absolutely not true that worker cooperatives fail at a higher rate also the thing that you're referring to in context to this last question is cherry picking uh was just was was me making the obvious point that the uh that the rate of you know economic inequality within firms at worker cooperatives is in every case i've ever heard of maybe you can come up with counter examples and i think there are good reasons to think this will always be the case much lower than the average rate at regular capitalist firms because if you have an owner who can who can make a decision about how to distribute profits and has vastly more bargaining power than any of the workers who sign employment contracts with them then you're going to get vastly more inequality within the firm than if everybody who works there gets to vote on the wage scales that seems like a strange hell to die on well i wasn't comparing to the average here i was saying you could cherry pick examples of both and say if we cherry pick these best examples you can make the data look good for either one so yes we can do that cherry picking the point is that like statistically uh worker cooperatives once they get started do seem to last about as long on average regular capitalist firms that's one thing the other thing that i think you're referring to with cherry picking is the claim that that wage scales worker cooperatives are much more egalitarian than at regular capitalist firms i don't know if you're calling that cherry picking uh but i'd be um you know but i mean this is this average so so i can i can average pick certain firms that have more balanced uh average out every single profit if it exists average out every single that's that's the cherry picking i don't care about the averages we can we can cherry pick different ones that do it fine either way actually the opposite of cherry picking uh no no no no no so so you cherry picked an example and then you're compare we know stop Ben Ben Ben hold up you cherry been been been been been been hold up here because this is cherry is the exact opposite if you don't understand my point let me elaborate on it then you can comment on it of all firms of that Ben Ben let me if you don't understand the point let me elaborate on it so that you can you can then respond so explain yourself this time please try uh i explained it perfectly well you didn't understand that was the kind of problem so so Ben Ben Ben stop interrupting Ben stop interrupting stop interrupting let me finish or we have to go into three minute intervals here in a second guys so cherry picking the successes of worker cops and comparing that to an average is obviously wrong the fact that you mentioned that worker cops are started significantly less often than normal capitalist countries means there's a far larger base to go from in capitalist countries so like it's the if we are the what's it I figured what it's called uh in immigration America from Nigeria we we immigrate the best examples because they're the ones who are coming into America and so they have a higher average of wealth generation IQ whatever and so it seems like they're better off because we've selected the best ones and are choosing from that group to try and make a disparity between uh racial classes or whatever the same thing here the fact that the people who start worker cops aren't just random people who can start businesses they are the ones who have the money to do this and who have the connections to do this so you're cherry picking the best examples and then saying ah the best examples of the very few people who actually start these they do well congratulations if I cherry pick from the best examples of corporate environments I can get a better number than yours easily the fact that since we're taking an average of a bunch of people starting a bunch of businesses of all income levels and comparing it to the very best of people who are allowed to start work co-ops is not a fair comparison so it's cherry picking here's cherry picking data from the best comparing it to the average of people of every spectrum and then saying ah clearly the work helps are better no that's false um but you still haven't answered my question like you've given nothing that can that can explain how economic inequality or political inequality is solved by worker co-ops you've just again cherry picked some of the best ones which I can do too so you've given nothing and again all of these can be better solved by campaigns in every way we'll kick it over to Ben for just a bit over two minutes so it's a match so so first of all I see what the problem is now you don't know what cherry picking means so you're saying you're making a claim that you're described as cherry picking that has nothing to do with what cherry picking means because obviously talking about every worker cooperative that exists as one as one point of comparison and talking about every regular capitalist firm that exists as regular another point of comparison is not is not cherry picking that has nothing to do with what that means now you can argue this is not cherry picking but you can argue that the uh that the sample size of every worker cooperative in existence uh is uh is too small I think I might be bigger than you think but fine fair enough you can argue that's too small uh for uh for a comparison uh but uh what I find fascinating is that in your explanation of why you think it's too small you are completely contradicting the premise of one of your anti socialist arguments from earlier you said oh well we clearly don't need to to use the political process to use the power of the state to give workers these rights in the workplace because you know any workers who who wanted to to own their own firms just could already you know it's it's already allowed so why is he why do you need to to force it uh but then just now you said well anybody any worker cooperatives that's getting started that must be uh that must be because these are workers who are in the unusual situation of having the money and connections uh to be able to do this so it seems to me that you'd have to take one finally uh you keep making this very strange claim that I have uh that I have not explained why it is that workers control of the means of production would lead to smaller wage gaps even even given market you know socialism uh based on based on private sector worker cooperatives and that's just not the case I've explained it several times but I'll explain it one more time which is that if everybody at a firm gets to vote on the wage levels though you know on uh on the wage scale that wage scale is going to be much flatter and more egalitarian than the wage scale that you're going to get from regular capitalist ownership relations I think that would be an extremely straightforward point you got to get over Tom uh so yeah that's I mean obviously false obviously you don't know what cherry picking is if you select of a very minority group like immigrants from Nigeria if you take all immigrants of Nigeria that's still cherry picking because there's a select feature about them that makes them different from the comparative group um the fact that it takes a certain group of people to create a worker cop and like a single individual given the option between worker cop or business they own they're going to choose business they own so in order to create a worker cop you need to have a group of people who you want to do this with it's not just like random person X wants to start a business that I'm gonna go with the business cop not a thing so there's a very specific kind of person who goes with that usually people who've researched it who wants to implement it in a certain way who has some kind of background in economics to know what the impact you're going to be in how to run it they're the ones who are choosing to make worker cops not just random person X who wants to start a business so there's a clear difference between the people starting worker cops and the people starting random average capitalist businesses most people who start businesses want capitalism regardless of any kind of background knowledge most people don't know about worker cops in general and so most people who start businesses won't start worker cops so it's clearly cherry picking of a certain group who starts a certain kind of companies not because they're not able anybody could start a co-worker co-op but because they choose not to for various reasons just like many people who immigrate in the us uh well I potentially could they're not allowed to because we're choosing the very specific best ones who are already qualified in the field and they're going to succeed at a higher rate automatically so it's obviously cherry picking this this is super simple I don't know why you don't understand this again and my comparison to my question was is what can socialism do that capitalism can't I can pick examples of socialists or camp capitalist companies that do better than many co-ops capitalism can do this too this wasn't a question of a can socialism do some better than some capitalist systems no my question was is can you do this without adopting socialism the answer is yes there are many capitalist countries that can do this and make have much better equality levels than america without adopting socialism you don't need socialism to do this nothing you said says that socialism is required to accomplish this that was not a thing that's two minutes we'll kick it over ben yeah so um it is interesting that sometimes you seem to understand what cherry picking means you'll actually explain it correctly you'll say picking examples and then you start pretending again that uh examining an entire category and comparing it to an entire category is cherry picking that's just I feel a little embarrassed that's just not what it means uh but uh more crucially of course there has been uh there is a structural reason why you have much more egalitarian wage scales at worker cooperatives than regular capitalist firms it's not a matter of looking at one capitalist firm looking at one cooperative there is a general structural reason which is that if wage scales are set by an owner who can do what they want as long as they can get someone with vastly less eager less bargaining power to accept it you're going to end up with much much less egalitarian wage scales than if everybody gets to to vote on it I mean this this this just seems like an incredibly simple point I'm very surprised that you're not getting it or understanding it I'm not sure I'm not sure what's what's going on there but if we're looking at other things that capitalism can't do I mean the example that we that we had uh was general economic inequality and I said that under capitalism you know generate so much economic inequality uh that you get these wildly egalitarian relationships in the workplace and you also get wildly unequal levels of political power just saying that there are capitalist countries that due to doses of socialism that have been been administered by elected socialist governments have less inequality than the United States is very different from saying that you can have uh that um that that you are going to get enough inequality under capitalism that those two things that uh that I mentioned are not going to be the case so I mean what you said is again demonstrably false like survivor bias you're you're comparing an entire group of survivors to an entire another group and guess what that's still cherrybacking it's literally survivor bias for that reason you're not understanding how fallacy's work is your problem secondly again as I said give me an example where these socialist countries are that you're naming because none of the countries have socialist governments doesn't happen like all of the socialist parties in those governments none of them are the majority parties not a thing you can just go to socialist parties in governments go down to once not in power you'll find uh norway denmark ireland sweden all of those places have socialist governments that are not in power there are some seats that they have none of them are the majority the majority are mostly capitalist democrats in lots of ways so again what you're saying here makes no sense you're saying ah we elect democrats who put in uh market market mixed economies like oh just like america does what's and then socialism no it's not socialism that's that's mixed economies just like america has so you haven't given any examples of successful socialism at all you've just picked mixed economies and said ah socialism okay none of that bears any relationship with anything I said I trust that anybody who's been watching this knows that what tom said has literally nothing to do with anything that I just said uh I don't know if he was just zoned out while I was speaking or he just decided to make something out but none of that stuff I said uh what what did I say uh I said that doses of socialism administered within capitalism such as nationalizing the health care sector for example uh have led to enormous human progress when those have been implemented and it is just a historical fact that they were largely implemented by elected socialist party and labor party governments uh in those countries which have been in and out of power in many of those countries for a long time uh and quite recently uh that uh that those have made those societies more livable I did not claim in fact I said the opposite of the claim that those were socialist countries the claim that I've made is that we can look at elements that are beta that have been successfully beta tested under capitalism namely democratic governments successfully nationalizing certain sectors the economy operating in the public interest namely a successful worker cooperatives and see that it is in fact quite possible to have a society that doesn't have capitalists with a with a functioning economy the fact that we we don't have one that's fully achieved that yet uh they not because they tried it was unsuccessful but just because they hadn't gotten there politically uh is is neither here nor there I mean if we were arguing at a point in history when no democratic republics exist again all you had was maybe you know a certain amount of constitutional monarchy to but with the king still holding lots of power you could say aha you know no successful constitutional republics yet it would be exactly as irrelevant uh so you're also shifting the goalposts in a very strange way on this cherry picking uh issue uh that you're talking about survivorship bias here which is a which is a different claim uh than than cherry picking uh but uh but yes sure if you're going to look at successful worker cooperatives then you're looking at the worker cooperatives uh that have survived just like if you're looking at successful capitalist firms you're looking at the capitalist firms that have survived that's about time yes is that once they get started uh they tend to survive at about the same right we'll kick it over to top wow you're just totally incapable of understanding the points here it's pretty simple like survivor bias is an example of using an entire group and compare it to another entire group and that can still be cherry picking this wasn't literally saying survivor bias is a fallacy you're using in comparing uh cooperatives versus non-cooperatives the point was just what you said earlier when you said comparing an entire group to entirely now in another entire different entire group is not cherry picking it's just demonstrably false i can give you an example where you're doing exactly that called survivor bias we're comparing an entire group to another entire group and it's still cherry picking you not understanding fallacies is kind of the problem here so but again so you admit that there are some socialist policies that are similar to socialism which are adopted in mixed economies so mixed economies like combinations yes i agree mixed economies work these are not examples of that we should adopt an entirely socialist government this is an example that we should adopt a mixed economy which which i'm for mixed economies not for socialism so you're saying ah mixed economy here are a few examples of it working in a few cases therefore let's adopt an entirely socialist government does not follow again cherry picking cherry picking a few examples of successes saying that ah we should adopt the whole thing doesn't follow so again what we should do is what we're currently doing taking a capitalist approach and adopting a mixed economy of taking certain protection policies and adding those in and that's good your system is not good all of the examples or socialism has ever been tried has always failed you claiming it's not real socialism no true scotsman isn't real isn't relevant people want to say that oh here's our idea of socialism we're going to try to adopt this and to adopt this we have to give lots of power to government and they're probably oh where we have lots of power we can abuse it now that's that's socialism that's what happens um so this is not a good policy if you want to implement socialism has to be voluntarily you can voluntarily create a co-op you can voluntarily vote socialism in office that's fine using government power to force everybody else to do it without consent is bad yeah uh if i were you just as a piece of friendly advice uh the uh the uh i would not try to run this uh this thing about logical fallacies uh i think we can compare notes there and that's probably not going to be promising for you but uh as far as uh the point about about mixed economy systems uh they um you know the argument uh is about whether the kind of socialism that i'm describing uh is uh is economically possible whether there's a reason to think uh that if you had certain key sectors of the economy be nationalized if you still needed a market sector because of calculation problems coordinating consumer preferences uh with with production uh you could at least have a market sector of a worker worker cooperative firms uh that uh well if you're going to say is this workable well if there were examples of an attempt to create exactly that we could look at those and use uh and use those to consider it uh but failing that you know in the absence of of any examples of that uh what we can do is we can look at the individual elements of that worker cooperatives uh as a whole how do worker cooperatives generally do is compared to conventionally organized capitalist firms and we can also look uh at examples of democratic governments uh taking certain key sectors like health care out of the market and see how that does uh and if you think okay these things can work individually but when they're put together uh they uh they would not be able to work there's some particular reason no reason for that i think we would need to hear the reason and we uh and we certainly uh we certainly haven't heard the reason or anything like it yet uh there's no true scotsman claim i've already explained why that's just wrong i mean you're just misunderstanding what no true scotsman means uh but forget it like get out like forget the question of whether you call it socialism or not uh the uh you know let's just call this let's just call what we have right now ex-ism uh what existed in the soviet union y-ism and the combination of a democratic government nationalizing some some industries running that side of the market uh and uh and and a private sector entirely consistent of a worker cooperative z-ism we could completely sidestep the terminological issue and time true that uh the bad parts of the track record of y-ism are just going to be irrelevant to the question whether ex-ism or z-ism would be better kick it over to tom uh so the question is if we try to adopt z-ism it leads to to y-ism i think was the communist parties so the problem here is that if we try to adopt z-ism the policies to do that lead to government overreach which then become abused and corrupted which leads to z-ism that's the problem it's not that they are literally the same thing obviously china isn't literally just giving public ownership to the means of production it's china the problem is it's a result of trying to adopt socialism because the only way to adopt it is through extreme amounts of government oversight which is bad um so so again you again you don't understand the fallacies is your problem i'm definitely going to defeat you on every single one of those hands down without even trying but separate topic so again the issue here is like what's better should we adopt as you mentioned should we adopt a complete system with all of the kind all of the companies like this or is it better to take just the mixed system i'm saying mixed system is better always it's always going to be better than adopting your system your system is going to fail for the reasons i listed in the intro that it leads to less competition gives people less opportunity to grow gives successful people less opportunity to grow their business gives less control over the people who actually have the right state of mind to make the right decisions it i would i think it's going to fail more often than it succeeds in making successful decisions because it hasn't been implemented if you could demonstrate it has been implemented other than just your hypotheses that a complete system adopting this will be better that would be great until then it's reasonable to reject that and to adopt the system that we know works and has been proven to work it has done an extremely well job of benefiting human life over the past several hundred years which is a mixed economy we know this works we have lots and lots of evidence this works so we're perfectly no do you have any evidence that your system works no zero zero cases okay uh the the thing about logical fallacies is uh is bizarre the couple that you've mentioned you've proven that you have no idea what they mean uh i would there are lots of informal logic and critical reasoning textbooks that are easily available uh you can you know you can buy them go on amazon tonight i can stock up on some i would recommend that you're not on this if this is something mostly you know about from the internet but uh but in both the cases that you mentioned uh you're just wrong uh as far as the relationship between yism and zism if you want to claim that it tends to create create zism would collapse in julyism uh then you certainly haven't made that case uh the uh you know the point was already addressed earlier that it's just not the case uh that china and all of these other uh irrelevant examples uh that you're reading off from from wikipedia and that open statement uh have were attempts uh to create socialist democracy that just somehow turned in to Stalinism and nowism uh as a matter of uh of historical fact uh the uh that's that's not uh that's not how that happened uh these are countries where there were revolutions that were led by Moscow aligned communist parties who had a pre-existing ideological commitment uh to the soviet model and who of course carried out that commitment once in power and there's absolutely nothing to do with the yism uh will uh will become a zism claim uh and certainly what we've seen over hundreds of years of uh of capitalism is that these features that i'm talking about uh like the creation of severe economic inequality like the absence of democracy in the workplace uh like the existence of poverty uh are are are built in they're baked in there's there's there's never been a capitalist uh version of capitalism uh that has uh that has done away with this we can look at a small local example in uh in the united states and look at the fact that you know juneteenth was last month uh we just passed 156 years since the emancipation of slaves and through that entire time capitalism has failed to correct the persistent economic inequality between the descendants of slaves and the descendants of people who are free in uh in 1865 it's certainly the case that uh that regulatory states and labor unions uh can sometimes make progress push that boulder up the hill of sanding off some of the worst edges of capitalism and then of course the wealthy elite every time they have a chance uh we'll start pushing that boulder down again with austerity and reversing uh those uh those previous uh those previous gains but what i really just want to emphasize is that you seem to really want to have it both ways that on the one hand sure yeah mixed economies great on the other hand uh the government uh imposing a democracy uh in the workplace because the majority of workers voted in power voluntarily to do that thing time which could be applied to anything that makes those mixed economies mixed we'll kick it over we've got to kick it over we've gotten kick it over to tom for two minutes as i said before if a bunch of people if the majority of people vote in socialist that's fine that by that part i'm okay with so if you convince the majority of people in a country to adopt this that's fine as i said multiple times in the beginning there's no contradiction there but they're not going to do that as we've seen in every single country even the modern mixed economies nobody adopts socialist run countries nobody adopts the socialist majority parties it doesn't happen good luck convincing them it's not going to happen go for it um but again so that's not a contradiction i'm literally saying you're not going to convince them nobody wants this it's a crap system people prefer giving themselves power so they're not going to adopt socialist system um i don't know why you came mentioning capitalism hasn't done away with poverty and inequality like no one's ever done that and we're not going to do that for a very long time your system does not do away with poverty or inequality either your your argument is that it makes it slightly better not that it does away with it um that's not your argument okay i'll ask about that later so uh your the capitalist systems have been doing away with poverty and making things significantly better for everyone for hundreds of years like it makes things better always like the amount of people in poverty around the world has gone down by like 50% or something the people live on a dollar a day or whatever things are getting better under the capitalist system and they can obviously obviously be continued to be made better by using more capitalism and modifying capitalism to make it more fair like the mixed economies have done the question is is would your system make that be an even better improvement or would it be worse and i'm saying it's probably going to be worse it's probably nobody wants that nobody wants that um because it's bad in many reasons for all the ways i listed in the introduction it lowers lots of kinds of things there's all kinds of papers that show that it lowers competition lowers uh i forget what i mentioned but they're all listed there and they've got papers to show it so this is not supporting your position like obviously no one's going to solve poverty inequality you're not going to solve poverty inequality the question is who's better okay uh i don't know how you heard me say that uh that in uh in actually existing worker cooperatives the um as a as a category uh the average uh the the average difference between the highest paid and lowest paid worker owners is a tiny tiny fraction of what it is in normal capitalist firms i'm not sure how you heard that and said that my argument was that it would make it slightly better uh my argument is that uh is that given workers control uh it's not structurally possible to create the runaway levels of inequality uh that you uh you have under uh under capitalism uh that lead to that make a mockery of political democracy because uh you're going to have wealthy people that vastly more political influence than everybody else uh that that leads that perpetuates capitalism by making it the case that the majority of the population who as you said in the moment lucidity earlier uh do not have the money and connections to uh to be able to uh to start a worker cooperative have no realistic choice except for to give up most of their rights and freedoms for eight out of every 16 hours a day that that level of inequality the kind of inequality where the bottom end is going to be grinding poverty of course would not exist given workers control for reasons that have been uh explained several times uh they uh saying that you'd be fine with socialism if uh if a majority democratically opts for it makes me a little confused about what you think we're we're arguing uh we're arguing about uh about here uh but uh but if you say that a majority of the population is never going to support that well there certainly are historical examples where a majority of the population has supported it uh you know so uh so just to i'm not making a statistical claim uh here uh but uh but just to uh just to go with one one example that springs to mind uh chili in the 1970s uh the the democratic socialist government of salvador a&a which was picked by a majority of of the chili and electors on a very radical socialist platform uh and uh and of course uh as is often the case uh when that happens uh the the united states uh took the took the view that you know henry kissinger famously said uh just because the the citizens of the country are irresponsible uh doesn't mean that they should be allowed to talk about certainly not the only example is that uh but of course we've got to kick it over what happened we've got to kick it over thanks so much tom the floor is all yours yeah i mean uh i i think that yeah those those didn't turn out so well did they so i'm ready to go to q&a i've stated my piece yeah i'm yeah i mean you're right it i mean the example again certainly didn't turn out very well uh but not because of any problem with socialism you got it well i want to let you know folks i just because i know many of you have many things on your mind and so oftentimes at the very start of the debate i say hey hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future upcoming debates and so as i mentioned a lot of people you guys have things on your mind all that good stuff so i just in chat hit the button for subscribers only chat it's temporary we don't mean to twist your arm into subscribing only because as i mentioned a lot of times people miss it up front and so want to encourage you to subscribe be in the chat if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and with that we will jump into the questions thank you very much for your first question this one coming in from you guessed it logical plausible problem thanks so much says congrats on hitting half century mark everyone push that like button and let's hope james to get to 100 000 subs thanks for building an awesome channel thanks so much john and we are excited we're celebrating it's a thank you celebration for 50 000 subs tomorrow so you don't want to miss that one folks are going to have votes and all sorts of fun stuff it's going to be a lot of fun but thank you and brenton langel thanks so much says t jump donald trump never won the popular vote and said he loved quote low information voters unquote anti-dem arguments using 45 as an example make no sense that's a fair argument yeah he wasn't elected by the majority it's the stupid electoral college thingy but yeah the point was here is that a lot of people being put into situations can make stupid decisions there are still 49 million people who made a stupid decision there so i'm not sure that's a great example that we should just give lots and lots of people the right to make the decisions about how a government or how a company should use what it should produce how it should produce it where it should produce it and what it should do with the profits i'm not sure given how bad the that many people are making decisions that that would be a good idea to do that gotcha and louis barnett thanks so much says is social democracy the best of both systems guess we hear from either of you um no i think that it's uh i think that's the best that's been achieved so far uh for for sure uh that uh that social democracy uh you know has by um you know redistributing some resources uh away uh from from capitalist profits to meet various human needs taking certain sectors of the economy uh out of out of the markets etc uh has been uh you know those are definitely the best societies that humans have created so far but i think that there are two problems with stopping at social democracy uh and not uh and not going for full workplace democracy uh one problem uh is is pragmatic the other is ideological the uh the pragmatic problem is the one sort of been mentioned uh rosa luxemburg's metaphor about reformism is the labor of sisyphus and you're pushing the boulder up the up the hill uh and it's being pushed back down again uh that if you leave uh capitalist class uh way of uh business owners with their economic power uh concentrated economic power will always find ways to translate into political power and they will always use that to chip away at whatever reforms have been uh enacted so far at the end of the day if you want to avoid that uh you alt you have to as as michael brooks used to put it you know you have to start taking some pieces off the board by democratizing the economy that's a pragmatic problem with stopping at social democracy the ideological problem stop at social democracy is even though those are certainly better societies than you know than the united states much less what the united states is imposed on much the rest of the world uh they're uh they're still societies where most people have no realistic choice except to spend half the hours that they spend awake uh most days uh taking orders in a really draconian authoritarian way from unelected bosses and i think we can do better you guys will jump into this next one from what i don't get a chance to answer oh that's right go ahead tom yeah so i mean i think that's fair like obviously social democracy is probably one of the best systems we've achieved so far it's probably not the best ever there's probably going to be more but if you're going to make a claim that you know of a better system and it's never been tested you have a much higher burden of proof than the one that we know is the best system so far and has worked in lots and lots of cases so if you're making the presentation that you have a better system than the best system that's like saying you're smarter than einstein you've got a lot to do to show that and i don't think there's any evidence to support socialism even comes near what that would require yeah i mean literally all evidence from actually existing worker cooperatives show that that's an efficient way uh to organize businesses i understand that that doesn't impress you and you think that for some reason uh that's unrepresentative of what that would be like uh in a uh in a system that was dominated by those you certainly haven't given us any reason to think so we must go to the next one do you appreciate your question at the logo says congrats on 50 000 subs thanks for all of your hard work i value these convos immensely thanks for your kind words amazing want to say the debaters of the lifeblood of the channel people like ben and tom have seriously made this channel rock and awesome and fun and so we want to say thank you to them and thank you to all of you for all of your great great debate ideas folks so thank you so much uh on this super positive and encouraging night and don fulman says intellectual honesty is in a state of recline is that my my channel motto intellectual honesty is in a state of recline by tjomersh very juicy and brenton langel says the co-op was in minnesota the co oh sorry about that the co-op wars in minnesota were caused by the cia check out the deep dive on the dollop pad podcast with dav anthony and garith reynolds for more info seems like a common socialist agenda thing we always blame america if it ever fails if socials never fails it's definitely america's fault always never never just because socialism just leads to china nope just it's always america's fault juicy this one coming in from do appreciate it the legend rives says social is socialism destroys savings and investments which which determines a good economy the response is always more regulation and inflation which destroys the economy how does socialism solve this huge flaw yeah i'm just not clear what the questioner thinks that they're talking about uh the it's uh it's certainly not uh presumably they're not talking about any sort of attempt to to institute economy wide or at least private sector wide you know workers workers control of uh of production i assume that they don't they're talking about that uh i don't you know i hope that they're not talking about uh social democracy those you know doses of socials and minister within capitalism as opposed to socialism as a complete system after capitalism which as we just agreed you know are some of the most successful countries and you know making societies that are livable for humans that have ever existed so they must be talking about some third thing maybe they can clarify that you got it and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from pigs are intelligent as dogs says ben do you condemn maus china ussr and venezuela yes or no clear answer please uh well when somebody uh when somebody asks a complicated question say they only want to hear uh yes or no uh then i'd say that uh intellectual honesty is not only in decline but decline uh so uh i think that uh i think that certainly i'd condemn uh the the authoritarianism of of those systems uh the i think that um you know i think that uh that some of them at certain points uh you know did uh did accomplish things that made you know that made people's lives better but also there were real horrors that that took place under there but those real horrors happened because of the absence of democracy the feature of maus china that allowed the great leap forward to happen for example uh you know which would certainly you know not had happened and continued uh if if mao and you know chow and lie and all those people had had to worry that they were going to to lose reelection was the extreme absence of democracy so uh if uh if this is supposed to be an argument against socialism in the sense of extending democracy to the workplace i don't really understand how the argument works because in this case we're talking about countries that not only did not have democracy in the workplace they had less democracy overall uh than uh than then you know regular capitalist democracies and that's precisely why these things happen you don't get a great leap forward in in a country where uh where where the electorate has a way to take leaders out of power you don't get the you you know ukrainian famine uh in uh in a situation like that so yeah i think that those are these are cautionary tales about the absence of democracy uh unlike uh unlike tom uh apparently i'm a big big fan of uh of democracy i'm such a big fan of it i want to extend it to the economy you got it and thank you very much for your question made by jim bob says and it's not related but i'm so curious to get your guys's opinion on this what do you think of the film cuties i haven't seen it no idea what you're talking about sure i don't okay next to brenton langle thanks thanks for your question says t-jump is ignoring the entire anarchist movement you can build socialism without centralizing power it has happened multiple times throughout history the anarchist movement i don't i don't think that's a good strategy to go with but okay next up thanks very much made by jim bob strikes again saying tom oh gosh tom i hope this isn't they say tom is that chair the only thing you have left from your grandma is this please tell me this is like a sincere not kind of mean super chat about your late grandma yeah my grandmother died and you should just send me all the money from the super chat like no it's a joke i got this from lazy boy lazy boy store gotcha okay i started sweating okay pigs are intelligent as dogs says if co-ops are so good why not just walk wait a bit people will see co-ops are better than traditional companies and we'll start doing them to beat the competition right wrong i i think that um you know this is a argument that's beloved of of libertarians and other advocates of a pure laissez faire system and at least they're being somewhat internally consistent when they make it in a way that advocates of a mixed economy would not be internally consistent if they made this argument because as was mentioned earlier you could apply the exact same argument to any other reform that that occurred capitalist power you could say oh if if having you know if a minimum wage was so great then everybody would just opt to only work at businesses that offered that offer a minimum wage you could say if if if laws against sexual harassment you know are so great then everybody would just choose not to work for for sexually harassing bosses you know etc etc etc it's exactly the same argument obviously realistically it's not the case that that most people are going to to be able to do that the if if you have if you have a system in which it's an option to to be the the sole the sole owner then even people who do have the means which most people most of the time do not to to try to to strike out on their own are most people are going to to take that option and of course there are only certain certain number of lifeboats out of the working class it's structurally impossible for for everybody to take it but most people are are going to try to do it that way there are tons of built-in competitive you know disadvantages there most obviously that that if you by definition can't reward investors with ongoing ownership shares if or else to the extent that you did that you would to that extent cease to be a co-op that makes it harder to start a co-op than a regular capitalist firm obviously the fact that ordinary working-class people really are a bigger risk for for banks giving out loans than than people who have who have some means that's going to be a structural disadvantage disadvantage for a for co-ops and all of these things make it harder to start of course again the statistics that exist we can argue about what the sample size is big enough but the statistics that exist seem to show that once they get started they do about as well but i would suggest that if you want to know whether most people would like just like taking orders and don't want to have any autonomy don't want to have rights at work don't want to be i have a vote in management elections or or whether they do probably the best way to test that is not whether people you know make the effort you know like try make a desperate attempt to pool together what little money they have to start a small business that will probably fail as most new businesses do the best way to test that is to see what happens politically to see if you can build a majority through the political process to to support socialism i know tom thinks that that's impossible despite you know they're being past examples of it but but in general the idea that oh if most people wanted the economy to be different in some ways it would just come about as a result of micro interactions i think is a bad argument that would be rightly rejected in every other context by anybody who's not a stark raving libertarian and it should also be rejected here you got it and thank you very much amanda for your super chat via venmo folks we do have venmo modern a debate is our call or you could say our handle on venmo amanda says 50k celebration thank you amanda i am pumped for it as well and so as i mentioned it is a thank you celebration for our guests like ben and tom as well as for all of you for your ideas for debate topics things like that we are pumped and so thank you so much for that support this one coming in from ferran salas says we have officially hit dumpster fire status in the chat thanks debaters and coonsmeister coonsarelli coons in for a bruising amazing juicy debate couldn't agree more it has been a juicy and fun one will steward good to see you again says yes the amazing thing that jessie lee peterson references to some back store here i don't know that's right we uh we like amazing we can't stop saying it here and uh we have several cliches that are what's the purpose oh when people use it ironically so we do call people brita in the chat sometimes ironically but next will steward says ben what evidence do you have that a pure socialist nation provides more benefits than capitalist nations well what i'd say is that the uh the main reason to think that some forms of socialism uh wouldn't be uh wouldn't you know can't uh have uh lead to functioning in prosperous economies is the calculation problem the issue about how to um coordinate uh production with consumer uh find great consumer references uh in the absence of uh of market signals or uh the the lack of efficiency that can enter into an economy without firm failure uh but the good news is that what we do know for sure from those mixed economies uh is that it is entirely possible to have a successful economy where some sectors are taken outside of the market so let's say uh use the most pessimistic projection like tom i think that you know in the future with the development of ai who knows right you know maybe we could have a much more radically demarketized version of socialism in terms of what can logistically exist right now sure let's let's take that you know worst-case scenario from the calculation problem and say there's no way to do it uh without having market mechanisms without having price signals without having firm failure you can have all that uh and uh and and still have it be the case that uh that the market sector those firms are at least uh collectively owned and democratically run uh by the workers and if you're gonna say no no that can't work uh that you know unlike the worker cooperative sector that exist right now uh this this wouldn't be successful you have to give a reason for that it can't be the calculation problem it certainly can't be uh the history of countries that have completely different systems than the ones being described uh so maybe there is another reason to think so but i'd say at that point the burden of proof is very much on the person who says that that can't be that the uh that uh that for some reason uh that hasn't been specified uh you have uh that you know you just cannot uh successfully uh successfully operate a um a market sector where all of the firms are owned by workers maybe there's some reason why that would be the case all it can say is i haven't heard it you got it and striking again will steward says this time ben if i am willing to work for five dollars an hour because i am not qualified to work a salary job why should i not be allowed to yeah so i i like the fact that uh that the questioner actually uh embraces the analogy that i keep making uh that they say yeah uh that this this argument uh against um against uh legally imposing uh democracy at work saying you can't deny people a voice to vote in the workplace uh is exactly the same as the argument that you can make against minimum wage that in both cases sure if we want to pretend uh that under you know regular capitalist conditions uh workers and capitalists have as much bargaining power than yeah you're you're shorting you know you're you're harming a worker by by not letting them you know voluntarily agree to those arrangements if you make the more realistic assumption that that obviously it's vastly harder uh for a worker to to replace their source of income than for a capitalist to to replace one worker uh then uh then that argument that that argument doesn't it doesn't work and i think that people have uh are more likely to have their preferences met uh in situations where you have a legally imposed wage floor uh that that you know that the effect of not having one is that people are going to be forced into those arrangements by economic conditions and similarly here and and you know and we can argue about what's legitimate you know to uh you know to be imposed in economic structures but you know and what the legitimate role of the state is but one thing i'm definitely not worried about imposing on people you know is the ability to vote in management elections if they choose to exercise that ability i i think this idea that you're going to get hoards of people under those circumstances saying no damn it i don't want power i don't want to have the option of voting in a management election i want to not be allowed to vote on that uh strikes me as a tad unrealistic you got it and so thank you very much for this alex appreciate your super chat just supporting the channel and also thanks so much for your question will steward is coming at you ben he is he's like a dog or the bone he says i believe i asked what evidence do you have not what assertions do you think makes sense ben uh yeah so i guess i guess uh will steward thinks uh that if a specific proposal hasn't been uh been been implemented yet the correct procedure is something other than looking at what the closest equivalents that have been implemented yet looking at places where on a smaller scale or part of the economy uh it's been implemented looking at whatever precedence that you can find and then trying to to reason you know looking at that and then combining that with reasoning about what would make sense uh you know given just the structural incentives that are built into the system like are you going to get you know more egalitarian or less egalitarian wage scales if you let everybody vote on them uh will steward apparently thinks that there's there's some other uh procedure that uh that you should use but if if his idea for that procedure is that uh is that if uh if something hasn't happened yet uh the the default should be that if it hasn't been completely implemented yet uh that you should just assume that it would be a disaster uh that's a that's an argument that could be applied at literally any point in human history to argue against literally any piece of progress that hasn't happened yet and i hope we can all see the problem with that you got it and thank you very much for your question bubble gum gun more of a statement says anarcho capitalism is the only tenable position fact there's more of a contradiction i don't think you can have anarcho capitalism because any type you have an anarchy it's going to lead to some people have bigger six than other people and then you don't have the nice jargon government so now you no longer have an anarchy you got it and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from forward tribes is dr ben can you explain venezuela's recent history and explain portugal's fantastic economic dynamics in the last 40 years okay uh so i'm not quite sure where he's going with the portugal part um maybe he could clarify that but as as far as the venezuela part goes you know i think that i think that you can certainly look at um success i mean what venezuela is or was at its height there's been a lot of austerity and cut since then but what venezuela was was social democracy i mean that's that's what existed in venezuela the vast majority of the venezuela economy uh was always privately i think there was never a point where that wasn't that wasn't the case uh and in fact again vastly smaller public sector than several of these other mixed economies that we have been talking about i think norway is a particularly fun point of comparison because norway and venezuela are both places where the size of the public sector was uh was inflated by a publicly owned oil company uh but uh but yeah so uh so given given that i'd say that if your explanation of of what happened in in venezuela uh which you know i think that part of that explanation certainly has to do uh with economic warfare against it you know most obviously uh by uh by the united states uh part of it has to do with severe missteps by some extent chavez but really muduro uh in uh you know especially in terms of currency management uh that's that's definitely a part of the picture there uh so you know when oil prices started to crash uh and you know other oil producing economies were able to you know suffer some temporary losses but then get better i think that they made some extremely short-sighted uh currency management decisions that exacerbated and led to bad cycle but the one thing that you can't really say if you're going to be intellectually honest is that socialism caused this because if by socialism you mean a society that's not divided into a class of workers in a class of private business owners then venezuela is not and never has been socialist uh it's uh it's always had a predominantly capitalist economy throughout the entire time that chavez was in power throughout the entire time uh that muduro has been in power uh if what you mean by socialism is social democracy then nope that doesn't work either because there are other countries like sweden and finland and denmark and norway that have gone much further in a social democratic direction then uh then venezuela has and the same effects haven't happened so yeah i i'd say that bare minimum intellectual honesty we can rule out those two explanations you got it and thank you very much for your question you guessed it will stewart do appreciate it buddy and he says let me just boomer tech over here one second the page is loading want to remind you the while we're waiting our guests tom and ben are both linked to the description folks if you haven't clicked their links what are you waiting for they're right there in the description box at the very top this one from will says the assumption i have is if no evidence then we can say let's try and find out but not assert it will be better yeah i mean again uh you can uh if no evidence sure uh i dispute no evidence i don't think that you need to uh to go all the way uh to a fully democratic socialist economy uh since as we agree right there there there aren't any uh any examples of those uh that the that we have we have countries where you know reforms have been carried out uh by elected socialist governments that have gone a certain distance in that direction but while still leaving most of the economy in the hands of of capitalists have made people's lives better but have certainly not you know transcended capitalism uh and gone to socialism uh that uh that in the absence of that there's no evidence i think that that's that's just a an unjustified leap i think that there is evidence i think that you can uh that you know if you want to know uh can you have a energy sector be successfully run by a democratic state um then there are numerous countries that have done that uh and then we do have evidence for that if we if you want to know can the healthcare sector be successfully run by a democratic state uh then we uh we do have evidence for that we can look at examples of that uh all of that is fully compatible with saying that uh that yes but you can't have a fully state-owned economy uh you know with without economic dysfunction uh because of calculation problems fair enough so you might still need a a market sector but then the question is does that have to be a market sector of conventional capitalist firms or can it be a market sector of worker owned firms and i'd say uh see earlier in the debate we very extensively disagreed about this and went back and forth but i think i've laid out my reasons for thinking that the existing evidence from the existing examples as a category does give us a reason to uh to think to think that that would be that would be successful now if we had uh somehow for some unforeseen reason things that are very successful a la carte turn out to be disastrous for some reason i wouldn't put together uh then okay uh you know since uh you know workers can democratically vote uh to restore restore power to uh to capitalists uh i'm not quite sure what antisocialists are so afraid of you got it and bubblegum gun strikes again with a twofer this time two statements saying quote democracy is cringe read some Aristotle fact next they also say t jump you can't have mafias when walmart sells tanks what they're talking about when he said he likes anarcho capitalism and you said that capitalism wouldn't work with anarchy because everybody who has the biggest stick would trample over the people with the smaller sticks nobody has a bigger stick well if walmart's selling tanks walmart's has the biggest stick and walmart is going to be the government like if walmart is selling the tanks and they just have a big resource of tanks they could just use all the tanks to take all of your other stuff too like why would they sell them to you to just keep the tanks and then just take all of your stuff juicy and this one coming in from do appreciate it zeorafa good to see you says why has israel been steadily turning away from socialism since the late 1970s so i i mean i think that uh that israel is a you know i mean i think is a pretty funny example on multiple grounds as a you know as a test case uh that you know that there has uh you know there has always been a large sector of the the working class there that has been disempowered to a pretty farcical degree if you if you wanted to start talking about about socialism that the minority of of palestinians who ended up as citizens of israel were completely deprived of any democratic rights for the first 19 years of the existence of the state certainly have been systematically excluded you know from every every level of of israeli society but i also think that outside of the agriculture sector you know where you had the kibbutz in i'm i'm not quite sure what the i i guess i'm just not quite sure what the questioner has in mind as far as what they think are are are sort of failed doses of socialism administered within israeli capitalism i know for example the socialized health care system there i believe is is very popular but but i think that but i mean i'll i'll answer the more general question and then if it's okay i just indulge me i do want to very quickly do the Aristotle thing because i was hoping to jump in on that earlier so the very general answer to to that question about why is it that you have countries that have enacted various social democratic programs have implemented um you know have have implemented reforms that arise from socialist aspirations even if they don't amount to uh to fortness of full socialism that turned away from that and i think that answer has been given that as long as you leave the capitalist class in power they're always going to roll down that boulder back down the hill as soon as they feel politically able on Aristotle i just say that yeah i'm not surprised that a apologist for slavery wasn't a big fan of of democracy but i'm a little confused about what that's supposed to show you got it and this one coming in from left is best says t jump why do capitalists ignore the effects of blockades and sanctions on socialist economies we don't i don't understand the question like yes those definitely have an effect but not literally every example of socialism was stopped because of u.s. interference that's just not a thing so yes it does have an effect yes we can have an effect doesn't mean that's literally every single case of socialism failed because of america you got it and this last question we've got to get out of here soon but just call me toast plain toast says can t jump explain why the socialist policies of ellende ellende thank you didn't work out so well quote unquote i imagine it's the same thing it was probably from interference most likely i don't know i don't know the specific case but i'm guessing that's what they're alluding to gotcha juicy and we will steward has one last one saying ben your assertion was that pure socialism was better than capitalism not that it quote could be successful unquote yeah i mean the uh the reasons that i've given for thinking that uh going beyond social democracy they have democracy at the workplace are are straightforward they've been given that quite a number of times during this debate they're not based purely on a priori speculation we have empirical evidence that i've mentioned which is that we can look at actually existing a worker you know worker owned worker managed firms that have existed under capitalism and we see that they lead to dramatically more egalitarian outcomes uh you know like a fraction of the economic disparities that you get uh within standard standard capitalist firms that seems like an excellent reason to think that the kind of economic inequality that's generated by capitalism wouldn't be generated even by this kind of democratic market socialism never mind what might exist in the future given developments in etc that teach up refer to you got it and folks we are going to wrap up i want to remind you to check out the links at the very top of the description of our gas as we really do appreciate them and i'm going to be back here in just a moment with a post credit scene letting you know about juicy upcoming stuff at this channel including some votes that i think are going to dig so stick around for that but before we go want to say thanks so much ben and thank you so much tom it's been a true pleasure to have you on thanks james thanks my pleasure so i'll be right back in just a moment folks stick around for that post credit scene coming up then thank you so much my dear friends oh oh thanks for your patience all right you guys i am so pumped to tell you about some juicy upcoming stuff in particular folks some juicy awesome stuff one thank you so much i haven't gotten to see you since before we crossed the fifty thousand subscriber threshold amazing so thank you guys seriously i cannot thank you enough thanks so much i see there in the old live chat good to see you my dear friends side show nav as well as bubble gum gun and reservoir of gore and let tornado and general ballzac amanda nicky quaba qua foie gras thank you for being here as well in silver harlow and creo debunk alex stinger gt2 youtube surgeon general ken lee and haxt and lee we are glad you were here as well as mark reed andrew amanda breman's name daniel and vlad tapes thanks so much my dear friends want to say seriously i am excited about the future we are planning big stuff tomorrow we are going to have a vote now one actually we know what several things to announce one quick announcement if any of our debates get too juicy for youtube if you know what i mean by that i mean if they start to perhaps rub up against to s we will put them on the podcast so for example this one on the far right of your screen is on the modern day debate podcast and only on the podcast you can't find it here on youtube anymore we did live stream it here on youtube so if you were that you know if you were there that night i know some of you were but if you weren't the only way you can watch it or should say listen to it now is via the modern day debate podcast so that if we ever have any debate where you're like um where'd that go check out our podcast because it's probably the case that it might have been a little bit too you know so in that case we'll put it on the podcast and we have to take it off of youtube the reason being we don't want an s t r i k e so you guys i am so excited travis pratt good to see you and then hunter tomsen thanks for coming by as well as oliver catwell thanks for dropping in and yeah i'm excited thanks devin embelton says amazing i couldn't agree more i'm excited though i i predicted that we would probably maybe like reach the 50 000 threshold around mid july like i was like almost certain i was like july 14th maybe july 15th so we i am excited like it has been super encouraging you guys to see modern day debate grow and i cannot say anything other than thank you for real you guys have made this channel epic you've made it fun is this channel is a truly eclectic mix of people from all walks of life politically left politically right we are glad you were here friends christians and atheists we are glad you were here muslims we are glad you were here gay straight you name it black white everybody and their mama we are thrilled to have you here at modern day debate so you guys so much excitement about the 50 000 threshold and you guys i have to tell you and i'll talk about this tomorrow don't get me wrong i am super thankful and super excited about the 50 000 threshold so i'm not in any way saying as if it's like something that's not epic it is epic but i've got to tell you our impact on youtube is even more epic i have like i always peek around out of curiosity i'm kind of sick like that i always out of curiosity kind of look around on social blade and other websites that show stats for other channels and we pretty consistently have way more impact in the form of views like people actually watching our content compared to channels that are sometimes like double our size i mean sometimes we have way more impact even than channels that are significantly bigger than us in terms of subscribers so i am thrilled about our subscription you could say our subscriber 50 000 landmark and i can't thank you enough folks seriously you guys make this channel rock the debaters make this channel rock i'm just a guy in the background sending emails folks seriously like i shoot out emails like hey you know this person's open for a debate you know what do you think you want to you know like yeah yeah sure so that is like that's like the j les like david letterman impersonating j leno you know baby so the idea though is this my dear friends is i'm just a guy that shoots emails and you're like hey you know this person's looking for a debate stuff like that but you guys make this fun because it really is it's a fun experience here in the chat i know some people it's funny a lot of times the people who say this chat is toxic it's so problematic that's the big the keyword now like the problematic oh my gosh it's like these guys they're the kids that oh bless their hearts i'm sorry but they're the kids that they got a trophy for losing you know they just their life's just a little too rough for them when they see people that disagree with them so where they oh it's toxic if there's people disagree with me but that's what makes it fun i look at it folks is that we have people from all walks of life people who will disagree in the chat with each other and we always ask like hey you know can you do it in a way that you attack the argument instead of the person like yeah we're reasonable we'll ask for that and we'll even you know if people are being malicious if they're being malevolent we'll bring the hammer down the mods they're sadists they like putting a little pain on people who are breaking the rules but the idea is we're like hey we're gonna let people disagree and sometimes that's going to offend people but the thing is folks it's authentic it's a true you could say battleground of ideas or it's like hey the most persuasive ideas are the ones that win out and i think that's a good thing now oh there's so many interesting like branch offs from here but i want to tell you though it is exciting folks it's so fun to have you here an eclectic bunch indeed i mean we've got look it's we've got breman's name thrilled to have you here my friend and says my names in a youtube you rock james congrats thank you for your kind words breman's name i don't know what breman's name background is who knows maybe it is scientologist we don't know church of entropy a pantheist hippie we are thrilled you know no matter what we got hannah anderson i'm pretty sure do i remember right hannah atheist or agnostic i'm not sure but the idea here is this we've got i think sunflower is a they they say they're a christian do i remember right sun sunflower have you told me that or am i wrong but the point is this you get people from all walks of life all walks of life that's a cool thing it's authentic it's something where it's like hey that's the real deal like this really is neutral territory this isn't it's not like a channel in which we're going to put up an after show to be like oh hey just to let you know if you didn't watch the if you didn't watch carefully during the last debate so and so really stunk it up i mean their arguments were terrible you know we don't do that it is a purely neutral channel we are fulfilling the vision of providing a neutral platform for everybody to make their case to the world on a level playing field we're determined to make that vision a reality and also folks yeah want to let you know thanks so much for your kind words by the way mr revolution five seven three we do appreciate it as well as thanks for your kind words hunter thompson and appreciate that travis pratt for your kind words and we are absolutely excited though my friends we have so many big and cool things coming up we are going to believe me folks i'm excited and i'm hoping for real potentially maybe within a year we make it to that 100,000 mark now that's ambitious i agree because that would mean let's see 50 divided by 12 that would mean like 4,000 a little over 4,000 subs a month that's a lot but it's possible and even if we don't make it by then i'm telling you i think the growth is just going to keep becoming it you can it's going to just our impact our influence which i think is a positive thing for youtube is going to keep going and i think youtube has our backs so to speak i'm the surprise we've never gotten an s t r i k e the reason being i mean we've had some juicy ones you remember i mean there's some some that i just deleted i was like i'm not risking it with that is atheism a hate cult is christianity a hate cult we had to keep it fair and balanced that's why we had to host both so we wanted everything we're all about equality folks we're all about equity we want to make sure that everybody is equitably offended and so my dear friends imran kahn thanks for being here says hey moderated bait i sent in a direct message to you on twitter i have no idea if you would respond but i understand if you don't since you're a busy guy by the way house university thanks for your kind words imran kahn and i will try to get to your dm asap i am behind this week folks we i was hoping to have the 50 000 subscribers stream celebration thank you event yesterday and then i was like well maybe turned it like maybe today but don't worry it is scheduled for tomorrow i have been swamped and i'm encouraged though i got some really good progress on a research paper i'm working on i'm so encouraged i'm like oh i feel like the what i wrote today it wasn't much more than like two good-sized paragraphs and i took like at least two hours of like just they were just they were like these points there's like they it has to be strong and long story short um i am like so happy with it oh that's like the perfect argument or you know kind of like in methods maybe you would say like like strong method methodological response we would say in psychology but i am so i'm excited thanks for asking and how university is going well i enjoy it uh folks if you don't know i'm working on my doctorate and sometimes life just it's like a tidal wave sometimes i am so oh just exhausted and trying to keep up with everything because i'm super encouraged about modern day debate it is so fun but at the same time you know sometimes you know that it's like ah like the last week we only had no we had three this week we're gonna have three but it might be the case we might even on some weeks have two debates that's kind of that's very few for modern day debate but it's just been so busy for me recently and you know we'll get there to where it starts to level out again but it just kind of comes in waves and then but yes imron con i will definitely try to respond to your question and so thanks for letting me know about that seriously in the chat is the best way to reach me after a stream and so we also want to let you know we took off the earlier in the debate we had subscribe for 60 seconds and then your your messages will still still show up in chat we turn that off because we don't want it to be like you feel strong armed we don't we basically want you to subscribe because you freely choose to and so it's a reminder to get people's attention because a lot of times at the very start of the debate people don't hear when I say hey hit that subscribe button for juicy upcoming debates and so the idea is when I do that little chat trick which is new it's a new it's got to be a new feature on youtube and never seen that until the last week or so is it's a way of getting people's attention to say hey folks if you didn't get that little call to action up front do hit that subscribe button and so it is like I said we removed it because we only like it being on temporarily because it's just to get people's attention in terms of the idea of subscribing rather than being like ha ha if you ever want to be seen in chat again you have to subscribe that's not what I'm trying to do to you guys so we are excited though you guys our impact like I said you could think of it this way there's an iceberg the tip of the iceberg is our subscriber count and I am pumped about it seriously it's epic and I'm more than thankful you guys I am so thrilled but it's only the tip of the iceberg our impact on youtube I'm telling you when you look at our metrics our viewership in terms of all the views like it is we've got really uh we've got a really strong impact on youtube and so that for me is I would rather you know I think I've said this before I'd rather have 10 000 views a day in terms of you modern day debate youtube channel people actually being impacted by the content then having I'd rather have 10 000 views a day and no subscribers which is theoretically possible then if you had let's say 200 000 subscribers and you have a thousand views a day I'm not trying to put anybody down in terms of like I'm not saying a thousand is bad or anything I'm not trying to be mean my only point is this is like we're about impact folks that's what we're excited about and so you guys have made it such that our impact on youtube has been huge and so thank you so much for that Brooks Chavez says thanks or uh please say hi hello on twitch you're right twitch so sorry folks up behind Ozzie and good to see you and Brooks Sparrow thank you very much for reminding me and but yes we do have a twitch folks and I see there are tepatsal things for being with us in twitch as well we do have a twitch my dear friends if you haven't checked it out I'm excited about that and also if you're listening via twitch you didn't know if you maybe didn't know we're on youtube we are on youtube it's our main platform and a lot of tornadoes as you should host a debate at Cerro Gordo ghost town would be dope and totally random hey that would be cool I've I've thought about hosting a debate on whether or not DIA which stands for Denver international airport because there's a lot of there's a lot of conspiracies and rumors about Denver international airport which is like an hour from my house there's rumors that it's haunted or worse and so I've thought about it like I wonder if we could host a debate at the actual airport this the wi-fi and I've never done a speed test while I was at the airport I don't think and so I'd have to test it to see if we could but that would certainly be a fun one but Brooke Chavis let's see and site show now good to see you and Andrew says ideas equal truth preach James preach thanks Andrew for your support I appreciate it in pancake of destiny says where is the 50 000 bathtub special James that's tomorrow it's going to be on the twitch hot tubs and bath tubs in pools category you don't want to miss it amazing but yes and yes church of entropy is a hippie there's no doubt about it but let's see shogan says we have a great weekend chat keep growing thanks for your kind words shogan and actually church of entropy surprises me sometimes church of entropy I have to give credit in terms of being I wouldn't say a contrarian but potentially church of entropy will surprise you in terms of reviews like sometimes I hear about reviews and I'm like oh interesting I wouldn't have guessed that you're not as predictable as most people I'll give you that church of entropy and then not mod Bruce Wayne says make a channel called modern day debate modern night debate that runs overnight debates for night owls oh that's a funny idea I like that and that and I like the day and night play will steward says your mic is clipping a bit tonight that's probably just because I'm I'm like so pumped and loud but thanks for letting me know it's been amazing actually you know what it feels like when I look at the meter I'm watching it right now on OBS it's not bouncing I can't even get it to go to the very top I'm confused by that so I don't know I'm surprised at clips even though I'm not in the red I'm in the yellow but we'll talk I've got to learn more about it Hannah Anderson says don't don't jinx it James then uh mr. pieces starting only fans for the curtain James 1000 will be a breeze don't undersell that talent that's funny the uh that's right what is behind the curtain I may show you I mean you got to hit that like button we got to get to at least you guys we're only at 146 there's 216 watching folks hit that like button I always imagine well two things one you might be thinking James why is it that there's 146 likes there's 217 people watching why are those last 50 or so holding out I mean really it's like 69 right now they're holding out I always imagine maybe one they're in the bathtub they their hands are wet they don't want to get their phone wet by reaching over to grab it to they were listening to modern a debate the debate tonight and then unfortunately they were kidnapped by terrorists and now they uh you know it's like their phone is still on play but you know they're they're like maybe the phone is like over here and their hands are tied up behind their back so they it's still playing but they can't stop it but they're at least happy that they get to listen to modern day debate while they're kidnapped so okay so I'm sorry but let's see you guys I am stoked let's see Ken Lee thanks for being with us as well as Alex and Nikki that's right in the egg court and good to see you will mark astro good to see you says 5d chas I like it amen to that and then Sergio Miguel thanks for dropping in forward tribe we're glad you're here said impact our crazy world needs debate long live modern day debate thanks for your support my friend that means a lot and then let's see here chats moving on me I'm trying to keep up oh will Stuart says it must be the headphones it is clipping I didn't even know that I'm glad you let me know that that's right who is it that said boomer tech the egg corn is right boomer tech oh man I remember you guys remember our first I think it was like our first year oh so bad oh snap brook was your name removed from the patreon credits I'm so sorry I can fix it right now actually I didn't know was removed I'm gonna do this right now you're gonna be very the very first person brook Chavez okay it's fixed no joke no joke watch you'll see when it comes to the very front of the ticker you'll see but yes I am pumped you guys let's see oh well I I don't know how I can increase the volume on the computer seriously it this is as high as it goes well oh okay maybe this will help so maybe that man this thing is all messed up do I look like some sort of like zoomer is zoomer the opposite of boomer is zoomer like a person who is like young and hip I'm still with it I tell you guys this all the time now I don't even know what an interoceter is but church of entropy says the mic is okay it's clipping because you're too close the reverb thank you Sergio Miguel for your kind words and thank you for that feedback church of entropy I wish I knew what the heck this thing is I just purchased it I pulled it out of the box I plugged it in and there are all these like switches and meters it's like if you guys ever seen the old he-man movie with Dolph Lundgren you remember the time machine that uh what was the name of the little elf um basically they had the time key and it's like that's what this is like it's got that many buttons that's how confusing it is for me so I mean bear with me but Brooke Chavez says I noticed during the mat d debate thanks James my pleasure and I'm so sorry I had no idea it was honestly not it was for sure not on purpose so divine apex production says did I miss the debate already you did you're amazingly late so it's going to be here on the channel though nothing tonight was worthy of making the debate such that it would only be on the podcast okay what do you mean next Captain Dip thanks for coming by Elizabeth Maran thanks so much for dropping in because James has a great last name it's a it's Coons so in case you didn't know how to pronounce it it is James Coons and it's obviously probably pretty obvious it's a German name I'm German I'm Belgian I'm French let's see I'm Polish you name it I'm it Japanese I'm pretty much everything so I am like the renaissance man of ethnicities but actually I'm like a pretty like I'm like pretty pale I am like the palest easy to sunburn type person maybe not the easiest I've had redheaded friends those poor people daywalkers but let's see Brooke Chavez okay I'm catching up with the chat I always just enjoy hanging out here you guys it's always fun I should go because I do I do I actually have to finish a lot of work tonight I'm thinking about it right now and I'm like dear gosh I actually do have a lot of work tonight so I'm glad it's only eight we're still okay but Church of Entropy let's see so OBS has a volume adjuster I know that I know that Church of Entropy I'm hip I'm with it I know like believe me I turned it up as high as I could now the other thing is I've got so so many burps if I like pause in my talking it might be because I have burps let's see what was it oh yes yeah does he do you seriously none of you guys oh wait Generation Z is a zoomer oh gosh that's embarrassing what are like the 20 year olds like Dylan Burns is like 22 right what would we call Dylan that's not he's not a zoomer dear gosh it just gets more confusing but you guys seriously you don't know the name of the elf the little guy the short guy in the original He-Man movie with the time key which looks like this you don't know what his name was it was like Eor or Igor I can't remember now speaking of movies I am so far behind I watched Edge of Tomorrow recently you guys have probably seen Edge of Tomorrow it's with Bruce no no it's Tom Cruise I watched it and I got it on Amazon Prime Day for a deal I rented it for like $1.99 or something I mean that's usually what it has to be for me to go for it I'm I'm frugal so I rented it and I thought wow I got such a great deal I got this brand new movie it's from like 2014 that's how behind I am on movies I don't even know I watched also what was it called man you guys I thought it was new I thought it was probably from the last three years the wolf of Wall Street by the way like you guys really didn't warn me about that that movie I don't think I've ever seen a movie like that now the idea is this we'll talk about that a different day the point I'm making is that I thought it was like from the last few years it's from like 2013 or something gee so I am so behind on movies it's frightening I at least I'll admit it Dr let's see Mengel we're glad you're here and then Wilmar Castro we're glad you're here as well as YouTube Surgeon General says Orco no actually that I think in the cartoon that was his name I don't remember what it was in the movie I don't think it was in the movie but I could be wrong I'm just gonna look it up He-Man Dolph okay Masters of the Universe came out in 1987 did you know that it was great because that was the year I was born and yes I was born in 1987 boomer and let's see let's look let me look up the characters so if you guys haven't seen Masters of the Universe first of all you ought to be ashamed of yourself it's like the greatest movie ever Dolph Lundgren has this crimson cape and it's maybe the reason I think it honestly is the reason why crimson is my favorite color uh since I was a kid I always just thought it was like the most beautiful cape beautiful is not quite the right word it's just enticing it's juicy and let me okay so on the planet Eternia at the center of the universe Skeletor's army sees his castle grayscale uh Gwendoor that was the name of him so Orco I think was in the cartoon I think you're right but then is Gwendoor in the movie so but yeah I want to say thank you guys for all of your support thank you for everything Lewis Barnett says what's your favorite Star Wars movie I think it's actually despite this being some people are like no it has to be Empire Strikes Back I get it if you live through it it's kind of like what we live through when we watched Star Wars episode uh what would that be eight when Kylo told now this is I'm it's not a spoiler because I'm just saying what he said you know it's not like it's anything crazy that he says this because you don't know if it's true or not when Kylo told Ray at the end of the last Jedi that her parents were like losers who left her really really uh not very tasteful uh the idea here is we were left on a cliffhanger for two years or so it didn't seem like two years seemed like it was way faster than that because anything compared to watching the last Jedi makes it seem like time is moving fast because the last Jedi just feels like uh time is like stopped it's that bad but uh for real I'm so sorry I know some of you guys like it I didn't like it um and don't do the oh it's james doesn't like female lead characters like no that's not it I loved Rogue One Rogue One was like maybe Rogue One is up there we'll come back to that point but I didn't like last Jedi now the idea is this I will admit it was cool because it had it had a similar cliffhanger to Empire Strikes Back Ryan Johnson left us wondering was Kylo Ren telling the truth or was he just saying that Ray's parents abandoned her right oh Gildor that actually yeah that sounds right I think you're right about that Oliver Catwell uh and Beastmaster yeah I remember I do he was scary in that movie looked like a werewolf now the idea here is uh I get why you that's right General Ball's axis Courtney Cox that's right Courtney Cox was in it she was like she had to be like 17 or 18 or something I don't know but she was really young uh so it was a pretty old movie boomer now the trick is this if you lived at the time that Empire Strikes Back came out well then yes you experienced the cliffhanger of actually not knowing if Darth Vader really was Luke's father I get it like I'm like okay but for those of us who didn't you know if I didn't get to experience that I have to say Return of the Jedi is my favorite Empire Strikes Back is close but it's still number two Rogue One is pretty high up there man probably put it above new hope then I'd probably go with the new hope um then I'd probably go with Revenge of the Sith Revenge of the Sith I should maybe bump up a few spots um Attack of the Clones and Phantom Menace are like I don't know they're they're Attack of the Clones Phantom Menace and Han Solo were all tied for the next best spot um if you made me like not pick if I had to put those in order gosh I don't know I don't know maybe I I guess maybe Han Solo I don't know I do like Darth Maul so everybody you'd be crazy not to like Darth Maul and I hope he gets his own spin-off series now the rumor is Luke is going to get his own spin-off series that feels like it's sacred it's kind of like hey guys if you want to make up your own character and take a risk with it like Mandalorian so Mando eternal great he's cool great story everything was great but if it tanked I wouldn't have felt like I lost anything it was just like oh Disney swung and missed but if they tank a Luke Skywalker series I feel like they're taking something wonderful and driving it into the ground and so I do feel like I'd lose something in that case it's like don't don't mess around with Luke or his story unless you know just be careful if you're gonna do it I hope they do it well and maybe they will I mean I've got to give them credit Mandalorian was great is that the only Star Wars show they've had at least live action wise it is that's crazy Dave Hill I remember it was like years ago it's like five or six maybe it was even seven years ago there were rumors of a live action show of Star Wars and I was like wow wouldn't that be something and it was but Dave Hill says it's okay last shot I was horrible I have to say I don't know why I sometimes wonder like Star Wars had a little political people who lean politically left gonna say it they I think they get pissed well not all of them some I think they really want the last shot I had to be a good Star Wars movie even though it wasn't that good and I just can't help it and I'm like am I am I wrong about that like I I kind of feel like they not all people on the left but I feel like it's like a it's there's got to be a correlation if I asked you the degree to which you identified with politically left politically right it's a small it's probably like a small r value small effect size it would be correlated with your political position now I'm not hinting at my political position um I think I'm somewhat moderate no joke I really do but anyway bubble gum gum thanks for your super chat says Korea best Star Wars character fact Knights of the Old Republic the best juicy now I am did I trigger everybody with that comment about your political positions so Andrew says you are wrong about Star Wars Andrew I bet you voted for Biden and I know you did let's see but it's okay and here's the thing it's interesting I think I got politicized and it's like it's not I just that was such a turnoff when people when some critics of Star Wars were like man it wasn't good and it was like well we loved Leia though Leia in the original trilogy was a strong character she was already telling people you remember she was like a almost like general level status on Hoth she was like telling everybody what to do and everybody took it seriously and nobody had any problems with it as well as she killed the most dangerous gangster in the planet Jabba the hut in return of the Jedi like Leia was serious she was like tough and so wow Andrew you surprised me says yes politically left and I hated the new Star Wars well then I am as wrong as it gets you're the first I think I've ever met of somebody who like clearly identifies as politically left and would say they they hate the new ones so I'm surprised now so you proved me wrong it's a small correlation Nephilim free is in the house oh boy here he goes and Resward of course his battle beyond the stars had a spaceship with boobs appreciate you letting me know that duly noted and so forward tribes is our movies being destroyed by fanatical political correctness debate idea that's a juicy one I mean so I oh yeah I always loved Leia in the original Star Wars it was never like anything about and like I said I love Rogue one it was never about like female or male leads and I'd also be willing to admit like like I just didn't really like all the Hayden Christians Christian sins work it wasn't terrible I don't want to be hard on him but like I just it's hard to duplicate what Luke did right and so I don't know I'm being hard on him but nonetheless forward tribes is our movies oh yeah and then uh general ball as X says and looked good doing it I don't know who you're talking about oh yeah Leia yeah I mean Carrie Fisher was cute when she was young like uh there are like these pictures of her where she was like on Hoth the scene and she was like just like teasing and like uh like winking and you know the funny thing is raw nakedness stupid horror energy uh one time she had a picture of Leia winking and I recognized it even though it's so small on the screen because I always thought I was like I just thought Carrie Fisher looked like so cute in that picture and I was like oh my gosh I would have if she was like if we were the same age I would have had the biggest crush on the world on Carrie Fisher but anyway I hope you guys have a great rest of your night I've got to go but it's been fun I love talking about Star Wars and movies thank you guys for sharing your insights I love it when you prove me wrong so thank you guys I love you guys seriously thanks for all your support we will be at be back tomorrow with two streams one with Fight the Flat Earth Flat Earth debate it's coming back and one on $50,000 thank you subabration stream I'm excited for it you guys so thank you for everything I love you guys seriously wherever you are no matter what continent no matter what your view is no matter what your background or walk of life is we hope you feel welcome and we appreciate you thanks everybody love you guys and we will see you next time amazing keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable everybody and we'll see you tomorrow night thanks everybody