 Let me put my headphones on, and we are going to do this. We're gonna put, whoops, not that one. We're gonna put, Fishing with Dynamite is, is Arthur Brooks's new book. And we're gonna listen, the interview is 12 minutes, but I don't think, I don't think it goes on for 12 minutes, and certainly I don't think we are gonna go on for 12 minutes. We've got, I've got a few key moments here, but I want you to get the setup and get what's going on, and then we'll critique it as we go along, and see what you think about the different arguments that Ben and Arthur, and it's interesting, watch for where Ben is trying to stir the conversation versus what Arthur Brooks wants to, where Arthur Brooks wants to take it. So let's start at the beginning, here we go. It really is interesting. It's about two theories of capitalism, what you term stakeholder and shareholder capitalism. Now notice, two theories of capitalism, that's very, that's to be very clear. There is only one theory of capitalism, that is capitalism. And then there's, and capitalism is consistent with the idea that the owners of the firm get to decide on its purpose, and the owners of the firm get to benefit from the profits, and the owners of the firm get to make decisions about its future, and that's called shareholders. Shareholders are the owners. They have a fiduciary responsibility. Yes, I know, only eight seconds, and I'm already commenting. Stakeholder capitalism is not capitalism. Stakeholders is an attempt. Stakeholder capitalism is an attempt to impose socialism on capitalism at the corporate level, to try to mitigate capitalism at the corporate level. So to grow socialism from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, and it is a disaster. So it's sad that Ben is better, but Arthur uses these terms, and I think Arthur actually embraces this kind of terminology. Talk about the difference between the two. We need people who really believe in markets. I mean, you and I both know, and you've documented this well in your last two excellent books, that it's capitalism that's pulled two billion of our brothers and sisters out of poverty. So note, yeah, absolutely, it's capitalism. And shareholder capitalism, not the stakeholder type. Shareholder capitalism that has brought people out of poverty, and where do you go with this? I was a kid. I mean, it's crazy to talk about dismantling capitalism unless you hate poor people. So that's one thing that we need to establish, but that doesn't mean that people who call themselves capitalists comport themselves perfectly, morally, every single day. On the contrary, there's this cronyism, there's this corruption, there's people who are cheating each other. So to the contrary, to the contrary actually means that under capitalism, there are a lot of people behaving immorally. Really? We have to be able to stand against that. So what this film does, Fishing with Dynamite, is very pro-market, but it reminds us that morality has to come before markets. If you're not putting in morality first, the markets are not gonna work. And it's common sense, but it's something we have to remind every generation, right Ben? Absolutely. Yeah, and what's crucial gonna be here, because I agree with that. Morality comes first. Markets, you know, and if you don't, and Ben is gonna make this point in a minute, but so I won't make it, but morality is important. And if you're not moral, that is really problematic. And indeed, markets don't do well in environments where people lie, steal, and cheat. But of course, capitalism has a built-in way to prevent that. Partially, capitalism is the rule of law. It's a system that protects property rights. It's a system that if you commit fraud, right, you are prosecuted for that. You're not just, okay, committed fraud. That's just a market phenomena. No, the laws actually against the kind of immoral behavior that it is engaged with in terms of breaking the law in terms of violating property rights. But other books has a broader point about morality that I think Ben is gonna try to combat. So let's talk about how you put morality first in your business. So there are a couple ways to read that. One is that you should act virtuously. You shouldn't act to damage other people that you should avoid the short-term gain at the expense of the long-term gain, which is one of the hallmarks of capitalism. People tend to think about people cheating in capitalist systems, but that neglects the fact that game theory suggests that if you keep repeating a game, if you screw somebody the first time, they're never gonna do business with you again. You really have to establish a reputation for being honest and you have to keep that reputation up. There's another way, however, that people have started to talk about moral capitalism. And this is the way that disturbs me. And that is the sort of social justice warrior virtue signaling, which is I'm gonna use my corporation in order to signal particular sympathy for particular political causes. Otherwise, people won't know that we're a quote unquote moral corporation. Meanwhile, we're doing business with the Chinese to exploit Uighur labor. But at the same time, I'm putting up a black square on my Twitter page. How do we distinguish between what moral capitalism actually looks like? Now this is interesting. Notice that they haven't defined morality. They don't need to because they're both some version of altruism. They're both religious and they're both oriented towards altruism. And I think at some point here, other books is gonna make that explicit. But notice to Ben's credit, he's trying to say, look, you can't break the law. He doesn't mention this, but it's a point I made earlier. But in terms of the morality of dealing with customers, dealing with suppliers, dealing with other business people, the market actually penalizes bad behavior. The market actually penalizes lying, cheating. If you're caught lying in a way that, let's say it's not a violation of rights that is not prosecutable by law, then the market will punish you. The market will hold you back. And indeed, of course, neither of them are gonna make the case because they can. That it's in your self-interest, not a light sheet of steel because it undercuts your self-esteem, it undercuts your ability to think, it undercuts your ability to produce, and it undercuts your ability to actually be a functioning member within a trading community, which is what capitalism is. It's a trading community. And if you lie, steal, or cheat, people won't trade with you and you're destroyed. So they stay away, I mean, Ben Shapiro at some level understands the argument for self-interest at an economic level, right? He won't go deeper and he said this himself. He understands the argument for self-interest at the economic level. In that sense, like Adam Smith, he understands that capitalism reinforces certain moral virtues, rewards them. But he can't name it and he can't go deeper than that. Author books doesn't even get that. So he's just being asked about this issue of morality and markets and see where author books goes with this. Moral capitalism starts with people behaving morally according to their own consciences. In their own sense of what morality really is. Yeah, but there's only one sense in the end of what morality is, which we'll get to. You could be Jewish, you could be Christian, you could be an atheist, but all morality is about what? This is very important for us to remember that immoral people are not gonna have moral capitalism or moral anything. They're not gonna have moral families and not gonna have moral lives. Capitalism is just a machine. It's like your car. I can use my car for great good to get myself to work and support my family. I can use my car for great evil. I can get drunk and accidentally drunk. But you can't use capitalism for great evil. That is an interesting point, right? Capitalism can't exist if people are immoral. Let me say that again. Capitalism cannot exist if people act immorally. It falls apart. It breaks down. Capitalism is built on trust. Capitalism is built on the assumption people are moral. Capitalism is built on the idea that people will stand by their word, stand by their contract. If people stop doing that, capitalism falls apart. See, they think capitalism is a machine that just happens. But no, capitalism is a million, billion interactions that are happening on a daily basis between human beings. And if those interactions are essentially immoral in the sense of lying, stealing, cheating or in a sense of just being crude and just being unmotivated by self-interest, by the way, which is the essence of morality for me, but not for him, then it all breaks down. You see, for Arthur Brooks though, if capitalism is truly motivated by self-interest, if this machine is run on the basis of self-interest, then it's bad. Then it's like that car being driven by a drunken guy. So capitalism is spontaneous order if it happens. And it only happens. I don't like spontaneous order for a variety of reasons which I'll explain on another show. I think spontaneous order is horrible because there's nothing spontaneous about it. It is the product of thinking, planning, individuals who then interact in very specific ways that respect property rights. That's when capitalism rises. It is nothing, nothing spontaneous about it. That's why I hate the term spontaneous order or say hate invisible hand for the similar reason. So note that there is no such thing as immoral capitalism, capitalism run by immoral people. Cause if people are truly immoral, capitalism falls apart. Capitalism falls apart, even on the basis of whatever we understand as morality as being something like not lying, cheating or stealing. But he says it's more than that. Through my neighbor's house and kill him and why they watch TV. What's the difference? Me, not- That's not capitalism killing people. My car and the same thing is true of capitalism. Now, when people are immoral, when we're paying attention to the dictates of our conscience, when I'm paying attention to my faith, you, yours, other people to their secular philosophy, as long as it's putting other people first. Ah, there we go. He throws it away and nobody's gonna challenge him. Nobody's gonna stop the tape there because the state of granted. Putting other people first, that's morality for him. Putting other people first. He doesn't care if you get putting other people first from the Christian Bible, from the Jewish Bible or from secular philosophy. What's important is that you function based on the principle of putting other people first. And let me just say that if that is the basis for your economic system, you ain't gonna get capitalism. There's no spontaneous order that arises when people put other people first. Indeed, as Adam Smith well understood, capitalism is the system that arises when you protect property rights, you protect individual rights more broadly. And people are self-interested. That intersection produces capitalism. If your intersection is altruism, forget it. Putting other people first. He said it, not me. People say, no, no, altruism doesn't mean that. Altruism is just being nice to people, just opening doors. It means self-interest, but moderate. No. Author books are good Catholic and a prominent public intellectual. Putting other people first and notice the Ben Shapiro will not challenge that. He cannot challenge that. Even though I think altruism is deeper, more meaningful to Christians than it is to Jews for a variety of reasons. It's still, altruism is altruism and that for them is morality. Serving your neighbor. Serving your neighbor. Then capitalism's the best. Yeah, capitalism's the best if you serve your neighbor. Really? It's much better than socialism because it rewards actually less greed but morals have to come before the markets or nothing will work. See, this is the thing, right? Capitalism, social, we're neutral about, right? What we do is we figure out what serves other people's needs better. Capitalism, socialism. Capitalism does, obviously. Look at all the wealth, look at all the success. So we dump socialism because it doesn't serve the needs of others better but a lot of altruists will say, but wait a minute. Capitalism also creates inequality. Under capitalism there are poor people. Under capitalism, some people become amazingly rich. Under capitalism, people sometimes don't make what's called a living wage. Under capitalism, the people who struggle. Under capitalism might be somebody who doesn't have health insurance. Under capitalism, they might be this, they might be that. What about all these people? Now, you'll see Arthur Brooks's answer to that but note that that's when socialism comes in and says, yes, maybe capitalism on occasion could provide better goods, more goods. We're not even sure about that because look at Scandinavia. But we are the truly moral system. If you think that serving others' needs, that is the standard, we can do that better. Particularly if we're concerned about the least able, the most needy. And that's why Arthur Brooks cannot argue against the welfare state and he won't try. Cannot argue ultimately against the living wage or minimum wage. Cannot argue against most government interventions in the economy. That's why this kind of advocacy for capitalism must and always does fail to succeed, fail to convince, fail to convert and hands the moral high ground to the left and lets the left dominate, dominate our economic lives. And yes, you can cut taxes as Republicans do every time they get into office. But what help is that if you increase government control over other aspects of our life just like the left wants. So there are libertarians in the audience right now who are shaking their heads. They're saying, well, you don't really need morality. The incentives of the market drive. Yeah, Ben should know better than that, right? He could say there, but there are all Indians out there who are saying you need morality but a different morality. But that would take him so far out of what he believes. So he's using this, libertarians think it's spontaneous. You don't need morality, morality is irrelevant. Markets just work. And that again is a horrible argument and it's why libertarians fail. That's why in my view, it's only when objectivism becomes the dominant argument for capitalism that capitalism can win. Cause you need a moral case for capitalism. You need a moral argument and moral advocacy for capitalism. And without it, you will never convince, you will never capture the high ground, you will, the moral high ground, you will never be dominant. So as long as it's libertarians and conservatives making arguments, we fail. Welcome, you don't need a pre-existing virtuous people. The incentives of the market, as I say, they drive you toward honesty because obviously if you screw other people enough people won't do business with you. What do you say to libertarians who say we're putting too much focus on virtue and capitalism and the system itself sort of checks and balances against people who are endemically corrupt? But at least Ben Shapiro understands that argument. I'm not your author, author rejects it thoroughly, completely. Ben is floating with it at least. I wish it were true. My answer is I wish it were true. In the same way that I wish that Facebook would make us all not lonely and that artificial intelligence. Does Facebook make us lonely? Or is Facebook a reflection of our loneliness? I wonder. I wonder what comes first. Sort out everything and that my toaster would actually give me companionship. These things would be great if they were true. Now notice what he's doing here. He's saying the market, the market drives loneliness. The market atomizes us. The market is antisocial. But that is unbelievably bogus. The market is where that can provide us with immense spiritual values. First of all, it can provide us with the art that feeds our spiritual values. It feeds our souls. It provides us with the wealth to make it possible for us to gather and do things together. It provides us with the time to hang out with friends. Try hanging out with friends when you're a subsistence farmer. The market provides us with the tools to connect with people across continents. This idea that the market creates a soulless world is silly to say the least. Complicated technocratic systems never help you to live the best life. That's why scientific socialism leads to misery. Now notice he's comparing scientific socialism to capitalism. They're both autocratic. They're both telling you how to behave. They're both manipulating you. And therefore you can't be happy. Sure, if that was what capitalism is. Capitalism is just about you making choices for yourself. Free of coercion. And of course, yes, Frank says, market is collaboration. Work, workplace is a place in which we collaborate, work together, form friendships, fall in love, do all kinds of fun stuff. At least in the days where you allowed to fall in love in the workplace. It's substituting a machine for the human heart. Capitalism is not a machine. Capitalism is human beings interacting with one another. Socialism is the dictates of others. But you see, he can't separate the two. He keeps saying, capitalism and socialism are basically the same. I just have this preference of capitalism because it produces the results. Scientific public administration, which looks at as human society is some Newtonian system, why it doesn't work. Capitalism is great, but capitalism can only ever be added to virtue to move human prosperity and human goodness forward. But doesn't capitalism has been explained actually promote, reward, facilitate virtue? What's the point? You know, the fact that you get rewarded for being productive, does that not reward and facilitate productiveness as a virtue? The fact that you're an emotionalist under capitalism, you'll probably lose all your money. And if you're rational, you'll probably be successful. Doesn't that promote morality and reward it? Isn't it self-reinforcing? Isn't it a virtuous circle? Yeah, it is. But not if you're an altruist. Not if you don't believe productiveness as a virtue. Not if you don't believe rationality as a virtue. Not if you believe that the essence of virtue is placing the interest of your neighbor first, of others first. It can never be a substitute for the human heart. Anytime we try to do it, we get in trouble. So does that necessitate any systemic changes to how we do free markets? So I know that there are people out there, they call themselves sort of the common good conservatives, who have suggested that the government should get deeply involved in regulating business, specifically because business won't hold to the good. I like that Ben Shapiro is raising this point. And he's obviously opposed to it. We'll see how Arthur deals with it. They don't trust Americans to act morally. They suggest that the corporations are engaging in shareholder capitalism rather than stakeholder capitalism. Tucker Carlson famously did a monologue where he railed against companies that would buy out other companies and then- Remember that monologue? I did a whole monologue about his monologue. It's those companies. Do you think that that is a proper take on it? It seems to me that that's a bridge too far. It pretty much is a bridge too far. Here's the thing for us to remember. And this goes all the way back to Adam Smith. He says that, but does he really believe it? Listen to this. Stuff, I'm not breaking any to ground here. But Adam Smith actually has something to teach modern conservatives. We've kind of forgotten a lot. And Hayek, who's much more recent, said the same thing. Look, the government's got four big jobs. Four. Which is to sort out market failures. Note that four big jobs. None of these are actual, the government's job. First, sort out market failures. Market failures? This is, he's defending capitalism. What kind of market failures? Well, you're going to hear in a minute. There's monopoly, that's- Monopolies. Monopolies. The government has to sort out monopolies. This is a guy who worked, not worked, ran the American Enterprise Institute. You think they know a little bit about monopolies? It's truly unbelievable, right? That we need antitrust laws to go after businesses who are too successful. And who decides what's too successful? Government, politicians. Private markets don't sort out very well. Externalities like pollution. Externalities, straight out of the leftist textbooks. Externalities, they can't be dealt with private property. They can almost all be dealt with through proper division of private property. And Arthur Brooks knows these arguments. He's well read. He's just dismisses them. That's number two. Cution problems like crime. Public goods, like trying to- Crime, okay. Finally, something that the government should actually do something about. Stand up an army. Those are things that are in a proper area. So we've got two irrelevant ones. Interventions in the economies, therefore not capitalism. And two proper ones, police and army. For government to be paying attention to. And one more thing, Ben. And this is something that Hayek talked about a lot, which is our opportunity, our privilege to be able to support our brothers and sisters who are in need. In other words- You hear that? Our privilege, our opportunity to support our brothers and sisters in need. Need is still the moral claim. Said to be moral, we have to support our brothers and sisters. How do we do that? Voluntarily? No, you can't leave that to voluntarily because people might not be moral. They might not do it. So how do you do it? They're a system. It's a really good thing- A welfare system, he said. It's one of the great achievements of capitalism. One of the great achievements of capitalism is the welfare system. Wow. Capitalism can provide the large F that can create the welfare system. And that's a good thing for government to do. Within the boundaries of making sure that we treat our brothers and sisters truly as assets and not liabilities. Now, if this is an advocate for capitalism, what chance does he have against a status of the new right or of the left? Of a centrist, of a pro-welfare state Republican or a pro-welf- I mean, he is a pro-welfare state Republican. What chances capitalism have to become a dominant system in the world in which we live? If these are its defenders. And again, Arthur Brooks represents the heart and soul of Republicans of mainstream conservatives. You know, Ben Shapiro is a radical compared to them. And Ben Shapiro is a moderate compared to me. Society. But those are the things the government's supposed to do. Everything else is just extraneous and red-seeking and special interests. All of that is a lot. A lot. Look at failures, externalities, just those two. There are a number of alphabet soup agencies in the government just dedicated to those two. And then police, military and welfare. Well, that's a big government. That's a pretty expansive government. Lots of intervention. A lot of what people are talking about when they try to read your capitalism. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for people. So when we re-educate people toward virtue, when we move them toward shareholder capitalism and toward stakeholder capitalism, how do we teach people to make that transition? Because a lot of people just buy stock and then they say, okay, your job is to maximize my share price. I need you to maximize the dividend that I receive. So how do we shift people's thinking on this sort of stuff? Why is that wrong, Ben? Are you buying into this? Why is that wrong for me to buy a share and expect my managers to maximize my long-term wealth? That's a job. That's the whole purpose of a stock market. Anything else is going to distort the way stock markets work. Distort the way capital is allocated. Distort the way capital works and perverts and destroys capitalism. Well, we shift people's thinking about this by remembering that we don't really get very much satisfaction from rewarding people who are hurting others. I mean, when- Who's hurting others? Find out that a corporation- And what does it mean to hurt others? Acting not virtuously or actually nefariously in a corrupt fashion. It gives you zero satisfaction to work for that corporation, to be part of the board of that corporation, to be an executive, or even to invest in it. And so what we need is a lot more transparency about actually what's going on. And that's good. How are we going to get to transparency? Do you think he believes that that transparency should be provided by the government or by force, by regulation, or should that transparency be provided by voluntary means and by demands of shareholders, the owners, and by the market determining it? I wonder what you think. Ask people to make conscious decisions in their own investment, in their own purchases, in their own employment decisions, and hold each other to a higher moral standard. That's really what it comes down to. Look, then there's no substitute for being a full human being. Anytime in modern society, somebody's trying to substitute a technocratic system that takes human morality and human conscience and human decision making out of the equation, they're going to screw it up. Capitalism is the opposite of a technocratic system. Capitalism is the opposite of taking a decision making out of human hands or human minds. Capitalism is that opposite of what he's describing. He's describing socialism. And yet he's blaming capitalism for the sins of socialism. You're going to get something that's a distorted version of what it should have been in the first place. I know that you're a traditional religious believer and you believe that God made people to treat each other in God's image. You don't have to be religious to think that morality has no substitute. And morality is about treating other people based on their needs. And that's the altruistic defense of capitalism. And that's why it fails. And that's why capitalism cannot succeed under conservatives. That's why conservatives do capitalism harm. Capitalism is a system of freedom that allows individuals to make value choices for themselves. And to the extent that they're not hurting other people, they're left alone. And to the extent that the value choices that they make are not productive and not pro-life, they commit suicide. They die slowly or fast. They hurt themselves. And capitalism is a system that leaves them alone to maybe learn from their experiences about what is required of human life. A success of human life requires means. And to a logic that extent in terms of other human beings, that means developing win-win relationships with other people. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, I wanna see a thumbs up, there you go. Start liking it, I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego, it's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. 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