 So this is Jason Hicko, 100 and, what did I say, 191,000 followers, he's a professor, I think of economics at ICTAUAB, I don't have no idea what that is, and he's a visiting senior fellow at the LSC, that's the London School of Economics, very prestigious place. He's the author of The Divide and Less Is More. He's an expert, according to his own profile on global inequality, political economy, and ecological economics. So here's a guy who's not an idiot, right? He's a smart guy, he's not an idiot, he's, I'm sure, well-read, knowledgeable about some stuff, and followed by a huge number of people. So in Florence, 191,000, for an economist, that's a good number, certainly followed by a lot more people than I am followed by. And this is the tweet. People often claim that capitalism performed better than socialism in terms of poverty and human development in the 20th century. This story is repeated so frequently that no one even bothers to back it up. Is it true? Is it true? I wonder. The question was explored in remarkable paper published by the American Journal of Public Health. Using World Bank data, it finds that at any level of development, socialist countries outperform capitalist countries on key social indicators. In 28 of 30, there were comparisons. He says socialist states had lower infant mortality, lower child death rate, longer life expectancy, better literacy, better secondary education, better food access, more doctors and nurses, and better physical quality of life. The paper's paywall, so here's a fee copy here, open access version is here. Wow, I mean, that's pretty amazing. I didn't know socialism was this good. I just didn't know socialism was this good. So what's going on here? So first, he doesn't mention that this paper was written in 1986. But okay, doesn't really matter, 1986. Okay, so I went to the paper and I look and there's a bunch of empirical problems with it, using averages and all kinds of stuff like that. But I mean, even given that, socialism comes out. Wow, doing really, really well as compared to capitalism in this paper. I mean, socialism beats capitalism hand down on almost every measure. So I wonder what's going on here? How could this be? Because I know, I know, without a doubt, based on empirical evidence, based on personal experience, based on knowledge of history, based on, I don't know, the Berlin Wall, East-West Germany, North-South Korea, all of that, that it's just not true, just not true. So let's, so what's the problem? How do you explain this phenomenon? And I've seen other socialists claim this. Oh no, socialist countries do really, really well as compared to capitalism, probably based on this paper. The first time I've seen this paper, 1986. And it's good. I'm glad that he put it up so that it is available for everybody to read, so we don't have to go through the paywall. So that's good, it's, so here it is. So I went down to the appendix and I said, okay, I wonder, I wonder. I think you would wonder too. I wonder how he defines capitalism, how the paper defines capitalism, and how the paper defines socialism. So I wonder what countries get defined as capitalist countries that he's comparing to the countries that he defines as socialists. So I mean, socialist countries, this is 1986. I'll give you some examples. He defines socialist countries as low-income China, lower middle income, Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea, Albania, upper middle income, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, USSR, Czechoslovakia, East Germany. So he's basically defining as socialist countries, countries behind the Iron Curtain, countries that are part of the Soviet Union, which is interesting. First thing to give you a little hint about, maybe there's problems with the study is that no high-income socialist countries, they're upper middle income and one wonders if USSR was really upper middle income, but no upper income countries. And all Soviet era, okay, China, 1986, define as socialist, maybe, depending on your purpose, okay, I can roll with that, that's fine. So socialist countries, okay. These are socialist countries, that's good. These are real socialist countries. Now let's look at how he defines, who he defines as capitalist countries, capitalist countries. Now this is where it gets really, really, really interesting. Right? So low-income capitalist countries, are you ready for the low-income capitalist countries? I didn't know there were any low-income capitalist countries, but it turns out they are. Here's the list of low-income capitalist countries. Bhutan, Chad, Bangladesh, Bangladesh in 1986 was a capitalist country. Nepal, Burma, Malay, Malawi, Zaheer, Uganda, Burmati, Upper Volca, Volta, I don't even know what that is, Rwanda, India, Somalia, Tensin, Somalia, Somalia, Tanzania, Guinea, Haiti, Haiti is a capitalist country. Sri Lanka, Benin, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Nigo, Pakistan, Pakistan, oh, the bastion of capitalism, Sudan, Tango, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Mauritania, Yemen, Liberia and Indonesia. Wow, that's low-income capitalist countries. How about low-middle-income capitalist countries? Lesotho, Bolivia, Honduras, Honduras. Did you know Honduras was capitalist? I did not. Zambia, Egypt, Egypt. El Salvador, Thailand, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Morocco, Nigeria, on and on, Jordan, Syria, Paraguay. And in 1986, South Korea, Upper-income, Upper-middle-income, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Brazil, Brazilians out there, did you know your country in 1986 was capitalist? High-income. Well, high-income is all the Western countries. And then he has high-income oil exporting, but these are oil exporting capitalist countries. Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates, 1986. Let's see, here's a link. I am putting a link in the chat for the paper. There you go. Link for the papers in the chat so you can go look at it. Now, basically what they've done is they've taken socialist countries and then they've defined every single other country in the world as capitalist because they're not socialist. Because I've told you before, people, people generally, cannot think beyond two categories. Socialist, well, if these countries are socialist then everybody else is a capitalist. That's it. That's the way they can think about it. Imagine the results would be a little different. If I defined capitalist countries as the Western countries, United Kingdom, Japan, Finland, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, USA, Belgium, France, Denmark, West Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland as capitalist, and then said everything else is socialist. Which is, by the way, much, much, much, much, closer to truth. I mean, it's ridiculous. What does it mean to say that Bangladesh is capitalist or even worse? What does it mean to say the Central African Republic? What does it mean to say that authoritarian regimes, that monarchs, that Anarchy, that, well, Anarchy, or that countries that have zero, zero respect for property rights, country that have no respect for contracts, country that have, I mean, that's enough. If you don't have property rights and you don't have contracts, nothing else matters. You don't have capitalism. You just don't. Capitalism is defined by even on the most simplistic level. Now, I would define it by the protection of individual rights, but okay, that's a difficult concept to comprehend. Property people get, contracts people get. And capitalism is inconsistent with authoritarianism. Now, that I think people have a hard time with. But at the very minimal, at the very minimal, property rights, protection of contracts, rule of law, how about rule of law? Those three, at a minimum, would be required to qualify as capitalist. So I'm okay with saying there's a third category that neither socialists nor capitalist. Fine, although most of these countries in Africa were run by rulers who considered themselves socialist. Now, he claims that these definitions come from the World Bank. Now, maybe, but then the World Bank is unbelievably ignorant, biased, ridiculous, stupid. And I'm being nice to them right now. So this is to tell you, I mean, the reason I mention this is that how you categorize things, how you define things, what things you put together in a bucket in under the same conceptual folder matters a lot. If you put Bhutan, Chad, and Bangladesh together with the United States and then you say, well, capitalism didn't cure poverty, then yeah. But are those three capitalist? Obviously not. So how you categorize things? What you mean by different things? How you define them and even having a definition is crucial to understanding, to knowledge, to going anywhere in life, to getting anywhere in research, to doing anything constructive. You have to have your conceptual house in order, which means having clear categories, clear definitions, and making sure that what you include in those categories fits the definitions. Obviously, the World Bank had no clue. Now, I'm curious, to what extent this is reflective of the World Bank. I find it difficult to imagine that the World Bank is a stupid, but it's completely possible. It's completely possible. Possible. I mean, a Brazilian says, in 1986, Brazil was not allowed to import computers and software. Capitalism? Is capitalism related to free trade? Anybody? Anybody? Going once, going twice? So truly mind-boggling. When this is considered research, when this is considered an academic paper, refereed, peer-reviewed, published, and that a senior, whatever, fellow, a fellow at the London School of Economics with 191,000 followers thinks this qualifies as science in any sense. I mean, they have, I noticed this, Richard Wolff does the same thing, right? And Varsh did the same thing in my debate with him. Anything that's not socialist is capitalism. So ancient Egypt, when they built the permits, capitalism. The slavery in the South, capitalism. Feudal society, capitalism. I mean, Karl Marx would be embarrassed by these people. Marx had a better understanding of what capitalism actually was, and he didn't have a good understanding of what capitalism was, but he had a better understanding of what capitalism was. And it's results than these people. The standard, and I'm curious to see the research, the standard should be property rights, contract law, rule of law, and some semblance of free trade. Something like that. You can come up with some criteria, but it has to be anyway. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support, by going to Patreon, subscribe star, locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.