 Wolf, particularly bad lit, you know, okay, Wolf is winning. Okay, here we go. So here's Wolf being asked a question about too many banks in America. This is Richard Wolf with a response to an Ask Prof Wolf question from our Patreon community. And in particular, from Liz Mednick, who asks about what she sees where she lives, a proliferation of banks. Can you believe Richard Wolf has a Patreon account? He's using a capitalist tool to raise money. I thought we're not supposed to be greedy, not wanting money. And he takes questions and not to mention all the technologies he's using right now to live stream this or whatever. But all right, ignore the fact that he takes Patreon. I mean, a good Marxist wouldn't do that. Let's see what he has to say about banks, something I actually know something about. Literally occupying all four corners of an intersection, spreading around the community as if a kind of hysterical process of plunking down bank branches was underway. She worries that this is crazy, that this is too many banks chasing after a limited number of depositors and it won't end well. And she wants my response. Good question. Okay, so there's a proliferation of banks, the bank branches everywhere. You go to a corner, there are four different branches on the four corners. It's just crazy the number of banks that we have in the United States, the number of bank branches we have in the United States, it's insanity. It's really, really bad. Now, the funny thing is in the beginning of Wolf's answer, he's actually says some things that are, God forbid, true. And then he goes completely nuts. But let's start with the truth. Correct observation. Let's see what it means. More than ever in today's capitalism, happening is financialized. Now, one of the things you'll note, and this is true of the Robert Reich video, of many of the videos, is that nobody actually defends capitalism. So capitalism is the mixed economy today. Anything that's happening is a consequence of capitalism if it's happening today. Indeed, in history, the world, according to Richard Wolf, another video I saw of his, the world has always been capitalist. Why? Because there's always been markets. There's always been some semblance of private property in any successful culture. So the world, according to Richard Wolf, has always been capitalist. So every problem that's ever existed, ever in human history, at least since the launch of agriculture, is the fault of capitalism. Because capitalism is the prevailing system always. So he blames World War I and World War II on capitalism, even though, because he thinks the Nazis are capitalists. He blames slavery and capitalism. He blames feudalism and capitalism. He blames colonialism and capitalism. When you don't define your terms, when you don't have clear definitions and understanding, you can do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. Consumers spend more borrowed money often than they spend of their own earned wages, salaries, and so on. That is true. Every business borrowing wildly, especially in the last 10 years, as the government responded to the crash of 2008 by dropping interest rates to the lowest levels in history. This is the Federal Reserve, central banks, governments, not capitalism, not capitalist, not a system in which there is complete separation of economy from state, which is what capitalism is. No. This is the mixed economy in which the government rules banks. The government rules the central banks. The government determines the interest rates. The government determines the money supply. And yet he is blaming what the government is doing today, in the world we live in today, in our mixed economy. He is blaming all of that. On what? On capitalism. This only system that actually opposes all of that. But everything he says about the evil of what the Federal Reserve has done is true. Of what central bankers have done is true. But that's socialism. Yeah, somebody says in a thing that even accuses, he claims that the Soviet Union wasn't really socialism. It was state capitalism. So capitalism equals evils in the world. Then yeah, all right, capitalism is awful. But he is so pathetic, so non, a non-thinker that he can't actually, he doesn't actually define his terms. What is capitalism? Capitalism is a system in which all property is privately owned, in which the goal of the government is to protect individual rights, protect from coercion, and in which the state owns no means of production, no banks, no central banks, no money. State owns none of that. That would be a definition. Socialism is a system in which the means of production are owned by the state. The means of trade are owned by the state. That's socialism. But if you don't define your terms, you can make up anything you want. You can make up anything you want. And that's basically what he does. Blaming all this on capitalism so much. Which was an incentive, of course, for everyone in economic difficulty, a consumer, a worker, a business, a government, to borrow like crazy. Absolutely. And a consequence of government intervention. Money was rendered so cheap. And so the level of indebtedness exploded. Everybody needs to deal with their debts. True. With the credit system. And therefore everybody needs a bank. Everybody needs a bank all the time. We'll get to the number of banks in the United States in a minute. And as everybody needs a bank, more and more, to get cash out, to solve problems with your checking account, your savings account, your credit card, your home mortgage, and whatever else, the banks not only reap a profit bonanza, but they- Banks are not particularly profitable right now. It's pretty amazing. Profit bonanza. Banks are profit-wise below historical averages. Half of the last 10 years struggle to get back to the kind of profits that they had in the past. Banks are not making huge amounts of money in spite of this debt boom, which he correctly identifies. But just factually, these guys make stuff up. There's no profit bonanza. Same thing is always told to the drug companies. Ooh, the drug companies, they make so much money, but they don't. They return on equity and return on assets. They're pretty average. Banks are pretty low. Somebody who invests in banks for a living, I can tell you, banks are not very profitable right now. They're not badly profitable. They're not losing money by any means. But the idea that they are hugely profitable is such bogus lying, typical of these leftist intellectuals. And by themselves in a tough competition for the loyalty and the business of companies, individuals, and so on. And so a mad rush of competition is underway. And that's what you see. Every spare office, every spare storefront grabbed so that there can be a teller machine, perhaps a teller or two that are living people, and the rest of the apparatus of a bank. Now notice what he's saying is this mad rush of banks to open up more branches, more and more and more branches, because the banks are trying to get the loyalty of their customers. But what is the reality factually? Well, the fact is that over at least the last three years, the number of branches in the United States has declined. The number of branches is less and less. I mean, you can go look at the data. I have, again, this is my field. And the number of branches in the United States is in decline. Banks are not rushing to open branches. They're rushing to close branches. Because how many of you use a branch when you can do all your banking on a phone? So again, just lies, factual lies. It won't end well. It is chaotic. Competition is chaotic. The socials don't like competition. Competition, you know, you can't tell who the winner and losers are going to be. Competition means that people are pursuing their own self-interest independent of a central planner. They're independent of an economics professor, independent of an expert, independent of a philosopher king. Competition means people actually pursuing their ideas, pursuing their interests, free of asking for permission. It's chaos. They hate chaos. They want order. The best examples of capitalist inefficiency that one could look for. Now, why do America has so many banks? Because, man, America has a lot of banks. I don't know. Some of you live overseas and you don't know the extent to which the American banking system is massive. America has 5,600 banks, 5,600 independent depository institutions. Now, anybody know how many banks they were 50 years ago, 40, 50 years ago, in the 1970s? Well, how many banks? Is this mad rush to open banks? Mad rush to engage in financial activity? How many banks existed back then? Actually 20,000 banks. And why were there so many banks? Was this a phenomenon of capitalism? This capitalism caused a proliferation of banks. I mean, you think a socialist 40 years ago, there were 20,000. Today, there are 5,600. The number shrunk by almost 75%. And why were there 20,000? No other country has anywhere close to that number of banks per capita. So there were 20,000 banks in the 1970s in the United States. Today, there are 5,600 banks. So there's been a shrinkage of 75% in the number of banks. You'd think an economist like Professor Wolf would know this. And of course, the reason there were 20,000 banks in the United States was not because of capitalism. The reason was because of financial regulations. What are the financial regulations that made it possible, made it necessary for 20,000 banks to exist? Well, it was state regulations. States basically did not allow their banks to merge and branch across state lines. In some states, you couldn't have more than one branch. You couldn't have more than one branch so that if you wanted to have a bank in your neighborhood, you'd have to open a new bank. So during the 19th century, 20th century, you had a massive proliferation of banks because of regulation. No other country was like this. Canada, for example, where you could branch anyway, you could consolidate across state lines, you could establish a Canadian bank from coast to coast, has five big banks and a bunch of little banks and less than, I think, 30 or 40 banks overall. And they, by the way, have had no banking crises in their history. The United States is at 12 because we have too many banks, because of the proliferation of banks. Finally, when Congress did something that made sense, it happens once in a while. In 1994, Congress eliminated all the regulations at the state level that prohibit bank mergers, bank consolidation, bank branch openings across state lines and allowed banks to go anywhere they wanted. Finally, when that happened in 1994, since then you've had a lot of consolidation in the banking sector. But again, it's not capitalism that created the problem. It's state intervention, state involvement. And there's no proliferation of bank branches in spite of what you might think. And the fact that there are four bank branches on a corner means that you've got options you can choose which banks to use. Richard Wolff would want to have one bank, a government bank, the same government that is flooding the market with dollars and lowering interest rates to zero. That government, he wants them, those people, to own the one bank. But we won't call it a monopoly, God forbid, because he's against monopolies, that one bank owned by the people, it'll be a people's bank, democratically run, democratically functioning. That's the kind of world Richard Wolff wants. But first, first he should get the facts about this world right. He doesn't have them. Number of branches in the United States are shrinking primarily because of technology. Think about it for a minute. If, as you have in my neighborhood, banks on all four corners of an intersection, here's what you know. With modern computers, one bank could easily handle the business now being handled by four. Of course, and ideally, the government could handle the business of 20. But the only reason there are four banks and not one is because of regulation, that some central plan are put in place, thinking that they were doing what is good for, society, rather than lending the market dictate. Because the market would dictate not four banks on a corner, maybe two, maybe just one. And that's what we're heading, by the way, with bank consolidation. I strongly predict that within 20 years, there'll be less than 1,000 banks in the United States. And you won't have four branches on a corner because all banking will be done from your iPhone. Maybe, I mean, ideally, if the government stays out of it, there probably wouldn't be more than 50 banks in the United States. Good luck with keeping the government out of it, particularly with people like Richard Wolff will call themselves economists and pretend to be such. The same computer could easily handle it. The same or a larger number of tele-machines could exist in one room or anti-chamber of an office as in. That's why there's bank consolidation right now. Bank consolidation Elizabeth Warren wants to end because she says it's anti-competitive. So the socialists have to decide, do they want competition or don't they? And what kind of competition? And how do you measure competition? But the fact is the banking industry is consolidating. There are fewer, fewer branches. There are fewer and fewer banks. But what Wolff really wants is one bank, one by the people, one computer dictating everything to all of us. For the duplication of security personnel, of clerks and so on. All a product of regulation. Idiotic ditto for the safe deposit boxes and so on and so on. This is a vast waste of resources. True. And if we then had regulation, we'd be like Canada with basically five banks. Serving what end? Well, after a few years, some of these banks will collapse and be replaced by another kind of store. The chaotic and inefficient competition among capitalists. Yeah, they'll be replaced by store and then there we will have also inefficient competition between capitalists because we'll have lots of different clothing stores and each clothing store, I mean they could consolidate. We could have one big giant workers run clothing store, run like a co-op, non-unprofits, all guided by a computer program by government officials. The same ones who put together that wonderful Obama health care exchange. We'll end up with only one or two left. And guess what? They will reward us for this capitalist wasteful competition by becoming monopolies or oligopolies when a very few are in a position to jack up the rates because we're used to banking in our neighborhood. So there you go. The solution, of course, is what? Because capitalism gives us too many banks and then too few banks. What are we going to do? If there's only one bank, it can charge more for the safe deposit box and then checking the cash. You see the picture. It's chaotic. It's inefficient. It's the way capitalism works. Good observation, Liz Mednick. All right, let's get him off my screen. It's pretty disgusting. I mean, this is what they do over and over and over again. They lie. They make up stuff. They engage in pseudo economics, in pseudo facts. They never offer a solution. This solution is, again, this solution is collectivism. This solution is nationalization. This solution is to get rid of private property. This solution is to have one bank. But God forbid not one bank won by the profit motive. This solution has to one bank. One bank that is basically run by the government for the people. No profit, no private property, no private interests. He's an authoritarian, the worst kind of authoritarian. He might call the Soviet Union state capitalism, but the Soviet Union is exactly the system that his ideas have to manifest and he has to know it. Somebody with a PhD in economics, spouting a kind of nonsense that he does, is a massive evader. If somebody who evades reality constantly evades facts, constantly evades the economic theory constantly. And according to objectivism, the source of all evil is evasion. Richard Wolfe is evil. He's a bad human being. He's immoral because of his evasions. He's dishonest. Yet people love him. He appeals to young people. He appeals to their ignorance. He appeals to their naivete. He appeals to their lack of ability to think for themselves. He appeals to their lack of education. He appeals to their altruism and collectivism that they have been filled with throughout their lives. Now, I mentioned this in previous videos where I've talked about Richard Wolfe. He also talks with hatred in his voice. He has an ugly, ugly soul. He has an ugly, ugly mind. He has an ugly, ugly spirit. He is an evil man through and through. And you can see that justice pervades in this world. He's not a happy person. He suffers for his evasions. All right, let's go through some super chat questions. What is the value of selfishness? Use another word, self-esteem. The value of selfishness is that you esteem yourself as a value that you leave according to your nature, which means by the judgment of your own mind and you respect your own mind, you respect your own ability to do the right thing. Therefore, you respect the possibility of being a morally virtuous person. And you regard yourself as a value worth preserving. Let me bring it down from Kant a little bit to a bromide that I had drummed into me as a child. And maybe you've heard it. Happiness comes from making other people happy. Oh yes, I heard it. Who hasn't heard it? And that's the trouble. Let's aim at the day when people will not hear it anymore. Because it isn't true. It isn't justifiable. And the first question you would have to ask is why? Why is it good to want others to be happy, but not yourself? And I suppose you will be told that well, but they will work for your happiness and not their own. Well, it's like an exchange of Christmas presents that neither party wants, but you have to exchange presents and you're not allowed morally to do something for yourself. Whereas what I say, you can make others happy when and if. Those others mean something to you selfishly. If you love them, then you want to make them happy. Fine. If you don't love them, that's not a moral crime. You don't have to love everybody. You cannot love everybody because the meaningless expression, you can love only those whom you value. And if they contribute to your happiness, you contribute to theirs. That's fine. But each one of you has to be selfish about it. Supposing somebody were in love with you and said, I love you because you're so bad. So I sacrifice myself and I'm going to love you. Would you accept that or would you say it's the most? No, sir. I wouldn't either. That's the most insulting thing anyone could have said to you. And yet that's what altruism would demand. And there is a great Russian writer who tried to practice it, Dostoevsky, who did marry a poor, stupid little seamstress who he didn't love at all out of the desire to make her happy. You see, the end of it was she committed suicide. Now that is an altruist practice. That's what altruism leads to. How about it's more blessed to give than to receive? That's obviously the welfare state. That's a clearly motivated slogan to please give me something and you'll be blessed. But I will keep your material good. Using the super chat. And I noticed yesterday, when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity. Go to Iranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com Iranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next