 Hey everybody, today we're debating right populism versus left populism and we're starting right now. With our left populist, Zach and Gavin's opening statement, thanks for being with us. Zach and Gavin, the floor is all yours. Yeah, thanks so much for having us, James. Thanks for hosting this debate. Really excited to get into the conversation. If anyone's just tuning in and is unaware, I'm Gavin from the Vanguard, the co-host alongside Zach who of course will be debating the left populist position. With me today, like I said, super excited for this conversation. I think it's pretty undeniable that especially over the last five years or so, we found ourselves in a populist moment as a country with the emergence of candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. I think it's fair to say that voters across partisan divides have embraced outsider candidates that they want to smash up the establishment ways of doing things and forge a new path, a path that will be friendlier to workers, less friendly to corporations, among other tenants of what I would describe as populism. I'm really excited for this debate, especially because on our channel, we talk a lot about a lot of different politics and figures, but we're definitely not happy with the modern day state of the left as represented electorally by the Democratic Party at least in Washington, DC. I think that's important to stay from the get-go. I would not define myself as someone. I would barely even define myself as a Democrat if all. So I think it's important to find some common ground and hopefully talk about some solutions to the problem that are being posed by our two-party system right now and how it's disenfranchising voices across the country, but especially workers in particular and populists in general who aren't represented in our government. So yeah, just really excited to have an exchange of ideas tonight. And like I said, thanks for having us on, James and Andy. Yeah, and I guess to just pick up where Gavin left off, I guess it's really important for everybody at the beginning of this to define terms. What are we debating? What are we arguing? And I guess I'll just lay out my understanding of left-wing populism. I just call it straight-up populism when I'm referring to it. And I just think it is the unifying of the working electorate, the citizens of this country against the opulent power holders that currently control the levers of power in this country. Look, if you look at any single politician from the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, you're going to find a lot of similarities. And you're going to find a lot of similarities in the people that are fundraising for them. Wall Street contributes massively to both sides of the aisle constantly. And this is reflected in the legislation that we see. We see it easier for corporations to not pay their fair share of taxes. We see it easier and harder for working class people who are struggling to get a break on their taxes. The IRS loves to crack down on people who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year while letting people like Jeff Bezos off the hook for the fortune that they're amassing. And I think that fundamentally goes back to this issue of money and politics. And I think money and politics is really the crux of how I understand populism. Getting money out of politics, making sure that the people have the right to represent themselves and that the oligarchic few, the people who have amassed these vast fortunes that are able to bank for old lobbyists that are able to take people out to dinner. We've seen the impact that lobbying's had even in less politically divisive areas in the past where we look at 20 years ago, the pharmaceutical industries weren't the most scrutinized industries in the world. And yet they were being flooded with lobby money. And what did that produce for us? Purdue Pharma created an opioid crisis in this country. So I think that many of the military industrial complex will probably talk about the endless wars that we've been experiencing in this country. Where does that get connected to? It gets connected back to Boeing. It gets connected back to Raytheon. The fact that these people massively control our state legislators all the way up to our president of the United States. And that's true regardless of who's in power. And I think that it's important for Gavin and I to also state that I don't think any true populist has ever really risen to power in the United States. It's it's it's seeming that immediately after anybody is able to get a taste of any kind of opulence, any kind of the taste of the Met Gala type of treatment that they'll immediately turn their backs on the people and begin shilling for a more corporateized view of the world. And I think that that's the opposite of populism. I think anybody that's taking super PAC money or money from big donors cannot be fundamentally a populist because you're not representing the views of the people you're representing the views of capital at that point, which is distinction. So I guess that's where I'll lay my foundation of the argument. You know, I think it's big money in politics and undermining the will of the actual working people in this country. You know, it would be my broadest definition of populism. But, you know, I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say about how you view populism and, you know, we'll go back and forth about that. You got it. Thanks very much for that opening as well. And want to let you know, folks, that it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate. We are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics. We hope you feel welcome, no matter what walk of life you are from. Glad you're here. And with that, we will kick it over to our right leaning populist. Thanks so much for being with us. Ready to go politics and David Carlson. The floor is all yours. Yeah, thanks. And thanks for inviting me on. So I'm ready to go politics. As many of you guys know, I'm sure I run a YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers discussing political strategies and commentary mixed in there as well. I identify as a right leaning populist. I am a social conservative on by and large at the same time. I think that when it comes to economics, I'm a little bit more of a pragmatist and kind of like a whatever works kind of guy, even though I typically lean right, depending on on the subject for sure. And I agree that it's important to define what populism is. In my definition of the term populism refers to policies and organizations which seek to bring good to the common man through economic and social policies, which assist the working class, the workers of America and also the American family, as I do believe that strong and independent families are better off for society as a whole. They do better socially, do better economically and do better for society as well. So that is kind of what my view of populism is. I think that we do have a good deal of common ground. I think that we obviously we oppose the endless wars. We oppose corruption in Washington. We oppose corporations, even though we may have, you know, a little bit of a different way of rectifying the problem with corporate power in this country. And I'm really looking forward to having this discussion and really just seeing where it goes, because I mean, we're very divided as a nation right now. But like we like we see, we see anti-establishment factions rising up in both parties. And by and large, the anti-establishment left and the anti-establishment right are very different. However, there are select few issues that we can come to understanding on get some common ground so we actually can cause, you know, some positive change to happen in this country. Yeah, and I can't help but agree. I'm David Carlson or the DC perspective on YouTube. I make content. I'm head of content management at the American Populist Union, which is a 501c4 that me and ready go politics both work with and for just a couple of guys founded it. Our plan is to promote a populist message. So that's what we want to do. And to me, that populist message, like Red Eagle said, I think the crux of it is the American family. The goal is to support the American family and help them thrive. We do believe in some form of government assistance, of course. So the welfare state is something that we acknowledge. But the way that it is used and applied to the family rather than maybe a handout program is different. We view that differently. We see benefits from the government acting as opposed to our libertarian, not populist counterparts. I think populism is inherently economically speaking, more moderate and socially speaking. It could go either way, depending on where you stand on the issues. I know me and Red Eagle stand on the right side of those social issues. And I think that's where a lot of our, you know, disagreements are going to come from because when it comes to a lot of, yeah, going after corporations were for that, protecting, conserving the environment were for that, ending the endless wars, of course. We definitely support that. So I think a lot of the problem or a lot of the conversation we're going to have will be around societal, social issues or the culture war. You know, the phony culture war, as some people like to say. I don't think there's anything phony about it. I think the attacks on the family, the attacks on America, the attacks on, you know, the civil liberties are real. And I think they're they're pressing issues for the common man, which is what populism typically seeks to seeks to support. So that's where I'm coming from in all of this. And John, thank you very much for having me on. I appreciate it and this opportunity to sit down and have a, hopefully a very productive conversation with you three gentlemen should be, should be exciting. So 100% and want to let you know, folks, if you are new here, we have many more juicy debates coming up. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and as well as that Bell notification so that you do actually get notifications. And with that, we are going to jump into the open dialogue. Want to remind you, our guests are linked in the description. If you want to hear more folks and with that, gentlemen, thanks so much. The floor is all yours. Yeah, I guess if I'll just go ahead and start with the responses, I do want to, before we get into the culture work, because I don't think we're going to agree on anything there. Let's just go ahead and flesh out some of our economic issues just so that we can, you know, kind of get this space figured out where we might find some more, you know, harmonious agreement or whatever, just to just to let people, you know, get a taste of that. And I guess my follow up would be, you know, you both mentioned that you were opposed to these endless wars that, you know, you didn't think that that was constructive for the American family, which, you know, I would agree with that. You know, I don't consider myself to be fucking anti-family. I think we should have strong American families as well. I'll put that out there, you know. And so I think that, you know, my question would be, how do you think that we're going to, I guess, get get the endless wars to be put to an end when we're still, you know, increasing the military budget every year, regardless of who's in power? You know, Donald Trump did run on ending the, you know, endless wars and, you know, he did, you know, work to end the ground through presence in Afghanistan. But he also raised the shit out of the military budget, just like Joe Biden just did, but with a bill that passed through the House of Representatives, that's democratic controlled, right? This is going on perpetually, regardless of what is being covered. The money is still being spent, right? And that's taxpayer money that, you know, could be going towards an infrastructure bill that they're now telling us that we can't afford. So I'm wondering until we get big money out of politics, right? And big money has completely saturated every candidate that I think could be possibly described as right wing populist, whether that's Ron DeSantis taking $5 million from the CEO of Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in America, or whether that's, you know, Joshua Hawley running in Missouri, excuse me, you know, on right to work, which is terrible for unions. And again, anti-populist. And again, he's laid in with all kinds of big money. I'm wondering, you know, one of the biggest benders would be the military industrial complex, which gets into the pockets of every single major politician, if we're not going to prevent them from taking that money and having the will of those corporations imposed upon them, how do you think we'll convince them to, you know, stop perpetuating these wars overseas? Well, I think that we definitely need to change the messaging within the party. I think we have to elect a lot more grassroots candidates and we need to make sure that we keep these individuals in check. We need to make sure that they don't cave into these special interests. Obviously, we know that there's a lot of politicians and that happens on both sides of the aisle, as you mentioned earlier. And they'll run on one thing, but then they'll get in there and they'll vote in the opposite direction because they have, you know, caved into the Washington way of doing things. So we do need to elect politicians who are grassroots but also keep them in check. I mean, there's especially on the right and to a lesser extent on the left as well, actually, the left has arguably been more notable at doing this in certain elections in 2020, but for threatening people with primary challengers that seems to have worked by and large. Sometimes the primary challengers don't really pan out and they do cave in and they're, you know, the same way, but we have to at least move the conversation in the right direction and then put candidates out there who truly do get it and who truly do understand, but also keep those individuals in check and make sure that they do the right thing and that they're actually receptive to the base. Because if they are, then I think we could actually see some positive change, especially when it comes down to something like for an intervention. Right. And even more so, I think a misconception with the MEC is that it is entirely private to ID Eisenhower and his famous farewell address was not warning against private corporations, but also the creation of the National Security Advisory Board, which was a Truman invention and the Truman bureaucratic state, right? So this very collective organization of the CIA, the FBI, the, you know, what would become the NSA and the Pentagon and how they operate to kind of subvert the will of the presidency and in a way, the will of the people. So there is definitely a public government aspect to that as well that needs to be tackled and that won't be done entirely by getting money out of politics, right? Most of the people that are in those positions are not really known very well. They're unelected officials. So, yes, of course, money out of politics is is probably a way to go. And I'd agree with that at that as well. But there is I think there's a there's a larger photo here that not many people really capture adequately when dealing with the military industrial complex that just these very broad solutions aren't going to work. That's interesting responses from both of you guys. And it's funny that you say, Red Eagle, that the goal is to get more people elected to Congress that you think reflect the populist perspective in your opinion, because in my opinion, we've been pursuing that strategy on the left and to quite middling results. You know, I think that most of the progressives in Congress, whether it be AOC or Ro Khanna or really any of them with maybe a few exceptions have have proven to be completely ineffective. I think they've mostly been captured by the exact establishment which they ran against, which they purported to, you know, have revolutionary ideas about. So I don't necessarily see how that's going to solve anything. I mean, even if you look back to the Tea Party era, most of those folks have pretty much joined the Republican establishment, those of which were elected at the time that are still in office. So, you know, while I think electoralism has its place and we certainly have to, you know, deal with it to get legislation enacted, that there's no denying that I'm not 100 percent post electoral. I think that this question, you know, comes to a this opens up a bigger question, which I'm really fascinated to hear your guys's response to because we've identified the military industrial complex as a as a common you know, threat, something that we both agree is a problem. I don't remember which of you mentioned it, but one of you mentioned that you were against the destruction of the environment. I would imagine that both of you are against globalism, outsourcing of American jobs. But to me, there's a common denominator there, which is, you know, the cause of all of these, you know, ills, which have, in my opinion, largely destroyed this country. And that would be capitalism, specifically corporatism. I think you can trace that back to definitely Reagan. Maybe it started a little bit earlier, but it seems like especially since, you know, the Reagan era, we've seen a lot of the jobs in this country hollowed out at the behest of giant multinational corporations that wish to, you know, do whatever they can to increase their profits, be it outsourcing all of the jobs to China or be it expanding the wars, you know, even though that's obviously not going to improve any one's conditions, not here or abroad. And same with the environment, I think it's it's undeniable that the destruction of the environment, the Ecoside, which is underway is 100 percent a result of the quest of giant multinational corporations to increase their profits come heller high water. So I'd just be fascinated to hear your guys's take on capitalism in general and how you reconcile that with your populist views. Yeah. If you don't mind, Rep. Yeah, go ahead. The most successful YouTube video we have on the American Populist Union YouTube channel is Stop Idolizing Reagan, why Ronald Reagan is overrated. We are against open borders, his policies were against his free trade policies. And to be fair, the that all started more so with Truman and not Truman, my bad, with Kennedy is when that really began to pick up steam and the financialization of the economy under Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, of course. So, yeah, we recognize that there are capitalism is not a it is not a God to be worshipped, it is a tool to be used in the pursuit of a common good. We're not going to put economic principles over the well-being of human beings. That that's that's where we come from. I don't I think that that would be foolish. So this, yeah, this. I mean, that doesn't mean we're going to become socialists because that's even more brash and foolish. But what makes you think that that's brash and foolish? Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. Let me. So you mentioned actually, can I ask you a different question? Do you think that there are any elected members of Congress that even remotely stand up for any of the principles that that you're conveying? Because as far as I understand the phenomenon would be that if right wing populism has Donald Trump in the same way that same way that left wing populism may have Bernie Sanders, you know, while I may hold my own personal disagreements with Bernie Sanders, he was kind of the guy that picked up the torch for my politics and made it a broad national conversation. You know, we had four years of a Trump presidency and he didn't do a goddamn populist thing financially. His major bill that he accomplished was a fucking tax cut bill in 2017. OK, the average household in the 1% received a tax cut of $50,000, which was 77 times larger than the average tax cut for the bottom 80%. He also one of his critical accomplishments was fucking the estate tax. Right. And he made it so only I think 1,100 motherfuckers in the entire United States have to pay in the state tax because they're that rich. And who does that benefit? Donald Trump and other rich cronies, the exact opposite of the of populism, which would be a benefit to the working people, right? It actually shafted the working people because over time their taxes go back up, whereas rich people don't. I mean, I'm not defending any politicians here. I think that we can get caught in the kind of in the mud in that regard. But yeah, I'd say there are a few. Could you give me like one or two? Maybe broadly speaking, Jim Banks, Paul Gosar, believe in in the message that. And do you think they go to the skies? If we go to the open secrets, do you think we'll find financial money that's been donated to those people by large mega corporations? Yes. And do you think that that's a problem? I think it depends. I mean, if they're getting like a check for like $30,000, I mean, for the example of Jim Banks, if there's some company in Fort Wayne who writes them a check for $30,000, but if his voting record is not necessarily affected by it, I personally don't have a problem. But if he's going to be voting and caving in to their interests from time to time, then, yes, I would agree that it is a problem. But by and large, I agree that Donald Trump it was not the most populist president. That, you know, some people may even think that he is on the populist right. However, I do agree that he was that vehicle to bring that necessarily to the forefront. I think that by and large, in my own view, I think Trump does have good intentions. However, he makes horrendous personnel decisions. He, you know, put a lot of Bush administration, establishment, Terry and Neocons in his cabinet. And that, I think, was one of the things that really held back his presidency. If he had a little bit more, you know, populist people around him, I felt like it could have could have gone a lot better. But I definitely agree that there is this issue of so-called populist politicians. But when they get to DC, they cave in. And part of that is because the swamp does run deep. They're always going to be a few steps ahead of us because they always have that ability that we don't exactly have. Part of that does include things such as big money. But either way, it does put us in a very tough position, but we just need to keep, in my opinion, we need to just keep pushing forward with electoral politics to get changed because I can't see any other way we're actually going to be able to shape things besides maybe trying to infiltrate the institutions at hand, which is kind of like another thing that we like to talk about on the populist right. But the truth is a lot of like, you know, social views, for example, a lot of these mega corporations, they're now holding these, you know, pretty left-leaning social views. And that's kind of. Well, they're trying to profit off of them, right? Like, they don't. Yeah, yeah, these views. Well, I agree, but by and large. But no, I mean, actions speak louder than words. Well, that goes back to the capitalism problem. If you have a problem with that, you should be an anti-capitalist. And that and I actually want to talk more about socialism because you say you say social. Can I make my can I finish making my point? I think that like when Jeff Bezos says that critical race theory is a useful tool to to to divide people and stop them from organizing or or when, you know, like Nike presses, like left wing social movements on on to the general public for for profits. Yes, I think that that is just kind of. Democrats and progressives playing, you know, full to these people. I don't think that these these social programs that you guys push are useful to anyone. And I think that you guys are being fooled. We're being fooled. You don't think America has a racist history in the past? Well, I don't think that that's necessarily what a lot of anti critical race theory individuals are saying that the problem is they're going out there and they're teaching kids as young as a five years old, that's what what white privileges and things like that. And they're purposely using it by and large to divide people and mainly to pit everybody against white people because critical race theory, as you know, the only race that it's really critical of by and large is white people. And obviously, kids that are as young as five years old in elementary school are being taught a doctrine that is probably, you know, regarding a topic they shouldn't even be learning until they're like nine or 10 years old to begin with. I mean, I'm not opposed to teaching about America's past or slavery and things like that. But I remember learning that back in school when I was like 10 or 11. And it was more of an uplifting type of thing saying, we're past that. We got past this as a nation. They're going out there saying that America was inherently evil at its founding. And that's kind of what critical race theory tends to be regarded as by and large. Well, that's an interesting thing. And, you know, as far as like teaching five year olds about critical race theory, and I don't think myself or a lot of lefties are going to die on that hill, to be honest. I think that is one of the culture war issues, as someone said earlier, the phony culture war that's really being used to divide us. And we can talk more about it. I'm more than happy to have a discussion about it. But before we do get into the culture war stuff, I do want to talk a little bit about what you said, David, about, you know, corporations, the likes of Jeff Bezos, you know, kind of pushing these narratives, whatever you see it as on the masses. And it really does go back to the question, in my opinion, of capitalism versus socialism, because capitalism is just giving Jeff Bezos a bigger and bigger microphone, a bigger and bigger platform to spread whatever he thinks is the right idea or fill in the blank with literally any other, you know, billionaire or, you know, industry leader. And you said that socialism is foolish and treated like a dirty word. But I mean, in my opinion, the socialist institutions of this country are by far the best aspects of it. You know, I was at the public library earlier today, for example, great public resource. You know, you don't have to pay for anything in there. You can print off documents. You can gain access to information. You can apply for a job online, there, et cetera, et cetera. Think about the fire department, et cetera, et cetera. So I just wanted to, you know, get a little bit deeper into that and see what your problem specifically is with socialism and why you reacted the way you did to it. I think that you're falling into like a very good libertarian trap here. I'm not a libertarian, like this is what Dan Crenshaw got caught up on with Joe Rogan forever ago. Joe Rogan asked him, he said, are you you're against firefighters because they're socialists and Dan Crenshaw was like, whoa, technically. No, look, the firefighters libraries, they serve a public good. That's that's good. OK, socialism is workers owning the means of production. That's different. OK, we can band together as a community, as a government and form a common good institutions like a library or a fire department or a hospital, things like this. That doesn't mean that there can't be private libraries or private fire departments and in whatever mean. But yeah, no, those aren't socialist programs. Those those are actually like very, very good capitalists and any any any functioning market should have those. I don't think it's fair to say a library or fire department is a function of capitalism at all. Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's a it's a it's a function of a civil society, not of capitalism. Wouldn't that be a mixed market society anyway, though? Because I mean, we don't live in an authentically capitalist society. Like we can refer to our society as at least mixed market, right? We do have regulations. This isn't laissez-faire economics. Well, you're never. Yeah, you're never going. I mean, it's it's like this this is a problem. We're trying to push back the dogma of the right as well as the left right. So yeah, you're mixed market, capitalist, socialist. I mean, you're never going to have one of these things entirely. It's always going to be a give and take like like rep was saying, pragmatic economics is probably the best way to go. What works? What doesn't what doesn't work? Is well, yeah, and I would argue that control of every market. Massive numbers of people going into debt because they can't afford their health insurance. What doesn't work is a country that spends all of its fucking money on. Yeah, so that's what we have now, right? What we don't have right now is here. Also, when it comes to owning the means of production and the workforce, I do want to talk about that a little bit more, too, because if you're a populist, I would assume you believe in workers' rights. And I don't understand why the concept or principle of democracy, why that would not extend to the workplace. I just what's your rationale there? Well, we don't necessarily believe that workers themselves should necessarily band together to own the means of production as a collective. We believe that workers definitely have their rights for things such as collective bargaining and things like that. But we do believe in some form of hierarchy as long as the system is technically fair. For example, I don't believe that we should be taxing the 1 percent, 99 percent. However, I would prefer to have like a corporate tax code where we specifically incentivize wages within that tax structure. So, for example, if you have a corporation who is going to, you know, treat their work as well, CEO doesn't take X amount of pay and they have good working conditions. I'd be OK if they, you know, paid a little bit less in tax. But if the corporations are going to be the way that they are now, I mean, I'd rather incentivize the tax structure, for example. So it benefits the workers, so their wages increase and that corporations will start to fall in line and cater to their demands. Yeah, I mean, I mean that corporate tax rate, I mean, we can talk about that. I mean, were we a were we a socialist society under Dwight Eisenhower? You were mentioning him earlier in his really tremendous farewell speech where he warned about the military industrial complex that when he left office, I believe the income tax for the highest income earners was about 90 percent. Were we a socialist country when Eisenhower was president? And if not, would you be willing to, you know, have a mixed market where 80 90 percent of the highest income is then returned to the benefit of the public good? Because I think that would be, you know, a great step in the right direction. I don't care what the fuck we call it. Well, I mean, Eisenhower, like that is true. The one of the top marginal tax rates were in the 90 percentile or something like that. But what is also true is that like the effective tax rate really has not dipped that much since then, because there were just like so many loopholes. And I think it was actually LBJ who ended up like cutting taxes technically more than even like Ronald Reagan did. But like a lot of the loopholes were closed, so it didn't make that much of a difference in the rate that people actually were paying. Well, I mean, I'll tell you, it's made a shit ton of a difference in what people are actually paying because Jeff Bezos doesn't pay any taxes and he's rich as fuck. Well, what would he pay any taxes under the Eisenhower system then? Because there were a lot more loopholes back then. No, of course not. I mean, these. Yeah, like this has always been a problem. I mean, they're super wealthy that can afford art projects that can that they can just use to get out of paying taxes super easily. Like these are probably we agree, dude, like we're agreeing with you. Like, these are probably I'm asking you. If we did have a nominal income tax rate of 90 percent, let's just argue then for shits and giggles that we rewrite the legislation and it is an effective nominal 90 percent. You still have 10 percent of your mega wealth, you know, let's say, you know, instead of making, you know, three billion dollars this year, Jeff Bezos made, you know, four hundred and ninety five million or something like that after it's all said and done or, you know, fucking I don't I'm bad at math. Maybe it's two hundred million. I don't fucking know. That's why you're a socialist. Ha, that's got me. I can't do math on the fly. Smoking too much pot and jerking off. That's why I'm at the end of the day. We want to do what's best for the American family, and it depends what these billionaires and, you know, millionaires are contributing to society at the end of the day. So Jeff Bezos is fine in space. Like we can we can always debate and give in the context of whatever economic situation taxes are prone to change. That's why they're changeable. That's not why they're like written into law in the in constitutional law, you know, based on economic circumstances. So yeah, they're prone to change. I think a 90 percent tax rate for for Jeff Bezos would probably be a bit much if it was actually effective. Like if we were truly taking 90 percent of all of his all of his income, that that'd be a bit silly because there is a reinvestment opportunity that would be missing there. I mean, these wealthy people are wealthy for a reason. They're not reinvesting this money. He's keeping it overseas and fucking not paying any taxes on it, just like Apple's doing, just like Google's doing, and just like it was all revealed a few years back in the Pentagon papers. Well, if he's keeping it overseas, that's why Trump did a tax holiday where he allowed them all to you can Google this, everybody that's listening. Trump did a tax holiday about two years into his presidential term where he allowed them to bring a shit ton of money tax free from Northern Ireland and a bunch of other places that serve as basically tax havens for the fucking rich. Zach, you forgot we were speaking hypothetically that these loopholes, these tax havens that you're talking about, they're not in the question. In your scenario, you said, OK, let's say 90 percent flat tax, there's no loopholes in that scenario, 90 percent would be outrageous. OK, but now you go back into reality. So you're getting your own like situations mixed up here. I agree with you. That's a problem. But in your scenario of there's no loopholes, there's no like havens. So whatever we're taking 90 percent of the money that is tax, which isn't happening in real life. I know that they have loopholes. We're taking 90 percent anyways. No, that's too much like in your hypothetical. OK, if it was all effective, yeah, we're taking that's too much because that wouldn't be happening in this hypothetical, which you proposed, by the way. Yeah. Can I break in just real quick to clarify one thing? Usually when we're talking about tax rates, what's left out is that it's a marginal tax rate, so it'll be after a certain amount of money made, then it gets taxed at that percentage. So it sounds really scary, 90 percent that doesn't necessarily mean they would just hand over 90 percent of everything that they make profit wise. It would be after a certain cutoff that would, I guess, be determined by the government and legislation voting, whatever. But yeah, I just do think that's important to clarify because the tax rate conversation can seem scarier than it is. He would still be getting to keep an enormous, enormous, ungodly amount of wealth that no human being should ever probably own. So what do you think the cutoff rate should be then? Because like if the cutoff rate for 90 percent or whatever is like the 0.01 percent, you probably still would be taking like, you know, 70 to 80 percent of his earnings more likely than not. We did just straight up flat off the top just for posterity, right? If we did off the top, Jeff Bezos personal assets is net worth right now. If we take 90 percent from the bottom, this is we go through all the fucking shit. He has a net worth of $198 billion, according to current stocks. I understand that fluctuates depending on the value of Amazon, right? OK, if we take 90 percent of that, that's $178 billion. That still leaves the motherfucker with $20 billion. Like that is more money than you can humanly possibly fucking spend. And what I was arguing with when I said that the people reinvest their money, which you tried to do that like fun dunk on me. What I was saying was that actually they don't fucking reinvest their money. They come up with a million different ways to hide it from the government instead, and then they beg the government for more money. I wasn't trying to I wasn't trying to have a fun dunk on you. I was keeping it within the conversation. Yeah, no, no animus in that regard. Rep, go ahead. No, I was always going to say, so if they're going to find ways to, as they do right now, to hide the money in other places, don't you think that if you were to raise the tax rate up to whatever 80, 90 percent that he would just be hiding that money somewhere else or he would leave the country and I'm aware of the name. Yeah, he's a famous actor. He threatened to get in a fight with Joe Rogan. You might be familiar with him. But the other thing they fucking did was they put his ass in jail for years for not paying taxes. That's what I think we should do to the motherfucker said, hide their taxes overseas when we can prove it, because that's how an effective justice system works. See how many billionaires hide their money overseas if you throw a couple of them in jail for five years or 10 or 25 years like we did with everybody that got crack possession. Well, yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about if you if you want to talk about, you know, banning offshore banking, I mean, we definitely would probably come to some sort of agreement there. I don't like offshore banking. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, though. Then how will we keep them from doing that is we will enforce the actual law. We don't enforce the laws on rich people. That's why they continue to break it. Well, is it is it technically the law for offshore banking, though, because it seems to happen at very high rates, literally against the law. And it happens at very high rates because there is no effective legislation to prevent it. Well, they find ways around the laws by and large. I mean, there's ways that they find around it because we live in a capitalist country. I think most of the problems you guys are identifying could easily be traced back to the fact that we're extremely pro-capitalist country that gives tons of hands out to the rich allows them to get away with all this stuff, which again, is why I just find it a little bit shocking that you treat socialism like a dirty word when in reality it would just help to swing the power back in favor of workers. Just a tiny bit. I'm not I'm not saying we should go, you know, full communist takeover all means of production. I'm not like a crazy person, right? But as we exist in this country today, I think introducing a little bit more socialism and a little bit less capitalism would 100 percent be beneficial for workers and would help take care of a lot of these issues, which we seemingly agree are problems. Well, the thing is we're not entirely opposed to capitalism as a whole. We are opposed to corporatism. I think that by and large capitalism as David put it can be a useful tool. I support capitalism. I like to say that I support capitalism for Main Street. I don't support capitalism for Wall Street. I agree. We need to stop the bailouts. But at the same time, we need to also, in my opinion, reform our welfare system, make it pro family instead of anti family. We need to, you know, focus on growth. We need to, you know, start growth in the small towns again across our country that have been hollowed out. I think the best way to do that is to focus on. Yeah, I mean, capitalism for them, I agree. But when it comes to things like coddling the megacorporations, we need to stop that. I agree. I don't, you know, when it comes to giving bailing out Wall Street hundreds of millions of dollars, if anything, that could be in a way regarded as some form of, you know, corporatist type of socialism. And I disagree with that because I don't even think that that's real capitalism in a society where capitalism should work, because that's corporatism. Well, yeah, I'm also a staunch anti corporatism. Just to clarify, I'm also in support of most small businesses. You know, I take pleasure in supporting my local farmer's market and local businesses across the city. It's it's something I really generally see no problem with as long as there are regulations in place to prevent exploitation. But you do talk about, you know, families a lot. And I totally agree that it's essential to this country that we have strong family units. I think it's been born out in the data that most parents that are raised with two parents in the household, regardless of, you know, what gender the parents are, but most kids that are raised with two parents do, you know, turn out better as far as their mental health goes, as far as their ability to live a happy and productive life. I just think that's a reality. So I'm not against you in that sense. But I do want to ask what you think about the mass incarceration problem in this country, because I would say that that's led to the deterioration of many families, unnecessarily, specifically in black and brown marginalized communities, which have been historically affected by some of the, you know, crazy, wacky, lefty policies that are being taught in schools, like you mentioned, the historical disenfranchisement of these communities and what's led to that. So what's your opinion on that? Well, I mean, you also have to understand that that is actually that the incarceration rate is actually going up compared to where it was in terms of the gap between black and white. Actually, it was I think back in like the 18 late 1800s, the gap was like two to one or something like that. And now it's like I think it's like five to one, six to one. So if anything, I think that our current welfare system not necessarily opposed to welfare as a whole, but the current welfare system has incentivized the breakdown, which has caused crime to go up when there's not a father in the home across all races. You could look at the statistics. A lot of people that are in, you know, serving prison sentences do so because the fathers are not entirely in the home, not necessarily just because the fathers are in jail to begin with, but because these kids grow up without a father. Maybe it's because the father was, you know, incentivized not to be in the home and then they grow up and then they start to engage in criminal behavior. They look to guidance from people like gang leaders. And we want we want to stop that from happening because that's not really good for for anybody in society. It's not good for those committing the crimes. It's not good for the crime victims. So I think that if anything, we need to reform our welfare system instead of having one that tears down and disincentivizes the family and where the government comes in and replaces the father, have one that actually builds up families and supports the and incentivizes the nuclear unit. What about the welfare system? Do you think incentivizes fathers to commit crimes rather than be fathers? I didn't say that it incentivizes the fathers to commit crimes. I said it incentivizes fathers not to be in the home because it incentivizes, you know, single motherhood. And essentially, the government can replace the father. Therefore, did you grow up with the single mom, Red Eagle? By and large, yeah. But that's anecdotal. Well, hang on. So did I. So did I listen. And so did a shit ton of other people, right? This doesn't nobody gets a fucking sticker, right? A lot of people fucking grow up without dads. And I, you know, I have nominally my dad is in my life. I just spent a lot of time where he wasn't financially around. So I got the taste of what the fuck happens when you force a mother to raise a family on her own, which is, you know, holding down a job and eligible for a lot of the benefits, right? And, you know, and I understand a lot of the motivation that that makes people angry, right? My mom is a Republican, right? She has worked for Jerry Moran in the state of Kansas, right? You know, and one of the things that was so devastating to her when really reinforces her politics as somebody who, you know, doesn't necessarily love the social safety net is that, you know, she was working full time. She was really struggling to keep everything together with her and her three children. And she was denied a lot of the benefits that the government offers people who don't hold down work. Or, you know, if you are, you know, long term unemployed, you can get certain benefits as a mother that you're not able to get if you're working. There's a lot of fucking problems with our social safety net. But I just think it's completely absurd to argue that the father parent is financially off the hook or even, you know, not even there as if it's some sort of like good thing or as if it's like a choice that they're consciously making. Why there's, you know, we have so many problems in America and I want to divorce my story from this, you know, whatever. I'm just saying, I have some experience with a mother that was on the was attempting to be on the welfare state. And I also have family members that were able to, you know, get on whatever welfare state social safety net that we have. It's woefully inadequate for anybody, right? Nobody can live off of the benefits they give. Who can survive off two fifty a week anywhere in America? Nobody can. The reason that these people turned to drugs and was and the reason that we fed mass incarceration to the public as these fucking crazy as black men that are out to terrorize the public, which was definitely the dialogue in the 1980s. Obviously, that's changed as we've evolved as a society. But in the 1980s, it was watch out for this crazy black eye on crack. That was every night on the nightly news. OK, as that happened after we made it economically impossible for these people to survive in their communities because we took all the business away. We we starved out the businesses that surrounded government housing, which is where people are supposed to go to get help to get back on their feet. So I just take issue with the description that this idea that these fathers aren't around, one, because they've been locked in jail with unjust laws, like who the fuck should be able to send you to jail for what you do to your own body? That's a libertarian argument right there. But it's a wrong argument, too. So you think that despite of how popular it is to legalize something like weed that people should be in jail because they smoke weed? Very few people are actually, you know, serving like long term sentences for drug uses. There should be no people serving long term sentences for drug uses. Well, I mean, we could technically have that debate. But what I'm saying is that if you're trying to tie that into fatherless homes and saying that it's because that these people are being put away for these long term drug sentences, these long term drug sentences don't entirely exist in terms of statistically being enough to really make the difference. I mean, the average sentence for weed, it's very minuscule. But what about heroin, right? I don't give a shit what drug it is. I think everything should be legalized. I don't think that's the government. Well, how many people in jail are actually in jail for like heroin use? It's a very, very use or trafficking. But that's the same thing, right? Like, no, it's not. What are you talking about? Listen to me, anybody that's been a drug user will transfer drugs to anybody else. I've never I've never been a serious drug user. But if you read about these people's experiences of you're going to do whatever the fuck you can do to get. This is like medication for these people, right? And we're going to go down a rabbit hole of shit that we don't agree with. So I'll save us that fucking argument. But I just think that there's no way to call yourself a populist and not support the legalization and federal regulation of marijuana, which is like 80 percent popular with the regular people. It's pretty much like, I don't know exactly how many states have it legalized, but pretty much everywhere it's been decriminalized and or legalized in like most states for the most part. I mean, I know down here in Texas, it's not. But I mean, decriminalization will more than likely. I mean, it's in most cases. But I mean, if you look at the states that have it legalized in the states that don't, I mean, the problems still by and large persist. And the disparities are getting much and much worse. So it's not going to like things. So I just wanted to cut in and say that 16 percent of the country, essentially, or 60 percent of incarcerated people are there for drug related offenses, which is no small number, considering the vast population in this country and considering that we are the most incarcerated country on planet Earth. So this is not something to underplay. And yeah, I do agree with Zach that it's a little bit absurd to call yourself a populist when you can't support the legalization of cannabis or other drugs. When that is clearly an overreach of the government's authority onto average people working people's lives. All people use drugs, rich people use drugs, poor people use drugs. In my opinion, it's frankly insane to say that it could be it should be criminalized and the war on drugs has absolutely destroyed the family unit in many communities, maybe not suburban, white communities, but across the haven't, right? Drugs have just helped the family. Well, why do you think people use drugs? Why do you think people use because we have an instance? Because we have a societal rot. We have institutional right. And you think that incarcerating people is going to get that is going to fix that. Incarcerating that legalizing cocaine and heroin is going to fix that. I think we'll regularly have cocaine and heroin. Somebody said, I think it was Gavin, you said it was 16 percent. I believe it's 16 percent, I believe, for federal prison, which is a very small subset of the prison population as a whole. I just wanted to make that correction. Right. And also, you have to remember, a lot of these people settle the cases down so they get pulled over for something or they have possession of an illegal firearm and they also have weed. And they go, OK, we'll bust you on a weed. And OK, well, even the settlement there, I know that to keep in mind. Well, yeah, they have that to fall back on, too. So if you want to talk about like criminal justice reform in a way, having those drug charges exist, it might sound ridiculous. But if you think about it, it kind of makes sense that they kind of do serve as a as an option for people to plead down to begin with, because if it really wasn't there, people could be serving a lot longer sentences on average to be with plead down with is fucking murder charges and all kinds of conspiracy charges. Like if you go into those black communities that have been devastated by the drug wars, people are going down for writing people are getting life in prison for writing to a gas station when another person goes in and shoots somebody. I mean, this is this is the kind of systemic war on drugs kind of rot, right? Like you are a passerby and now you're doing 25 years. The people aren't pleading down on drug charges. That's absurd. Also, I have to break it down to them is what I have to break into and mention that even regardless of incarceration rates, being charged with a drug crime in general is financially devastating for the majority of families in this country. And I can tell you that because when I was in high school, I actually was arrested for cannabis possession. And luckily I came from a family that, you know, my parents have good jobs and we're doing fine, so it wasn't a big deal. But needless to say, thousands and thousands of dollars were charged of me for possessing cannabis. And again, luckily, my family was able to absorb that. But I think half of people in this country live paycheck to paycheck. You think your average family could afford the cost associated with any sort of involvement in the criminal justice system when it comes to nonviolent crimes, let alone incarceration, which, of course, has its own issues and recidivism rates are not good because of all the issues that come along with our criminal justice system, with our incarceration system and with how that affects people's going forward in their lives. So if you want to talk about, you know, destroying families and incentivizing people to live productive, you know, family lives or whatever, I just think it's insane to not take this into your consideration. Well, I mean, we need to provide alternatives. We need to help people who are addicted to drugs. We're not going to help them by legalizing drugs. OK, but we do need to provide support structures and and prop up institutions that will help these people, rehabilitation centers, churches, community centers, all sorts of things. I this legalized, not legalized conversation is black and white. It's not black and white. It's we there are there are definitely solutions other than full realization of you dead. We could start with woods and you can you can start by stop interrupting me. OK, you can that's that's a good way to start. Like, there are a lot of solutions that we can talk about. So go ahead. Sorry, I forgot what I was going to say. Also, James, I was going to double check in. What's our scheduled runtime in this? I just didn't know how long until we got to Q&A. Yeah, we're doing pretty well. I'd say we've got maybe another 10 minutes until Q&A. OK, cool. Oh, yeah, I actually agree with David. It's not entirely like black and white. And when it comes to things like drug legalization, I don't personally support legalization. But yeah, I mean, I agree. When you're talking about the South side of Chicago, I don't want cops going around and focusing on weed, obviously, because there's clearly other, you know, bigger fish to fry besides, you know, weed charges in the South side of Chicago. But like I said, decriminalization in a place like that is not something I'm opposed to. It's not really the hill that I'm going to die on when it comes to that. But I just would rather treat it when it comes to people that are using, like if people are an opioid addict, for example. Yeah, I would rather treat that like it's an issue of health rather than an issue, I mean, a criminal issue first and foremost. But when it comes to the people that are purposely going out here and that are dealing these drugs and they're ruining these communities, they probably should be going to jail, especially if they're going to be dealing Coke or heroin or crack or whatever it is. How long should their sentences be? I don't exactly know, but you do have to disincentivize that. I don't believe that it's going to be helpful to the people. If we don't, I'm not the biggest war on drugs guy myself. But by and large, I do support sentences for those that are dealing drugs that can actually cause serious, irreparable harm to somebody. Right. Well, I mean, I'm also in favor of like punishing people for selling heroin to children and stuff like that. I think the way to solve that would be. But I got you there. Sorry, my bad. No, you're good. You're good, bro. I think my solution to that would be to legalize tax and regulate these drugs so there's not a black market anymore. Then we won't have to deal with the criminal issue. And then, yes, instead of spending all this money, criminalizing and prosecuting people for doing drugs, we would spend that money. Exactly what you said, David, social services, helping people heal, helping community centers get the funding they need, helping treatment centers get the funding they need. Any institution which is seeking to remedy these issues and offer people help should absolutely be getting that money instead of it all going to the criminalization of these products, which, again, people are going to use anyway. There's always going to be drug usage and a market for drugs. I think it should be legal tax and regulated rather than a black market where people are getting fentanyl, late shit and dying. Yeah. And I also think that it's important to, you know, at least ask if you do support the people that are selling, you know, heroin, going to jail, usually with long sentences is how it works. If you get caught selling a narcotic, do you also support the entire board of Purdue Pharma going to jail for 10 years? Do you think all the doctors that peddled that shit should go to jail for 10 years? Yes, absolutely. When they're laughing in emails about getting white people hooked on cocaine and they they call them, what are they? What they come up with insults about how they're, you know, we're becoming rich off of opioids to selling them to these these hillbillies. Like, yeah, these people should go to jail. They're menace. They're actually menaces to society. They're evil people. They're evil doers, and they should they should be brought to justice. There is no doubt about that in my mind. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think that it's also important to know when we talk about the issue of opioid, the opioid epidemic and how people get hooked on it in the first place. A lot of the times they're not just, you know, going straight to heroin. A lot of the times they get on Oxycodone and all these other drugs that they get from big pharma. And yeah, absolutely. I agree that we need to be targeting big pharma for that first and foremost. And a lot of that is tied in with our political class as well. I'm sure you guys have heard Frank Luntz, the one of the leading Republican strategists, even though he's not really much of a conservative at all, at least not by today's standards within the party. But yeah, any definition really. But he he got essentially he was the one that was pushing Oxycodone as the miracle drug. And this is the guy that our politicians are listening to. And that kind of allowed in part for the opioid epidemic to kick off. So yeah, absolutely. I think that if you do tackle big pharma, there's going to be less of a need and less of a demand for these other drugs. I think I think it was Trump back in 2016. He always said they need to be they need to come up with some form of narcotic that's not changed. And I feel like we actually can see some form of reform. Right. And I'd like to make a greater statement. We're diagnosing, you know, people are doing drugs. The addiction comes from that. There are other things that come from that, including crime and incarceration. The question is, why do people have to do drugs? I guess some people smoke weed and do drugs because it feels good. But ultimately, I think it's a form of escapism. I think it's a form of trying to get away. I think that if people were happy with their lives, they probably wouldn't do as much drugs, especially hard drugs that ruin your life because people would be cognitive enough to realize that, hey, maybe this isn't good for me, maybe I should stop. We need to make life worth living. And that's what I think, like, right wing populism is about, making life worth living, giving people sustainable jobs in sustainable communities where there is a sense of fellowship, fraternity that people actually care about each other and care for each other and want to cultivate something beautiful, which our society and a culture does not incentivize at all. We live in, you know, ran down, disgusting, corporatized, very generic towns and areas. And the heartland is dying. It's being replaced by garbage. And we agree on this. And I think that like your solutions are they they're trying to fix a problem that we both agree on, but I don't think that you guys have the right ones. Like maybe you guys are pro-UBI. I think UBI would just cause more problems because it wouldn't fulfill people. People are fulfilled by work. People are fulfilled by family structure. People are fulfilled by having a purpose. I don't think UBI would be effective in that. Well, I don't think legalizing drugs would be effective in that either. I think that that would just depress more people because, you know, marijuana is a depressing, whatever we can. Yeah, go ahead, man. I'm sorry. No, well, I appreciate you saying that. And I just wanted to clarify that the populist left position is not that people should go out there and take hard drugs. Obviously, I agree that most people that are addicted to drugs, especially hard drugs are that way because, yeah, like you said, they're unhappy with their life. They don't have enough resources. They feel desperate and they do need an escape from the very cruel realities of this existence, especially under our hyper capitalist corporate system. It leaves people destitute. So, you know, while your solution is to criminalize those drugs and incarcerate people largely for helping them. Well, I mean, how it's incarcerating and charging people with current is not helping them. But my solution would be to actually provide them help rather than funneling through a carceral system, which only increases their trauma and therefore increases their dependency on drugs. But to your other point, sorry, what was your say? Oh, yeah, on UBI, I would say that, yeah, I agree, work absolutely fulfills people. One of my the things that fulfills me, most of all is working on the YouTube channel, the Vanguard. That's my job. That's Zach's job as well. And we get a shit ton of fulfillment from it. But we couldn't have started this. Thank you. We couldn't have started. We could not have started the Vanguard without some money. You know, we had to get laptops. We had to get microphones. And we had to, I mean, we started this job during the pandemic, honestly. And a big thing that helped was the stimulus checks. We weren't slaving away at some nine to five job that made us miserable and sucked all of our energy and time away from us. No, we had the time to ourselves to do what we needed. And yeah, that federal stimulus money really helped get us some of the equipment necessary to put on a show that people would be interested in watching. And now we do work. We work every day doing this show, producing content, fulfilling ourselves. But that was made possible with a little bit of stimulus. And I don't see that as any different than a universal basic income because a lot of people don't have the, they aren't blessed with family money. They don't have extra resources. Everything is going to food and to rent. A UBI would free people up and give them the time to pursue what they want to be productive in the ways that they see fit instead of their shitty boss who's forcing them, exploiting them in some job that makes them miserable and only depletes their will to live and to produce and to be productive. So I have a question. What are you guys' opinion of a negative income tax? Just kind of asking that question. If you support UBI, would that be something? Because I feel like that would be a form of UBI that would incentivize work better than just throwing out $1,000 to everybody every month. Yeah, I mean, I think it just comes from a fundamental difference in divergence in how we understand human nature, right? I guess if your position is that through where people will find fulfillment, through work going to a job that you enjoy or are productive and monetarily see returns by, then that would be a good alternative, right? It's like, oh, well, the people who go to work get this money back in the form of a tax credit or whatever, reverse income tax, et cetera. But I just personally, and this is maybe gonna sound hippy to you guys, but when I quit my job, I used to work at a fucking Silicon Valley startup. I hated every fucking second of it, right? I worked at a WeWork building. I had a fucking collar that I wore to work. I entered phones in those stupid fucking phone booths and cocked shit to people to pay my rent, right? And I never felt more liberated than when I said, nah, fuck this shit, I'm gonna become a podcaster and I don't give a fuck if I'm broke as shit and eat ramen noodles every goddamn night. And I think that's in people, that is in humans. You will find what you're calling is and then you will, whether it's Sisyphusian or not, you're gonna roll that boulder up the fucking mountain every single day because that's what drives you. And I think human beings, that's what makes us human, that drive that we have to create that, it's create new things and to push it forward. And I personally think that exists whether you get people at UBI or reverse income tax, well, I'm not against a reverse income tax. If people have jobs and that fulfills them, I think you should definitely get the extra bread and do what makes you happy. Although I will, I was just gonna say one last thing, I will say that UBI, I do prefer that because I believe universal programs are generally the way to go because if they're not universal, then they'll be reduced to handouts as right-wingers like to call them. So I just tend to say make it universal, that's my position. You got it. It might be a good opportunity to jump into the Q&A. We do have several questions ready to go if you guys are ready. Sure. Yeah. Want to let you know folks, as a reminder, our guests are linked in the description. We highly encourage you, you can check them out right now and that includes if you're listening via the podcast as we put our guest links in the description box of each podcast episode. So you can find them there as well if you're listening via podcast right now. And so with that, thank you gentlemen, we're jumping in with this first question from made by Jim Bob who says, populous left socialism requires capital. No, where does that capital come from? Is that the whole question? Yes. Okay, I think that just comes from a fundamental misunderstanding. Socialists don't oppose markets. Markets far out existed capitalism, right? Under feudalism when it was lords and serfs. We still had markets. People still went to the store and bought things. And even before the Lord and Serf relationships, there's actually a great book by David Graber. People can read it. It's all about the history of money and finances and back in the day. One of the ways that people would participate in markets before there was even tons of fiat currency floating around. If you actually look at spells and periods during the United States and even before then, there was not a lot of actual dollar bills going around. So people kept personal lines of credit around. These things could absolutely exist during, you know, with a socialist state. Socialists don't oppose businesses. We don't oppose markets. We don't oppose, you know, selling goods if you're on a mom and pop street. What we do don't support is unregulated markets. And what we don't support is, you know, workers not having their voice. We believe in democracy so much as socialists, which is what I like to say. If you're a true socialist, you believe in democracy so much that you think that it should expand to the workplace. So that's just my response to that. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's really well said. And generally, I mean, I don't think that, I don't think that money capital is necessarily a good thing. I don't think it's, you know, proven to be a very, you know, useful addition to the human species overall. But that being said, I do live in reality. I understand that we live in a largely capitalist society and we have to, you know, adjust accordingly. So while maybe in my fantasy, we would go to having no money, no capital, et cetera, and try to, you know, do a, you know, more communal type thing. Yeah, I understand that, of course, it's gonna have to come from somewhere. And of course, there's gonna be markets and small businesses. It's just about regulating them and balancing them with public, you know, programs with nationalized industry as well to, you know, rebalance the scale. You got it, Ann. This one coming in from Kay Lewis as force treatment for addicts. Question for all. I mean, force treatments probably won't help. I think hopefully we'd promote an environment where people would wanna be treated and wanna be helped. I think that there are ways to go about that, which might mean holding cells for a while and helping them through that struggling. I think that ideally we'd be able to provide strong civil institutions, which would help people and repeat offenders. Obviously, if you want drugs legalized and drug consumption legalized, I guess this doesn't really matter, but it's tricky. It's a tricky conversation, but really it's, I mean, how can we help people is where I come from. Well, I'd give them the choice. I mean, if you don't accept treatment for like heroin or something like that. And at that point, I probably would give the choice of either jail or treatment and then they would pick treatment. I wouldn't necessarily say it's force treatment though, but it's pretty much the illusion of choice. But yeah, I mean, I'd offer them an ability to, I guess you would say get off their sentence because a lot of the times these people do get dealt a bad hand by, as I've said, it all goes back to big pharma most of the time. So yeah, I probably would give them the opportunity to get clean. And if they do not take that obviously, then there would be some form of sentencing, but I think that they would take it every time. So you can call it force treatment or whatever, but yeah. Yeah, I actually know an alcoholic pretty well at just bone of feed alcoholic. And he was very aware that he's an alcoholic and he wants to get treatment for it. However, usually treatment for drug addiction requires at least taking two, three at a minimum weeks off of your job. And unfortunately, most people in this country, especially most people that are addicted cannot afford to take two to three weeks or more off of their job, which prevents them from seeking and getting the treatment they need. So well now I wouldn't be in favor of forcing anything. I believe if we offered people the opportunity to get the treatment they need, most addicts, which are very aware of their addiction and don't love the fact that they're addicted would take that treatment, would take that welfare. So yeah, that would be my response. Yeah, there's a good experiment that was done called the rat park experiment. This guy, Johann Hardy writes about it in his book. And it basically compares two worlds for rats, right? If you put rats in a cage and one of them has a water bottle and one of them has heroin-laced water bottle same with cocaine, methamphetamine, basically any drug that will alter the state of this rat, it will go up to it and it will suck on that water bottle until it fucking kills itself every single time. Every single time that would rat would run up to the water bottle and it will suck on all of the, you name it drug until it completely dies. That's just what it'll do. However, if you take another rat, one that would ultimately fault the victim to the same fate if you put it in that same cage and you put it in this really big cage and it's got a bunch of friends and it's got a bunch of other rats and stimulating things for rats to do, puzzles for them to solve, run around, get food, whatever. You can put both things of water in there, the heroin-laced water and the regular water and the rats will not touch the heroin-based water. They might try it one time and then they're like, oh, that's not water and they won't go for it. And I think that that goes on to say that the best way, or my interpretation of that study was that the best way for society to grapple with these problems is to make it so that people feel fulfilled in other ways. I completely agree with Red Eagle and David on that. We need to make people feel fulfilled through their communities, through their families, through their, you know, whatever your fucking hobby is. If you're an intense, like, you know, canoe rower, like whatever you're finding your community and you got to find it through something, 100%. But I also think that all of the evidence shows that if you put people in jail, if you force them to do even treatment at a nice facility that they don't want to do, it's ineffective, right? It doesn't work. And I'm not interested in pursuing any more policies that aren't effective. And I think that what has proven to be the most effective policy so far is to use safe injection sites for people, provide them with mandatory counseling if they're going to come and receive safe injections from you. We've seen this, if you can read the writing that Gabor Maté has done. He's a Canadian addiction specialist. He's done intense and really good work on the safe injection sites and the results that they've had there. And that actually leads people more likely, some people admittedly, about 10%, 15% of those who are addicted and come into the safe injection site. They will use heroin until the day they die. They will just keep getting their fucking safe injections every day. They'll go to work. They can be productive members of society. They will come every single day for their fucking injections. That's about 10 to 15%. But a large chunk of the other individuals, they will slowly wean themselves off heroin through therapy and through the safe injection sites. Criminal penalization hasn't worked. Our current rehabilitation, really it's a rehabilitation industrial complex. You can either go to a place that's really shitty and looks like it's in the bottom of a church somewhere and it's a couple of chairs and then you go to bed in a bunk room that's terrible and maybe there's a rundown shitty basketball hoop outside. That's one spectrum of the rehab facilitation center. And then the other one is like where you go if you're Hunter Biden and you've been arrested for like the 35th time for possession and use. And it's basically a resort that you go and kick it at and sit in the bathtub for a while and hang out. And that doesn't do anybody any good either. What we really need to be doing is thinking about long-term solutions. And so that's why I'd advocate for safe injection sites. You got it. Thanks very much for this question. Coming in from, do appreciate it. Let's see if I, two seconds, technical issue. Here it is. Thanks very much. Professor Paleo Khan asks question for the left-wing populace. How would you prevent left-wing populism from becoming a socialist communist state? I mean, again, I think that's a little bit of a simplistic way to look at it. I don't necessarily think that we should become a communist state. I just think it's about rebalancing socialism and capitalism and more in the favor of socialism prioritizing the rights of workers and democracy in the workplace, as well as potentially nationalizing key industries, which for example are destroying the planet. So that would be my answer. I don't necessarily know if, you know, left-wing populism would immediately lead to that. It would be up to the people, hence populism. Yeah, I think that that's essentially where it goes down, right? I mean, Gavin and I have our own positions. We're populists. We're free speech absolutists too. So we'll fucking argue about this shit. And I'll argue with other people who identify as left-wing populists all the fucking time about shit that we disagree with. But what we do agree with is, you know, economic puddle of fees that are gonna impact and benefit all proletariat workers, full stop. And, you know, that's, you know, I don't even think that necessarily this country is interested in going full communism. I think that if you were to introduce those ideas to a lot of left-wing populists, they would find them unsavory, right? I think that left-wing politics in America, despite my own personal view about it, just from an outside analytical perspective, is very infatuated with the Swedish, Nordic, sort of way of constructing society, right? They want to see civil services in a more robust fashion. They want to see transportation, roads fixed. They want to see public transit. They want to see a cutback in emissions. They want to see, you know, things that are by and large broadly popular amongst the American people, taking health care off the backs of the burden of the people, et cetera, you know, reigning in major corporations. I don't hear a lot of drums being beaten outside of the online like fucking, you know, we all, I mean, I'm sure that you've right-wing populists, you have the people that you're like, oh God, there are those people coming into our comment section. They want to do something crazy. Like we have those people too. And they're like, China's never done anything wrong. Like it's a, they've eradicated poverty. It's a socialist utopia in China. And we're like, okay, crazy people settle down. Like let's talk about reality. So of course everybody has a spectrum of like, oh, these are the people on our side of the political aisle that are just downright now fucking unserious. But I don't think that there's much of a political push from the populist left to go full communism. I think it's much more about workers' rights. It's about showing solidarity with striking workers. It's about regulating big business and those sorts of things. You got it. And I want to remind you folks before we get to this last question that we have, our guests are linked in the description that includes both here on YouTube as well as at the podcast. Thank you very much for this question coming in from Kay Lewis who asks Zach, none of these things have worked in California though. More of a comment. Sure. Yeah, I'll respond to that. Fuck Gavin Newsom, that guy is a stooge for Silicon Valley. No wonder shit hasn't worked in fucking California. Gavin and I are arguing for another wave of neoliberalism. We're not saying, hey, let's reelect Barack Obama. We want all those motherfuckers out. We want everybody that's ever taken a dime of corporate money out of office because I don't fucking trust those people. You want to know what the dumbest shit in the world is? Gavin Newsom's new fucking, oh, you can't have a gas powered lawn mower. This shit is absurd. What he's trying to do is deflect from every single real substantive issue that the populist left is trying to make people pay attention to. Like the fact that Prop 22 passed and it should and after millions and millions and millions of dollars were spent by YouTube to screw over workers and have all those rights that workers fought for in the 20s and 30s and 40s, all the shit that our grandparents fought for, struck for, stood on the picket line for and said, no, I will have my wage be higher, right? Like Gavin and I are from the Midwest. That runs deep in our community. People value unions, people respect unions here. So that's absolutely not the case in California. California is neoliberal as shit. Their ideal worldview is like exactly what Nancy Pelosi wants. It is absolutely antithetical to all of my propositions. And yeah, California is like the straw man that is used because it's the MSNBC style politics. It's the, you know, it's the neoliberalism that Gavin and I detest more than anything that that's what drew us to our politics podcast. We don't spend much of our time arguing outside of our party just quite simply because we think we have a lot of fucking cleaning up to do, right? And yeah, so I'm not going to stand here and stim for anything Gavin Newsom's ever done. I think he's a piece of shit. I think he, you know, he was eating at the French laundry while people were fucking in bread lines in his own fucking state. I mean, how much more out of touch elite can you get? That is the opposite of everything that I stand for, for sure. So, you know, thanks for the comment. But yeah, I probably detest Gavin Newsom in the California legislation just as much as you do, man. This one coming in from Contrary in 420, thanks for your support, as well as for your questions as for the panel, thoughts on our current central banking system. Any alternatives? Wildcat banks? And all I have to say is I'm not a fan of the Fed. I think that Fiat currency has been a disaster. It's not backed up by anything. I'm not saying that we have to do a full return at the gold standard, but I mean, we need to return to some form of standard because, I mean, the left will point to the, a lot of the graphs that showcase the income inequality breaking off in like the late 70s. And that's absolutely true. And I think that our current system and the, you know, the formation of the Fed and this introduction of Fiat currency has kind of led us down a dark pathway that benefits the corporations. So. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're expecting to get a lot of pushback from me on that. I also think that Nixon fucked up when he put us on the petrodollar. I think that, you know, I'm not a cryptocurrency guy. I think that unregulated currency is a disaster. If that's where this question is going to, I think that the rich people will buy up all of the currency and we'll see price plummetings, just like we saw when all the whales got in and then got out of Bitcoin. But as far as, you know, the way that things are done now, I guess I would just say that I'm not an economist, right, but I think we could stand to change a bit of how we're doing things. Gushin, or anybody else? I echo both sentiments, honestly. You've got an American populist. Thanks for your question says question for the left. How can you support mass immigration and be populist for two main reasons? It lowers wages and it increases CO2 emissions. Doesn't lower wages if you mandate a minimum wage of fucking more than they're paying us now. And I also just think that this, Gavin will probably disagree with me on this. We have a little bit of a different take on immigration. I'm gonna go ahead and give you the hard hippie version. Look, we fucked up all these countries. You commit a crime, you have a penalty for it, it doesn't matter if you like it, right? We did coup d'etats in these people's countries, we made it unlivable for them there. I think as a result of that, the United States has an obligation to, one, restore these countries to a place where people don't wanna fucking leave their homes, right? We need to restore these countries in central and South America. We need to stop intervening in their politics in the way that we're doing. And we need to let these people have their fucking countries back, but as it stands, we haven't done that. We've had them in road doctrine since God knows who went 17 something shit, which says that anything that happens in this hemisphere is the United States business and we've fucking thrown out leaders. We fucking put in people who are gonna lead death squads throughout places like Nicaragua. We've done a bunch of fucked up shit. We forced Mexico into the drug war that they didn't wanna participate in and we just talked about how that's been a massive disaster. So until you can fucking, I don't know, pay for your crimes, repent for your sins, whatever the fuck you wanna say for the United States government. So true, so true. We are gonna have people that wanna come into this state and I think it says it on the fucking Statue of Liberty, right, give us your broken, your tattered, all that shit, right? That's, you know. I mean, I like, yeah, it definitely is a curse on our nation that we've done such evil things around the globe that now we're suffering for it in different ways, I agree. But I'd remind you that the Bill of Rights says for our posterity and the Bill of Rights is actual legal document, not some hippie-dippy, which by the way, your answer was incredibly hippie and so I applaud you for that foresight you had. But the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, not necessarily a binding document. Like that's a motto that's been picked up by liberals, I guess, and really the mainstream. But you're right, my bad, the Statue of Liberty is not an icon of American democracy. No, no, no, it totally, it totally is. No, it is an icon of American democracy, which is the problem. I think Columbus is much better. Forgive me, just because they did ask for the left side to respond to that question, I do want to give Gavin a chance before, if you guys aren't as fine, I'm okay with that, but just Gavin, if you add anything. Oh yeah, I would pretty much largely agree with Zach. I don't really think we have all that much disagreement. The only caveat I would add is before we do just allow mass immigration, we do need to make sure that these workers are not being exploited by corporations because that will reduce the amount of American workers that are able to take those jobs if fill-in-the-blank corporation could just hire a bunch of illegal people and pay them shit wages. Yeah, that's absolutely gonna have that deleterious effect. So yeah, with the caveat that we need to take that into consideration and fix that problem, which again goes back to more socialist policies instead of just favoring multinational corporations and letting them exploit whoever they want. So I have a response to that and just the left argument on this as a whole. How do you rectify the $15 minimum wage coupled with mass immigration? Do you really think that that would be an economically viable situation because it's pretty evident that if you're pouring people in here and they are working for an increased baseline wage that it could potentially cause things like inflation to take effect even more so than it would now if you just raised the minimum wage to 15 the way that it is. Yeah, that's actually true. And if we let the corporations go ahead and get away with that, they'll just go ahead and skyrocket what they're charging people, they'll gouge people, they will do everything that they fucking can to keep their body in line where it's at. My answer to that would just be more regulation, right? We might disagree on that, but I think that you can't allow corporations to price gouge people at a time like this. I think that if you're gonna change the societal fabric, I think we'll say, hey guys, you can't make your fucking shit overseas anymore because you're paying those people 10 cents a day with no bathroom breaks. That's just the reality, right? Where everything says made in China, made in Indonesia, we're not doing it over there because it's fucking utopia. We're doing it over there because it's cheap as shit and we can exploit those people. We're gonna say, no more. You take that off the table and then you say, hey man, you have to make everything fucking domestically or you're going out of business. The United States government will put your fucking executives in jail and you're going out of fucking business. Then you can say, okay, great. You wanna work in America? You gotta pay your people a living wage. We're gonna start $15 an hour. And hey, here's the fun. Instead of doing all that subsidizing for people like the airline industry, for Citadel, for all these motherfuckers on Wall Street that just burned through all of our cash, let's reinvest that money in mainstream. Let's take basically the PPP loans and all that shit that we just gave out to people. Let's do a specific funded bank rule for small businesses that want to be able to pay their employees more. They need it. We've given so many breaks and benefits to big business. Let's give some breaks and benefits to small businesses. Let's pay them more money. Walmart can take the hit, right? They have fucking, Amazon can take the hit if you make the fucking $50 an hour. They're still making money, right? But small businesses on Main Street where Gavin and I live, that's just not the case, right? Because people don't have as much money here as they do on the coast. You're a conglomerate. You're getting money from people in New York and LA who have these astronomical incomes. But if you're in a place like Kansas City where the average income is closer to $40,000 annually, of course, the people are making their decisions a lot more tightly on your local business level. If you've raised the prices on something to pay your workers more, that's gonna be really felt in the community. You're gonna feel that backlash as a business owner because people are gonna shop at your establishment less. We have to do something to counteract that. We have to. And my position would just be that we should tax the larger companies, the ones that we've been giving bailouts to. You correctly identified it as socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor, which is actually an MLK quote about basically letting big business off the hook and leaving poor people to suffer. So I think you have to do both, right? You have to provide a boon to small businesses, Main Street, as we call it, right? While then making the big conglomerates, the ones who have been receiving all of our bailouts and fucking squandering it all the time, those are the people that are gonna have to vote the bill because they can absorb it. You got it. And that's actually all we have for questions, folks. Do you wanna say we sincerely appreciate all of your questions? It looks like David, do you have a point? Go ahead. Yeah, I do. Just to kind of respond, I know I said something earlier and get quite a chance, but I would like to say there are ways to raise the wages without mandating minimum wages, which I'm actually kind of for minimum wages. But wages will rise naturally if we stop mass immigration because it does lower wages. And if we stop free trade, become a competitive, well, a competitor in the global market again, raises, oh my goodness, wages will naturally rise. And we can see this tracking over since the 40s, wages did rise. And then around 1970, 1965, somewhere in there, we went free trade with JFK. We had the Hart-Seller Act where we started to bring in a million people a year, then things got worse around the Bush administration, H1B visas, competition decreased and so did pay. So yeah, I think that this question is, yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about it, that immigration does decrease wage growth. You got it. Well, we do want to say folks, our guests are linked in the description. We sincerely appreciate them and that includes at the podcast and want to say thank you so much, Zach Gavin, Red Eagle Politics, as well as David. It's been a true pleasure to have you guys on today. Yeah, thanks so much guys. Really appreciate the exchange of ideas and really appreciate your moderation, James and Andy. Yeah, good chatting with you guys. Thanks for having a good chat. I enjoyed it, yes. Absolutely. 100%, thank you guys. And with that, we will be back in just a moment folks to let you know about upcoming debates. So stick around for that and we'll be right back as mentioned. No, no, no, you're cool. That's good. And want to say ladies and gentlemen, punk to see you here. Thanks for being with us. And do want to say hello to you in the old chat. We saw new people in the old chat there, such as Fat Baggins as well as Professor Paleocon and Jess Sagalow, good to see you. Devil's Thadvicate, glad you made it back. I recognize you, Brian. Brian, win, right? That's how we pronounce it, Andy. I think so. Thanks for being with us. Someone said it was win, but I thought it was win. Is it poker? They said win, like W-I-N. You'll have to let me know, Brian, in the chat, how to pronounce it. But we're punked, you're here either way. And then, Brassman, thanks for being with us as well as in Hacks and La Tornadoes. La Tornadoes says, don't forget about the Twitch chat. You're 100% true. Thanks for reminding me as I know that I am, honestly, oftentimes the most forgetful person ever, but I'm pumped to see you there in the old Twitch chat. Brooks Sparrow, good to see you. Oh, I was just looking at Twitch. Topazal, good to see you. And let's see here. In the old Twitch chat, thanks for hanging out with us, though. We are excited to get to hang out with you and as well as let you know this Thursday, we do have a debate with a ghost hunter, real life ghost hunter. That's gonna be a juicy one. You don't wanna miss that one. And then, King Anus, thanks for being with us as well as the anti-authoritarian hippie and Office Computer 888. Thanks for dropping in. Fat Baggins pumped you here. And yes, we are pumped, you guys. Bubblegum Gun, good to see you as always. Second Horizon, good to see you. And we are pumped, though. Stellar J. Atkins pumped you came by. Thanks for dropping in. Kevin Dev, glad you're with us. And I've gotta run, folks. I've got a super jam-packed week, so I'm kind of in a time crunch, but did wanna get to say hello to you and say thanks everybody for your support of Modernity Debate. We do have a lot of juicy debates coming up, so don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. And with that, wanna say thanks everybody. Thanks, Andy, so much. And we'll see you next time, folks. Thank you, James. Thank you, everybody. Have a good night. 100% thanks, everybody. Have a great night.