 Hasan Piker is one of the biggest streamers on Twitch, which is quite the accomplishment because the platform was originally for gamers, but he does political commentary. With over 2.2 million followers on Twitch, 1.1 million on Twitter, and 1 million on YouTube, he has quite the influence. He's a hardcore eat the rich type pro socialist leftist, but he's not who he appears to be. He's come under fire quite a few times for the amount of wealth he has, and each time this happens, he not only has justifications locked and loaded, but his millions of followers are quick to come to his defense. The excuses and reasoning used to justify Hasan's enormous amounts of wealth completely contradict what he says and the moral high ground he takes. Today, I wanted to break down and explain how nepotism created this faux anti-capitalist. Although it's rarely discussed or acknowledged, to take a political position is to take a moral position. Yes, even right-wing conservatives believe they are moral exemplars. To be a socialist or social democrat, you're taking a clear moral stance. I've personally been in this camp since learning about Bernie Sanders years ago and realized that he stands for everything I believe in. As a whole, here's an incomplete, abbreviated list of some of the things that we believe in. One, people should make a living wage. Two, healthcare is a human right. Three, college should be free or at least way less expensive. And four, there should be a true equality of opportunity. I don't think Hasan or any of his followers would disagree with much from this list, but what's often left out of this conversation when it comes to Hasan Piker is wealth hoarding. Again, we're discussing taking a moral stance politically. So, do we believe that we live in a fair and equal society when a small portion of people have far more wealth than so many other people in this country? Now, listen, before any Hasan Piker stands freak out. I challenge you to stick with me until the end of this video. This isn't about Hasan Piker having money. I could really care less how much money the guy has. This is about Hasan believing he has a right to the moral high ground by simply saying that we should tax the rich more. By the end of this, I'll show you how Hasan's actions don't align with his words and is similar to the right wing free speech absolutists who block everyone who disagrees with them. Sure, you can say we need to have more conversations with people we disagree with, but if you block anyone who disagrees with you, are you actually walking the walk? In Hasan's case, if you're an anti-capitalist hoarding wealth, do your actions align with your words. The reality is that Hasan is extremely disconnected from the working class who he claims to be fighting for. I'll have more to say about anti-capitalism and morality soon, but first, we need to understand how Hasan became disconnected. Was he originally connected to the plight of the working class and just lose his way? Or is he someone who was never connected to the working class in the first place? But before we get started, if you're new here, welcome to the Rewire Soul. I'm Chris. I love making video essays talking about a bunch of different topics, breaking them down, analyzing them, and seeing what we can learn from them. So make sure you subscribe, ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos, all right? And for all of you loyal subscribers, some of you right now, you're like, wait a second, am I experiencing deja vu? I could have sworn I just saw this video. Well, to be honest, there weren't that many of you. So real quick, I took a very, very long break from YouTube. The YouTube algorithm is not being too friendly with me and it's suppressing my videos. So I've been experimenting a little bit and I take so much time to work on these videos. This video right here took me multiple days, all right? I had to write out the whole thing that I spent an entire day editing and everything. And although it's not about the numbers as creators, when we make something, we want it to reach people. So as you can see, there wasn't too many views on this. So I decided to re upload it with some different settings. So all of you, if you're wondering how you can help out, just do me a favor, engage with the video. When you like comment, share the video on other platforms that really helps with the algorithm. The algorithm is like, oh, cool. People actually like, you know, this video. So if you want to help in that way, it doesn't cost you a penny. It helps me have the time. It helps me get in the good races of the algorithm once again. And I would really, really appreciate it. But as always, be sure to leave a comment to just let me know how you like the different voiceover style that I've been doing lately rather than hopping on camera all the time. Because yeah, I like your feedback and like knowing what kind of videos you like best. All right. But before we get started, one more thing. If you're not yet, make sure you follow me over on social media at The Rewired Soul. I love chatting with all of you. I love getting book recommendations. And also this way you don't miss any upcoming content just in case the YouTube algorithm doesn't want to show it to you. All right. But yeah, let's do this thing. Nepotism is a hot topic and you need to look no further than YouTube to see just how many people have become interested in it. Simply put, nepotism is when people in power favor people close to them like friends or family by giving them jobs or opportunity. Remember, a core tenet of anti-capitalism and socialism is true equality of opportunity. In a society where nepotism exists on such a large scale, this form of equality just is not possible. We're sold on the idea that America is a meritocracy. We're told that if you work hard and improve your skills, you'll reach the top of the ladder and live that American dream. We're told that the capitalist system is the best system because it's meritocratic where you could start from the bottom and work your way all the way up to the top. One of the most cited studies on what it takes to succeed in America and become wealthy comes from a Georgetown University study. This study is titled Born to Win, School to Lose, Why Equally Talented Students Don't Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be. And you can probably already guess where this is headed. Their summary puts it nice and succinctly. The American Dream promises that individual talent will be rewarded, regardless of where one comes from or who one's parents are. But the reality of what transpires along America's K-12 to Career Pipeline reveals a sorting of America's most talented youth by affluence, not merit. Among the affluent, a kindergartner with test scores in the bottom half has a 7 in 10 chance of reaching high SES among his or her peers as a young adult, while a disadvantaged kindergartner with top half test scores only has a 3 in 10 chance. This study shows that the top predictor of wealth in the United States is not how smart you are, it's not how hard you work, but it's about the family that you are born into. Although Hassan claims to be anti-capitalist, you can easily see the contradictions here. Although Hassan and his followers believe they're anti-capitalists, when the excuses for Hassan come out, you can see that they too have been brainwashed by this neoliberal idea that we're living in a meritocracy. While doing research for this, I came across one of Hassan's videos titled, Hassan Reacts to a Quote-unquote Hater. And this short 8 and a half minute video is extremely telling, and I'm going to reference it more than once in this video. And when you are living the life that that theory is based off of, any true leftist with a love for people and a sense of empathy would understand that. But that's not what these white male leftists were. Truthfully, they're not that different from their white male conservative counterparts, just another side of the same coin. Their sense of elitism was just academic and came from their knowledge of theories rather than propaganda, but it gave rise to the same idea of political dominance. I think the part of the thing that's funny is though, like none of those people are academic, like including myself. Like if she was to, I guess like if she were to call out like Bosch or Destiny or whatever the like that wouldn't get as much traction. So she just like chose me instead. Or maybe she knows that I agree with her and that's why she added me and said like, oh yeah, Sampakar, please stand up. But So listen, I'm a college dropout. And if you're a non-college educated like myself, you know there is a major lack of opportunity when you do not have a college degree in this country. A recent study shows that on average, there's a pay gap of $22,000 per year between those with a high school degree and a college degree. In fact, the overall return on investment for a college degree is nearly $1 million over a lifetime. If you're familiar with my work, you know that I'm a natural skeptic. So when Hassan said that he's quote, not an academic, I was instantly skeptical. Like I said in my recent video about Jordan Peterson, the Manisphere and strategic ignorance, these things take two seconds to look up. Wikipedia always has an early life section and it often outlines a person's education. On Hassan's Wiki page, it says that he attended the University of Miami, transferred to Rutgers University, graduated cum laude and had a double major in political science and communication studies. I don't know about you, but this seems pretty academic to me. If I were to be charitable to Hassan, I'd say that he interprets being a quote unquote academic as someone who publishes research. But in the context of the video he's responding to, she's clearly discussing the educated elite rhetoric that Hassan uses regularly. People in the working class don't decide to skip college for no reason. Those of us who don't come from a privileged background are well aware about how many more opportunities that you get just by going to college. The problem is that since we're the underclass, we can't afford it. So by going to college, we're rolling the dice. We're hoping that that investment pays off. But as you've seen throughout all of the debates about student debt forgiveness, a lot of people's college investment did not pay off. What we're seeing with Hassan Piker is cognitive dissonance, turning into what psychologists call dissonance reduction. Dissonance reduction is the process by which a person reduces the uncomfortable psychological state that results from inconsistency among elements of a cognitive system. Being the progressive socialist that Hassan is, he has to ignore his privilege to make it make sense. So rather than understand this woman's criticisms of his educated elite rhetoric, he chooses to use his own definition of what an academic is. But after graduating Kamlade with a double major from a top tier college, what did Hassan do next? In 2013, Hassan joined the Young Turks, which is one of the largest independent media channels in the world. It was 2013, so Hassan hadn't even graduated from college when he joined the Young Turks. Now, you may be asking how Hassan managed to get this job. Was it from his hard work in college and his advanced intelligence like the meritocracy tells us is what happens? No, this was a simple case of nepotism. Hassan Piker was hired by the co-founder of the Young Turks, Cenk Yuger, and Cenk is Hassan's uncle. Now, it's important to discuss why nepotism is such a massive issue that stifles equality in the United States. Despite everything you've been told about meritocracy and success, this whole thing is a zero-sum game for someone to win someone else has to lose. That's simply how capitalism works. Privilege and nepotism create an unfair example at every single level of our lives. Colleges have a limited number of spots, so for someone to get a position, someone else has to be turned down. Jobs have a limited number of open positions as well, so to get a job means that someone else had to not get that job. Something that nepotism babies of Hollywood say to reduce their own dissonance is to argue that there is just so much nepotism in Hollywood that it creates this competitive atmosphere. Sorry, but a bunch of rich kids coming from famous families is not a fair competition because there are countless people who come from nothing and will never even get their foot in the door. So, to watch Hassan sit back and say, I'm not an academic, is completely disregarding the advantages he's experienced and the privilege that he comes from. It shows that his disconnection wasn't something that was lost, it just was never there. Much like an Elon Musk, his mind tells them that he's worked hard to earn his wealth, so he deserves it. And the myth of meritocracy wins once again. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am that I'm finally able to address this. Every single time that I see someone explain that Marxism is about how workers are exploited, I want to massage my face with sandpaper. I would rather watch Tucker Carlson for 24 hours straight pretending that he's not a racist than to listen to my fellow leftists tell me that wealth hoarding is totally cool just so long as you're not exploiting labor. I would rather helplessly watch as my cat throws up in a terrible place while I'm in the middle of a Zoom meeting than witness leftists believe the exploitation of labor is the only moral topic that we should even consider. That is such a cop-out that allows wealthy, privileged people like Assant Piker to get away with whatever he wants. The idea that as long as you're not exploiting labor, all is well and good in this world is completely ridiculous until people who believe in Marxism recognize this will never solve any of the problems that we see with capitalism. To understand where I'm coming from, we need to talk about something called effective altruism. Effective altruism is a philosophy that comes from a man by the name of Peter Singer. I won't get into all of the details of effective altruism, I actually covered it recently over in a substack post if you want to read it, I'll link it down below, but you should really read Peter Singer's books as well as some books from William McAskill if you want to learn more about effective altruism. But anyways, in short, effective altruism is about doing the most good that we can do. When I learned about effective altruism, I had the experience that many people do when they learn about it. Peter Singer has us do a little bit of a thought experiment. He has you imagine that you're walking just minding your own business near a shallow pond. You look over and you notice that a child has fallen into the pond and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy, but let's say that saving the child would ruin a $100 piece of clothing that you have on. Maybe you have on some fancy shoes or a nice little sweater vest, something that's worth $100 that will get ruined if you save this drowning child. He then would ask us, do we have a moral obligation to save that child's life even though it would ruin something that's worth $100 of ours? Well, do you? Singer then asks, if it matters how far away that drowning child might be. If you could save that drowning child's life anywhere in the world, if it was equally within your means and it would only cost you $100, is that not the same thing? If it's of no danger to yourself and at no great cost, no massive inconvenience, do you still have a moral obligation to save the child? And I'm telling you, that right there messed me up because the point that Peter Singer is trying to make is that on a daily basis we spend on ourselves when it costs so little to help another human being. For example, there's a charity organization called GiveWell and they are an organization that believes in effective altruism so they try to do the most good with the money that they get and they show how getting a bed net for children in Africa is only $5 and this helps prevent the spread and infection with malaria. Alright, so when we start thinking about this stuff, like I said, it really messes you up because you can simply donate $5 and it might save somebody's life. But before you get all crazy with me, just know that I personally believe that there are limits to this thing but it makes us start asking some important questions. The most important question is this, with so much suffering in this world, how much money is enough? As you can see, if you follow me on social media or you've watched my videos where I'm actually on camera, I like to spend some of my additional money on sweet Lego collections but this thought experiment has made me pause before making literally any purchase. But Peter Singer's thought experiment reminds me of what happens to newcomers when they get sober through 12-step programs. They say that once you know there's a better way of living, it really messes up your buzz forever and I know this from personal experience because I was a chronic relapser. They talk about having a belly full of booze but a brain full of AA, right? So once you hear this thing, you cannot unring that bell. So hopefully now you can kind of see where I'm going with this and why it's a little ridiculous for Hassan to believe that he has some sort of moral high ground while he lives such a lavish lifestyle. Again, Marxism is more than just about the exploitation of labor. We need to start asking how much wealth does one person actually need? If equality is about fairness, how much does someone like Hassan actually deserve when so much of his current situation is based on privilege and nepotism? Both factors are completely outside of his control. In 2021, Hassan came under fire for buying a $2.7 million home in West Hollywood. One article describes it as being in a centrally located Beverly Grove neighborhood, a secured and tightly hedged if otherwise bland and featureless courtyard fronts the roughly 3,800 square foot pan-Mediterranean style residence that was built in 2014 with white stucco walls and a red tiled roof. Arguably, one of the exposed wooden eaves gives the five bedroom 5.5 bath home a smidgen of authentic architectural character. I think it's safe to say that we progressives argue that the rich have far more than what they need. Hassan is a twitch streamer, which means he can literally do his job anywhere with an internet connection and a room to do it in. So why does Hassan need a 3,800 square foot house in one of the most expensive states? Not only is it one of the most expensive states, but he's in one of the most expensive areas of the entire state. Now, this is where Hassan stands come out in full force. This is when questions come up like, well, how much should his home cost? And is he not allowed to have a big house? They also bring up the fact that Hassan bought a big home so his family could live with him. I'll be the first to admit that these are extremely fair questions, as well as a good point about doing something kind for his family. But going back to Peter Singer's thought experiment of the drowning child, it kind of screws up your buzz again. I live in Las Vegas and it's nowhere near the cheapest place to live in the United States. But after doing a quick Zillow search, I found out that you could buy some pretty nice five bedroom houses over 3,800 square feet for less than half the price of what Hassan has spent. Seeing as how Hassan can do his job from anywhere, we have to acknowledge the fact that he is making the conscious choice to live in one of the most expensive places in this expensive home. Take a moment to ask yourself, how much good could he do for others if he made another choice? How much additional money would he have to help others if he lived in a different city or a different state? Since Hassan is a self-proclaimed anti-capitalist, I don't think that these questions are so out of line. Now, this is when we get into some much tougher questions that Hassan defenders have. How much money should he give away? And more importantly, how does somebody like me know that he's not given away massive amounts of wealth? Much like the other questions, these are extremely valid. These are really difficult questions to answer, and I for sure don't have all the answers. But in order to even get close to the answer, we need to approach the questions from a different angle. We need to return to the question of, with so many people suffering, how much does one person or one family actually need? From here, we can start with the question of, how much money should someone give away? I think a good reference point is to start with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Our basic needs are food, water, warmth, rest, security, and safety. So in order to survive, we need to be able to feed ourselves and have a roof over our heads. After that, we have to meet our psychological needs, which means we need to have relationships with friends and family. This helps us maintain our sanity and not spiral into a deep dark depression. I think it's safe to say that after meeting all of these needs, the rest is a luxury. So, what are the luxury items in this hierarchy of needs? Next up is prestige and a feeling of accomplishment. I've recently discussed the sociological theory of conspicuous consumption, which is the practice by consumers of using goods of a higher quality or in greater quantity than might be considered necessary in practical terms. Basically, after our basic needs are met, we then spend our money to convey status. Hassan presents himself as an anti-capitalist, but so much of capitalism is based on social signaling via status displays. The rich are those who buy what they don't need simply to prove to other people where they stand on the status hierarchy. So, when Hassan buys a $2.7 million house in Southern California, when he could live somewhere much cheaper, how much different is Hassan than the rich that he claims to be against? Going back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Peter Singer, how can we defend a man who says he's fighting for the good of all while he buys things that he doesn't need? Meanwhile, there are so many people in the United States alone who can't even meet the basic level of Maslow's pyramid. The next question was, how do I, Chris, know that Hassan is not giving away a ton of his wealth? Well, now that we've approached this question from the angle of how much does a person actually need, the one thing that we do know is that Hassan is not giving away nearly as much as he could. This also brings up an interesting moral dilemma that I regularly acknowledge, and this is something that I believe we all should take into consideration. Giving away your wealth is another form of social and status signaling. If a person flaunts how much money they give away is no longer seen as altruistic, but if a person doesn't say how much money they give away, it's assumed that they're not doing it. So I respect the fact that people like Hassan are put into a very lose lose situation. By now, you've probably even asked, well, how much money are you giving away, Chris, with all those sweet Legos all over the place? And I'm in a similar moral dilemma. So if you would like to know how I decide how much money to give away to charity while finding a balance between things I want to have fun with, luxury items and all that, leave a comment down below and I am more than happy to discuss my personal process so I can find a balance that meets my needs as well as trying to meet the needs of others. But now I want to return back to the argument from Marxist that is simply about eliminating the exploitation of labor. I really want to drive the point home that Marxism has a massive morality problem when we forget the major issue involving wealth hoarding. To do this, I've crafted a little thought experiment of my own involving Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is an extreme example that allows us to really highlight the lack of morality with this type of Marxist thinking. Why? Because Jeff Bezos has more money than he could possibly spend in an entire lifetime. Not only is Bezos one of the richest men alive, but due to all the attention on the unionization efforts of the Amazon employees that have been going on recently, many of us know that a lot of his wealth comes from labor exploitation. Since Hassan, Hassan's fan and I all agree that labor exploitation is bad, let's imagine something incredible happens tomorrow. Imagine that tomorrow Jeff Bezos wakes up in the morning after having some sort of Ebenezer Scrooge experience in the previous night. He decides that he's going to change his ways and from this day forward, he's no longer going to exploit his workers. Starting tomorrow, his workers will get to keep their surplus of labor, giving them a massive wage increase. The workplace also becomes democratized and they vote on how much their leader Jeff Bezos should make as a salary. Pretty cool, right? But although Jeff Bezos is no longer exploiting his workers, he still has more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime. Or let's say his workers are so grateful to Bezos' change in heart that they still let him keep a fat salary. And don't forget about all of his investments that are making money while he sleeps. Meanwhile, while Jeff Bezos still has more money than God, hundreds of thousands of Americans are homeless. People are starving to death and using GoFundMe as a way to pay their medical bills. Would any rational person say that Jeff Bezos is the pinnacle of morality while still hoarding all of that wealth? Of course not. So, if it's still wrong for Bezos to hoard all of that wealth despite the fact that he's no longer exploiting workers, how can you argue that Hassan's massive amount of wealth is okay? When Hassan was trending after buying his multi-million-dollar home, his primary argument was, then tax me. I cannot tell you how lame of an argument this is. But even more so, people actually fall for it. Like, what a weak excuse to hoard your wealth. So, is he saying that you need to be forced to help others? As anti-capitalist and protaxation as I personally am, this is exactly why conservatives hate this idea. They don't believe that you should be forced to help others. If Hassan was the upstanding beacon of Marxist morality that he presents himself as, why does he need to be forced to redistribute his wealth? This man came from privilege and benefited from nepotism. In a truly equal society, he would not be in the position that he's in right now where he's amassed so much wealth. And since this video essay is already long enough, I will spare you the conversation about the privilege and success that comes along with being conventionally attractive. But just know that that's played a massive role in his success as well. But due to Hassan's constant need to reduce his dissonance, he's been able to dodge this glaring flaw in his moral compass. So, if I'm being real with you, I debated on including this last section, but I feel it needs to be said because it further solidifies the point that Hassan is disconnected from the working class. Going back to Hassan's reaction to his alleged quote unquote hater, he's able to dismiss all of this woman's arguments by saying, I'm not who she's talking about. Much like believing Marxism is simply about labor exploitation, Hassan misses the broader point this young woman is making. This is extremely easy to recognize by simply watching her video without Hassan reacting. When your leftism doesn't come from a love for people, it shows. This reminds me a few years ago of how white male leftists on TikTok would come on here to debate with white male conservatives. And though so many of us praised their content, I think they're actually a perfect example of what this creator is talking about. If you look closely at the origins of their perspective and the vibe of their community, it ironically mimics the alt-right pipeline. For so many white male conservatives, their journey to the alt-right started with content like that. Feminist gets owned, feminist theory gets destroyed, content around dominance of political ideology rather than social issues that ideology is actually based off of. And these white male leftists had a very similar vibe. It felt like these leftist creators were just using these debates as a grudge match, an excuse to destroy or own their conservative opponent. Their leftist ideology was never born of a love for people. It was born out of vain self-interest to flaunt their intellectual superiority and prove that their political ideology was more dominant than a conservative one. The damning thing is when a lot of black and brown creators, some leftists and some who just wanted to call out their lack of intersectional theories or the tokenization of black and brown people's experiences, women's experiences that they would be talking about in their debates, these white leftists leaned into their sense of elitism and tried to say that those perspectives were invalid because they were not academically insightful enough. They argued that these creators had no room to criticize them because they didn't study or understand the academically codified leftist theories like they did. The thing is, you don't need to understand a theory for your perspective to be valid, especially when you are living the life that that theory is based off of. Any true leftist with a love for people and a sense of empathy would understand that. But that's not what these white male leftists were. Truthfully, they're not that different from their white male conservative counterparts, just another side of the same coin. Their sense of elitism was just academic and came from their knowledge of theories rather than propaganda, but it gave rise to the same idea of political dominance and the same lack of empathy and love for people. All right, real quick, I'm going to go off my script for a second. I just want to say how terrible reaction videos are for this very reason. When you're watching a reaction channel, they pause the video so much that you don't even get a complete thought from the person. It chops it up. So a person will say one, two, three seconds of something, not even a complete sentence. Meanwhile, somebody like Hassan or any other reactor will take five minutes to argue against that point. When you're not even getting a complete thought from a person, you're not arguing against anything. So anyways, that's my personal gripe with reaction channels and how people love them so much. Someday I might do a video on this and further show how this happens because when I go watch the original videos, I see this all the time. I'm like, you never would have known what this person was actually saying if you didn't go watch the original just because the person paused it so much and took so much time reacting to two or three seconds of half a thought. So anyways, let's jump back into this. So Hassan's entire reaction to her was a straw man argument attempting to rebut a point that she was not even making. Her argument wasn't Hassan is a debate bro. Her argument was similar to the alt-right pipeline. Hassan has a similar community of toxic people cheering on this blood sport. Hassan is playing a game of semantics here to avoid what she is actually saying. He's saying, I don't debate people as a core aspect of my content. Therefore, I am not a debate bro and do not have any of the same characteristics. She says, quote, for so many white male conservatives, their journey to the alt-right started with content like that. Feminist gets owned. Feminist theory gets destroyed. Content around dominance over political ideology rather than social issues that the ideology is actually based off of. You don't need to be a diehard Hassan fan who spends hours a day watching his streams to see the similarities. Just look at his channel. He's the equivalent of a leftist Ben Shapiro. Hassan uses his privileged, educated background to dominate his political opponents and belittle them. And if you don't feel like watching his videos, just scroll through his Twitter feed for two minutes. Hassan Piker is the educated bro dude of the left and for the life of me, I can't understand how people manage to have this massive blind spot. His rhetoric and argument style is no different than Manisphere bros spewing a toxic masculine vibe except Hassan is wrapped in this leftist outline. This is what the TikToker was saying and it's nothing new. FD Signifier and Noah Sampson have brought this up as well as many others when it comes to debate bros. In his video on Vosh, Noah Sampson shows how Vosh has created such a toxic audience that they go and attack people that they claim to be fighting for like black women. Can you honestly tell me that with Hassan's dominant style that he has a compassionate audience who isn't spewing hateful garbage across the internet with people that they disagree with? Hassan's educated elite background of privilege allows him to use academic lingo that doesn't connect with the lower class and I think that's a factor in why he's successful. These people watch him and think, oh a guy with the stereotypical high school jock physique and attitude but he says big words and is a leftist right on. And don't be fooled by stuff like this because he's not ashamed to wear a dress. My senior year in high school when I was a football playing toxic masculine jock I too wore a dress with my teammates as we did a cheer routine. Just because I wore a dress it didn't mean that I wasn't a self-interested D-bag. So what did we learn today? Being anti-capitalist in a Marxist is more than just getting rid of labor exploitation. We also learned that nepotism creates a society that can never be truly equal and those who benefit from nepotism and privilege will always refuse to acknowledge it. Most importantly we learned that to take a political stance is to take a moral stance. You shouldn't have to be forced by the government to redistribute your wealth. Part of me wants to suggest that Hassan knows that in our capitalist society where money rules over politics he never has to worry about his taxes going up. I would not be surprised in the slightest if deep down he knows that he's never going to be taxed as much as he says he wants to be so he can easily say tax me all day long while hoarding his wealth. Meanwhile there are millions of people in America working 10 times harder than he is that can't afford to pay their bills. Now there's definitely something to be said about the fact that Hassan is spreading awareness about various issues and potentially creating more voters. But when you're talking the talk but not walking the walk of making a more equal society does that even really matter or is it just a hollow form of virtue signaling? Well look at that I managed to make it all I'm gonna care about after I finished editing this video I just wanted to make two things super clear just in case they didn't come off the right way all right. So the first thing is I have absolutely zero problem with people like Hassan making money I do not mind people making money we are all living in this capitalist system so if you want to make money make your money boom all right until things change with the entire system that we're living in I don't fault anyone for making their money the point I'm trying to make is when you have created your plan off of this idea of socialism and taking this moral high ground and saying eat the rich tax the rich the rich are terrible while simultaneously being one of those rich people that's where I take the issue all right so from anybody who was about to leave a comment or already left a comment saying like oh he's not allowed to make money this is a straw man argument that I didn't have in this sweep but I've been thinking about it this often comes up right when someone criticizes a so-called socialist for making money they say oh you're against people making money and it's completely switching the conversation we're no longer talking within that framework right like you know Ted Cruz or somebody who's very pro-capitalist if he's talking about making money I'm like okay that's who you are that's what you talk about but when your anti-capitalist and then holding all of this wealth that's where I'm taking it right that's the first thing the second thing is too don't mean to pick on his song I am not just picking on his song you would be surprised at how often I notice this and have these same criticisms okay the song is just one of the the largest creators the largest influencers someone with the largest voice and I felt that it was necessary to bring this up but trust me whenever whenever I see a socialist slash marxist slash anti-capitalist content creator I often check a few things right how big a rectangle they are all these other things but also check their their patreons too right because I'm very skeptical of that when you're bringing in double what the national average for the monthly salary is for making anti-capitalist content I get a little skeptical so I want us to start having this conversation more regularly right just the morality of it all because what are the actual values that we're trying to get across right and I truly believe and I love all of your feedback in the comments down below if you haven't left yet let me know let me know where you disagree but I personally believe one of the core values is trying to create equality right and I do not believe that it's morally acceptable to say I believe in this thing but you're gonna have to force me to do it or I'm not gonna do it and then we just kind of look at that and accept it all right so I hope those things those two things come off clear and like I said I'm not perfect I do find a balance with what I do this is that sweet lego collection that I was talking about and there's more behind this camera that you cannot see but I personally find a balance with what I do right so if you would like me to make a separate video about the process that I go through because trust me a lot of thought goes into this uh let me know down in the comments like yeah Chris make a video you know if this got your wheels turning if you heard that Peter Singer thought experiment and it messed you up too then let me know I can make a video on that I'm more than happy to do all right but if you've made it this far I really appreciate you having videos this long it is a gamble a lot of editing a lot of time goes into these so if you've made it this far I really really appreciate you if you're new make sure to subscribe if you're already subscribed I love you I appreciate you anybody watching make sure you follow me on twitter and instagram because again I am testing some different settings and I'm turning off it going to your subscription feed and the notifications going out so make sure you follow me on social media I will post these to the community tab the last video that I did on Queen Elizabeth on black twitter actually performed very well because I had that setting off so I'm still gonna keep experimenting with it because that might be my way of getting around the algorithm kind of not being too happy with me taking such a long break from YouTube all right but anyways that's all I got from this video again I appreciate you tuning in checking out this very long video essay and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I'll see you next time