 I want you to see how Rational National kind of responds to this guy and the kind of admiration, the kind of, and this is what, this is the left. This is who we're dealing with in terms of economics, in terms of morality, in terms of everything, and you know it's, let's take a look at this. So I'm going to be commenting on Rational Nationals. What's his name? Somebody you know his name? I couldn't find his name. It has to be somewhere here. But anyway, we're going to be commenting on his response to this Richard Wolfe guy as well. Here we go. You spend the best days and the best hours of your adult life in an institution that tells you in a thousand ways, don't give a shit about you. Mark's an economist, Professor Richard Wolfe. Now before we get to that, did you notice just the, the sneering, the attitude, the disgust with which this guy talks about you and your job and, and I mean, it's just, just this condescending, creepy, you'll see this over and over again. What a, what a, what a horrible person. Just from that little clip, you can see what a horrible person. All right. Was that left form 2019 where he discussed four issues with capitalism? David Bell. No. It was about 20 minutes long, but I'm going to pull three different clips out of it to showcase to you just how brilliant Richard Wolfe is. He's really able to. Okay. Keep in mind, brilliant. This guy is brilliant. Richard Wolfe is brilliant. So keep that in mind as we go through this. I'm only going to show you two clips, two of the clips that he, that he presented because the third clip is just stupid and irrelevant. So I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you two of them. This guy is the most anyway, you'll see. To break down the, the inherent issues with capitalism and make it digestible to the average person. So let's get to the first clip. You know that in the private sector, which is where most of us work, the overwhelming majority. By the way, everything he says from now on is basically true of the public sector as well of any sector of the nonprofit sector of any sector. You know, we'll talk about that, but, but it's basically true of, of every sector produces some good or some service and sells it into the market. And that employer is never ever going to hire you for $20 an hour, unless the following sentence is true. During each hour that you work, you add more to the value of what your employer sells than the $20 he's going to pay you. Or to say it in real simple English, you produce more than you get paid. Now notice, he presents this as some kind of revelation. This is a deep point. This is, wow. Do you know when you go to work and they pay you $50,000 a year, they get more than $50,000 of production out of you? You work to them, in other words, more than $50,000. Now this is, this is what Marxism is about. This is a key point within Marxism. This is the whole basis of this idea of exploitation. But note the disdain and the wonder in which he says this, ooh, I am such a smart guy. Look, when you go work for somebody, they pay you less than what you're worth to them than what you actually produce. Now why is that just a truism? Indeed, that has to be the case. And indeed, that is true of every, every trade, every trade. When I buy an iPhone, when I buy an iPhone, I mean, it's horrible. I pay $1,000 for the iPhone, but you know what? The iPhone is actually worth more than $1,000 to me. I'm actually underpaying for the iPhone. I mean, if I paid the full worth of what the iPhone is worth to me to Apple, Apple would have a lot more money. It's not fair. And you know, what else? When Apple sells it to me, it's because they value the $1,000 more than they value the iPhone. They make money off of it. I mean, that is the essence of trade. The essence of trade is that basically we pay for something less than what it's worth to us so that we are better off as a consequence. And we sell something for more than what it is worth to us. And therefore, we also benefit. That's what makes trade fundamentally win-win. Now let's apply this to labor. The business, the evil corporation, evil in quotes, corporation, pays you $50,000 a year, $100,000 a year, whatever the amount is, $100,000 a year, because you can produce for them more than that. That is, you're worth more than $100,000. That's why they're willing to pay it for you, otherwise they'd keep the money. So the value you add to the business is worth more, I have mentioned iPhones, I've mentioned it, is worth more than the amount they give up, again, the essence of trade. And you know what's amazing about that is, is that the worker accepts the $100,000 a year because what? Because that is worth to him more than the time he's going to invest in working for this company. So of course, I always tell students in my talks, you are going to be paid less than what you're worth to the company, but more than what you can get anywhere else or more than what you value your time at. That's why it's a win-win. You're better off because you're getting more than your alternatives. And I'm assuming here that it's not just about wages, it's also about the environment, it's about the whole package benefits, whatever, the whole package that the employment involves. And the employer is going to get more than what they're paying for. It's exactly the same as buying an iPhone. And yet the Marxists present it, and Wolf is not unique here, this is the whole basis of exploitation theory, we'll get to that as he moves forward. Is that this is some kind of revelation? Now, this basically reflects a pure, sheer ignorance of economics, and that's why I put in a quotation mark, you know, Richard Wolfe economist, he's not an economist, he knows nothing about economics. If you don't understand the trader principle, if you can't understand the trader's win-win and how the nature of that win-win relationship, then you should never not call yourself an economist, and notice that this is who rational, national, you know, just grovels before, just thinks it's just this genius, you guys are an idiot, to put it mildly, right? All right, let's keep going. So notice, okay, so you're getting paid less than what you produce. So if you've said to yourself, have you heard some proud person say, I will never work for anyone who doesn't pay me what I'm worth, you're talking to a person who doesn't understand how the system works. Notice, he equivocates between what you are worth economically, of course, and what you produce in the context of a corporation. Note that if you could produce that as an independent and make that 100,000, let's say, I don't know, let's say you write code for Apple, and they pay you $100,000, plus the benefits or whatever, if you could write the code and sell the product by yourself to get $100,000, or let's say $110,000, because you're actually producing code worth $110,000, because you're producing more than what they pay you. If you could do that independently of Apple, then you wouldn't go to work for Apple. You'd do it independently. But the fact is, you cannot do it independently. So your work is actually worth zero independent of Apple, or Google, or some employer employing you, you know, unless you've got some new idea for some new product, and then you can go become an entrepreneur. But your work that you're doing for Apple is not relevant to anything else. It can't, it doesn't stand on its own. And therefore your worth is your worth to whom? It's not, you don't have an intrinsic worth, and your ability to produce is ability to produce for whom? Now, if you want to produce for yourself and be an entrepreneur, that's a different career track. Good for you. But we can't all do that, partially because we, most of us don't have what it takes to be entrepreneurs. Most of us don't have good ideas. Most of us, some of us are not disciplined enough to be entrepreneurs and to work for ourselves. We don't know how to sell what we would make. We have no idea how to do it, and then we would have to hire people to do the marketing. I mean, what Richard Wolfe is doing as he's rejecting specialization, rejecting again, another basic idea, basic concept in economics, and he's rejecting his rejecting the whole idea that you are worth to someone. There's no intrinsic worth. You produce for someone. The only time you produce and you gain from that product, you know, you could go back and be a subsistence farmer, and then you grow the potatoes and you saw the potatoes. And then you get exactly what the value is that you produce. But even then, what is the price at which you get the potatoes for? Well, what the market is willing to bear? In a sense, the market is going to determine your worth. Who else is going to determine your worth? Your worth economically is what people are willing to pay you based on how much you produce and based on the fact that they make that job available to you. Now, we'll get to the role of the capitalist and the role of the entrepreneur in all of this and why there's a whole lot of dimension of ignorance here. I mean, these people have no clue how business is created, how business runs, how business produces. They just think it just happens. They're just jobs. There's just a place for you. And then they screw you and they're just products. There's just innovation. There's just stuff. I said this the other day when I talked about about, no, I forget his name. Anyway, the guy I talked about two days ago, who did I talk about two days ago? Man, I'm getting old. The whole assumption of the Marxism and the whole assumption under most leftist economics and unfortunately, the whole assumption under most every economics with exception of some Austrians is that stuff is just there. I spoke about Cornell West. Thank you, Jennifer. Cornell West makes the same mistake. The stuff is just there. And the whole view in economics, the whole view in economics, that economics is the study of the allocation of resources under under scarcity. No, that's not what economics is about at all. scarcity is irrelevant. There are no scarce resources. What's interesting about economics is the creation of resources. It's how resources created, how wealth is created, how stuff is created, not how stuff that somehow miraculously appears gets distributed. That's not economics. That's not economics. When Marxists do it, and it's not economics when classical economists do it. The whole point of economics is to study two things. Economics properly is the study of production and trade. How resources come into existence, how values, material values come into existence. How stuff is produced and created. And then how it's traded, the principles by which that occurs. That's economics. And none of these guys, none of these guys, you know, understand, or none of these conventional mainstream or Marxist economists have any clue about what economics is really about. Never mind about economics themselves. Understand this guy, Richard Wolf is going to debate Gene Epstein. I mean, we'll see how Gene does with him. I wonder, I think Gene just like when he debated me on selfishness will will stick on some small point and won't address the bigger philosophical issues, the bigger fundamental issues that make everything this guy says, basically complete and utter nonsense. All right, here we go. You were never paid what you were worth. Yes, all of you were paid what you were worth. And if you think you could be paid more, that is, if you think you are worth more, can be worth more than switch jobs. But there is no worth that is external, that is somehow intrinsic to what the market, what people will pay you for whatever service or product or job that you produce. And that's true, even if you are self employed, you're still dependent on what the market will pay you for the thing that you're producing. Even if you think it, it's worth more. Your worth is determined in a sense by others. And you cannot and will not be in a capitalist system. Why? Because the difference between what your labor adds to the value that your employer sells. And what he pays you is his profit. Well, that's why he's in business. That's true. But no, there's the sneering. Notice the profit disgusting stuff like that. And yes, that's why he's in business. And of course, the difference between what you produce, it's not. And what he sells it at is not all profit. Other people are producing. He produces the CEO, the people who run the shop produce. And only when you deduct all of them, of course, he's got expenses, there's materials, there's marketing, there's advertising, there's a million other expenses associated with it. And only then the difference is the profit. Only then is there a profit. But all of that other stuff doesn't count. Because again, the Marxists are all about physical labor. Only labor adds value. They are intellectuals who negate the intellect. And if you don't generate that profit for him, he's got no use for you. That's right. What use do you have? Why would I pay somebody money? If they're not going to add value to me. If they're not going to make my life in some way better. And for business that some way better is profit. For nonprofit, it might be measured differently, but I'm still paying somebody, paying somebody less than what they produce, less than what they really want to me. Because I have to get value from that relationship. There has to be a profit. Otherwise, why transact? So, you know, this is again, this is just basic stuff. And the way he says it, the sneering, the, it's just disgusting. So for the American people, the vast majority of whom come home every day with a vague sense of having been ripped off. Is that true? The most Americans come home every day with a vague sense that they have been ripped off? Really? Ripped off? I mean, people might think I should be paid more and they might not be happy with a job. But really, a majority of Americans come home with a sense that they're being ripped off. Now, the truth is that if you tell the American people often enough, that they should have the feeling that they've been ripped off, that indeed they have been ripped off. Then you will create that feeling. And that I think is a lot of the frustration of working Americans of the of the what's called the working class, the middle, the lower middle class, with the jobs because they be told that their wages haven't increased, even though that's not true. They'd be told the standard of living hasn't gotten better, even though that's not true. They'd be told that inequality is a real economic problem that's holding them back. Even though that's not true. They'd be told that they're being exploited by corporations, even though that's not true. And they told us over and over and over again and nobody stands up and says, That's not true. None of that is true. Indeed, 184,000 people watch this video. My video, maybe 2000 people will watch 182,000 people are going to stay ignorant about this. And that doesn't include the other millions of people who watch some of these horrific ideas about economics clueless about what really how economics really works. The job, they're exactly right. It's now what happens. I wonder what happens how these people view when a company loses money, and still pays its employees. And when the shareholders get really upset because the shipwrecks went down, and they lost money, and employees still get paid. It eat most businesses who start out, start out losing money. For years sometimes, the entrepreneur, the capitalist financial markets, pay the employees and they still get paid, even though they're producing no profit. Think about a biotech company that my employee at a startup, my employee, 10 scientists, real, you know, 10 scientists, pay them a salary every month for years. And for years, there'd be no profit. And yet those scientists, including the non scientists, the janitors, the secretaries, the everybody gets paid every month. And the venture capitalists keep pouring money into it. And they lose money every month. And yet, these people paid get paid every month, the workers get paid, who's exploiting hooten here. And then maybe 10 years out. Boom, there's a new drug or a new invention and they start making money. And all those years, it was the workers who got paid. And the capitalist who lost. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. What is the, because they add nothing. Just they haven't had the course yet to be able to understand why they feel that way. And why they ought to the course on uneconomics, non economics, anti economics, the closest we get to pardon me, pardon me, me for those of you who've heard me do this joke before, the closest we get as a culture to recognizing it is that peculiar tradition we have of the name we give for the two hours immediately at the end of the workday. The two hours that are advertised in that window we pass on the way home from the job, which tells us if we come inside, we can have a happy hour, underscoring how different it is from the previous hours. Is that true? The people in America hate their jobs so much that happy hour represents the distinction from being at work. The people resent their jobs that much. And if that's true, that's very sad. And that's a real problem. And the problem is that they shouldn't be at the job that they're at, that they're not being selfish enough. They haven't thought about what they really should be doing with their life and how to do it. I mean, if people at that dissatisfied, but I don't think happy hour, happy hour is not happy because it's the end of the day. I don't know. Or maybe happy hour is associated with alcohol, because that's what our culture views as happiness is getting drunk. Well, if happiness is getting drunk, then yeah, working is no good. But that's so perverse. It's not a joke. That's sad. And think about what they were doing before they had work. That is what human beings do. Before they went to work. Well, they got up with the rise of the sun. And then they, you know, they, they go to, they go to farm when the sun rises. And then they, they basically, you know, they, they work all day. And then they go to bed when the sun sets. That's life. That is life. Whoops, what did I just do? I don't want to do that. That's life under a pre capitalist, a pre you have a job world. Right. And that's, that's what he's arguing for. Let's go back to, let's go back to subsistence farming. How was that for those people? How was that for anybody? Even Marx understood that that was wrong. That that was bad, that that was no good. And yet that's the only option he presents here. The only option he presents. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life, and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages, and to the role of the collectivist roads.