 People of the internet, welcome to modern day debate. I am your guest host, Kaz. And tonight we have T-Jump Crossing Swords with Leo Philius. We have 10 minutes of opening statements followed by 60 minutes of open discussion, 30 minutes of Q&A. Going first tonight is Leo Philius. And Leo Philius, if you're first word, the floor is all yours. I think he left. I think he ran away. Sorry about that, everybody. My 90-year-old grandmother needed a quick favor. Family matters, it just took a few seconds. Had to go, had to take care of that really quick. I apologize, folks. No problem. So they're your first word. You can have the floor for your opening statement. Alrighty, yeah. Hi, I'm Leo Philius. I should be linked in the description below. So I'm not gonna spend too much time on that. So yeah. Oh, just to clarify, your name is in the thing, Bill Keel? Oh, yeah. So that says Bill Keel agrami. If you happen to know who Akil Bilgrami is, you'll get it if you don't. I'm sorry. Anyway, Marxism. Yeah, Marxism is an interesting subject. I have to be honest. I haven't seen T-Jump talk about specifically Marxism much. I have seen a few of his debates on socialism, but me personally, I think socialism is tangential to Marxism fundamentally. Not saying that he doesn't know what he's talking about. Just I've never heard what he's had to say on this. So I won't make any statements about his beliefs or anything like that, because I just don't have anything to work from. Marxism is reasonably complex. It's more of a philosophical and sociological analytic methodology, more than it is anything. So what I'm gonna try to do here is briefly summarize three of the prominent areas of at least Marxism as I hold to it, which would be Orthodox Marxism. And those are dialectical materialism, the metaphysical framework, historical materialism, the historical analysis, and the labor theory of value, the economic analysis. So let me just jump right into this. Dialectical materialism was pioneered by Karl Marx, who was in his early days, a young Hegelian. It is built off of a Hegelian philosophy, but Marx didn't really like the idealistic way, the idealism that Hegel used to look at the world. So he took the dialectic that Hegel developed, but he inserted it into what he would have called a materialistic framework. What this was, what dialectical materialism is, is it says that we should not look at the world as some static and unchanging entity, that we build systems around such that our systems don't ever change in our static and unchanging with the world. This is not going to be successful with humans. And the reason for that is because the world is not the universe. Reality is not a static and unchanging entity. You might think if you took any solid object that's sitting around you and you stared at it for 15 minutes, it's not gonna look like it changes. But if you could look at it under a microscope or what have you, you would notice that there are a variety of wild changes occurring to the system that makes up that object. And this was an observation that Marx and then later Friedrich Engels, his closest colleague, developed that the world is in a state of, the number one, the world is material. It's physical and that's that. We shouldn't presume that there's anything else beyond it because that just muddies the waters in terms of helping us understand reality and our place within it if we start to think that everything was designed specifically for us when that obviously doesn't seem to be the case. So reality is fundamentally material. It is in a state of constant flux and we should base our systems on this. That is a basis of what dialectical materialism is. This prescribes what Marx would have called historical materialism, which was more a historiological analysis of societies where Marx said that the ways that societies develop is directly rooted in the development of their productive forces, which is something that is either promoted or either incentivized or potentially disincentivized by something Marx would have called class society. That class society is when you consider that the whole framework for how long humans have existed for you in at least a couple hundred thousand years, class society is very, very new in human society and it is a result of the ways that humans have developed in terms of moving towards systems that allow humans to produce more than what any particular tribe or clan, what have you would have needed. And this eventually led into the development of a class society, a society where there are classes of people that have different material conditions and prescribed by that different material interests and that there was an antagonism between these classes as a result of different interests that they have being prescribed by a difference in the material conditions, like do you have enough food, do you have enough water, do you're shelter, all of those kinds of things and your material interests are the things that you seek. So most people are probably gonna be concerned with pursuing a job and earning money so that they can put food on their table and pay their bills and get water and raise their kids. Those are their material interests. But then there's a class of people that don't have to worry about those things. They have the ability to have interests and pursue interests that go beyond that art, science, technology, culture, what have you. And it was the movement towards a class society that afforded a particular class within society, the ability to focus on those things that led to the cultural development of humans. And this is where Marx would say that class society, despite currently being something that is more detrimental to human society at some point was beneficial to it. It's why we were capable of developing the technological advances and the cultural advances that we were going even further than that. He then started to take this and examine that within an economic framework whereby he said that so many economists throughout history, including people like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Foyer, many of these classical liberals, these classical political economists, they struggled to define what value was in an economy. Now, Adam Smith, along with other people, I think Robert Owen was one of them. I think David Ricardo spoke about it a little bit. I think it was, I know Adam Smith mentioned it in the Wealth of Nations, but it wasn't the only one, was something called the labor theory of value. I think Adam Smith also introduced, I don't know if he was the first one to do it, but I believe he also introduced the subjective theory of value in the Wealth of Nations. What Marx said was that value isn't some subjective thing. If that were the case, why is it that when I wanna go buy a car, I can't buy it for $20,000 less than what it's being offered for? Because the value isn't subjective. What Marx would have said, and what somebody like myself, an orthodox Marxist would say is that value, the value of a product is rooted in the amount of socially necessary labor, which is the amount of average labor, because I mean, if you got two people, one takes three hours to produce product X, the other one takes six hours to produce the exact same product. The average between those is going to be the socially necessary labor requisite to the production of a product. That's what value is to a Marxist. And this concept of value was proposed by Marx because he believed it helped to explain something that's known as long run equilibrium prices or the long term prices around which the supply demand curves tend to fluctuate. I would argue that there has been no other economic system that's been capable of predicting why there are long run equilibrium prices, at least not as accurately as Marx had. So what I've said is very simplistic. Marxism is not a simplistic thing. I've tried to do my best in the time allotted. I don't really know how much time I've used or how much time I've had left. It's not really important to try to give a brief summary of orthodox Marxism at least. I should say anything dealing with Leninism and Stalinism and Maoism or Castroism or anything like that, anarcho-communism, I'm not here to discuss that. I don't defend those. I don't advocate for those. I don't agree with those. Those aren't my positions. So for me personally, those are things that I just don't care about. Those aren't what I defend. They don't matter to me. So that's a brief summary of some various areas of Marxism, at least as brief as I can get in the time allotted while trying to retain some of the technicalities. But for anybody that's hearing something and they have questions, you can throw them in the comments section. We'll get to them in the Q&A. Or I would recommend reading Marxist theory, the three volumes of capital, socialism, utopian and scientific by Engels, the state revolution by Lenin. There's a variety of work out there for anybody who is genuinely curious, regardless of whether the questions they have are inquisitory or critical. And I'll, I guess I'll just leave it there. All right, thank you so much, Leo. And we'll go ahead and kick it over to T-Jump for his opening statement. T-Jump, floor is all yours. Yeah, so I didn't really hear much about why we should adopt Marxism or why Marxism is good. The only thing he said was that it made predictions of long-term economic trends, which I don't know, I'd never seen any successful predictions of the Marxist ideology. All the economic studies that have been done, empirical studies, to try to confirm Marxist predictions have either come up ambiguous or negative. Like there haven't been any like successful economic predictions that have been attributed to Marxism in economics or any other field. As far as I know, most of them have been attributed to be false. So I don't really know what the point Leo is trying to argue for here. I don't know what exactly the positive claim he's making is that we should adopt Marxism because why? What is the thing we're looking for here? Just to take a brief detour from that, hopefully we can talk about that in the Q and A. Marxism has a various number of criticisms, especially in academia, which include general criticisms of the lack of eternal consistency. That's one of the big ones. The labor theory of value and the tendency for profit to decrease over time, those are inconsistent. They have a contradiction within them, which causes a problem. If your worldview is contradictory, well then it's probably wrong. It kind of has to be wrong. Contradiction means other, a number of criticisms related to historical materialism, the type of historical determinism, necessity of suppression of individual rights that results with Marxist ideologies has a problem because it decreases a significant amount of potential for growth, incentives, technological growth, societal growth. There's issues with implementation of the economic policies that Marx advocated for. He said that socialism is going to be a necessary result in all capitalist economies. There's going to be a socialist revolution. That one's a false, obviously a false prediction. In fact, the opposite of the case, it's not the developing world that makes transitions in the social, it's the underdeveloped world that makes transitions in the socialism and they are incredibly unsuccessful. All the most successful economies in the world are mixed economies. Marxist prediction about what a successful economy would look like have all pretty much been wrong throughout all history. The only Marxist communist socialist governments are mostly like China and that's only successful because of its size. Other ones that other Marxist governments are like Vietnam and Laos, which are not very successful. So if Marx was correct, that this was a significantly more successful program, economic program, then we would expect that the most successful countries in the world would probably adopt it, which they haven't. So Marxist predictions about what would happen in these economies have been wrong. Also his prediction about the decreasing rates of profit was wrong. Like all the profits that have been measured based off of all the different standard criterias we use have been showing profits of increasing, not decreasing is understanding of machines was wrong and how machines can actually create a surplus of profit in the same way a labor force can, even though there is a expenditure of resources, like you work for a day and you burn yourself out and you have no more energy. That doesn't have a net decrease for your overall value. You come into work the next day and you just keep doing it, machines are the same way. And so their overall value doesn't decrease over time in the same way that Marx prescribed. His understanding of economics has just been essentially shown to be false in a number of ways. And I don't see any reason why we should adopt this policy or this economic principle that he espouses, especially because Leo mentioned Ingalls is like laws or principles or whatever, which are all super vague platitudes. They don't really mean anything or tell us anything about economic, what we should do economically or what's going to happen economically. They'll just vague little happy statements that you can interpret in whatever way you want. So I don't see any reason why we should adopt this as a principle to assess economics anything or to look at the world in any significant way. It's vague, it's self contradictory. There are issues with this implementation, like I said, trying to deal with these kinds of economic suggestions usually lead to very bad outcomes. There's an absence of price signals which causes a significant problem economically. There's reduced incentives which causes significantly more problems and empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified and it contradicts most of this research we have in economics. So I think just overall it's been shown to be false and there's no reason to adopt it in the current economic systems we have today and the mixed economies that we have are preferable. And if I was going to start a new country or whatever, it seems like I would be more rational to adopt the economic models that are used in the most successful countries, none of which use the Marxist model. So I don't see any reason why we should take this seriously. All right, thank you so much, T-Jump. And before we get into the open discussion, I wanna let you know folks, especially if it's your first time here with us at Modern Day Debate that we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics. And we want you to feel welcome no matter what walk of life you're from. 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Their first word whenever they're ready. Yeah, I love to hear like, again, I didn't really understand from his opening what the goal of his position is. What specifically about Marxism are you advocating for? I guess I don't understand the question. So Marxism doesn't prescribe things for us to do. It's just an analytic methodology. I'm asking you, what is your prescription? Is your position in the debate? I don't have one. I just take it as an analytic methodology and I agree with the analysis that it provides. No, I mean, like, are you saying that we should adopt the Marxist analysis over this other analysis because something? Oh, because I think it's more accurate. Why? Because I think that the things that Marx said have largely been shown to be true. Examples. So, well, like you said, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, you do know that that has been acknowledged by a large portion of neoclassical political economists, right? Many of them have actually tried to explain it. So, all the studies, like there's been a number of studies from the 1970s onward and previously, all the data is inconclusive. There's no actual support in this. There's no consensus on the topic. Much of it is mixed. Much of it shows that there's no results. I can just give you a reference right here. Yeah, I'd love to see that. Even trim off profit rates in developed capitalists, economics of time in series Munich, 2018, report mixed results and argue that the answer is not yet certain due to conflicting findings in the issue of appropriate measuring the TRPF. That's just one of them. Here's one from, these are big names that I can't pronounce. From 2011, thermo-disclusk, cog or something, technological development, a long run profit rates dynamic in the US manufacturing sector. There's a Marcelo Recendi one. Profit rate in the US, 1949 to 2007. All studies, Oscar, Giorda. These are all studies analyzing this exact thing and whether or not Marx's principle was correct or not. There is no accepted findings here. Just not the case. Well, yeah, in those studies, but I didn't say that all economists acknowledge it, just that a lot of them do acknowledge the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. There's many that, like you're showing, try to explain that away. I'm not surprised. They're neoclassical political economists. Their job is to defend the status quo. So I would expect that they're probably going to try to argue away the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. I just don't think they're successful in it. Well, I'm making more of like a climate change argument. There are a lot of scientists who reject climate change. They're just the minority. They're not the consensus. The consensus is that this hasn't been shown to be successful and it's a huge consensus. It's not like a small consensus. So saying that there are a lot of some of them, some of the economists who grant this, it's like saying there's a lot of scientists who reject climate change. That's nice, but what I care about, what's relevant to science is what is the consensus in the field? I mean, do you think the consensus in the field supports this principle? I actually, I don't really know. I guess I would liken it not to climate change, but more to like quantum foundations where amongst professionals talking about it, there's quite a bit of a split as to Copenhagen versus Everettian versus relational. I would look at it something more like that. I don't think economics is really, as a field rooted as solidly as in empirical data as like physics or chemistry or biology as a result of the sociological underpinnings of what economies are. Sort of, but I'd say that, I mean, there's definitely a lot of empirical underpinnings in economics, but- Sure. If we're comparing countries, how many countries accept this and how many countries reject it and use the more classical economic model? Well, I don't think that the acceptance or rejection of models by countries bears on the merits of those models. I do. Like if you have a model that is significantly more successful or does something better than any country who would adopt that model would have an advantage in some case. And so it's more likely that it would be adopted by other countries. So the fact that it's not accepted by most countries is a good indicator that it's not a model that many countries have confidence in and they have confidence in a different model that has been very successful for them. So it's a pretty good argument that if you are proposing some kind of a model, either an economic model or a political model, if that model is actually more successful to some reasonable degree, then we would see people who adopt that model equally be more successful to a reasonable degree and we just don't see that. I guess I just don't agree that countries not adopting a model means that it must not be successful or that it's more likely to be unsuccessful. To me, that comes off as more of an argumentum and popular that, well, an idea, if some idea is more popular and used by more people or believed by more people, then that's an indication that that idea is probably more accurate than another. I just don't see a good argument for why I should think neoclassical, political, economics is more meaningful than a Marxist political economic analysis. In theory, if it's never been tested, sure, like if you just come up with a new idea and say, well, no one's ever tested this, well, then you can't know one way or the other, but this has been tested. There's lots of people who have adopted this model and they don't have any discernible advantage economically from a dot model. Who's adopted a Marxist model? China, Laos, Vietnam. In what way has, in virtue of what is China Marxist? The basis of their economy, their communist Marxists, that's like- They don't have billionaires in China. Jack Ma's a billionaire. They don't have private capital accumulation and a private ownership of the means of production in China. Yes, they do. You can start your own business in China. Now, sure, they have more regulatory capture and there's more government regulation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the means of production in China aren't privately owned and controlled and that a capital accumulation isn't private. I thought we were talking about just the philosophy, like using the philosophy to analyze systems by comparing societal growth to different kinds of class systems. Like they do that. They don't listen to all the social communist stuff that Marxism says, but I thought that was a different topic that we were just talking about. Socialism and communism are prescribed at least in some sense by Marxism, but I don't know what it is that China's doing that's Marxism. They're using the epistemology that you're presenting, the economic theory that you're presenting to analyze systems. So they're using the Marxist system to evaluate different economies and saying using this class structure model to test or evaluate different economic systems. So they're using the thing you're talking about in the way that they analyze economics. Yeah, I guess I just don't understand what you mean. I don't know what China is using that would be explicitly Marxist. It seems that China is just another largely imperialist nation. I would say even more so than the United States just operating under the status quo, the neoclassical political economic model that's dominated the planet for the last roughly 270 years. 300 years. Well, they use like historical materialism and dialectic materialism as a basis to assess economies. They say and they use those things. America doesn't use those things. They don't care about them at all. I agree with that. I guess I could grant that China might use those. I don't see why that would be important. It doesn't seem that much is turning on their use of that, I would say. Well, that's what I was confused about your opening because you seem to be prescribing the epistemology of Marxism and separating that from its implementation as two different. Well, I would, but Marx and Engels never laid out how to implement socialism or communism because they broke from the utopian socialists. They didn't think that socialism or communism was a thing that, well, if everybody just kind of held hands in Tsengkung Baiya, we'd get there. They saw them as inevitable results of the revolutionary development of the human society. Marxism doesn't prescribe what we should do. It's just a way of analyzing largely, well, in Marxist time, classical political economy, but today more neo-classical. So people who use that system to analyze economies are like China, Laos, Vietnam. They use the system that you're prescribing to analyze economies. They may not try to direct themselves towards what Marx would have directed themselves, but they do use that epistemology to assess things. Now, if you're right that that epistemology is more accurate and answers problems that others don't, then those countries should have some kind of an economic advantage. They should get something right that other countries aren't getting right. They should know something or solve something that the other countries aren't getting rights, which would give them an advantage, but I don't see that happening. So all of the countries that are adopting the Marxist epistemology that you're talking about, whether or not they actually implement it, don't seem to have any greater knowledge or insight into economics than anybody else. Well, yeah, but I can grant that they're using a Marxist mode of analysis. I don't really think that they are, but I can just grant that. I don't think much turns on that. Sure, that nothing is changing. They just started not acting on it. It would be like me setting my hand on a stove top, recognizing that my hand is getting burned, but just refusing to lift my hand off of it. They're just refusing to act. That I don't see how that would bear on the validity. That's not, I don't think that's the right word I want to use, the merits rather of a Marxist analysis. Okay, so could you tell me what prescriptions you would say that a Marxist analysis would give us that they should be doing, but aren't? I don't think a Marxist analysis really prescribes much. I think that... You said what you just said before. Well, I think that what Marxism is, is like I said, an analytic methodology and that what Marx and Engels discovered is that if we use, if we're taking this method that we use, what we'll discover is that there are just intrinsic aspects of the development of human society and that what Marx and Engels called socialism and then later communism were intrinsic aspects. They weren't something we can do to society to make it better. Marx would not have said, this is what you need to do to make socialism or to make Marxism be a thing in the world. That that's not, he wouldn't have said that because that wasn't the goal of what he was laying out. The goal of what he was laying out was a critique and an analysis of classical political economy under a capitalist mode of production. And all I'm saying is that I think that many of the statements made by that analytic methodology are accurate. Okay, so I need like a concrete example. So let's say... I would say the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. I think the fact that many, not necessarily all or most but many even neoclassical political economists have recognized this and have tried to explain it away shows that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is a thing that happens in the world and that the neoclassicals are just trying to find a way to explain it away to protect the status quo. What's, it's false. Like I have this study, I literally just closed them. Yeah, but there are studies on it, but I would have to believe them. Like I don't know what they say. So which one tendency of rate and profit to fall from time to time research units of banks and government departments, procedures studies the rates of profitability in various sectors of industry, 88, for example, Pali as Anderson profit shares investment now bankers, there's a bunch of, I'll just list of things. The National Statistics Office of Britain now released company profitability statistics every quarter showing increasing profits. So you're saying that because corporate profits are going up, therefore the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is false? Sort of. So this study is specifically analyzing that principle. This was just on the first empirical tests of the labor theory of value tendency of the rate of profit to fall. It's just the wiki of the tendency of rate of profit to fall. This was studies done specifically on this to see if it was the case and they found contradicting results. I would, I think if you're talking about the wiki because I have looked at the Wikipedia page on it. I mean, everybody's looked at the Wikipedia page on everything anyway, obviously I'm being deceitious, but I've read every Wikipedia page on everything ever. But I guess what I would say is that I think what they're trying to do because Marx was quite careful here. He said that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not a law. It doesn't occur universally across the board. There are ways that a capitalist can mitigate that problem. It's a tendency, not a law. It's just that, yeah, a capitalist might be able to mitigate it for six, eight, 10, 12 years, but again, the profit is, well, I don't think, I would think there's numerous points in history we explicitly see. I think that's what's happening now. I think that's part of the reason we're seeing the inflation that we're seeing is because corporations are artificially inflating prices to combat the fact that people aren't purchasing as much products and their ability to generate a profit on those products quarter over quarter, year over year, whatever is trending downward. So what are they gonna do? They're gonna try to find ways to mitigate that because obviously the profit incentive is maybe not the only but certainly one of the primary incentives for operation under a capitalist mode of production. If it were true, I just want you to bear with me here, if it were true that the tendency to generate profit year over year goes down, don't you think that capitalists would probably try to find ways to mitigate that if they could? Sure, obviously. Do you think that they would be reasonably successful in potentially mitigating that problem? Mitigating the problem, yes, but that just means decreasing the rate at which it goes down so it would go down slower or they're reversing the problem and goes back down. You can reverse the process but only temporarily. But yes, but you can't reverse a process like 10s and 10s of 20 of times over and just keep reversing the process for hundreds of years and have it still work. That doesn't make any sense. Well, yeah, I agree. I think that's largely the reason why societally we're facing many of the problems that we are. Well, that's literally just the past like the entire past 300 years of just every capitalist country has been nothing but the opposite of that. I guess in virtue of what? Economic growth, technological growth, machine growth, worker growth, even though wages are stagnant and... You don't think public funding had anything to do with any of that? Sure it did. What is... I would argue that public funding probably had more to do with a lot of technological developments, the internet, rocketry, nuclear energy. Well, but when you're investing public funds, there isn't really a need to make a profit. So if not necessarily all, I can just grant that it isn't all, but a lot of our technological developments are the result of public funding, then there isn't any profit to be made, so it can't drop. There isn't a rate of profit at all there. But it's growing, that's the point. So all it's growing, the rate of profit is growing. Profitability and the rate of profit are not the same thing. Sure. So profitability ability can go up, but the rate of profit can still be trending down over the long run. We can still go up too, yes. Well, yeah, I think that it has gone up because capitalists attempt to mitigate this problem, inflating prices, you know, things like outsourcing jobs, cutting back on jobs, cutting back on ways of reducing things like variable capital and whatnot. What does mitigate mean? Reduce the effects of or temporarily negate the effects of some problem. Right, so if it's going up, that's not mitigation, that's magnification. It could be, I mean, if it's going up, but it was going down before and then it goes down after, you wouldn't call that in between more probably just a mitigation of a problem? At some point, yeah, over small periods of time, if it goes up over just like a quick shoot and then just crashes or something, yeah, that would be a great example of mitigation. If it consistently goes up for hundreds of years, you can't call that a mitigation anymore. That's just- I don't think profits have increased over hundreds of years. I think that there's been, well, I guess over the long run, I think that you could say that they have, but I think that that's been a rise and then a fall because of that- Well, I'd say it's- Like getting graphed, there's ups and downs, but the trend is what's important. What is the trend? Well, but the thing is that, I guess under the labor theory, we're not really looking at like trends per se. What's being analyzed here is what happens when capitalists seek profits. They end up losing the ability to generate profits, mitigate those problems, or potentially invest in other industries. Their profit, their ability to make a profit goes back up, but then that either stagnates and levels out, or it begins and usually begins to drive. I think that there's examples of this in history. I would argue that the 1929 economic collapse was a result of this, the 2008 economic collapse. I would argue that this is what causes economic bubbles. Profit-seeking resulting in an oversaturation of commodities in a market such that people just stopped buying them and you're not selling anything. What's gonna happen? You're not gonna make any money. The bubble's gonna burst and the ability to generate profit and the value are just gonna plummet. That's actually exactly what happened in 2008 when the housing bubble burst. No, it's because people overbought houses that kept buying houses more than they own. Why did they overbuy houses? Because they were given loans. Everyone was given a loan. Yeah, exactly. Why do you think that the banks did that? Do you think that they were trying to increase their rate of profit on the loans that they were giving out? Knowing that they gave out more loans and gave more lucrative loans to people, they would be able to generate more profit off of people making those loans? No, it was loopholes because they were giving up to people who couldn't pay the loans and that's what caused the bubble burst. Yeah, but why do you think they were doing that? Why were they giving loans to people that they couldn't afford them? Do you think they had to do with the kind of make money? The banks weren't. The intermediaries were. The intermediaries were making profit off of it and then breaking the law and giving them to people who literally didn't qualify because they were giving- What intermediaries? The banks are the intermediaries. No, there's people who can sell loans to people and sell houses to people as a intermediary. They do that through banks. Yeah, but they do that through banks too financially. Yeah, so again, it's not the banks. There is a group of people who were- But the money comes from the bank. Yes, illegally because they are illegally given these- So if money is lost, the bank is losing money. No, again, so this was not the bank giving out money. This was people illegally offering certain rates to people who couldn't qualify for those rates and because of that, which the banks didn't know about, banks were not at fault here, they were, that seemed like good loans to the banks when they weren't. And so the banks paid them out because it seemed like good loans when they weren't. So it wasn't, the banks weren't the primary cause there. It was, there's a bunch of legal- I don't know who these intermediaries were be if they weren't themselves financial institutions. I don't watch movies to get my economic information. They have lots of great papers referenced in there. So it's just like, it's just fine. So like, I think one of the greatest critiques of Marx was from Karl Popper. I like you and good philosopher guy said historical materialism was a very scientific theory, made predictions, the predictions were proven false. And then a bunch of ad hoc nonsense get added in to try and make it unfalsifiable. It was a falsified theory. And that's kind of what I think we're seeing here. So because of the ambiguity of Marxism, it says the rate of profit will fall except when it doesn't accept, except when the capitalists like just, they avoid it. They use evasion tactics to make- Well, unironically, yes. The capitalists will find ways to mitigate his loss of profits. I like honestly teach them, I think you would agree with that. If it were the case that the capitalists were losing profits, which is granted, that doesn't actually happen in the real world. If it were to happen, you really don't think a capitalist- No, no, no. The point here is your principle, if the capitalists were not doing anything to mitigate it and the profits were just going up, your principle would say, oh, they're just mitigating it. You don't have a way to differentiate whether it's actually working or whether or not you have this ad hoc principle. Oh, you do? Yes, if profits were going up, but we could see that capitalists aren't, you don't doing anything to adjust value, differences ratios between constant and variable capital because that's ultimately where the tendency of the rate of profit fall comes from. The capitalists is trying to reduce the amount of variable capital necessary to the production of goods because that's under the labor theory of value where value is rooted in. It's rooted in the variable capital. But if the value of a product is rooted in variable capital and variable capital is going down, then the value of the product is also going to drop. So what you would see is that over long periods of time, you're gonna see this, you're just gonna see these consistent dips in the rate of profit and then attempts by the capitalists to mitigate that that are the results of things like outsourcing jobs, reducing wages, reducing benefits. The question is, how do you- Are you- Hold up, hold up. The question was is how do you differentiate whether it's actually going up and you're just making stuff up to try and make it fit your model versus it's really going down and you're just saying capitalists are doing- Whether it's with a Marxist framework. If profits were going up, but capitalists weren't like necessarily doing anything to mitigate that. Like we know what kinds of practices capitalists engage in when they try to mitigate a loss of profits. I've already named some, they outsourced jobs, they reduce wages, they reduce hours, they lobby for lower tax rates, they do all of these things to increase the amount of profit that the company develops. So if they were developing profit, but none of those things were happening, then we would say, oh, well then yeah, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is false. But I don't think there's a place where you can show me this- Bitcoin. Where they're not also lobbying for tax breaks, where they're not also outsourcing jobs, all of the, what's happening with Bitcoin right now? Yes, it's going down. Why is that happening? They didn't do any of the things you listed and they made a shit ton of profit. Also, Bitcoin isn't rooted in labor, so it doesn't really have value under the labor theory of value. So I don't see why it would even be right. Yes, but it's value increased, so it has no value. Yeah, but it doesn't have value to the labor. So under your definition of value, it might have value. But then you're just not using the labor theory of value definition. Yes, because the labor theory of value is wrong. What, so how does the labor theory of value define value? The amount of work required in the society to produce some good or something along those lines. Yeah, so how much work do you need to do to make one Bitcoin? Press the button, the keyboard? What are you doing? Yeah, so you're not actually really doing anything. You're not like taking some natural resource and turning it into a product, are you? Yes, correct. So then you're not adding value. From your theory, yeah. You can have, yeah, exactly. But if you're going to criticize the labor theory, hold on. If you criticize the labor theory of value, you should probably do that by using its definition of value. Well, no, that's what I'm saying, is that that definition of value is wrong because there's other kinds of value. There's other kinds of value. Well, there being other kinds of value, there's other versions of how life evolved. That doesn't mean evolution is false because there's other ways to describe it like creationism, which doesn't really describe it. But I think you get the point. No, don't get the point. Okay, so there being other ways to define value doesn't mean some particular way of defining it must be wrong. No, no, no. So going back to what you said, labor theory of value states that the rate of profit is going to fall necessarily. But if there's other ways to prove it- No, no, not necessarily. It's a tendency, not a law. Like it has to over time fall, I think is at the conclusion. Over long periods of time, we will see dips in the rate of profit, yes. And that will be a result of the oversaturation of commodities in a market and thereby a decrease in their value. Can it go up indefinitely? Does it- No, absolutely not. So the labor theory of value says it has to fall at some point, right? Well, it's going to, yes. Not that it has to, it's just- But if there's other ways of generating value which will stop that from happening, then it won't fall. Yeah, I guess. But that would just depend on what you meant by value. I don't think that you would be using value there the same way that an LTV would be using it. Well, obviously, because they only count value as the labor thingy. And I'm saying, well, that's not the only kind of value. So this, the thing that we use to assess the labor theory of value is the products are being made by people, which is fine. And the rates of profit fall can be inflated by the other things that labor theory of value doesn't call value. So their value in every other economic sense and every other economy around the world says these other things are valuable too and they raise the profits. You go up from these other things. And so this dip that we're seeing in labor theory of value just doesn't happen because it doesn't incorporate these other things that are actually really valuable. What do you mean by valuable? Because Marxists would say that there might be things that are valuable, but don't contain value because there's no socially necessary labor requisite to their direct production. Well, so example, like using Bitcoin. Bitcoin as a means to transfer wealth or to bypass securities and governments or to evade taxes. Like there are lots of values to this system that people use it for to make lots of money and do things which that can then be translated into real work. Even though the creation of a Bitcoin is pressing a button. So on the labor theory of value, it has zero value. It actually does that zero value actually can then be translated into real work value outside of it, which is a mathematical problem in the theory of value because it doesn't count this as anything. How does it is zero? And so since this system can produce something that can translate into real work, but it's not accounted for in the labor theory of value, it's a gigantic weakness in the theory. What about Bitcoin can be translated into physical labor performed by a laborer like in a plant or like a manufacturing? Well, like if I can use it to evade taxes, that's work I've done, that money I'm getting them. I don't think you've spent, you haven't taken a natural, physical natural resource in what turned it into a useful tool. That's what labor is to LTV. I'm saying like I do work and I get paid money. So I do, let's say, I don't know, pick berries or something. And some percent of that is taxed. And if I can use Bitcoin to avoid that taxes, that work that I've done can be, I can use Bitcoin to save more of the work I've done. Well, what you would be doing is using Bitcoin as a way of capturing more of the surplus value that would be the difference, the excess value between what you're paid and what you actually generate in terms of what you do. So if you pick berries and you're paid, say, 20 bucks an hour, but in that same hour that you earn $20, you pick $100 worth of berries, that $80 is the excess, the surplus value. If you used Bitcoin to avoid tax loopholes to make that, let's say that in an hour, you're actually earning $26, all you've done is just reduce the excess value between what you produce and what you earn. But I'm not understanding, yeah, that fits in the LTV. I'm, I guess I'm a little confused here. If he's generating value, but you say it has no value, that doesn't fit. That's a contradiction. What do you take value to be? What do I take value to be? In an economic sense, I should specify. Anything that makes people's lives easier. Yeah, that just wouldn't be what value is to somebody in the labor. I'm not even necessarily saying to what you said, it's like wrong, but that's just not. Well, I know, I know. But my whole argument here is that the labor theory value, the Marxist system is stupid and it doesn't really account for value, and it doesn't really account for economics. But it gives a very specified definition of value. I know it does, but I think it's stupid. I think mine's better. What in virtue of what? It doesn't account for the things I mentioned. Like my definition of value is anything that makes people's lives easier. I think that's a better definition of value, a better way to assess economic goals. Why is it better? It accounts for more things that seem to have value. Like what's a thing that it accounts for that LTV doesn't? Bitcoin. LTV can account for Bitcoin. There's just no value in it because there isn't any socially necessary labor required to produce it. So let me give an example. So let's take a pair of like the Gucci jeans that you've probably seen a picture of. They're like all ripped up in the front that like, at least we're like, I'm from a farmer, would look at that and go, that is the most useless thing. Why would I spend $400 on a pair of already ripped up G what? So that has a price. It's $400 if I remember from the meme. I think it was like, anyway, let's just say it's $400. Yeah, so it has a price, but there really isn't any like use value to that to the farmer, but nobody's gonna say that there wasn't labor expended to produce that product. So it might not have a value in terms of a use to you, but that isn't to say, at least under the labor theory of value that it has no value. So there can be things that have value, but no use in the LTV that can be accounted for. And there can be things that have use, but have no value in the LTV that can be accounted for. The idea that the LTV doesn't account for things because of the description or the definition of value that it uses, I just don't think is a defensible objection. Okay, let's go back to like, what do you think are the advantages of this model? What do you think it does better than- It provides an accurate analysis of the development of human society and the reasons why it seems that our ability to develop into the future is being restricted. I would argue that that is being restricted as a result of the mode of production under which we live and that the way that it is structured and what it's incentivized to do, the productive forces. What productive forces are being restricted? So just to give some examples, I think that there's absolutely no reason why humans couldn't be utilizing largely nuclear energy to power everything. The reason that's not being done is because there's no incentive to transition to that by the capitalists who own all of the capital and the resources that would be requisite to a transition because they can already make billions of dollars just continuing to do what they do. So they have no incentive to continue to advance the technologies that we have, implement them in society to make our societies more efficient and more sustainable. That's just one example. Well, it's false. The reason nuclear isn't adopted is because people are afraid of it and they voted out. I disagree. Any Marxists would disagree because the development of society isn't rooted in ideas. That was the primary criticism that Marx had with Hegel is that idealism doesn't work. We have to be realist about this. It isn't whether things accord or disagree with our ideas that drive society forward. It's the antagonism between the classes as a result of the restriction of the productive, the development of the productive forces. Okay, well, that's very, very easy to disprove. Religion, you're an atheist, right? We're both atheists. We don't believe in God's Sky Daddies, but God's Sky Daddy had a really big impact on people's societal development, didn't it? Absolutely. So doesn't that prove Marxism wrong there? I would, I guess I would need you to walk me through that I'm really not. You said that the growth of society isn't based on the ideas. It's based on the labor theory or whatever. And I'm saying, no, the ideas actually do have a significant impact. People believing in a magical Sky Daddy, who isn't gonna flood the world again, has a big impact on, say, climate change. And so the ideas people have have a profound impact on society. Oh, I agree. I should clarify. I wasn't saying that ideas don't mean anything. It's that a religious person might have a set of ideas based on their religion, but at the end of the day, they're gonna engage in the things that meet the material conditions they need to continue to survive, regardless of honestly, whether that aligns with their religion or not. And I think, T-Jump, correct me if I'm wrong, that you would probably agree with that. That's what it's saying. It's not that there aren't ideas don't matter to us, but that at the end of the day, the ideas that I have aren't what's driving me to do what I do. My need to meet the material conditions that I live under finding food, finding water. I mean, obviously, that those two ourselves don't. Global warming. What about it? So people who are going against the material needs, we have a material need to save the planet and not burn to death. They have a bunch of religious guided beliefs that don't include them. In virtue of what is that our material need, most people would be more concerned with putting food on their table than they would be voting for the right people to change. Like, I mean, you're right when you say that, like there's a lot of this stuff most people just really don't care about, but that's part of the point is that the ways, like I think that we should, and I would imagine you probably too, that this is a problem we should address. We need to address climate change. We need to start, but how many like protests have you been at for that? How many politicians have you sat down with? Not saying that you haven't done that, but if I had to guess, that's probably going to be minimal compared to you doing other things that bring you an income in whatever way so that you can meet your material conditions. Yeah, I mean, you do what you do on YouTube, but what I'm talking about is like going to Washington and talking to the politicians. Most people, like me and you and others who want desperately want change to be made, we're not doing those things because they're not going to immediately satisfy the material conditions under which we live. That's what Marx meant when he said ideas don't matter is that ideas matter to people, but not to the development of society. People don't act always based on- So I'm lost, I'm losing the connection here between ideas and don't help with the development of society and what you mean by development of society. Because when I think development of society, I think electricity, light bulbs, Faraday, literally nothing but ideas, quantum mechanics, spacecraft, space travel, ideas and nothing but ideas, the cotton mill ideas, I think nothing but ideas. Do you think scientists would have developed ideas because they thought it was cool or because they're scientists and they're paid to do it and they need the money to continue to live? Both? Yeah, but which one do you think would be more rudimentary? If, if, either. You have no idea. I mean, read studies of both. I would say that scientists further develop science not because, well, this idea is cool. Let's see what other people think. I mean, the end of the day, that's probably what they're gonna say, but they're doing it because they're paid. Most notable scientists throughout history were not paid and did this specifically just because they thought it was cool. Ludebin Boltzmann invented the atom. He never got credit for it. He committed suicide, got no credit for it at all, got no pay for it. He made one of the greatest discoveries of all mankind. There are many, many mathematicians, many, many scientists where that happens all the time. Women scientists, especially in history, do it just because it's cool. They're never gonna get any credit for it. So I don't know the numbers on that, but yes, they do both. Okay, that bears on Marxism in a negative way. How? I have no idea. You just asked the question, like do I think the scientists do it for money or do they do it because it's cool and I think both? Well, yeah, I just don't see how that would bear on my head. But yeah, that's a good thing. You asked the question. That's a fine answer. There's nothing wrong with your answer. I just don't see how that answer would bear on Marxism. Why don't we see how the question bears on Marxism? I guess what I'm trying to say is people act in ways that bring them the things that they need. The most immediately, people are gonna do what they need to do to survive. If the things that you need to survive, you don't have to actively go out and seek and do things to get, then you're free to pursue other things. For most of history, the people that developed science and math and technology and art were wealthy people. They were aristocrats. They were the people that were learned that could read, that could write, that had money because they had that free time to pursue those ideals. The serfs didn't. And I'm sure you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you would agree with me that there were probably a lot of other people that were speaking somewhat like metaphorically here, like Einstein's or what have you out there, but nobody ever heard of them because they didn't have the ability to really share their ideas and develop them because they didn't have the time because they were focused with meeting their needs. Sure, but every single academic model says that. Why is this special to Marxism? Well, yeah, every economic model says that including Marxism, that wouldn't necessarily be a point against Marxism. Marxism would say that that's gonna be an intrinsic part of any model. It's just that we should have models that afford as many people as we can, the ability to actually pursue the things that they would like to do rather than being forced to work for somebody else to make ends meet, to continue to exist. Sure, and pretty much every academic model says that also. So I've not seen how this is a- I don't see how capitalism says that. Yeah, does capitalism would say we should, if we have the means to do so, give everyone the means to do that in order to expand- What does capitalism do to bring that to fruition? We don't have enough resources. So it does do- See, I just disagree with that. What? We produce enough food to feed 10 billion people globally. There's eight billion people on the planet. Globally, we waste a third of the food that we produce. Actually, we wouldn't be able to do that because to be able to transfer the food would cost more. And it wouldn't be- Yeah, it would cost more. Because we could definitely feed more more. It only costs something under what kind of system? A profit incentivized system? Like if we lived under a system where there was- You didn't- It doesn't matter. It doesn't- The money value here isn't what matters. Don't you think that we would have more of an incentive to deliver food to people because we're not concerned with whether we're gonna make money on it. We're doing it because that's what we should do. That's not what I mean by cost. I mean, the amount of technology and work that has to be put into something to get food from arable countries like America to Africa or whatever. You don't think the logistics to get food, like at least- So- That quantity of food. Literally every single individual, I think, did that. But if we could reduce- What is global hunger right now? Like 16% or something like that? It's somewhere around 20%. I think somewhere- If that was reduced to below 5%, you're saying we don't have the logistics to do that? No. Yeah, I just disagree. We have the logistics to take people out with lasers on drones that are thousands of feet in the air in the most remotest places in the world. Like I don't understand- Lasers cannot do that. They cannot do that. Yeah, they can. Lasers can direct rockets. They can't- Yeah, but that's what I'm trying to say. Okay. I just don't understand- So that was one of the criticisms I brought up earlier. A logical advancement. I just disagree. That was one of the criticisms I brought up earlier is the implementation of this kind of system. It decreases the- It has a lot of problems. When you try to implement this system, it never ever works. That's why we've never seen it. Well, under the ways in which it's attempted to be implemented, I can just disagree with those, though. I don't think that bears on the merits of Marxism because Marxism doesn't describe a mode of implementation. That's left up to the person. I can agree that everybody thus far who strived to implement it didn't do it very well. Okay, so if we have no past evidence of this model being successfully implemented, we should accept it because why? Because those past attempts at implementing it don't bear on the merits of the model itself because the model doesn't prescribe a way to implement it. It's like saying, there's this cool idea. It doesn't tell you how we should put it into practice in the world, but this is how I think we should do it and we should kill millions of people to do it. I could just disagree with that. But I don't think that bears on the merits of the model because that person said, this is what we ought to do to implement it. That's what they thought, not what Marx thought. Well, so like if I'm running a country and I'm trying to pick whatever epistemic model to I want to use to try to assess how I should run this country. And I have one model that has a bunch of people who've tried it and all failed. And one model that a bunch are running, are literally running all of the richest, most powerful countries in the world who have the best economies. Which should I pick? I guess I'm not understanding the question. I wouldn't look at what model we should implement based necessarily on the ways that we should implement it. I would look at the merits of the model. But that depends on whether the model itself prescribes a method of implementation. Because if it doesn't, then no way in which you implement it is ever gonna bear on the merits of the model because the model doesn't prescribe a method of implementation. I don't actually know. I think I would say that capitalism provides a mode of implementation. Well, again, so the question here is the whole point of the debate is you're making a positive claim, Marxism is good. And I'm trying to say, I'm running a country and you're saying you're promoting this system to me. Like I'm running the country and you're saying you should use this system. And I'm saying why? Like I have this very good system called capitalism or mixed economies. Like capitalism on its own isn't good. So I agree with that. Mixed economies are the best. All of the best countries in the world use mixed economies. They have the best results. They've had the best results for the past 1000 years. These work really, really well. Why should I get rid of this extremely good model that has the least hunger, least death, least suffering, best health, best of everything in the world to adopt yours? Well, I guess I would disagree that like under capitalism, we have the best healthcare and all that stuff. Obviously, mixed economies does not have the best healthcare, but it's got a more capitalist based healthcare system than any other country on the planet. And it out, or I should say out of the developed countries on the planet, but the worst health or at least some of the worst healthcare outcomes. Some of the highest prices. But there was, I think it's tangential. There was something else you said I wanted. I just want to make sure I heard you right. You said that you agree capitalism in and of itself isn't really that good. Yeah, like laissez-faire, super-capitalist, anticarpism is stupid. Why? Because it doesn't work as well. All the evidence shows that mixed economies work better. But why doesn't it work? I'm just going off the empirical data and just literally don't think. Well, yeah, I'm not disagreeing. I'm just asking you to kind of explicate it. Why don't you think it worked? Like what is the data that you're reading say about why it doesn't work, I guess? That's a different topic. I guess what I'm trying to get at is it seems then that we're agreeing capitalism as a mode of production. Yeah, yes. It doesn't work like it's a failure. Yes, I agree. Pure, unregulated, anticarcapitalist, capitalism is stupid. Well, that's just what capital is. That's what Marx was criticizing was a capitalist mode of production, which I mean, we are technically still capitalist mode of production. He would have also criticized nation-state regulating them. There's a difference between just complete laissez-faire capitalism and mixed economy. So mixed economies, very, very successful. So mixed economies are like in the middle. When you say mixed, can you break that open for me a little bit? It's the technical term for what we call the current economic system in most Western countries that have like a mix of socialist policies and communist policies. Countries have them. Socialists? Socialist policies like the welfare states. I don't think a welfare state is socialist. This is what? Mixed economy is the technical term. It's a technical term in economics for a mixture of certain kinds of capitalist policies and socialist policies. I hear it in the literature, but I have to say I've never talked with a PhD economist to use that term. They always say what I like the term. I use neoclassical political economy. I'm not denying that mixed economy is a term. Obviously it's a term. I don't know what you mean when you say mixed because capital accumulation is still private and ownership of capital is still private. That's what capitalism is. Sure, our nation states regulate the system so that it runs a little bit more fairly. I think that's a point against capitalism. I'm not necessarily arguing against, I mean, I am, but I'm not. I'm defending Marxism. Marxism just criticizes capitalism. But I would say that's not necessarily a point in favor of specifically Marxism, but certainly a point against capitalism that in order for it to operate properly, we have to regulate that system. So let me finish the statement this time. So mixed economies are in the middle. Capitalism is like the far right. Marxism, socialism is like the far left. And neither of the far right or the far left work. They both garbage every time they're implemented in extremes. They completely fail. But this part in the middle works really well. Everywhere in the most successful. I mean, there's billions of people that go without the requisite food they need. There's billions of people that don't have clean water. There's billions of people. There's billions of people in the extremes. But I fail to see. I don't think that we've ever seen. The name of Marxist country that exists that are less starting people. There is no Marxist country. I don't even know what that phrase means. Exactly. I just don't know what that phrase means to say Marxist country. It would be like saying physics country. I, like physics is just a way, physics is just a way of understanding something. That's all Marxism is, it's an analytic method. So, like taking Marx's ideas to their extreme versus taking capitalism to its extreme. But I don't advocate for that. I don't care about people who took Marx's ideas. I'm sorry, I just, I don't care about like Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism. I see those as bastardizations of Marxism that didn't really capture a lot of the strictures laid out by Marxist angles. That's why I'm an orthodox Marxist and not a Leninist or a Stalinist or a Trotskyist or whatever. This is why like I brought up at the very beginning it's completely unclear what you're advocating for. So say I'm running a country. I'm not like advocating. I'm defending Marxism as an analytic methodology and that I think it's a successful method. What you mean by those words is what's unclear. So say I'm running a country and you're gonna bring this to me. What would I do with it if I accepted it? I don't, I don't understand the question. I wouldn't use Marxism to tell you what to do, I guess. Marxism doesn't tell us what to do to make the world. I'm asking a very much, much, much more basic question. So you're coming to me with some information and I'm supposed to accept this information and use it over some other information to do something presumably. So why should we use information X over information Y to prescribe what we do, whatever that may be? Is that kind of? Sort of, yeah. I'm looking for a very, very basic trying to understand what you're doing. Yeah, I would just say information X gives us a more accurate understanding of the nature of human society than information Y. Then what is information Y and why do you think that what? Capitalist economics, like neoclassical political economics would be Y and Marxism would be X. I think Marxism provides a more meaningful and accurate description of the development of human society than neoclassicalism. How? Well, neoclassical political economics is. Two questions, two questions. One is how and one is why does this matter? Let's say, let's say I accept this. What difference is this going to make in future? Like if I take this model over the capitalist model, what difference is it going to make in future? Well, it doesn't necessarily have to make a different. I'm not saying that Marxism means we do something. All I'm saying is that Marxism is meaningful as an analysis. We can just use Marxism to analyze our political economic systems and then do nothing, do nothing to change them. Marxism doesn't tell us what to change or how to change it or when it's going to change or why or where or anything like that. It's just a way of looking at something and describing how it works. So the only thing you're advocating for is using the Marxist model to look at. To look at the capitalist mode of production and derive to essentially, I'm sorry to interrupt, but to essentially it is going to be somewhat flowery language, so forgive me, but to sort of derive the equations of motion of the capitalist mode of production. Okay, I have no idea what that means. To sort of examine that mode and say, given this understanding, this is how it's going to work and thereby this is what we should see. And I would say largely that is what we have seen. Okay, give me more of the examples of the things that we would expect to see under Marxism that wouldn't be predicted. Rising inequality between the ownership class and the laborer class is another prediction. Okay, who doesn't make that prediction? I don't necessarily think that a capitalist mode of production would at least want to predict that. Capitalism really- I don't have any system that doesn't predict that. I think every system literally predicts that. I don't think capitalist- I think biology literally predicts that. I don't, in virtue of what? It's just the way the accumulation of resources work over time, just entropy, literally entropy. That's literally- But I would disagree. I think for, actually up until about eight to 10,000 years ago, human society didn't operate that way. What? Significantly more communal. Obviously in a very barbaric and simplistic manner, but it was very tribal and clan related. It was based on communes. Local communes shared everything. Sure, that's fine, but that doesn't bear on the fact that these were communes. They shared, sure, but that doesn't bear on the fact that these were communes that shared their resources. They didn't have people that absorbed 90% of them. Well, one person in a clan of 100 that absorbs 90% of the resources, but the rest, the other 99 are stuck with only 10%. This wasn't how it worked. Right, sure. They warred and stole from each other. That's fine. Marxism doesn't say that it didn't happen. It's not talking about the ways in which they fought with each other. It was talking about their structure. Right, so what the structure there would be the clans absorbed 90% of the profits but share them amongst all of the members, right? Sure, I can say a human body, my body, can accumulate 90% of the resources and I share it with the rest of the cells in my body and that would be the same thing. I don't think that it would be possible for one individual to accumulate 90% of the resources that a commune collected, because I don't know what it would mean to say that the commune collected these resources if only one person did. Was not, was not. So when we say a commune collects 90% of the resources, the whole point of the conversation was, is pretty much every model predicts that one organism or group is going to take 90% of the resources. How does capitalism predict that? Everyone, it's literally just biology and entropy. Yeah, but how? Like where's the inference at? What? I'm not, I'm not following- So how do we get from capitalism and therefore there is naturally going to be a level of inequality? Don't you think a system that's going to create inequality should be a system that we should probably say, hey, maybe we shouldn't do that? That's literally physics. So like you're saying reality, we shouldn't do reality. I don't, I guess I'm not understanding that. I don't know what about physics says that societies that are necessarily unequal. I don't think that's a physical or an empirical claim. Like they're- Well, okay, it might be potentially empirical, but I don't think it's- There's no way to equally distribute all resources across all space and time exactly equally at all times. It's impossible. We can't- Yeah, Marxism doesn't say that. Which means there's going to be inequality. So every system predicts- Yeah, Marxism, that's what Marxism says, is that under a capitalist mode of production, there is intrinsically going to be inequality because you have two classes of people. All systems predict this. Every- I'm still not understanding how capitalism predicts this. Because- I know it talks about it- There's going to be a distribution of resources based on luck. Why should resources be distributed based on luck? Because of where you're born, you're biologically- So if you're unlucky, you should just starve to death? It's not- It's not should, it's going to happen. So prediction doesn't mean it should happen, it's saying it's going to happen. Yes, capitalism predicts- What? It's going to happen that there is going to be separate groups of people. The smart ones, the dumb ones, the healthy ones, the unhealthy ones, the fast ones, the slow ones. Every model predicts there's going to be a distribution of groups. I don't think capitalism predicts this so much as it's just being a intrinsic feature. I think it's a feature of capitalism, but I don't think capitalism said, if we implement this system, this is what's going to happen. No, no, because capitalism starts, this is the way it already is. Yeah, so it's not a prediction, it's just a feature. No, it's a feature of reality, not capitalism. So this is the way reality is, and we expect this to happen, and then we're going to implement this system to try to mitigate that. I just disagree that that's a feature of reality that can't be changed. I have no idea how to even, like do you think some people are gonna, there's a way to change that everyone is equally has the same intelligence and opportunities at 100% of equal health rate everywhere, no matter what, is that possible? No, I wouldn't defend that claim. I'm talking about material conditions, not things that you're born with. Those are material conditions. No, your intelligence isn't a material condition according to Marxism. Your material conditions would be the resources you have available to you to continue to live. Food, the water, the shelter, in the modern day and age, you could also, and those are also going to be different based on location. And you think those can all be utilized everywhere, all over the world, no matter what? Oh, I would depend on what you mean by equalize, otherwise, no. Right, so there's gonna have to be two classes. It's gonna be some with less, some with more. I don't think there has to be, I think that there is, I just don't think it has to be, I think for a majority of human history, it wasn't. So you're saying it's possible to equalize this in perpetuity across the entire planet to make sure there's no more class distinctions? Is it possible? Absolutely. That's ridiculous. Why inverts it? Why? Because not all of the fresh water is in spread out enough to do that, not all of the food, not all of the air. So yeah, when you have more than what you need, you share. That's a thing that could be done. Yes, and it's still, which means to share means you're gonna take the fresh fruit in one location and transport it for weeks to a different location. And the further you transport it, the less fresh it's gonna get. Yes. We can go from a port in China to a port in the United States in like 10 days. Why would it take weeks? Because then you have to put it in a truck and you have to drive it across like the entire land from different ports to like the edge of Africa. Like it takes weeks to go from one. But yeah, but why would they send it to a port in the United States to then be sent to Africa? Oh my God. It does happen under capitalism and I would argue that's because they're seeking profits out of some place in the world. In any port, you can send it to any port, you're still gonna have to drive it. And the driving is gonna take a long time. There's lots of terrain, like mountainous terrain, which is very hard to get over. We're not understanding the objective. What is this? What bears on this? It's going to take weeks to get resources from America with lots of arable land to place in the core of the land. Well that means we can't do it because it's gonna take some time to get the resources there. That means there's gonna be a class difference. There's going to be a class difference between the people who have it right away. How does that mean there's gonna, so because it's gonna take weeks to get resources places, therefore there's always gonna be classes. I'm not understanding. Congratulations. That is not what class means in a Marxist framework, no. Yeah, cause Marxism is stupid. It doesn't recognize reality. Yeah, but I don't think you've really given an argument for why Marxism is stupid. I literally have explained just basic reality. No one's going to be equal. You're never going to get everyone. Yeah, I just disagree with that. I don't think that that's necessarily true. Why should I think that's true? I win the debate. Like if you can't do the reality. Well yeah, but staying there because you don't agree with me, I win the debate isn't telling me why I should agree with you. If you don't agree with just obvious facts about reality that you can't just make things equal. Yeah, but what makes it an obvious fact of reality? That's what I'm asking you. I literally just explained that. I literally just explained it. I don't think that you did. Then you're done. But I'm really going to communicate. Well that's not really an objection to my art, I'm not really hearing an objection. I don't know what it is that you think you destroyed. I can't further explain basic facts about reality. Yeah, but you say they're basic facts, but then you can't tell me in virtue of what they're basic facts. Okay, so then give me an example of what you said is a basic fact. And in virtue of what you can't do it again because I'm not understanding. I'm an idiot, like you said, I'm an idiot and I'm stupid and I don't understand what you're saying. So can you do that? I'm literally doing it. You guys want a little Q&A? Yes. We've got three minutes. I'd like to use all of them up. No, I want to move to Q&A. Because I want to hear an objection. So as I said before, you will never be able to balance all of the needs of life to everyone on the planet. In virtue of what? Yeah, you've made that claim. Why should I think that claim is true? Because more arable land is in one location than the other. It's hard to get in one place to another. Then why does that mean that resources cannot be equitably distributed? In virtue of what? Because it's harder to get to some place than the others. In virtue of what does it being harder mean? It cannot be done. It was hard to put a person on the moon. T-Jump, you don't think we did that? Do you think it was easy to do that? Yeah, I don't understand. You're saying it's hard to do this or for it can't be done. That's not an argument. You're not giving me the inference. If it's harder to give $1 to one person further away than it is to one person that's closer, then guess what's going to happen? The person who's closer is going to get it faster and easier and get to use it more. Well, I think that depends on the system that you live under. Under capitalism, I would think that I would say that. This is why Marxism dies and it fails in every country. Yeah, you haven't really shown why that's the case. I literally have. I literally just showed you. No, you haven't. OK, then summarize. You can take the last two minutes and summarize. I'm good. I've explained it so clearly that everyone in the chat understands it. I'm ready to go. I don't think so. No, OK. Well, I think then we'll just go ahead and move on to Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, both of our. Well, time is relative when you're listening in. Ladies and gentlemen, both of our guests are linked in the description below. So if you like what you heard, if you're moved by what you heard, please check them out, whether you're listening on the podcast or on YouTube. So with that, I just want to say superchats do get priority, but if you do have a question for one tonight's debaters, you can tag me at modern day debates. Just want to say that insults will not be read. Anything that violates YouTube's TOS or hate speech, anything like that, those will be just skipped over or edited for charitability. But yeah, so I will go ahead and start reading the questions. But go ahead and send the superchats if you want. We don't have that many on the list right now. So I'm going to start the timer now. All right, first question from bubblegumgun for two dollars says at T jump, is the quantum field a particle? Yes or no? No, but it is still physical. He's I debated him earlier, like today or yesterday or something. Gotcha from Neon Noir. You're muted. You're muted. Oh, I was just going to say, how did I was going to? Because I was wondering why he was briefed, but then you mentioned it. How do you get from Marxism to a quantum? What am I missing? Yeah, he made the argument. I brought up quantum fields as an alternative to God. And he said, well, quantum fields aren't matter and they're not particles, so they can't be physical. And that was his argument. OK, gotcha from Neon Noir says, why reject Lenin and Stalin when all they did was try to implement your ideas just because of the outcome? No, I don't think they try. I don't think you get to tell me whether somebody tried to implement my ideas. I'm an orthodox Marxist. So I don't think they tried to implement my ideas. People like Trotsky and Lenin and Stalin, they were Marxians in the sense that they believed in a lot of what he said, but they believed that the way to implement it was through a vanguard party led by a strong leader who establishes a dictatorial state in favor of the proletariat. But Marx was very critical of nation states and did not believe that a nation state being utilized to bring about some sort of revolution was going to be a successful thing because a nation state is itself a hierarchical system. And Marx was very critical of hierarchical systems. So it's just that they weren't implementing my my ideas or what I thought. We'll respond to that, T-Jump. Stayed up and talk a little bit. OK, OK. From Alan Green for $10 says, quote from Investopia, most of the blame for the subprime crisis is on the mortgage originators or the lenders. End quote. They consist of retail banks, mortgage bankers, and mortgage and mortgage brokers. The mortgage brokers, those are the intermediaries. This is another quote. Sorry. These are two quotes back to back. Sorry. Yeah, the mortgage brokers were the ones that was talking about the intermediaries. Anybody want to? Does it? OK. From Mark Reed for $5 says, T-Jump, why do people need exactly the same resources? Wouldn't people that have access to an equal amount of resources be of the same class? No, because if it takes like resources to have to go from one location to another, it takes weeks. The level of freshness goes down, for example, as one possibility. Electricity, when it goes over locations, it decreases in its potency of electricity. Distance and location have a huge impact on the quality of the goods that you're transporting. So if it takes longer to get quality of goods from one location to another, they're going to be lower quality. So there's going to be a class difference between the people who get the lower quality stuff and people who get the higher quality of stuff where it's produced. Fish, fish is an example. Yeah, I would just say that I think that there could be resources produced in multiple countries. Africa is one that many countries, like China, more so than the United States, unfortunately, are making actually quite impressive investment into African countries. Africa, because it has for dozens of years in the past, but a huge place for me personally, I would say that Europe raped Africa for all its resources. Anyway, sure, we grow pears in Argentina, but why couldn't we grow them in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? This idea that resources, oh, yeah, Africa has a lot of arable land. Yes, absolutely. There's different countries that have different amounts of arable land. America has the most. Yes, and I would say that I don't see why humans, socially speaking, couldn't recognize how we need to produce things in different areas, but we can find ways to distribute that to all people in some equitable sense. All right, gotcha. One second. All right, from Bubblegumgun for $2 says at T-Jump, it has to be a particle for it to be physical. You want to take that one, Leo? Go for it. No, no, it's not even worth it. Look, dude, go learn about canonical quantization and what a quantum, no, I'm not even, no. OK. Sphincter of Doom for $5 says, the problem with Marx is the LTV, which cannot be reconciled with time preferences or marginal utility without becoming the STV. I disagree. It takes a different definition of value, but its ability to account for certain aspects of non-productive areas of an economy isn't like moot as a result of that. It's just that it explains them differently. Also, if the subjective theory of value were true, I should be able to go buy a brand new Ford F-150 for $35,000 if I want. But if I walk into the dealership and say that they're going to look at you and go, the dude's going to go, ah, fuck this guy. Because the value isn't subjective. I don't get to choose what I'm going to pay for what I buy. So then what is value if it isn't subjective? I think Marx is a good job of answering that question. And that's all I have. My answer is better. Gotcha. So that is the end of our Super Chat list, guys. So if you have a Super Chat up until the time that we run out of questions or the time runs out, those questions will go straight to the top of the list. And we will go on and move to the unpaid questions now. I got a Super Chat on my end from Lawson Harrison. I can't wait for the Communist Revolution so that myself and 99% of the population can be artists, YouTubers, and philosophers. Unironically, that would be totally based if people could actually live in a society that allowed them to pursue the things they'd actually like to pursue. No involuntary impositions of will. Well, I think his point is that most people wouldn't be doing anything productive like McDonald's workers, none of them, no old farmers. Yeah, and then McDonald's wouldn't be a thing. Well, I definitely think farmers would be a thing. Because farmers is like the oldest job in human history that's existed before the concept of commodification and capitalism. At a different rate, though. I think the rates and the amount of work would change significantly. So I think most jobs would probably go away. There probably wouldn't be most jobs. And most people wouldn't be able to work. Yeah, I think that we would just end up automating those jobs. I don't think we can do that yet. I don't think we have the technological ability to do that yet. AGI, when it happens, I'm all for it, though. Gotcha. A question from Gur Mania asks if I have a channel. And I did link that in the description below. Thank you for asking that question. Don't ever read anything from Gur Mania on this channel ever again. Just don't do it. No. Well, I had to take the opportunity. I had to take the opportunity to plug my channel. So please subscribe to me. I need more subscribers, so just got to say that. From Azi, I don't know how to say this, Azi Zaba. Yeah, OK, is China failing? Sailing with respect to what standard? Agreed. I don't know what it means to say that somebody is failing Simplicit or failure is given with respect to a standard generally where the actions, behaviors, or outcomes are out of accord with the standard being taken as prescriptive of those actions or behavior. So if you're trying to go to the store, but then somebody comes and team bones you and totals your car and you don't ever make it to the store because you got to wait for the police and you got to write a report and it closes, then you failed, but only with respect to your standard your desire to get to the store. So I don't know what it means to say that somebody is failing, but you attach no desire, no standard, or nothing to it. I don't know what that means. I think it's definitely failed morally. They're definitely evil in a lot of ways, but economically they are doing well. They're doing very well. They're on the top of the countries of doing the most economically well. Azi Zabix, zero. Let's have a pronounce that name for that one. Question from whoops says, why do we do new better things? That's a quote from a leaf on YouTube. Why do we do new better things? LOL, this dude just doesn't want to get it. Capitalists literally have no representatives, but propaganda. I don't know what that's, I'm sorry. It sounds like it might be more of a question for T-Jump. I should let him answer. I think it's a criticism of T-Jump. They're saying that capitalists literally have no representatives, but propaganda. Why do we do new better things? Why do we do new better things for lots of reasons? Money, efficiency, better quality of life because it's fun. Scientists do it because it's fun. There's lots of reasons, but again, all of history shows that mixed economies that are predominantly capitalist are better than pretty much everything else. Okay. Another question from Azi Zabix, zero. For T-Jump says, how do you think fruits from around the world end up in his local supermarket? And why fruit farmers so impoverished if they're so close to such an in-demand resource? Because we pay better. So like, fish is a good example. Transporting fish means it's gonna be less fresh and less tasty for everybody. It doesn't matter where you take it. So even here, I'm in Minnesota, if I'm trying to get like a lobster or something, we're gonna be less fresh than if I get it in Maine. So there's gonna be a class difference between the quality of the lobster I get versus the quality of the lobster you get in Maine. Same thing applies to fruits, same thing applies to corn, same thing applies to everything. So as you transport things the longer and further it is away, the quality and the amount of energy it takes to get that to the location is going to decrease or increase relative to the stuff that you're sending and its quality is going to decrease. I guess I would just say that I think T-Jump is using class to mean something different than at least a Marxist would say because the Marxist isn't gonna say that class is given in terms of the quality of the material conditions or the material resources you have, but the quantity. So you might, you could be somebody who only makes 35K a year living in Maine and when you go out and buy lobster, it's gonna be way fresher than, let's say the Succup family that lives here in Succup or here in Iowa, if you've ever seen grain bids with the green Succup that's the family I'm talking about. But I don't think anybody would say that that means that Succup is of a lower class than the making millions of dollars a year with the 100 million dollar a year company under their ownership is of a lower class than somebody who makes 35K a year in Maine simply because they can get fresher lobster. It's not the quality of the material resources, it's the quantity. Gotcha, we did get some more super chats in. Thank you so much guys. Send in your super chats. We do have more time on the clock and James needs the affirmation to be motivated to keep making more videos. So it's from Jay Grimes for $10 says, et agrammi marx was not critical of the nation state. For him, it was necessary. Agrammi, he's like, he's muted. He said something here. I saw his mouth. Well, no, no, I said agrammi marx and then he started reading it. I realized, oh, he was saying at agrammi and then after that was the start of the session. I don't know what that means at agrammi marx. He's saying, Leo, did you know that marx? That's what he's saying. So agrammi is Leo. Did you know that marx? Why is Leo agrammi? Because my display name on the screen is Bill Keel agrammi. Oh, I forgot about that last name. I remember the Bill Keel, but I don't remember the agrammi part. Okay, sorry. Okay, marx was not critical of the nation state. For him, it was a necessity of current political economy and would pass into history like past societies. He himself supported German nationalism. He literally said, marx didn't criticize nation states, but here's how he criticized as saying that they're requisite to the maintenance of the status quo under the systems that it is currently maintained, but that as we develop past that, the need for the nation state will disappear. Marx was certainly critical of the nation state. This is expressed in his drafts of civil war in France as well as I believe, see there is a second or is first or a second volume of capital, I can't remember, because I've totally read all theory. But yeah, he was quite critical of nation states because he viewed them as hierarchical systems that were oftentimes captured by the capitalist class and then capitalist class and then utilized by them to further their own interests which almost always came at least according to marx to the detriment of everyone else. So he would have been critical of nation states. He was quite critical of nation states in virtue of them being hierarchical systems. People are commenting on your cat. No, yeah. He's a lonely, lonely boy. All right, from Ahmed Khan for 199 says, smuggling of genes into the USSR. What? Ahmed Khan says for 199, smuggling of genes into the USSR. Like genes, G-E-N-E or genes, J-E-J. I don't, what's his point? He just made, he's asked, I'm sorry, I don't, I'm sorry. Yeah, I know, I just, I don't know what, he's gonna have to send something else to clarify. I'm not understanding it better than me. I'm just coming in and it is. Yeah, the Soviet Union had no genes. There were no genes at all during the USSR. Nope, nobody had genes, apparently. I don't know what he's trying to do. It's a conspiracy. This is the real reason why Ukraine's being invaded right now. Stop the import, hashtag, stop the import of genes. Nobody likes it, but get rid of this information. Okay, from SvigDurubdu for $5 says, unfortunately the geography of Africa is not as conducive to trade or transport as Europe or the American continent. Yeah, I disagree. I think that history shows that's obviously false. There was massive amounts of trade into and out of Africa during the 1560 and 1700. That's just a historical fact. I don't think it has anything to do with geography. I think it has to do with more socioeconomic culture rather than geographic culture. All right, from Medical Mastery for $4.99 says, T-Jump, stick to politics and philosophy, not science. Materialism is dumb, so is communism. Pay me. I'm sharing with you. From Brandon Hansen for $9.99 says, Marx is a Mothuselian, but just flipped the hierarchy structure. Also, he sucks. Yeah, I just, I don't know what that means. Wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. He wasn't done, he wasn't done, I'm sorry. Also, he sucks. Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Friedrich List, all are the real ones you need to know about. I know a little bit about them, but with respect to what he said to Marx, with the first thing, genuinely, I don't know what that means. With respect to Marx is dumb. Okay, sure, you can think that, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with people thinking that Marx is dumb. There's probably more people to think that he was than that he wasn't. Oh, apparently he sucks a lot. So that is all the super chats at the list, and we will go back to the unpaid questions now. So if you have a super chat, send it in, and they will go straight to the top of the list, we will ask them that. From, did I read this already? Yes, I did. From Darth Revan asks to the Marxist, are you suggesting we go back to tribal clan times? What logical sense does that make? I don't recall saying, or even insinuating that at any point, what I said, or at any point in this discussion. I think what I said was that societies prior to about 10 to 12,000 years ago, that's how they were. I don't think I said anything about that, that means we should go back to that. I don't wanna wear nasty ass, very, very poorly made clothing. It's largely like fiber and mud, it's just slapped onto my skin. Like no, I don't understand this, asking questions that don't even have anything, even remotely to do with what the person's harking. Okay, let me just check to see. It looks like that's all the questions we have. Let's call for alcohol. Give them one shot. I know, so there was a question, another question from Gurmania for T-Jump. Would you mind if I read that since I've got it right here? Sure, no, no, by all means, please. He said, question for T-Jump, is there at least one facet of Marxism that you would agree with or appreciate? Not sure how to answer that. I mean, I guess so. There's lots of different platitudes in it that are just truisms that I agree with because they're truisms. I mean, it's definitely not the most wrong system. It gets many things right. Okay, I did see another question just came in. Let me see if I can, a question for T-Jump. Is there at least one? Oh, you just read that. Sorry, man, way behind. Okay, well, I guess we're- Yeah, Gurmania likes to fuck with people. That's why you should never read his question. Never read his question again, Gurmania. You know I love you, Gur. No, no, we're done. Okay, well, I guess we'll wrap it up, folks. So, before we go, I would just like to thank the moderators in the chat. I want to thank James for creating this platform. Thank you, everyone in the audience for joining us tonight and for elevating the conversation with your super chats and your questions. Thank you to the debaters. You guys are the lifeblood of the show. Thank you for joining us here tonight and for showing your ideas. And for everybody that's out there tonight, like it if you loved it, share it if you want to spread it and subscribe because we have plenty more debates coming your way. You don't want to miss our speakers, our link in the description below. Check them out, do it now. Thank you so much, everybody. Have a great night and remember to keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Have a great night.