 Folks thrilled to have you here very excited for this Want to let you know a couple of quick housekeeping things if you ever have to use the restroom the right out here and We're gonna have a special kind of been in the country before or maybe it's new But we're gonna have a special thing this time where our sponsor manifold has been really good to us Helping us make this event possible and site that I actually use it's a play money prediction website You bet on anything don't risk your real money. They're hard-earned money Anapoles the channel play money predict anything including the debates at debate con here this weekend So when I encourage you folks if you're watching online check out that link in the description box or this debate It is capitalism versus socialism will destiny beat Leo So if you go to that manifold link in the description as I mentioned and here if you want to use your phone and Use your camera and take a picture of the QR code. You can actually vote as well predicting But you might be wondering well, how do we actually decide who won though? Like what's the objective criteria? We're gonna do an in-person pre-debate Handful and then post-debate and it's just by percentage So if you're leaning and I even just a smidge or destiny in terms of capitalism Then you slip your hand up or if it's maybe you're totally behind and slip your hand up, too If you're at 50-50 or like I'm truly at 50-50 you ask you to not vote for that If you lean toward Leo socialism Any degree we'll ask you to put your hand up that Just want to give you a heads up. That's coming and we're gonna have Ryan counting hands for that He'll take the present so But I want to give a huge welcome Steven. We'd love to have you come up here I want to say thank you so much for helping us make this event possible It's a true pleasure to have you so welcome Steven Great. Thank you so much. My name is Steven gruget. I'm one of the co-founders of manifold Manifold is a play money prediction market And what that means is you can come on to our site and create a betting market on any question that you care about That can be serious things like the conflict in Gaza the 2024 election or silly things like whether friends will be dating in a month Manifold lets you do it all From betting on events like this any any event you could possibly think of and through the power of market incentives Our markets actually are reasonably accurate even using play money, so I encourage you all to check it out Enjoy the debate Thanks so much Steven pleasure to have you. Thanks again for helping us make this event possible But thank you all for being here. Oh couple cuz quick house came things So if your VIP we asked that these first two rows that you has the signage that say reserve for VIP We asked you they'd be reserved for VIP and then There are break room so there is one just on the other side of this wall So if you're kind of tired you're like down and quiet a bit just on the other side of the wall Otherwise we're gonna get started want to give a huge round of applause for thrilled to have our Friends and guest speakers Steven and Leo to be with us. We're gonna start with Steven With his opening statement Steven the floor is all yours Oh That's right The pole okay, if you lean just even slightly or a lot toward capitalism and Steven Flip your hand and if you can't if even just slightly or a lot you lean toward the oh and socialist Got it. All right, well, thank you very much and Steven the floor is all yours. Thanks for being with us All right, well my argument against socialism is pretty simple two big points Despite all the promises of Mark some 200 years ago I don't think there has been any country that has actually enacted any form of socialism and has like delivered on Economic prosperity in the way that it would promise it seems like overwhelmingly these countries run into problems with either authoritarian dictators taking over or an inability to conduct their markets in an efficacious way Among a number of other smaller or more local economic problems that run into Communities that try to embrace like socialists or command economy policies I think that the economic unfeasibility is really bad I think the second huge part is some of these countries seem to run into a big issue relating to social or political freedoms You have a lot of these countries like say China or Vietnam that end up only having a single party That's allowed to rule and you end up by the admission of a lot of people that support socialism or communism basically an intolerance to other sorts of economic or political ideas I Feel like one of the reasons why capitalism is better than socialism or one of the reasons why the system works better than socialism It's because capitalism is a larger umbrella that can incorporate multiple different kinds of economic philosophy So for instance if you want to do a co-op or if you want to have your little socialism town You can do that under a capitalist system. There's absolutely nothing today that stops you from Starting a co-op from getting your friends together and creating whatever type of economic arrangement you want But again by the admission of many leftists some of them quite large on the internet today If you were living under a socialist system things like private investment or private ownership is Explicitly banned and you will be sent off to a reeducation camp if you try to start a business like this So I like the economic prosperity that capitalism delivers I like the social and liberal freedoms that capitalism tends to deliver and I like that if you like socialism You can try different forms of economic organization under a capitalist umbrella And I think these are things that are not afforded to you under any sort of socialist communism or Marxist system It's my opening statement Anyone thank you for that Stephen. We're gonna kick it over to you Leo. You got ten minutes on the floor Capitalism is a word that has evoked a lot of different emotions and a lot of people throughout history What exactly is capitalism well put simply capitalism is the notion that the means of Economic production the ways that humans produce the things that we need as a species to continue surviving on this planet is owned and controlled privately Capitalism has existed for somewhere between about 250 300 years so in the grand scheme of things. It's still relatively new to us Capitalism has actually done quite a few good things throughout human history increases in individual wealth increases in productivity as well as technological advances and improvements in quality of life Capitalism is not evil to me as it is to many others However, I would say that capitalism is not perfect and it certainly has its drawbacks There is a system a systematic analysis of capitalism known as the labor theory of value Which I'm going to try to avoid for the sake of this discussion because it is quite technical But there are a variety of things derived from it known as predictions that are made about capitalism And how we can expect it to evolve in the future. I'd like to list at least three of these predictions The diminishing return of capital to the workers in the form of wages That is effectively just a reduction in wages earned over the last 40 maybe 50 years Wages as measured against the worker productivity at least here in the United States. I live in the United States I can't really speak for other countries has gone down The second one would be rising tension between capital owners and the laborers Over hours to be worked and wages to be paid Most people are familiar with the labor movement of the early 1900s and we have all seen a rising labor movement in the United States today particularly amongst railroad and auto workers The third one is the centralization of capital into less and larger firms over time the notion of Monopolization we have seen this in the fossil fuel industry We have seen this in the telecommunications industry We have even seen this in areas of the agricultural industry where something like 90% of the production of beef Is controlled by four corporations? So it seems to me that these three predictions have come true and for me That gives us reason to potentially consider alternatives to the capitalist mode of production I would say socialism and I will be defending particularly market socialism is something that we can look at and potentially implement as a means of Transitioning away from capitalism into a fully socialist economy. What is socialism? Socialism is generally defined as a mode of production where the workers own and democratically control the means of production Now I being a market socialist believe in Incrementalist policies that are anti-capitalist and that might kickstart this transitory stage from capitalism Into socialism things like worker cooperatives single-payer healthcare nationalization of a variety of industries running them like we do the post office, which is a nationalized institution things like the telecommunications industry Transportation having robust public transportation particularly at the national level much stronger wage and labor protections and an increase in green energy production alongside a nationalization of the energy production industry Now I think that these things would do a hell of a lot more for people broadly and would benefit society more Than how we are operating today I want to reiterate that I do not think that capitalism is evil or Anything like that as you might hear from many other socialists But I do think that what we are seeing today is that humans are technologically advancing Beyond the capability of capitalism to meaningfully maintain and provide for the humans that exist on this planet I think that is why despite producing enough food globally to feed 10 billion people There's only eight billion people on the planet and yet five to six million humans die of starvation every year. I Think socialism is something that we should all consider and look at as an alternative to the systems that we operate under today. Thank you Thank you very much Leo for that opening statement. We'll kick it into the open dialogue gentlemen the floor is all yours I guess one of the things that I run into that is interesting is when we talk about capitalism, obviously we have problems with capitalism Actually before I get into this do you consider countries like when Mao ran China or modern-day China or The Soviet Union were these socialist countries in your eyes. No, no, okay so I Find that it is Impossible sometimes to defend capitalism in certain arguments against people that advocate for socialist reforms because what I run into is I don't get to Define capitalism as textbook capitalism textbook capitalism is perfect. There are Multiple competing firms in every single section of the economy. There are no monopolies the government regulation is absolutely perfect Wages are always perfectly competitive workers get to have employees or employers fight over them for payments and etc etc We all know how capitalism works in a textbook. Most of us here have taken an econ 101 or a finance 101 class That form of capitalism is easy to defend as the best system of economic organization ever But I don't get to defend that system I have to defend capitalism with all of its messy realities with all of its imperfect Implementations with all of its contravening forces and actors both global and domestic and the frustrating thing is that when I have to defend The real implementation of capitalism as it as it exists today I find that I often have to run into the idealized versions of socialism that exist Nowhere, I don't know how it's ever possible or even satisfying For a socialist to constantly say well this form of socialism failed But that wasn't socialism that form of socialism failed But that was actually a state capitalist ran by a government that form of socialism failed But that was because of contravening capitalist global forces every single time you try to point to a successful socialist force It just it either wasn't really socialism or it failed for some reason extrinsic to it Do you think it's fair that for a capitalist? I have to defend the real-world messy implementation of capitalism versus like the idealized dream-like version of socialism that Has never managed to I guess materialize in the real world I think practically yes because the reason that I think that this idealistic form of capitalism doesn't ever obtain is Because of the structure of capitalism with the profit incentive Capitalists simply aren't going to operate Capitalism in the idealist sense because it doesn't maximize their profits and maintain Their powerful ownership over the means of production and with respect to socialism I would say we don't have any successful I agree we don't have any successful Implementations of socialism, but I think that's because too many people think that socialism is a thing that we can do When I think that much like capitalism we didn't just oh, let's let's just let's do capitalism now human society Organically evolved into capitalism out of mercantilism which itself came from feudalism And I think that there isn't anything that we can do to make socialism become a reality humans will at some point probably over the next 150 years organically evolve into a Socialist mode of production and I just don't know what that would look like and that's why personally I choose to advocate for a more market socialism that Sort of sits as a transition between capitalism and the full-on socialism that I think that you were that you were mentioning Sure, so I agree with what you're saying there, but it seems like if capitalism evolved in this like economically darwistic sense of capitalism basically grew out of The feudal to mercantilist to what would eventually become like the global capitalist society Why then if the next successful and best form of economic organization is socialism? Why would we need to? Why would we need to enact policies that grossly favor socialist policies and disfavor capitalist ones? It seemed like you were advocating for that in your opening. Well, I think because Advocating for those policies and implementing them would it improves human's lives And I think that improving human lives and operating an economic system Toward the benefit of humans rather than the mass accumulation of profit would just be better Why do we think that so you talk about the profit incentive? Why do we think that market socialism doesn't run into the same issues with these types of incentives? Well, I think that it probably would because markets are still markets are still present in market socialism But I think that market socialism is sort of like kick-starting that transition into full Marxian socialism where I think most of those problems are going to fall away I think this is just sort of a hypothetical here that let's say in a hundred and fifty years humans are living under a fully Marxian socialist economic system I actually believe that there will probably be some problems there and then I think that's the point where Socialists then Compared to people that would be arguing then for probably communism or something like that would have to defend socialism with those problems that it That it would have so then just to double check this so aside from the individual workers that might be working at a firm Does market socialism solve anything that's intrinsic to profit incentive problems? Because I hear for instance people will say like the profit incentive is a reason why pollution exists But then my question would be why do we think that that would go away? Just because that profit incentive is now dispersed to instead of one owner of a fossil fuel industry Maybe have a hundred workers Wouldn't they be wouldn't they have like all the same incentives to enact whatever environmentally destructive policy? There is because all of them can now profit off of said destructive policies I I really don't think so I don't think under a market socialist that everybody's going to be concerned with with making more money Because I think that the money that is made that is produced throughout the economy Would be more equitably distributed and people would probably be more wealthy and I think that That would reduce that incentive to maximize profit And would allow people to operate economic firms in ways that are geared Even if only a little bit more towards actually providing for the sake of humans. I don't think market socialism is perfect I don't think socialism is perfect But I think they're a little bit better than what we're doing now Why do we think that equitable wages would happen throughout society like what would be what's like the mechanism for Let's say we've got a co-op that does janitorial services and then a co-op that does Um, I don't know transportation What what would cause the wages between these two separate Cooperatively owned firms to equalize but we think that would ever happen just because we're in a market socialist system that I actually don't know Okay, um, so I feel like the so a couple So here's like a couple of big problems and I've been going on other things so the first thing is that um, whereas it seems like we both agree that capitalism evolved naturally out of the the Mercantile the mercantile system that preceded it the reason why that evolution happened was because it was just It was a better way of organizing Economic forces, right capitalism allows capital to flow highly efficiently from industry to industry We equalize rate of return throughout society It's just a really really good way of allocating in a very dynamic way Money to different sectors where money can be made as opposed to the command economy attempts Where the government tries to say where the money or investment should go that that seemed to fail horrendously A lot of socialists understandably so back away from those kinds of early examples and say well that wasn't real socialism But it seems that even today we're acknowledging despite the fact that we could do co-ops in any part of the united states Which is essentially what market socialism is it's kind of like every single firm becomes a co-op People don't seem to be gravitating towards that anywhere. I don't see any big leftist making investments into that anywhere I have a lot of questions specifically on how that form of economic organization would work namely How do you how do you become an employee at a co-op if you if it requires some sort of buy-in? How do you start new businesses? I think we can go into that in detail if you want which I'm really curious about But then the second part is that I don't think that market socialism really solves anything I don't think that whereas any strong argument for why Different competing firms in a market socialist environment would have more equitable rates of return of money to Different people within a firm. Yeah Maybe a hundred people in a firm now make a more equal wage But there's no reason why competition between firms would solve for the inequalities wage distribution in united states, which I think is largely where a lot of these problems come from You know as much as people want to say Jeff Bezos makes so much money I don't think people that are programming at amazon are complaining about the the money their ceo makes like people don't go and work for You know any of the fang or any of the large tech firms and are thinking like man bill gates make so much money They may only make 350 000 a year in total compensation Um, so I think those are two big big issues right off the bat And then we can go to more you can I guess address either of these two things If you want before we move on to other stuff for them Well the first thing that I would say about why we don't see people moving into market socialism now and into worker cooperatives Is because there isn't much of an incentive to the economy is already largely controlled by people who have an incentive against that Because it would be a threat to the means through which they maintain their wealth and their power with respect to Like buying in I don't think that's how Worker cooperatives would probably work as the data that I've looked at that's not how people get hired at them as it is And with respect to the data that that I've looked at which I can It's just sitting in front of me. I could cite it if you'd like Worker cooperatives operate as well if not better than traditional capitalist firms And I do think that they're gonna have problems. I like I said, I don't think worker cooperatives are perfect But I do think that they are What's that? Oh, I do think that they are a little bit better than capitalist firms With respect to competition between them. I think there would probably still be competition between worker cooperatives I don't know if it would be quite as ruthless as it is now because I think that the profit incentive would be reduced and so would provide for A less of a ruthlessness to the competition But I also think that there might be more cooperation involved between even between industries As a result of decision-making at these firms being a little bit more broadened I think that a lot of people may Look more towards cooperation rather than ruthless competition Um, but I should add just really quickly. I think competition is healthy even within capitalism I do think competition is healthy and I actually think most capitalists don't really like competition Okay, and I think that's why we see monopolization in a lot of industries sure that's possible So we can say capitalists don't like competition Um, but I mean a simple question in your ideal Market socialist transition would capital firms that are privately, uh owned would those still be allowed to exist? I think for a time Yes, for me it would be a slow transition again incrementalists sort of starting with an incentive for new firms To um to structure themselves as cooperatives incentives for current firms to structure themselves as cooperatives and sort of That slow transition with incentives Into worker cooperatives and then say maybe I don't know I'm just sort of throwing out numbers for the sake of the argument 30 years after that the government sort of mandates that you have to be a worker cooperative at that point Okay, so I I don't think the I don't think the argument that um, uh co-ops don't start because capitalists are You know, you know bullying them out, which I'd be curious like what even are the mechanisms that are causing that to happen Because as you said they're I don't think it's bullying them out so much as They're just not doing it. It's not the system. We currently live under. That's not what people are looking at There just isn't an incentive for it. Yeah, but like where are all of these employees like clamoring for Cooperative businesses. Why don't they just go start when I started cooperatively? I would Argue from a Marxist perspective that the reason for that is is that they're more focused on meeting their immediate material conditions going to work to earn the wage to pay their bills and It said it can pay the rent and pay get medicine for their kids and buy food to feed their families people are focused on that That's a strong argument for working class people doesn't explain though why you don't see a whole bunch of Tech workers get together and make cooperatively owned businesses. I think tech workers are Largely going to be contained in the working class I don't think you think tech workers are struggling to feed their children afford medication. I don't think working class necessarily means struggling Okay, what is your I'm sorry real quick What is your because I understand from for a Marxist working class just means you're part of the proletariat meaning you are an employee That's working somebody else's you sell your labor power. Yeah, I think tech workers sell their labor power Okay, sorry the because earlier when you said working class you implied that the working class are people that are struggling to make ends meet So it sounded like there was it's more that the working class aren't they don't think about these things They're not really concerned about it because they're focused on other aspects of their lives Like meeting their immediate material conditions Gotcha, but even higher members of the working class that aren't just focused on meeting there I would argue they still are focused on me. I would argue everyone Is informed their interests are informed by the material conditions under which they live Okay, so meeting those. Okay. So even people making high healthy six figure salaries and educated positions or high skilled labor positions these people are Too fixated on their material conditions. Even capitalists are focused on Their material conditions, but their material conditions are different. So they inform different interests Like investing in other capitalist firms to maximize return and maximize profit and things like that everyone Their interests their material interests are informed by their material conditions being in different classes And this is where the concept of class and marxism comes from is living under different material conditions None of us lives the way that billionaires do so our interests Are different than billionaires interests are because the conditions under which we live that inform our interests Are different than the conditions under which they live that inform their interests Okay, I I understand the argument, but I'm I I'm I guess for me. I'm obviously as a capitalist I'm I'm wholly unconvinced. So we have a superior form of economic organization That doesn't in the transitionary phase at least promise to address Um in the short or long term any of the big problems in society This form of economic organization does not have an organic movement towards it like capitalism did This form of economic organization would require strict government restriction to get there. I think there would be an organic Evolution into socialism. I don't think that we're probably there yet or maybe we're at just The very start of it and then over I don't know the next like I said 100 or 150 years that gets that um Um That transition gets bigger and bigger that movement gets bigger and bigger and more and more people demand better I thought if you said that like wages are having problems, there's increased antagonism versus bosses that capital is centralizing How is this an organic evolution towards socialism? Well, I don't think necessarily that that's an organic evolution towards socialism more as it more than it is a sort of people starting to reject the capitalist mode of production, which I would think Would come at the start of a transition these transitions don't happen quickly humans didn't evolve into capitalism immediately that took Probably and I would argue mercantilism was sort of a transitory stage from more of a feudalistic monarchistic Economic system into the the capitalist economic system that we currently have and we say when we say devolved into capitalism Are you implying that the systems before it was superior that feudalism? No, no evolved in the capital Capitalism is certainly better for humans than then feudalism or anything like that. Sure. I just want to say them um I guess then my my only other I mean the only other question I can think of I guess then is like Why do you think we haven't seen any country that's attempted To try this transition to socialism. Why have none of these countries worked out? Why have we not had because they've tried to sort of force Transition into socialism like let's do socialism right now If somebody tried to do that with capitalism 300 years ago, they would have faced the same problem They would have failed because broadly globally capitalism hadn't caught on There the transition hadn't really started yet and that's just going to make it difficult. That's what I mean by an organic transition is that It's not it's not like we all get together and say all right. Let's it's time to do socialism It's that starts with this slow rejection of the capitalist mode of production people wanting something more people Starting to advocate more and more for different ideas different economic structures and systems And implementing them that slowly moves us Towards an economic system that's more democratic than what we currently have such that at some point in the future We're no longer living under capitalism and are living under a much more democratic economic structure That we would work that I would recognize as socialism Didn't the um, wouldn't we argue that all of the early attempts at socialism Were actually the opposite of that that it wasn't forcing people into socialism that these were transitory stages I thought that was the whole point of vanguard parties or the whole point of like Um, we're trying to very much opposed to vanguardism I would argue that vanguardism was essentially trying to force socialism and that's why They failed also. I'm well real quick. What's the difference between that and what you want to do with giving preferential loans to Cooperative or market socialist companies and slowly easing back the amount of capital available for a capitalist to invest in businesses Aren't you essentially going to be creating the same I don't think that's the same as like Putting people in work camps and stuff like that. I don't think those things that happen like with the soviet union and Malice china and everything like that. I don't think the same problems would arise with The implementation of policies that incentivize worker cooperatives alongside capitalist firms I mean like I said, it's it's incrementalist. This doesn't just Happen overnight and things like universal single payer health care robust public transportation public telecommunications things that I mentioned I don't think that's Anywhere remotely close to what we saw with the soviet union or with malice china or even with china today Which I agree with what you're saying there capitalist. Yeah, I definitely agree that but I don't think any of those things are remotely closer to socialism Um, I don't either market socialism It is a bit of a misnomer because you still have markets. You still have commodification. There's things like that But there's a much more democratic control over the economy than there is right now workers These people in here that have jobs don't really have much of a say over where they work what what that firm does So the ceo's the executives could choose to lay off a bunch of people and move those jobs to mexico And none of those people have any say in that at all whereas with the worker cooperative that would be put to a vote for the workers Hey, are you guys willing to give up your job so that we can send them to mexico? Most of them would probably say no and then that wouldn't happen So it's just let's make the economy a little bit more democratic and see if this Kick starts this movement into a fully democratized economy lacking things like the excuse me decommodification And some of the other features of the capitalist system But I don't think this is going to happen overnight Okay, to be clear when you say more democratic What you really mean is like less democratic for certain areas of more democratic, right? Because right now if anybody wanted to create a co-op or a market socialist operating firm You could do that anywhere, but in your idealized system the one we're making steps towards Private ownership and private investment would effectively be illegal, right? You would never be able to do that at some point that would probably be the case. Well necessarily, right? It would have to be the case. Yeah at some point but not not like right away It's not like all right We're gonna make private investment illegal and you can only because that would that would just completely destroy our economy So we we can't do that and that's what I didn't mean I just mean it's it's a tad ironic to refer to it as a more democratic system when certain ideologies are Not only necessarily incompatible with the state They would be banned from certain forms of economic participation as well Well, I don't think those forms are themselves democratic So I think that at some point eliminating non democratic forms of economic investment is would be better for people Okay, um I think that's my back and forth. I don't know what else you want to talk about. Yeah Yeah Or what how much time do you want? Yeah Yeah One prompt is you Isn't it a leap to assume socialism is the next step in economic evolution or not assume it would be some other yet thought of system um because Capitalism is an undemocratic system of economic control and the next step would be one that would be democratic. So Any economic system that is democratic where the workers Have that that democratic that broad democratic control over economic production would just be socialism And to me that is the next step. I would want to hear an argument for What would be the next step other than that and What kind of model that would be and what it would look like? Any thoughts on the other side or um, I I mean I take issue with the idea that like a firm operating under So when we talk about incentives for firms, we talk about incentives for unions are a good thing I think people run into this issue where they think worker equals good and firm equals bad Instead of just firm is the firm and the worker is the worker. I agree with that. Yeah, I hear capitalist firms are just firms It's they don't do anything. It's oh, sorry to interrupt But it's it's the workers and then I would say it's the owners of the firms And their interests that they use the firms to meet That creates the problems and so one of the points of socialism and one of the points of Marxism broadly is to eliminate That class of individuals that has that much power Over the society such that they can use the economy to meet their interests Which I think as we have seen plainly comes to the detriment of societies broadly Sure That can happen But I don't feel like there's been a convincing argument made on the other side That organizing these firms taking away the capitalist owner and then distributing among the workers Because people associate workers with good. They think that more democratic better for the workers Both of those things are almost certainly true is going to be better for society I don't think that's ever been demonstrated. I don't understand why there would be any mechanism where that would be true You don't think a democratization of economies like we've done with our governments would be better for society Like I don't think for our governments. I don't think necessarily that follows Well, I don't I would say I don't think it necessarily follows either All we're doing is we're shifting around some of the incentives But it doesn't necessarily mean that these incentives are going to align in a way that's better for society All it really means is the incentives are probably aligning in a way that's better for the workers Now if you're a worker in a particular firm, that's good And most people are workers. Most people are not workers of every firm in the united states though No, but most people are are workers rather than owners. That's true But more people buy from privately earned companies than work for different types of privately earned companies, right? So for instance, we run into issues in parts of the united states where labor unions that are representing workers Might be blocking the implementation of green energy programs. This has happened or at least when I live in california There's a big deal in california that the lco the largest collection of labor unions Fights pretty stringently at times against certain implementations of green energy policy Because there aren't going to be good jobs there for some other workers So this would be an example where the the laborers themselves are actually standing in contrast to what would be better for all of society Because they're representing their own interests, which I want to be clear again It's not necessarily a bad thing for workers to represent their interests But I think it's a mistake to pretend that just because workers are representing their interests all of society will be better off for it Workers don't represent the interests of all workers people that are working As a police officer in a police union are not representing the same interests as teachers working in teachers unions And there are times where the unions can actually be at odds with the With the contravening Population sentiment as well, right? We'll see for instance in local elections how important it is that you have to You've got to bow out and basically give a ton of concessions to emergency service unions At least in Omaha where I was from that was a really big deal that if you're running for mayor You have to have the the firefighters the cops on your side So there are times here where where labor unions or workers in general labor in general could be advocating for things that are Not in in a good thing for society So the the idea that we want to make a huge transition from one form of economic organization That is undoubtedly superior to the form that came before it Undoubtedly superior to the attempts at socialism if I grant that they weren't socialism that existed in other parts of the world That we want to abandon that and try a whole new form of organization That doesn't even have the underlying mechanisms necessary that even theoretically would address societal problems But that we want to actually start to make that transition using a combination of government policy and capital controls And then we want to phase out capitalism in favor of this other form of organization that would make illegal capitalism I find that yeah that that line of argumentation is it feels very heavily ideologically driven in a very negative Not willing to confront reality kind of way So one thing I would say is the mechanisms for capitalism didn't exist under monarchism and repent or um feudalism either They slowly came about as humans began to evolve organically in the different ways of organizing the economy The mechanisms for socialism do not exist currently because we're not we don't live under a socialist economy again That organic evolution has to sort of happen of its own accord I'm just advocating for policies and sort of not I don't know if I would say that market socialism is a completely different mode of economic Organization, but I would say it is different from Capitalism, but that's why I argue argue for incremental changes like that that don't Shock the economy rapidly, which I would say would probably cause economic collapse globally. Sure. Can I just one more question? Yes, you keep saying that you're viewing market socialism as just a transitory thing So is your goal at the end for every price control and every every all labor and everything to be ultimately dictated by Like a form of central committee that every labor is sent to a particular firm that the cost of everything All the wages are eventually set by some central governing body. No, I don't think so to me that would be more of like a Maybe like a statism or something like that and I consider that different from a socialism Because we what is market socialism transitioning to that because the my understanding is the reason why it's called market socialism is because Your economic organization eliminates the private ownership But the prices of goods and labor is still largely set by market forces and it's called market socialism So what is your market socialism transitioning to if not full socialism? Which I believe would demand a form of command economy Where wages and prices for goods and services and everything are set by a central body or yeah, you can tell me the difference Well, I don't know if they would necessarily be set by a central body under full socialism because I don't live under full socialism I don't actually know how it would play out just like people living under monarchism Couldn't have known how capitalism would play out So again, it's just and this is one of the big things about socialism is we can define it But we can't say what it's going to what's what it's going to look like when it manifests Just like under monarchism, they couldn't have known they might have had an idea of this You know private ownership over the economy But I don't think they would have known what that would look like when it manifests in the world And as we do now sure and final point we keep saying they wouldn't know they wouldn't know they wouldn't know The difference is nobody had to make government policy saying we're banning socialism We're only doing capital or banning mercantilism. We're only doing capital. We're banning kings and queens We're only doing capitalism capitalism grew. Um, because Because market forces are real they're powerful and that form of private organization Just eventually exploded around the world and overtook what was there before it We didn't have to there didn't have to be a government policy massaging capitalism early on or banning competing forms of economic organization It just took over the difference here is that you are suggesting a move toward socialism using Preferential government policy meaning You're disfavoring the current capitalist organization. So you are asking for to move against where I guess the markets want to be right now So I don't think it's I don't think it's satisfying to say well, they didn't know that capitalism would be like this Like yeah, sure, but nobody in the beginning was forcing You know the early economies to transition to more market-based systems. So I feel like it's a bit different there Yeah, I just think that Forcing the systems to move today is just a benefit if we can force them to move in directions that better Meet the needs of the humans that exist on this planet. And I think that there's probably ways in which Governments have done that already particularly with um, supporting things like unions which Largely oppose a lot of the a lot of the interests of capitalists and other things like enacting um Labor protections and all these things that I think it's clearly obvious that capitalists thought and continue To fight against the markets don't want seem to want that either But governments are effectively forcing that on them. So I don't necessarily think um That that's really a bad thing and under socialism you were talking about sort of this central committee I don't know if that would be bad If that's the way that that it played out. Um, because of course, I don't live under an economic system None of us do that that is structured that way. I know a lot of people argue this Well, if it's all centrally controlled and all that that would be bad I don't know if there's really any meaningful evidence that we can point to that supports that because forms of like Central organization today have largely operated within a global globally capitalist economic system. So I don't Think because that's the thing socialism would also be global You couldn't have one country that is socialist within a broadly capitalist A broadly capitalist mode of production that country is going to fail because the global market will not favor it So not only then do we have to ban capitalism from our countries? There would have to be like a worldwide I don't know if it would be banning so much as just again an organic evolution away from it I think that there would be incentives put in place that might well when we say like a capitalist country would outcompete a socialist country It seems like we're It seems like we're literally granting the strongest economy would just sort of disfavor a socialist Economy and I would think that's largely because of the interests of the capitalist just not wanting to do business with a socialist country Okay, I that doesn't I mean like, okay I don't know where that idea comes from at all. I mean if goods if you don't think capitalists like socialism It doesn't matter all they have to do is want to outcompete the other capitalist if there's a socialist country and two Capitalist countries and the one capitalist country doesn't want to trade with a socialist country The other capitalist country will and they'll just outcompete the other capitalist country, right at some point You're going to be forced to compete unless I don't think so I think capitalists tend to band together usually as a result of their interests against systems that Threaten the system that we have now through which they maintain their wealth and their power and I think that's their interest They can but at the very least I mean in a capitalist system though There would always be an opportunity for somebody to come up and take advantage of those other systems in order to outcompete the capitalist firms I don't think they would under capitalism globally as it exists today I think capitalists would band together and sort of shut them out And I think capitalists have done that before particularly when they buy out local Smaller firms as a means of eliminating competition because it's in their interest I don't I want your customers because then I can just funnel more money into my pocket if you're not out there taking their money I mean, but that's not only in their interest That's also in the interest of the people that are running those businesses, right? Well, that those aren't that is the capitalists Maybe I mean I mean if to use the tech example from earlier Do you think that a tech startup with four or five people that those people should be banned? It's a bad thing if they sell their business to Amazon or Microsoft Well, you know four or five people is already pretty much kind of like a worker cooperative Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying because in a lot of early like tech startups You might just give equity and like very small wages to people So you're saying that like those people selling their business to a larger tech firm that that's like necessarily a bad thing Necessarily a bad thing. No, but I think that generally speaking that that's Not really a good thing for small firms to sell out Okay eliminating competition I mean if you think about it if there's two companies that you can buy a product from and they're the only two companies They can charge you whatever they want There's no other company for you to go to That offers cheaper products because they bought them out and I think that's largely why they do it It's in it's in their interests. They make more money All right, we go back and forth this forever. So I'm gonna do So yeah, what we're gonna do is we have a little uh a couple other prompts But I do have a fact here uh from mckinsey global institute from 2017 to start this question So up to one third of us workers could be displaced by 2030 globally between 400 and 800 million individuals will be put out of job by automation and will need to find work So we're talking about uh, you know a thousand people at a at a place that get replaced by robots And now you only need three people to fix the robots So the question is socialism can provide financial security and social safety net for people who lose their jobs To ever-advancing robots ai and technology How is your your view as socialism or um capitalist? So how is that going to resolve marx actually talks about this I don't really want to get into what he said because that goes into ltv And i'm trying to avoid that not because I can't defend it, but because it's just We don't need to talk about it. It's it's it's complicated um, but yeah Imagine in 2048 when Currently 40 percent of current jobs don't exist It's not that these people are lazy and don't want to work is there literally are no jobs for them to do Do they just starve to death because they can't earn money? Of course not We'd have to capture some of that income that the or some of that um Wealth that the economy is creating to provide to them so that they can maintain their existence I don't know what else they would do to earn the money that they need To survive and I think that kind of shows that capitalism as an economic structure Is we're slowly with automation and other things like that We're slowly moving past its ability to meet our needs as humans and that at some point It will just organically happen that capitalism will fall away for a more socialist looking More socialist structured form of economic production Um, is the McKinsey Institute. What is the never mind? I won't even ask Um, I don't know the political leaning is uh, there's something called the lump of labor fallacy It assumes there is a fixed amount of labor in a society for a given population to work Um, I'm pretty sure we've been hearing I think literally since since marks That all the jobs are going to be eliminated Because of the sowing loom or because of the printing press or because of the automobile or because of whatever It hasn't happened yet unemployment in the united states is at historically low percentages like lower than it even should be for a healthy economy The idea that in some number of years all of a sudden we're going to run out of jobs We're going to run out of labor. We're not going to have anything left to do Again, it's been said over and over again. I'll believe it when I see it I don't think any reasonable economist has given an actual prediction stating that we're going to run out of work Again, this has been said for hundreds of years over the world and it just doesn't happen the There's also there's also a second thing. I want to talk about here. I think it's really important. So We have this idea that robots might replace people And I mean the assumption would be that they're doing the job more efficiently than the people would be I think it's interesting that the counter argument from the socialist perspective is oh, no, no Well in a socialist environment, we wouldn't lose those jobs So does that mean we're going to have like a bunch of people working jobs Like in sub-optimal ways that could just be better automated like at that point wouldn't it be better? And again, I have to contend with my real capitalist implementation with the fantastic socialist implementation in the fantastic socialist world I guess we ban all forms of automation You know computers don't exist anymore and we've got 400 women in a warehouse, you know locked up doing math equations all day So the calculators never replace their jobs Wouldn't it be better to have a system where we actually just do all the automating but we tax it a bit higher We take the taxes we distribute it in society and instead of taking a job where there were a thousand people working And in the socialist environment, they're still working the same dumb jobs Well in the capitalist environment those thousand people working are now 200 people working But they're taxed a bit higher and then the 800 people working are you know Just given higher earned income tax credits or higher negative tax returns or something like that Wouldn't that be a better way of organizing or of organization rather than just having laborers endlessly defend shitty out-of-date jobs that probably You know aren't even going to be competitive with other firms or the rest of the world I think so. Yeah I mean that's I think you would have to do something like that under capitalism as automation increases also As we have technologically advanced. Do you think most workers today are doing as productive like actual direct productive labor like a coal miner Or somebody working in a steel foundry Do you think people are doing work like that as much or more today as they were say a hundred years ago? Or do you think that I think our labor is a lot more technical and abstracted of course from like direct like mining rocks. Yeah, of course Okay, okay But I don't but I don't know in a socialist society Maybe it always would have been mining rocks right because as soon as some you know Assel brings them in a sheen to to mine the quarry, you know, the socialist laborers might look at and go Well, hold on if this guy with his one machine can mine all of our rocks It's going to make the 50 of us look like idiots We're going to ban that machine which seems like something that could like conceivably happen in your idealized socialist society because Then you're just going to have a bunch of workers that are standing around with nothing to do So under full socialism, I don't know The place that currency would have but I would think that as long as there is some form of currency as we understand it today There will have to be some sort of universal basic income Which I think would be socialism would be much more amenable to than capitalism would which I think that at some point in within the near future Something like a universal basic income is probably going to be adopted in the united states Maybe amongst other countries as it is I don't know when but I think in the near future that is something that's going to happen as a result of the rise of Automation and the need for people to still maintain some level of income so that they can purchase You know the goods and services that they need That they need to live their lives All right our next prompt here So a common criticism of capitalism is that it fails because there are no profits and things Like protecting the environment nature parks building parks socialism solves these market failures thoughts on the panel I'm not even sure If I would agree with that I would have to hash out that with Whoever asked that question I'd have to hash that out a little bit more with them tease out a little bit more information So I I don't even know it how much I would agree with that Yeah, I mean I would argue that in in any economic organization There are going to be things that need to be solved for that don't directly have Some sort of like profit incentive or you you're running to like free rider problems Or you run into tragedy the comments where basically you have these big problems that kind of affect everybody But any individual actor trying to solve it doesn't get adequate compensation for it Or doesn't even see the reward for it right if you decide that you want to stop polluting the river But all 400 of your friends are still polluting the river. I mean, what's even the point, you know I would argue that capitalism does not solve for these things. These are called externalities in an economic sense It's external in that there is some form of production or some activity you could do and the problem created is external to any of the Inputs outputs economically what's going into the thing right your profit your cost None of this is taken into account with these external problems So in a capitalist society you would need a government to say hey If you emit a certain amount of carbon You're going to get taxed on it so that you can take that externality and make it part of your productive inputs Or you say hey, we're going to make this illegal. So now there's the threat of jail In a capitalist society, that's how you would solve for that I'm pretty sure in a socialist society you would solve for it in literally the exact same way As I brought up earlier, you know, there are examples today of laborers that will fight against certain types of Green energy programs because it threatens their currently existing fossil fuel jobs There's no reason to think that a laborer is this holy unit that is going to give up their job Their way of life and everything because they think it'll benefit all of society I think that laborers are invested in their work and the money that they make and everything Just as much as like a greedy capital owner could be If anything, I would argue that a greedy capital owner probably has a little bit more Flexibility because them losing a certain investment isn't the end of the world for them Whereas a laborer fighting for his job against an incoming like green energy Plant like a solar panel facility for him. That might be his entire likelihood The laborer might even be more invested in the fight against we'll say green energy is example I keep using So yeah, I would say that the only way to address these things are with government programs So you either have to incentivize it economically or you have to do it legislative like make it illegal basically All right We got one other prompt here from our live chat. So thank you in the live chat for Stephen But will even the ideal textbook description of capitalism Inevitably devolve into a system with problems we see today So that kind of ties into another question that we had here on our prompt, which was how will your system Address inequalities. Well, I mean the idealized system is is always going to be Perfect. So I don't know how to Like an idealized social system would have every firm also looking out for other firms and every worker would be United with every other worker struggle even if they work in different firms in an idealized as I don't know But actually happen and an idealized capitalist society every single negative externality would be priced in via government policy Such that everybody is ultra incentivized to do things In the way that's the most advantageous to society at all points in time, right? Like in the in the perfect capitalist society There are health insurance markets and hospitals available for everybody that's competing all across the borders And there's enough government incentives to make sure that everybody is like competing in the best way for the best Healthcare outcomes etc etc etc Yeah, I mean in any idealized society there's always going to be a number of policies that you can enact to make sure that your particular Whatever I guess whatever you're trying to maximize for is maximized for But the reality is that there are no idealized society So we kind of have to look at what gets us the closest to those idealized societies And I would argue that's where the government comes in for rules and regulations To try to push a capitalist society, you know via your invisible hand in the best direction for all the people I just want to clarify Again that I agree that there is no idealized society. I don't think socialism is some sort of idealistic system In fact, those who know their Marx knows their Marxism. No Marx was no friend to idealism That's why, you know, it's dialectical materialism historical Materialism because he the concept of idealism he didn't agree with Um, and I don't even think and I made this statement again I just want to clarify it that socialism is perfect. Socialism is not perfect It will have its problems and it will also be replaced by an even more appropriate Mode of production itself. So socialism is not the end state of human economic production I don't know if there ever will be one Um, Marxists usually say communism is sort of an end state to human economic production. Um I I see where they're coming from as a Marxist, but I still I'm a little skeptical of that But I just wanted to reiterate that I agree with Steven. There's there's no such thing as as an idealized society Marxism is not idealistic. Socialism is not idealistic. Communism is not idealistic Socialism will have its problems The government may probably have to step in and regulate that to help with those problems And socialism is also not the end state of human economic production. Just as a quick intervention there Socialism is idealistic in the sense that it only exists on paper so far, right? I get there is it is I don't know what idealistic would mean in that sense. It's an idea Well, of course capitalism is also an idea, but it's also like a there's an implemented actual policy of capitalism So when people say socialism is idealistic, they're not referring to idealism versus materialism materialism It's just the the form of analysis that Marx used when looking at the relationship between right like capital and labor That's like a materialistic analysis, but when people say that When people say that socialism is idealistic, they don't mean uh, it you know It falls under the school of philosophy of idealism They just mean that it only exists on paper so far because we haven't seen an actual implementation of socialism That either satisfies a socialist enough to call the socialism or works In reality, I think yeah, I guess I can agree with that. I don't think that's a point against socialism, but yeah, I think it's true All right, next one So destiny, why do you like unions when they're inherently anti-capitalist? I don't think unions are anti-capitalist again People morally load a lot of things like capital owners or laborers usually in today's society capital owner is morally loaded as bad and laborer is normally loaded as good I don't think that unions are good. I don't think that unions are bad I think that unions are a collection of workers that are representing themselves against a capital interest or an owner I think that uh today as capital has become more and more and more productive and the benefits of owning capital have increased dramatically The the owning businesses the the size of businesses the global markets It seems to be the case that capital owners have a massively disproportionate power to negotiate against um To negotiate against laborers So in that sense when when your market forces are starting to heavily favor one side as it favors the capital owner It's probably a good idea that laborers have some ability to negotiate as well So in that sense like a massively in favor of labor unions I don't think it's a free market or a good capitalist market when Monopsony power or a monopoly power exists on the behalf of the capital owner And you know, I could I could envision a different society where there aren't very many capital owners where laborers have Laborers have a ton of rights and they can fight for way too high wages and they're putting all sorts of Business sectors out of business and the and the capital owners might need a few more protections But historically i'm not sure if that's ever happening where we're at right now today It seems to be pretty obvious that the the laborers themselves seem more protection So in general i'm a favor of labor unions because it gives laborers the ability to negotiate and fight against capital power more effectively I would agree with a lot of what steven said. I don't think that unions are anti capitalist I'm not really sure what that would mean. Um What what I would say is that I agree with him that they're a way of workers A way for workers to organize against the interests of capital owners But what I would also say sort of as a question just to get people thinking is why Do capital owners have so much power over workers that workers have to band together to organize against them? And also should we have a class of individuals that has that much power over society to begin with just food for thought This next one i'm going to read it for pay them Uh, will sex box replace street walkers who will clean them? Will that create more jobs or less? Oh, this this rollercoaster, you know the fellows Is the sex worker union fuck or not? unintended Myself i'm not really sure how to respond to that one. I don't think robots are going to replace um sex workers I Think human human interaction is very much favored by most humans so Uh, I think there will come a time when this will happen and I think it'll be pretty sudden I don't think we're there quite yet. Um There are definitely forums online you can go to where people are starting to talk to ai robots online ai robot obviously And something that you find in some of these communities is these people can get like very addicted very quickly to their little ai Partner, so I think that I think once the technology gets good. I think we'll be surprised to see how many people Start to actually move over there, but I don't know when we're going to get there I feel like the ai sex robot question is similar to like the ai driving question where it's going to be like the end of The world or the end of the economy, but for some reason it's always five years away. Um, we I think I feel like the first time I heard about self-driving cars being a real possibility was around when I graduated high school in 2007 And we're constantly like one to five years away from full self-driving cars So who knows what'll happen when we get there? Yeah, I do just want to say one thing Um with the whole self-driving cars people I've heard always talk about it's so cool They're going to be able to drive themselves. I grew up in Iowa and I'm just like We've had tractors that have been doing that since like 2002. So it's I'm I'm already used to things that can drive themselves All right, so like going to the next one here. So life expectancy in post soviet russia dropped as low as actually That's All right, so we had a fact this one story follows Life expectancy in post soviet russia dropped to as low as 57 years for men and is still today just 65 years This is compared to the 76 years in us and 81 years in canada Is it the case that socialism leads to poverty and tyranny? Well since soviet russia wasn't socialist They were an authoritarian state russia is still an author well a totalitarian state I would argue that probably has more to do with it The state being totalitarian and the government just doing nothing for their people Particularly in terms of health probably is the reason why a lot of more developed western countries Have higher health health life expectancy better health outcomes and mind you in my opening I I acknowledged the benefits of capitalism. I do think that capitalism provided a lot of benefits to society I do think that increases in life life expectancy productivity personal wealth technological advancement came from capitalism I just think that what we're seeing is the system is starting to crack and it is no longer Well, I wouldn't say right now is no longer But it's we're slowly seeing that it's struggling to hold up human society in ways that benefit humans Yeah, I I don't I don't think that capitalism is struggling. I think that there are countries that are struggling. I think there are Like we've faced huge issues in the world You know, we've got palestine and israel blowing themselves up right now We've got ukraine and russia continue to blow themselves up and we had a virus that like blew the whole world I mean, um, there are problems that we run into but I feel like It hasn't been said by my debate partner to be fair But I hear this criticism a lot of capitalism of like the boom bus cycle that capitalism creates winners and losers that it's prone to Epic failures over and over again But the reality is I think I feel like the boom bus cycle that capitalism has problems But eventually solves them. I think that's a feature of capitalism And I think it's a good thing as opposed to socialist countries that just bust bust bust until they break and then dissolve or Have another revolution or coup or something changes. So Um, yeah, I mean like obviously our current systems have problems But I think we can continue to remedy those problems using government policy The idea of throwing everything that we've accomplished away so far to move to another hypothetical system that we have No evidence of working strongly and have seen it bend towards authoritarian Dictatorships over and over and over again. It seems like not the best idea to me Just remember when we were moving from monarchism into capitalism There was no evidence that capitalism worked Well, the evidence was that people were naturally gravitating towards it because it was a superior form of economic organization We didn't need the king or queen to endorse capitalism right now We're asking for the kings and queens of society meaning the government policymakers to show Financial and legislative preference to a hypothetical system that we don't know if it would work, right to be clear I don't think that the you keep drawing the comparison between the evolution of capitalism and the supposed evolution of socialism the evolution to capitalism was evolution But the change to socialism is is engineered There's no guarantee that like an engineered solution is going to work as organically or as as well as a naturally evolved system would work So I don't know if social I don't know if I would say that socialism is an engineered quote-unquote solution Or that that's how we will evolve into socialism I'd still mean if we're saying that like we make preferential loans to cooperatively owned companies and we start to make disfavorable loans Cooperatives isn't socialism and market socialism is sort of a misnomer. It's not really socialism So but I just think that it's sure but at some point you're banning you're banning capital owners You want to ban private ownership? So this is like engineered. Yeah, right? Yeah much like we ban slavery or well That might be a debate to some people but for the most part I would say we banned slavery and I think that's good Banning things isn't always bad Sure, I don't disagree. I don't know if I would say that uh slavery It's hard because every time socialists argue that they don't normatively load the word capitalism or socialism The comparisons to capitalism are always things like slavery which I feel like is at least in my personal opinion is normatively loaded I think most people consider slavery to be a bad thing, but oh, I wasn't trying to like Attach slavery to socialism there. Sure. I just wanted to clarify that All right, you got it. We got capitalism is better than slavery a lot better I would prefer capitalism eight days out of the week and twice on sunday over slavery. So Like I said, I don't think capitalism is evil. I just think we're starting to see it fail All right. Well, let's ask the next one in a survey of 12,000 American workers nearly 50 percent said they felt their job had no meaning and significance The same percentage said that they were unable to relate to their company's mission Would workers have higher job satisfaction under capitalism or socialism? job satisfaction fellas, um I think under any system where workers are appreciated more by their firms and paid well I think that there would be more Um appreciation and satisfaction with their jobs whether that's capitalism or socialism any economic system or workers Are appreciated by the whatever firms they work for are paid well Um that they they would have more sad more job satisfaction Um I'm kind of agnostic on that. I'm not sure. Um, I'm trying to think about like If like if you have a bunch of mcdonald's workers and they feel like alienated I debated a guy, uh, michael albert who's the founder of participatory economics But I think the phrase that he used a lot was alienated from your labor Um, I don't know if the alienation from your labor exists because you feel like you don't have a lot of control over your job Or if it's just because your job fucking sucks When I worked at mcdonald's I don't know if me getting to dictate like how frequently we change the fry oil Is going to make me feel any better about dealing with the absolute Fucking dredge of the earth that comes in and wants to shit on me because they're you know, mcwhopper isn't Fucking cooked fast enough. Uh, maybe for some people it would maybe for others. It wouldn't I I truly I truly agnostic It sounds like I'm leaning over there, but I truly am agnostic on that It might be the case that if you give employees like more control over the everything going on in the workplace Maybe they do feel a bit more involved Maybe they do feel a little bit better about working their jobs Or it might be the case that you know The workers all come in on friday to vote for the next thing that happens and nobody gives a fuck They all just kind of like talk amongst each other. They're like, okay, this is stupid. We vote on our shit and then we leave Who knows? I truly don't know the answer to that. Yeah US workers choose to work more than workers in other countries US workers worked on average 34.3 hours More than workers in the left Netherlands work 27.5 hours more way 27.4 and then mark 27.1 So all those other countries are Got seven more hours of work here in the US. So which system is going to provide more time for art and family and personal life? a system that um Well, and the thing we have to remember is the united states still works on a standard 40 hour week a lot of these Nordic countries that people call socialists that aren't socialists. Um They tend to have like a 36 hour work week or a 32 hour work week So they do afford more of that free time for people to spend with their families or pursue their own goals and things like that And I think that's overall a good thing whether under capitalism under socialism, which I think would naturally afford people more time for themselves um that we Give a better work-life balance maybe move to a four-day work week Or something like that will reduce the the daily work hours things like that I think even under capitalism would improve people's lives And it's something that I would advocate for as a as a market socialist to move into slowly reducing the work week Because as we have seen productivity tends to stay the same if not increase as there's a better balance between work and life Uh, there's a quote by uh, frederick jameson and uh, uh, zizak. I think um That it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism Um, I I think that I think that people are obsessed sometimes or get really lost in the status quo and my feeling is that 40 hour work weeks are just a horrible status quo that for whatever fucking reason both workers and uh Managers like cannot imagine moving away from I don't know where this comes from. I don't know why the obsession with this exists um, but yeah, I I think that having fewer hours worked I think is definitely better. I I'm pretty sure that the work from home Epidemic and everything basically showed us that you can probably have people coming into the office less Probably having them working less. You still get the same amount of work done Um, I I'm waiting in the united states for the dominoes to start falling on this where people finally realize that like, okay You know, fuck it. I know you started at 40 hours a week if you clock it because I also don't know if it's um Maybe I'm just getting selective stories, but like I hear so many people to work on tech We'll say like yeah, I have a job. I code probably like I've heard anywhere from I've heard anywhere from two to 12 hours A week of work or from two to like 20 hours a week of work depending on what you're doing But the idea that you have to be sitting at your computer being productive for 40 hours a week is like is ridiculous Nobody does this and even at even for a menial or low skilled labor, you know, that's the case as well Again, I remember from my restaurant work. I'd say you probably spend around Depending on when you're working in your hours, you know You're spending anywhere from like 20 to 50 percent of your shift just bullshitting because there's nothing to do And doing your job faster fucks you over because you just clock out early and you don't get fucking paid There's no reward for doing your job faster. So Yeah, unless you get more work just shoveled on to you because you work so well We'll give you more. Yeah to respond to the prompt fewer hours worked I think is definitely a better thing But for whatever reason in the united states especially we are like status quo obsessed people And we will not move away from things without like substantial pushes from either somebody doing it first and at working or Something different. Yeah, and yeah, we've seen that time and time again with a lot of different things I gotta say you've been quite agreeable in this debate. I like it. Well, that's because my position is capitalism. Capitalism is very agreeable. So We're gonna go into the q and a So while I ask everybody to make a line you guys want to tell each other one thing you like about each other's system One thing and we're gonna make a line Here Well, one thing I would say is the um The advancement that capitalism has provided thus far In human society Um, I I said what I said that capitalism has provided um for humans Thus far. I do still think that we are starting to see the system crack a little bit Um, but capitalism has provided for humans has provided for increases in personal wealth and um And uh, what was the other thing I was going to say? And actually increases in um Well family time because we don't toil away 12 hours a day in a field six days a week anymore So capitalism has done a lot for human society. I just don't think it's going to do the do so Indefinitely into the future. All right and quick thoughts over there destiny and is it Wait, is it what they said about their system or about the system something you like about socialism about socialism? um Well, I feel like the strongest argument is a more macro one for socialism that the more dispersed Decision-making is throughout society in general probably the more empowered Individuals feel that they're where they're taking place in society And and work in labor is probably one of the largest avenues that we express our will desire the amount of time that we spend Our emotional psychological and physical toils Happens at the workplace. So I feel like the the strongest like macro argument for socialism Is just the idea that if in an area that you spend so much of your life If you could give any amount of control back to a person that's working in that environment And on top of that any amount of profit or any amount of the fruits of their labor back to them I think that that sort of empowerment across all of the laborers in a particular society I think it's probably the best macro thing to focus on for a social system. I think that's a good point Well, thank you to both of our speakers We're going to go into our q&a and we got a lot of people lined up here waiting to ask questions So uh, we're going to get through these here your question Uh, my question's for leo in the beginning you mentioned, uh, we have a lot of starving people and way more food than we need Or yeah, then we need to feed them. Can you describe in your mind? The the specifically what socialism would solve to fix that issue because it seems really complex and i'm Yeah, I think socialism would probably not overproduce food for the sake of Profit and would probably be more focused on a more equitable distribution of food focused more on let's feed people rather than Let's make a bunch of food so that I can make money And so I think that that sort of incentive of production production production production production so that I can make a lot of money Falls away with socialism and it's more let's produce For the sake of what humans need which I think sort of So mark's called it the crisis of overproduction that capitalism overproduces because it's just trying to Saturate the market with products for the sake of profit. I don't think socialism would do that I think that production would be more centered around providing for humans rather than providing for profit Wait, this is a quick question of that Why if you've got 20 workers and they're deciding if they want to overproduce food or not and they all And all of them make money for the overproduction of food. Why would they not all vote to overproduce food? Well, I just don't think they'd want to and I'm in full socialism. I don't think people would Be doing things for the sake of profit. I don't know how much I feel like this is where like the idealistic like the the the citizen of the world kind of comes in that in order for Socialism to work we rely on I mean in a capitalist study We just need one person to not want to overproduce But in the socialist society we would need every single worker to come together or at least to have 51 of them And say we're not going to overproduce for more profit But well, I think under market socialism most of the workers wouldn't feel like they need to overproduce for greater profit All right. All right your question young fella Yeah, so I want to bring up a concept of contract laws So it seems like with the evolution of contract lies when we've seen changes of economies that The fuel that we have for Capitalism is the ability to contract my labor for something else from you or barter between two people And it seems to be a fundamental human nature to desire to Own their own property and claim it's their own and to be able to freely exchange those goods You know, you got mutual consent. You got consideration between two or more people You said at your end goal was to eliminate The ability it sounded like to enter into those type of contracts where I can't exchange my labor or Goods for what I consider to be profit And beneficial to me and that your ideal system not idealism Your your perfect system would be one in which it would go contrary to human nature and to our foundations of liberty I don't know if I would say that this contract Is a really a human nature so much as something that's sort of been Pushed on to humans, but it's not so much as taking that away as it is making it superfluous For people to need to enter into those contracts But I would say that if two people want to enter into like a contract where hey I'll do some of this for you if you know if I can get get some of this under socialism I think that people would still be able to do that. It's just the broad Worker contract of I sell you my labor for a wage Would would be eliminated and just to touch on private property A lot of people talk about oh socialism eliminates private property it does but people need to understand What we mean when we talk about private property. We're not talking about your house We're not talking about your car. We're talking about something like wal-mart where it's private property owned by a set of individuals But they shouldn't be allowed to own something that necessary to society as a whole Why don't we democratize that a little bit like we did with our governments instead of letting our governments Just be ran by crazy people who want to do whatever they want like kings and queens We democratized it and gave everybody a say in how our societies are going to be ran And I just think that idea should be extended into our economic systems All right next question So this question is for leo. So leo you said that the what's god when capitalism was first starting like out of the feudalism era You said that the capitalism nation didn't fight the other nations. They didn't like out compete them We just slowly evolved into capitalism Would you not consider netherland spounding when they declared their independence from the haves of big dynasty and then fought several wars Against all the feudalistic countries over the next 200 years to have been a capitalist country Fighting to prove that capitalism works and then out competing them to become like the largest economy in the world for 200 years Well, the first thing I would say is I I don't think I said that Capitalists have never fought with each other or anything like that But I would say that that whole war had probably had a lot was was due to more than just Hey, we're going to fight for capitalism. I think that there were personal interests involved in there And that's probably why like with most wars I think that It usually comes down to personal interests of people that hold a lot of power that are going to send others To fight their battles in a foreign nation and die Then that it's people who just choose to go kill other people because they're not like us or something like that war is a bit complicated And I usually think that most of them are fought because of personal interests of powerful people War is complicated. I think we all agree there war is also very bad and we shouldn't do it But we're humans and we're dumb so Yes So predicate my question over the last 60 years We've seen a massive decrease in poverty in the world from like 40 Massive poverty rates are just below 10 right before the covid stuff And so didn't that then make socialism or the ideal of socialism the ideology if you were like of socialism de facto a mute point because Capitalism has proved out that it actually helps the working people help the poor far more as china Changed their market from a socialist one into a more capitalist one Due to capital to some degree that they became more prosperous and had less poor people And that drove the richness of the world to increase where it is today Um, I would say that the reduction in poverty that we've seen over the last 100 years Is probably largely due to government intervention I do think capitalism played a role in it in creating the wealth Necessary, but I don't think capitalism itself is what distributed that wealth I think that governments intervening into the economy things like social security Things like labor laws wage laws things like that that took some of that wealth and allowed it to be distributed to the workers Was a is what helped to reduce poverty But I would say that a lot of that is probably ignorant to socialism that doesn't socialism doesn't really That doesn't really matter to socialism But you know like I've said I do think capitalism has done a lot to benefit society In creating the wealth to lift people out of poverty is one of those things we could look at China as they moved away from a lot of Mao's policies, what was it something like 800 million people were lifted out of poverty So I do agree that that capitalism produced a lot of the wealth to lift people out of poverty But in my opinion, I would say that government intervention to more equitable equitably distribute that wealth Is probably a bigger contributor to the reductions in poverty than the capitalist system itself All right, so our next question. Yeah, he's got a question for each of you. So 15 seconds each for question Yeah, this is a quick one. What is your opinion on price controls in markets in general? Whether that be for, you know Special goods non-elastic goods, whatever. I'll let Stephen go I think that there are there are very unique times where price controls can be beneficial The most important thing to keep in mind with price controls is Market forces are real and they have to be respected if you're setting a price above or below what's happening You need to be ready to deal with the external ramifications of that We've seen in places like venezuela where largely their economy Completely fucking failed because the price controls were probably far too aggressive in that country versus other things where price controls could be more reasonably set I would agree with a lot of what steven said I do think that there are unique instances where it can work But under a capitalist system like he said we have market forces and those forces do need to be respected So I would say that For the most part I am against the notion of price control Good to hear. Um, this is a question specifically for you leo Since the advent of the use of mediums of exchange Individuals in their economic societies have been able to garner a greater leverage in negotiating a More optimal outcome How is the use of currency and wages to democratize the economy? Any different than the use of ownership and voting shares controlled by the workers To from my perspective, it seems that you want to democratize the workplace Not the economy so that workers can vote for their interests Even it is even if it is antithetical to the interests of society or the consumer or the business itself So to start with market socialism that would be more democratization of the workplace rather than the economy But I think I would have to disagree personally that that's That that society broadly wouldn't want a more Well a more democratic society because our economies are features of our societies and they are not democratic right now and I am Big fan of democracy here. So I think that working toward extending notions of democracy into our economy Which I think takes time would be a benefit to society broadly All right, your question. Hi, Sean. Hi So I have a question for you actually because every time we talk about socialism On the internet people say we're not in favor of that authoritarian stuff We just want to subsidize worker co-ops But the thing is this strategy has already been tried in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez took office There were 877 worker co-ops He then guaranteed them loans at 4 interest rate from the government Which is half the rate for a traditional firm that ballooned to 60 000 worker owned co-ops in the nation of Venezuela So there's a study on this which is the workplace democracy and social consciousness study A study of venezuelan cooperatives from camila pinheiro harnaker And what she found when looking at these co-ops is that they consistently voted to reduce their memberships To increase the profits for the individual members of the co-op They consistently voted to not sell to the government store at the cheaper rate and instead sold internationally And this caused the venezuelan government including Hugo Chavez to basically state That worker owned co-ops are just a group of capitalists with private ownership This is not socialism and in order to have socialism we have to force it upon them And this is when they started seizing all these firms So if you're not in favor of authoritarian socialism and you're putting worker owned cooperatives as the alternative And that in practice just led with an extra step to authoritarian socialism Like why not just skip that and go there or come up with a different solution? So the first thing I have to say is I'm not sure what the phrase authoritarian socialism means That would be the forcible feature of their of these private firms Which I don't think is what socialism is I can't really comment or speculate with respect to the study that you cited. I'd have to read it myself I don't really know much about worker cooperatives In venezuela or how they played out. I'm sure there's probably a lot of cultural differences Between venezuelan people and american people but co-ops in america and I can cite a multitude of studies on this The same things have not occurred. They have not voted for the same things They operate as productively if not more so than capitalist firms. Are worker cooperatives perfect? No, I do not think that they are But I still think that they are favorable to traditional capitalist firms Also, just a quick thing on that real quick. I think this is one of the reasons why I I'm going to be honest I never read capital because fuck that shit But I'm pretty sure that most even most marxists don't read capital I'm pretty sure that marx himself would consider that a a worker working in a market socialist firm is There's still an exploitation of labor that's happening there. They're just the exploitation of labor is owned by the employees themselves But I'm pretty sure that what marx would have advocate. Well, I don't know if marx technically advocated for anything But what he described in the future settings of socialist communist societies was the mode of production would change such that It wouldn't be market forces determining what your final outputs are. It would be a central committee so The reason why any market socialist firm would eventually not have workers voting to sell their stuff internationally or to the government Is because at some point you would just dictate to these firms you'd say you need to produce 100 bushels of Of um corn corns and bushels, right? I don't know a hundred apple trees or I should know I'm from fucking Nebraska I should know bushels of corn Um, yeah, or you would have to like milk 100 cows or you would have to produce 100 You know anime sex robots or whatever all of this would be done from a central committee It wouldn't actually be the workers themselves choosing ultimately what they're producing Yeah On top of those evil sex robots your question So uh leo can you define the organic shift that you were like so you say mercantilism into capitalism Was organic right so you assume that the organic shift is going to happen in 100 to 150 years Or is that just a mile that was just so okay? Okay, I was just sake of argument and then destiny 200 300 destiny for you Why not just you know debate or advocate for the perfect idea of capitalism when you know a lot of your opponents seem to want To debate or go for this perfect idea of types certain types of I mean, I mean, yeah I mean I've argued for changes in capitalism like what I admit. I'm wholly uneducated. I don't understand how Monopolies work in the United States because or more more more specifically I don't understand how antitrust law works in the United States Because I don't understand how so many massive tech companies can continue to acquire so many other massive tech companies I think it's ridiculous that what I blizzard or not blizzard microsoft just bought activision activism activision blizzard And I don't even know why activision was allowed to buy blizzard. Um, yeah, or or why What way back in the day? I think facebook bought instagram facebook bought I think snapchat and whatsapp. I think they own all of those apps Yeah, I don't understand how so yeah when I talk about capitalism like there are things that I would truly change too It's funny. I brought this up as an argument against him That you know should four workers be able to sell their tech company to a larger company is that bad? I actually do think that's bad I don't like the idea that firm organization in the united states in certain sectors is basically centered around this Concept of we need to create a firm and build it up so that it's big enough to just sell it to a bigger firm Personally, I think that's an incredibly toxic way of approaching You know firm cycles in in a capitalist system. I think it's anti competitive by by definition So yeah, I mean there are things that I advocate for in a capitalist society to make it better And to answer your question. I don't know what the organic evolution in the cat or uh, uh, uh, Freudian slip Into socialism would look like because At least I don't think I'm living through it right now. I think I might See by the end of my life the start of that It's just like the people who were living through mercantilism probably didn't realize they were Living through that organic that organic shift Are your question your reputation proceeds you so i'm fully expecting to get smacked around if you see fit But I did have a question revolving around uh automation that came up a little while ago It seemed that the options on the table were that either if Jobs get automated away. We can have the state intervene to accumulate more tax dollars use those to Make up for the fact that those folks lost their jobs or alternatively They could make the conscious decision to not automate to retain their jobs But if me and you know 500 people are working in a mine and a machine comes along that takes up the vast majority of that work We're just going to keep our jobs and keep getting paid while letting that machine do the majority of the work So it seems to me why not if some circumstance like that comes up where the vast majority of an industry is getting automated away Why not hand over ownership to the folks that are working it let them come in for a couple hours a week a couple days a month Maintain their salaries instead of having the state intervene to make up for that failure in the original system Yeah, so there's like two parts to that. Um, the first part is um Let me rephrase this real quick back to you say say there's 500 workers mining a new machine can replace 500 workers Why not just have the machine come in Monday through Thursday the workers work Friday and then everybody kind of keeps their wages basically, right? Sure, but then the question is where does the money to pay them come from for them to stay home Sure, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, not even mythical. I mean this has happened. Yeah, we're huge gains of product So then then the there's two issues. There's two huge contributing forces here So one is going to be another mining company starts and when that company starts They just bring in the machine and now if you've got a company we're trying to pay the machine and 500 workers Well, this other company is going to come They're going to be able to sell the materials for way less than you because they don't have to support of the workers And then you're kind of like fuck to that point. Um, the second thing could be that um You would say well any machine created for this particular thing would always be earned by or owned by workers coming in Which is some form of like worker ownership, but then the issue that you run into next is who's going to be creating like the Machines because there's not going to be as much of like an incentive to do it Um, I will say that like uh in my personal opinion The biggest obstacle that we have towards like compensating workers whose jobs are being replaced isn't actually an economic one at all I think it's one of political will the united states a lot of money a lot of capital a lot of resources available to it But for whatever reason and by whatever reason, I mean fucking republicans, but but for whatever reason We can't actually allocate money to these people and we have to find ways to do it where we feel like they earn it Even if it's a doctor program five seconds real quick There is an analysis of NAFTA that was done and people tried to do job retraining programs for workers That were displaced because of the NAFTA trade stuff between the united states of mexico And I think what we actually found by the end of that whole program is if we would just take the money And just give it to the people instead of trying to retrain them at 40 50 years old other jobs It would have ever done it Okay, holy That was like putting a youtube video on times to speed Your inner Shapiro was now All right, uh, thanks foreign database for hosting this but for leo It feels like a lot of socialists fail to like look one or two steps ahead if something is ever applied The main thing I would look at is a lot of our companies and firms are vertical in their labor There's the sweatshop workers. There's the engineers. There's the management. They're so on Why as an engineer my I'm vastly outnumbered by the floor workers and so on say if I make Some kind of like the iphone or something as apple Why would I ever want an equal representation for the workers for the floor workers as well as the engineers? It feels like it's not in my interest to ever let them Have a democratic system where their voice out numbers mine or even if we separate it as two separate entities for Say the engineers have 25 the floor workers have 25. Why would I ever want them to have the same representation? I would yeah, of course It's it's interesting. It's the same reason that capitalists don't want socialism because that eliminates the system Through which they maintain their wealth and their power over society the engineers the skilled workers make more money So why would I want those who I make more money than to be like put on equal footing as me? I I make more money I want to keep making my money. I don't think that it's that the engineers Income would drop. I think it's that the sweatshop workers would not be Sweatshop workers anymore They'd be a dignified worker with some level of control over the work that they do and they would probably make at least Closer to what the engineers the skilled workers are making Versus what what it is now, but you are right It would be in the interest of those who earn way more money than sweatshop workers to not Want sweatshop workers to be on the same level as as they are It comes back to a phrase that I think is very simple yet really makes The point in a lot of different arguments that when you are accustomed to privilege equality will feel like oppression Can I take a stab at that real quick? Sure you bet So part of the part of the argument for equal representation Or democratic representation is one it doesn't necessarily have to be equal right if you're if there are five engineers and 1000 laborers in a factory that are like actually producing the components It's not like the 1000 laborers have you know 500 times the voting power as like two engineers or 200 times One of ours five engineers or whatever, right? It could be that you vote on different parts of your jobs I think that the strongest argument for these types of voting things that you can have at these workplaces Even when the work is heavily vertical is maybe groups of workers would have the ability to vote for or against something That's suggested by other workers. Let's say the engineers decide that hey We can continue to make iPhones in the ordinary way or we found like a new Highly skilled way to make phones where if you like crush your ball sack, okay? You can make the phone at 500 times speed, right? It might be the case that The workers themselves look at this and they go, okay. Well, we're we're we're going to vote on our floor We reject this plan. We're not going to crush our testicles this sucks and they reject that plan and they send it back to the engineers You might think in your mind. Okay. Well, I'm an engineer now I've got to deal with these fucking assholes telling me, you know What we should do what we shouldn't do but that that same verticality can exist above you It might be that you as engineers have some you know middle management asshole that comes in Who tells you we actually found that you can program faster if you crush your balls And maybe those engineers decide well actually we reject this form of of labor So we're going to vote on this and pass it up to you So even as engineers even if you feel like ultimately like well Now we've got to deal with the people on the floor And we've got to like this do this weird voting thing to haggle back and forth It also grants you as a labor the ability to haggle back and forth with management up you Are up the chain from your job because again if we're talking in a marxian sense It's between labor and ownership means that if you're labor There's always going to be somebody above you no matter how high a job you have Because you're always going to be answering to some sort of private owner some sort of ceo some sort of Board of investors or external, you know investment. Yeah Thanks for that. We do want to wrap up with that poll as promised So in particular if you did not vote in the first poll you can vote in the second poll Assuming that you're leaning one way or the other if you're still 50 50 I want to ask if you would Not vote But if you are leaning toward destiny and capitalism could you put your hand up for a moment? Okay And then it is a percentage remember so In terms of percentage change If you are leaning toward socialism and leo could you slip your hand up? While ryan does the math just want to remind you there are bathrooms just out here outside of this door We'll have lunch in just a moment. That'll be on your own so you can go wherever you want You're watching online. Check out that manifold link. You can still vote as ryan does the math You can see online on the screen here Well, come on over to speaking of the mic All right, so from the start we had 28 votes. Uh, so at the end we had 25 people for destiny three for leo The percentages are 89 percent for destiny at the end. We have 90 percent in favor of destiny and we actually had 31 votes so we had three extra votes at the end and an extra one percent went to destiny So I think that would conclude our manifold poll. Thank you very much ryan want to give a huge round of applause Thanks so much folks. We'll let you break for lunch. We're looking forward to seeing you at the next one Folks if you're watching online, don't forget to hit that subscribe button Is there are plenty more debates coming up today live and in person at debate con four You don't want to miss it hit that subscribe button right now Thanks for being with us today and we look forward to seeing you at the next debate in one hour live and in person Here from dallas texas