 Hey everybody tonight we're debating capitalism versus socialism and we're starting right now with our capitalist side going first with their introductions thanks so much for being here Steve and SOD the floor is all yours and thank you James and for Stephen and Leo for joining us for this debate tonight and for Josh for setting up the debate as well looking forward to a robust debate on the merits of these economic systems. There is no question in my mind that capitalism as an economic system is the greatest guarantee of individual human freedom. I will not however make the statement upfront that capitalism requires democracy or will I say that socialism is synonymous with totalitarianism. What I will propose is that capitalism is the most moral just and direct conduit to individual human freedom. We're going to define capitalism as follows. An economic system in which the production which production and property is privately owned and labor is exchanged through private interactions between individuals through voluntary association. As I understand the socialist view of economics and I know this critique varies between socialists is that the poor and the lowest lower class do not have the freedom to create those voluntary associations. They must participate in a system which is inherently unequal and therefore are exploited by capitalists such as the shop owner, the shareholder or the Wall Street investor that unfairly benefits from the fruits of their labor. There are many across the spectrum from lasak fair libertarians all the way to your staunchest Marxist that have negative views of those at least you get off the fruits the labors of others. Though everyone seems to disagree as to who those leeches are on the left it is typically seen as the wealthy capitalist suit that doesn't work on the GM production line, the Amazon fulfillment center or the Tyson slaughterhouse. Those on the right look to those that can productively work and choose not to. It exploits social welfare programs and don't contribute to the market system in productive ways when they ought to. It is my contention that if capitalism is naturally exploitive socialism is intentionally exploitive. It is designed to extract wealth capital and labor from individuals to distribute it broader social good. I'm sure our interlocutors believe that this can be done through purely democratic means and in an adjustable way. My contention is that the controls would be that would be needed to make this a curve would be baked into a system that would ultimately be corruptible and prone to inefficiency and to create the same equality that they propose to rectify through socialism. I'm going to keep things short on my part tonight so we can get into the meat of things but what I'd like to know is how their specific grain of socialism is to function without the necessary mechanism of government corrosion which I see is necessary for such a system to exist. How is freedom of association still maintained if you must participate in a system in a workplace such as socialism? Whether that workplace would be whether or not that workplace would be democratic. How is labor supposed to be compensated for if wage is no longer the form of compensation? How do you expect such a system to function to actually function in the real world without top-down government control? With that I'll yield my time to Spencer. Sorry to start. Sorry this is my first rodeo. So the degree to which an economy thrives or falters can arguably be summed up and not simply the degree of material or human capital it has but the degree to which systems in place allow that capital to dynamically respond to change and organize themselves to facilitate this that system must minimize and signal costs and not just direct material or transaction costs but the oft overlooked agency cost. Agency costs are essentially the cost incurred by an agent given powers on behalf of the principal an organization person or group of persons acts in divergence with the interests of the principal. These manifest particularly between management and stakeholders and voters and politicians. Agency costs I would submit are the single largest reason why socialism does not perform as pardon me as well as capitalism be it in the form of worker socialism social democracy or state socialism. Those interests diverge much more greatly with them as it takes more coordination information or negotiation to align those interests. We see this with voters being more satisfied by their local politicians and the ones at the federal level as now you have larger voter pools and more competing interests. We see it in traditional corporations where the more managers you have I have nine bosses vis-a-vis office space the less productive employees are either through micromanagement or having managers of different knowledge levels and performance markers directing employees under them in either case worker ownership invites more managers or at least more owners who would be selecting them. The latter doesn't always happen of course we see examples of agricultural cooperatives functioning well and indeed most of the largest cooperatives at least in the U.S. are primarily agricultural that is because they involve fewer people and the knowledge level and interests among worker owners are more or less the same. If you were to take a large industrial conglomerate where aerospace engineers marketing directors and welders all were trying to evaluate whether someone is sufficiently productive at their job there'd be a great deal of miscalculation involved. Nonetheless the fact that cooperatives do not always fail is not the same thing as them performing better indeed cooperatives fail to be competitive at scale with without bringing in outside investors rendering them less or rendering them increasingly less like a cooperative. Corporations reduce this agency cost of management by having stockholders appoint directors whose full-time job is just to run the company along with them appointing managers as needed. One can argue co-ops can select their directors too but those directors are now answerable to all of the employees whose interests may not be in line with the long-term health of the company. Corporations have lower agency costs when stockholders select their director and fire them for underperforming because they're selecting someone whose job is to further their interests. One argument for co-ops is that it is more fair or more moral often invoke with the refrain of democratizing the workplace as the workers are the ones producing the wealth. Agency costs notwithstanding this often comes with the implication that such firms should be restructured into co-ops by law which if that is a recommendation here it flies in the face of individual workers' rights and the concept of democracy. Some workers do not want to be an owner which comes with more responsibility as well as more risk since now one can lose their life savings in the stock of the company they work for should it fail. The risk adverse nature of workers in forms of why most don't start their own businesses as well as why agency costs are higher for cooperatives. This is all before considering that isn't it just the workers producing wealth but the material capital of the capitalist that make those workers be able to produce that much more wealth and it was the capitalist that took on the risk in doing so which further renders the idea of the wealth producer being the legitimate owner not one consistently applied. Now many advocates of cooperatives point to the success of Mondragon in the vast country of Spain but tend to overlook that it is a federated cooperative making it more like a conglomerate many of whose largest members have outside investors making them less like cooperatives themselves and Spain's corporate tax structure favors cooperatives with lower tax rates for co-ops and especially for specially productive co-ops. Some even point how Mondragon fared better through various Spanish financial downturns but again this overlooks that one of the largest members of Mondragon is Spain's third largest credit union Laboro Cuxta which I'm pronouncing that correctly which gives preferential loans to its co-op members but was still had to be bailed out by the Bank of Spain in 1986. Mondragon appears to succeed to a greater degree than other co-ops by behaving the least like a co-op and arguably more like a conglomerate with an ESOP program along with receiving special treatments by the government. But what about nationalized systems like the post office or health care or fire departments? Well it turns out that at least for the U.S. post office it has been mounting unfunded liabilities since the 60s when its workers striked to be formed a union restructuring the post office to be funded by postal services primarily instead of the government but given a huge line of credit when it posts losses besides several developed countries have already privatized their postal services. Private fire departments are rare but do exist and they do perform more efficiently than many public ones and do so on a municipal contract despite the common association with such services being provided only to the individual clients who pay their dues. Health care is another one. People often claim that the reason the U.S. health care system is broken which it is because it is profitable. Sure. Is anybody else hearing it? Because it might just be me my voice breaking as I'm running out of breath or whatever. I didn't hear it. Did anybody else? My mic's been muted so I don't think it's coming from me but if it's been happening I haven't been paying attention. I'm sorry. What it might be maybe I'm unconsciously clicking my pen without realizing it. All right. Where was I? Because the health care system is profit driven but this ignores that less than 5% of U.S. health care spending is profit but less than 0.5% being the insurance. It also ignores the Singaporean system which performs on par if not better than the least costly single-payer system in Korea while being more privately funded than even the U.S. A simple critical examination of just single-payer countries themselves was a huge amount of variability among single-payer systems in cost which tells us there are non-trivial factors other than the presence or absence of single-payer and there isn't even a strong relationship between the degree to which health care is publicly funded and a difference in cost. Claims of these systems are more efficient because they're more socialized or nationalized almost always relies on ignoring any other potential factor and its degree of impact. At the end of the day when advocating for nationalization of anything we must recognize the state for what it is, sanctioned violence. Now violence can be justified under certain circumstances but only to the extent to which it is necessary. If you can achieve your goals with less violence or without violence then I think we can all agree that's a morally superior method. Some methods are necessary with the state but even in the existence albeit rare frequency of natural monopolies or even public goods are not themselves proof of the state having to necessarily provide them let alone the state provide any other things. Ultimately I would argue the advocacy of socialism in one form or another is one that is based on sincere good intentions as well as expediency which are often the means by which ideas take hold and thrive in politics. However politics is an arena where ideas do not need to work or even be tested to survive so socialism requires a more robust argument and that I'm done. Thank you very much for that opening statement and we will now kick it over to our socialism team. Want to let you know folks if it's your first time here consider hitting that subscribe button as we have many more juicy debates coming up and want to let you know whether you were listening via YouTube or to modern day debate on podcast. We have got our guests linked in the description we highly encourage you to check out their links so you can read or hear more from each of our guests and with that we'll kick it over to Cyra and Port as well as Leo as they make their case for socialism thanks so much for being here guys. Yeah it's kind of weird that Leo left just to see it like you know that's just okay I'm defending this on my own I guess. So it was something that kind of came up in the last debate that myself and Leo did on this very topic. It was a little bit of a point of contention although it was mainly Leo that kind of said it I'm going to kind of take that mantle tonight. So the point of contention was is that Leo stated that there has there has not been a socialist country there's not been a country that has operated under socialism. I agree with this statement if you can find me a country that you know is both operating as a social democracy more akin to you know your Norway Denmark Sweden they're sort of like they're very robust and very secure social safety net and social protections as well as every single institution organization business like anything that you can think of where there is a hierarchy involved so someone from the bottom to the very very top and everybody in between where they have been put in those positions through the democratic process thereby a worker co-op unless you can point to me a system or a country where every single aspect of that country has been elected through the democratic process and has the benefits of of what we call a social democracy or you know very robust and very expanded social safety nets. Kind of hasn't been a socialist country they've been some that have gotten you know maybe parts there's been you know statists or you know a country operating under statism. There are countries in the world that are that expedite pieces of this I'd mentioned Norway Denmark Sweden which would be more of a social democracy there are worker co-ops in quite a lot of countries all over the world that doesn't make them socialist simply because a country has you know socialized medicine does not mean that the country is operating under socialism it just means that that one aspect is socialized. So yeah I didn't really have kind of much else to say I had said it was going to be a quick opening so I'll leave it over to Leo. I said oh what my whistle there before I get going here so the debate between socialism and capitalism is to me always been an interesting debate to be had it's a discourse that's always interested me and as almost boastful as it might sound it interests me because at some level it surprises me to see so many people defending a system that fundamentally rests on exploitation in some sense or another. What exactly is socialism? There's been many many people with many different definitions and ideas of what socialism either is or should be throughout history and I think that a lot of the traditional examples that we often see of what socialism is or how socialism could be construed and think of your Stalin, your Lenin, your your Mao Tse Tung, your Pope Pot. I personally I think there is a debate to be had on whether or not the the systems and the ideologies they advocated for really enshrine a lot of the strictures of what Marxism fundamentally is. I'm willing to concede for at least the sake of this discussion that they represented it at least in some form. That being said I think things like Marxism, Leninism, things like Stalinism, things like Maoism are fundamentally tangential to the discussion that we're having. Socialism as I would define it is the socioeconomic ideology in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are socially owned and democratically controlled by the working class. At least technically speaking that's how I would define socialism. For people who might not necessarily be as acquainted with certain sociological and economic terminology, socialism is generally construed as having two parts. The first one is a is essentially a democratization of the economy by the workers and the second one would be something along the lines of decommodification. Now as Stephen has already pointed out no so no country has ever really been socialist. Now it is true that many nations have encapsulated certain ideas such as demodification of particular markets, healthcare and transportation are two very very prominent ones that we could see in most western democracies and also worker cooperatives existing in the vast majority of countries that we see on the face of the planet. So the main problem that I have with capitalism and I'm going to try to keep this as short as I can because I don't want to take up too much time but I did want to start by saying I don't view capitalism as a system that was created with the intent of being abusive or extractive. I think that the system has just been utilized to do that because it can so easily return a massive profit to a few amount of people by utilizing the system in such a way in an abusive and extractive way. So I don't see capitalism as being an intrinsically evil or destructive ideology. I don't think that that was what it was intended to do. I just think that that is what it is currently used for and I don't think that the system is capable of reform. I view capitalism as being fundamentally autocratic which might sound almost hyperbolic at first but I think that there's a strong case to be made for that in the fact that workers don't have any control over what a company that they work at does. All of the power of what a company is and what a company will do, what its vision is, who gets hired, who doesn't, who's going to be a manager, all of that are these are decisions that are made by a very, very select few number of individuals. I think that democratizing the workplace and ensuring that everybody who is employed by a firm across our entire economy, not just selectively, would ensure a greater, greater workplace happiness and greater content with life. Now there is empirical data demonstrating the success that worker cooperatives have all across the world from the fact that they can absorb price shocks and economic shocks as well as economic downturns just as well oftentimes better than traditional firms can to the fact that workplace happiness and wages are oftentimes generally significantly higher to the fact that they oftentimes survive the first three to five years of business much better than traditional firms do. We can look at all of this data and see that worker cooperatives are in fact a successful means of governing our economy and I think that it's not just something we should do it's necessary to transition our economy in that direction. Now what about decommodification? What decommodification means there's essentially two senses in which it can be construed. We can decommodify labor which means that labor does not exist as a commodity to be sold for a wage and within a market structure or and that would be decommodification of labor or we can look at decommodification in the terms of structuring our markets and the products and services that are provided through them as not being traded for the sake of profit is being provided to people for the sake of allowing or affording people the products and services requisite to a substantive standard of living and like I said earlier I think that some countries most countries have have adapted some of these practices but I don't think any country has adapted all of them and I would argue that's what a socialist country is and I would argue that's what a socialist country needs to be for me to say that it is socialist at least as Marx and Engels originally laid out and I would argue that it is not just something that could be done that it is an imperative that humans move in this direction if we are to ensure a sustainable bright and progressive future for ourselves and our posterity. Thank you very much Leo and Cider and Port for that opening statement very excited we're going to jump into the open conversation folks and with that gentlemen the floor is all yours for open conversation. So I suppose you're on mute. That's right I just realized that as I so I like to start out we can talk about something that Leo brought up how workers have no power and when they aren't owners I don't necessarily disagree with that but is that necessarily a problem since the consumers still have power and while everyone's a consumer and not everyone's a worker so if you have a proper signaling of the conditions of the workplace and if people are intolerant to poor working conditions be it weight as benefits or just in proper hours the work the consumers can decide to boycott them. So is that necessarily? Yeah I would agree to an extent at least with pretty much everything that you said but one thing that I would choose to elucidate on is the fact that consumers do have power and in certain respects I would agree that they have more power than a than a laborer does in our markets but I would argue that consumers generally only have power or at least power that they can express through what's often called in a term I that you are familiar with in saying that you are familiar with purchasing power but I would also argue that purchasing power can be affected by the structure of markets and can be affected by by forces acting within that market that don't necessarily stem from the consumer and I think that this is very very prominent in markets that would be in elastics just I argue healthcare where the the the price curves I think is what is what they're called the supply demand curves don't change relative to they're they're inelastic that demand for a product doesn't change its value it's always going to be worth something those are people rather are always going to pay something for that like healthcare because it's it's one of those things people need to survive so I would argue that consumers do have more power than labor could be leo cut out for me yep it's the end of your sentence there leo was roll body you cut out what's up the end of your last sentence in my body yep in my back okay um I have I have no idea what was going on um you guys can hear me right are you you cut out just a moment ago okay um give me a second here there we go what so where where where did I cut out at around uh time out the you know you know elasticity of healthcare is that right is where you started to garble out oh so what I was what I was bringing up in elastic markets as an example that while consumers do have power in the markets that their power doesn't extend to the level that that of the of the capitalist the industry owners would and also while we can wake up companies we feel are performing poorly that is a very nuanced subject mainly because there are because of well what I would argue is monopolization which I think is something inherent to capitalist systems whereby there are only certain firms where we can go to receive some products so even if they engage in behaviors we would otherwise disagree we don't have anywhere else to receive these products or services that are requisite to us living our lives so we can't just say hey I'm not going to buy a product from you anymore because you're the only place I can get this product from on top of that I don't think that boycotts generally have worked I think that um well I think what we might want to do just until Leo's internet catches up is maybe kick it over to cider and port to give a response Leo I hate to do that but just because your your internet is wobbly and so we were kind of losing what you were saying there again and so maybe we'll give you just a bit of time to maybe hopefully it stabilizes it's also possible that just if he just turned off his camera and I might hope if it's just a bandwidth yeah it might just help for the better idea um yeah so kind of basically Leo I think your connection is behind and choppy and so I was just saying to cider and port maybe he should talk for a while just until your connection can hopefully stabilize because we couldn't hear a lot of what you're saying and that's repeated again we probably won't hear it again that's fine yeah so Josh there was a few things that I kind of took down during your opening which was you would say that there was like this difference between uh politicians at the state level and politicians in like congress in the senate etc etc and and that you know that like these state politicians kind of tend to represent the people better it's kind of ironic though that the the root of the problem there is capitalism because it's because well I mean it's because of lobbyists it's because of you know like massive corporations that are donating x amounts of hundreds of thousands at a time to a given politician so that they get elected and then that they go into congress in the senate and they are able they are in a position to be able to write and draft legislation that directly benefits them and benefits the um the uh corporations to speak on that steven you don't think that would be a problem in a in a socialist society where industry does have influence I mean no especially if you're specifically thinking small or larger scale industries I don't be singular why why do you think that would be different I mean they're going to still have interest in in benefits and some kind of incentive to have politicians either agree with their society or their their specific industry over another industry and let's consider even having some kind of market competition within those co-op systems there's going to even be more of a pressure for those individual co-op systems maybe not influenced specifically through money but through favors or incentives to you know influence specific politicians and politicians influence specific industries there's there's there's still going to be the same problem it's just going to be a different problem not only that but even today unions are they lobby a lot of a ton in fact among super PAC dollars unions contribute to super PACs more than corporations do uh yeah okay so I honestly I don't see that as a negatives well I think corruption is a negative whether it's from corporations or unions I think the issue there which I do I think is a problem is that you have much more concentrated regulatory power which when you have more regulatory power you increase the incentive to capture it when it's more concentrated it's more easily captured if you reduce or diffuse that power and there's many ways you can go but go about doing that you would either reduce the incentive to capture it or if it still is captured less damage can be done in doing so I think lobbying is a is a symptom of the of the deeper problem and it's not really the cause of it and the problem is the state intervening too much on in markets whether they be socialists or capitalistic markets yeah so I would just kind of have to say that I would respectively disagree with what Steve said um so we know that that candidates for um congress and for the um senate can get elected purely through a grassroots um effort I mean you look at any of the squad uh any of the justice democrats that are um in uh I think Richard Ojeda in North Carolina came like ridiculous he didn't actually get in but he came ridiculously close like that is like a purely like to the heart red state and he came I think it was in two or three points and he's a justice democrat uh you know and like these people can get uh so you know as I said members of the squad you have um you have Ro Khanna who is in the senate of course Bernie Sanders all of these types of characters can get in purely on on small dollar donations and with no need of a super PAC or any sort of a major corporation that are getting in I I think you should be noted that like I mean I know at least for AOC uh she was recruited by Zach Exley who is with the justice democrats and that's that they're funded in part by Soros so it's not really entirely grassroots it's certainly it's partially that and definitely tries to hold this air of grassrootsing but it's very much that you get a lot of plausible deniability from the appearance of grassroots whatever to extent you actually wouldn't that wouldn't that be more due to the fact that they I mean they can anybody can donate to the justice democrats and George Soros donates I mean obviously he's got significantly more wealth at his disposals we can donate significantly more than the average person can but I think that there's a difference between somebody who's really rich providing a donation even maybe a generous donation to to and not even necessarily a political campaign to any sort of organization and actively funneling tens if not hundreds of millions into a super PAC designed to be like particular candidates that hold to particular ideologies that would benefit the very people who are funneling money into their campaigns now you had mentioned earlier that unions do that what I wanted to say is that that they're supposed to their job is to lobby on behalf of the workers and I would argue that that organizations lobbying our government as well as our at least currently capitalist economic system and the people that sit at the top of it lobbying them to ensure that they have some decent standard of living I don't think it's a bad thing and I think it's drastically different than massive industries like the fossil fuel industry collectively pooling hundreds of millions of dollars into organizations that then distribute that money to politicians to protect the interests of the oil industry which as we've seen and see today come at a detriment to not just ourselves now in our environment but our future societies because they'll have to deal with these problems at the same I don't disagree that absolutely happens and that in in basically corrupting the process that is happening with fossil fuels but we also see it with environmentalists who have who successfully lobbied to essentially gut nuclear in the 80s which then helped keep fossil fuels in place for decades and ironically enough much of the propaganda that was pushed out was made by fossil fuel companies so it doesn't really matter I don't think it matters who it's coming from the problem is is that we've concentrated too much power and then the stakes increase and then everybody's just in this huge bidding more for it and you have all this rent seeking and that's the problem and corpora unions are no more virtuous than corporations in my opinion I don't have any problem with unions in principle although I do have a problem with like public sector unions are an issue because they have an adversary relationship with the taxpayer but unions in principle aren't necessarily bad but they also aren't any more virtuous than corporations either because they consist of human beings and they are just as subject to corruption as anything else they're lobbying for their interests is just the same as union workers and Greenpeace or the NRA or any single entity that has some private interests and many times we look at those kinds of organizations and say well that's on the other side and I don't agree with it so they must be some kind of negative well there's a that that money doesn't come from nowhere I mean there's people that donate to those organizations to provide that interest into the governmental system now I wouldn't personally not mind having lobbying completely removed from the system I mean that would be I mean that would I mean that wouldn't that would solve a lot of problems. It's largely unenforceable unfortunately and what you have to do is you have to reduce the incentive for regulatory capture and a lot of people are kind of iffy on reducing regulatory power but you can certainly diffuse it you can increase the number of legislators per capita you can have more local governance where having to secure the the loyalty of a particular candidate to your ideology or your specific policies it doesn't go as far because that vote is diluted and if you have term limits it goes and it's even further diluted that's what we that's what we kind of see in parliamentary systems there's a lot more turnover because if you don't form a coalition you have another election and there's far more legislators per capita as well so I think that's why we see because even in Finland Finland doesn't have any restrictions on campaign funding or contribution in terms of total amount that you can have much like the US but we don't see the same level of corruption they have more local governance in particular so the issue I think is we have far too much concentrated power and then interested groups and everyone's interest has has their own interests are now lobbying to get that because if they don't if they don't secure loyalty then somebody else will and it's going to be to their detriment so I did want to jump in here really quickly to touch on a point that both Steve and Josh brought up I agree that numerous different organizations with numerous different special interests donate to political campaigns and other non-political groups and what have you but the point that I think the larger point anyway that I think that needs to be discussed is what the interests of those organizations are if an organization is donating to our government and lobbying our government on behalf of worker protection regulations, higher wages, better benefits things like that while that is lobbying the government I don't see that as a negative but if an industry is lobbying on behalf of the protection of their profits deregulation of their industry and their businesses so that they can funnel more money in the pockets of shareholders and executives things like that while that is lobbying that comes with negatives that you would not see from organizations lobbying on behalf of a collective people because I think that that better represents what it is people want rather than you having industries lobbying our government to protect their power I think I think there I would I would I don't fully disagree I don't fully agree so I think it's important to recognize that when unions lobby they don't lobby on behalf of workers they lobby on behalf of their own members even if this means to the detriment of workers outside of that union a classic example is when I could agree with that but I do think it's nuanced well like a classic example which is uh so shortly during reconstruction maybe shortly after while racist white unions in the south lobbied for prevailing the minimum wages knowing to prevent newly freed black slaves to underbid white union oh yeah unions did that frequently throughout the 30s to 40s and the 50s but african-americans weren't afforded I would argue that that as wrong as it was was more a product of the way that society was back then had african-americans been afforded the same rights I think they would have had or rather enjoyed the same protections from um from those those um those unions and I do I do agree with what you're saying but I do think it is a little bit more nuanced I don't think that we can just blanket statement unions you did what they lobby for might help some people but it can come to the detriment of workers oftentimes I do think that that is the case with like say that the NEA the national education I think they're a they're a bad one police police unions yep yep so I I do agree with you but I do think that there is nuance there and which unions we're talking about I think some absolutely or the most part do do some good but um I don't think this would be an issue within a socialist system um that there would be competing interests special interests that there'd be competing interest groups within within that system well yes but I would argue that because the structure of market firms would be oriented around the worker and that things such as what particular political campaigns if if this is even something they're capable of doing any particular firm would contribute to would be something that the workers of those firms would collectively vote on which seems to me that what you would find is that there would be some lobbying of the government but it would be a collective collectives of people lobbying the government on behalf of of proto cause or policy that is likely to largely benefit the worker cooperatives and the people who are a part of them now obviously we don't work with cooperatives aren't as expansive or thorough throughout our societies to know whether or not that's what they would do but I feel that that's seems to be a a a cogent argument that could be made well I would I would I would want like so we saw a little bit of this in the 30s where you know when unionization increased and many of the things that were were formalized in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act had many of it had already become uh industry standards largely because unions had gotten gotten it that way yes but so when unions collectively organized through voluntary organization and and bargaining to achieve their those kind of results that is a market mechanism that doesn't really that doesn't really create these negatives that often come from lobbying which is what which is why I would prefer the fair but personally I think the Fair Labor Standards Act was just a formality for the most part much of that was already kind of a standard and so and I just I just wanted to add in really quickly this is why I advocate for syndicalism rather than the government stepping in though I think that when all other methods have failed and the government is the only thing that we can turn to to step in that then we should do so but yeah I agree with what you're saying so far yeah so like as I touched on in my opening is that if you can achieve your desire results without using the state or some aggressive form of aggressive violence then that's the that's the better method even even if you can get better results from the state like this is the extreme version I use of this only because it's not as an example but for perspective is if tomorrow we had incontrovertible proof that we could cure cancer if we enslaved a random five percent of the population that it still would be wrong so we shouldn't do it so there are certain thresholds that we find morally intolerable so I we should always look for the the least violent solution and if we can achieve that through market mechanisms and unions through collective bargaining is certainly one of them I don't think we should and I didn't want to presume this was the recommendation on your part whether you're wanted to force firms to restructure into uh co-ops or simply we should we should want to make it that way or this is just why this is a great this is a great reason why it should be that way I would definitely be object to um forcing them to be if they if all if workers and firms decide voluntarily to restructure themselves or for new ones I have no problem with that because co-ops aren't morally bad forcing disallowing co-ops by law or forcing things to be co-ops by law though that's bad so yeah I mean I would agree with that I think that we should use the the least amount of authority that we can in implementing the systems we feel are best going to improve the material conditions of everybody that that that we that you know everybody in our civilization I'm going to try to be brief here because I do want them both Steve and Steve in the jump in here but I would argue socialism does that I would argue that market firms being structured around the worker and a at least a starting with at least selective decommodification would result in requiring less from the government in ensuring that markets are going to operate in a productive and a beneficial manner and I would argue that the fact that we have had to rely on the state to regulate markets to ensure more equitable distribution of the resources that are gained from those markets amongst all of those who collectively contribute to their production in ensuring the the fair equitable and sustainable action of firms in the markets the fact that we've had to rely on the government to ensure those I think is a testament to the failure failure of a capitalist system I think a socialist system a market socialist system in which you still have markets and there can still be things like competition and new firms and everything but having them democratically controlled I think would result in them operating in a way that is centered more amount around the worker rather than around simply making a profit at whatever means necessary which would result in less intervention from the government in the markets as that would result in less corruption that we would see in the markets well I want to hit that point but I do think we should let Steve and Steve hit so I wrote a little note and I'll we can touch on that again. Yeah so Steve what's your kind of like general opinion on unions like do you think that they can be like corruptible like are they just as bad as like lobbyists or like what's the what's the kind of story there? I mean it depends on the you I mean it depends on the situation I think pretty much anything to be corruptible and when I mean public sector unions as we've already discussed are a major issue because they do have that relationship with the government already embedded in them I mean I'm not sure how familiar you are with the unions sector in Michigan and the United Auto Workers Union they actually are not just for the auto workers they also have unions within the public sector as well cooperative unions across different industries leading into actual governmental systems which is just bizarre what I found out when I found that out it blew my mind I had no idea that people that worked for the government were part of the United Auto Workers so there's there I think it's fine if a union is very specific to a workplace to a specific industry and I understand that that cross play is meant there to be greater collective bargaining against specific industries so so one part of what part of that union is having an issue then they can call on their buddies and on the other part of the union and then they you know cross strike or walk out do those kinds of things to ensure that you know they have great greater collective power against whatever industry that they're they're shooting against wherever they feel that they're wrong but again in principle unions are not specifically a bad thing I mean workers should have protections I think that can be done through several ways unions are one laws have created I've never been personally part of the union but I've never felt exploited as as a worker as a wage wage earner so I don't think that it's necessary to have an equitable workplace but I do think that they are corruptible as well okay yeah so I mean do you think that like unions are going to better kind of impact like the workers or like would it be kind of like lobbyists or like going to help get a politician elected that that politician is then going to like implement laws to help the workers like which one do you think is going to do like the most amount of good well I don't I think specifically unions should not be interacting specifically with the government if they are concerned about the workers themselves they shouldn't be specifically really quickly and isn't that isn't that fundamentally isn't that sort of opposite of what unions are designed to do aren't they designed to lobby on behalf of workers because workers are so underrepresented within our market they be doing they're supposed to negotiate with their employer exactly and and also if there are they're a federated cooperative also with other like you know the the upper management of that federation because what does a union do when a corporation does not comply and continues to engage in abusive or extractive tactics do they not have the right to lobby the government on behalf of the workers okay well I think maybe we might be uh falling into an equivocation trap do you mean when you say lobby there do you mean like hey government they are literally like abusing us come and you know investigate this or are you talking about hey we need to change the law kind of thing um why are you talking about I think it could be both I think it could could be both well what I mean is that I think any employee or you know anyone who represents that employee has a duty or like to like represent them as well as they can so if if they're actually being abused there are a lot there are rules in place to you know to prosecute and investigate that kind of abuse but that's very different from saying we should lobby the government to change the law which maybe the law does need to change but I think I think they should be treated distinctively yeah I would argue that the law does need to be changed one of the main critiques that I have with capitalism is that it inherently requires some underclass of workers from which wealth is extracted to maintain the high standard of living of the capitalist industry owners as we've seen since capitalism has been a thing that has existed there's been a stark divide it's often been described in Marxist theory as a divide between the bourgeois and the proletariat well I so it's important to remember that before capitalism happened there was a lot more poor people and I agree and so capitalism has been on net at least a good in reducing poverty in fact it was actually one statistic I agree to an extent yeah one statistic I remember for the industrial revolution was ironically enough the number of people who were poor seemed to go up but that was because the people who were so poor that we were literally dying of starvation or exposure they were living long enough to actually be counted among the poor even though they still struggle to get by so capitalism or nothing is a light switch and it takes time to build those resources and so I I when you talk about extracting wealth I think that I think that has definitely needs something that we should probably unpack okay um and I have no problem no problem unpacking that talking about that but um I did want to say really quickly that and this is where I get into it with other leftists online because at least I would argue and obviously there's going to be those that disagree that I understand what capitalism is as a system and it's sort of the history that it has though I'm not by any means to be an expert but capitalism is a better system than feudalism than you know chattel slavery and monarchism that we've had prior I don't I don't like like I said in my intro I don't view capitalism as a system that was designed as a way of the world going to get rich and they're going to suffer you know it wasn't this evil thing that these people sat around it was saying hey you know what we think that more people should be allowed to involve themselves and trade in the markets and you know create products and services and have the ability to trade them freely and make a living and I think that's a very good thing and I do think that at least when measured against systems like feudalism and monarchism capitalism as an economic system versus those and many others like mercantilism is better it provides for a little bit more freedom than those systems do the argument that I would make is that capitalism has been utilized as a method for extracting wealth from an underclass of workers who provide their labor to generate that wealth though they don't share an inequitable amount of the wealth that their labor produces and that because of that I would argue that capitalism is a system that humans have transcended that capitalism I'm not going to sit here and say it's this evil terrible bad system it's just a system that I don't feel is capable of providing sufficient material conditions requisite to a substantive standard of living for all the first many humans we possibly can and for anybody who would say well because I've had and not that I'm ascribing this to anybody here but I've had some people that I've had these discussions with say things along the lines of well capitalism does provide you know sufficient material conditions for as many people as possible and if that's the case I would say that it does a pitiful job because there are many many more people that we could help so I the argument that I would make is not that capitalism is evil but that it is a system yeah it is a system that humans need to transcend because we've lived beyond its ability to provide for us as a society collectively that's the argument that I would make at the risk of oversimplifying you're saying that modern society has or can outgrow capitalism yes okay yes so I think I think before we really try to address that when you say equitable distribution or equitable amount of you know wealth extraction what like what what would that what does that mean exactly for me that would mean that the labor power as or just the labor that somebody provides for the production of a good or a service that they receive what would be a fair I'm trying to think of the right words to use here and it can be kind of hard to use to find them a fair I guess you can say recompense so I would I'm quite certain you know what this is I would I would hold to Marx's um labor theory of value that the the now I don't agree with it exactly as Marx laid out because it is I would or do something that's nuanced but you're referring to from from each according to their ability to each according to their need well I think that the the labor theory of value plays into that but I think that the labor theory of value itself is something separate from that that is a part of that where it says that the value of somebody's labor is should be equal to what labor was put in or rather the value of some good or service should be and I would I would add at least in part or in some sense equal to the amounts or the requisite labor to producing that good or service so when I say that somebody is receiving an equitable wage I guess you could say for what they're doing is that the wage they're receiving is number one always enough to for them to have at least a comfortable so I'm not going to say it needs to be you know that they can go out buy a Gucci bag every month but a comfortable standard of living regardless of the society that they live in but that is also measured against the labor that they provide the the contribution that they provide to society so the the biggest problem with labor theory of value is that it only looks at one side of the thing so it trade is trade occurs at the intersection of supply and the man the problem with this problem with the labor theory of value is that it fails to account for time preferences and marginal utility and I would agree with that yes mark marks to his credit attempted to reconcile it and he called it socially necessary labor the problem is that that basically turns it into the subjective theory of value and everything but name where it's the problem is that not all labor is worth a give like whatever threshold you pick and then this is zero not all not every form of labor is worth that now you can make you can try to structure your society where the only forms of labor that are sold are valuable above that threshold that's possible but ultimately that you can't really guarantee that any form of labor sold is worth as that specific minimum amount because it depends on how much the people who are buying it are willing to pay for it and also if it's if it's the kind of labor that almost anybody can provide your bargaining powers severely diminished so that's that's part of the problem but um what was going to say so yeah so ultimately the value of anything labor included is not based solely on the demands of those selling it that doesn't mean I would agree that doesn't mean that we can't try to create a system that minimizes suffering I don't disagree there but I think a lot of progressive policies that are either socialism in name or socialism in intent tend to overlook the the idea that instead of examining let's increase wages let's increase benefits let's examine what is driving up the cost of living and a lot of it is protectionism protectionism for housing for nimbies at the local level protectionism at the borders with import tariffs I'll uh I'm not going to say it's all of that but much of that is drawing and for education I mean one of the big reasons why at least higher education is so much more expensive is that it has been indiscriminately subsidized where now you have all this guaranteed funding that colleges are competing for and among these people fresh out of high school and okay we're not going to increase teaching faculty or computer labs are going to make fancier dining halls or student centers or athletic facilities because they're competing to bring those students there to get those guaranteed dollars teaching faculty per student has not really changed ratio wise since the 60s but administrative faculty has doubled if not tripled and and the federal reserve uh did a study and they found roughly for every dollar increased in tuition uh federally backed grants and loans tuition increased 66 cents and it was a huge pass-through effect so the problem is that we're in this when you're when you artificially restrict or artificially subsidize something that's just a recipe for the price increasing that doesn't mean that you that so I think the problem here is there's a very expedient way like okay this is a problem we want more people to afford this so let's uh pay for it more but without really kind of examining what that's going to uh uh lead to and in the case of pass-through tuition at first it was it didn't seem nothing at first but then now tuition goes up a little more people now need the loans and then it goes up and then it's created a feedback loop and like that back way back in the day when people cited you can just work a summer job and afford your college throughout the most of the year and that was mostly true at least for state schools uh that's when loans were much harder to get the interest rates were higher uh higher and the exception rates were lower and that's really what we have in education and in healthcare I would argue that it's a combination of your artificially restricting supply in all sorts of ways and we're artificially uh increasing demand in ways that probably are not an effective use of dollars we can definitely reform end-of-life care I mean people over 65 are consuming almost a third of all healthcare spending and Medicare is only 20 percent of healthcare spending so and we have an aging population I the aging population I actually did uh uh a uh a regression model in my in college trying to isolate what potential factors might be for healthcare and I thought aging population might be one like the percent of the population over 65 it actually wasn't as significant as I expected wow the most and I also I also expected population density to be a factor but it really wasn't the ones that were the most significant factors were the the single biggest one was meeting household income higher the income more people are willing to spend on healthcare and part of that is that you have a lot more quality of life kind of care and and or even but it's also you know you'll you'll you'll be willing to pay for more the the the earlier pharmaceuticals and you're not going to wait for it to go generic you just immediately get like this because it's already available we also spend a lot more on testing like we have a much higher cancer incidence rate which was the second biggest factor but we also are much more we spend a lot more on testing we catch cancer a lot more and we treat it a lot more so we have a we have a more than about average cancer survival rate but at a much higher cost so there's definitely diminishing returns and how much even when we're trying to like you're not just you know milking people were for premiums but so healthcare in the US is a broken ass system I'm not going to say it's it's okay at all but I really when I when I looked at it the the thing that kind of led me to that was that looking just at single pair countries Norway per capita PPP costs two and a half times that of South Korea even though it's also single pair so there's there's there's clear factors other than single pair and in Singapore actually let's see I think I have a really cool chart that I made that if I can share my screen that kind of highlights exactly why the discussion on healthcare isn't asking the right questions am I able to share my screen here yes ready for you okay let's see right here so that's coming up so what this what this is is it's a breakdown of public and private spending on healthcare per capita and dollars and then from left to right is an increasing portion of total healthcare spending that is public and what you kind of see is it really isn't any a clear pattern so what I don't think the the issue is it needs to be more publicly funded I think the issue is that we're not asking the right questions of what factors are really driving up the cost of healthcare and the one thing that stuck out to me was South Korea is the cheapest single pair and it has high it has a tiered system and has high out-of-pocket costs and so does Singapore and Singapore isn't a single pair system but it's basically the same cost as South Korea it's like it's like a tiered multi-pair system kind of like the U.S. but it isn't the crazy town that is the U.S. and so I don't think that's why I don't think they're implementing single-payer in the U.S. with no other changes would necessarily actually save the cost of delivering care it would shift who's paying that cost that's not really the same thing and I think it's really easy the single-payer is very seductive because it's a very simple concept it's an easy political sell but and I'm not going to say I'm not going to say the single-payer is bad because there's just as much as I would say there isn't strong evidence that it reduces cost there's also not strong evidence that it increases cost but at the same time I've looked for a more thorough study that because I mean it this was just my college project and I I looked at you the factors that I looked at were medium household income costs that are out of pocket fertility rate percent over 65 doctors per capita population density and percent that was public and most of them were pretty much like they had r-square value less than one except for median household income age standard cancer incidence rate and percent out of pocket percent out of pocket was actually negatively correlated the higher the percent of out of pocket the lower the cost and the u.s. is actually below average the average percent of costs that are out of pocket in the ocd is 16 percent the u.s. is 10 only the uk and france are really lower than them and the nordic average is 20 percent and in south korea is 35 and singapore is right there 35 but singapore is not in the ocd i had to get work bank data for that one sec we just had a request someone asking for the two steves in particular if you guys want to weigh in we want to give you a chance to cider and port as well as i apologize i'm just as captivated i'm just as captivated at this point as uh probably audience as well so so that's an excellent presentation i'm uh i i'm glad that i stayed away from healthcare because i'm not that well versed in it myself i've i've got a little practical information on it no so i'm sorry go ahead no no one thing that i was i was curious about is the deep amount of decommodification of labor how how is that supposed to be implemented how are you looking at are you looking at like just completely removing wages and i don't i don't think that's how you were pointing it earlier but i guess i'm i'm confused as to what you mean by that and how you how you're thinking that you're going to be able to figure out what a single worker is worth uh in a specific industry and how you make that equitable across the system so that holy cow there's there's there's a lot to respond to so i'm gonna try to first i'm gonna start with that question um i don't think that decommodification of labor that means that the labor doesn't have a value i think what it means is that the value of labor isn't a commodity on the markets it's not something that we trade on markets as a commodity it's something that's sort of inherent to the fact that somebody is a worker this allows them the freedom to work where they please or work in whatever way they please while still ensuring that they have the requisite material conditions to sustain their standard of living um i did really quickly want to respond and i can certainly make this quick to what um josh was said there as a concerns the labor theory of value the the main contention that he had with it is actually essentially the same main contention that i have with it which is why i i've sort of coined it myself though i i don't have like any formalization of it i i've sort of said the modified labor of theory or labor theory of value rather because i i i think that marx was on to something with the labor theory of value but i don't think that he quite hit the nail on the head there i think that there are other factors that determine the cost of a good or a service the the main point that i have with the labor theory of value is that the labor requisite to the production of a good or a service should play a major factor in the cost of that though not necessarily the only factor that plays into the cost of that good or service as well as that what the worker is receiving for the production of that good or that service is is enough for them again to have have a substantive standard of living as a concerns what you brought up with health care and i believe it was education was the other market you brought up some of the problems you pointed out with these markets especially with with education with the the the the student loans issue that you were mentioning i would actually agree that that is a problem that the the cost goes up because more money is put into the student loan program and so that it seems that universities are utilizing that as a means to capture more revenue by increasing their tuition so that they capture more revenue out of the student loan program i would argue that this is a result of the fact that education alongside health care is an inelastic market that the the cost of the products and services provided by that industry or that market do not depend on the supplier the demand of them people are willing to pay whatever they can for these things because they are at least for the most part requisite to to a decent standard of living in the society that we have today but you you would also mention that you hadn't seen any evidence that that single payer health care seems to reduce the overall cost of health care i do have a study that was published in in analysis.org which shows that the the u.s system that we have now compared to systems in canada is actually significantly more expensive and most of that has a reason is a result of overhead cost or the wages that are paid to executives and shareholders there's also another one that i have here from that would that's in journals.plos.org that shows the same thing and it was a meta analysis of 22 single payer plans over the past 30 years starting and i believe it was 2018 or 2019 that showed that single payer systems seem to reduce the overall cost of health care provided on a collective basis. well so i don't disagree doctors in the u.s are paid far more than in other countries particularly and we have a much higher ratio of specialists i don't disagree there and part of that is informed by the cost of higher education in the u.s but with regards to administration costs it's i that one can definitely play some shenanigans when it comes to admin costs because administrative efficiency isn't just percent of your budget because well in terms of dollars per capita medicare actually spends more in dollars per capita than private insurance and it's not because but it's important to remember that the percent of your budget that is admin isn't necessarily administrative efficiency if if you're a retail store and your wholesale costs double but everything else stays the same your administrative costs as a percent of your budget go down but you didn't become administratively more efficient and that's kind of what it can you i'm not saying necessarily that's the case here but we you can't just look at percent of the budgets as okay there plus not only that but with at least i agree and with medicare i think it's important to recognize that not all the entire cost of administrative and medicare doesn't even fall entirely on the balance sheet for medicare like for example uh collections medicare doesn't do collections the irs does uh legal you don't you have much you have a lot you're pretty limited in how you consume medicare but the dog kind of helps you out a lot as well and advertisement advertisement is kind of a weird one because every time a politician talks about medicare that's free advertisement in a way but there's also medicare because it's kind of isn't really it doesn't administrate fraud as vigorously as as a private insurance they have a much higher fraud rate they have a fraud rate about nine to ten percent which is kind of enormous whereas for uh yeah that is true it's it's a little outrageous a private insurance it's about four to five and uh now i'm not going to say private insurance is just great and super magical because there's all sorts of issues there but and my my issue with a lot of comparison of single pair systems is it's very difficult to cross compare because even what counts as admin like how canada administrates itself is different than how medicare or the u.s. administrates itself so it's it's difficult to compare apples apples but my my point was really that uh someone asked my train my thought like the worst time now is that in trying to isolate those factors it's it we're not asking the right questions really so what is what is driving up the cost of health care is our americans consuming more health care is the cost of health care more are we more unhealthy the u.s. has the highest obesity rate in the developed world we also have one of the highest violent crime rates in the developed world even if even if health care costs the exact same as elsewhere we still have more health care spending per capita so how much of that is just that we are more unhealthy we are more violent we are just there's more strain on the health care system and if that health care system is artificially restrained either from certificate of need laws or uh fda restrictions on importing drugs or even arguably onerous licensure laws where which artificially restricts the number of doctors or even just nursing practitioners those little things can add up and health care is a complicated thing so i'm not going to say what the answer is i just think i have an issue with saying well single pair will solve all of our problems well i don't think it's that's a simple answer i said very at least just simply switching out everything in the u.s. given the regulatory structure that we have that's why i'm not really convinced single pair in the u.s. is necessarily better because if you look at a number of single player implementations i won't say all because i haven't looked at all of them much of the much that comes with it is also removing a lot of red tape that allows it to operate more efficiently that red tape that held back the private sector now some some argue that well the government's more accountable so we can get we can get away with getting rid of this red tape and maybe you agree or disagree but that's something that you i don't think can be overlooked yeah i think the red tape issue is something that we face here in the united states especially with the affordable care act but i i think it's more that the red tape is structured in a way that it actually ends up benefiting most of the insurance companies and in turn is regulating rather you know providing care to people in terms of the you know all what it is it's driving up the cost of health care and what most of the cost of health care in the united states go to at least as measured from canada and this goes to the same study that i that i cited that was published in the analysis of internal medicine it's called health care administrative costs in the united states and canada 2017 so it's a measure of the united states versus only canada from the study quote of the 3.2 percentage point increase in administration's share of u.s health expenditure since 1999 2.4 percentage points was due to growth and private insurance private insurers overhead mostly because of high overhead in their medicare and medicare managed care plans which is one of the reasons why i argue that there needs to be reform in both the medicare and medicare programs i think that republicans have sabotaged those i think that they've regulated them and structured them in a way that that that allows the private sector to abuse them for the sake of a profit which has reduced the overall efficiency of the operation of these programs if i remember correctly um i know that overall so the overall profit margin of providers that the average profit margin of providers who have medicare or medicare patients to any degree is about five to ten percent which is average but 70 percent of providers actually take a loss because some of them take on more medicare and medicare patients and the losses is often in a way of 10 to 40 per procedure but the issue if you look at it is that um that medicare don't some insurers get get loans or grants from the government though that cover a lot of medicare or medicare patients that i i don't know how i don't i don't know what to what extent so i can't really say but i do know that um what was i gonna say oh yeah so medicare uh the organization has the information because they they take they poll providers like okay what is the cost of providing this like just just the cost of providing this procedure the labs the the the the doctor the hours and all that and they have that data they just choose not to reimburse at that level for a lot of procedures for a lot of providers and one of the more interesting things i saw when i when i found this out as i looked at the is that right around about 1967 1968 is right around when healthcare costs growth decoupled from inflation growth which is shortly after medicare now i i don't remember exactly who was in control of congress in offhand that time so i can't maybe it was republicans maybe it was a democrat what was the year again you said 68 67 68 uh yeah it was democrats that well i think that wasn't wasn't that wasn't that nixon well i don't think he had i don't think he had the congress though during that period when did nixon come into office was that 69 69 it was oh it was oh it was a lot later yeah it was it was after oh it was lbj okay yeah oh yeah yeah that's right the great society the 60s yeah sorry your phone isn't silent if you drop it on the floor i didn't want to say that i have very much enjoyed this healthcare discussion i do have some more rebuttals that i'd like to make but being honest i do think it is a little bit tangential to the the overall discussion that we're having plus i would like both steve and steven to uh to chime in here as well yes i was just gonna ask you um steve like what's your kind of i'd like idea or your opinion on like taxation like do you go like it's a kind of more sort of crazy land and think that it's theft or like are you okay with some or like what's the no taxation is necessary to maintain the government and we need government as a as a necessary evil unfortunately i don't i don't consider humanity to be able to govern itself without having some kind of some kind of overarching structures to ensure that we don't go around killing each other and you know doing anything that we really want to um praying on the week and all that kind of thing uh do i think that we should have equitable tax across the board i think if especially if we're looking at a socialist system as as the end game everybody should be contributing the exact same percentage amount it should not bury there should not be a progressive tax whatsoever you said under a social system the whole idea specifically well if everybody is earning the same amount and everybody's contributing and getting those same benefits let's see that's the thing i don't that's not socialism yeah i don't think that a socialist system advocates that everybody earns the same to me socialism is just to me socialism is just economic democracy it's just the means of production being collectively controlled and democratically owned and democratically controlled by the workers by the workers yes yes so which yeah but the idea of like a flat of a flat wage and a flat tax is that's that's kind of more so kind of found under like it's some kind of like communistic states or like in in that kind of it either way it's it's it's not what would be found under a socialist country and it's not what me and lee hill are advocating for true true yes so a progressive tax in both your opinions on yes um yeah my whole kind of like my very very very quick idea or like my very very quick opinion on uh taxes is the more you are and the more you pay simple as that well i mean that's technically the way it would work with a flat tax that's true in a sense well go ahead no so uh now one of the biggest criticism of a flat income tax is that it puts an undue burden on the lower income uh earners which is actually it does but you but what you could do is simply have where it only kicks in above a certain threshold so wait hold on just to understand what you're saying you're saying that it would kick in that so people under a certain annual income might not necessarily need to pay that tax that it would kick in so basically uh you only you only pay let's say uh flat this is just hypothetical is a flat 15% only everything above 80 000 a year or 100 000 or whatever you just pick whatever yeah but so then so your tax revenue will be lower although uh the overall average tax rate of the entire workforce is 15% it's just that the thing is that the bottom 40% are net tax recipients so it's not just like everybody so it's really roughly in terms of income tax revenue the top 50% pay like 95% of income taxes yeah the thing and this is another thing that that that is contentious between me and other leftists on the internet is that the wealthy do actually pay a larger percentage of taxes but I I and I don't think that a majority of leftists like myself or Stephen here would necessarily disagree with that I think that what we would disagree with is the idea that the wealthy are paying a fair portion of the income they earn in taxes when you compare the income they earn and the taxes they pay on that income to everybody below them where we pay significantly more taxes relative to our total income as compared to people who make even a million dollars a year they're paying several oftentimes several percentage points less on their total income in taxes than we are which I don't think is fair well that does raise the important question what is a fair tax uh or fair share as as the common refrain is because one thing there's two ways to look at this what's the tax the fair tax rate and then what is the fair portion of the total tax burden you're paying if you look at the portion of the total tax burden that each quantile decile whatever is paying the rich pay a larger portion of the total tax burden than their portion of the total agi and this it actually is an increasing portion until you get to like the top 0.001% and then it starts decreasing again it's still a greater portion of total tax burden than their portion of total agi but it so the real question is do you want them paying a bigger portion of the total taxes or you just want them to have basically have less money I mean well it I mean it sounds bad but I think that there's certainly an argument to be made when it's dug into but I want them to just have less money I don't think that that it I genuinely do not believe that there is a way that you could justify one individual earning 40 something million dollars a year I don't think that one individual can contribute productively in such a way that they earn that much money I think that they make that much money because they have the power to write their own paychecks but CEOs don't write their own paychecks that way the stockholders pick the CEO it's a little it's a little nuanced but the executives and the shareholders work very very closely ensuring that the majority of the wealth generated by a firm it funnels into their pockets you are partially correct and that a CEO can influence the stock price and if more of their compensation is in stocks then that's stock options yeah but actually that I wanted to circle back to something back to what we were discussing before is that do you uh have a meaningful distinction between a worker co-op and like just a traditional corporation with an ESOP program yes um I think that an ESOP what is employee stock ownership program is that what it is that I believe that stock option program something like that it's stock ownership program or policy yeah okay um from the I must admit that the research that I've done on the differences while some what substantial is not really all that thorough but from what I have seen is that ESOPs don't seem to provide the same level of control over how the firm operates nor do they seem to to contribute as much in the revenue back to the workers as a worker cooperative does whereby an ESOP allows an employee to own stock in the company which I'm not going to say it's necessarily a bad thing but they're rarely are they owning stock at a level that allows them any substantive say or word and how that firm is operated whereas a worker cooperative would would essentially guarantee that oh you're right in that so there are worker owned and like an ESOP program you become a worker owner but you don't become a worker manager you don't necessarily have a significant voting stake in determining this the executive board or or or or even being eligible for it kind of thing it's just that I bring that up because there are one like because if you want then they have a bigger stake but when you have more worker managers like then you get kind of a little bit too much input in a little really quickly can I ask what you mean by worker manager just so that I understand exactly what it is so either you're actually a manager yourself or you're selecting managers and you're kind of overseeing so I it's probably a better term for it but what I mean is if you're an owner you're an owner but if you're like if you're a you know okay we're gonna select our CEO and then all the workers have an election and or you know the workers then vote that would be kind of like but only the workers that and it would be among the workers because you don't bring in an outside one that that's probably what I would probably call a worker manager but there's probably there's probably a better way to articulate that and yeah I don't think that with the worker cooperative what I do believe that managers and supervisors and executives would be voted on I don't think that it would have to be reserved to people that are within the firm I think that it would just be more a democratic process whereby certain people can say hey you know I'd like to take up this managerial supervisory or executive position and and all the people that are employed by this firm collectively have the ability to vote on who has submitted themselves and who they think is is going to best encapsulate the vision that those individuals have for that company and I think that it just so like I said and I keep bringing up the phrase but I think it's the best way to summarize what both myself and Stephen believe in is is economic democracy a democratization of the workplace where our firms are controlled democratically the same way that our governments are and I know that there are a lot of objections that are brought to that especially in terms of oh well you're forcing people to give up their businesses and what have you and well the government's forcing people to structure themselves this way but we already pretty much forced people to structure businesses within a certain manner as it is you know there's only so many different structural forms you can take when you start a business you can't go anything outside of that and a lot of that I would argue is beneficial it ensures a level of of sustainability it ensures a level of of community with these corporations although I think that it could definitely be increased um and a level of accountability and transparency although again I think that that could be increased but I in short no matter what system you have you're going to have to have some level of authoritative structure which ensures the sustenance of that system and in socialism it would be no different um I personally wouldn't argue for the government mandating worker cooperatives right away I would argue that that the government and financial institutions I personally believe the financial institution should be decommodified and run through the government but that's a different discussion for a different day should provide incentives for businesses to structure themselves as a worker cooperative and then if that doesn't do enough to push a movement toward worker cooperatives then I think that the government should step in yes I I would say that we should allow firms and people in general because a corporation is a voluntary or people people voluntary organize voluntarily organize collect their resource pool their resources to try to achieve something they couldn't on their own unions do it HOAs do it if only from worker cooperatives do it worker cooperatives do it exactly so I think any we should allow all forms of voluntary organization and then let the market decide provided that we don't have the and then the government's role is to interfere where there is fraud where there's theft where there's you know violation of people's rights that kind of like that includes not honoring contracts or just straight up assault or abuse you know and that the people will decide what is most valuable and as soon as you decide once you decide that the legislators are going to decide what you can buy and sell and under what conditions that's when the legislators are the first things bought and sold so we should we should minimize the degree of interference by the state because then corporations can then take over or unions can take over or whatever I I agree with that maybe in principle but I think in practice what happens is when we let the firms decide what sort of structure is going to exist how they're going to structure themselves within our market system what we find is that a system that has become dominant not quite frankly I would argue I think this is evident throughout history is that these firms structure themselves in a way that maximizes the the revenue funneled into the pockets of a very very select few number of those who sit at the top of these firms that they utilize these firms as a tool to maximize the amount of wealth they can create for themselves and this is one of the major criticisms I would have with the capitalist system in general is that I think that the way that the system is inherently structured it will be utilized to maximize the profits and maximize the revenue that is then distributed to a select few number of those who own those very industries and markets without considering the needs of the workers below them. I've got a request before we do go into Q&A I do want to forgive me SOD I know you had a you had a round in the chamber ready to fire back however just to hear from Steven and Steven before we go into the Q&A shortly in case you guys had anything I know it's moving fast and so oftentimes it's challenging to know when that time to jump in is they want to give you a chance to mention anything you wanted to add. Just really really quickly I'm going to run to the bathroom quick I deeply apologize I'll be right back. I actually had a question but I I definitely want Steve and Steve to get another chance. Yes so the last time that I kind of chimed in it was on the whole issue of taxes and just to kind of just like very very quickly kind of sum up. Bernie got a lot of kind of like you know flak for saying this last year but like I 100% agree with him I don't think I would just kind of expand on it a little bit I don't think that billionaires should exist either I don't think that billionaires should exist in the same country where people don't make enough money to survive where somebody is working 40 hours a week and they are and they are still coming up short on you know money for food for rent for bills whatever it is I don't think that that should be I don't think that those two two things should coexist within the same country so I think that like you know taxing very very wealthy people and and like look the whole reason why he got a lot of flak for that is like oh but what that would mean is that somebody can have 999 million dollars and still be incredibly rich and be like never probably be able to spend that money like ever it's just going to get passed on to their children and their children's children taking some of that money and redirecting it back into you know low-income neighborhoods into states into you know pushing it into education giving people access to healthcare all of these things can be done by simply making it so that billionaires just don't exist you know maybe that's a little bit of a harsh kind of statement and I like know that there's going to be some people who are not going to agree with what I have just said but I don't really think that that's too much of it I ask you what you just said basically just kind of expanding on the whole Bernie Sanders saying that billionaires don't exist oh yeah 100% just you like there's no way you can earn a billion dollars it can't happen I get that like that there's some people who is going to disagree with me but I don't really think that that's too much of a fair compromise you know I know can I ask a really really good question a genuine question here just for Steve as we hadn't heard from Steve from the capitalist side yet sorry I apologize I just go into Q&A go ahead Steve I don't think that it's I mean I don't understand what the what what the issue is there I mean specifically him like of just Bezos or I'm trying to think of another Elon Musk thank you that's that was actually the name I was trying to remember here you know they don't get their wealth out of out of a vacuum some that money's coming to them some for yes I mean they we all what I hear a lot from the social side is that those individuals that that make those kind of money have have some kind of obligation to society I'm pretty sure that many of them do provide a lot of benefit to society just through their innovation their their profit their employer that those that they employ we look at Bill Gates and what he provides society even though some of us don't agree with some of some of his his ideas what incentivizes someone to get to that point where you can even extract that amount of money from them where is where's the profit I mean if that profit doesn't exist if you've already decided well you cannot make over this amount of money where what what decision does he make at that point it's like well if I make 34 34 million dollars they're going to just take it away from any what me anyways why would I even work that hard where's where's the where's the incentive at that point I don't think that Jeff Bezos has an incentive to or Elon Musk or Bill Gates really have an incentive to do anything anyway I think that a majority of the innovation that flows out of these companies has absolutely nothing to do with the individuals who own them like Bill Gates with Microsoft or Jeff Bezos with Amazon or Elon Musk with Tesla I think it I think that the innovation flows from the workers that they hire to work at their firms and that those very people should be receiving the credit for the innovation not the billionaires who hired them that the wealth that these people generate is extracted from the labor provided by everyone that they hire to do their jobs most of these billionaires don't really do anything at all most of all of the administrative work that they would otherwise do they pawn it off to other secretaries and administrators that they hire they spend most of their time on their private jets and their yachts in their country clubs golfing with all of their big rich billionaire buddies doing nothing yet they make all of this money despite not really contributing anything to the firm that they own while everyone below them contributes labor out of their day time out of their day time out of their life time with their friends and their family time building up who they are as a person who they want to be contributing labor to these firms that is an extracted out of them extracted out of the labor that they provide and captured by people simply because that person owns the business that they work at I don't think that it's fair and I don't think that it's an equitable system we want to let's see and give you a super short and pithy SOD response and then we jump into the Q and A so to try to address both one the whole billionaire shouldn't exist the math doesn't really work out you could take 100% of all billionaires wealth in the US it wouldn't fund the US government for even a year and then next year you wouldn't have any wealth to take anyway it's very much balking at big numbers without context to in the case of amazon 80 some 80% of amazon's profits are through AWS which is only 20,000 of its 810,000 employees the rest of the consumer services are at razor thin margins as is so this idea of redistribution or they're not extracting they're really taking a small amount from every single labor and that's really it it the math doesn't work out where you can just make billionaires not exist we can solve all these problems you're not really going to get that much wealth from them and then you once you take that wealth it's productive wealth you won't be able to take it next year we can jump into the Q and A want to say thank you very much for your questions folks and we want to let you know that our guests are linked in the description we appreciate our guests and so we do thank you guys in jumping into your questions folks we do appreciate all of them this first one coming in from secular socialist says steven is there any irish phrase you could teach the american audience we do have a lot of irish phrases but i like it would it would we're listening it there's so oh god um like we we have already used a tick so like that's kind of something that is used to refer to a person who has you know like a very like i don't know why i did that with my hands it was anyway but um you know like a very nice ass but we already use tick as somebody who's stupid so we kind of we don't really kind of use that we have a grazing system we have taco cheesy taco and cheesy taco bacon it's fantastic and i do think that like um ireland has like butchered the english language like in in the in just like how we use it um so there was a time in in irish history where we would look outwards at some other countries and we called it the emergency it was called the emergency which every other country in the world called world war two and the absolute pinnacle of this sort of just butchering of it and i'll leave it outside at this james um had we terrorism up north in the 70s had we fuck we'd a bit of trouble it's just it just makes no sense at all you've got it i have a question for cider about that is the irish butchering of the english language is that like a form of protest against it that's a good question john no i i just sort of think that the irish soul is just a much more of a free and a loose being and there's too much rules in the english language like there's a wall of english language in between me and you and fuck is my chisel so that's the english language is really just three kid languages in a trench coat it's it's yeah it's next i think that's a good synopsis appreciate your question this one coming in from secular socialist strikes again saying to steven and leo by the steven they mean cider and port and leo most leftists are socially left first you consider yourselves to be quote unquote woke why or why not i i don't know what it's meant by the word woke yeah i just just really quickly the word woke i don't think actually has any this is gonna be how do i work this this is gonna be a very unorthodox way of wording this but i think that people will understand what i mean the word woke has no meaningful meaning if you can kind of understand what i mean by that so i i don't know what they mean i i don't i don't i don't know what they mean you've got i don't i don't really consider myself to be that woke like i'm i'm on the kind of side of like a lot of the woke standpoints and stuff like that but like really yeah i just i don't really consider myself to be that woke juicy and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from medus nco says why is it that only individuals with nothing let me just pull this over okay starting over why is it that only individuals with nothing want or believe in socialism successful people aren't interested that would tell me something if i believed in socialism um well very there's been a number of very successful individuals that have advocated for socialism richard wolf is very successful individual he's a he's a marxist um gnome chomsky has expressed support for numerous marxian ideas people like martin luther king have advocated for socialism carl marx was i would argue quite a successful individual who invented what socialism and communism what marxism who person it's named after what these are he defined them it seems to me that it's getting at this point that well the only people that want socialism are those who think that they they're privileged and they're entitled to all this well you know what people might disagree but there are things that humans are entitled to by virtue of being a human like health care education water food shelter no human asks to be born we shouldn't thereby have to really do anything to receive the things that are requisite to our survival those should be guarantees juicy and secular socialist rose his or her hat into the ring once again saying steven you've said you've done stand-up on stream before do you think certain topics are off limits or shouldn't be joked about oh my god no no no no i have what a lot of people would kind of consider to be a dark sense of view i don't really consider my sense of humor to be that dark but like i've joked about topics that like you probably shouldn't joke about i i think that like you know comedy can be like it's it's my coping mechanism so if i go through grief like i like on the day that my grandfather died i was cracking jokes all fucking day like it's like like i understand that like sitting around a table and you're like being sad and feeling sorry for yourself that that can be some people's cope mechanism and you're welcome to it but it's just not for me i don't yeah i don't think that this whole thing about like you know the like woke sjw is writing on say this that they're like they're like killing comedy no man look at look at fucking ricky draves look at daniel sloss look at like any of these like bigger comics that like are constantly talking about these things no man comedy's not going anywhere i'm sorry but it's the conservative sense of humor bring it up since we're in the ballpark of the topic allegedly i had read an article that allegedly stated that socialism done left had a apparently said some things and then claimed that they were a joke is it okay to say the things that socialism done left had said as a joke it you see it really depends because what you'll find and um i i know believe me sorry leo i'm kind of out of the loop here i'm noisy at what we're referring to um so socialism doesn't say any of the words on i won't james you know me i'm not going to do that to you i wouldn't do that to you but socialism done left made several racists and other bigoted comments on discord there were screenshots and they were from like six months several months ago something like that um the thing is is that he said that they were taken out of context and he wasn't meaning anything and that he was mocking people that you know actually believed those things and honestly when you look at the broader context of the discussion that was had on discord it seems that that is the case and that's why what i was gonna initially say is that it's a bit nuanced we often hear from people who make racist statements and this that and the other that oh well you know i was just joking but what what we need to understand is the broader context in which the joke applies there are certain jokes that we can make that deal with race that are funny for reasons that people can pick up on and understand and know that it's a joke or you can make a joke about the race and the joke is racism and that is drastically different than making a joke that concerns race that isn't about the racism so whether or not when considers what SDL did okay or not i think really depends on the framework at which they're looking at it i would argue from a broader framework it seems at least that these were jokes albeit very very ill-placed jokes but jokes nonetheless what have you got so d i think you're on mute uh no i was just yawning i didn't i didn't have i didn't have one thing that one one topical thing to share regarding dark humor if i if it's all right yes all right i'll share my screen real quick uh oh here we go oh i knew it was gonna be good i'm down two seconds um the audience can't see it yet but i'm i'm almost there to where they'll be able to see it oh no i've just gotta shrink it down because i was super zoomed in for the last screen share two seconds so sorry i'm curious if people in the chat are already guessing what it says but let me oh god depending on what circles you frequent you buy yours you've definitely seen it a lot or okay now they can finally see it in the audience because the screen share i've adjusted it so you're a very sick man all right next up i'm going to the question from is it pronounced poopy poop-a-mans thank you very much for your question says leo if a company is collectively owned by the workers wouldn't that make the workers share holders to me it does and i prefer it over right now but it sounds like you believe the opposite it depends on whether or not there is a um a larger market that which shares of companies are traded upon most worker cooperatives that do exist or have existed don't have shares just like the vast majority of companies that exist on a planet don't have shares and aren't traded on a market the shares aren't traded on a market i can't speak for any other countries but in the united states of america the stock market accounts for and its value accounts for roughly 15 percent of the value of the u.s economy when we speak of the stock market we're not speaking of the communities or the the rather the the companies that exist in the communities that you drive through we're not speaking of middle america we're not talking about honestly a large portion of the economy we're talking about the largest firms within the industries that we operate within and quite frankly i don't think that measuring their success in their profitability which is what the stock market let's be honest is is a measure of is their profitability is really a measure of the the overall success or productivity of the economy and the success of the people who participate within it gosh in bar and vangie says communist company everyone makes the same salary why bother with the stress of running the company if you can push a broom and make the same salary well number one come the idea of a company wouldn't exist under the first thing i need to say is neither me nor nor steve insider report are advocating for communism at least i don't at the current instant number two companies the concept of a company wouldn't really exist at least in the way that we understand it in communism and number three under communism everybody doesn't earn the same thing that that essentially misses the point of what communism really is i don't know if you have anything to add steven no no i'd know i wouldn't have anything to after that yeah you kind of summed it up perfectly neither of us are advocating for communism and that would yeah i think i think whoever posted that has a misunderstanding of what communism is uh communism is a classless society but also a moneyless society so it's in these question is kind of incoherent to what communism would actually be can i just thank you josh and the fact that you properly understood what communism is i appreciate that i very much appreciate that you got it and bubble gum gun says most respectful debate i've seen so far i agree this has been really respectful so thank you guys it has been a real treat and bubble gum gun also says government is a nessa is asna is that government is a necessity as much as theft is but if you look empirically government has created the most evil taxes are the seeds of authoritarian okay is that specific to anyone any particular person i didn't quite hear that i don't think so but so here's here's the issue that this is coming from like the libertarian aspect that and i which i don't completely disagree with but it definitely is taken too far where the idea is okay you only have you cannot extend rights to someone else that you don't have yourself and you don't have the right to take someone else's property by force so you can't simply vote to take taxes but you can organize voluntarily and then have a structure that is funded by taxation but it tends to the manner of taxation and also the manner by which that taxation structure comes in so it so governments can just be even scoundrels but it's not inherent to government it often you could argue it often is and i i think like it's like excise taxes or sales taxes which you're the government is providing the very structure of property ownership so any exchange of property i mean i i don't see how that's necessarily theft but income taxes is a little meh wealth taxes harder to say because the government isn't deciding the value of those things but but nonetheless uh taxes aren't inherently theft but many forms of taxes can manifest as a form of that i just wanted to add really quickly because that the whole taxation is that and i do agree with with the vast majority of what uh what josh just said um the the whole tax say i call them anti-taxers because the idea that taxation is is theft i would sum it up as just being asinine um we would not have the societies that we do in most of at least the western world if it weren't for taxes what taxes are or at least what they're supposed to be is a society collectively coming together and agreeing to pool a particular amount of their resources together to fund particular programs or incentives or what have you that generally benefit all of us together and we see this in term i maybe not here in the united states but in many western countries we see this in the form of their health care systems their education systems numerous other public transportation which is significantly more developed in a majority of the western world outside of the united states mainly because personal automobile ownership is a thing in the united states more so than others but it's the u.s and canada but yeah yeah yeah yeah um the main point is that taxation is not theft i agree with with josh that taxation i think that there are ways that taxation can manifest itself is theft and i think one of those is lowering taxes on the wealthy and increasing them on everybody else requiring those who earn less to uh carry more of a burden carry more of the tax burden i don't think that's very fair but i i i think that you can't have a technologically advanced society the likes of which most western countries enjoy without the concept of taxation and without taxation most western countries would not exist in the manner that they do today i would i would probably disagree i'm taking it that far i mean so the u.s had two industrial revolutions before we had an income tax so it's certainly yes and there are reasons for that though well the reasons were an income tax was unconstitutional until the 16th amendment in 1913 but i don't know if it was really unconstitutional well it wasn't outlined in the constitution that you can't do it it was just made an aspect that well so more specifically direct taxes have to be portioned kind of like ending slavery well so what i mean is is that the kind of income taxes congress wanted to pass and what is what is common in western countries that would have been unconstitutional prior to the 16th amendment because they weren't apportioned among the states in that okay california has 12 of the population 12 of the tax revenue from this tax has to come from california regardless of how many people are in cal or regardless of the actual amount of income a agi in california and congress has already ruled that direct taxes outside of the income tax per 16th amendment are have to be all they all have to be apportioned among the states which includes property taxes which are then really extended wealth taxes which is why we don't have we can't have a national property tax but um singapore is an interesting example because it has much lower taxes overall but it has uh government ownership of certain industries the dividends from which uh through tenisec holdings uh provides revenue through almost a market mechanism to fund the government so i so it's it's i don't and i would i would definitely disagree that taxation the weather taxation is theft or not does not depend on who is being taxed like oh it's unfair the poor being taxed and the rich aren't i do agree with that and i just want to specify i wasn't i that that is not what i was saying i do agree with that sentiment i i i thought maybe you miss spoken but we probably don't have time for you we could revisit that maybe later like in another debate or something because that there's taxes we could have a whole debate on taxes alone so bubble gum gun strikes again says you will never have a capitalism under government if you pay property tax surprise that's not ownership we have a mixed economy not capitalism so i think it is us or i mean i don't know well here's the thing what i i would say this uh given that the government defines and is at least right now the mechanism by which property is defended and defined that the fact that they tax you on the thing that they're allowing as a legal phenomenon to exist doesn't mean that you don't own it owner the purpose of ownership a simple test of ownership is if you're able to exclude use by non-owners the government does not have the right to just come up ideally anyway the government does not have the right to just come on their property to just come on their property and do what they want with it there's imminent domain which is kind of bs but but nonetheless there are definitely restrictions on the government regarding how they can use their property use your property and that's why you do own it if you if the government imminent domain is an example where they suddenly like yeah you don't own it anymore but whether you own something or not is not simply decided on you paying a tax for is is really my point um james could i have you repeat that question i'm sorry but i did want to it's going to be really quick but i can't remember exactly if you want to move on though that uh so what i remember being is essentially because if your property is taxed you don't own it so then you get without as long as the government is taxing your property you don't have capitalism that's yeah roughly so oh yeah the mixed economy thing the the idea of a mixed economy is being honest not really a thing in economics that there's some things mixed economy that that term is just very much nuanced and that would be a whole ass discussion in and of itself capitalism is essentially defined as private capital accumulation that is that is one of the most at least succinct ways to define what capitalism is and what is it what it entails that capital can be accumulated privately by private by individuals privately if you have that your capitalist even if that's regulated in certain ways if that if capital accumulation is still private that is capitalism you might have strong social welfare alongside that that's great i would advocate for that at least in principle um you know depend on what particular systems are being implemented anyway as long as the accumulation of capital in a market can be done privately you are dealing with a capitalist system we'll jump into this next one from khan the stoner lin who says anyone familiar with pierre joseph proud hon or economic mutualism the synthesis of property and communism and what do you think of anarchism i did never heard of that person or that system and as far as anarchism i'm not necessarily a proponent of it i think that's uh open to everybody so the problem with uh so the issue with anarchism is you had you had the anarchist paradox where if you so it's important to remember the anarchy is just absence of rulers it's not the absence of rules but if you eliminate what you call the state but you're going to need some means of defending and defining property that if that becomes a an accepted authority they functionally is not named and indeed become the state as well so anarchy is arguably not something that's attainable uh but uh there are monarchists who try to say the that proposed that had the minimum the least amount of government that's practicable yeah i was gonna say eventually in anarchist system there's gonna be organizations that grow just just naturally just as they did in human history i think that's true but i think the point of anarchy is that they're not centralized systems that are very much communal that the communities essentially govern themselves rather than they're being a centralized form of control that governs all communities like i i think that the phrase that the josh sod used is is really good that it's not it's not it's the elimination of rulers not the elimination of rule there are still going to be rules and there are still probably going to be some sort of hierarchical system i think that most anarchists would would say that that system is much more communal rather than being centralized and bureaucratic as we're used to and that that's what most anarchists would um citer would uh would would would argue for um if i could because citer might have and then we do i want to give citer a chance if he wants to go ahead well i was going to say that uh because anarchist ireland is actually uh an example of what leo was saying and maybe citer has more insight on that yeah i mean i was just going to say i have no idea who that person is um but um anarchist like yeah i don't like the whole idea of like you know uh causing like massive systemic change through like a revolution and like even you know like a violent one i mean obviously you know that's how the united states was kind of founded it's how ireland's got its independence as well uh i would however argue that we did it a little bit better the only reason that i would say that is because in 1916 we fought the british who with sticks we brought sticks to a gunfight and we won so just want to point that out hey australia lost to what to kiwi not kiwis but uh casuaries and uh ostriches and they lost to like so a bunch of flightless birds so i think they lost and dying next up con the stoner lin strikes against us what do you all think about intellectual property it should be protected the one distinction i would make it the reason i would make it yeah exactly is that i wouldn't argue it's really intellectual property is the development of something like a vaccine or something along those lines i don't i i'm people can disagree i'm sorry i don't think that somebody has rights to that but like a book or something along those lines yes i think it should be protected uh so this is uh the problem with intellectual property is that most of it is infinitely uh divisible like it's not actually a rival risk commodity it's like a club good like a subscription to a netflix or a newspaper like something like netflix where it actually is an infinite amount of it and the problem really is that intellectual property laws go too far where it's essentially admitting that i am afraid that my customers or competitors are going to make better use of this property if you're actually so i patents are is fine although i think the patent system needs to be reformed as well but uh intellectual property is uh it's not an easy answer i guess i should say you've got it sieve or steve i'll just make all everything leo said so i'm actually gonna diverge a little bit from josh well i think a property rights should be protected or i i'm sorry intellectual rights sorry i gotcha you got it thank you interesting gentleman and then con the stoner oh that's right the legend rives thank you very much for your question was how does socialism stop inflation um anyway capitalism does i mean i don't understand what yeah i mean that question i don't because there's maybe he's just trying to say that maybe it's a better way to stifle yeah i don't know because there's so many market factors that affect inflation that even under a market socialist system it's not like i mean maybe somebody could make an argument that it would be maybe better or worse to handle inflation i don't really know i've never looked into that but i would argue from my limited knowledge that the market market forces as they operate under a market socialist system would probably control inflation in at least similar ways as we have now got giant con the stoner lin said let's see socialists remember robert owen a wealthy industrialist who gave everything to build socialism twice new lannark and new harmony indiana what no i don't know that name i actually saw that name during my research but i didn't i didn't look into it too too deeply juicy secular socialist says james asked steven to tell us a joke now he's just poking me with a stick just dance monkey dance um put me on the fucking spot um oh god a quick one um what does it make a wish child and a carton of milk have in common an expiration date chomping to the next one bubble bubble gum gun says private tanks protects property i don't need government stealing my property to protect it from being robbed that's an oxymoron second amendment what the question yeah i don't i don't know what what is what are you i think what he's trying to say is yeah that because he's able to defend his own property with rights afford with that which is afforded by the second amendment that he doesn't need the government to do so and then the government that therefore does not have a legitimate claim over much if not all taxation that it i think that's what he's saying i'm not sure it's an interesting argument um there's there's only so much limit that an individual has control over a certain piece of property though i mean yeah you could say well i've got to take myself but there's going to be someone out there with two tanks i mean it's yeah i mean it's just i mean unfortunately you could unless you've got your own nuclear arsenal there's other areas in the world that are going to be able to take your property from you regardless of what your second amendment relates to and i never promoted the second amendment as well so i mean i mean vietnam shows that you don't need a nuclear arsenal to defend yourself it's very much true history like you know guerrilla warfare so the issue with war is that if you're if you don't have them but the you know you need the political will to prosecute a war as well as the material and uh if you just make if you guerrilla warfare compete a lot of casualties very quickly and all those soldiers coming back is going to kill political will and that's that's why the vietnam basically won so i mean history was a pleat with guerrilla warfare working against technologically numerically uh superior foes and including the revolutionary war for the u.s very yes exactly gotcha and this one would be the british d mack appreciate it said can an observation be fallacious can an observation be fallacious it's an interesting question um i feels like those like so an argument can be fallacious because it comes with a conclusion yeah what i was going to say is that i don't think an observation could be fallacious because an observation is not itself an argument and an observation would be represented by an argument the argument can be fallacious but the the observation itself i don't think fallaciousness would apply to that no i i i do agree uh an observation is at most a a premise for an argument it doesn't it doesn't yeah so i mean i you can't you can't you can't have observations that are wrong because hallucinations things like that illusions or maybe your sensors aren't do not don't have enough you know either your actual sensors or like your or your transmitters don't have enough fidelity there's all sorts of reasons you get incorrect information but that's not the same thing as being fallacious yeah you got it in displace gamer thanks for your question last one we have here says my question market socialism is just another form of capitalism it is still private ownership working within a market would a better name be social capitalism no because it isn't private ownership the firms in a market socialist economy would be collectively owned and democratically controlled by the working class which is the the the signifying attribute of socialism i think i think what he's trying to say is that it's one thing to say that the workers at that firm are the owners it's another thing to entirely say the working class all own that firm and that for like they all so i think that's what he's saying is that only the workers at firm own that firm as opposed to all the workers own all of the firms so i think because in that case the workers who own that firm they are the exclusive owners of that firm and in sense they are a collectively private organization i think that's what his argument is d-max doesn't strike me as capitalism d-max says thanks you're welcome d-max and thank you and we want to let you know folks our guests are linked in the description as it says here on the right side of your screen highly encourage you to check them out as we do appreciate our guests and that includes if you're listening via podcast folks if you have not already pull up your favorite podcast app such as these right here on screen look up modern day debate and subscribe for listening to these debates via podcast and if you're listening via podcast want to let you know all of our guest links are in the description box there as well as we really do want to say thank you to our guests we appreciate them and with that gentlemen it's been a true pleasure we really do appreciate you thanks for being with us tonight thank you thanks so much james it's been a real my pleasure oh yeah this has been great absolutely really respectful i really do people really enjoyed it and folks i will be back with a really short post credit scene in just a moment letting you know about upcoming debates so stick around for that and i'll be right back that was epic really excited to be with you want to quick say hello and i want to let you know first i just want to say hi to you in chat and let you know we appreciate you debos holdos thanks for being with us says i got you on spotify now oh that's really cool we're so glad i'm like i'm pumped that the podcast people have been finding it useful so that's encouraging and so thank you glad that i hope it's useful to you and fun and so i'm huge on podcast i love podcasts i even sometimes will download modern day debate because sometimes my attention is split long story short um it's nice to get to listen to it after and so also want to say hello leo tj says everyone go like thank you for your support leo seriously and norman bates says james looks like burt from burton urney that's funny thank you very much norman glad you're fox sushi good to see you brook shavis says tickle that like button indeed and thank you for your support patrick benek glad you were here and yeah thanks sorry about that i am behind on the link so i have to update um stevens i forgot and then i also have to add the capitalist guest links sorry about that they just hadn't given them to me prior so i will get those updated and i appreciate you letting me know about that and riley s good to see you thanks for your support of the channel hannah anderson good to see you as well and let's see mark read glad you're here and brian griffin good to see you louis presciato glad you made it says beta mail here hi thanks for coming by and displace gamer good to see you and said i've been watching for a while but never asked a question then glad you got my question in my pleasure displace gamer thanks for coming by and then vera said just subscribe to podcast great for driving oh i'm so glad to hear that vera that's encouraging and i'm yeah i couldn't agree more that's one nice thing about the podcast is that basically what is it um oh long form content you don't have to like you know click down on your phone to change it because then it's like a two hour debate so i've had people that are like yeah i listen to the modern day debate podcast while i'm just like cooking while i'm cleaning while i'm uh someone said that while they were working out a good workout uh both for your mind and your body and so evil atheist despot says what other podcast do you listen to if you don't mind answering happy to i actually kind of have like a spattering so one of them is on i'm trying to learn about real estate stuff which is i find interesting and i'm like looking forward to someday wanting to buy a house and so i'm trying to learn about it little by little but also i i do love free economics that's one that i've always loved for a long time i do enjoy and it's been it's been a long time since uh since i found it and that since i've you know i've enjoyed it for a while now unbelievable with justin brierley so they have a lot of debates on religion that's a fun one and then but yeah so i i would say a good mix and riley s says i'm glad to then glad you are and brian griffin says hey james word you get the world goes wild song from man you'd have to google it if you google it and just type in buy above envy that's the name of the artist above envy and you can find it uh basically i just got it like it was like a ten dollar licensure to get the rights to use the song on on youtube and yeah it's never been hit with um it's never been hit with copyright infringement which is really nice because uh a lot of stuff sometimes they buy stuff on fiverr like those channel intros we used to do and they get hit with like channel with uh copyright infringement so anyway let's see we don't actually have it's not it's not a jones who we are talking to for the potential next big event we are actually talking to uh i can't say the names because it surprisingly and honestly i'm a little bit i'm being patient we have this epic event because i don't know folks if you didn't know we do a Kickstarter event once in a while where we try to raise funds for kind of like a generous honorarium for each of our guests and it's usually like a higher level debate so bigger name people and what happened is i'm still waiting on the debaters in particular one to confirm it and so frankly i'm a little bit i'm i'm being very patient because the person it's been weeks and i'm i told him i said if i don't hear back by friday i'm gonna have to find somebody else so uh but yeah mark taylor thanks for coming by this how does one become a debater on this channel if you email me at moderndaydebate at gmail.com i can let you know uh we do have like things that we usually ask for one would be we we obviously like to see if a person has debate experience that helps john house's bigger pockets real estate channel oh it's like bigger pockets because bigger pockets um so yeah i have listened to bigger pockets before um but it's like um it's a smaller one up in the northern colorado area so bigger pockets by the way is uh they their headquarters are in denver even though you one of the more popular people he lives out in like hawaii and stuff but anyway um this one's like a northern colorado so not too it's pretty similar to it but long story short john house is more kenthoven please lol uh that's not going to be now he won't be right we do plan on hosting him again but it won't be it for that particular event but uh riley s says silly james that was me replying to someone in chat oh god yeah thanks for letting me know and i want to say hi to everybody in the old twitch chat good to see you brooksbarrow and potsel as well as kairi isn't good to see you thanks for hanging out with us and azian are you still in here there you are and last username good to see you thanks for being with us poor lucy and yes we do we are excited that twitch it's always fun pumped that people are enjoying the twitch chat and yes we are excited so let me tell you about the future in particular so sorry or so glad to hear that brian griffin says thanks james i'm really loving the intro song i'm so glad to hear that i i love it too i enjoy it and let me show you this next week we will have it's supposed to be next week uh it might be a little bit later out we're confirming this big foot debate which will be a two on two this friday we're supposed to have wotan and mc tune debating flatter so that should be fun that is still up in the air i'm still waiting on wotan to confirm it's been a long week but i'm also excited that this saturday should be a fu a fun one it'll be a tag team on whether or not noah's ark has already been found so we do host if you're new here want to let you know modern day debate is a neutral channel so we only host debates we don't have any sort of video that are like arguing on behalf of any particular view we literally only host debates and you know maybe like an occasional thank you video where we say thanks everybody for your support when we do appreciate your support folks want to let you know we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics we want to let you know no matter what walk of life you are from folks socialist capitalist christian atheist republican democrat you name it we hope you feel welcome we really are glad that you are here with us and it makes it fun it's the more the merrier folks you've got like a different you've got a good melting pot here people from different ideas and perspectives and backgrounds and we like that and so mark taylor says thanks james thank you mark for your kind words now i've got to go in just a bit so i wish i could stay longer and i'm excited to see you on friday that's going to be epic but i actually am like in a little bit of a time crunch so i've got to run but thank you all for your support thank you so much for real love you guys you guys always make it fun it's honestly a blast and so we really do appreciate you so we hope to see you at upcoming debates and so if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and that notification bell as well for many more upcoming debates as we're excited for those and it'll be a blast so thanks everybody and we appreciate you hanging out here keep sifting out the reasonable from the the unreasonable