 There's a YouTube channel called PragerU that makes political commentary videos from a conservative perspective, and in case you've never heard of it, PragerU stands for Prager University. But it's not actually a real university, it's just a YouTube channel named after its host and co-founder Dennis Prager, which is sad news for its nearly 3 million subscribers who are all hoping to earn a PhD in owning the lips. It's pretty pathetic and more than a little bit cringy to call your YouTube channel a university, unless you're doing so ironically, which I'm very sure is not the case here. Seems like Dennis Prager is just trying to give his videos the illusion of intellectual authority that the word university provides. Kind of like how Scientology tries to make itself sound legit by putting the word science in its name, even though it's just a weird religious cult. It's desperate, it's delusional, but it seems like people fall for it, and why should I pass up a good opportunity? So… Welcome to Lucky Black Cat University. I'm Dr. Professor Black Cat, and in today's lecture, we'll be doing some media analysis and criticism of the video, Socialism Makes People Selfish, by PragerU. You might think it's not worth it to debunk a video with such obviously bad and nonsensical arguments, but sadly this video has over 4 million views, and the likes outnumber dislikes by 4 to 1, so it is in desperate need of debunking. I've put the link below so you can watch their video in full, but rest assured, I'm going to show the full video, I'm not going to cut out a single word, I'm just going to chop it up into little pieces so I can comment along the way. OK, so let's begin this wild ride. In the contemporary world, it's taken as a given that capitalism, with its free market and profit motive, is based on selfishness and produces selfishness, while socialism is based on selflessness and produces selflessness. Well, the opposite is true. OK, so that's quite a big claim. Let's see what he says to try to prove his point. Whatever its intentions, socialism produces far more selfish individuals and a far more selfish society than a free market economy does. And once this widespread selfishness catches on, it is almost impossible to undo it. Another big claim, still waiting on that argument though, and here it comes. Here's an illustration. In 2010, the United States President, Barack Obama, addressed a large audience of college students. At one point in his speech, he announced that young people will now be able to remain on their parents' health insurance plan until age 26. I don't ever recall hearing a louder, more thunderous, or more sustained applause than I did then. Did the president announce that a cure for cancer had been discovered? It is highly doubtful that the applause would have been as loud or as long. Here's the thing, Dennis. For some of those students, he just did announce a cure for cancer. Any of them in the crowd who have cancer but don't have health insurance won't be able to afford to get their cancer cured and will probably die. And there's probably others in the crowd who have diseases that, although not cancer, are also deadly, or perhaps only debilitating. So yeah, I think you can excuse them for being a little enthusiastic. Those selfish students not wanting to suffer from disease and perhaps die. So entitled. But what were they so happy about? To be told that you can now remain dependent on your parents until age 26 should strike a young person as demeaning, not liberating? Maybe they do find that demeaning. But if they do, what is it that has put them in this demeaning situation? It's the fact that their country does not have free universal health care. It does not have Medicare for all. If their country did have free universal health care, they wouldn't need their parents' insurance because they wouldn't need private insurance at all. Problem solved. Throughout American history, and for that matter, all of Western history, the great goal of young people was to become a mature adult, beginning with being independent of mom and dad. Socialism and the welfare state destroy this aspiration. No, they most certainly do not. It's actually quite the opposite. A strong welfare state makes it easier for teenagers and young adults to become independent of their parents because it becomes easier to afford moving out of your parents' home. And if there was real socialism, it would make this transition to independence even easier. And now is probably a good time to point out that socialism and the welfare state are not the same thing. The welfare state is the bundle of government programs that are meant to improve people's economic and social well-being. It includes things like old age pensions or social security, unemployment benefits, and in many countries, but not the United States, free universal healthcare. Every country has a welfare state to some degree, even if it's just an itty-bitty welfare city, and a welfare state can exist within a capitalist system. Socialism, on the other hand, is an entirely different economic system. In socialism, there are no class divisions, and the means of production are socially owned, which means they belong to society as a whole. And if we take socialism to mean what Karl Marx called lower-face communism, then in socialism the commodity form is abolished, which means that production is not done for profit, it's done to meet people's wants and means. If what I just described sounds very different from countries that get called socialist, that's because it is very different. So many people mistakenly believe that these countries are socialist. It's a common mistake, but it's still wrong. In various European countries, and now increasingly in the U.S., it is becoming common for young people to live with their parents well into their thirties and not infrequently beyond. And why not? In the welfare state, taking care of yourself is no longer a virtue. Why? Because the government will take care of you. Oh my God, this is such a bad argument. PayPal no longer value being independent. They've been corrupted by the welfare state. That's why you have thirty-year-olds living in their parents' basements. Ah, Dennis, Dennis, Dennis. No. That's not the problem. It's because it has become increasingly difficult to find a decent-paying job, increasingly expensive to pay rent, increasingly expensive to pay tuition, and the blame for this belongs to capitalism, not the welfare state. Therefore, socialism enables, and as a result, produces, people whose preoccupations become more and more self-centered. How many benefits will I receive from the government? Will the government pay for my education? Will the government pay for my health care? Wanting the government to pay for education and health care is not selfish. It's something that benefits society as a whole. When your neighbor gets an education, it doesn't just benefit your neighbor. It benefits you, too, because now your neighbor can use that education to cure disease, or invent more efficient forms of green energy, or condescendingly work their knowledge of ontological philosophy into every conversation. No, Cody. I actually hadn't noticed the connection between the Hegelian hermeneutic circle and my comment that we've been having lots of rain. Thank you for enlightening me. Okay, I guess that last one's not really benefiting anyone. I know right now there's someone watching this video who's like, that joke doesn't even make sense. Lucky black cat obviously doesn't understand the hermeneutic circle. And to that viewer, I would just like to say, shut up, Cody. But in all seriousness, a well-educated population is a population that will be better equipped to advance the well-being of society. And a healthy population is a population that will be in tip-top shape to go out to work every day and produce the goods and services that we all need and rely on. Education and healthcare have, as the economists would say, positive externalities. It's not selfish, because it benefits everyone. This of course is a very shrewd, cold, and narrow justification for providing healthcare and education. I mean, how about just having a little basic human decency? Anyways, let's hear some more of the selfish things that socialists want. What is the youngest age at which I can retire? How much paid vacation time can I get? I have a feeling that Dennis Prager is totally clueless about just how awful and soul-crushing many jobs can be. They want time away from being exploited and alienated. They want an early retirement from spending nearly every day doing tasks that feel meaningless and painfully boring. They want a vacation from being emotionally abused and bullied by their boss and having their dignity stripped from them. They want time to recover from the chronic pain and disabilities that result from their bodies being gradually broken down under hours of daily toil. Whoa, chill your balls, Dennis. It'll be okay. I promise. What's next? Time off when they're sick. How many days can I call in sick and still get paid? By God, it's madness. How many weeks have paid paternity or maternity leave am I entitled to? Wow, these selfish pricks wanting to take care of their newborn baby. Feed the baby, change its diaper, bond with it. Don't they know there are Starbucks customers waiting for their lattes? Get back to work. And if you stay home, it'll only spoil the baby. A baby needs to learn to be independent, meet its own needs, not rely on mommy and daddy. This is how you get 30-year-old socialists living in their parents' basement. No, send the parents back to work and leave the infant to fend for itself. This will teach it the spirit of capitalism. The list gets longer with every election of a liberal or progressive or left-wing party. And then each entitlement becomes a right. Let me say this loud and clear. You should be entitled to health care, to education, to vacations and parental leave, and to having the freedom and the choice to retire at an age where you still have plenty of years left to enjoy and make the most of your one and only life. This is not selfish. The definition of selfish according to the Miriam Webster dictionary is concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself, seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure or well-being without regard for others. So there are three key things to highlight in that definition. The word excessively, the word exclusively, and the phrase without regard for others. There's nothing wrong with being concerned for yourself. In fact, there'd be something wrong if you weren't concerned for yourself. Concern for yourself is not selfish. What's selfish is when that concern for self becomes excessive and is exclusively for yourself and without concern for others. It's not excessive to want to live in a society that provides health care and education. It's not excessive to want free time and fulfillment. These are very basic things that we all deserve. And it's not exclusive concern for yourself or disregard for others to want these things, especially when you want a world where these things can be enjoyed by everyone. And you know what can give us this world? Socialism. That's right. But we're not done. There are even more destructive effects of socialism. Entitlements create citizens who lack a character trait that every human should have. Gratitude. You cannot be happy if you are not grateful. And you cannot be a good person if you're not grateful. That's why we constantly tell our children, say thank you. But socialism undoes that. I love how the fist just comes and punches her away. Let's see that again. Socialism undoes that. Un, un, un, undoes that. Ooh! Awesome. After all, why would a person be grateful for receiving an entitlement? Who's going to be grateful for getting what they're entitled to? So instead of thank you, the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, what more am I entitled to? Entitlement and gratitude can coexist. I feel entitled to my hands. But I can also take time to reflect on all the great things that my hands can do for me. Like punch a bitch away in a Prager U video. And I can feel gratitude and appreciation for my hands. And I can do all this without ever thinking, you know what? I'm really not entitled to having hands. But Dennis is right about one thing. There is a connection between gratitude and happiness. Research studies show that making a mental effort to appreciate the good things in your life, both big and small, can improve your emotional well-being and mental health. So there you go. That's one victory point for Dennis Prager. I hope you're grateful, Dennis. The problem is that Dennis takes this piece of truth, and he twists it, and distorts it, and perverts it into a justification for a system of brutality and violence, health care, education, a home to live in, food to eat, all the very basic things we need to survive and live a decent life. Every person deserves this, which is to say, every person is entitled to this. To deprive people of this because they might not feel grateful if it comes too easily is just brutality with a thin and totally transparent mask of benevolence. Here's another way to look at this. Do you think that in a relationship between two people, that both of them should be entitled to a basic level of respect and common decency? If you answered no to this question, please don't have any relationships. You should feel entitled to respect and decency, and you should recognize that others are entitled to the same. If you don't, you might let people abuse you or treat you like a doormat, or you might treat others this way. Again, gratitude and entitlement can coexist, but no one should expect you to feel grateful just because they're not being a total prick to you. And if you're ever in a relationship where someone acts like they're doing you a big favor just for being the normal level of nice and acts like they bestowed a great privilege on you, then I hate to say it, but it's really time that you break up with Dennis Prager. Say thank you. In an abusive relationship, it's common for the abuser to normalize treating you badly and then expect you to feel grateful when they don't. They don't think you're entitled to decent treatment, and they don't want you to think that either, because if you do start thinking that, you might stand up for yourself. And they don't want that. And any time you stand up for yourself and demand decent treatment, they try to make you feel like you're the selfish one for expecting to be treated with decency. Does this sound familiar? Sound a little bit like the curriculum at Prager University? We're in an abusive relationship with capitalism, and PragerU wants to keep it that way. Yet the left insists that it's capitalism and the free market, not socialism that produces selfish people. But the truth is that capitalism and the free market produce much less selfish people, teaching people to work hard and take care of themselves and others, and that they should earn what they receive. Produces less selfish, not more selfish people. Hold up. You're saying that people should earn what they receive? OK. Abolish inheritance. Abolish surplus value extraction. Abolish landlords and usury. You know, just to be consistent. And did he say capitalism teaches people to take care of others? Teaching people to work hard and take care of themselves and others. What the f*** is he talking about? First of all, hasn't he just spent this entire video telling us that taking care of others is bad? And also, does he lack even the most basic understanding of capitalism? The goal of economic activity is private profit, i.e. personal financial gain? That doesn't teach us to take care of others. If anything, it's the exact opposite. Dennis also seems to think that in socialism, people would become so obsessed with their own needs that they lose interest in working. But most people want to work. They don't just want to sit around all day every day. They want to feel like they're contributing something. The problem is that capitalism makes the conditions of work quite miserable. But work doesn't have to suck. In socialism or lower-phase communism, whatever you want to call it, the goal is to create a truly free society. We seek to create a world where work is freely chosen without the duress of needing to earn a wage, where work is self-managed and unalienated. Socialism makes this possible because workers control production and because production is freed from the necessity of pursuing profit. These conditions empower us to reshape the nature of work in such a way that makes our needs as workers one of the priorities. So that work, as much as possible, can be transformed into something that we enjoy, something that gives us fulfillment. For example, when there are types of work that people find tedious or boring, we can automate them. Let the machines take care of that shit. And that won't always be possible. So in those cases, we can share that type of work so that nobody has to do it full-time and each person only has to spend maybe a few hours on it every week or month and save the rest of our time for things we actually like. Capitalism teaches people to work more. Socialism teaches people to demand more. Which attitude do you think will make a better society? Well, Dennis, when you put it that way, socialism. Socialism sounds better. Dennis wants us to work more, but the question is, work more for what? When we work more, who does that benefit? What good does that do? Does it do something good for those who need it? Or does it primarily serve to help the rich get even richer? Are you working to serve people's needs and enhance their well-being? Or are you working to encourage trivial consumption that's also destroying our planet? Or to build bombs that are used in war? Or to serve goals that are anything from pointless to downright harmful? Work is never good or bad in itself. It depends on what purpose that work serves. Are people happier when they work more? Are their lives richer and more fulfilled? Maybe for the lucky few who love their jobs, but even a job that you love can be turned into one you hate if you spend too much time on it. When we work more, what does that do to our families? What does that cost our relationships, our friendships? But never mind. Dennis would say that these questions are selfish. Our world has the productive capacity to provide a good quality of life for everyone on the planet. And as technology improves, it takes less and less human labor each and every year in order to do this. So why does Dennis want us to work more? Because the more we work, the more profit we make for the capitalist class. And if we don't work hard to make them rich, then we're selfish. It all makes sense. I'm Dennis Prager. To subscribe to our YouTube channel, click here. To help keep our videos free, donate here. Wait! Help keep our videos free? What are you trying to turn us into selfish, entitled monsters? You should put all Prager U videos behind a paywall. Immediately. The higher the better. It'll help make us grateful. Say thank you. I, for one, would be very grateful if each Prager U video was behind a thousand, no, no, $10,000 paywall. Come on, Dennis. Practice what you preach. I thought this was a university. Where's the tuition? It can't be free. Are you a socialist? The truth is that capitalism and the free market produce Dennis Prager. Why? Because capitalism is cancer while socialism is a cure for cancer. Hey, it's Lucky Black Cat here. Thank you for watching. And if you'd like to watch some more of my videos, feel free to click one of the video links you see on the screen. And if you'd like to help me and my channel grow and reach more people, then please like, comment, subscribe, click the bell to turn on all notifications. And Cody, if you're still watching, now's your chance to comment and explain why I'm wrong about Hegelian hermeneutics.