 People of the internet's night. We're debating capitalism of Anne Rand and we are starting right now With the opening statement from Dr. Norton. Dr. Norton the floor is all yours Thanks, guys I'm Dan Norton. I have a PhD in philosophy and I advocate's iron rands philosophy of objectivism You can find my work on my YouTube channel, which is linked in the description I want to thank modern-day debate for hosting this event and Thank Ben for agreeing to the debate and the audience for being here and participating In my opening statements, which I'm told I have up to 12 minutes for I'm going to be laying out iron rands defensive capitalism as I understand it Let me start by asking you to imagine that you are stranded alone on an island Perhaps you were shipwrecked In any case once on the islands you now have a choice You can choose to try to survive or you can just give up and let yourself die You can starve to death Let's suppose you choose to try to survive How will you do it? Well, perhaps most obviously you need to get food But how will you do that? You can't just wish food into existence Praying doesn't work You need to do things like search for edible plants or catch fish But which plants are poisonous in which are edible? How can one catch fish? We aren't born with the knowledge of how to survive We need to discover that knowledge and then act accordingly To discover the knowledge we need to survive we need to think we need to use our rational capacity And engage with the world If we do so we might discover which plants are edible How to catch fish? How to build a shelter? How to build fire? Which plants have medicinal value and so on? If we stop thinking if we stop using our rational minds we lose our ability to survive or to improve our lives Now let's say another person washes up on the island Is that good for you or bad? Well, it depends on what kind of person it is If it's another person who uses reason to discover knowledge and help himself survive Then he could be good for you Maybe he can discover and teach you survival skills that you didn't have And maybe you can also teach him things By working together sharing your knowledge and trading You can both survive better than either of you could alone On the other hand suppose a different sort of person washes ashore Suppose it's a lazy bum who doesn't ever want to put forth the effort of thinking and producing values He just wants to live on you as a parasite He happened to have a gun on him when he arrived let's suppose and he uses that gun to make you his slave He just points his gun at you and orders you around In this case the person who came ashore is bad for you He's just a drain on your resources You would be better off alone It's the threat of physical force the gun that allows him to make your survival worse if not impossible Thus it's in your interest to have others on the islands only if they agree not to use or threaten physical force against you Force negates the value of reason It's pointless to reason if doing so does not allow you to reap some kind of reward But force doesn't just make a reasoning pointless It also makes reasoning impossible If someone points a gun at you and demands that you believe two plus two is five Or that the earth doesn't move and the sun goes around it You cannot make yourself believe that If you have seen no evidence supporting it Or if you have seen evidence contradicting it You can mouth the words, but that's not the same as believing it As I ran says a gun is not an argument Unquote what would have become of the scientific and industrial revolutions if men such as Galileo Tried to think in compliance with the dogmas of religion rather than following their own independent judgment They're thinking would have been stifled those revolutions would not have happened and we would not enjoy the modern technological Civilization that we enjoy today now returning to the island example I said that a person who suggests you to force on the island would be bad for you But that evaluation Assumes a certain standard of evaluation in particular an egoistic standard According to which something is good for you if and only if it helps you achieve your survival if however egoism is bad If self-sacrifice is the moral ideal as it is for many people Then a life as a slave might actually be good for you On a morality of self-sacrifice what grounds do you have to object when others wield force against you? Insisting that you have the right to live your own life as you see fit Would be trade in egoistic and selfish attitude Which is the opposite of self-sacrifice If self-sacrifice is good, it's better to submit to coercion Thus an ethics of self-sacrifice is in conflict with a politics of freedom Freedom enables one to achieve one's survival by using one's mind to one's own benefit But if one shouldn't pursue one's own benefit if one should be selfless There are no grounds for insisting on freedom Instead one should give it up Being free is in one's self-interest Being a slave is not in Ayn Rand's view Only an ethics of egoism can ground the politics of freedom Only if it is right for an individual to pursue his own interest Does it make sense to banish force from human relationships And that's what capitalism does It allows people to interact with each other only on a voluntary basis Initiating physical force against others is prohibited Force can only be used in retaliation that is in self-defense The role of the government in a capitalist system is and only is to protect people from force Thus the government has a police force to protect people from domestic criminals A military to protect people from foreign threats And a court system to settle disputes peacefully But that's about it The government does not itself act like a criminal and coerce its own citizens This means that under capitalism there are no taxes Taxation is a form of coercion If you do not give some of your money to the government you will eventually be hauled off to jail by people with guns Programs that are funded by taxation such as social security, Medicare, welfare and public education all depend on coercion And do not exist in a capitalist system Nor would there be any regulations And by regulations here I mean laws that interfere with voluntary actions For instance minimum wage laws that force employers to pay at least a certain amount Even though employees might voluntarily agree to a lesser amount Or laws that prohibit you from taking a drug that lacks FDA approval Even though you might want to take it The vast array of regulatory bodies that now exists The FDA, SEC, OSHA, EPA, etc would not exist under capitalism A world without taxes and regulations is obviously a far cry from what we have today So blaming today's problems on capitalism as is so often done by socialists and others Is to attack a straw man What we have today in America and have had for many decades is a mixed economy not capitalism That is we have a mixture of freedom and coercion And it's the coercive element not the free element that causes problems Freedom is good Coercion is bad No country has ever been entirely free of coercion But perhaps the U.S. in the late 19th century came the closest And this was a period of explosive growth for the country In which millions of people immigrated here for a better life Freedom and progress go together This is not an accident When men are left free to think and act on their own independent judgment They can discover new knowledge and build new technology That puts them on the line And new knowledge and build new technology that pushes mankind forward And raises everyone's standard of living When thought is stifled through government control of speech When production and trade are stifled by taxes and regulations Progress slows And mankind stagnates Or even retrogresses To conclude Ayn Rand's defense of capitalism in a nutshell Is that capitalism is the system consistent with the requirements of man's survival Man survives by reason But force to the degree it is used makes reasoning pointless and impossible It negates and paralyzes the mind So if survival is the proper goal Which it is according to Rand The proper social system is one that abolishes force And leaves man free to think and reap the rewards Capitalism is that system It is the system of freedom and of reason And it is the only moral system If man's life on earth is the proper standard of morality Which according to Ayn Rand it is Thank you Thank you so much Dr. Norton for your opening statement And I'm going to go ahead and kick it over to Dr. Burgess for your opening statement Thank you Kaz, thank you Dan I do want to start out by just dispensing with a very typical but very unhelpful libertarian strawman Which is the idea that debates about capitalism and socialism and taxation and redistribution and property rights Have anything whatsoever to do with attitudes towards coercion Or threat herring All systems of property are coercive by definition Property just is a claim to a right to exclude other people from the use of some resource All distributions of property are backed by threats of coercion Unless you redefine the word coercion in a silly way to mean like unjustified coercion In which case you're just begging the question So a no trespassing sign is every bit as much a threat of coercion as a overdue notice from the IRS What we're arguing about when we argue about capitalism socialism and equality and property rights Is not coercion good or bad It's certainly not reasoning good or bad It's is do we it's which system of property should be coercively enforced Which distribution of scarce resources should be coercively enforced Now just to very briefly lay my own cards on the table I agree with the great socialist analytic philosopher G. A Cohen And accepted a fairly radical version of the principles of quality of opportunity Whereby social systems that tend to produce inequalities That are linked to factors outside of your control Whether that skin color or gender Or whether you were born into a rich family or a poor one Or whether you happen to have certain skills that are you know prioritized By the kind of society that you live in innately Are to that extent unjust not the only thing can make inequalities unjust, but it's certainly a thing So I think that the system we should coercively enforce is a much more equal distribution Than Dan does or that I ran did But as much as I would be very happy to get into what I think more just and equal system would look like In the open back and forth or in the Q&A That's not the main subject that we're here to talk about tonight The main subject that we're here to talk about tonight Is not socialism but capitalism and specifically Ayn Rand's defense of capitalism and I think to really understand that defense You need to get into Ayn Rand's values Because it is really important you know Dan to his credit was very frank about this this opening To recognize that when ran defense capitalism She's not she's not defending the halfway civilized kind of modern capitalism Under which we have a social safety net to guarantee that people don't just starve in the streets if they fall through the cracks in the system Under which we have civil rights laws to stop restaurant owners in Alabama from hanging whites only signs in their windows under which we have Medicare and Medicaid to make sure that the old and the destitute Don't die of easily treatable diseases. That's not what she's defending what she's defending as a kind of quote-unquote capitalism now The word capitalism is used by everybody else refers to a specific mode of production that exists at a certain time in human history Not this moral ideal that that Rand is talking about But what she's talking about is a kind of brutal unregulated capitalism Under which as we just heard no social security laws No workplace workplace safety regulation Civil rights laws No healthcare you know provided to people who can't afford private insurance Etc. Etc. Etc. So even if you disagree with You know my socialist ideas even if you think those go too far You should be able to recognize that this is a this is a really sociopathic Moral ideal that is being being defended so and I should also say that as much as Randians like to have it both ways about the relationship between the kind of capitalism they advocate and the kind of capitalism That's actually existed in history saying no no no you can't blame anything bad on the problems of capitalism You can because it's it's it's not real capitalism at the same time Wanted to take credit for capitalism's achievements to say oh the good parts are because of the parts that are truly capitalist Right everything positive that happened in the Gilded Age in the 19th century dams talking about is because of that It's only the negative stuff. That's that's not because of that It's more or less the same bait and switch you get from religious believers who say that all the good things about nature Testified the glories of God all the bad things are a result of original sin But if But if we're talking about Rand's ideal of capitalism not only would it be morally grotesque and all the ways that we just went over It would be one that it wouldn't even be consistent with a thriving economy Rand said many times that she wanted a separation of economy and state as total as the separation of church and state in the American constitutional system Which would mean we just heard from Dan when he listed off the acceptable functions of government What wasn't on that list maintaining public roads that deliveries can happen on? chartering corporations Having you know the state minting currency and of course without these things there could be no Functional economy at all we'd have absolute economic collapse if we got rid of those things So don't take Randy and seriously when they want to take credit for the good parts of capitalism But why does she defend this particularly savage kind of unregulated? Capitalism with all of its brutal human consequences that we saw in that gilded age that Dan was just praising Well, she justified it by reference to so-called objectivist ethics by which No one ever has a moral duty to sacrifice his or her interests for the interests of anyone else Or at least she sometimes said that if you listen closely to Rand or listen closely to Dan just now It's a little inconsistent because there is an exception for sacrificing Your interest the interests of others when it's a question of sacrificing your interests in the name of respecting Libertarian property rights as when you wash up on an island where all of the all of the usable resources were already private property and no one will share and You you have a duty I guess in that case to not survive I'd actually be fascinated to hear What the what the result would be in that scenario But she certainly thinks that people should have to live pretty miserable lives If that's the consequence of rejecting the right of rich people to keep every last dollar in their bank accounts What she doesn't think anyone should have to do is to sacrifice their interest even very slightly Even with a slight increase in the tax rate in order to secure other people's rights To health care or housing or education or a voice in what happens in their workplace because she says this would violate Objectivist ethics. Well, what on earth is that? Well, Rand like to make silly statements like her epistemology is objective reality, which is just nonsensical way of putting together words Everybody thinks what they believe it is objective reality and epistemology is the is the study of how we figure out Which things are objectively true But pressed for details. She tended to say things like That we should only believe things on the basis of empirical observation of regular non moral facts And of course as David Hume showed centuries ago There is no way to derive any moral values whether whether iron rands or anyone else's from the base non moral facts A study of the non moral facts can tell us how to achieve the moral political goals we care about it Certainly can't tell us which moral political goals we should care about in the first place that doesn't mean there's no role for moral reasoning There is but that role is best described by the great 20th century political philosopher John Rawls Who said that what we're doing when we engage in moral reasoning is a process of reflective equilibrium We're trying to bring the values that we care about together into an internally consistent picture which might do things like Mean doing things like for example rejecting certain shallowly held values in favor of deeper more important values And of course when you start doing that there's absolutely no reason to take Rans Extreme and fairly inhuman value system seriously as a contender Now she tried to make it less absurd by constructing a strong man of all the other schools of modern moral philosophy Which she said we're all altruism they're all about pure self-sacrifice, you know You're not allowed to promote your own flourishing as an individual at all You have to sack you have to just live for others and sacrifice everything for others And of course if those the only options are that Purely monkish life of absolute self-sacrifice and being a randid egoism Well, you know randid egoism starts to sound a lot better But of course those are not at all the only options and none of the major options in modern moral philosophy Bear any particular resemblance to the strawman according to utilitarianism Your happiness counts as much as the happiness of anyone else According to Contianism a view that ran really hated and said was the source of all the altruism and collectivism Where by old wisdom shades not everybody else in the world means by old wisdom idea That you should sometimes in some ways or to some extent sacrifice your interest to the interests of others But the idea that you should have to engage in total self-sacrifice She described Contianism as the sort of root of all this in the modern world Of course Kant's moral principle the categorical imperative states in no one's certain terms That you have moral duties to yourself in exactly the way that you have them to any other people If you read Kant's grand work in the metaphysics of morals One of his four examples of an immoral act is failing to develop your talents His moral principle is that you should always treat humanity and this is an exact quote Whether you're a person or the person of another as they ended itself and not merely as a means to an end And even a lot of people like me who aren't pure Kantians think there's a tremendously important moral insight in there Of course it's wrong to treat other human beings as if they were ATM machines who only existed to serve your own personal flourishing Of course it would be wrong to enslave the other person on the island I believe no less than I ran did there's no God and no afterlife and we only have one life to live But I draw the opposite conclusion because I also realize that everyone else in the world All those billions of other human beings also only have one life to live And they count just as much as I do And certainly you know just to talk about the social democratic minimum program If I can help other people flourish to the best of their potential by supporting a system of taxation Under which people have to give up some small portion They have in order in order to pay for things like universal free higher education or universal health care So everybody else can flourish There's absolutely no way that you can get from any kind of normal recognizable human value system to the conclusion that that would somehow be morally wrong And remember finally that coercion has nothing to do with it I know I'm running into the limit this is the last point That when you talk about taking away other people's property Well if their property is meant in a legal sense what's legally their property that of course taxation Can be taken away their property because legally it's the property the IRS If on the other hand it means morally their property property they should have Then that reminds us that the issue has absolutely nothing to do with coercion It's who has a good moral claim to which piece of property Rand has her theory let the chips fall where they made a free market And that a very implausible theory but maybe we'll be get a good defense of it as the debate goes on Thank you so much Dr Burgess for your opening statement Thank you both for your opening statements So let me go ahead and just let everybody know If this is your first time with modern day debates 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their links and check them out Hit the like hit a like button hit the subscribe button Show James that you appreciate the debate so he can keep giving you guys what you love Tomorrow night we have another debate coming was the moon landing faked that's going to be T jump versus Alex Stein I think there's another debate I mean have that written down so I'm not going to mention that But that is all I have right now so I'm going to go ahead and kick it over to the open discussion We have 60 minutes doc gentlemen the floor is all yours Okay Because I can respond to some of that and all right So maybe I'll just start by saying that I don't think Rand's view is sociopathic But if it is then I think the opposing view is giga sociopathic So I don't think a whole lot is accomplished by throwing out insults And I typically try to avoid that thing and just focus on the arguments So that's what I plan to do here to focus on the issues So one issue that Ben brought up at the at the beginning was this point that coercion is a red herring that you know coercion is a part of every system So that's not really what's at an issue And I've seen him cite Matt Brunig on this and I've read some articles where he's made this point many times in many of his videos And I think there's an element of truth to this I think it's true that if you have a certain view of morality Morality underlies politics politics presupposes a certain view of the good So we have a view of the good that's morality and then how does what's good What's good in the context of human relationships? That's what politics is So politics is really just an application of ethics So if you have the wrong ethics you're going to have the wrong politics And I think Ben has the wrong ethics and therefore he has this I think he has the wrong view of coercion And likewise he thinks I have the wrong view of ethics and therefore I have the wrong view of coercion So I think it would be perhaps fruitful if we now go down to the ethical level and see if we can get at this deeper layer of disagreements in the moral sphere So from what I understand having seen some other of your contents you think that it's I guess you think other people have like do other people have a right to what I produce Let's say we're on the island to go back to the island example let's say I build something Does that give me a moral claim to what I've built do I have a moral right to that or does somebody else assuming there's there's one other person on the island who has not built what I've built It might give you a moral claim it's not an indefeatable moral claim it's it's not absolute I don't think that you know if for example Somebody's somebody's going to die or be maimed in a in a hurricane if they if they can't shelter under it that you're that you're right to the fruits of your labor Which of course workers lose under capitalism we should also note that I overrides overrides someone else's someone else's right to shelter but I should also say I actually don't think it's true That the difference about how we talk about coercion is a result of difference in deep moral views I think that I think that it's just true that if you use the word coercion and non moral sense right not in a normative sense that you know you're using it to mean bad coercion or unjust coercion But you're just using it in a morally neutral way to refer to you know the use of force to you know to you know the use of you know the use of force or threats of force to you know to make somebody do something like for example to exclude them from scarce resources Then it's just trivially true that all claims to property involve threats of coercion now of course if you want to redefine the word coercion and use it not in the way that you know it's ordinarily used which I just gave but you want to use it in a So it only counts as coercion if it's bad or wrong then sure our differences and whether this counts as coercion could have to do with the differences in our in our moral views but I would just argue that that's that if that's what it means saying that what we're arguing about coercion Because you're just assuming that the you know that the right view about what counts as bad or unjust coercion is the one that you're starting with but of course the whole thing that we're arguing about is whether particular forms of coercion would be bad or unjust Okay so you've mentioned that there is a neutral sense of coercion and then there's a moral sense of coercion according to which it's morally bad I'm not I don't typically think of myself as using coercion in a neutral sense a non normative sense maybe you mean just a descriptive sense I just I just made a descriptive sense that you're you know that you're using force and threat of force to make somebody do something for example to exclude them from use of scarce resources and if you are using a normatively loaded sense if you know if what you mean by coercion is actually bad or unjust coercion at that point it's not that we disagree about you know about whether coercion is okay or not it's that we disagree about whether for example redistributing existing property would count as coercion Okay so maybe it'd be useful to bring in the distinction between initiation of force and initiated force and retaliatory force because I'm not sure we would agree that the same things that we would use the same label for the same act so if I if I if I build a shelter on the islands and then someone else arrives on the islands and let's say they need that shelter to get out of a hurricane and I say no you can't come into this shelter that I built in order to save yourself would I be initiating force against that person if I if I keep them out the problem is that there is no normatively neutral way to decide what counts as initiating force because people who talk who like to talk about initiating force they don't literally just mean you know the first person to you know to use violence or threats of violence that's what it sounds like but that wouldn't actually capture the distinction that they're going for so for example you know if if I you know as a cat burglar right you know stealthily take your take your TV out of your living room there's no violence involved you know you were you know asleep or you were on vacation you know what happened and you use the and you find out right and either you personally or you know I don't know some the police or some private security force you know use threats of violence to to get it back from me right you know that you that you say that if I don't if I don't you know return it on my own accord you know you're going to you know you're going to violently take it from me is that you're not initiating force or not my understanding is that everybody who talks the way that you're talking and using the sort of phrases like the initiation of force and standard objectives or libertarian ways would say no no no you're not initiating force when you do that but what that really shows is that it's there's a kind of shell game here because you're saying you know you're not really talking about who's the first person to do something violent you're talking about who's the first person to violate a property right a moral property right that then of course the whole issue is who has what moral property rights right morally who should have what piece of property and your answer to that question is going to be the same as your answer to who's initiated in force in a conflict there's no way that any version of this could do any argumentative work you know because you're you know you're always already packing in where all the action is which is that who actually has a moral claim on some piece of property. Okay so if the the more fundamental issue then what is coercion is what do we have a moral claim to then then let's talk about that I want to try to get down to the to the root of the disagreement. So I asked earlier if I build something by myself on the islands do I have a moral claim to that and you said something like well maybe in a general way I do not not not a not a did defecable claim you know there could be Okay yeah so maybe in an emergency situation someone could right okay so if it's not in an emergency situation then I have a moral right to what I produce. That's an example I'm sure you can come up with other scenarios under which even in this sort of island example you know I might I might agree that you know that there's that you don't have an exclusive right to 100% of what you produce. I would I would also by the way, again I would say if you know if you really believe in this this principle, which which I don't right that they that there's there's a sort of absolute moral entitlement to anything that you that you produce, which, you know, I think has some some pretty grim results. If you if taken seriously right you know because that would mean that people who are incapable of working you know do for example the severe disabilities wouldn't have an entitlement to to anything, you know that they that they would have to just hope that somebody who did have such an entitlement generously felt like sharing with them you know but they wouldn't have they wouldn't have their own claim on anything I certainly don't agree with that I think that yeah I think generally speaking I think the fact that you are the person who produces something. You know gives you gives you some claim on it I think that they have a that you know all else being equal. That's a pretty good reason to to think to think that you should that you should you should have it. But, but I also think that there, there are other, there are other morally important factors and in deciding what counts as a just distribution of resources I think that the point about a large scale inequalities that are due to factors completely outside of your control is is something that gives us a powerful reason to support or oppose, given distributions of resources I think the very fact so beloved by objectivists that that we all have a right to, you know to pursue our own individual flourishing our best lives. You know gives you know is grounds, certain claims about distribution of resources if you need certain material certain material base to have even a fighting chance, having a good life, you know, I think that that's something that that gives you a moral claim on it I think that is pretty complicated and you're probably not going to be able to plausibly boil this down to to you know to one or two, you know to one or two principles and just extrapolate everything from there, unless maybe their principles like, you know, a just social order is the thing that you know that you would endorse from behind Rawls's veil of ignorance maybe, and that they, and that you know whatever the correct rules are the ones that would be part of that just social order, something like that might be a plausible sort of general thing that you could try to get everything else from, but unless we're talking about something like that, you know I think there are, there are multiple values that are important, and you know I don't think just reducing everything to one, like a labor entitlement principle is plausible and even if I did, I would be very skeptical that that capitalism honors that principle, given of course that, you know that that you know workers under capitalism, generally speaking have no realistic choice except to contract away. You know the lion's share of the results of their efforts, and you know I would question whether that's a you know a truly free choice but you know maybe that's a slightly different argument. Okay, there's a lot there. So, one thing I'll say is I think everyone flourishes best under the kind of system I advocates for the I think there's more opportunity in a capitalist system of the sort I advocate than anywhere else. I think people who came here in the 19th century in the in the so called gilded age which I think maybe is better called the progressive age because it was there's so much progress made in that area. In that era, they came here for the opportunities to make their lives better I think capitalism makes opportunity increases it dramatically over any other system for people who can't work on their own I think it's a tiny minority. And I think there would be abundance charity private charity, you know people out of benevolence who would be if they're you know so much of their wealth weren't seized by the government I think many people would offer more to the people who need private charity survive but it's, I think that kind of thing is a red herring against capitalism, because it's such a trivial tiny amount, especially you know in day of the internet you can just do data entry on a computer. Even if you're disabled you can earn money somehow you can support yourself. I think it's easy. I do want to go back to this, the island. Hold on you spoke for a while. Let me make another point here. Okay, if we're back on the islands. You said in general, if someone produces something they have a moral claim to it. So I want to, I want to see how, if I can, you know, build on this example, let's say that there's there's two people on the island, and one becomes radically more wealthy than the other like Jeff Bezos level wealth like 1000 a million times more wealthy than the other maybe because you know the other is just less talented less capable, he can support himself he can live on his own, but he just doesn't have the genius of the other guy. So there's massive wealth inequality. They both produce whatever amount of wealth they had on their own. Now, does each have a moral claim to everything that he produced, or does one have a moral claim to what the other produced that I'll leave it there for now. So I think that the so I think that in the scenario you're describing. No, I don't think that the that somebody who in the impossible scenario right where you could somehow have Jeff Bezos to an Amazon worker levels of wealth and equality within two people on an island. You can only have that level of wealth and equality, given, you know, structural power within a system that people have no realistic choice, but to participate in. But given that impossible premise, then I would say, no, they don't partially because of your description, right, because you said that the that this rather that this is a result. That level of wealth and equality is a result of talents that you know that one person has that another person doesn't have now to the extent that one person. So you're just to be clear about to explain it right so that he doesn't have a moral claim. So, I don't think that he has a moral claim to all of it now. And here's why not. Right that they have remember that, you know, pretty much the first thing I said after the point about coercion in the opening statement was about a quality of opportunity what kind of a quality of opportunity we should believe in the principle of a quality of opportunity I endorsed what Jay Cohen called Socialist quality of opportunity is that inequalities or at least large scale inequalities are at least as a default, at least all else be equal we can balance this against other values, but they are unjust if they trace back to things that are outside of your own control. Now, in the, so that grounds a certain amount of labor entitlement, you know, that if it's just, you know, one person chooses to work and the other one doesn't right you know that that that like the person who chooses to work you know a superior claim, maybe not an absolute claim but certainly a superior claim on the product of their labor. But even in your scenario the way that you laid it out, you know, if the if the difference in talents is due to one person, you know, voluntarily choosing to, you know, to work on developing their talents, you know, and while the other person doesn't that wouldn't be as bad. I think that's not the objectionable for other reasons but not for this reason. But if we're just talking about people who innately have have greater talents talents than others that know, I don't you know I don't believe in meritocracy I think I think that that's a grotesquely undesirable moral ideal I don't think that the fact that you're that that you're born with greater talents but in itself gives you gives you a moral claim on a greater share of societies of societies resources. I also say that the issue about private charity is not just that people have that you know there are people who would, you know would become destitute, you know with without, you know without redistributive programs although that's certainly true it's you know if you know men's goals the survival I would point out that the advanced social democracies in the world are doing way better in terms of life expectancy than the comparatively more robustly capitalist United States, and where for example people die because they don't go fund these aren't fully funded, but even if everybody could get, you know, some level of sustenance and a long life by living off of private charity if, for example they were unable to work. And I would still say that forcing people to rely on private charity is incredibly degraded and it makes them unfree because they have a if you have a right, a positive right to healthcare for example, just for being a human being just for being part of a social order. And then, nobody is in any position to take it away from you on a whim, whereas if you're dependent on on private charity then, definitionally, they are able to take it away from you on a whim and I'd say a society where everybody's trying to craft a more a more compelling, you know, attention job story and go fund me that everybody else is one that's far worse for both freedom and human dignity than one with robustly redistributive universal social programs. Okay. So there's a lot there. I mean, government can take things away on a whim too. I don't think that's, that's more likely to happen under capital and I think people are going to be more secure. And there's going to be less need of charity and again, I don't think you can talk about problems today and pin them on capitalism like medical go fund me is or whatever. We've had so much government intervention or interference in the healthcare industry and so many other industries I don't think you can blame something that happens today on capitalism like that. I want to go back to this point about equality of opportunity. I don't, I don't think that's a legitimate form of equality to advocate I believe in equality before the law. So you have the same laws for rich people and for poor people, but equality of opportunity. No, I reject that. So let me give some examples of, of why. So imagine, you're beautiful. You have more opportunities to be a model to be on TV. Now, is that unfair that some people are more beautiful than others? Should we disfigure the people who are beautiful in order to equalize opportunity of being a model? Take LeBron James. He was, you know, physically gifted. He's a giant man. I mean, most people can't do what he does. Should everyone have the equal opportunity to be an NBA player? The only way you can equalize opportunity is to tear down the people who have more skill or, or innate, innate talent or innate DNA, whatever it is that they got lucky with. Einstein is a genius. Not everyone's going to have the opportunity to become a genius physicist like he was. Are we going to stifle the mind of Einstein in order not to offend the people who are not as smarts? I think equality of opportunity is a terrible thing to aim for. I think everyone should take whatever they are innately given and try to make the most of it and not spend their life whining that someone else has more than they do. I think the whole issue, and this gets to John Rawls, the issue of fairness does not apply when you are talking about metaphysically given facts like things you were born with and didn't choose. It's not unfair that you weren't born as beautiful as someone else. You might be unlucky, or if you're beautiful, it's not that it was fair that you were beautiful. You just got lucky. Same way if you, you're playing a lottery and you, you don't get the winning ticket. It doesn't mean you were treated unfairly. It just means you were unlucky. Now if you got the winning ticket and then they didn't pay you what you were supposed to get, that would be unfair because there was a choice involved. There was a volitional choice. Someone could choose to make something happen, follow through on the agreement of the lottery. We pay the winner or not. But when something is not open to choice, the issue of fairness or unfairness doesn't even apply. The concept is invalid in that context. I think that's the basic problem with John Rawls, and that undercuts a lot of his policy prescriptions. I'll just pause there and throw it back to you. So on the on the subject of LeBron James and beautiful people being models and all that, I think there might be some confusion. The claim is not that people shouldn't be allowed to have talents. People shouldn't be allowed to develop talents, that the distribution of talents by nature should be corrected. Nobody has ever said that. I don't really have it. Neither has anybody else in the history of philosophy. What I have said is that the distribution of material resources shouldn't be wildly unequal on the basis of those talents. So of course, should LeBron James be allowed to play basketball, of course he should. But I do not think that he therefore has some sort of absolute sacred right to every penny that he earns playing basketball. I think it's fine to tax away all or even most of LeBron James, not all, but to tax away quite a bit or even most of LeBron James' income in order to make everybody else's life better, to provide a fair floor for everybody else to try to flourish in life. And perhaps a deep difference between us morally is that I just don't think that would be equivalent to breaking LeBron James' legs so he can't play basketball better than anybody else or whatever the other example was. So, you know, unglifying, you know, supermodels so, you know, so they won't get more modeling opportunities. Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, that, you know, of course those things would be unjust. People have a right to bodily integrity. That's a tremendously important value that when we're balancing values to decide what the right thing to do is we have to take that into account. Of course people, you know, people have have a right to, you know, to act on and, you know, develop their talents. But I don't think that people have a right to every dollar that comes into their bank account from some sort of free market process. And I don't see any reason, I certainly haven't heard any reason why I should believe in such a right. You said fairness doesn't come when things aren't open to choice. I'm a little unclear about what that means. Remember, my claim about choice and fairness is that if the distribution of resources or the distribution of power, etc., is linked to factors that you have no choice in, then that distribution is at least, you know, prima facie unjust, right? You know, perhaps there are other values that, you know, once we weigh it against it, you know, if we have to allow that distribution or the economy will fall apart or something, they might, you know, luckily say it's acceptable after all, but at least on first blush, the default, right, should be thinking that that distribution is unjust. And if we can correct that distribution without having to, you know, smash the faces of any supermodels or, you know, or do anything else that would violate fundamental rights like that, then we should do that, because of course, I don't believe, and I haven't heard a good reason to believe that people have a fundamental right to every dollar that comes their way by the result of some sort of free market process. So, I mean, should we tear down anybody to achieve robust equality of opportunity? Well, if tearing them down means, you know, redistributing, you know, some income that they would otherwise have, then sure, I don't have a problem with that, because I don't, you know, I don't believe to steal a wine, it's not my own, we have nerve endings in every dollar in our bank accounts. But if tearing down means like not letting people, you know, not letting people be models or not letting people play basketball, no, I don't advocate that. Nobody advocates it. But I will say one of the things that oftentimes debates are good for is at least, even if you can't agree on positions, at least clarifies the differences between positions. And I have to say, as much as I find, you know, pure equality before the law, a pretty paltry and unappealing sort of limit to the kind of equality that we should believe in, right, you know, there's that wonderful, the Anatole France quote about the law and its majestic quality forbidding rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges and begging in the streets or stealing bread. You know, I don't think that's that's worth much as ideal to quality. I do find it incredibly refreshing to hear a defender of capitalism say, I don't believe in a quality of opportunity. I think that's really useful and clarifying. All right. Thank you. So, I didn't really see a principal difference between being not okay with disfiguring somebody in order to achieve equality of opportunity, but you are okay with seizing someone's property. I mean, some people, depending on your situation in life, you might you might rather have one in the other or the other rather than the one. I mean, if it's a little scar is if it's a huge scar, maybe I'll take some disfigurement if it's going to save me, you know, 50% of my income. So, I'm not really seeing a principal difference between the kind of equality you are in or not okay with equality of opportunity, you are in or not okay with. I think when you try to have the kind of equality of opportunity that you talk about you lose equality before the law. So now not everyone has the same rights to what they produced. Let's see, I want to go back to the. So you said earlier that even if one guy on the islands when there's two people one guy earns way more it doesn't matter if it's a million times more 100 times more 1000. It's a lot more. But you said in that case, even though both have produced what what they have, you don't think either, I guess you don't you don't think one, the guy who has a lot more has a moral claim to all of his stuff. And I don't recall why that is. Could you, could you address that. Sure, happily so to to go back to the beginning of those remarks you said you don't see a principal difference between physical disfigurement and redistribution of resources I think I gave several times with principal differences you have a right to bodily integrity that they that that you have that it would be an incredible violation of personal freedom to to to disfigure somebody's body against the will the fact that I do not believe that it would be an incredible violation of personal freedom to take away some of somebody's money I think that the I think that your person is much more integral to to who you are and what kinds of rights you can reasonably claim than that external property and certainly that external property in in in money that the fact that you might prefer to be disfigured right you know that that you know Jeff Bezos you know might prefer to be physically disfigured that to have, you know, two thirds of his income taken away or whatever. It has nothing to do with it, you know, one way or the other, I mean, they you know, we both agree that, you know, people don't have the right to everything that they prefer that that's a that's a completely different question from what rights people can plausibly assert you know what they would prefer to to have happen you know you have a, you know, it could be that you know that you would, if you're a hardcore racist, and you know the south of 1963, you know, it could be that you say I would rather rather die than then see black people given the vote and maybe you really need it. But the fact is you still have a right to life and you do not have a right to deny black people the vote so I mean your preferences have nothing to do with it. I'm also confused by the claim that equality before the law is is lost if you have progressive taxation in other words you know which is I believe what I heard right if the that if you if that's not your claim please correct me but you know that if if some incomes are taxed a higher rate that other that other incomes that that violates equality before the law I'd certainly say that's just that's not, you know, certainly normally how quality before the law is understood. I need to hear a lot more about what the conception of equality before, you know, before the law is, I think that it's certainly something that, you know, I think that that if the kind of equality we care about is just that, like, everybody is subject to the same laws that you know progressive income tax certainly fits that standard. If the kind of equality we care about is everybody's interests are taken into account in the same way. In the way that rolls for example cares about, then you know I think that I think that's consistent with it to it sounds like we're talking about some third conception of what equality before the law is that I don't really understand but on your direct question at the end there. So, when we're talking about the two guys on the island. Of course, nobody's earning anything on an island and they by definite you know you need to come, you need a more complex society than two people to have like earning right that suggests that that suggests that you have you know money, you know, be distributed that you know you have, you know you have profits or wages, you know, unless the word earning is being used in some eccentric way but you know if you just mean that you know that one person is harvested that's the other something like that. Then, then does does the does the one who's who's harvested far more than the other have a right to keep all of his and does the one who's harvested far fewer have a right only to his. And what I said is that that depends on the reason why one of them has harvested so many more than the other. That you know that the sort of the version of equality of opportunity that I've been arguing for with that would tell us that if it's it's a matter of free choice that they the one guy has simply chosen to spend more hours a day harvesting than I think that he would have a much better claim I'm keeping all of them maybe not an absolute claim if the other ones can start to this or something like that right you know there could be things that would die that would override that would have a much better claim, whereas, if it has to do with a factor that is outside of of your control, then the near fact that that that you have more that you're able to get more by itself I would argue has a lot less moral weight, because you know we generally think I think correctly that that it's unreasonable to have a district different distribution of material resources, based on things that you can't control, you know, no matter what you do, whether that's being born into a certain cast, or having a certain certain skin color, or inherited wealth, or even having certain talents that that other people don't have I think in a society where, let's say the only way to have a good life, and have your material needs that was to was to be good at basketball No, I mean I wouldn't want to disfigure anybody but I would absolutely not think that that was a just society, because there is an extent to which we can't control how good we are at basketball there's an extent to which you can, you can practice but there's a considerable extent to which you can. And to that extent, I think that sort of meritocratic ideal is objectionable for the same reason that racism or cast systems, or any of those other systems that assign resources based on factors outside of your control, or unjust. Okay. I'm still not clear on whether you think in the case where both on the islands are producing and they're supporting themselves that one is just way better, you can get 100 times more it's not that maybe it is out of out of their control maybe one is just genetically more capable for whatever reason, and make some more able to survive on the islands. So it's, but I don't think, like, I don't think that makes a difference in terms of the moral claims like if one is genetically just endowed such that he can get 100 times more 1000 times more than the other. I don't think that means the one who can get less has the moral claim over the more talented guy. So I guess I'm, I don't see your reason for for disagreeing with that. And if, depending on the reason for the discrepancy, if it's due to factors out of their control, then you're more inclined to say that's the one who is better off, just due to luck. There's less of a moral claim than if it was due to something entirely within his control. And I just, I don't see any justification for that. Okay. I mean, I think I gave it several times but I'm happy to give it again. I think that the, I think that I think that it's the exact same reason that that we object to to any system that systematically disfavors people with the basis of factors with outside outside of their control. I don't see a principal difference between saying that some people should have much worse lives than other people, because of their skin color because what cast they're born into, or, or because, or because of whether or not they you know what their natural endowments are and subset of talents that happen to be favored by those people shouldn't be penalized. But that's different than saying they have a moral claim over what others have produced. We shouldn't penalize people because of some factors that are out of their control like their skin color or their gender. But we're not talking about penalizing the person who produces less. It's not a penalty to not give him something that he hasn't produced. It would be a gift to him. It would be penalty. That distinction only makes sense if you're just assuming the thing that hasn't been established and I haven't heard the slightest reason to believe yet tonight, which is that everybody has a right, an absolute right to everything that they produce again. So that principle is obviously inconsistent with capitalism. It's I still think it's a bad principle that they have a that that if be you know if because of factors that are totally outside of your control, you are able to produce much less the idea that you know you know that that it's therefore fine if you have a much worse life. I don't I don't see any reason to believe that it'd say that it's a gift if you know it's it's a gift to redistribute and it's here and it's a penalty to redistribute from. Those are both claims that only make sense, given the premise that I just don't see any reason to accept that everybody just just has a right to to whatever they can get in what you would see as reasonable ground rules whether we're talking about the island or we're talking about a free market economy. And you know, I think look, I think that a lot of the reasons that inequality is unjust or are, you know, inexplicable to a contrived situation like an island, you know, because a lot of the bad things about inequality like some people having no realistic choice to go to work for others and have to and have to give up so much their autonomy in that process, you know, like some people having more political influence than others etc aren't going to apply in an island but yeah, I think that the I think that if like every coconut on the island was sufficiently harvested by one person, so that the the other person you know simply had to beg or do whatever the first person wanted to get to get the coconuts they needed to survive and yeah I would absolutely say that the person who was in that position because of factors outside of his control would have a very good claim to to take to take some of the coconuts I wouldn't have the slightest problem with that. If it's an emergency situation where you're going to die if you don't take the other person's coconuts then it's okay to take the other person's coconuts even it involves coercion because we're talking about emergency situation you steal a loaf of bread because that's the only way you can live but we're not talking about an emergency situation. I'm just talking about a situation where someone is vastly better, maybe for a reason that side of his control. He's just genetically endowed he's vastly better producing wealth than the other person, so there's a vast amount of wealth inequality. So that's a different situation than an emergency case where you have to do it in order to live. You can support yourself in a very modest meter away perhaps but it's that's a different scenario it's it's not an emergency. Yeah I mean but the emergency thing is an interesting loophole because I think that loophole might be a lot bigger than you might want to recognize right you know that if somebody especially given the way that this was set up in the first place right so if there are you know because I said not that the person was going to die if they didn't steal but that they would have to beg or they would have to do whatever it was they would have to meet whatever conditions the other person imposed to get any of the coconuts they didn't need you know that we're going to rot there if they weren't redistributed and so if you think that that counts as an emergency right then then I think that's a that's that's like a loophole you could drive a semi truck through in terms of your defense of libertarian property rights because in that same sense like any working class person under most circumstances you know some people eventually succeed and started their own businesses etc but under most circumstances most working class people under capitalism would be in that state that same state of emergency right you know that they they only they're only able to they're only able to make a living by submitting to the will of an employer so so so if the if the if the first case is an emergency then so is the second case and we're kind of done with capitalism. Now it's easy as cake to survive under capitalism there'll be so much opportunity unbelievable. I mean get rid of minimum wage laws or one thing I mean think of all the people who yeah if you got rid of wage laws you would you would amiserate 10s of millions of people and of course society is with higher wage floors. Again, you have the higher standard of living I know that you want to play this game where everything everything that's bad about American capitalism is because of the uncapitalist parts because the state intervention. Everything good is because of the capitalist parts I would suggest the empirical record shows that societies with stronger unions and much stronger state intervention have vastly more human flourishing. But if what you mean by as easy as cake to survive under capitalism is that you can you can get a job. Okay, but in that same sense as easy as cake for the person the situation I described to survive on coconut Island because because as long as they beg or fulfill whatever conditions are given by the person with all the coconuts, they can survive so if you think that that is justified in the latter case because it's an emergency that every day life for people who aren't in a position to start their business under capitalism is one great big never. We should say what about the core people with their iPhones are in such dire emergencies. Well, that's that's that's a spectacularly silly idea. I love the idea when socialists paint all the area because we constructed a society where it's impossible to get around to make a argument about how it's easy. He was going to say how it was easy. He was going to give us a layout of how it's easy to live under capitalism, I think. Yeah, I mean, there's so much demand for people to do labor. There's an infinite amount of work that could be done. And I mean, if you can hire people for 10 bucks an hour, hire kids who are just getting started in the workforce, get a little bit of experience, all that is made impossible. Like I said before, during earlier in the debate, you know, you can just get on a computer and do some data entry and support yourself. It's easy as cake. It's easier than it's ever been to survive. So there is, it's just total fantasy, I think, that the picture that social is portray of how people are going to be dying in the streets under a capital. Well, people do die. People do die in the United States in lots of ways that they don't in situations with robust, more robust social democracy. You know, we do have a lower life expectancy than countries that have adopted that have adopted things like universal health care or that have made all the inroads into the progress of capital that the Nordic social democracies have. But also, again, I do want to point out the sort of rich absurdity of defenders of capitalism saying that under circumstances where we're making it harder and harder to even function in your day to day life without having a smartphone that having a smartphone is a sign that you can't really have any problems or you know, complaints about the distribution of resources. But no, it's not an emergency. You're trying to have it both ways of the emergency question. Sorry, can I finish? You're trying to have it both ways of the emergency question because in the Coconut Island case, you're saying that if the only ways to survive are to either steal or to, you know, abase yourself to the person with all the coconuts and fulfill whatever conditions he gives you for for getting coconuts, that that's an emergency that you can steal. But then you're saying, oh, it's easy as cake to survive under capitalism. When what you mean by easy as cake is it's easy if you're willing to accept a job under whatever conditions the people who have more resources are willing to provide you with that job under to, you know, to submit to poverty wages, wage, real world, et cetera, et cetera. But that's an exact parallel to the Coconut Island case that, yeah, if you're willing, I mean, you haven't given me a disanalogy yet because if in the Coconut Island case, if you're willing to meet whatever conditions the person with all the coconuts gives you for for getting some of the coconuts, that it's easy as cake to survive. In exactly the same sense, if you're willing to take a job for under under whatever circumstances that's offered to you, that it's easy as cake to survive under capitalism, maybe there's a disanalogy somewhere, but I sure haven't heard it. I mean, this doesn't know this coconut apple that we keep referring to is an example that Bosch gave. It's kind of vulgar. So if we haven't given the full details exactly as he gives it. But anyway, that's not the talking about Coconut Island. I was talking about someone who is producing stuff. He's built a house. He's built some kind of shelter. We're not just talking about coconuts. You picked off the ground. Someone is just vastly superior than the other. That was the example I was giving. But to compare an emergency situation where you don't have enough coconuts to eat or something else to eat, or you're going to die to working a job in a factory where you have a reliable, you can just waltz in there. Easily work your shift, go home and and live on, you know, for however long you want to do that. To call that an emergency is just invalid comparison. Well, I mean, it's an emergency in precisely the same sense that if you're really No, you're not going to die the next day. Well, you're going to die if you don't have a job. What you're saying when you say it's her, but it's easy to get that job. Sure. And it's easy to fulfill the guy with all the coconuts conditions for getting one of the coconuts. And I have no idea why it's supposed to make a difference whether you're harvesting coconuts or you're producing it in some other way. I would also want to justify it in your in your factory example. Well, again, but you haven't told me why it's justified. What what makes an emergency? It's an emergency. But what makes one an emergency? That's the point of the time span you're about to die. So well, you're only going to die if you don't get one of the coconuts, but it's easy as cake for you to do so. If you're willing to meet the guy's conditions the same way that under capitalism, if you're willing to meet an employer's conditions, then it's easy as cake to survive. I also want to point out that in your factory example, I think it's very revealing to pair that up with what you said earlier about how the closest we've gotten to get a quote unquote real capitalism is the 19th century. Well, let's think about it's you know, you just waltz in and you do your shift and you go home. Well, that shift, right? How long is that shift and in the in the 19th century? But how long is that shift in the in, you know, early under early capitalism? How long was it before capitalism when you had to work? Sure. I mean, I mean, that's obviously that's obviously irrelevant of it. Nobody's defending the system that they have a well. Capitalism has reduced the work day. Yes, I do want to try to get you guys to have enough to have even amounts of time. So I don't know who's talking more. I just want to try to even it out. I'm just I'm sorry, I don't want to take over too much. I just want to even it out a little bit. Probably probably Ben, I would estimate has said more not to fault him for that. But yeah, I think capitalism has improved the the conditions of working people. I think a lot of times unions are giving credit for things that were already happening thanks to the forces of capitalism, free market, working themselves out. And then the unions just came along later and have, you know, stamped it, rubber stamped it and made it law. So yeah, I think things have gotten progressively better over time and large part thanks to the progress. It's no longer necessary to have children working because we're so productive that we can afford people can afford to, you know, raise them, give them education instead of working in the fields. So that's part of the progress. That's a testament to the success of capitalism. Now there is things get even better than they were in the 19th century. I'm not saying, you know, capitalism is not a static system where it's, you know, stuck the way it was 150 years ago. It's always getting better. So maybe, you know, if we allow capitalism to continue, it's work. We can, you know, maybe the average workday will shrink down to four hours instead of eight hours. So I don't think that it's yeah, it's we can we can credit capitalism for the increased quality of life that we have weekends, that sort of thing. It's not due to the to the alleged benevolence of the government interfering. Well, I mean, that's just flatly historically wrong. It out like not only were eight hour day laws ferociously resisted by the robber barons, so were the 12 hour day laws. When those were first passed, that was tremendously controversial at the time. The claim that what was what was already existed was just rubber stamped is just as easily checkably historically inaccurate as a claim about this sort of thing can can can be. And and I'm certainly the fact that, you know, that capitalism is better than feudalism, which is it is in lots of ways. Now, not necessarily in terms of actual hours worked per year. I think feudal peasants actually, if you, you know, if you add up all of the, you know, this the saints days and feast days and all of that stuff. I think that, you know, I think the average feudal peasants was was actually I was actually working a few hours a year. But overall, sure, I mean, not by that metric, but by many metrics that the is is capitalism better than feudalism? Sure. But no socialist has ever denied that. In fact, every socialist who's ever existed has emphasized that fact. Read, you know, the first chapter of the Communist manifesto. It's all about that fact that they the fact that capitalism is superior to feudalism is completely uncontroversial and undisputed. The dispute is about whether capitalism is as good as we can get or whether humanity can do better. OK, I just want to acknowledge like I don't know exactly what happened with the the laws with regard to things like eight hour workdays or weekends. So maybe the rubber stamp thing I was speaking loosely there. But I've read and I also wanted to mention in capitalism, the unknown ideal, this is a book by Iran. It deals with a lot of the myths surrounding the history of capitalism, including things like child labor and unions, the role of women in the Industrial Revolution. So I would recommend that people check that book out if you want to learn about the history of the 19th century. I remember I don't know if I read in there or some other source, but the the progress that was being made on things like eight hour workdays or certain wages like Henry Ford raised, raised, I think he doubled maybe the wages of his workers at a certain point. Those kinds of progress were already underway. And later after they were already underway, it was legislated. I don't know if it was by the NLRB. But anyways, my point was just that the legislation followed what was already happening thanks to the forces of capitalism. OK, you said some things about capitalism. Fetalism, how capitalism was better than fetalism and no socialists disputed that. I didn't say socialists disputed that. I'm not sure what what the point of bringing that up was. But anyways, those are the only notes I had in the last segment. So I'll I'll stop there. Yeah, I mean, the point of bringing it up was that it argued with socialists. You made a big point of saying that capitalism, you know, was was better than what it existed before in a way that certainly sounded to me like it suggested that that was somehow relevant to the argument that you and I were having. If it wasn't relevant to the argument that you and I were having, I have no idea why it was why it was being being brought up. It sounds like in that case, you know, it was is kind of a non sequitur in this context. I think I would not. I think the last place anybody should look for accurate history is the writings of Ein Rand, a one of the most extreme ideologues who's who's ever lived and said this is my economic historian who contributed an essay to her book, who got a PhD at Columbia, I believe Robert Heston, I think. Oh, yeah. Well, I would imagine that any economic historian who is contributed, of course, and socialists, they have their own histories and they're going to have to go to history books written by socialists to get obvious facts like there were some obvious facts. We'll let him finish his points. Facts that are undisputed by. No, no, no, no, they are. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Facts that are not disputed by anybody except the most extreme fringe of right wing ideologues on planet earth. Everybody else agrees that, of course, eight hour day laws, 12 hour day laws, child labor laws, all of these things were things that people died and struggles to achieve. There were things that were bitterly resisted by by factory voters in the 19th century as late as 1914, the Supreme Court was striking down attempts to enact child labor laws. I think that the idea that the forces of capitalism did away with all these things as opposed to struggles by working people to both found labor unions and enforce better conditions that way and also to exert political pressure to have better laws I think that's completely detached from historical reality. I would also point out the continued irony of saying that anything good that happens under actually existing capitalism, well, that's due to the forces of capitalism. Anytime you point out the horrors of actually existing capitalism, people who die because their medical go fund me is the alleged horrors. Okay, alleged horrors, sure. Okay, I guess that's never happened. So if the alleged horrors of capitalism, I guess it's not true, for example, that Sweden has significantly higher life expectancy than the United States, it's not true that infant mortality is higher in the United States than comparable anglophone countries that have socialized medicine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But sure, the alleged horrors of capitalism, no, no, if any of that stuff is acknowledged to be real, can't possibly because of capitalism, it must somehow or another be a result of state intervention. Again, this reminds me of nothing so much as it reminds me of hearing devout Christians saying, yes, all the good things about nature testify to the glory of God, but the bad things, well, those must be a result of original sin or something that God couldn't have done that. Okay, what's the principle? The idea is that coercion paralyzes and negates the mind. Now that goes back to the earlier discussion of what is coercion, and we have disagreements with that and it rests on disagreements about the moral claim issue, but the thing that explains it is that when you use force against people, you're stifling the mind. I gave the example of Galileo having to think in compliance with the church, you're stifling them in the mind. Anti-trust laws, you produce too much, you're penalized for, or you charge too much, you can be penalized for that, you charge less than your competitors, you can be penalized for that, you charge the same as your competitors, you're penalized for that, collusion. So no matter what you do, there's no way to interpret it. This is one of the examples I ran gives is how non-objective anti-trust laws are. If you're a businessman, you're just paralyzed. There's nothing you can do legally. So when you use force against people, you paralyze the mind that impedes and stifles production and that drives down standard of living, makes everything worse. So there's a mechanism to explain why bad things happen when you introduce coercion into a system and why good things happen when you free up the system. And I just wanna add also on this issue of historical surfaces, Ben, he's gonna claim his facts based on socialist historians and say they're not controversial. And I'll point you to things I've read in capitalism, the unknown ideal. But I say, you know, read both sources. I think it's good to be widely read, read the opposition and, you know, make up your own minds. But this is another source that I just wanted to bring to people's attention. There's a reason I ran title that capitalism, the unknown ideal. Many people don't know about this. The universities are dominated by people with leftist perspectives and that's all that many people hear. Yeah, God, I wish that were true. But in any case, I think that there are numerous non-socialist historians who will tell you everything that I just said earlier. I think they're pretty right-wing historians who would acknowledge that there was tremendous opposition to 12-hour day laws, child labor laws, et cetera. But I would also just say, and I know we're out of time so I'll just let this be my last point, that they have that I don't think a sort of general vague ideological story about why state intervention would cause bad results counts as a principled reason to believe that everything bad that happens under capitalism is a result of the respects in which it's not pure capitalism. That really is a empirical issue and I'll need a lot better than that to take that seriously. Hello? Yep. Yeah, Ben broke up for a second, but I think... Oh, no. Did you... Yeah, I think I got the... You got the gist, okay. Yeah, I mean, I think the mechanism is legitimate. I think the force does negate and paralyze the mind and I mean, we could go into that more, I'm sure, but we're out of time here. It's time for the Q&A, Kaz. Yes, are we ready? Okay. All right, gentlemen, thank you guys so much for that spirited discussion. Thank you to everybody in the audience for the questions. We're gonna go ahead and get into it. If you guys have any more super chats, they will go to the top of the list again. Please remember to keep it civil and attack the arguments and not the person the insults won't be read. And the gentleman's links are in the description below. So if you're listening via the podcast or on YouTube, don't forget to check them out and don't forget to smash the like button. Don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to give James some love for giving us this great platform to discuss these ideas. So with that, let's go ahead and get to the super chats. Okay. Extra juicy. Member for two months. How long, how will the government fund policing and military? I think that's for you, Dr. Vett, Curtis. No, that's probably for me. That's for Dan because I, you know how I think so. So what does Dan think? Yeah, so it's a common objection. Like if we have capitalism and there are no taxes, well, how will we get things like the police and the firefighting and roads? I produced a video on my YouTube channel, which addresses exactly that question. So I'll refer to you to that, but there are various ways of financing the governments. Ayn Rand has an essay called Government Financing in a Free Society and she mentions various things, some of which have actually been done historically in some places like wateries. Of course there will be donations as well. She also talks about paying money to enforce contracts. That could be a way of raising money. And also I should mention that it will be much easier to raise money if the government's functions are scaled back to the kinds of things I'm saying, just police, military and courts. That's so minuscule compared to what we have today that I think it would be cake, easiest cake to fund the government. I've heard some people say that if the government just invested its revenue from voluntary means, donations or lotteries or whatever, it could have enough to survive or to perform all its functions just on the interest that it would get from investing whatever it gets. But also things like roads, those would not be functions of government. Those would be private. I think there would be an incentive. There's a demand for roads just like there is for games at sports arenas. No one person is gonna pay for a Lakers game, but you have tens of thousands of people who all want this thing and they'll chip in, they'll pay for their ticket and collectively they can make something like this happen. And likewise with the roads. It doesn't have to be toll boosts. There are other things you can do. Tolls maybe is one way, but you could have self advertising space on billboards. That'd be another way to fund roads. You could build, factor in the cost of roads to the rent that people have to pay for businesses or homes that are alongside the roads. That's another way you can raise revenue. So there are different free market ways, but also you can check out my video for that. Interesting. Thank you so much. The next super chat from a long story short for $5 says, Ben, Sweden has more billionaires than the USA per capita. Most of the Scandinavian countries have freer markets than we have here. Okay. The first claim may be true. The second claim certainly is not and definitely doesn't follow from the first claim. So I think that the first claim is true. That's actually great for me because that should just make nonsense of the claim that having this more expansive economic role for the state that you have in the Nordic countries makes it impossible to have thriving economy. But the claim that there's any way in which the Nordics are economically freer as libertarians understand that than the United States is just complete. Like there's absolutely no basis to that in reality. I would strongly recommend what Matt Brunek has written about this, the People's Policy Project. In terms of the things that people will bring up are the lack in certain countries of minimum wage laws, maybe what they won't bring up are the fact that you have vastly more favorable labor laws for unions and you have sectoral bargaining that essentially enforces minimum wage as much higher than the American minimum wage a sector by sector of the economy. So it's not just whatever the market will bear, you have that higher wage floor that way. Other than that, the claim that the Nordic countries where you have vastly larger public sectors, vastly stronger unions, vastly more expansive social services, things like free college, universal healthcare, et cetera. Oftentimes mostly nationalized healthcare that those are somehow more free market than the US is largely based when you actually like dig into the facts that people bring up to try to support that. It's largely based on the fact that like starting a business in some of these Nordic countries you have to fill out fewer forms than you do in the US. That's most of what people are talking about. The actual number of forms of US is nothing that would be a meaningful barrier in the first place, but even if it were, that's not because of the sorts of differences that people are arguing about when libertarians and social Democrats and socialists argue about whether the Nordics are better. That's just because of America's crazy federalism means that oftentimes you have to fill out form for the locality of the state, the country and that places like Sweden have much more centralized systems which means that you have fewer forms to fill out. But I don't think that's anything that any libertarian or conservative actually advocates getting rid of America's federalism for the sake of giving people fewer forms. Gotcha, thank you so much. Can I add a few thoughts on that? If you make it short and pithy but Dr. Burgess we'll have to have this last word, so go ahead. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll just mention that sometimes happiness studies are mentioned in connection with the Nordic countries because evidence that they're better places to live. But you're on Brooke who was another objectivist who, he's actually debated been in the past. He's done a show debunking or at least he takes it to debunk some of these happiness studies. So yeah, I'll just leave it at that for now. Okay, well, I find you're on personally likable but I would be very skeptical if any of you are on Brooke debunking of that. But also even if you disregard the happiness studies I think that factors like life expectancy or just the sort of obvious benefits for human dignity of not having to rely on generosity of family members or private scholarships to go to college, et cetera are still a standard of living. I think there are numerous respects in which those countries are better even disregarding the happiness studies. Although I do think it's awfully significant that countries where it's sunny like two days a year and extremely cold are still ones that want us in at least self-reported happiness numbers that that seems pretty telling to me. Happy to thank you so much. Okay, this list next up is from KWNY Upstate for $5 robbing someone of their property and giving it to others also robs them of their motivation to work and yet doesn't impart that motivation on others. Well, I think it is really interesting to pair that super chat with the last one because in the last one we heard that the Nordic countries that have higher tax rates and vastly more extensive social services produce more billionaires. So which is it, right? You know, does it actually does having higher tax rates to fund universal social programs that dramatically improve the lives of most people does that reduce the willingness to work or not? And if it does, how do you explain the fact that there are more billionaires in Sweden? And I'll just add to that. So again, I'll cite, you're on, you know, this is kind of like citing right wing historians versus leftist or socialist historians, you know, listen to both sides and see what you think makes most sense but from what I've heard from my sources, the Nordic countries are actually less regulated than the US is in many respects. And, you know, Bennett's gonna have his own sources but I say- No, it's not about sources. I just explained what that meant. Yeah, of course, it's not about sources, right? No, it's not about sources. It's literally about what people mean when they say that. What people mean when they say it's regulated is not that they're fewer labor regulations. It's not their fewer environmental regulations. What they mean when they say it's less regulated is that there are fewer steps to start a business. And that is because they lack the kind of federalist system that we have in the United States. There's no other sense in which those countries are less regulated overall. It is interesting, but we should move on. Let's go ahead and see Caleb Moppen for $20 says, Anne Rand and fake left are both anti-populist. They view humanity as the mob, threatening the intellectuals like Leo Strauss. We need a government of action to fight for working families. Well, as usual, Caleb's descriptions of my politics have nothing to do with anything I've ever said or thought. I don't know why he makes stuff up, but he does. I think the most charitable interpretation of him is that he's a severely mental ill person. I hope he gets the help he needs. Gotcha. Once again from KWNY Upstate for $5, how much of Ben Burgess's money and goods does he currently distribute to those in need? Question mark, please don't say he doesn't actually do what he preaches. Well, if what I preached were individual charity as a solution to poverty, then there could be an inconsistency there. Of course, I don't preach that. Libertarians and conservatives preach that. So they don't do that. They're hypocrites. But the accusation of hypocrisy makes absolutely no sense when it's leveled against people who do not in fact preach that. Gotcha. I don't see what the hypocrisy is on my side. Well, if your solution to people suffering under capitalism is individual charity and you're not giving out an individual charity, then yeah, that sounds a whole lot more hypocritical than somebody whose solution is systemic and structural, not doing the thing that they don't advocate. Well, I haven't stated how much, if any, I give to charity, but also the reason some people might not give to charity is because their property is already being seized from them in large amounts by the government. And so they don't wanna give anymore. I think it would be much more benevolence towards helping out people who truly need it, which again, I think is a tiny minority of people who literally can't support themselves. But I think there would be abundant charity for that tiny minority if people weren't being forced to do it already. Yeah, I mean, that's a prediction that's based on nothing. There's absolutely no reason to take that seriously. I understand that it would be convenient for your ideology if that were true, but I would like to see some actual evidence for that before I started to believe it. And even if I did believe it, see earlier in the debate, I think that there are reasons to prefer people being given something as rights of citizenship that cannot be taken away by a whim. You have to change the laws. It's very difficult to change the laws. Once social entitlements are in place, it's often electoral suicide to oppose them. So it's vastly more difficult to take away universal social programs. Certainly no individual government official could just do it on a whim. Then it is take away individual charity. And so I think forcing people to rely on individual charity to meet their needs is incredibly demeaning and it dramatically disempowers them. I think you got it backwards. It was a question for Dr. Burgess and we do have to move on. So I'll let him have the last word on this one. Sorry, this next thing is just a, it is a super, super, I'm so sorry, a super sticker from Noly D for $2. So thank you so much, Noly D for that. Thank you so much. The next is from Super K-Pill for 499, Dr. Burgess. Keep in mind, many people are able to escape their nine to five under capitalism by saving and investing. Yeah, I mean, some people are, most people aren't, you know, most, you know, small businesses, you know, fail very soon after being started. But I also think that if you say that people could escape something, right? Then even if that's true, right? And of course it can't be true for everybody. It would be structurally impossible to have a modern complex economy where everybody was a small business owner. That couldn't work, right? So even, you know, so given that, right? The question is, is it just to have a social order where most people start out under conditions that it feels appropriate to describe leaving those conditions as escaping them, especially considering that escape would be structurally impossible for everybody at the same time. Dr. Gordon? I just, maybe I'll just reiterate the general point that I think if you have a free system, a capitalist system, the opportunities that people have over time will get better and better. So as I mentioned earlier, maybe instead of an eight hour day, it'll eventually be a four hour day because we've made so much progress. There'll be so much technological advance. There'll have machines, robots, doing what used to be done by human labor that's, you know, work will become less necessary. At least certain kinds of work. Yeah. But automation never works that way under capitalism. It never could work that way under capitalism because the incentives don't work out, right? Okay. Well, I mean, yeah, I don't agree with that. I had a- Yeah, I mean the point is just that they have a, why would you continue to pay people just as much to work four hours? Obviously what would be in your interests would be to either, you know, make people, make people part-time or to, you know, lay off half the workforce if it, you know, or to have people, you know, work just as much and produce more as long as you have that separation between labor and ownership, there's absolutely no reason that automation would ever work that way in the future just as it hasn't worked that way in the past. You know, you haven't gotten shorter workdays, you know, purely as a matter of sort of benevolent decisions, you know, by business owners that they were voluntarily sacrificing their own products for the sake of their own profits for the sake of giving the workforce more free time. I think, yeah, I mean, I think people would have more opportunities to work less per day if they wanted thanks to the free market mechanisms, but the point I forgot a second ago that I just came back to me is, this point about relative versus absolute poverty. So now today some, you know, poor people, people are often called poor, have iPhones, they have internet, they have cars, they have TVs. I think this is testament to, you know, the progress that we've made, you know, people today who are poor are richer than kings were in the feudal era, you know, 500 years ago. And I think we'll just see that. Maybe poor people in the future will have flying cars. And I think we'll see that, but it's better to have unequal rich people than equal poverty, equally poor. Well, yeah, I mean, I acknowledged that principle earlier. Obviously I don't accept that those are the options. I think empirical reality overwhelmingly shows that there aren't the options that we can have, for example, much stronger labor unions, much more expansive social services, you know, without resulting in the more equal distribution of poverty, but with, you know, good standards of living for the majority of the population. I think the history of actually existing social democracy proves that conclusively. I think if you look at worker cooperatives like the Mondragon Federation in Spain, I think you can absolutely have successful thriving businesses that don't rely on this division of labor and capital in the first place. But yes, if the only options were severe inequality or everybody being worse off than they would be in a more than even the worst off people in the more unequal system, in a more equal alternative, then sure, right? You know, that would be a good, you know, like then I would have to rethink my views, you know, but of course I don't accept that those are actually the options. I don't think the historical record shows those are the options. Gotcha, okay, let's move on guys. Next question is from Super K PIL for 4.99. Dr. Burgess, low life expectancy is due to obesity epidemic, not the US healthcare system. Americans love to eat. Yeah, well it's certainly true that Americans love to eat, but trying to pin the differences in life expectancy, infant mortality and my favorite, mortality amenable to medicine, which is just stats nerd speak for people who die who would have lived if they had medical intervention on time, trying to pin all of these discrepancies between the US and Canada, the US and Britain, the US and Sweden, et cetera, on obesity alone is just not plausible if you actually look at the country by country breakdown rate. It is true that this is, you know, this is definitely one of the areas where the US is worse, but, you know, as anybody who has, you know, visited Canada, you know, Canada knows, right? You know, this is a culture that loves to be around donuts and the obesity rate is somewhat lower than the United States, not nearly low enough that that explains the difference by itself. I would also point out that there are other lifestyle factors like smoking and drinking in which Great Britain, for example, is much less healthy than the United States and yet they have the higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, lower rate of mortality amenable to medicine than the United States has and you simply cannot explain all of this away just by the single factor of obesity. Gotcha, thank you so much. And the next question comes from a long story short for $5. Isn't it ironic that these socialist YouTubers like Vaush never bring on their channel real people who lived in the USSR or Eastern block countries? Well, I mean, if, you know, I have my disagreements with the gentleman who's mentioned but I've never heard anybody accuse him of being an advocate of the system they had in the USSR. So I think the question, you know, gets down to, you know, the same one, you know, as we were raising earlier about what's quote unquote real capitalism or not, right? I mean, you can insist that anything that was called, you know, socialism, you know, that whatever its flaws were are the same flaws that would be true of anything else no matter how radically different that use the same label. Of course, if you're gonna say that then you'd have to say the same thing about capitalism and all the flaws of that would be explained by that label, you know, by the fact that it's capitalism. I actually think the difference between what Vaush advocates, which everything I've ever seen, right? You know, what he advocates is a kind of market socialism with universal worker cooperatives, you know, whenever I've heard him describe what he means by socialist and that's always to describe it, that sounds a lot more different than the USSR than pure capitalism would be from the United States. I think even by the admission of libertarians and objectivists who will say things like, you know, the 19th century United States is about as close as you know, as anywhere has got into pure capitalism. Oh, also, Vaush isn't here on my channel. I routinely host all sorts of people who wanted to debate me granted Vaush does too, but I couldn't speak to whether anybody he's hosted is from those particular countries, but, you know, I don't know, I mean, you can watch my debate on my channel with Yaron Brooke, where he goes on and on about his life and, you know, socialist kibbutzim in Israel. So I, you know, I certainly don't see how this particular criticism could be applied to me and frankly, probably couldn't be applied to Vaush either. Whatever my problems with some of the guys views, I do not think that he's in the business of, you know, he clearly likes doing debates. If you're from one of those countries, you wouldn't want to argue with him about capitalism. I think that he would, you know, my sense of him is that he would probably take it, although obviously I can't speak for him. Dr. Norton, do you want to say anything with that? I'll just mention that Ayn Rand was from, she was born in Russia and she lived under the communists when they took over and she has some first hand experience with that system. And her first novel, We the Living, is the most autobiographical novel of hers and it's, you can see some parallels between the Soviet system and then what happens in the novel. So if you want to get her perspective on it, I would recommend take a look at her book for novel We the Living. Gotcha, thank you so much. All right, super chat from Spencer Howe for 4.99. I believe this is our last one. Dan, economies only exist because governments allow them to. Who would print the money in your perfect capitalist, Randian society? Okay, so currency, I think it should be privates in a capitalist system. The government should not be able to produce fiat currency as the Fed does and just prints money. I think that causes inflation and that's terrible for the economy. It's an indirect way of stealing people's wealth to devalue the currency like that. As to historically, I think there's, the Canadian and the Scottish banking system, I think was privates. This is, I'm not an economist, but I've heard a little about this from economists. George Seljan is a name I would recommend you check out. I think he's shown that in the Scottish and or Canadian system, there were basically no runs on the banks, no panics as there were from time to time in the US. And of course the US had a centralized bank. There was the first bank in the United States, the second bank in the United States, and then there were greenbacks later. So there was intervention with free market banking. There wasn't free market banking in the United States for much, if not all of its history. Other countries that did have, or at least had closer to free market banking like Canada and Scotland did much better. And I guess banks issued their own currencies. And I would recommend you look into the work of George Seljan for more on how free market banking would work. So in that particular case, I think these other countries, Canada and Scotland, are better than the United States in terms of adhering to free market principles. Gotcha. So those are the last of our super chats. Let's just try to do these in a rapid fire succession from Louis the, you know, I suck at Roman numerals. I'm interested to know where people are getting their morality from. Do you guys have a moral epistemic basis? Well, in my case, I would say first and foremost, experience, you know, I have my experience of the world and that informs my beliefs about morality and everything else. I first read, I ran when I was 17, almost 18, many years ago now. And what she said, cohere with my own experience. I thought it made a lot of sense. And, you know, I was just blown away by how clarifying it was. She made explicit a lot of things that I think are implicit in my own experiences. But, you know, she's a professional philosopher outside the academic mainstream. But anyways, what she wrote just made a lot of sense to me based on my own experience of the world and my introspecting. So I would say, fundamentally, I get it from experience. And then she, I think, articulates very well the kind of views that I find compelling. Yeah, I mean, I touched on this in my opening statement. I think it's absolutely impossible to derive morality from experience of non-moral reality alone. That they have a, that once you know what you count as a good outcome or a bad outcome, you know, or what you count as a rights violation or not a rights violation, that experience can certainly tell you when one of those things have happened. But I think that, you know, I think that not that moral values are not ultimately non-reducible to any sort of non-moral facts. You know, non-moral facts can tell you how to achieve goals that you care about. They can't tell you which goals to care about in the first place. And this is a logical leap that neither Ayn Rand or anybody else has been able to perform. She addresses this issue of Hume, David Hume and her essay, The Objectivist Ethics. So I recommend taking a look at that. If you wanna see her perspective on this issue of how you derive morality from facts. Interesting, thank you guys so much. We do have a new super chat that came in from chess119 for $2. Dan, without government, who will defend private property rights? Without governments, I guess that means anarchy. So I'm not an anarchist. Part of the capitalist system is having a government. Its role should be much more limited than it is right now. But if there weren't a government, I think that would be very bad. I think if you just leave it up to vigilantes, a war of all against all people enforcing either themselves or they have some gang that fights rival gangs, I think that would be very bad. Ayn Rand has an essay called The Nature of Government in which she addresses this issue of what would happen if you didn't have a government, why you needed a government for the purposes of objective law. Physical force is something you wanna have controlled objectively, cause it's a destructive force. And you wanna be controlled very precisely. You don't wanna, you only wanna use it in retaliation. You don't wanna initiate force. And you only wanna retaliate proportionally to the crime that was done. You don't wanna overdo it. So you wanna very carefully control laws. So it's as peaceful as possible, which means society will be as successful and prosper as much as possible. So yeah, if there weren't a government to enforce laws, I guess private citizens would have to do it, but that's not a good system. Gotcha, thank you so much. Next question from Brad Becker. Why has been focusing on rich people? Capitalism is how poor people become wealthy. Well, obviously because I don't accept his premise that capitalism generally has that effect on poor people. Capitalism is certainly a system under which some poor people can become wealthy. I certainly don't accept that it's a system that has that effect on most poor people. I actually think it's a system that has the opposite effect. It's certainly true that as technology progresses over time, that alone can expand pot. I don't accept that you need capitalist property relations in order to have that growth over time. I also don't accept that wildly unequal distributions of resources in the present are justified by the promise that the floor will be raised in the future. I think that people who are around right now also count. But I think that the capitalism is a system that has the effect of making people much poorer than they would be often under other circumstances. Again, is it better than feudalism? Not a dispute. Is it the best that we can do that I very much don't accept? I think even the actually existing social democracy as the Nordic countries and elsewhere prove that there are ways that we can do things other than totally laissez-faire unregulated capitalism that are much better for people at the bottom of the economic ladder. And I think examples of successful cooperatives show us at least a glimmer of possibility of something even better than that. Gotcha, thank you so much. Next question from Pear D. Baer. Does Ben know what Anne Rand's definition of capitalism is? I think we heard it several times in this debate. So, unless Dan has dramatically misrepresented it, then yes, I do know. Can you recite it? I can recite it. I didn't give the literal definition that... Oh, okay, but you certainly describe what you would count as pure capitalism, right? You described a system under which the state only exists for certain extremely minimal libertarian functions under which there's no redistribution, there's respect for pretty absolute property rights. You listed on a long list of the kinds of social interventions that exist under actually existing capitalism that wouldn't exist under capitalism as you, Anne, understood it. I mean, I think that you can... Whoever you agree with in the debate, I mean, I think that Dan would have had to do... I actually think it's an unfair accusation against Dan that he hasn't at least conveyed what Anne Rand means when she said capitalism, I mean, I think Dan did better than that. Okay, yeah, I don't take it as an accusation, but just for the question or for the audience, this is Anne Rand's exact definition of capitalism. Quote, capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights in which all property is privately owned, unquote. So she uses the concept of individual rights in that definition. And I was thinking about including that in my opening statements during certain drafts of working it up, but I ultimately decided I wanted to focus it differently. I mean, I conveyed the idea of rights, but since it's come up now, I can just say that her idea of rights is that they can only be infringed by physical force. So if you have a right, the only thing you have a right to is to be free from force. You don't have a right to positive. So what's sometimes called positive rights or positive freedom by people on Ben's side, they'll say you have a right to a job, you have a right to an education, but at whose expense? That's the question Anne Rand asks in her essay, Man's Rights, also in the virtue of selfishness, her book. I recommend checking that out. The kind of so-called positive rights amount to violating genuine rights. She says these are inflated rights, just as bad money drives out good money when you inflate the currency. Well, these printing press rights are drive out genuine rights. The only way to have a right to an education or a right to a job or something is to violate someone else's right, genuine right to not be forced to support that person by giving pain for his education, pain for his healthcare, pain for his job. So that's a little bit of an involved discussion, which I didn't have time to get into in the opening statement, but the key idea for her on rights is that they can only be violated by physical force. And that means no coercion. If you coerce someone, you're violating someone's rights, otherwise their rights are intact. Yeah, so of course it's not controversial that basic rights to things like healthcare, education, et cetera, are incompatible with absolutist property rights. The disagreement is about which ones are genuine. I think that a right to healthcare, a right to education, et cetera, these are real rights. And I think that the right to keep every single dollar in your bank account, every single pre-tax dollar in your bank account is a nonsense pseudo-right that I've heard absolutely no reason to take seriously. I would also point out that it's actually not about physical force that was established earlier in the debate. That again, the threat of physical force is used to enforce any system of distribution of scarce resources. The actual argument is always about which distribution of scarce resources should be enforced by the threat of a physical force. And of course, what's really revealing is that, the libertarian, any objectivist in cases like the television example from earlier would say, oh no, that doesn't count as initiation of force because even though there was no actual physical force earlier, there was still an action that violated property rights. So the real action is always going to be on the question of what gives somebody a right to a given piece of property. And that's something that I think libertarians have struggled a lot to say anything plausible about because you always end up in this bind where if you, are you just describing a fantasy scenario whereby things played out exactly that way in some alternate dimension, people would have a right to some piece of property or do you want to defend actual property rights as they exist in the real world, which very often come after a series of economic transaction, which would be unrecognizable in a world without tons of state interventions of kinds that objectivists and other kinds of libertarians disapprove of. Gotcha. I think that was a good stopping point there since Dr. Norton did lead us off. I think we should go ahead and wrap it up there. We are out of time for the Q and A. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been quite a pleasure to host this debate. I want to thank our debaters. You guys are the lifeblood of the show. 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