 People of the internet we are debating how bad is the economic equality and we are starting right now With dr. Ben Burgess and sphincter of doom Then give it to you guys for your introductions dr. Burgess lets you go first Sure, so I am an adjunct philosophy professor at Morehouse College and a columnist for Jacobin and Guess publisher be mad if I didn't plug this so it just came out a week ago Christopher Hitchens, what he got right how he went wrong and why he still matters which I Should say by the way anybody who goes to the event in Dallas next weekend. What's a signed copy? I will definitely bring a few with me and sphincter of doom Hi, I'm sphincter of doom. I don't have my own channel yet I'm a chemical engineer. I minored in philosophy, but I do not teach it. No And it's not much else to say about me. All right. Thank you so much. All right, ladies and gentlemen All right, so tonight we have dr. Ben Burgess going first to lead things off with his opening statement of 12 minutes each And we have 55 minute opening discussion and then 30 minutes of Q&A We're gonna let everybody know that if this is your first time at oh at modern day That we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics And I want you to feel welcome no matter what walk of life you're from if you have any questions or comments for tonight's debaters Please fire them into the old live chat and be sure to tag me at modern day debates Super chats go to the top of the lists and we ask that you please keep that your Conversation civil both in the chat and with your comments Attack the argument and not the person insults will not be read and that goes for the general discourses in the live chat as well Our invaluable moderators are working tirelessly to elevate the conversation So please show them the respect they deserve and each other as well the debaters as well Please respect each other and not hurl personal and tax and insults our guests are linked in the description below so if you like what you're hearing on YouTube or the podcast, please click their links and check them out and Hit the like share and subscribe button so you can keep this channel growing and growing I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's a debate conference coming up in a couple weeks 15th and the 16th and then tomorrow night we have another debate Evolution is going to be debated but Dr. Sy Gartt and Jen from Church of Entropy and with that we're gonna go ahead and kick it to the Opening statements. Dr. Ben Burgess. You have the floor All right, thanks Kaz and thank you Josh Other than this one time, I'm not gonna say a sphincter of doom. So thank you Josh for Still wanting to do this even with all the trouble we had scheduling it and all of my nitpickiness about how to frame the issue in the title When we're exchanging Suggestions about what to call it one of the ideas floated around was economic inequality on trial and that analogy I guess I've been a prosecutor, but of course it would have been a pretty misleading analogy because even if I can convince Everyone watching the economic inequality is very very bad. There is no judge here to enforce a verdict We can't debate our way to a more equal society at a certain point You have to actually log off and do things like talk to your co-workers about organizing a union But right now let's talk about why I think egalitarian values are worth going out there to fight for I'm certainly not going to argue that we should empower some dystopian bureaucracy to ration everything out to make sure everyone has a Exactly equal share of every resource when I say that economic inequality is indeed very bad I don't mean that any time anyone has a little bit more than anyone else. That's necessarily unjust What I do mean is the kind of raging inequality that's normal and content capital society the average CEO in a large firm Earned hundreds of times what the average fully employed worker makes and a lot of people are doing much worse Than that average full-time employee who has a pension and benefits because they're either Underemployed or they're over employed Stringing together gig economy jobs without benefits or any sense of security for the future and yeah, I Find that kind of inequality To illustrate why it's grotesque I could start talking by talking about sweatshops and Haiti that are subsidiaries of crazy wealthy American corporations or Even staying within the borders of the United States. I could talk about the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest zip codes But instead of that I actually prefer I think it might be more instructive even to Focus on a mundane everyday example of what? Significant economic inequality looks like the kind of example that feels So normal to people who spent their entire lives living in a grotesquely unequal society That oftentimes if you're at the bottom end of this it doesn't even occur to you think of this injustice It just seems like yeah, that's how life is so here's the example a trust fund kid might be able to spend a gap year in India finding himself between high school and college Meanwhile, his parents pay their cleaning lady Let's say, you know, they don't just pay her enough for rent and groceries, you know She has some spending money But certainly not enough for her to fly off to any of the places that she might like to visit Her lack of funds stop her from boarding a plane to any of those places in exactly the same way That she'd be stopped if the TSA put her on a no-fly list in both scenarios If she tries to board the plane anyway, men with guns will use force to stop her and that last point is Worth circling and underlining some people will say no, we shouldn't be trying to create a more equal society We shouldn't be thinking about moving from capitalism to some form of democratic socialism Because equality can only be purchased at the cost of freedom They say capitalism is a system of uncoerced free exchanges Whereas if we try to make society more socialistic by doing things like for example Nationalizing big corporations. That's coercion But this is just a rhetorical sleight of hand any Distribution of scarce resources is ultimately enforced by coercion That's what's threatened by a no trespassing sign every bit as much as it's threatened by a bill from the IRS In fact in practice Ignoring the first is a hell of a lot more likely to actually lead to a confrontation with armed agents the state that ignored the second So the issue in dispute in arguments about capitalism and socialism and equality and inequality is not Coversion yes or no It's which distribution of scarce resources should be coercively enforced and you shouldn't trust anyone who doesn't make that distinction Now I've been speaking at a very general intuitive level, but to make this a little more precise I think there are at least four kinds of objectionable economic inequality One I object to any level of inequality that makes us less free if you have so much less Than others that you're completely dependent on the goodwill of people with more to meet your needs Those people with more have a lot of power to make you do what they want That kind of soft coercion isn't as bad as slavery or forced labor But it's still pretty bad and there if there's a good way to restructure economic institutions So no one is put in that situation by their lack of material resources. We should do that By the way that point about how capitalism doesn't have to be as bad as even more coercive systems like feudalism or Ancient slave systems that existed in the past in order to be bad is the same reason I'm annoyed when people like Stephen Pinker make a big deal of pointing out how much better poor people in 2022 have it then their ancestors who lived under previous forms of social organization My beef isn't that it's false. In fact in a lot of ways, it's it's true Even you know, we don't go back to distant ancestors, you know, but my objection is the true or false It's a hundred percent irrelevant the same way that racial discrimination and housing or employment Was surely less than one tenth of one percent as bad as the Middle Passage But it was still a serious injustice that needed to be addressed. All right, that's one two I object to inequality in power the same way it was unjust women couldn't vote and the reason it was unjust is there was no Good reason why women should have less power over the direction of society than then that exact same objection applies to any kind of economic inequality Severe enough to result in an inequality of political influence in the state and the point about equality of power applies just as much to what goes on within a workplace in fact grotesque levels of inequality in distribution of resources are not totally but to a great extent Downstream from inequality of power within firms in a worker co-op where everyone gets to vote on wage scales You won't necessarily get a completely equal distribution You might convince your fellow workers that you need to get paid a little more to give you a reason to take on positions with more Responsibility and stress or conversely for doing particularly dirty and unpleasant jobs But good luck trying to convince them that you have to get hundreds of times more than they get three even in a society that wasn't divided into workers and capitalists If it worked out that economic inequality got so severe that people at the bottom end Had just dramatically worse quality of life because of that You know miserable stressed out about money all the time can't spend time with their loved ones Etc etc etc etc and making the distribution of material resources more equal would correct that situation Then at least all else being equal. I think a principle of communal caring Gives us a reason to do that the same way you might spend some of your individual resources on helping a family member who is in trouble And no, I don't think it's realistic or even necessarily desirable for everyone to care exactly as much about random strangers as they care about their own families But there is a hell of a gap separate and caring about someone quite that much From being so callous towards them that you let them sink to the point where they have to start a go fund me to pay for their medical bills for I believe in a quality of opportunity That means that if there's a reasonable way to avoid this No one should have less access to the resources they need to live a better version of their life Because of factors outside of their control This is the exact reason why we think it's outrageous For example, if members of racial minority groups have a smaller share of society's resources just because of the color of their skin Lack of access to resources because of factors outside of your control Now a lot of defenders of the capitalist status quo would say oh, we agree with you about that one We also believe in a quality of opportunity But the fact is they really don't or at least they don't believe in any particularly deep version of it Because if for example, some people can inherit fortunes from their parents And all they have to do is not fritter it away And other people have to work two jobs and drive an uber at night to make ends meet That's a clear cut case of some people having less access to scarce resources than others do Because of factors outside of their control Now you will notice that I've used a few phrases like all else being equal or if there's a good way to do this And the reason I've used those phrases is because I'm speaking at the level of values but I do recognize the politics is complicated and Sometimes important values have to be balanced against other values that are also important And this is the last point I want to get into before I throw it to josh If you can convince me that we have to allow large scale inequality because the only alternative is Economic collapse and everyone being way worse off than even the worst off people are now So that you know someone in the society we live in right now For example, who's working two jobs and you know, what I just said drive an uber at night to pay for rent and groceries But still manages to make enough to pay for food for themselves and littering cat food for the cats Woods we're saying in this hypothetical that if things were made more equal There'd be so little to go around that they'd have to resort to eating those cats So they didn't start to that if you can convince me of that That those were the options then sure I would reluctantly allow large scale inequality as a necessary evil I'd still think it was evil, but I might be convinced that it was a necessary evil But I'll end by just saying that if anyone seriously wants to make the case That there's no way to make our society at the very least dramatically more equal than he is right now Without making the worst off people worse off than they are already Well as the subject of that book I mentioned earlier might put it all your work is still ahead of you Thank you so much dr. Burgess for that great opening discussion And now we're going to go ahead and kick it over to josh also known as the sphincter of doom Oh So I want to I want to thank you guys for having me Admittedly my opening is a bit short I much wanted to save time just get into the meat of our arguments. So it's not going to address I didn't anticipate everything you were going to say, but I'll just I'll just get into it And A lot of hay has been made about economic inequality and it's a moral and economic implications Con implications in concluding that it is harmful or immoral But I would submit what much of this is more haywire thinking There are critical oversights in the evaluations to wit special pleading or circular reasoning These arguments generally fall into one of two categories picking only time periods or countries where a trend of inequality being bad is synthesized Or using metrics that are unfalsifiable A good first example is pickety say's book one which helped galvanize the very discussion on inequality But his findings look only at specific non continuous years in the 20th century And he doesn't even account for the depreciation of capital assets over time When one does so one shouldn't be surprised when capital values outpace Uh and accumulate faster than others another example is a famous ted talk regarding the spirit level Book by british policy advocates richard g wilkinson wearing his choice of which countries to trend to demonstrate more equal societies are better off various metrics like crime rates happiness social mobility These but he chooses different countries for those trends from metric to metric And the most glaring omission of which is singapore which has more inequality than the us But it's absent in every single one of his trends with the exception of the one that fits his metric which happens to be in the incarceration rate We can then look at social mobility arguments like those found in robert reich's inequality for all Here the argument is that inequality creates less economic mobility But the measurement of economic economic mobility here is relative mobility from income one income quantile to another not absolute earning power When inequality is higher the relative quantiles would be further apart so even an absolute increase in earning power equal to or even sometimes greater than A similar one in a country that has less inequality will appear to be less impactful when in reality that person is equally or even better off Uh similarly economists like richard wolf will point to the relative real gains in income by income quantile over time pointing to the much higher gains for the rich and lower or even negative gains for The lowest quantiles what this argument fails to account for is the distinction between statistical categories and flesh and blood people who actually occupies the one percent or Any quantile varies over time and indeed there's a lot more flux into and out of the highest in the lowest income quantiles annually It's it actually turns out that about one in nine americans will find themselves in the one percent at least once At least one at one point in their lifetime And of those in the one percent that persist is to stay in the one percent for 10 years or more That only comprises about one 10 to 11 percent of the one percent All these arguments overlook a critical question that to be asked regarding inequality. How are real people affected? What is their absolute earning power? We don't buy things by our portion of gdp or our portion of the total agi. We buy it in Whatever the legal tender is How so how much do people have and how far it goes is the real question If the amount they have is too low That's an issue and it's an issue of absolute poverty but not relative poverty and absolute poverty occurs independently a relative poverty Singapore has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. It's even higher than the us Yet, there is little absolute poverty all with lower taxes and a less extensive welfare system Alternatively, afghanistan has one of the lowest income inequalities in the world But they're all just more equally poor in absolute terms Obviously, there's a lot of other factors than inequality itself But I use these that analogy to illustrate that inequality Isn't as good of an indication as one might initially think another critical oversight In the argument that excessive inequality a commonly unqualified term to what level of inequality is unacceptable Is necessarily bad is overlooking the manner in which the inequality arises Whether it's by political favors and corruption or by market mechanisms and voluntary exchange given Singapore again Has more inequality than the u.s But fewer or if any of the problems commonly claimed to be caused by excessive inequality Despite having more than the u.s. This raises serious doubts about Either what is causing these problems or the impact of inequality itself And maybe that the inequality is at best a symptom of an underlying problem But not the problem itself itself necessarily The iza a german labor a german labor friendly think tank sought out to see if that may indeed be the case and they did a statistical analysis of OECD countries and they found that when inequality arises through political favors It does it absolutely can be a problem for economies It's it's overall negative growth for economies But if it occurs absent to these or with very small amounts of political favors It actually is good for the economy. Um, at least to the extent that the inequality exists currently Of course the if these findings hold true that means two things First even where inequality is due to political favoritism the solution isn't redistribution And I know that uh, dr. Burgess was not necessarily suggesting a redistribution, but But the solution is to root out the political favoritism Um, and secondly where inequality does arise through markets. That is good for the economy and people overall And when it comes down when it boils down to it without inequality, we wouldn't have an economy And and that was it. I I did wrote I took notes during your Opening version dr. Burgess. I'd like and I I figured those would maybe a good start starting point to discuss Sure so, uh um I didn't have one clarifying question your number three I I wrote down I was writing down all four Could you clarify what you meant on number three because I wasn't sure what what the actual Inequality to which you objected Sure. So, uh, so number three was just any level Of inequality that resulted In people having much worse lives than they I thought they would Given the same resources being distributed more equally Okay um, so I'm just gonna go down the list if that's okay and Feel free to take Sure. Yeah, there's are we ready to go into the open discussion now. Are we still in the uh opening? Oh, that's a good question Uh, I'm I'm done with my opening. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I guess we're in open discussion. All right. Yeah, go ahead and stop the timer then and uh Start the 55 minute timer Let's go ahead and kick it off gentlemen Yeah, no, there's definitely stuff I wanted to ask about from yours, too But sorry, you want to go through this one in time. Let's do that. All right. Well So the first thing is the the CEO pay one This I think is another instance of kind of math without Uh proper context. Yes Like for example, you'll look at the example I like to bring up is like mcdonald's ceo made 20 million dollars last year And that sounds like a lot more than any mcdonald's worker But if you actually took that in I don't think it just sounds like and I think it is it Right, uh, but if you take that entire 20 million and divided it along the I think it's 1.6 million mcdonald's employees it would amount to 25 like I think it was half a cent an hour more So while it's a big number But it's not as if his pay Even if it was reduced to zero and distributed among all the workers their pay isn't going to be all that much different Yeah, so, uh, so I think that there are a a couple things going on here And and I think part of it depends of course, you know, the revenue from mcdonald's that doesn't go into new investment and and it doesn't go into worker pay is certainly not confined to the pay of the ceo but You know, which is which is relevant if we're thinking about the diversion of mcdonald's That was organized by as a co-op or something but also remember Like so the point about ceo pay is a point about the extent of disparity But then the next question is if that's bad, right, which I think it is. Why is it bad? And So the the first one that I mentioned Uh, is that that level of disparity? you know leads to large-scale inequalities in power if uh, if you are the ceo of mcdonald's And, you know, you you call your congressman, uh, you know, you will you will most definitely if not in the moment You know that day get to have a conversation with the congressman himself Whereas if you're one of those workers, uh, you know, you're You know, you'll be lucky to have an extended conversation with an intern or you know, uh, maybe maybe somebody from uh from a temp agency So that kind of significant, you know, the fact seems to be and maybe you dispute this, right? But uh, but the first part of the first point was that You know was that large-scale, you know inequality economic inequalities tend to result in large-scale inequalities and political influence I'm not well. I'm not necessarily convinced That's the case either because if you look at pre-tax inequality in a lot of developed countries, some of them are at similar levels than the u.s Pre-tax inequality. I mean if you look at like say finland, for example, they don't have the Much like the u.s. They lack restrictions on total Campaign spending or contributions and yet they don't really see The same levels of corruption that we have in the u.s. And I think a much But I think I think um Sorry, I think a better explanation for a lot of the lower levels of corruption we have and we see in europe and canada is that You corruption is a symptom and so what you like money in politics I think is the is the symptom not the problem and because there's so much power to be captured and it's in us And it's so concentrated And but in europe you have far more legislators per capita and you have far more Local and regional provincial state legislation So the power is diffused more so securing the loyalty of any particular legislator doesn't go as far Especially with the parliamentary system that has more turnover I think that is a better explanation for why they have less corruption and i'm all forgoing more towards that Especially with like mixed vendor representation and all that and that's that's a separate question to economic inequality maybe well, maybe it's not but Yes, as for as for the fact i'm sorry I've got all these thoughts. It's okay. It's it's it's okay. I just thought you were done but go keep going As for the ceo pay. Yes, the ceo pay has more money by himself But collectively mcdonald's workers their total pay exceeds that of the ceo by good deal uh ceo pay So, I mean if if those workers were to organize and even just contribute a little bit of money each if each of one of them contributed $15 that's more than the entire pay of the ceo that it could give towards a particular pack if they wanted to Okay, so so that might be a good place to to pause because i think you said a few different things uh there uh, so I I think that I wouldn't want to equate the issues of Um, man, i'm getting a little bit of an echo. Can you hear that? Okay, um, so I wouldn't want to equate the issues of uh, you know unequal political influence with the issue of Corruption, it's certainly true that one way that uh, that people you know that people with vastly more concentrated wealth can have more influence than People with vastly less is like, you know handing out bribe money. Uh, that's what that's one channel, uh between between concentrated economic power and concentrated political power uh And it's one that americans tend to focus on a lot and kind of have a charmingly naive belief that That we can campaign finance or who reform our way out of it, but I actually don't think it's the most important You know channel, uh, I think that uh because you know, there are plenty of places That have far stricter campaign finance laws than the united states, uh, where it's still the case that uh, that you know the That the owners of capital have vastly more, uh, you know, political Uh, you know political influence, you know that that any any particular Uh individual working class person in fact, I think every country in the world Sat satisfies that description. So just as just as one quick example Uh, you know another channel between concentrated economic power and concentrated political power That has absolutely nothing to do with bribery or corruption or campaign finance Is uh, you know the business veto that you know that if you if you do things that if you do things that displease Uh, you know the uh the owners of uh of businesses, those large businesses Uh, you know, they they can always you know, they can always take their business elsewhere Uh, and this is and that you know at that risk of capital flight is something that effectively disciplines The uh egalitarian ambitions of governments all around uh all around the world You know and and is and is in fact, I think actually much more effective needs of discipline I think I would also point to ownership of media And uh and the way that that's that that's linked to uh to political influence even on voters in that case You know by uh by not very many corporations But the last thing I did just want to say was on the point, you know, the mcdonald's example Just just you know sticking with that for a second Sure, uh, if if every single if every single mcdonald's employee You know got together and made a coordinated effort to exert, you know exert political influence You know, then um, you know, then they could you know, I mean they wouldn't have Exactly the the same abilities, you know, because because they they don't have the power to You know, they don't have the power to influence company decision making in ways that You know in ways that the that politicians would would worry about they might You know, but you know, but they can go on strike, you know, they have various ways of exerting political influence but of course You know, the point is that it's much much much easier For people with concentrated economic power to exert, you know, concentrated get a political influence that, you know You don't have the same kinds of collective action problems With making that happen that you do with a variety of ordinary people because yeah I think it's always true in any kind of hierarchical system that sure if if all of the people at the bottom, you know Resisted that system or made an effort to reform it, you know, then you know, even slavery wouldn't work You know with with all slaves, you know resisted at the same time, but I wouldn't conclude too much from that okay It's uh Seems like we more kind of disagree on which is more impactful I personally think that the the concentrated government power is if addressing that would in effect address the How people wield their wealth as it were But so so so actually maybe you can clarify that because I hear people say this this a lot and i'm not Or at least I hear people say an aversion of that and i'm not certain of what you need Is the same all right as what's often meant by that. So, uh so a version that i'll often hear, you know from like libertarians is is Oh, basically, you know If we had a less, you know, like a state that you know that that played less of a role in the economy than you know that the Uh, you know the prize, uh, you know wouldn't be uh, you know wouldn't be worth as much Uh, but I think you're saying something slightly different because of the things that you said about parliamentary systems and all that Well, it's a little bit of both. So it's so your part of it is yes the prize There's there's less to gain if you capture that power But at the same time It's less likely to be captured because or even it's even harder to stay captured because there are more Actors at play that can either be influenced by other groups or go their own way Uh, it's kind of like like thinking of like the a cartel the more members of a cartel It's harder to really keep everyone on this like to behave as it were But even when but also when it does get captured because there's less power to be wielded in that way less damage is done So it's kind of a it's it's both of them and you can like so regulatory capture is It the more the more power there is more like the more bigger incentive it is to capture it the more concentrated it is the easier it is to capture and Depending on what you want you either want to reduce the power or diffuse it and those aren't mutually exclusive Sure, I could do both. Yeah. Okay. All right. I got you. Uh, yeah, so I guess I'm you know I'm not sure About the the second claim The diffusing claim because it seems to be That at least of the american context are our federalism, you know the way that the way that so many powers are devolved to states Uh, and and the relative lack of centralization, you know compared to uh, to at least some European countries in many ways actually Actually makes it easier for for corporations to to to get what they want, right? I mean if If amazon is is sort of dangling out the prospect of opening their headquarters in one of five places Uh, or you know, whatever, you know the uh, say, you know a car company You know once, you know off is offering to to open up a factory Then, you know, you'll get state governments can get a tripping over each other competing To to give them to give them the best the best deal and the most tax breaks to rule out the red carpet I mean, we've we've seen some dramatic examples of that lately Whereas uh, a more centralized government, you know does have more bargaining power there And and I I also think historically Um, just at least again at least in the american context if you look at the history of things like right to work laws It's it seems it seems to be easier For you know employers, you know associations and chambers of commerce that lobby for such things to get them done On a state level at a national level, so i'm just not sure that that's actually empirically true that the diffusing Uh, you know the diffusing makes it harder for uh, you know people at the top of an unequal economic setup to exert political influence But I've always been really confused about the first plan, which is the one i'm more familiar with You know because it's a sort of very common, you know libertarian kind of claim not that you're necessarily that and uh And it always seems like yeah, okay If you know if you somehow had a combination Of extreme economic inequality really concentrated economic power but Uh, the state wasn't doing any favors For the people at the at the top it was it was acted the way that it's supposed to and in the sort of minimalistic libertarian conception of what a state should would do Uh, then then sure, uh, there would be you know, there would be no favors being given but it just it seems like the claim Uh, that somebody like me would make would precisely be that uh, that if That if you have concentrated economic power the holders of that will it evidently You know get the states uh to to to do them favors You know that maybe that could be counteracted with things like the extremely stronger unions you have in places like Finland But all else being equal, you know, that's just going to happen that you know saying You know the idea that you could have capitalism that wasn't crony capitalism, you know that that you know that you'd That you'd have this much economic inequality going on, but it just wouldn't translate into Uh into the the state intervening in the economy on on behalf of the people with lots of it Has always been very confusing to me. I don't know what the mechanism is by which that would happen Well, I think it's important to remember that absent political favoritism What your economic power is based on how well you provide products that people demand I mean if you're not doing that or you're grifting people or whatnot that power is going to wane very quickly Yeah, um That that's why sure I mean although although and also I mean also in the absence of the state doing favors It'd probably be easier for unions to form as well and not just big unions But unions that may compete with another because they may have Disagreement says to how they feel their workers should be represented like maybe you'll have young workers that might want higher wages versus Middle-aged worker like, you know thirties in their thirties. They might want more childcare for example Yeah, so so again, I get that, you know absent political favors Nobody's doing nobody's doing any political favors But but I guess my question is What's the mechanism by which it would ever be the case that you had this much economic inequality without Uh, it translated into into political favors through For all I say right like in other words either You know, presumably it's not that we think that the people who um That's you know, amazon and walmart and mcdonald's and etc are going to nobly hold back From trying to do that, right? So, uh, it seems to me that attacking the economic power Is the is the only way of uh, of reducing the uh, the political Uh, you know, the the political influence over the long term Well, I misunderstood your question before uh, so um, the reason why is that it takes resources to secure There's lobbying or bribes Whatever however you want to characterize it takes resources to do that and it takes and once the politicians are on it They're going to want a constant stream and that is what takes resources to actually get them to be loyal to you If the amount that you get back from that loyalty is very little then it's not really worthwhile um either it's little because The state has little power to really intervene or it's that you can't because there's so much turnover You can't get a big enough coalition to get the state that you would you want Yeah, so so again, I don't know how this reduction in power is is going to happen without a uh You know reduction in state power is going to happen without that reduction in uh in economic inequality I'm skeptical that you can have a state that's strong enough to enforce property rights But wasn't strong enough to be used Uh in in cronyistic uh ways, but but but I did just want to I didn't want it to get lost And you said something a minute ago about how uh absent, you know, political corruption the only the only way that uh, that you know, that's Economic power only comes from providing goods and services that people want and you know, not You know grifting people and and I guess the two things I would say about that were one Just as an historical fact, even if we're narrowly focusing on that issue At the provided of the goods and services to consumers um, you know, they actually, you know, I mean, I don't know about you know depends on a little bit on what you mean by by grifting but but you know, but but massive fraud of consumers, uh, the certainly, you know wildly unsafe products, you know going to consumers, etc Is is something that that happened Well, it still happens quite a bit but it happened quite a bit more You know before the expansion of the regulatory state in the 1970s You know with with a bunch of consumer protection laws. So would your view be that those things happening Was somehow results of of political favors being done, you know, or political corruption Or is there a way that could happen in the in the in the market? Just, you know left to its own devices Well, it's important to remember that when people Uh refer to free markets Like when they're extolling the virtues of free markets at least they don't mean like zero rules at all There's there's rules for defining and defending property. There's rules against aggressive violence like fraud and assault Uh and theft and there's also some means of adjudicating disputes disputes in a kind of court system. So That that the assumption is that that's in place as for uh various consumer safety products a lot of that actually Has been corrupted itself. There are many life-saving drugs that are prevented from being allowed in the u.s. Because of the fda And it's kind of a bootleggers and baptist situation because the fda is just super cautious about everything and also their the reinforcement agencies are corrupted because Pharmaceutical companies don't want competition a an interesting example is the catalytic converter When the new um emission standards came out Japanese motor companies they retooled their engines to meet the emission standards where american Companies they developed the catalytic converter, which artificially increased the cost of the car slightly the The american motor companies lobbied to have catalytic converters required thus Making the japanese automaker Motor companies they their cars had to be more expensive as a result even though their cars already met the emission standards so this kind of Protection cronyism Is increasingly so like for example, there's a regulation. It's like one of the weirdest regulations. I saw Where there's a maximum and a minimum for the diameter and thickness of pickle slices And that's because the companies that make the machines that slice your pickles they they've invested They want their investment protected. They don't want the competition. It's just kind of silly Now that doesn't mean that all consumer protection is like that But once you put that in place you create that incentive to capture it and corrupt it in that way Sure, but uh, but I guess one thing I find a little bit confusing about that answer is that uh, you kind of started out by saying well Yeah, of course, uh, you know, you have laws against all of these ways that uh, that companies You know historically have and you know still continue to I mean like no laws perfectly enforced but you know is but often but you know But certainly like in the early 70s at the time That like unsafe and any speed was coming out and the big big push for a lot of these consumer regulations has happened Was happening and just rampant ways, right? You know, so the first thing you said was well, of course We'd have laws to to stop stuff like that, right? So you're sort of accepting the basic framework that there are Uh laws, you know some sort of consumer protection laws in place and then you started talking about regulatory capture and uh at the process being corrupted to to prevent competition And and so so I guess one thing is how the two halves of that answer, um You know fit together, right? I mean if the idea is that there's that there's like You know some consumer protection laws, but like little enough that we're not going to we're not going to have a regulatory capture problem different concentrated economic power then Is is that little going to be enough to uh to prevent like, you know lots of people die in from stuff like You know unsafe cars like that data example um, well, uh another thing that's also to consider is that before the apa kind of existed in herness You could sue you had a much you have a lot you had a lot more uh Ability to sue companies that you know dumped on your land or dumped near your land and they got into your water system And whatnot once the apa came along they basically decided what did and didn't count as pollution and then Narrowed what counted as you know standing Uh, so the issue I think is that it's it's I think it's more of a tort reform issue I was referring to laws mainly against aggressive violence and in that case that kind of would be if it's just dumping on your land but um Yeah, I think it's so when you have Regulators defining what does and doesn't count as harm people who are harmed may not no longer have a reprieve And people who have not people who have not been harmed can now claim to be harmed and then So again, I'm not sure if that answered your question though. Uh, no, I don't think it does because the question the question was Uh, if you you know if you could somehow, you know, you wave a magic wand and you reduce the consumer protection part, right, which is all we're talking about here right now because uh, and and that's also something we don't want to get lost that of course The you know the dangers of you know the problems with uh with with economic inequality You know, like I think every single thing I said would be completely consistent with every single company Uh, that's that's you know, enriching owners or investors You know making good products and you know and and satisfying consumer needs I think I think all of my injections to economic inequality are completely consistent with that scenario But of course, we know in real life that hypothetical is not realized that that's that there there is lots of fraud that the That's of various shades of subtlety that That oftentimes You know companies will will put wildly unsafe things on on the product on on the market and you know, I'll uh the the main character's day job and in fight club If uh, you know, like there's a there's a sort of decision about whether to pull things off the market That's a calculation about how much you think that you know, you're going to lose from from being from being sued And so the question was Do you think that if we could wave wave that magic wand and somehow shrink the regulatory apparatus for consumer protection? Down to some level that you think would be an attractive reward for regulatory capture If that nub was left Would be enough to stop like lots of people dying because of because of unsafe products, for example Well, if you take that away and you open up the fact that you know companies will still be Much more liable because a lot of those regulations in place also limit the liability of those corporations then corporations have to do a recalculation like like you said with The main character the narrator in fight club If you make it not worthwhile Bakeries aren't going to just poison Pardon me. Bakeries aren't just going to poison their customers intentionally or even just recklessly But there is sometimes it's like well sometimes a small amount might get in and it's not going to kill you and but Some of the limits are arbitrary for like this is just like For example, when it comes to the nuclear community like a lot of the your nuclear exposure limits are orders of magnitude lower Then what is unsafe to be exposed to and that's Part of the existence that people are kind of irrationally scared of nuclear part It is also lobbying on both the part of environmentalists as well as fossil fuel lobbyists So again, it gets back into the whole bootleggers and baptist parable where you have multiple parties with different motives that are for this policy and the The greedy versions of why therefore kind of get a A plausible deniability because of the more noble intentions behind it But to answer your question, I do think It would depend on how we would reform like you know, tort reform But I and I I do like this topic, but we probably should move on to another And it should be your turn. You probably had a question. This might be a good chance So can I just really really quickly say guys cast before so first of all we can separate out the tort reform issue We could we could we could have we can limit caps on how much you're going to sue people for while keeping the regulatory state States in place But second is, you know, just counting on torts to do the job only works You know when you when you have the funds for for a good lawyer and sometimes, you know, good lawyer will take on a case for prestige or whatever, but But assuming that that's going to happen enough for the people who most desperately need redress I think is a pretty heroic assumption Perhaps but if you don't have much of a case then you're not being able to You're you won't probably want to get to find a lawyer anyway. So if you can't prove your case then What I mean, what what's what's the solution to that? That's that's the but that's regulation is the solution Is the whole the whole point of regulation Rather than just leaving it all to the tort system is that we don't have to wait for something to, you know, this this provably impacted me And I I have the time and the resource to investigate it and to get a get a good lawyer to let to make my case We just have to have oh, you're recklessly, you know, we're not going to be intentionally poisoned in, you know The bakery products, but we recklessly You know let unsafe products products out onto the market that have the danger Of killing lots of people and I think if you lack the resources to do all the things you just said I think, you know the regulatory state is as imperfect as it is see where we started about how I'd You know like to change the economic system in general, but as imperfect as it is I think it's a much better solution than ports Well, uh, the issue is that regulation doesn't necessarily prevent harm like even like this regulation in place is meant to stop this harm But how do you know how much harm would have actually occurred with the regulation not in place? And not only that but it functionally turns into a point goes for torts Yeah I'm well, we'll revisit. Oh, I'm gonna have my second thought and then we'll revisit that because I'm I'm gonna hear that but um By saying hey, you have to prove this is safe as opposed to having to demonstrate harm You're you're functionally putting a regulatory cost on corporations or at least producers that they're guilty until proven innocent Yeah, I think I I think that's entirely appropriate. I don't think that the I don't think that the reasons why We have such a high high burden for for proof in In criminal law Apply in this case. I think having to prove that that your that your products are safe Uh, you know, that's I don't see that as a deep rights violation in the way That's you know putting people in prison or executing them You know with with the deal with the burden on them would be a deep rights violation But you but you're still Sorry Yeah, go ahead. Sorry While you um think about how you want to respond to that Let me just say to the audience one one quick second that uh, if you are enjoying what you are seeing and hearing Please don't forget to like share subscribe hit that like button Please if you are enjoying what you're hearing from one of the Speakers in particular you can check out the description box one of their links will be there You can go and check out their channel or wherever they are located You can hear more from them and um, also if you have any questions for the speakers If you have any comments for them, please send a super chat Um, or if you uh, if you don't want to send a super chat, you can ask a question But super chats do get priority. They will be read first So please send us a super chat so that we can ask the the vaders questions are uh Live or q&a will be starting in about 20 minutes or so 25 minutes Um, and I think that's all I wanted to say so uh, go ahead gentlemen so I I got my train back on track. So the uh Violation of rights thing the the issue there is so I have no problem with companies being prosecuted for fraud saying This product does this what it doesn't including, you know, the scope of its function that it claims is safe I'm okay with that because that's functionally fraud But at the end of the day we're essentially holding corporations responsible to a degree at least Where people if people are abusive or reckless with that product and it ends up being unsafe It's it's on the corporation then So, I mean there's a balance there And that that's why I mean maybe it was a stretch to say like they're all guilty until proven innocent It was more to kind of characterize it that way than that I am Reluctant on a lot of strict liability crimes because I think You can that you should not punish people When the harm hasn't been occurred has occurred Um, you shouldn't you shouldn't punish people before potential harm has occurred I believe you're muted sir my apologies, uh if uh yeah, so, uh, so the idea that you know Punish people, you know before before harm is occurred, you know seems Seems like a very weak reason to me to to oppose stopping people from uh for doing things that we know Have an unreasonable potential for harm now if if you if you're much more worried about You know companies being unreasonably stopped from from doing things that are that are safe Then uh, then you are about uh about people, you know about actually unsafe products being put out And victimizing people who are often not going to be in any sort of position To to to sue, you know realistically I don't really have the the resources to you know, even do the initial investigation Then I guess that makes sense, but I mean my priorities would be Would be the opposite uh the opposite on that one Uh, and the thing Uh was about the the parody argument about regulation and torts which is that Uh, and if you want to move on to other stuff, we don't have to do the whole thing on this But just just really briefly because you did ask about it Uh, the the parody argument was just that you know, you could equally say Uh, you know, we don't know if we had it made it really easy to sue people, right? We we don't know how much, you know How much harm would have happened that was presented, you know With that was that was prevented by by making it this easy because presumably In both cases, you know a big part of the point of either making it really easy to sue people Or imposing regulations and by the way out for both but the uh, but uh, but Either strategy the uh, the you know all the big part of the point is is deterrence. And yeah, that's that that is That is somewhat hard to measure I'm not convinced that we don't have, you know reasons to think that the sort of consumer safety and environmental laws that came into the 70s Have led to uh to to to less harm I suppose it's possible that there would have been that much less harm anyway independently of them Uh, but man, I would sure rather err on the safe side on that I see what you mean and that's that's a decent parody I uh, I'm inclined to agree that it really is just it comes down to we don't really know And uh, we could talk about this more. I think we should move on to another element And uh, I asked you a question about that and then we branched off to a whole bunch I think it's you should uh, unless you want to go down my list, but you wanted to ask me a couple things Uh, yeah, no, I'm happy to uh to go down the the list I guess I guess it it a bigger, you know, sort of picture way, right? Like it seems like a lot of what your opening statement was about was some combination of How bad the sort of immediate utilitarian effects of uh of economic inequality are Uh, and then that was that was one big thing it was about and the at the other was about Um, you know degree of economic mobility, right? So so it's it's not as bad That you know people at the bottom or way worse off people than people at the top if you could if you could make your way You know from the from the bottom to the top and I think that was the defense of of it I think those were the two big defenses of inequality goes here and there Well, so the second part it wasn't just um It was more that your ability to move through the relative income quantiles. Well, it isn't what mattered. It's What was your absolute buying power? um Like how much do you have and how far it goes if you have enough to get by Or even like have an even afford a few luxuries Why does it matter at all? How much more somebody else has The how much more they have is going to have little effect on your buying power for example, and Okay, I mean it does right. I mean like the like like how much more they have Does actually in the moment we could argue about long-termism and you know, whether You know and whether allowing this makes everybody's buying power greater over time, etc You know now become the standard argument, but certainly there's no denying that in the moment Some people having more buying power. Absolutely Does does mean that you have less? I mean there are finite resources and this is the this is the system for for allocated that And if some people, you know, some people have more Then absolutely some people some people have less and if the question is well If you can get by and have a few luxuries Then what does it matter that you have so much smaller share of the pie that there is to finite resources to go around that someone else does Uh, and and I think that there are a bunch of reasons Why uh, why that would matter? I mean one is brought up by the inequality of opportunity point Which uh, which is uh, is that if if there's no good reason for that right then uh Then it does it does seem unjust if some people are arbitrarily being uh being denied that so if if if you have a smaller share Just because you chose You know not to work very hard or you you made different choices about you know work, you know work life balance Then you know fair enough. I might not quarrel with the justice of that Uh, but if it's because of factors outside of your control that is that is presumably something That I think most of us would would recognize as a reason to find unequal distributions unfair I mean you've brought up political favoritism and corruption many times And there are different reasons why you might be uh opposed to one of those things But surely uh, one of the reasons is the unfairness of it, right? Why should some people have a leg up over others? Uh because of political favoritism and corruption That's surely one of the reasons that we uh that we object uh to you know to racial discrimination for example that you wouldn't you know that you wouldn't say hey if you know Black people, you know, uh face certain kinds of discrimination at a given point, you know Well as long as the average black person has enough to get by and you know a few luxuries Then um, you know no harm no foul, right? You know you say no, that's We and at objectionably unfair that we could kind of go through all the other reasons but I would I would say, um You know, I would say everything that I listed off in the original is a reason why we should still Still object to to that point. I guess the only one that it would be relevant to is the one about absolute, you know absolute quality of life But even there I would really question the idea that economic inequality is uh, is irrelevant to to that that the that If you you know, if you look at all the studies about comparative life expectancy for example In a wealthier and poorer zip codes often within the very same city. So, you know, sometimes very close to each other uh, I mean, I guess you could say that That the that the condition of people before zip codes who live like 30 years less on average in some american cities That that has nothing to do with the condition of people to wealthier zip codes There's nothing that we could do in terms of redistributed resources That would that would raise that quality of life and raise that life expectancy But bad that does not seem very plausible Well, I want to touch on the equality opportunity because it is my opinion equality opportunity is that this is this weird um, uh nebulous term in politics in my opinion, uh, and my experience anecdotally, of course is progressives tend to use it But then they they would point to disparities and outcome and say that must be due to unequal opportunity And I'm I'm speaking generally It doesn't necessarily apply to you and then conservatives will say I'm for equal opportunity and they look for equal treatment And if there's equal treatment, there must be equal opportunity So it really I think seems to be a code word for lack of a better term for what their real their real political Priorities are and again, I'm not necessarily projecting either of those on to you So my question is when you talk about equal equality of opportunity, what do you mean by it? Yeah, so so I think I gave the definition that that I would use in in the opening But we could recap it and maybe go into a little bit of some of the differences between different things that people mean by it So, uh, Gia Cohen is a 20th century socialist analytic philosopher I like a lot and he makes a distinction between three kinds of equality of opportunity What he calls bourgeois equality of opportunity, which just means there's no legal impediment to anybody From from any background rising to to any given level So you don't have, you know apartheid laws, for example You know, but it's it's a sort of purely negative understanding Of equality of opportunity And then you could have what he calls left liberal equality of opportunity Where you recognize certain kinds of social disadvantages that you need to compensate for them In order to put people on a on a level playing field For example head start programs And then what he calls socialist equality of opportunity, which is which is what I mentioned at the outset, which is the idea that it is That it is in principle objectionable And and we you know we can talk about what that means in a second, but it's in principle objectionable if Some people have less access to resources than other people Due to factors outside of their control now when I say a principle objectionable I don't mean that there's no circumstance under which on balance You know that that might be the lesser evil to allow that to continue to happen. There are certainly There's certainly inequality as an outcome that there's no reasonable way to uh to correct for Uh even inequality as an outcome that stem from things that people that are outside of anybody's voluntary control um But all will speed equal unless there's some other really important value that this is getting in the way of That you know, I do think that a virtue of social orders is When they more full, you know, when they at least come closer to it being the case that you don't have Um, you don't have inequalities in an outcome that stem back to things that are outside of anybody's control because intuitively That does seem to be pretty central to why we injects to you know cast systems or feudalism or you know, or racial discrimination Their gender discrimination, etc. Right like there are arguments you can make against all of these things. I'm purely utilitarian grounds That like oh if we have racial discrimination the smartest people from certain races will be making their contributions to science and etc etc But and you know, that might be part of why you're against it But I think for most people that's not the main reason that you're against it, right? I mean the main feeling that racial discrimination of that example is unfair comes from the fact that People are having worse outcomes not because they chose to work less or anything like that But because of factors completely outside of their control like in that example what your skin color is and we could add to that you know What your what economic position position you're you're you know, you're born into and the And the point seems to be largely unaffected by the change Well, I even somewhat disagree in that I don't think the objection is based on things outside of our control I think it's based on it's objective when it's based on something that we don't think should matter For example people's religion is completely within their control, but we still find it unacceptable discriminate based on religion Yeah, I think I think that's a fair I think that's a fair point, but I but I think that it's I would I would Put it a little differently I would say that what the religion example shows Is that that's is that the fact that something is not under your control is not the only reason That people having different outcomes based on it Would be objectionable, right? But I don't think it shows That it's not one thing that could make uh disparate outcomes objectionable Well, uh, well in addition to that what I mean is like some things that are outside of our control do matter like our genetics To a degree will it will affect Many of our opportunities. I mean i'm six foot four I'm not ever going to be a competitive horse jockey Yeah, sure And if we lived in a society, uh, we're you know, we're one of you know, the only way You know, we were ruled we were ruled by a cast of competitive horse jockeys, right, right And the only way to to sort of break into the ruling class, you know Was was by being a competitive horse jockey That would seem extremely unjust and one of the reasons it would seem extremely unjust is that it's outside of your control, right? I mean, I would completely Embrace uh this this example. I do not think that I do not think that to the extent that we can reasonably correct for it without violating other values, etc I do not think that That difference is there uh that are traceable back purely to genetic inheritance about to voluntary choices, you know should should matter for You know for outcomes whether it's that example or I guess more realistically historically Like a warrior cast that you could only be at if you were big and strong enough had all the power privileges or in uh, contemporary, you know liberal capitalist society Just happened to be born with the propensities For you know more easily developing the skills that help people do well in school and climb through professional ladders and uh, etc etc if some people Have dramatically worse lives because they lack those skills and it's not under their control You know, of course, it's always partially under your control But if it's you know to a degree that we're worried about it's not under your control whether you have those skills Yeah, that does seem like an objection to to having large-scale inequality based on factors like that Well, and it's my fault for pausing but um I think one of the big factors that is almost completed out of most people's control that Greatly affects anybody's economic prospects is geography and not just I happen to be born in a wealthy country or a poor country, but certain The african continent is the second largest continent in the world, but it has the least amount of coastline It has fewer navigable rivers. It has fewer places that are going to be useful for ports The zaire river has much has far more waterfalls and that are bigger compared to the mississippi like This that doesn't that doesn't explain all of the problems In struggles that many people living on the african continent face But that's a huge thing And you look at the u.s. The east coast is far more developed than the west coast There's far more wealthy people on the east coast and that's One you have just have years far more years of human capital and capital development so I guess my question is is like should geography matter and to what extent should it No, uh, I think I think would be they would be the simplest answer to give a slightly more day-lots dancer. Uh, I think that um You know, I can certainly see the point that there's a certain kind of moral urgency That uh under development in africa has to westerners to the extent that you think that the history of colonialism Is causally implicated with that under development and a much lesser degree to the extent that you think that factors You know like you like you mentioned all right like we could agree Uh, even if you think because the background thing that yeah ideally right we would You know we would want right, you know to there are complicated questions here About the extent to which you know people are part of a sort of a single, you know big society Or or not I think I think with an increasingly globalized economy, you know that sort of murkier than ever but they have But uh, but yeah, I think that I think that in general, uh, the you know, I mean to the extent that you can You can reasonably correct for it You know without doing things that you know that violate other other values than than absolutely inequalities uh inequalities between you know between countries Are are important, right? You know and and I think that You know and and are are objectionable, you know, I mean, I think I think it could be that you know In the case where you you know To a much greater extent maybe than you do blame the history of colonialism For for the the economic condition of a bunch of africa Then there might be multiple reasons To to want to to correct that and so it might have greater moral urgency that if the only reason is just well All those being equal we would be living in a more just world if you didn't have a way worse life because which country you were living in But I I don't think that there would be no moral reason to want to correct for that if it just sort of you know arose Immaculately in a way that I will say I think for a few really, you know, inequalities really do Now this one's a little weirder and I I I I I forgot about it. I should have brought it up earlier. It's what about time so it's undisputable that white americans have far more wealth on averages in black americans And to to a great degree But it's also true that the average white person is almost twice the age of the average black person And the reasons for which are itself something we could unpack but nonetheless simply born in a certain time or living longer Like that's mostly out of our control as well should that be equalized? I mean you look at inequality distribution chart like the or the distribution of income in countries It often lines pretty well up with the distribution of age and and which makes sense as as you get older You you build up skills your your income generally increases at a degree You build up capital and and wealth and whatnot So well to what extent should that be a factor to be corrected for even though it's something you largely can't control for Yeah, I mean I think so first of all I think in the case of black and white americans. I think that that's That there's exactly one plausible explanation for that and and it's uh, and it's The the fact that you know poor people on average have much shorter life expectances Than the wealthier people do on average. So, you know, so given You know like most racial disparities. I think it could be traced back to that that they have that That the distribution of poverty Among the races is wildly unequal because of the history of slavery and Jim crow and you know FHA red lining and etc. You know with him living memory that um And so because of that unequal distribution of poverty, you know due to our apartheid past Then uh, then you have all of the social ills that go with poverty are also unequally distributed Uh, and that would be the case even if there was there was zero racial prejudices And in anybody's mind, uh in the in the present In the present in the present day So so I think that I think the much shorter life expectancy that tends to go With with poverty is is going to be by far The most important explanation. I think a lot of other explanations are going to be indirectly Caused by that but uh on on principle imagine that we lived in utopia where where there was no no bad racial history Where nobody was in a worse position because of because of what economic Location they were born into etc. Etc. But it was still the case that uh older people on average were doing better off than younger people I do think that would be uh, that would be less objectionable A lot of these other uh inequalities because I think when you You were concerned about you know About lack of resources about quality of life etc. Etc. Uh, you know, we're concerned with How good a life one person is living versus how good a life another person is living So, you know, if you're going to be doing better as you go on Then then you have much less of a legitimate complaint Then then somebody who's not going to which is one of the by the reason by the way One of the reasons that union seniority systems are awesome and and giving employers more flexibility about stuff like that is terrible Okay, um, I'm there's a lot of debate over the extent of the effect of the legacy of slavery and Jim crow It's it's difficult to um to uh really discern. I think a number of uh economists I think have at least is a good experiment in using uh, how not not just african americans, but Immigrants of african descent that came from a similar that came from a place that spoke english They came from a place that had its own legacy of slavery In the anglo caribbean and then when they immigrate to the u.s. To what extent? Does that affect them because they're coming from just uh, just as just as if not more poor Places they are unambiguously black. In fact, if anything they're on average darker than the average african americans So whatever levels of systemic racism that are play, but they tend to be overrepresented among high income blacks They tend to be over represented among that's but that's that's not that's not at all a comparison of like to like Because because you're not you're not talking about You know You're not talking about random members of uh of groups being you know being taken you know being you know like like your number came up uh in the You know we're like it's not like people running this experiment have the power to make people you know move to the united states the you're talking about uh People who have in fact made it uh to to to the united states And so I think it's going to be an extremely limited subset That's going to be wildly unrepresentative of the larger group I think the larger point that even apart from the fact that that would be a hell of a weird coincidence That the you know descendants of slaves on average, you know are are doing so much worse the descendants of non-enslave people in an even bigger coincidence that uh That people whose you know parents or grandparents, you know, we're we're living under Under jim crow uh and and you know just desjure apartheid within living memory are doing so much better than people for for whom Uh, that's that's not the case on average that would be you know, but even beyond that I think I think it's I think it's very hard to deny That on average if you're born into poverty You're more likely to end in poverty than somebody who wasn't now That doesn't mean that there aren't people who are born into poverty Who manage to be up with the mobile? Of course there are that doesn't mean that there aren't people who aren't born into poverty who fall into it Of course they are but I think it's very implausible to deny That if you're born into poverty that considerably raises your chance of ended up in it Oh, I don't I don't I don't think I wouldn't dispute the being born in poverty You're more likely to die in poverty than someone who wasn't I mean that isn't but that I don't know if that really is necessarily relevant because well The relevance would just be that if you have like start with the moment Right, whatever moment you think this is right that like, okay You have no more racial discrimination We're you know equal playing field starting now, right that at that moment Uh, it is going to be the case that poverty is very unequally distributed because of all the discrimination etc, right and so given that if you have many more, you know If you have disproportionately a larger, you know portion of black people than the portion of white people who are born into poverty and you accept that uh somebody who is You know that somebody who's born uh into You know that somebody who's born into poverty is more likely to die in poverty Then I think once you put those two together Uh, you know, you have to acknowledge that at least a significant chunk of racial disparity comes from that history I won't dispute the possibility But uh, like like like you're absolutely Right that there could be a selection bias and those from the the afro-cribbian immigrating to the us in terms of the composition of the people That are coming but the same same could be said about Uh, the composition of the slaves that were brought here or the immigration patterns Well, what my point is is that I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying is that it's Not as clear cut as I I think a lot of people claim on both sides I I know a lot of people when I bring up that stat about the the anglo-cribbian a lot of people on the right Like well, that's case closed. I'm not going to look any further like that. That's that's not the right reaction either but Yeah, I would just I would just think that again if you acknowledge That uh, that at the moment of the end of legal discrimination Many more black people are because of that limited poverty of the white people. That's a Uncontroversial historical facts Then uh, and you also acknowledge That somebody born in poverty is at least more likely to to die in poverty Then that putting those two together um You know short of some sort short of what hell of a confounding factor That you know, I don't I'm not sure what that would be right like Uh, but putting those two together that seems to keep a lot more than just the bare possibility Of it right and that seems to give you a really good reason to think that that is at least a A really significant factor and I also don't think that there's really much of an analogy between saying that that people's That that of course, you know, who's going to You know what categories of people people with what life plans, etc Are going to uh to to make the effort to integrate in the first place not to mention, of course that there are a lot of things about our our immigration system That you know, it's it's a very it's a very difficult process, right? You know, we don't we don't we don't make it easy, right? So I I think that people Uh, who who a make the effort in the first place and be successful jump through all the hoops, etc etc Are going to be very unrepresentative a hard time to see the analogy between that and say that well maybe, you know enslaved ancestors of of uh, of You know black people, you know boarded the united states had some feature They had in common that was different from africans that were not enslaved It's it's it's at the very least it's a lot harder to see What the uh, you know, what the uh, like Like it's it's much less obvious what that what that cause and effect story looks like uh, then uh, then in the in the immigrant case and also Um, you know, I mean, I think, you know, it's that's packing a lot You know, I mean obviously heritable traits, etc But that's packing a lot into heritable traits over a very long period of time Especially because you know the most obvious genetic difference uh, you know between uh between the ancestry of uh, of you know, african americans and uh And and people who you know who were born into countries from you know From being the ancestors of many african americans were taken Uh is uh is the higher percentage of white ancestry of of african americans So unless that for some reason uh causes You know causes people to have some sort of heritable trait that makes them, you know Not rise through the economic ladder as well That it seems like by far the simplest and most compelling explanation would just be More black people in poverty coming out of legal discrimination Plus people born in poverty more likely to end up in poverty Well, it's just i Because you have your last words think you're doing let's go ahead and wrap it up after you have your Yeah, so um, I I absolutely agree that you know the day after jim crow was repealed or the emancipation It's not as if everything was great the uh, I'm not suggesting that um, I I think a big thing that's overlooked is uh And it's you have to be very careful when you propose this because it's it's often abused but uh black american culture was forged through the crucible of slavery and jim crow and it is distinct from uh black britains or black australians or dominicans like so it's not it's really it's not genetics but culture like there there are elements of the culture where some of them eschew a certain particular fields Or you know all you're going to college you're doing Here you know, you're doing what the man is plus there's a there's a subculture that uh is part of the drug war the drug war like blacks blacks kill themselves at three times three to five times the rate that's what that whites do And this is hard to do to gain warfare because of the drug war and the drug war with cartels and part and there's a cultural element to that as well and then they and You you grow up in that it reinforces. I'm not blaming anybody your rate like it's part of your Cultural, you know, and so that these are harmful things that have to be count for I don't think they necessarily fully explain it Culture doesn't fully explain it genetics doesn't explain it I don't think any one factor explains it and because the attempt to explain it is so politicized that I don't we're not really asking the right questions kind of thing and It's it's a complex topic and I I'm not sure what the answer is I just think that I don't think we should just look at one or just look at the other but it's difficult to really coalesce Those factors in a in a meaningful way All right. Thank you so much speaker of doom and dr. Ben Burgess for this riveting discussion I want to let everybody know and remind you that uh The debate con is coming up Hannah Anderson has just placed in the the chat a link to the crowdfunding uh, so if you would like to support james and modern day debate in In putting on this debate con then the crowdfunding link is there so you can go ahead and contribute to the pot I also want to thank you guys for having this discussion. So, um, we don't have a lot of questions Uh, like I I saw a question in the chat that wasn't a super chat, but I can answer it Someone note someone noticed that I was popping cough drops. They're asking what brand and uh, they're hauls and uh, they're specifically the uh, the cooling strawberry hauls and uh They taste good and the mentally deep filling feels nice. So that's that's why I picked them Well, I'm gonna, uh, give you what we have you guys can talk about as much as you want or as little as you want If any more super chats come in, of course, we'll read them until We call it a night and then that'll be it But if you do have any questions or comments for the uh debaters, please send them in now and again Their links are in the description. So please click them if you like what you've heard tonight If you want to learn more about them, please check them out Like share subscribe the like button. We have 62 likes right now in 143 viewers So I know we can get more likes. So please like the stream guys and um Okay, so super chats Just we have a two dollar super chat from bubble gum gun Uh at ben should the state have any quality of violence? Uh, that's odd phrasing but uh, but I I think that of course, um You know a big part of the function of a state is to take violence out of the the hands of uh, of private vigilantes, you know, that's one of the things that you uh that you hope for uh in uh in a state um And of course states also perpetuate a lot of you know, you know violence in uh, you know Waging rules abroad that I certainly you know that I certainly view as wildly illegitimate but um But you know, I think even putting aside the terrible state that we have right now and and thinking about a much a much better state Uh, then yeah, I do want there to be a uh an inequality in in you know, sort of ability to uh to use violence uh between You know me and you and josh on the one hand, uh and uh and people Who are tasked with you know certain kinds of you know enforcement on the other? Again, I'm very not crazy about the enforcement system that we have right now. I think we can do a lot better Uh, and and I certainly don't think that ordinary people, you know that like um random citizens should have no You know legal right to use violence. I mean, you know, even very authoritarian regimes generally recognize some kind of right to self-defense And you know and and that's that's as it should be um But you know, I think if I think if you have a world where um You know a lot of you know where the response to people being sort of interpersonally victimized Is it vigilanteism and vendetta's you know, that sounds like a better world to me? And uh, and and I think that it's also pretty bad Uh when you know, you end up with you know, people who have concentrated economic power It's bad enough when they're exercising a political influence to get uh to get the state what to do what they want It's it's even worse Uh when they're allowed to just have private armies like the you know, the pinkertons who would who would kill strikers Uh in the uh in the in the gilded age. So yeah, I I do think so Uh, I I also again on this whole question of violence or aggression or coercion Or any of that stuff, you know, any anything anything swirling around there I would just reiterate the point I made in the opening about um Why I think that when we're talking about distribution of resources those are largely red herrings because um, you know any any system for distributed resources Is is going to be you know backed up by coercion Or else it's going to very quickly not exist The the question on the table is always Which distribution of resources should be backed up by coercion? Do we think that you know Ships fall where they may at a free market and uh, and whatever the result is is fine Is that our theory of what a good system of distribution is? uh, do we think that You know, do we think that something much more egalitarian in that equality of opportunity way? I laid out, you know earlier is a good distribution of resources I think these are good substantive things to argue about but I think All of these questions about violence and coercion and all that are largely a red herring of that discussion Okay, thank you so much Um, the next question we have well, this is a comment from adam abela 15 shekels 35 short of a freshly raped virgin from Here you go, uh mdd now we have two superchats hooray. Thank you so much adam uh Joe schwarz for 199 for both. What's your favorite south park episode? Um You go first Uh, my favorite and grand. I haven't seen some of this newer stuff. I think I owe this classic scott tenerman episode Yeah, that is that is that is definitely a top five south park episode I mean, I'm in a similar similar situation there like I was No, I can remember like I definitely went through like Way the hell back when when I was like getting stuff from, you know video stores Uh, you know the the early seasons and I remember watching A lot of it is it was coming out of like 2010 2011 and then I really stopped for a long time. I will say actually Uh, that I you know the risk of dodging the question. I will say that I think that they're um That uh their coverage of the 2016 election was excellent. Uh, that they that like the the south park Uh satire of of that election was actually some of the best commentary on what was going on there that uh, You know that I've I've seen uh, I've seen from anyone, but yeah god. Let me think about that. Um Yes scott tenerman, uh is uh, is very good. Um I think Just try to think about like oh actually here. Here's one. I like a lot Honestly, I don't know that it's better than scott tenerman, but I I don't want to I don't want to just repeat your answer And so I'll I'll just say one that I like a lot is the toilet paper an episode uh, where um, they they have you know, the the Kids toilet paper the art teachers art teachers house and then well, I'm not going to give away everything that happens in the episode but uh There's a there's a discussion at the end between the other kids and cartman about feeling empathy You know, we we care about other people eric that uh, that is like one of the funniest things. I think in the entire show Okay, thank you so much Did you guys both get to answer that? Yeah at length Okay, um Where are we? Uh, that was Joe Schwartz. We have another one from a long story short for five dollars I grew up with caribbeans my entire life. They never thought of themselves as victims. That is why they are successful I think that is for Well, who uh, yeah, so so yeah, yeah, josh was the one who brought it up and it sounds like the commenters agreeing with him uh, yeah, I mean so so I think that uh That claim right I mean partially gets down to questions about Kind of what josh was talking about the end of open discussion, you know the extent to which You think that the sort of main explanation for for disparities is Uh, culture or the ideas in people's heads Uh, as opposed to more more directly material factors Uh, and and I'm very skeptical in general of culturalist explanations I I think that you know, they're if nothing else there are too many examples of you know, like ethnic groups that at times when Uh, when poverty was extremely widespread among them you had a lot of social ills that people blame on culture And uh, and and they those decreased like I say, uh, you know after after the the economic improves And it doesn't seem like this an obvious change in uh in culture uh, you know the the idea that somebody, you know, like like Hard-striving immigrants or just go-getters and you know that that's the that's the sort of made explanation uh for for the disparity I I mean, I I guess, um Certainly You know the fact that immigration pre-selects for people with given left plans and aspirations and etc I wouldn't deny, you know, that that's that that's part of the explanation in fact I think that actually Kind of reinforces my point right that they that those things only go so far right that you know that We're not comparing, you know Um, we're not comparing like just any random Caribbean Uh as they are in the united states Um, you know as an immigrant to the you know, like, you know, just any random Caribbean just wakes up teleported into the united states tomorrow You know, we're not comparing them to any random african-american board in the united states Which which would be the the like-to-like comparison. We're we're comparing people who? whether you attribute it Um, sort of happenstance giving people a chance to do one thing or another or whether you attribute it to people to go get Instrivers or whatever Uh, either way, right? You're talking about a very different subset of of caribbeans than than just like Representative cross-section of everybody of everybody from from the Caribbean And you're comparing that not to like let's let's just assume for the sake of argument that the the questioners Explanations the correct one, but uh, okay, so the like-to-like comparison would be what's the success rate of The most striving go-getting whatever percentage You know like of uh, there would be a comparable size percentage Of african-americans to the comparably sized percentage of caribbeans And um, and even if it is the case, right, you know, maybe it's the case that they that that would be, you know You'd have just as much success in both cases I think the fundamental point wouldn't really be touched by it, right because the sort of fundamental point is that If you're born into poverty, it's harder Not impossible definitely not impossible lots people do it, but it's harder to us to Be you know to escape from poverty to have a different economic location later That it is if you are not born into poverty to uh to stay out of it and So whatever combination of factors you think Might lead some people to be you know more successful at that than others in terms of just you know sure those attitudes or A particular material advantages at particular moments in someone's life that you know that might come up for one reason or another sheer dumb luck You know genetic propensity towards certain skills, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera Whatever factors are you think make some people better to escape in poverty than others If those factors are going to be unevenly distributed just like the same factors are unequally unevenly distributed among people who are not born into poverty Then you're you're going to have more people From the first group end up in poverty than the second group and that would still be by far The best explanation of why you have these racial disparities in poverty Uh, I'd like to kind of piggyback on that just just to be clear. I was not referring to the entire Caribbean I was speaking to the Anglo-Caribbean because I wanted to keep I wanted to keep constant the fact that they speak english And african-american speak english So it's kind of like Jamaica trinidad, you know parts of the caribbean that are almost entirely Uh composed of black people and they have a legacy of slavery and they speak the english language You could even include Guyana in the serename in that Even though it's south america and not the caribbean Uh interestingly enough prairie weekends that emigrate they do not see the same pattern As you see uh from the uh anglo-caribbean part of that is because they don't speak english as a native language Um, also, but at the same time Roughly 12 percent of prairie weekends are also afro, uh, latino So many of them are white hispanics. So it's it really really raises the question of how much they're visible Ethnicity or race has an impact on that But at the same time I fully concede like it's difficult to account for the selection issue there, but I I don't think it's sweet. It can be completely discounted either We do have to keep it short and busy from now on guys Okay, just just just really quickly. I was I was going to say uh that the uh that uh that I think Uh, I mean, I'll certainly take that you're not talking about all caribbeans as a friendly amendment But I think everything that I said during the previous few minutes You could just substitute jamaicans for caribbeans and I think the point would stand Okay, all right So I guess I'll some people wanted to send in some more super tets after we uh started the q&a so Moving along long nights youtube in for five dollars says I wish we would stop calling black people black people and white people whites I'm sorry. I wish we would stop calling black people blacks and white people whites We lose the people factor and it relegates us to a color always in us versus them dynamic I think uh, did any of you want to comment on that? I I think um the the uh rhetorical weight of those words is up to society And we can decide whether there's some sort of moral aspect to that or not and I personally don't or I strive to at least not to Have any kind of moral like oh blacks versus black people whites versus white people. I can't say that other people don't but I'm not sure I necessarily I I sympathize with the sentiment sentiment. I don't think it's necessary to have the word people in it for us to consider them people Yeah, well, I certainly agree with that I will say that that usage blacks whites Maybe just because it's dated and maybe it's an arbitrary association But it certainly sounds funny to my ear, you know, like like like the more natural way to talk to me Will be white people and black people, but I'm also very skeptical that language choices Are are the sort of main driving force of any of this stuff Okay, thank you so much moving along a long story short for five dollars says Ben needs to take a field trip to new york and just talk to caribbean and west africans It will give you insight. Haitians are in the same as average americans Um Okay Uh, I I mean, I think the last the last sentence was the most interesting Uh, that's certainly not my impression for my six and a half years living in miami, which has a very large Haitian population Uh, but you know, but since it's an empirical question, you don't have to like look it up and probably do Um, you know, we can do the youtube thing where people look it up in 10 seconds and sort of glance at it and You know, but I think we're probably a more interested answer You know, give it a little bit more time to look into the empirical claim, uh at the uh at the end Uh, but uh, but I I'm always happy to take trips to new york. I like taking trips to new york I try to do that regularly and one of the people that I I try to see there is is actually, you know, by coincidentation So, uh, so it's a it's a fun question. I like it I am I have a question for you ben more house college. That's where you teach, right? Uh, yeah, so so as a uh, as Yeah, so so I as an adjunct. I actually just started at a gig at uh at more house parents Yeah, what was your question? Well, I mean more houses in Atlanta. It's a historically black college so I'm just I was curious if of The the composition of the student body that you see Oh, yeah, it's it's a it's an overwhelmingly black, uh college is is my you know, I mean, this is actually again I'm I'm gonna be Coming in and starting to starting to teach there So there's not a lot of information that I could give you but my but certainly my understanding is that it's overwhelmingly black college It's a it's a yeah, it's a hbcu is the uh is the acronym people use, you know, so it's a historically black college okay cool All right The last super chat that I have on my list right now is from warren ellis for five dollars He asks have either of you read anthony atkinson's book inequality if you had What do you think of his solutions for the uk and the us? I can't hear you. You're making I was just gonna say i'm not familiar with that book. Are you josh? I Okay, I will say I definitely saw at least one other super chat earlier. I don't I don't know if it got lost in the You know, I do know that one was there was some kind of trauma about somebody having a super chat that he didn't want if Anybody knows what super chat dr. Burgess is referring to please say so right now. I'm watching this live chat Uh Okay, so if not we can move on we do have other questions to talk about okay, so so if if I'm not just making it up the The super chat I could swear remember from earlier was uh our It was something like you know Are some people fat because other people are thin or something like that and uh, and and if if if that if my memory is That correct. I did want to answer that just because it's a you know It's it's a fun question. I'd say yeah under certain circumstances. Absolutely, you know if You know if you if you have limited amounts of food to go around or or even if you have Economic disparities that that leads you know to some people having less of a You know less time and you know an energy, you know to to cook healthy food, etc or hey if uh, you know if you if you're uh, you know, you could also have have weight disparities because of You know undiagnosed medical conditions, you know, you could be really thin because you have a tapeworm You haven't found out about because you don't want to go to the doctor Because because you don't want to cope I have been accused of that being being anorexic or a tapeworm most of my life But I just have a crazy metabolism Gotcha. Okay. Uh, so uh some other questions. We do have about five minutes left. Um Noob Slayer asks who you are Like what like what cosmic cosmically like that's a that's an open question. Um I guess it really I guess it's more like how I answer that question tells me what kind of person I am It's like it's a it's a meta question. Uh, I mean, I'm I'm a chemical engineer I'm kind of an econ nerd. I actually really I really like debating not in the sense Not in the contrarian sense. Uh, I learned uh in my youth that You can only learn so much on your own you y'all have intellectual And emotional uh blind spots and you can only learn so much from those with whom you agree because they likely have those same blind spots So at some point you have to Subject your reviews to scrutiny and start talking to people with whom you disagree to learn something new And that's a big part where I enjoy debate Sorry Thank you so much. Uh, john edwards asked wait. Where is james cas you moderating? Yes, I'm moderating james is uh Dedicating his firstborn child to rumpelstiltskin as I said in the chat. No, I'm just kidding. He is uh studying I believe or working on his phd Skeptic 77 are the books behind ben all books he read No, no, certainly not. Uh, there are uh, a lot of books that I've read behind me But there are also books that you know, I hope to read at some point, you know, I'm I'm I've always been kind of a book hoarder Uh, there's you know, like like I I you know, there are all those memes about like You know, hey, are you going to read all the books you have before you get more books? And you know, I was like now I'm going to get these books, you know, this is this books first Uh, when you know what I had, um You know, it's it's you know, I always end up giving books away when I move whatever I buy I buy too many books. I think actually stuff that's visible is pretty much all stuff I've read But there's definitely stuff on these shelves. I have no question about that Gotcha. Thank you so much. All right. Um noob slayer question noob slayer You know, I just realized his his name is longer than that or maybe not Uh question for both. He says what Why care about any of this? What's the ethical argument to even bother considering equality or whatever? Yes, I guess that's more of a question for me because because I'm the one who thinks that we should care about it That that at least all else paid equal, you know, it's it's you know, much better You know to to have a more equal society. Uh, I think that again, I I went through a bunch of reasons in uh in the opening I think that if you you know, if you think that, uh, if you if you will at least grant me That citizens should have an equality of political power. I think that gives us a reason to care about economic equality Maybe you don't care about that. Uh, if you if you care about freedom that I think That I think making people less vulnerable to the soft coercion of of needing to do what do they say in order to have, you know People having that sway over them's their material needs that uh, is an important reason. Maybe you don't care about freedom either If you uh, if you care You know if you care about people having You know lacking equality of opportunity I mean we spent a lot I spent a lot of time both in the opening of the back and forth with josh Talking about why I think equality of opportunity is incompatible with large scale With what large scale inequality of outcome. Maybe you don't care about it equality of opportunity either That's one of the kinds of equality you're asking why we should care about Uh, and then I also said this was the only remaining one I haven't mentioned. I also said that uh People having shorter less happy Uh, you know more stressful lives because uh that they could be prevented by somewhat equalizing resources Uh is is a is a problem But again, maybe you don't care about that and if you really don't care about any of this stuff Then we can go back to that south park episode that I mentioned Where where the the boys are desperately trying to explain to cartman who's just looking at them like they're crazy Nowhere we care about other people and he's just like what So, uh, I think both of us should care about this because we care about how the economy is structured and that affects people one way or the other And we just disagree on how best to structure the economy and whether You know, what what are the appropriate or the inappropriate constraints? What are any any sort of interventions? Uh, or the standards by which we would uh, Judge our actions or inactions and uh, this is this is an element of that and I mean that's why I care about it And to answer like I do care about opportunity and people's, you know agency and whatnot But I I don't see them as some sort of singular good I mean we talked about the various conditions that should or shouldn't matter At length and I don't it wasn't even exhausted. We ran it at even they had the time but uh Yes, we can we kind of just you would have any much more time to you know reconcile our views if ever Gotcha. Well, thank you so much. Um, I think we're gonna ask our last questions here. Um Rock E shepherd is asking what is the best form of government? Do you like constitutional republic? And he's not addressing anyone specifically so Just give me a yes or no each of you The second question at least I have no problems with the constitutional republic. I'm not sure it's the best Federations have their advantages and the disadvantages. I don't think there's any one good form of government Uh, a good government is one that isn't oppressive. How about that? That encourages Oh, sorry, uh, I I did the thumbs up earlier for uh, yeah I think a good form of government is one where uh, that you know maximizes people's um ability in practice to uh To to uh control their their own their own destiny to to determine what happens to them Which I think in areas that touch a bunch of other people means democracy Uh in in areas that are just about yourself, you know, uh means, you know means personal freedom And and yeah, I like democracy. I like it so much that I want to extend it to the workplace Thank you so much. Okay. Um, so my clock is up for the q&a. You guys ready to get out of here Pretty much. Um, I just want to ask you guys a personal not personal question But I just wanted to know um, uh, dr. Burgess and speaker doom are or Are you guys moral relativists moral realists moral objectivists? What would you call yourselves? Just I just want to know the label. You don't have to expound on it or anything. I just want to know I mean, I I don't think that there's uh if I don't think that there's a there's a short answer to that I don't think there's a I don't think there's a short label that i'm confident is true That uh, that I could just I could just give the the label. I have I have some thoughts, uh, you know, I I think I I'm certainly not a relativist in the sense of like Uh, the sort of like 19 year old, you know, intro to ethics student relativist, you know, it's like, oh, you know, whatever And it's just like the opinion nothing to worry about Clearly not but uh in terms of like meta ethics I I don't know. It's it's a very big subject and I would not I would not claim to have like really settled views Interesting and speaker doom. I'm I'm kind of like we I'm kind of in the same boat It's difficult to put those views in a box Uh, I will I will I will say at least for clarification is that more relatives of relatives and just seems very puzzling to me Because at the end of the day morality is deciding, you know A framework for acceptable or unacceptable obligatory or discretionary behaviors And that either applies to everybody or doesn't we may disagree on what those behaviors should or shouldn't be Or what should or shouldn't be in those in those categories, but it it just seems odd to me But then again, uh, maybe I should uh look further into it and I just something I hadn't considered Okay, thank you so much guys. Thank you both so much for this great debate Um, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up. If unless you guys have anything else you want to say No, okay. So again, thanks to the moderators Thank you the debaters and speakers for this great discussion Thank you to the moderators in the chat for keeping everything very civil and uh working so hard and tirelessly Thank you to james for creating and maintaining this wonderful platform that we all get to share our Ideas and have great discussions on. Uh, thank you to the audience for participating and watching us and making this Everything that it is. Uh, thank you to everyone who sat in super chats and elevating the conversation. Thank you to, uh Once again, lastly the light debaters whether the life of the show Like share subscribe. Once again, uh, we have another debate coming up tomorrow Dr. Seigart and Jen From church of entropy for evolution Is going to be debated The debate con is coming up in a couple weeks. So please support that by tickets if you can go down and see them live And remember to keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable and with that we are going to be leaving Have a great night everyone