 Hey everybody, today we're doing capitalism versus socialism and we're starting right now with James Hakes opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us, Hake. The floor is all yours. Well, thank you very much for having me, James, of Modern Day Debate and thank you to Mouthy Infidel for joining me. This is going to be a fun discussion. Merry Christmas and happy New Year, everybody. Those who support capitalism, which is distinguished from libertarianism. Capitalism is about Christianity, responsibility, morals, and freedom. Those who support capitalism or the capitalism supporters, the capitalists are like a father who has a proper hands-off approach to the children, to the people. A father will let you fall, will let you suffer, will let you hate him, will always give you the opportunity to change. He will punish you when you violate the rules of the home. But once you're on your own, you're free, you're on your own. He will punish you, but then he will let you go. And then after that, it's a sink or swim type of situation. And that type of situation, that suffering, that threat of being out on the streets, if you don't take care of yourself, is how you grow and learn and survive and even thrive in society. You make a way and you become a value to society. And rather than a drain on society, on yourself, on your family, on your community, you freely give to people where you see value. You donate to them. You become a patron of them. You are not forced to give to a corrupt government or to people who are just immoral and living their lives immorally. Those who support socialism on the other hand, which is the same thing as communism in my mind, just at the thread of a gun, are like a meddling mother who just feels sorry for the people, feels sorry for criminals, suppresses the natural talent of the people, is jealous and undermining of success and talent and excellence, enabling and babying grown men until they flip out and kill her or else they cave in and give up on life or kill other people. She has a twisted idea of what fairness is and that makes her pretend that she's right to punish the innocent. And we've seen that. We're seeing that in America today. We have a capitalist, I mean a socialist country right now. She pretends that she's right in giving the deadbeats and thieves, including herself, more stuff. It's an ego gratification, feeling sorry for people whom she feels are inferior to her and inferior to the other people whom she's giving preferential treatment. And it depilitates them and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. She accuses the innocent and justifies her own evil. She cares nothing for consistency, for truth or what's right. Socialism is an atheistic concept. So that's my opening statement. Thank you very much, James Haig, for that opening statement. And folks, one last note. It's your first time here at Modern Day Debate. We are a neutral channel hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. We hope you feel welcome. No matter what walk of life you are from politically left, politically right, you name it. And with that, thanks so much, Alfie. The floor is all yours for your opening and welcome. Thanks. So I take it that before really diving into this, I should at least establish a working definition for capitalism and a working definition for socialism so that we kind of know what we're talking about, at least in my opinion or the way I conceive of things. There are, broadly speaking, three categories of goods in any economy. So there are non-produced assets, so things like land and natural resources. There are capital goods, so things which are used as inputs into production, so like factories or equipment and things like that. And then there are consumer goods, so things that like individual consumers consume, so things like clothes, food, video games, et cetera. And I take it that capitalism is just generally defined as the private, an economic system which is based on the private ownership of non-produced assets and capital goods, whereas socialism is generally defined as an economic system based around public or democratic or collective ownership and control of capital goods and non-produced assets. Whereas generally speaking, both capitalists and socialists are fine with private ownership of consumer goods. So that's the basic distinction between capitalism and socialism. The next question is more concretely, what would the vision or what would the version of socialism that I propose look like? So how is it that I think we can achieve a society that fulfills the principles that I just laid out of collective ownership and so on? Generally speaking, this is going to be a very broad, very quick sketch. The vision of socialism that I advocate for is one wherein the commanding heights of the economy, generally speaking, so certain sectors like healthcare or education or public utilities are taken out of the market entirely and moved and basically nationalized and are just completely owned and run by the government. And then of course, in the sectors where we still want markets to operate and allocate goods, we can still have public ownership in the form of say the government through a social wealth fund, buying and owning up shares in the competing companies in the market. And then in addition to the public ownership element of socialism, I also advocate for worker control. So that involves things like co-determination policies, like workers having representation on boards of directors in the companies that they work at, or having ownership shares in the companies that they work at, in addition to of course, having like large sectoral unions and so on. So that's the basic idea. And then the next question is what are the advantages that I believe my vision of socialism has over Hakes vision of free market capitalism? Well, there are several obviously, but to keep it short, I'm just going to list off three that I think are pretty important. So for one, we have inequality. Under capitalism, we have a situation where tens of thousands of people die every year because they can't afford healthcare. Meanwhile, there are people like Jeff Bezos who have so much money that by their own admission, the only way they could possibly spend it all is by engaging in extravagant activities like going to space, right? And so the next question is, why does this inequality exist under capitalism? Well, the basic idea is that like one third of all the income that's produced by our country is called capital income. Capital income flows to people who own capital. And since under capitalism, capital is owned privately by some people rather than publicly by everyone, that capital income flows very unequally to a small privileged group, privileged population of our society. But why should we care about that? Well, for one, we could just point to the falling marginal utility of income. The basic idea is as you get richer, every extra dollar that you earn means less, right? So if I give Jeff Bezos an extra $1,000 every month, that's pocket change. It's not going to really mean much. But if I give some poor struggling family an extra $1,000 a month, that's the difference between deep poverty and a decent, respectable existence, I guess. And so if we have an economic system that's distributing wealth grossly unequally, then we have an economic system that's distributing economic resources in such a way that people who need those resources much less are getting in excessive amounts of resources at the expense of people who, if these resources were distributed to them, it would mean much more, right? But then there are also broader effects of inequality, which we could be, which we should be concerned with. For example, high inequality leads to lower economic growth because people on the lower end of that distribution have less access to things like quality healthcare, quality education, and other resources that are necessary for becoming a productive member of society. And when less people can become productive members of society, that leads to a less economically productive society. In addition to that, it's been shown that higher levels of inequality leads to things like higher crime and lower social cohesion because inequality, of course, breeds resentment. In addition to that, high levels of inequality corrode democracy. Obviously, if I call up Joe Biden's office, nothing's going to happen. If Jeff Bezos does it, he's going to be immediately accepted, right? Rich people have an ability to lobby the government and so on and earn political favors in a way that less rich people don't, which leads to them having a heavily uneven level of influence over how our government operates, which of course flies in the face of the ideal of democracy. The next point I wanted to make is the idea of internalizing externalities. So basically, under capitalism, there's a lot of overlap between what's useful for humanity on the one hand and what's profitable on the other hand. So for example, the shirt I'm wearing is useful for me and obviously some capitalists found it profitable to produce this shirt, right? But there's also a lot of non-overlap as well. For example, filling the atmosphere full of fossil fuels is probably bad for society, but it's nonetheless profitable and so capitalists keep doing it, right? Providing universal healthcare for everybody would be beneficial for society, but it's not profitable to do it for insurance companies so they don't do it, right? And the reason for this is because the calculation for profit under capitalism is revenue minus cost, but not every source of benefit that an economic decision will make for society reflects on the balance sheets of the capitalist in terms of revenue. And the same thing goes for, you know, not every detriment to society or that accrues to society as a result of a particular economic decision shows up on the balance sheet of the capitalist in the form of cost. And the final point that I wanted to make is the point of alienation. So most of us spend most of our lives in a capitalist enterprise which is fundamentally run like a private dictatorship where you basically have no control over your job whatsoever. And this leads to a lot of job dissatisfaction. People don't like spending half their lives in an institution where they have no control over, you know, how that institution is run or what they're doing, right? So a few statistics on that. 72% of North Americans are not engaged in their jobs. They report feeling dissatisfied and alienated from their work. And North Americans are the most engaged of any world region, right? And furthermore, studies have found that alienation from work, so feelings of powerlessness, self-estrangement and normlessness directly correlates with higher occupational self-direction and indirectly correlates with higher worker ownership and higher hierarchical positions. So yeah, it seems like we have, you know, good sort of a priori reasons why we think this is the case. And we additionally have empirical evidence supporting the fact that the hierarchical organization of businesses under capitalism breeds a lot of alienation, which is really problematic, right? Because given how much time we all spend at our jobs, it's important that we get it right. And it seems like capitalism utterly fails on that front. Now, finally, I guess before kicking it back over to James, the most immediate concern that people will have is they'll say, sure, capitalism has flaws. And in theory, socialism sounds like a nice solution. However, it just has been shown not to work in practice. Now, my response to this is that socialism is a very broad concept with a lot of different models and institutions and historical examples. Some of these models have failed miserably, such as the Soviet Union. Just as early capitalist experiments failed miserably as capitalism initially emerged out of feudalism. And I agree that we should learn from these failures and that socialists should guide our model of socialism away from what has been shown to fail and towards what has been shown to be successful, so as not to emulate those failures. Indeed, the elements which are crucial to the model of socialism, which I've laid out, things like social wealth funds, nationalization of certain industries, unions, redistribution, etc., have all been successfully beta tested numerous times under capitalism. It's just a matter of putting those ingredients together. If you want to look towards the countries which come closest to emulating my provisional socialist utopia, we can look to places like Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, some of the most prosperous countries in the world, at least according to their poverty rates, the World Happiness Index, the Social Progressiveness Index, etc. So yeah, that's basically it. You got it. Thank you very much for that opening statement as well. And once you know both, we are absolutely thrilled if you have somehow not heard about modern-day debates, first-ever debate conference, Debate Pond, which is on January 15th and 16th in Dallas, Texas. My dear friends, this is going to be huge. Tickets are on sale. So I want to let you know, I'm throwing the link for the tickets in the description box, as well as in the live chat. If you haven't grabbed the tickets yet, I have a job to face. Let's extend the early bird prices to get it on us. It's dirt cheap right now, folks. We are pumped about it. And with that, thank you very much to our guest for jumping into the open dialogue. Thanks very much. Malfi and James, the floor is all yours. Well, in my view, capitalism is earning your way. And socialism is free, quote unquote, free stuff taken from normal, actually working people who earned it, and redistributing it to angry, ungrateful people who don't deserve anything. And so I don't see it as I don't see the injustice that's happening in America as a product of capitalism, but a product of socialism. Malfi Infidel mentioned how Jeff Bezos and other rich people who might call commie capitalists, they're no friends of America, and they're not for freedom. They have undue influence on the government because the government is already socialist. The government is already over meddling in life. And that's why they have that influence, because the government has that power. And so they're just colluding against the people. And that's why I call it commie capitalism, because capitalism and socialism aren't really opposites. One is a stepping stone to the other, especially when the society gets more corrupt. As the people are more immoral, the capitalism starts to tatter and people usher in socialism by way of the misery of the people that Malfi Infidel mentioned. So there is a lot of misery in the people, but that is spurred on by dishonest people. Some of the most dishonest people are the socialists who are including Jeff Bezos and those people. Okay, so I guess there's a couple of things I would say about that. The first thing is that when it comes to Bezos and people's influence over our democracy and whether or not that would occur within a more freer market capitalist system, I think that it probably would. So there's a lot of talk among populist capitalist types about how inequality is largely just a product of government intervention, but this is actually not true. Even in the most free market capitalist system imaginable, there would still be gross inequality. And this is because even a free market capitalist system distributes the national income based sole marginal productive capital and labor. And this inevitably creates large amounts of inequality for at least three reasons. The first reason is that around half of the population neither works nor owns a considerable amount of capital. So their true factor income is around zero dollars. The second reason is that there are considerable productivity differences between different kinds of jobs and so wage differences would also remain very high even in the absence of rent. And the third reason is that capital is distributed extremely unevenly. And so capital payments would remain very unequal even without rent seeking behavior and so on. And so if I can show, which I think I have, that any free market capitalist system will produce gross inequality. And if the government still exists in such a system, then it's just an inevitability that some people have way more money than others. So some people will have more of an ability to influence the government than others, right? This just seems like an inevitability under any capitalist system. Additionally, you talk about how, you know, the problem with socialism is you give people free stuff by taking it from those who earn it. And I guess I would like to, I guess maybe probe a little bit what you mean by that because it seems like there's two sort of appeals happening. One of them is an appeal to desert or what people deserve. And the other thing that's happening is you're sort of appealing to this idea that, you know, it's wrong because it's coercive, like we're coercing people and we're taking their stuff to give it to others. And so I guess I'm just wondering, like, which of those things do you think is, like, more fundamental to your argument before I, you know, try and address it? I see that kind of as the same thing because when you're taking something from someone by force and this stuff is enforced by the government, it's not really enforced by the people. There are like a bunch of useful idiots who support it, but it's the injustice is against the individual. If that answers your question. Yeah, I think so. So it seems like, you know, the injustice comes from the fact that, you know, you're coercing people to take their stuff. Okay, so I guess this is gonna, I'm gonna try not to take too long, but the sort of coercion rabbit hole is a bit of a, you know, is a bit of a complicated thing. So I hope if it's okay, I can just like take a little, take a couple minutes to lay out sort of my view on this, and then I'll give you as much time as you need to respond, of course. Right. So in my view, the problem with appeals to coercion is the following. When capitalists say that redistribution is wrong because it involves coercion, they can't just mean that it's always wrong to forcibly exclude a scarce material resource from someone because that would condemn all property ownership. You know, what is property ownership? If not me saying, I'm, you know, taking ownership over the scarce material resource, and if you don't like it, I have the right to coerce you if you don't comply with that arrangement. Right. So therefore, what the capitalist means by coercion is that we forcibly removed a scarce material resource from someone that belonged to them. The key question then is what we mean by belong. Right. Clearly we can't mean legal ownership because redistribution done by the state is illegal. And clearly we can't mean current possession. Right. Because if somebody steals my car and then I steal it back, presumably no capitalist would object to what I did and call it like saft or coercion. So what the capitalist means is moral entitlement. Therefore, what the capitalist is saying is that it's wrong to forcibly take a scarce material resource from someone provided that they had a moral right to it. Now notice that this moral entitlement prong of the definition of coercion is doing all of the argumentative work. Capitalists don't oppose violence or coercion so long as that coercion doesn't violate the moral entitlement prong. But of course, socialists agree that we shouldn't take things from people when people are morally entitled to those things. Right. That's just a tautology. So the real disagreement between capitalists and socialists has nothing to do with violence, pro or con or coercion, pro or con. It just comes down to what property people have a moral right to and appeals to coercion do nothing to settle that question. Therefore appeals to coercion are simply misleading and don't really do much argumentative work at all. Right. Now coercion defined neutrally exists equally in capitalism as it does in socialism. So imagine I'm looking to find a house to live in. I'm presented in the status quo with the following choices. I can pay a landlord rent to live in some building or I can be homeless. If I pay the landlord rent, this will be described as a voluntary non coercive transaction by a capitalist. After all, I chose option one because it was the best of the two. But wait a minute, right? These two options aren't the only conceptually possible options. There could be a third option. I could just move into the building and pay nothing to the landlord. If I had that third option available, I would definitely choose it. But I don't because the state has violently and coercively foreclosed that option. Through its construction of property law, the state has declared that landlords may call it on the phone and have it violently remove me from the building if I chose option three. That is the state has through violent physical coercion restricted the options that are available to me. It is only due to this coercion that I chose option one and pay the landlords anything. And so imagine a second example. Imagine I'm thinking of getting a job. I have two following options in the status quo. I can get a job and pay income taxes on the income from that job or I cannot get a job. This is an identical situation to the one that I just gave. Given this range of possible options, I choose one. I choose option one. So our income tax is voluntary and non-coercive. It would seem so. At minimum, paying income tax is just as voluntary as me paying rent to a landlord. That is, I have chosen that option among all of the available options because it is the best one. But of course, the rub is that this is not a complete set of possible options. There's a third option here that the state forecloses, get a job and do not pay income taxes. That third option is the one libertarians would choose or capitalists, but the state through violent physical coercion has prevented them from having this option. But the problem with libertarians or laissez faire capitalists is that they will describe my choice to pay rent as non-coerced and voluntary while describing my choice to pay income taxes as coerced and involuntary. But there's no neutral construction of coercion that would ever support such a distinction. So that's sort of my, broadly speaking, my problem with these sorts of appeals to coercion. I know that took a while, so you can take as long as you want to respond. So in short, you're talking about undermining the notion of somebody's right to what they own and then and then equating coercion of enforcing what's right, which is to say you don't pay rent, evict you, which people today, they have way too much, they have more right to what they are than the person who actually owns the place. Equating that with coercion over what's just to force what's wrong. I think that capitalism and the Christian version of capitalism is enforcing what's right over what's wrong. And socialism, which is atheistic and anti-what's right, is about coercing what's wrong against what's right. And you mentioned inequality. I want to make a mention of it. Inequality and even so-called gross inequality is not inherently wrong. Inequality will increase the more prosperous a society gets. And that does bode ill for that society because the richer people are, the more temptations they have, the more corrupt people tend to get. They get spoiled and they get corrupt and just start abusing one another. So that is true. But inherently, a society will get more and more unequal, but everybody's doing better in life if they have their freedom. And people who blacks 50, 100 years ago were much more poor physically than what they are today, yet they're more angry and more bitter and they have more crime today than they did 60 years ago. So this materialism that socialists believe in, which is to say they believe that poverty causes crime, inequality causes resentment, no, it's the anger that they are brought up in, the immoral lives, the broken families, the angry mothers. And they start to think like those angry mothers. And that's why they're all caught up in these physical issues and division when it's really not their problem. The rich people are not their problem. Okay. So the first thing I would say is that you said that my sort of rebuttal to the arguments from coercion are undermining the notion of someone's right to what they own and conflating coercion over what's right, over coercion of what's wrong. And I kind of like the way that you put that, because my whole issue is that if you want to say, okay, but the coercion, if you want to say sure, coercion happens in capitalism and socialism, but the coercion that happens under capitalism is justified because we are creating a system of coercion that's justified, that's upholding a just distribution or just distributional system of property ownership. Whereas the coercion under socialism is bad because it's a coercion which is upholding an unjust system of property ownership. Then that's fine. You can say that. The problem that I was originally taking, the sort of gist of my rebuttal, is that you originally said that socialism is bad because it involves coercion. And all I'm saying is, well, no, you can't say that socialism is bad because it's coercive, right? Because you equally support coercion. So the disagreement between us isn't which. Those are not the people to be trusted with this power. We have the more freedom, the better, but you can't have the freedom without the morality. And that's why I think the solution is pushing, bringing back morality and interpersonal enforcing of what's right. Well, so I guess I don't understand because it seems like, so my original intention was just that, well, you can't appeal to coercion as to why capitalism is better than socialism because they both have coercion equally. And so the real disagreement is over which system should be justifiably upheld through coercion. They're not really argumentatively useful. And now you're saying that the symmetry breaker is not under socialism. The coercion is enforced by corrupt people. But I don't really think that's going to be a symmetry breaker because whether we're talking about capitalism or socialism, the system that we're trying to uphold is going to be coercively enforced by the same people, which is the government, right? Not true. Not true. Because when you have capitalism, you have more the people control. It's more that ideally the companies aren't going to be able to be in bed with the government because the government is not big or powerful enough or micromanaging and meddling enough to have influence on the people's lives. Okay, but think back to my earlier... It's too different. It's not going to be the same people. Okay, but think back to my earlier analogy as to why capitalism and socialism both have coercion, right? Imagine I can either pay a landlord and live in a house or I can not live in that house, but imagine I choose the third option and I choose, hey, I'm going to not pay anything and still live in the house, right? Who's going to enact coercion to stop me from choosing that option, right? It's going to be the government, right? So it's going to be the same people. I don't know. Well, in almost every case, that's going to be the case. Now, I guess you could make the argument that under socialism... Would you rather confront the local cops or your landlord or would you rather try to confront this unnamed bureaucrat who's making this decision for you? Because you're at the mercy of the bureaucrat and you have no way of confronting them. Under socialism or capitalism, if you try to take something from someone else, it's going to be the local cops who come to stop you from doing that, right? So it's the same people. It's the same amount of coercion. It's the same people and coercion. The only difference is which system of property distribution are we trying to uphold through coercion and settling which system that should be cannot be settled by appealing to coercion itself. It's just going to have to be settled by different considerations. You're the one who brought up this coercion thing. I brought up it's done by the government and by force. And I guess you're saying you're thinking that I'm just hung up on coercion. I just brought up the point that who is forcing this? It's not the boss and the workers freely making a deal. Okay, this is how we want to run our business. You guys have control. No, it's done by force by some outside entity that's micrometalling and micromanaging and costing and just draining on society. They're not bringing value to society. And so this, I don't know, it's kind of crazy the way that you're thinking. Okay, so I guess I still don't fully understand, right? Because you're saying that like, well, you're saying I'm not hung up on coercion. I was just talking about force and then you sort of go on to make the same appeals about how under capitalism things are free contracts, free of coercion, under socialism, things are forced by the government. I didn't say free of coercion. It's local control. When you have local control, it's so much better. You can face the person who's wronging you. You cannot face the government. It hides from you. Would you rather face the local police or the feds? The federal police are much worse. Well, I don't see what about socialism. So like I take it that socialism is big government. Sure. But I take it that the dispute between capitalists and socialists is not over whether the government or the local government like it is in part laws. I mean, I don't think so. I think like the dispute between capitalists versus socialists is generally just about whether we want capital goods and non produced assets in the hands of the public or in the hands of private owners, right? That's the academic version, both capitalism and socialism by any common conception are compatible with either laws being enforced by the federal or local government. So I just I don't know why that would be a consideration because in reality in practice, look at what they're doing. That's just a constant power grab. The socialists in the government, which is both the Republicans and many of the dead and the Democrats, they're they're grabbing more and more control and micromanaging and enforcing like ridiculous statement, ridiculous things. Okay, I see. So your contention isn't necessarily your so the point you're making now is that fine. It's not necessarily the case that socialism has more coercion than capitalism. No, that is the case. Well, okay, but so it's so it seems to me that the point you're making now is just coercion. Sure. But it seems like the point you're making now is that it's the issue isn't necessarily the existence of coercion. It's that under socialism and under capitalism, both in both cases, the system of distribution is being propped up by government coercion. But under socialism, it's not just under socialism, the government becomes more corrupt. Is that like the idea? And it's not just coercion, it's theft. Sure. But I just take it that, you know, saying that it's theft sort of runs into the same problems that I was pointing out with coercion, where if you didn't, it's like, what does theft mean? And what you mean by just muddying the waters, though? Well, no, but so you say it's theft, right? But my problem is like, okay, well, what does theft mean? It's taking something from someone else that you don't have a moral entitlement to. Right. So we both agree that theft is wrong. We just disagree over who has a moral entitlement to what property. And so settling the question of who has a moral entitlement to what property, that's the real dispute between us. And that dispute is going to just have nothing to do with like saying it's theft just begs the question, right? You're just assuming it doesn't beg the question. It means that the socialist is going to beg the question, pretending not to know, because the socialist has no morals or values at all. And that's why they pick and choose and say, the white man stole the land and committed a genocide against Indians. When in reality, that's not how it went, but they will lie and deceive and undermine and just question all morals and values that everybody knows you have a right to your property. Sure. But no, but my point is that socialists agree that you have a right to your property. No, they do not. Well, if we're defining your property as property, is property that you have a moral entitlement to, socialist and capitalist both agree on the following things. We both agree that you have a moral right to your property. We both agree that it's wrong to steal the property that somebody has a moral right to. The only thing we disagree about is what property, what people have a moral right to, right? And my point is that settling that question cannot be done by just saying that socialism involves theft or coercion, right? Because the whole issue in dispute is, which of us is advocating for the right system of property entitlement? But so, I mean, that's sort of the issue I've been having, but it feels like one of the arguments you were making is that the coercion under socialism is more problematic because it's done by the government and under socialism, the government becomes bigger and it becomes more corrupt. And I understand that point. That's a fair point. But I don't know why I would believe that, I guess. You don't know why you would believe that the government gets more corrupt, the more power that it grabs? Have you seen in practice how corrupt the politicians are? Sure. So, I mean, I agree, but the question is whether or not, like if we can both agree that politicians can be corrupt, but the disagreement is going to be whether under capitalism versus under socialism, which system leaves more room for politicians to be corrupt? It's definitely socialism because they have more power under socialism. Under capitalism, they don't have the kind of power that you're talking about giving them of enforcing the different ways that the workers own the business. That should have nothing to do with the government. People have a right to make a contract with each other. Okay. So, I agree that there is some... We shouldn't even have minimum wage. Sure. So, I mean, I agree that there is some mechanistic argument you can make that, well, it seems like under socialism, the government would be more corrupt because the bigger the government gets, the more room there is for the government to be corrupt because they have more power. My problem with this argument is twofold. The first argument is, sure, I understand we have mechanistic speculation in the direction of the hypothesis that you're putting forth, but I also think we have mechanistic speculation in the other direction. So, for example, while it may be the case that the government becoming bigger gives it more access to corruption, it might also be the case that the more of people's money that the government is in control of, the more incentive people have to hold the government accountable, which leads to less room for corruption. And so, in addition to us having sort of mechanistic speculations in the opposite direction, we also have sort of outcome data. And in basically any hierarchy of evidence, outcome data is going to trump mechanistic speculation. Now, what I mean by that is I'm not going to try and run through a bunch of stats to, you know, go out here or whatever, but just like to say like a few things, right? So, for example, the correlation between government expenditure as a percentage of GDP and clean government is 0.36. So, there's a positive correlation, while the correlation between total taxes as a share of GDP and clean government and direct taxes as a share of, as a share of GDP and clean government are 0.30 and 0.57 respectively. Who's making these, these stats? Well, we're just comparing numbers from- This is meaningless to me. Truly. Because these are made by liberals, and I have no concept of what you're talking about. And so, people, socialists are liars, and liberals are liars. They will come up with data to support what they're claiming, but it has zero to do with anything. Let's talk about reality, what's happening. Sure. So, I mean just like a couple of things. So, like these numbers, so for example, these numbers are coming from like- It's completely divorced from, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah. So, these numbers are coming from like the World Bank and Transparency International. Right. In different places like that. And basically- The globalist socialists. Well, so basically, what these numbers are doing is we're just looking at certain metrics of economies that are reported by their government, such as how much taxes the government is collecting, how much social spending the government is engaging in, etc. And then we're taking that and we're comparing that to how corrupt these countries are according to metrics like the Transparency International Index and so on. Right. And that tells us nothing because we're not looking at specifics in the actual real situation. Well, sure. I mean, I can give specifics. So, like for example, like the 10 least corrupt countries in the world according to the Transparency International's ranking. So, the 10 least corrupt countries are like Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Iceland, Singapore, Sweden, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. I don't mind that. On average, those countries collect 23.64% of their GDP and taxes, while the 10 most corrupt countries in the world, for which there's data available, collect only 14.5% of their GDP and tax, at least according to the World Bank. So, I mean, like, yeah, I mean, I could go on- But that's all meaningless. Like it's not telling you- Why is it meaningless? I mean, you look at- Well, you look at the demographics of those countries. Those are like some of the wider countries and white people for some reason tend to be less prone to that type of corruption, where they try to- They like things to be honest. They like societies to be honest. Like, many of them don't have to lock their door. But, and so you're not really giving us real specifics about those countries. Let's deal with stuff that we both know here and now. We're looking at our country and it's becoming worse as it becomes more socialist. I mean, if you want to compare, like, you know, if you want to try and look at this in a way such that we're controlling for, like, ethnic or racial disparities, I mean, we can do that. But it's- No, but I have zero interest. I have zero interest in studies. Well, hold on. So, well, firstly, I mean, these aren't even studies. I'm just showing you the correlations that we can see in, like, raw data sets, right? Right, data sets. You're just- You can- People lie with numbers. So, it's just utterly meaningless what you're talking about. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, okay. So, I just want to say two things. Like, the first thing is, if your original concern was about, you know, ethnic disparities or racial disparities, we can control for that and just look at specific regions or places that are similar in their ethnic makeup, right? So, for example, the two least corrupt countries in sub-Saharan Africa, that being Botswana and Mauritius, I'd probably pronounce it wrong, but those two countries have disproportionately large public sectors, welfare states, central government expenditures as a percentage of GDP, and socialist governmental parties, right? And then, if you want to compare, like, white countries, like, countries like Denmark and Sweden and Finland, which have larger governments, are less corrupt than places like the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom, which are also white and are, you know, have smaller governments and are more corrupt. Now, it seems like your second objection was to say that, you know, you're not really interested in these numbers because, you know, people will lie about these numbers. And so, basically, what I would say about that is that, so, we have this data, right? We have the data that there are a bunch of different data sets and studies corroborating the hypothesis that, you know, bigger governments are not more corrupt. And then we have two different hypotheses to explain why this data exists. My hypothesis is that this data exists and it's corroborated because the conclusion is accurate. And your hypothesis is that this data exists because it's, you know, all these different separate organizations are all in some sort of, you know, cahoots or they're all liberals and they're all lying. And so then the question is, which of our explanations for this data is more plausible? And I would say that my explanation is a priori more likely to be true because you are sort of positing, I don't mean this to sound loaded, but in some sense you are positing a conspiracy theory. And conspiracy theories are just a priori less likely to be true all else equal because they are committed to positing a cardinality of at least two agents who are conspiring with each other. And my theory doesn't definitionally have such a commitment to, I guess, additional ontology. So my explanation for the data is just a lot simpler. And so I don't know why I would accept that the reason that this data exists is because of some, you know, big conspiracy or anything like that. It's not a conspiracy, the world is corrupt. And they don't have a concept of what corrupt even is, they're corrupt people. And you're just naming, rattling off numbers and a quote-unquote measure on how corrupt a government is. I have no concept of what they mean by corrupt or anything. And so it's utterly meaningless to me. It means zero to me about what you even think of as corrupt is not even a valid, because you guys don't actually have real morals and values. So what you're bringing up is a distraction in order to try to make a point about big government versus small government. Okay. So I mean, so is the issue that you don't think that, is the issue that you think- I have zero interest in the argument that you're trying to make. But is the issue that these people are lying about the data? Or is the issue that they, like the metrics that they're using- They have no, I have no idea, because I'm not, I have not even looked at this thing. Okay. Well, you know, speaking the metrics that these places are using are using metrics, which you would generally agree- You're trying to force me to talk about something that I have not seen or looked at. And it's that I have no honest interest in. That's fine. I mean, we don't have to talk about it. I was just responding because you were talking about issues with methodology. Because you guys look at studies rather than like reality. Reality, we can look at how the United States has gotten more and more corrupt, the more socialist it has gotten over the last 160 years or so. And you want to look at every other country and compile all this data in order to deceive me or deceive your viewers, I guess, or deceive yourself into thinking, oh, no, this is not a problem. Sure. So I mean, I guess the problem is like you're sort of making these claims about how, you know, the government in the United States has become more corrupt and, you know, the governments in places where they have bigger- And the people have become more corrupt. It's a moral people issue. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. And so you're making these sorts of claims, but I just don't know what you mean. I don't know what metric you're using for corruption. I don't know how you're attempting to measure this, because it seems like when we try to measure this in a way that is comprehensive, and that does make sense, like this conclusion just isn't really borne out. But you looked at one weird study, and you haven't seen like, okay, so what I mean by the corruption of the United States, we introduced an income tax. We did not used to have an income tax. We have these property taxes. We are paying rent to the government. In California, people are beginning, and they try to stop it, but now they're trying to re-institute it. People are being taxed out of their own homes. You talk about being evicted, taxed out of their own homes that they've paid off completely, retired, and then say they die, and then their children inherited or something like that. And then all of a sudden, the tax goes from 1,000 a year to 12,000 a year, and the children aren't making the same kind of money. And the money is worth less and less and less. We have the minimum wage. We have women voting. We have abortion on demand. We have the races. They're trying to stir the races against one another. We have more and more out-of-wedlock births, and children being raised by single mothers and turning into criminals or turning into social justice warriors and politicians. We have a corrupt country. It's becoming more atheistic. We have people thinking that socialism and communism are fine, and we have people being called fascists and racist. Racism doesn't even exist. We have a false thing being taught in schools. And school education, by the way, is not a way anymore to get ahead in life. That's just a side note, something that you mentioned, because people are being indoctrinated. They're not being educated. So that's what I mean. Some of the ways that I mean that we're becoming more corrupt in America. Okay, so I guess my issues with that are a lot of these things. So, for example, when I ask, how are we becoming more corrupt? Well, okay, well, firstly, I just want to say, because you sort of dismissed the things that I was appealing to you by saying, you're just looking at one weird study. But I mean, no, I'm looking at correlations between different metrics from a bunch of different sources from the World Bank, from the Transparency International. But it's not studies. But I mean, I'm looking at a bunch of different metrics. But I mean, look, so if you're going to say that the reason we know we're becoming more corrupt as a country or our government's becoming more corrupt is because, so some of the things we mentioned, like we have higher taxes, we have a minimum wage, we have people who are pro-socialism. I mean, I just take it that the including things that are involved with the system that I advocate for as just part of your definition for what constitutes corruption rather than giving some neutral definition of corruption that we can both agree to, and then showing that the policies that I'm advocating for increase corruption in that sense, I just take it that the way you're defining corruption and in doing your analysis is just going to be question begging. Of course, it's going to be the case that socialism increases corruption. If in your definition of corruption, you're just appealing to the things that I'm advocating for, but that doesn't actually say anything informative about the substantive outcomes that the system I'm advocating for will lead to. It's just not informative, because I already knew that my system involved these things. Right? Yeah, I see what you're saying. So, because you are a blind person and you believed in socialism, you think that we can make up this neutral definition of morals in order to, in order that we can both agree to, in order for you to deceive people into thinking that more people, recruit more people into thinking that socialism is a good thing. Well, I'm not saying that we have to create a neutral definition of morals, although that would also probably be helpful. I'm just saying that, like, look, if you're going to make the argument, if you're going to make the argument that my system is bad because it increased, like, so, okay, so imagine if I were to make the argument that capitalism is bad because it increases human despair. And then you said, okay, well, what do you mean by human despair? And I said, oh, well, by human despair, I just mean there's private ownership over the means of production, there's low taxes, et cetera. You would be like, well, okay, but that's not really an argument. You're just saying, you're just saying that, like, your system increases this thing with a negative connotation. And then when asked to define the thing, you're just, you know, you're building into your definition the things that I'm advocating for so that it just becomes a tautology that the thing I'm advocating for is going to increase the thing we're talking about, right? Because you're including it within the definition. And you're fine with all the other, I see what you're saying, but you're fine with all the other stuff that I mentioned that isn't explicitly socialist. The division that the socialists are sowing between the races, the killing of the babies and the wombs, the increase in the exploitation of anger that the socialists do to try to recruit more workers into or disgruntled employees anyway to join unions and become more little socialists. You're fine with the pushing of anger, the pushing of envy, the pushing of theft and selfishness that is inherent in socialism because you don't see that those things are inherent in socialism. Yeah, so I would say that when it comes to the division between races, right? What I would say to that is I agree that, of course, division between the races is bad. I'm for racial parity and I'm for there being cohesion between the races. I'm very much for that. But the case you would have to make in order to show that this is a bad thing that increases socialism. I mean, you can't just simply assert it, but you'd have to give some evidence that increasing size of government actually increases disparity between the races. And I just don't see any reason to believe that. In fact, I would say No, what's happening? Go ahead. Go ahead. In fact, I would say that we have historical evidence that divergence between the races or conflict between the races becomes more inflamed when racial, economic and social inequality increases. And I take it that through things like socialistic policies like redistribution and such that would decrease the economic and social inequality between the races. That racial tension would actually be ameliorated rather than inflamed by the types of things that I'm advocating for. No, I'm saying that they're using the natural fissures of society, the anger that is in the black homes because they're being raised by single mothers and they're being brainwashed with this phony idea of racism. They're using the socialist degenerates like Black Lives Matter who have zero love for any black people are being rewarded for being a drain on society by the socialists. They're using them in order to do a power grab. So it's a divide and conquer kind of situation. I'm not saying the increase of the government is necessarily doing that, although it is because you have these females and POCs in the government and the white kiss-ups in the government who are exploiting that for their own power and money. But the purpose of Black Lives Matter is to malign, defame and tear down the remnants of the morally decent capitalist society that we have. And they go after the best people, the white Americans, the men, they go after conservatives. The men are the solution for the black community. Fathers, they go after the Christians, which is part of the solution for the black community. Police who are part of the solution for the black community. And meanwhile, Antifa is being rewarded by the socialists. I mean, they're openly anti-American. They don't even want America to exist. So I'm saying that they are using these people for power. Okay. So I mean, I guess my kind of argument would just be even if I granted that all these organizations like Antifa and BLM, even if I granted that these organizations are worsening racial conflict or are indicative of racial conflict, that still doesn't really settle the question because then the question would just be, okay, well, which society would these divisive organizations be more likely to pop up in? Would they be more likely to pop up in a state with or in a country with a smaller government or a bigger government? And I would say that with respect to that question, we actually do have evidence that sort of government redistributive policies and government involvement can create a dynamic or an atmosphere where there's more parity between the races. So for example, right, if you look at like Gallup polls and Pule polls about how Americans view race relations, and if you look at how racially divided voting patterns have been over time, it's clear that race relations are higher, are better when racial equality is higher. The black middle class was vibrant and growing as the average black wealth nearly doubled from 1995 to 2005, right? During this time, race appeared to lose its salience as a political predictor. More and more blacks were voting Republican and, you know, reversing a decade's long trend. And in 2004, Bush, George W. Bush collected the highest share of the Latino vote of any Republican ever and a higher share of the Asian vote than he did in 2000, right? During this time, our politics grew increasingly ideological and less racial. Progressives and the beneficiaries of a generous social welfare state generally supported the Democratic party, while more prosperous voters were more likely to support Republicans. Stable majorities expressed satisfaction with the state of race relations, right? So majority of people said race relations were good. It wasn't, it wasn't quite a post-racial politics, but it was certainly headed in that direction, right? However, after the financial collapse of 2007 and the collapse of black wealth, things changed pretty dramatically and race relations took a huge nose dive, right? So it does seem like the types of things that we're looking for, if we're looking for better race relations, so for example, you know, less economic and social inequality between the races, those things could obviously be helped by, you know, government redistributive policies and such that I'm advocating for. Because it's because socialists are atheists, so they don't realize they think that it's just a matter of having stuff or not having stuff, having money and wealth and not having money and wealth. Poverty does not cause crime. It's the immorality of the heart that causes both the so-called poverty that we supposedly have in America and the crime. And the crime causes poverty more so than the poverty causing the crime. And so that's a false idea. And the financial collapse was a result of the socialistic ideas. We had Clinton saying, I think it was Clinton, saying that every black family should own a house. And so they were encouraging and getting in bed with these banks to give them loans that they couldn't afford. And it was a perverse, anti-capitalistic, socialistic incentive. And they exploit all evil to bring in usher in more false solutions is what the socialists do. And they are explicitly exploiting and stirring up false anger. So it's not just the fact that this anger exists because of inequality. They're exploiting it and exacerbating it and lying to the people. We've seen them lying. You know that they're lying, right? Well, I mean, I think that's like a whole other conversation. Because Black Lives Matter is all based on 100% lies. Okay, so, but I guess I would just say that, so you said this earlier and you've said it again. And I guess I wanted to touch on this. So you said that inequality or you said that the problem with socialists is that we don't understand that poverty and materialistic considerations are not what causes crime. And I agree that poverty by itself isn't a very good predictor of crime. I think the data has borne this out again and again. So I agree with that. But the problem is both times I've brought up the relationship between whether I'm talking about crime or racial animosity. Both times I haven't said anything about poverty per se or material wealth per se. I'm talking about inequality. And it does seem, and I just gave you some historical evidence to that effect, that inequality between groups of people increases animosity between those groups of people. So it's not necessarily poverty, it's more inequality. Because obviously, when the people around you have more and you have way less than them, it's very hard not for people to get the feeling that society is kind of fucking them over. Sorry, I shouldn't say that. They're harming them or they're disadvantageing them. Because they're looking at people around them and they're saying, okay, well, why is it that our society is constructed in such a way that everybody else is getting advantaged and I'm being disadvantaged, right? And so the socialists lie to them and tell them that it's racism? Well, I don't think so. I mean... Yeah, they do. Are you saying socialists don't say you're poor because of racism? Oh, well, I mean, sure. I think there is a good argument to be made that in large part the racial disparity, the economic disparity between black people and white people is due to a legacy of slavery. I think there's a good argument to that effect. But I mean the point is that even if I grant all your claims about that, the point is still that we can see historically that one racial... So like, okay, even if I say that an instigating factor for racial animosity is that bad people and socialists and Antifa and BLM are lying to black people to instigate them to be angry, even if I granted that, we still have empirical historical evidence that racial tensions fare better when racial equality is increased, right? So I could just say, sure, it's BLM and they're tricking the black people into being angry, but I still have historical evidence that BLM is less effective at doing that or the evil atheistic socialists are less effective at doing that when black people are more equal to white people, right? Because they're going to be less receptive to those sorts of lies if they don't already have some underlying sense of unfairness because of the inequality they see around them, right? So even if I granted what you're saying, it's not incompatible with the point that I've been making. I agree with you that if blacks were to get married and do it the right way and have morals because marriage, married blacks, when they have married household, the so-called poverty that they suffer just greatly diminishes when compared with whites because it is an issue of their own immorality and it's being encouraged. And I'm not saying that it's Black Lives Matter and Antifa and these others lying to them. They're being lied to by the whole mainstream media, the Republican Party, the Democrat Party. They're all lying and kissing up and feeling sorry. They feel that the blacks are inferior. They can't make it on their own. That's why they do this special treatment stuff. Okay. So could you maybe expand a little bit on the point that you're trying to make? Because I don't really understand. Is your point that... If they were to be moral, yes, that would increase. They would have jobs, they would be working, get rid of the welfare, send the illegals back so that they have more job opportunities, get rid of minimum wage. They would be working again. They would be too busy to be all into this stuff. They would be occupied with gladness of heart rather than bitterness. And they would have parents. They would believe in the actual God and not be this fake black Christian church mess. So it would be yes, that would help. But yes, they would still have less inequality, so-called inequality. But the issue at root is not the inequality. It's the lack of morals that they have, which just breeds their own anger and they blame somebody else for it rather than looking at themselves. Responsibility is the solution. So again, even if I were to grant the claim that the reason why there's a lot of resentment is because black people have these bad moral views about why they're in the state that they're in. And they have the excuse of this imaginary racism thing. Generations. Yeah, go ahead. Even if I were to agree that that's like an instigating factor, the problem is, again, that's still compatible with what I've been saying because I could just then say, okay, well, based on the historical evidence, it seems to be the case that black people are less likely to have this decay in their morality, as you put it, when there's less inequality between them and white people because maybe them seeing that inequality around them makes them more susceptible to being tricked by these racial narratives. At least that's what the empirical evidence would suggest. Now, I'm not saying I actually grant your premise that this is the cause. I'm just saying that even this argument is not compatible with the point that I've been making, which is that we can see that lower levels of inequality between the races breeds more racial animosity. And it seems to be the case that government redistribution and such is one way of alleviating that inequality. But that's not going to solve their moral issue. It's never going to be enough. They will never stop complaining as long as they continue in this immoral thing. To your point, Trump even said at one of his rallies when all those rallies were disrupted by Black Lives Matter agitators, he said, I think I could talk with these people, but some people you can't talk to. But what do we all want in life? We want a good job, good family, a good home. So he knows that people want to fulfill their basic needs, but this wealth redistribution, giving them stuff that they didn't earn and they're not doing for themselves, they have no self-respect still. And they don't respect the white people anymore. They're just looking down on them because they see that they can exploit the white people, call them racist, and they'll just give them more and more free stuff. Your solution is not a solution at all. So I guess whether or not the thing that I'm proposing would be effective at combating the problem that I'm trying to combat, that's just going to be like an empirical question. And in order to answer that, we would just say, okay, well, we can look at history. Does it seem to be the case that when there's less inequality between the races, there's less animosity between the races? And that does seem to be the case, right? Now, of course, that's not like foolproof. That's not like foolproof data. There could be other variables that play that are creating like a serious correlation or something. But I think it's still evidence nonetheless. And I think we also have mechanistic data that I've described in that. But it's correlation. It's not causal. Go ahead. Sure. But okay, but when I have certain mechanistic arguments that I can make, such as it seems like broadly speaking, we do have evidence that inequality is a predictor of crime. We can look at raw correlations, or we can look at more detailed studies that take into account other factors to ensure that there is more likely to be causation, right? So I have this mechanistic speculation. We have some outcome data. And we can't even look to more detailed studies that do account for other variables, right? So for example, right, there was one study from 2009, it was called segregation and mistrust, diversity, isolation, and social cohesion by a guy named Eric Osslerner. And basically what it found is that inequality and residential segregation, rather than diversity per se leads to lower levels of trust, right? Integrated and diverse neighborhoods will lead to higher levels of trust if people also have diverse social networks. There were other studies showing that economic inequality between races, rather than any barrier such as cultural, linguistic, or other barriers, is what accounts for the negative impact which we can observe of ethnic diversity on the amount of public goods in a country. So I mean, like, yeah, I mean, it seems like we have strong theoretical reasons to believe this would be the case. We have data. What would be the case now? The case, believe that it would be the case that more inequality between races leads to more tension between those races, right? Like, we have very strong a prior theoretical reasons why we would think that's the case. We have raw correlational data we can look at. We have more detailed studies we can look at. And I just don't see any reason to suppose otherwise, right? Like, you haven't even given me an argument in the opposite direction, right? Like, I just don't understand, like, why I wouldn't... Because you're just picking, you're just picking this inequality thing and you're completely ignoring the lack of the decline of the morals of the people and the specifics of people's lives and what goes wrong in their lives. You're just looking at big data and completely took looking away from how people actually live and interact with each other. Sure. Don't fall for this data, man. I think that you're... I think that people are deceiving you with all of these different study things to make you focus on this thing rather than look at reality as it is. Sure. So I'm not saying that inequality is the only factor which plays into tension between the races, right? The inequality would solve itself if they had the morals. And the inequality is not inherently a bad thing. Okay. Well, I don't agree with that, but so there's a couple things I would say. So the first thing... But that's a mama thinking mindset, but go ahead. The first thing I would say is, look, I'm not saying that inequality is the only factor. Sure. There could be other factors. There could be factors relating to culture or morality, but that's all compatible with what I'm saying, right? All I'm saying is that inequality seems to be a factor such that all else equal a system which leads to less inequality between the races, which requires some level of redistribution. But it doesn't require that. Go ahead. That system would have less animosity between those races, right? So, yeah. And I guess, as to your other point, that redistribution is not required to tackle inequality between the races. I guess I would just say, I'm not sure why I would suppose that's the case when in every other instance, when it comes to inequality more broadly, I don't have data specifically with respect to racial inequality. But when it comes to inequality more broadly, it seems that redistribution is continually very effective at alleviating economic inequality. And without that economic redistribution, inequality seems to persist to a very high degree, right? And so I'm not sure why racial economic inequality would be an exception to that more general rule. And even if I were to say that it's theoretically possible, which I'm sure it is, that sufficient cultural changes and sufficient changes in the ethics of Black people could lead to them closing that gap without any economic assistance, that's compatible with my point, which is just that economic assistance is probably an easier, more feasible way to achieve that goal. No, man, that's not the case. Because you have to, I think that this is the case where you look at how your own life, I don't know if you have what your story is, but you look at, they say anecdotal evidence is not evidence, but you look at real life stories of people who go into a place of suffering and where they're basically, they suffer some crazy situation. And they have to figure out a way to make it. And they end up doing the best of anybody sometimes. So you have to see how human nature works because this spoiling of them and redistribution, robbing one to give to another is misguided. It is a mama type of meddling, solving the symptoms, which are not even really the issue, rather than dealing with the root moral issues and dealing with the lies of this racism thing. Shortly, you've got it for the Q&A. I'll give you a chance to respond, though, Malfi. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. I guess I'm just sort of lost as to the point here. I mean, like, sure, there are people who through ethos and personal work ethic alone, people can sometimes persevere and so on and close economic gaps. But I mean, when it comes to racial inequality, we have this legacy of racism of slavery of, okay, well, in my opinion, we have this legacy of racism of slavery, followed by Jim Crow and redlining and all of these historical conditions, which caused black people to be institutionally more poor than white people. How generational wealth is, this leads to a situation where now black people are still on average, less poor than white people. And it seems like that hasn't changed so far. And it seems like one very feasible way to make that change is through redistribution policies, right? Now, it could be the case that another way of making that change is just to instill the right ethics or something. Morals and capital and freedom. Sure. But even if it... And that's not the issue, but go ahead. And so on. That's still compatible with my point, right? There could be multiple ways of achieving the same outcome. And I would just say that if we know one of the ways, even if there might be other ones, and the outcome is one that we find desirable, why not pursue that method? Because we've been trying that for the last 70 years and they're worse off for it. They're more bitter, more angry. And yes, they're so-called richer, but they're spoiled now. And they're acting worse than ever. Well, I disagree, right? Because when racial inequality did decrease, we did see an increase. And we did see when racial inequality did decrease, we did see a decrease simultaneously and racial animosity between the races, right? And that only stopped and reversed when... Obama got an office. And he said, well, yeah, sure. Well, I mean, Obama got an office after the 2008 financial collapse. I know, but I don't know that the financial collapse caused them to blame the white man, but I know that they're constantly blaming the white man. Black wealth, which led to an increase in racial disparities, because that's what happens when two races become more unequal in their economic resources. And Socialist Obama was there poised to exploit that anger and lie to them and cause them to become even worse 12 years later, 13 years later. I don't agree with that, but I mean, even if I did grant that again, I think that's just compatible. Last year? Yeah, yeah, sure. But again, I don't see how any of this is necessarily contradicting my point. I don't think that you have the root point. You are focused on, again, you're focused on the physical and not why they are that way. You're blaming something. Don't fall for that generational wealth stuff. They were doing better even as poor people. They were happier. They were so-called poor people. They were happier. They had their families together. They were moral. They were upright. They were respectable and respected than they are today. It's ridiculous. Well, I mean, if you want to make the claim that black people were happier Yes. Under Jim Crow, I mean, I mean, okay, but I would need to see what metric you're using. Look at the families. Yeah, I know, because you don't believe in, like, I don't know, what a mess. You're all into the numbers which are deceiving, man. It doesn't tell you the real story. Okay, but I mean, so, I mean, I guess we're just going to have a very fundamental disagreement, because it seems like what you're saying is it's not the case that when there's less inequality, there's less animosity between different- It may or may not be, but that's not the issue. That's my point. If that is the case, then that provides very solid evidence for the claim that if we were to engage in redistribution to lower that inequality, there would be less racial animosity, right? No, it does not, because, well, who knows, but that's your quote-unquote solving one symptom to bring up more issues, more other symptoms. You're solving a symptom, this inequality thing, and you're corrupting society because you're stealing from one to give to another, who they don't deserve it, and they're only bitter in complaining. They're only going to get worse and try to take power, and then it's back at you to the white man, blaming, doing to them what they think was done to them historically. Look at what's happening in South Africa right now. They're a communist country, and they're just taking the land from the whites. Look in the other way as the farmers are getting murdered, and the black-on-black crime is out of control, and they have child-headed households because of the lack of moral sexually that they're doing. It's a mess. It's worse than it was under apartheid. Yeah, I'll give you the last word. I'll give you the last word. We're having a hake of the hake report. I said, Mothi, I'll give you the last word, since we started with hake of the hake report, and then we're going to jump into Q&A. Okay. I guess the case that I've tried to lay out here, I guess for the past little tangent that we've been on, is that, look, we have historical evidence and we have empirical studies which seem to suggest that when there's a lower level of economic inequality between the races, there's less animosity between the races, right? And subsequently, so that's like the premise one, premise two, is that redistribution is one way of alleviating that economic inequality, and then the conclusion is that therefore, if we engage in that redistribution, which lowered economic inequality, this would contribute to there being less racial animosity between the races, right? Now, you said that you even like agreed with the empirical claim, or at least you're not necessarily saying that it's wrong, right? But if you agree with that empirical claim, then it just seems to straightforwardly follow that the policy I'm advocating for would have the outcome that I'm talking about, right? So I guess I'm just not seeing the counter argument to that. You said that it's just one symptom. Well, I mean, even if I granted that, like, certainly, it's a symptom that is bad, that is negative. And so if we know that there's a policy, if we know that there's a policy, well, the symptom being racial animosity. And so if we have a policy that we know will alleviate that symptom, even if there's a deeper problem that needs a different solution, it's still going to be good to alleviate that symptom in the meantime by enacting the policies that I'm talking about. And then you just to be just to let's see. So it's not too long. I've got to try to if you can maybe 20 seconds. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah. And then it seems like your last point was just the speculation that, well, even if you created more inequality, or even if you created a higher level of equality, black people would still rise up and, you know, attack the white people, and it wouldn't make this go away. Well, that's just going to us. So that counter argument is just going to assume the falsehood of the empirical premises that I think I've sufficiently established. But I just don't see any reason to make that assumption when I haven't really been provided a sufficient counter argument for that empirical evidence, which suggests the opposite of what you're speculating. Have you seen South Africa? The next one, guys, I hate to interrupt. This might be a chance during the Q&A, though, for you guys to bring up points that have come up. If you want to readdress them, I encourage you to sneak in those responses. I'm going to limit you so you don't do it too much, but if you want to jump into it, I want to remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description. So if you're listening, you're like, I want to hear more from this James Hake. I want to hear more from this Melty Infidel. What are you waiting for, folks? You can by clicking on their links in the description right now. And that includes, if you're listening to the podcast, we put their links at the very top of the description box for both. And with that, we're going to jump into the Q&A. I want to say thanks so much for your questions. This one coming in and from Crystal A says, The Hake Report. La, la, la, la, la, la. Thank you very much. And Jonathan says, why does mouthy socialism depend so heavily on capitalism and still call itself socialism? Well, I mean, of course, I would just disagree. It seems like the person's just saying, oh, well, how can he call it socialism if in reality it's capitalism? But I mean, obviously, because I am the one claiming it's socialism, I'm just going to disagree with the premise that it's actually capitalism. So I'm not really sure what else to say, right? I mean, I think the definition of socialism that I gave is pretty common. It's just public or democratic ownership over capital goods, i.e. the means of production. That's a very common definition that's used. I think the system that I proposed meets that definition. So, yeah, I guess I'm not really sure what the objection is. You got it. And thank you very much for this question. Stringter of doom, amazing, says construction of coercion that supports libertarian position. And then, Colin, the non-aggression principle, the distinction between positive and negative rights and property ownership and extension of bodily autonomy. Nice. I can read it again if it's hard to... Let me read it one more time. It's a construction of coercion that supports libertarian position. And then they're saying, here's what it is. The non-aggression... Oh, I see. I see. The distinction between positive and negative rights and property ownership and extension of bodily autonomy. Yeah, so saying property ownership and then appealing to the non-aggression principle, that's just going to run into the exact same counterargument that I gave earlier, which is just that what is the non-aggression principle? It says it's wrong to initiate force against someone or their property. But then it's like, okay, well, what does their property mean? Well, it can't mean their property legally. It can't mean their property as in current possession because that would contradict libertarian beliefs. So therefore, it has to mean their property in terms of the property that they have a moral right to. So the non-aggression principle just bottoms out as saying it's wrong to take people's property, provided those people have a moral right to that property. But of course, no socialist is going to disagree with that. The only disagreement is going to come down to who has a moral right to what property. And the non-aggression principle does nothing to address that question, and therefore it doesn't really do any argumentative work whatsoever. You got it. Anne, sorry if my audio is bad. I'm basically in a closet at the library. I'm doing my best here. Bubbles for discord mod support my campaign. Seamless, self-logging for that. And this one coming in from, I appreciate your question. Sunflower also says, mouthy and fiddle. How can socialism deal with individuals wasting the resources allotted to them for bad reasons, such as gambling or bartering for junk, etc.? Well, essentially it's going to be the case under capitalism and socialism that some people are going to use their resources in ways that are wasteful, right? But I mean, it seems to be the case that socialism even has an advantage in that respect because under capitalism money is distributed in a grossly unequal way. So people on the richer end of that distribution have more room to waste that money on things that are non-essential, or don't really matter, or don't produce that much utility for them, whereas under socialism, because the economics situation is distributed more evenly, ostensibly there's going to be less people who have room to waste that amount of money on more frivolous things. Or at least that seems plausible to me, but I mean, I'm not sure. But again, this is just going to be a problem. People wasting resources doesn't seem to be a problem that's specific to capitalism or socialism unless you can provide some sort of an argument that it would be more prevalent under socialism. But I just haven't really, I guess I just haven't really heard that argument. It enables it. It enables just being lazy. But why? And wasteful, because you're going to be taken care of no matter how irresponsible you are. Right. But so, okay, so, but it seems to be the case that, okay, so it seems like what you're saying is that if we give poor, we distribute poor people money, they're just going to become lazy and they're not going to work. My claim on the other hand, so it seems like your theory of poverty is that poor people are trapped by this culture of poverty and welfare worsens that culture of poverty. My theory is that poverty is basically a matter of there are certain day to day difficulties that make it very hard for poor people to better their situations. So, you know, bettering their situations by doing things like going to school to become a nurse instead of a cashier or moving to a better neighborhood or looking for a better job. And so instead of working on their futures, poor people are trapped by the need to pay the bills of the moment. And therefore on this theory, providing welfare to people gives them that breathing room that's required for them to focus on the future and actually better their situation. Right. And I think that this has been borne out, right? There was a very recent experiment. Thanks to socialism that life is so hard for them in the first place, thanks to minimum wage and the high taxes and the printing of money and the just doing away with people's natural ability to work and make a living. Well, so when we're doing away with the morals, it wouldn't be single mothers if they had the morals. So when we're talking about poverty, well, firstly, you appealing to morals, I don't think that's incompatible with either capitalism or socialism. So I don't think that's going to be consideration in favor of capitalism. No, socialists all under... Well, they don't support morals. They don't support family. They undermine family. Well, I disagree with that. I don't see why that would be the case. Well, no, in fact, I would say that the opposite is the case, right? What's one of the major impediments to people being able to start families? It's them being afraid of the fact that if they have children, they won't have the resources that they need to provide for them. Thanks to socialism undermining their own... No, no, no. So providing people more resources makes them more likely to have families, right? Children are a drain on resources. Like if you look at surveys, one of the main reasons for people not having kids is because they're afraid they don't have enough resources, providing them more resources through redistributive policies. They've already done that. People are having more kids, right? So subsidizing people's lives just makes people's lives more expensive. We must jump forward. This one coming in from... Do appreciate your question. Pardon me. Mango tea says socialism sounds great on paper, but capitalism is better overall because its results are seen throughout the world. Socialism leads to dependency, weakness, and inevitable destruction of society. Yeah. So when it comes to dependency, and I'm glad someone brought this up because this is what I was going to get to just a minute ago, but I didn't have time. So it seems to be like when you just look at empirically, right? So recently there was a SOCTEN experiment where some philanthropists randomly selected like over 100 residents of poor neighborhoods in California to receive 500 a month in cash. And instead of working less, the people who got the cash actually worked more, right? And interviews with the SOCTEN residents who received the money found that they spent the money almost entirely on necessities like food and utilities, and they reported feeling more confident, engaged, and entrepreneurial. People who got the money were healthier, happier, less anxious, more financially stable, and more well off. Additionally, with respect to Hake's point that because of socialism there's more people in poverty, this just, I mean, this just doesn't seem to be the case, right? Like there's a, we can see a robust cross-country correlation of, it's an R-squared correlation of 0.64 between net public social spending on the one hand and poverty reduction on the other hand, right? It's not complicated. When you give people money, they're more wealthy, they're less poor, they're more motivated to do things. They have more time because they're not as trapped by the bills of the moment, right? And so that would be my, my sort of counter argument, but I forget what the beginning of that question was. This is socialism sounds great on paper, but capitalism is better overall because its results are seen throughout the world. Oh, yeah. I guess I would just say that like, look, I think I responded to that in my opening statement, which is just to say that like, sure, there have been horrendous failures of socialist experiments like the USSR or Mao's China. But, you know, if you look at the specific model of socialism that I'm proposing, all of the institutions that make up that model have been repeatedly successfully beta tested under capitalism. And if you want to look towards the countries, which most closely emulate what I'm advocating for, you can look to the Nordic countries, which in fact are not, you know, devastated, but are rather very extremely prosperous, some of the most prosperous countries in the world. So yeah, that's what I'd say about that. This one coming in from mango tea. Yeah, that's finger of doom says a third option regarding corruption. The measurement for corruption are incomplete. Distorting price signaling mechanisms is also a form of corruption. Yeah, true. So I mean, even if you wanted to, so I mean, the first thing I would say is that I think that the metrics that I was appealing to when we're talking about corruption are, you know, pretty, pretty solid metrics that most people even very distant, even people who are very distant ideologically, most people could agree that these metrics are indicative of corruption, and that, you know, being higher in these metrics is all else equal a bad thing. Now, if you want to say, well, there are other metrics we could look at, which would make it better. Well, I mean, sure. But the fact that there are additional metrics we could look at to make the methodology more sound doesn't mean that it's not still the case that the methodology still as it is, is somewhat informative. And therefore the facts, the conclusions that I'm drawing from it are still generally warranted, right? If you wanted to sort of supersede the conclusion that I drew, you couldn't just, you wouldn't have to, you wouldn't be able to just do that by saying, well, we could add another metrics, you would have to say, we should add another metrics, and then you'd have to show that when we add those necessary additional metrics, the conclusion reverses compared to what it was when we only had the previous metrics. So, yeah, that's what I would say about that. You've got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question as well. Nicholas Gonzalez says, heavyweight, Hank! Thanks, James Coons, for the show, and my pleasure. Huge thanks to the guests. They are the lifeblood of the channel, both fake and multi-independent. Link in the description, folks. Check them out, if you haven't already. Mango Tea strikes back saying socialism is similar to Islam. They are both decent provocateurs, and their arguments sound applicable, but reality shows both ideologies contain cancerous ingredients. America is great because of capitalism. Yeah, Islam is communism just in religious garb. Well, I'm embarrassed to admit I have not previously considered the argument that socialism in fact is Islam, but I'll have to do some more reflecting on that, I guess. They just have a different set of false morals. You got it, and thank you very much for your question. Bubblegum Gunn says, Hank, the worker slaves hate at the Karen boomers, too. Repeat that? The worker slaves hate at the Karen boomers, too. They shouldn't hate anybody. That's what's undermining their lives. Socialism is about hating reality, hating God and nature's God, and hating nature, like feminism and anti-racism. Ruben A. Hernandez IV says, good faith for president. Nice. Cracker, Carl Bumpkin, is that bad if I say something bad? Thanks for your super chat. I didn't see a question attached. Let me know. Nugget says, healthy, go and forgive your mother, then return to your father. Hank, you are alpha as usual. Thank you. Yeah, it's nice advice. I'll look and do it, okay? Thank you very much. Mango Tea Strikes Again says, wealth redistribution does not align with the laws of nature. Nature does not reward you for doing nothing. Nature doesn't care what you did yesterday. It's all about what you did today, strive today. Well, I mean, I would think that if we look at what it was like for humanity in its natural state before we invented societal institutions, it was a situation where it was full of tribal fighting and rape and people dying at the age of 20 because they got a scratch and there was no healthcare to mend anything. I mean, I don't think the pre-civilization natural state of humanity is very desirable or is something that we should try and craft our institutions to emulate. But you're playing God, like you are meddling in the natural way that people interact, and you can convince yourself that you're not stealing from somebody, but when you steal from that person and give it to somebody else, you're breeding more resentment. And you're exploiting the resentment of the person who's... Anyway, go ahead. The first point that I would just make is that when it comes to resentment, it seems very clearly to be the case that resentment is lower in places that have more redistribution and less inequality. But the more fundamental thing is you said this thing like, well, you're playing God because you're meddling in people's natural affairs. And the way that you're kind of... The thing that you're kind of assuming there is that capitalism is like this natural state and then government intervention kind of like supervenes on capitalism and some sort of trans-historical sense or something like that. But that's just absolutely not the case. I mean, capitalism itself is a system of property ownership and distribution which is established by and upheld by the state. Capitalism isn't any more natural or less government involved than socialism is. They're both systems of property ownership that are upheld by state coercion. The question is which system of property entitlement or property ownership is more morally justifiable. But neither one of them is more natural or anything like that. It's clearly more natural because it's the way that God made it. When people naturally have a sense of right and wrong, good and evil, fairness, especially when they are in a Christian nation, which is what we once were. And so they naturally like they work on a handshake. Rather than having people say, oh, you have to pay more than $2 an hour and all that stuff. Somebody outside meddling in your affairs. Well, I so I mean, I don't this could be a very fundamental disagreement, but I don't believe in God. But I mean, even if I did, right exactly, even if I did. And I said, like God instilled us with the sense of morality or even if I took like a naturalist route and said, we have this natural sense of morality. And your argument is that's why capitalism is more natural is because it's more moral. Well, I mean, okay, I mean, I understand why you would think that. And if I were you, I would think that too. But that's not really going to do any work to convince me, right? Because again, it's kind of just begging the question, because you're just saying like the built in assumption of that argument is that capitalism is more moral than socialism. And therefore it's more natural. But of course, this entire debate is about whether or not capitalism is more moral than socialism. But but it seems like you've engaged in this weird circular reasoning where you've said you've made an argument that capitalism is better than socialism because it's more natural. And then when I ask you, why is it more natural? You say, well, because it's more moral, right? So it's like a circular, it's like a circular thing. I said, look at how people naturally interact when like there's a crisis and they they're resorting to like bartering and stuff. It's the it's this, they end up naturally going to fair trade and stuff like that between one another. We must think of bartering as really equivalent to capitalism. But I also think there are instances of crises where people engage in mutual aid and such, right? Exchange of value. I think human nature is very dynamic and has the capacity to manifest in a bunch of different contradictory ways. Megathe says, wealth redistribution does not align with laws of nature. Nature does not reward you for doing nothing. Nature doesn't. I think you just read this. Gosh, sorry guys. My important memory is shot. I got it. It was a bad day to sleep. Finger of doom says, how inequality arises is what drives animosity, not the inequality itself. The IZA demonstrated this when it comes to its effects on economic growth as well. Political favors, bad market mechanisms, good. Well, I mean, that just doesn't seem to be the case at all. I mean, the most plausible mechanisms for why inequality leads to lower economic growth is just because it leads to less people being able to have access to the resources that they need to develop their human capital and become productive members of society. And when it comes to resentment, I think that just seems very a priori implausible. When people are becoming resentful because they see inequality all around them, I don't think that it's going to make them less resentful to be like, okay, well, at least this inequality came about through the free market. I don't even think most people are that ideologically motivated or politically aware to think in those terms. They would be more prosperous under capitalism, and so they wouldn't be jealous of the person. They're not, in a moral system, in a capitalist system, you're doing better anyway than under the socialist system. And you're not supposed to covet. It's one of the 10 commandments, thou shalt not covet their neighbor's stuff. And what socialism does is breed off of violating that and encouraging that. You must jump to the next one. This one coming in from Rumrunner says, actually, Ray the Way first said, quote unquote, blacks take it's African American, my guys, quote unquote, blacks is a segregation term. No, they're blacks. They're not African. African is segregation term. That's distancing themselves from what they are. They're Americans. They're black Americans. You got it. Yeah, I'm not really sure of the opposition. I hear blacks said pretty frequently. I never thought it was really like a racially negative connotation, but African American is negative. Rumrunner says, if institutionalized racism is holding us black people back and not culture, then why are Nigerian immigrants doing so much better than black Americans? Nigerian immigrants don't even have the same history of segregation and racial oppression that black people do. So if it's the case that the reason for black people being disadvantaged is because of this legacy of racial oppression and injustice, then I don't know why you would expect it. Like that hypothesis wouldn't predict that Nigerian immigrants are equally as disadvantaged as black people because Nigerian immigrants don't have that same history. Blacks aren't oppressed. They're only oppressed by their own mothers and by one another. They're evil toward one another. They hate one another. That's one theory. From the sphincter of doom, since the war on poverty in the 60s led to a net reduction in the rate of poverty reduction in its first 20 years compared to the 20 years prior, and that was with Jim Crow, in effect, for the latter. I'm saying is he saying that the war on poverty did help or didn't help? I'll read it just in case it did. I'm not sure what he's saying. He said the war on poverty in the 60s led to a net reduction in the rate of poverty. I think they mean poverty in its first 20 years compared to the 20 years prior, and that was with Jim Crow, in effect, prior. So he might be saying, because I remember the first time he said that it led to a reduction in the level of poverty reduction. Okay. You're right. That is what he says. I thought that it was an accident, but you're right. I think you got it right. So I would just say that people will often talk about the war on poverty being ineffective. Basically, what they're doing is they're looking at the official poverty rate, which is more or less the same now as it was in 1967, when the war on poverty started. So they're saying, look, we started the war on poverty and poverty didn't really get reduced that much. However, the problem with using this measure when assessing the impact of welfare on poverty is that the official poverty rate does not take into account non-cash or tax credit transfer programs, which make up the majority of the US's welfare regime. So in other words, what this person is saying is like, hey, did you know that if you don't take welfare into account, welfare hasn't decreased poverty? And it's like, well, yeah, sure, but this is not going to be an informative metric. And when you do take into account non-cash and tax credit transfer systems by using a metric called the disposable income poverty rate, what you find is that since the war on poverty started, disposable income poverty has decreased by about 40% from 1967 when the war on poverty started to 2012. Meanwhile, the rate of market income poverty has went from 27% to 29%. So when measuring properly, what we find is that the war on poverty has been an extraordinary success. Ill-gotten gain. It's ill-gotten gain. At what cost? We've become more immoral. I mean, in order to make that argument, you'd have to show that the war on poverty caused us to become more immoral, but I just don't see that. It doesn't address the issue. It enables it. Well, it addresses the issue of poverty. No, it enables the immorality to just go out of control. The Black family just fell apart. And so did the White family over that time. Not as a result of the war on poverty. In part, yes, it did. It encouraged all kinds of wrong things. It's just enabling immoral people. When it comes to out-of-wedlock births or whatever, it just doesn't really seem... Which predicts crime and all kinds of poor things. Yeah, sure. But I just haven't really seen any evidence of this relationship between the war on poverty on the one hand and more out-of-wedlock births on the other hands. In fact, I've looked at this before. We do have to go quick. I'll give you a chance to finish, Maliki, because the question I think was originally for you, but then we've got to move into the next question. Yeah, so I'll try to be quick here, but this is a really complicated topic, but I'll try to be as quick as possible. The main empirical justification that I was able to find for this, when I've looked into it, is that there are papers pointing out that there are areas with more generous welfare benefits for single mothers, and these areas on average have higher levels of single motherhood. However, as we all know, just demonstrating correlations between two variables does not necessarily imply causal relationship between them. In the case of welfare and out-of-wedlock births specifically, there's good reason to think that this correlation may be spurious. This is because, among other things, it's reasonable to postulate that areas with more single mothers are likely to pass more generous benefits available to single mothers to please the voter base, and areas which have cultures that are more accepting of single motherhood are more likely to pass more generous benefits for single mothers. This would explain why places with more generous benefits are also more likely to have more single mothers without us having to conclude that more generous benefits cause single motherhood. And not only would this explanation be more logically sound, but it also has the benefit of being empirically substantiated. So I'm not going to go too much into the details of these studies because James wanted me to hurry up. But if anybody in the audience is curious, I know James, I didn't send you these beforehand, so I'm not going to take this as like a dunk against you or anything. But in case anybody wants to look into this, there's a study titled Welfare Effects on Female Hedgeship with Area Effects by Robert Moffitt, which basically found that when controlling for these confounding factors that I've mentioned, the relationship between welfare and single motherhood disappears for white people but remains for black people. And in a follow-up study called Does Welfare Play Any Role in Female Hedgeship Decisions, Hilary Hoynes found that the impact of welfare on black single motherhood disappears as well when controlling for migration, right? So that's basically the broad overview. Coming in from Kay Lewis says, Mouthy, at what point will we be equal enough to stop taxing whites to give to other groups when everyone has the same amount of money? Is that when what's your metric for success? Yeah, so I'm not even proposing that we take money from white people and give it to black people, right? I generally speaking favor broad universal welfare programs that tax the rich and give to poorer people, right? And this would have the effect of alleviating the disparity between black people and white people because black people on average are poorer than white people. And so you could alleviate this disparity by just using a universal taxation and redistribution approach without necessarily just taking from white people exclusively and funding policies that benefit black people exclusively. Mr. Monster says sharing is caring. Thanks for that. And Rumrunner says, James, you're a capitalist. Your views on race seem collectivist. Many of us black people don't make excuses and are against Black Lives Matter and Tiva and the far left. Exceptions to the rule, but by and large, 96% voted for Obama twice. Are you kidding me? You guys lump yourselves together. This one. Don't be offended. You guys did it yourselves or they did it themselves. Blame the other blacks, not me. Swinger of Doom says you have a right to bodily autonomy and thus the product of your labor, which includes property. Well, I mean, I take it that when they say you have a right, they're not just like describing some weird metaphysical fact, but rather they're making a normative claim that like you ought to have a right to this, to your bodily autonomy and therefore your property. The first thing I would say is that like that's just an assertion. We would need an argument for why I should accept that normative claim. The second thing I would say is that it's sort of framed weirdly because it says you have a right to bodily autonomy, therefore you have a right to your property. But it seems entirely, well, the first thing I would say is that when you say your property, that's not really going to be informative, because the socialist ostensibly would agree that if we're defining your property as the property that you have a moral right to, then a socialist would agree that you have a right to your property. And then the real action is going to be what counts as your property in the moral sense. And that's going to be the real disagreement between capitalists and socialists and sort of obfuscating that, which is the real disagreement by just appealing to this vague rhetoric about coercion and autonomy is just not going to be very helpful. It's not vague for the people who are suffering. You can brainwash the ultra-rich who are already socialist because they're guilt-ridden, they don't deserve what they got, the entertainers and celebrities and all them, the ultra-rich like Bezos and Buffett and all them. But the common people, the actual workers, are not going to be happy with this wealth redistribution stuff. It's evil. They can see that it's evil. And they know that it's their stuff that you're taking, you being the government. You must move. I would just move quick. This one from, I'm sorry to do this to you, it's just that we have a lot of questions and I've also got to get out of the library somewhat soon. This is I'm traveling so it's not going to be like this. Thanks for your patience. Willie Powell says, MTV, I like the way you say, amazing. Great debate to both speakers. Agreed. Mothi and Haig, we appreciate you guys and they're linked in the description folks. And Jonathan says, under Mothi's definition, corporations are socialists. Their shares can be owned by the public and social wealth funds own them too. Is this accurate? Well, so publicly funded companies themselves are not socialists. If we did create a social wealth fund that came to have like majority ownership across, you know, like the entire economy, then yeah, I would, I mean, that's part of what I'm advocating for when I talk about socialism. But the United States, I mean, in most countries, do not have social wealth funds that, you know, buy up shares in publicly traded companies. But if they did, I would consider that like a step towards socialism for sure. This is what's coming in from Jonathan says, under Mothi's definition, that's how we got that one, since you're a doom says people wasting resources under capitalism are bearing the cost of being wasteful, not so under socialism. Well, that's obviously false. I mean, if you're a person in a socialist economy and you're distributed X amount of money, and then you waste some of that money, you pay the cost, right? You're disadvantaged by that because now you have less money, right? It's same thing under capitalism. It just doesn't seem to me at all that there's a symmetry breaker such that, you know, wasting your money is worse for you under capitalism than it is under socialism. You got this one coming in from Singer of dooms says anything seems worth it spending someone else's money, though. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean in your face. That's what it means. Okay. Next up, let me know, did I read this one? So sorry, you guys, they said you have the right to bodily autonomy and thus the product. I think that's Oh, the product of your labor, I think that's a little different, which includes property. So he clarified. Okay, sure. So if he's saying that you have the right to whatever you produce, is that the claim the product of your labor? Yeah, okay. So whatever you produce, you have a moral right to that. So that's not even going to support like even if I were to grant that that's not going to support capitalism, right? Because I mean, let's think of a couple examples. For one, we have the value of unimproved land or natural resources. Nobody produces natural resources or land, right? So this line of logic would say that we should have like a 100% land value tax because nobody produced it. So therefore, nobody has a moral entitlement to that value. Additionally, we could think of like capital income, right? If you are just a passive owner of capital, you're accumulating hundreds of dollars, right? Like if you have money in an index fund or something, you're accumulating hundreds of dollars in capital gains and you're not producing that, right? You're not working for it. Your money is just sitting there and it's accumulating, right? And so even if I were to buy that theory that people have a moral right to whatever they produce, that's not going to favor capitalism. But I also think that theory happens to be implausible. So for example, I don't think 50% of the population, whether that be, you know, disabled people, children, the elderly, I don't think that these people who by and large don't have the capacity to produce things due to factors that are completely outside of their control. I don't think that in virtue of that, these people should be doomed to poverty and starvation, right? That seems like a very implausible theory of just distribution. You got it. And thank you very much for this question coming in from Sphincter of Doom as well. It says, oh, and then sorry, we have so many here's so many questions that if we can limit it, at least it'll be short. But if you limit it to like 30 seconds per response, at least it'll be fair because I'll limit both of you to that. Sphincter of Doom says the Nordic countries have a much more evenly distributed spectrum and are indeed more business friendly. Social democracy is just government taking credit for the wealth capitalism creates. Yeah. So when he says that they're more business friendly, this claim comes from the Economic Freedom Index, which gets its measure from the World Bank. Basically, the method is they look at one, how many steps it takes to, how much time it takes, and three, how much it costs to A, open a business, B, obtain a construction permit, C, close a business, and D, get electricity. So the kinds of regulations that companies actually complain about such as safety regulations, environmental regulations, consumer protection, product liability, and so on are left out of this metric entirely, right? So I mean, there are additional problems with the metric such that they tend to overestimate differences. But yeah, it's just not a great metric. And then I can't remember. Wait, what was the other claim that the person made? I'm trying to be really quick. The Nordic countries have a much more evenly distributed tax burden and are indeed more business friendly. Social democracy is just government taking credit for the wealth capitalism creates. Oh yeah. So the first point is equally terrible. I mean, like it's just obviously the case that the tax burden is going to be more evenly distributed because the income is more evenly distributed, right? There's less pre-tax inequality. So the tax burden gets spread more evenly. If you want a more even tax burden in the U.S., one way to do that would be to create a more equal pre-tax income distribution, right? And that's what I'm advocating for. We must move on. Pardon my interruption, but just want to get through as many. And Swinger of Doom says, claims of the merit of redistribution ignores the cost of doing so, e.g. GDP doesn't consider the reductions in demand from taxation. I don't understand the point being made. So like you have less money to work with because more of it's taxed. So you're being a drain on the economy because the money is going to the government to be redistributed rather than being spent freely by the people. Sure, but you have to take into account both. So if I'm advocating for taxation and redistribution policies, you can't just say under this system you would have less money after being taxed than you had before being taxed, right? Because you're not taking into account the other side of that token, right? You have to also take into account now just the taxation, but the benefits which are provided by the state that are funded by that taxation, right? So it's not enough to say pre-tax income versus post-tax income. You have to compare pre-tax income to post-tax and transfer income, right? We must move forward. Thank you very much. Ann, this one coming in from, do appreciate it. Run Runner says, Nordic countries have no minimum wage, regressive taxation, lower business taxes than the U.S., but only a bigger welfare state. How is that socialist? Yeah, so the first thing that, I'm sorry, wait, what was the first thing that was said? He said, Nordic countries have no minimum wage, regressive taxation, lower business taxes than the U.S., but only a bigger welfare state. How is that socialist? Okay, so no minimum wage. The problem with that argument is that the reason the Nordic countries don't have a minimum wage is because they have extremely large sectoral unions that set wages for the workers, and that ends up with, you know, in different sectors, the minimum wage, which are set by unions in the Nordic countries, are much higher than the minimum wages in the United States, right? And I consider unions to be a much more socialist way of, you know, setting wages than a federal minimum wage, right? Because socialism ultimately has to do with democratic control and influence over the economy. And I think that, you know, sectoral unions are one of the most, one of the best ways to implement economic democracy. So I don't think the lack of the minimum wage in the Nordic countries indicates that they're not socialists. I already addressed the tax burden thing, and I forget the lesson. Mr. Monster says, Native Americans and Native Scandinavians enjoyed socialism for years, explain, chairing is caring. He's talking about the Indians in America? That's right. I don't think that that worked out. I heard a story, and I don't know if it's the same story that he's talking about. He says Scandinavians? Native Americans and Native Scandinavians. Oh, individually. I don't know what he's talking about. This one can't address it. From Sphincter of Doom says, Mouth E, seems to have just admitted the resentment is just NB slash spite in parentheses dismissing unfairness, something not the best thing to appease or incentivize. I don't think I made that concession. Okay. You got it. And thank you very much for this question. Coming in from, do appreciate it. Adam Albilia. Good to see you. He says, redistributing my shekels. I trust you to do good with it. Thanks, James. And thank you, Adam. We are pumped for the conference, and I am pumped. We're going to talk about updates on that, but if we want to get through these last questions. This one coming up from Tomek. Thank you for your question says, why does Sweden have a system of private property? And then folks, we can't take any more questions. I'm sorry, the library is going to get me out of here in a few minutes. Why does Sweden have a system of private property? Correct. I have no idea. Like, I mean, did you just want me to like, I don't know what they're asking, like, did they want like a historical account of like, how the institution of private property arose in Sweden? Because I mean, I don't know, it just seems like a totally tangential historical fact, right? You got it. And thank you very much for this question. Coming in from mango tea says, Malthy, if you believe in socialism, give me your home, your car, your labor and your money. I want 50% because I'm not as privileged as you. I think I probably won't do that. So coming in from Sphinxure of Doom strikes against a single motherhood includes families that are a result of divorce. So it isn't a proxy for births out of wedlock. Sink, okay. Okay, yeah, I see the point. I don't think that's a kind of argument to anything I said. If anything, I think that's a counter argument to the alternative claim, right? Roe v. Wade to increased the out of wedlock births, believe it or not. This one coming in from Sphinxure of Doom says your property equals that which you created yourself with your labor or acquired via voluntary exchange using that which you created yourself with your labor or was donated to you by others voluntarily. Yeah, I already responded to that view, I think. This one coming in from Ozzie and says how Christian is the corporate shield that protects owners from liability for their negligence in running the business. Corporations are commie. Yeah, a lot of them are, especially these huge ones that are in bed with the government. I don't know. There's a lot of frivolous. We should get rid of the frivolous lawsuits to the courts are extremely corrupt. The lawyers and the judges, it's a big mess that we're in. The culture is corrupt. You got it. This one from Tommy Capitalist. Sphinxure of Doom says less pre-tax inequality isn't Okay, says less pre-tax inequality. This isn't going to be like this forever, folks. This is I'm just traveling. Sphinxure of Doom says less pre-tax inequality isn't created by redistribution when redistribution is done via taxes. Well, I mean, that's that's not true, right? Like before I'm taxed this year, the amount of money that I have this year before getting taxed at the end of the year is going to be heavily influenced by the amount of social programs that I've been receiving throughout the year, which are funded by taxes from previous years. So I mean, I mean, that's just obviously not true. And also part of what part of what plays into pre-tax levels of inequality in the Nordics has to do with their levels of unionization and things like that, which is also a part of the socialism that I advocate for. This one from Mr. Monster says, I believe that socialism and capitalism has each ups and downs. A combination of the two would be more ideal. Would you agree sharing is caring? I don't know if I agree with that. It's it's there's it there's a time to share and there's a there's a lot of time not to a time not to help for sure. Gotcha. Well, I mean, I came here to defend socialism. So obviously I disagree that, you know, capitalism and socialism is better than socialism. You got it. And I want to let you know, folks, that's it for questions. Our guests are linked to this question. I'm going to be back in just a moment, folks, with updates on this huge conference in Dallas, Texas, January 15th and 16th. You don't want to miss it, folks. So stick around for that update. But want to say huge thank you to Malthy and Frank. It has been a true pleasure, you guys. Thank you. Merry Christmas. Jesus is a capitalist and Jesus is king. Merry Christmas. Thanks. Thanks James for having me. We have one last one. Come back to Zaka and very naughty says how can Nordic countries be your heel when you're arguing against private companies, which very much exist there? Yeah, so I didn't claim that Nordic companies that Nordic countries are my deal. I said they're the closest existing societies to the type of socialist society that I'm advocating for, because they have high levels of unionization, high levels of redistribution and high levels of public ownership over their economy, especially Norway, which has a massive social wealth fund, which is a big part of what I'm advocating for. So yeah, I mean, they're not my ideal, but they're like the closest thing that exists to my ideal. And so I think that they're high levels of success are relevant. You've got it. And want to say thank you very much, folks. Both guests are linked in the description. If you want to hear more from hate or Malthy, you can. And that includes, if you're listening to the podcast, put our guest link in the description box at the very top of both YouTube and podcast. I'll be back in just a moment. We'll want to say one last thing to hate and Malthy. Thank you very much. Thanks for my dear friends. Very excited to be with you. Want to say this couple of things. One, we are absolutely pumped. I have put this in the description box. I'm also going to pin it to the top of the chat right now. In particular, the link for the in-person conference ticket for January 15. What are you doing January 15th and 16th? If you are anywhere near Dallas or maybe if you want to fly to Dallas, enjoy the warm weather. Why not? We're going to be there in person. Hang it out. It's going to be a blast with tons of debates. For example, you can see the bottom right of your screen infrared in Dylan Burns going head to head in a one-on-one debate. But also, my gosh, you guys, it is going to be huge. Daniel, he could be on destiny and whether liberalism requires the domination of Islam, juicy to say the least. And not only that, you guys, I am absolutely pumped. Check this one out as well. Elijah Shaffer has agreed to debate destiny, whether or not religion and government overlap. That is going to be juicy and you don't want to miss it, folks. I'm going to tell you. One, if you're anywhere near, I am putting that link to the ticket in the old line chat, but it's also in the description box. And that way, if you guys would like to, hey, you can easily sign up now. The tickets are, I told Bob, I said, Bob, let's extend the early bird tickets. We've got a good start. I'm pumped. You guys, seriously, we actually have a great start in people buying tickets. People are showing for this. It's super encouraging. But we're like, you know what, we did this fast. We sprung it like on people. It was like, hey, we're going to have a conference in a month. And so we were like, let's do the early bird a little bit longer. This is temporary. I'm traveling. Okay. We know that people are busy during the holidays. So we're like, you know what, we'll extend it. Not a problem. And that way people can get those early bird tickets. So I'm going to tell you guys, it is going to be phenomenal. I'm going to pin it to the old top of the chat right now. And so that way, that link is handy for you. And it's also in the description. But you might be wondering, you're like, James, I'm just too far. That's not realistic. I got to tell you, for the debates during the conference, about half will be type where if you put into the crowd fund, you get to watch live. Really big stuff. You guys only throw a nine bucks into the crowd fund. And that's in the description box as well. That helps us put these events on. So if you are a believer in the vision of providing a level playing field so that everybody can make their case on a neutral platform, join us by clicking on one of those links, whether it be buying a ticket for in person or maybe you're like, I don't know if I can do that, but you know, I'm far away and maybe I'll just throw into the crowd fund to help support it. And then as mentioned, you get to watch all of the debates live that day. You guys, it is going to be phenomenal. We are absolutely pumped. We've got such a stacked lineup in terms of talented speakers. But in order for us to do this type of conference, I'm going to tell you, we need to actually break even. And we can. I fully believe we can. And if we happen to have any surplus funds, if the crowd fund makes it to 5,000, which we believe it will, and if the ticket sales get us to where we have a surplus, in either case, 100% of the extra funds will be reinvested into the next conference. So you might be thinking, oh, James, you want to go on a vacation? You want to go on a ski trip? No, no, no, no, no, no. This is 100% will be reinvested back into our second conference. I'm going to tell you, you guys, it is going to be phenomenal. Let me show you something that you felt. You might be wondering, you're like, I don't know what is this exactly as well. Let me show you. So modern database debate con, our first ever conference is happening. It is going to be monstrous. It's in Dallas, Texas, January 15th through 16th. And we're using Indiegogo. See right there. I'm pointing to it. Indiegogo is the crowd fund that is linked in the description. And it is so easy because you might be thinking, James, I don't know how to use that. That's kind of weird. What exactly is Indiegogo? Well, let me show you. You might be like, is it easy to sign up? You don't even have to sign up because you're busy, folks. I know you are. You don't have to give them your information. You can just sign in quick via Facebook. Piece of cake. So that link, again, is in the description. That helps us put on these debates as we are absolutely pumped, you guys. We're taking a big rest, but we absolutely know it's going to be worth it. This conference is going to be mega. And so here are just some of the examples of the perks. Watch all the debates live. Just throw in nine bucks. You guys, nine bucks. I mean, that's a trip to Chipotle. That's a trip to Chipotle. Nowadays, I went to Chipotle. It was $10. I said, I haven't been here in a long time. The prices must have gone up. But I've got to tell you, for nine bucks, you get to watch all of the debates free. And if you were a Patreon supporter, that is linked in the description as well. You also get to watch all the debates live. You don't have to put it into the crowdfund to watch all the debates live. We just want to say thank you for being a Patreon supporter. Or if you happen to be a member of the channel, you don't have to put it into the crowdfund, we just want to say thank you. So you are already set. We'll communicate with you about how to get that live event link on the day of the debate. But let me show you some of these other stuff. Because you might be like, I'm still kind of new to it. James, are you sure you know what you're doing with this stuff? Yes. This one right here, my dear friends, see that? See that poster in the background? Mike Jones and Michael Schirmer, that debate was epic. It was huge. It was about a year ago. And that was our first crowdfund, which was a success. We've done this before, my dear friends. And we're going to do it again. We're determined. I seriously, I am absolutely determined. And I can tell you, we made this goal, too, for you to remember this debate. Matt Billahunty versus Dr. Kenny Rhodes, we met our goal for that as well. And you might be thinking though, you're like, James, what is with the crowdfund? That's like weird, man. Isn't aren't these debates, aren't these conferences just free? You just, you know, you just show up and people say, hey, you know, for free, we want to let you use our venue. And we're just going to find the speakers for you, James. Not exactly. So here is the budget for the conference. In terms of supporting the channel, you can see at the bottom left venue is the biggest chunk of the pie on the right side. There's venue in the bottom. There's key in the bottom of the page. But on the right side of the pie graph itself, that blue chunk is for the cost of the venue because it doesn't actually cost. It's a lot of money to rent out a big ballroom with 200 people. The other one is if you look at the bottom, you see that orange chunk? That's the speaker's hotel rooms because you want to take care of the speakers. We really do appreciate it as all the speakers are doing this just pro bono. They're just doing it for the travel cost being covered. That's amazing. So we are super thankful. So this is kind of a thrifty conference actually, because you might be wondering like, James, like, is this, you know, are you going really big on us? It's like, we're trying to keep it thrifty. We really are. And we're trying to put on the biggest event possible. And we're getting high quality speakers that we're thankful that they have been willing to come just for the cost of their travel. And we're covering their food for the day, as you see in the graph. That's in the little slice in yellow at the top of the graph. And then in the gray, or I'm sorry, speaker flights are in the gray. So you guys, this is going to be ginormous. That link for the crowdfund is in the description box. And if you believe in the vision, I've got to go seriously, they're going to kick me out of here, is if you believe I'm putting my shoes on right now, got my wool sock, I mean, what's the concept? It's cold. You have to. But if you believe in the vision of providing a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level playing field, pinch into that crowdfund, buy a ticket. If you happen to be nearby in person, the early word tickets are still on sale. We extended that through tonight. So jump on that, my dear friends. Thanks for all your support. Literally, I've got to run. Thanks guys. I love you guys. I wish I could be longer, but the library is closing. So I hope you have a great rest of your night. Love you guys. Thanks for making this channel awesome. I seriously appreciate you guys more than you know, like, you are honestly, I love you guys. You make this fun. See you next time. Tomorrow night. We'll be on. We'll be on tomorrow night, by the way, folks. Forgot to mention that I've got to get the event up because I'm a little bit behind, but we will be live tomorrow night and it's going to be amazing.