July 15, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:56
4144 More Hard Truth About Socialism
While the Merriam-Webster dictionary may define Socialism as "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods" - the practical reality is much different. Stefan Molyneux outlines the basic logical flaws in socialist theory which dooms its implementation. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
So the question of socialism is also very interesting because when a false and pernicious belief is so widespread and it goes so much against the historical reality of starvation and genocide and mass murder and you name it, gulags, concentration camps and so on, you have to kind of explain why the belief is so prevalent.
Now, One of the reasons why I think that socialism is so seductive to young people is it kind of accords with early childhood.
Early childhood in the family is associated with the Marxist doctrine, of course, from each according to their ability, in other words, those who have the ability to contribute resources do so, to each according to their need, which is why the parents go out to work and the children...
Do not. The parents can generate resources and income and they use those generated resources and incomes in order to feed and clothe and house and provide medical care and so on to the child.
So when we are children, we live in a socialist paradise.
A sort of RBE, Marxist mommy, robot conveyor belt of stuff, which we don't really have to think where it comes from.
You know, you just opened up the, like I remember a friend of mine, I used to go to his place, play Dungeons and Dragons and stuff.
You'd open the cupboard in the basement, like the cauldron, and there would be like mountains of pop and bags of chips, like things that I would never round in my house.
But you don't really have to think about where these things come from.
There's this omnipotent authority figure who just provides things and so on.
And that's kind of like a template for the state.
The state being the provider of things that just kind of mysteriously appear, mysteriously come into being and flow in your direction.
So I think we start, you know the old saying, if you're not...
A socialist. When you're young, you have no heart.
If you're not a conservative, when you're older, you have no head.
There is a continuation of childhood that is very tempting when it comes to the state.
Now, of course, the purpose of parenthood is to grow your children into independent and competent adults, but for tragically Many children in the world, that whole process tends to fall apart, tends to not work very well at all.
So you end up with this stunted childhood where you didn't get the security and the benevolence and the resources that you needed.
And so there's this hunger for some other agency or entity to fill that gap, that hole in your heart, often the size of your heart.
And then when people have A friendly, charismatic politician coming and saying, basically, I'm going to be your parent.
I'm going to give you stuff.
You don't really have to worry about where it's coming from and so on.
It's really tempting for people to continue on in that vein.
So I think that's one of the reasons why it's so prevalent.
Now, of course, in the family...
It's perfectly moral.
It's good because the parents are all choosing and they chose to have children.
It's their children. It's their resources they're disposing of by supporting and feeding their children of their own accord, of their own free will.
They're voluntarily giving up property for the choices that they have made.
When you take personal situations and you translate them into a coercive environment like the state, right?
The state is Her idea is so good, they have to be implemented at the point of a gun.
It's sort of like, well, if you're on a date and you make love with your partner, that's good.
If you then are forced into an arranged marriage, well, that's bad, right?
I mean, so personal decisions are good.
and those personal decisions float into a coercive, larger environment, they turn from moral into immoral.
Like if you give someone money because you care about the person and they're poor, that's charity and that can be a good thing.
If then you pass a law which says the government has to take money at the point of a gun from one group of people and give it to another to supposedly help them, but of course it's power corrupts, it just buys votes and creates a dependent class and so on.
The government is a farmer and the poor are their crop and the rich are their fertilizer.
But anyway, so when you take private decisions, which are fine and moral and good, and you then translate them into a coercive legal environment, they go from moral to, well, the exact opposite of moral, which is not good.
You give money to someone through charity, that's fine.
If they take that money from you at gunpoint, well, that's mugging, that's theft.
That's democracy. So that, I think, explains as to why.
And it's interesting, you know, because people often ask me, you know, when I'm involved in debates or discussions with the people, I ask them about their childhood.
It's kind of a cliche, right?
But there's a very good reason why I do that, which is if you examine people's adult political beliefs 99 times out of 100, those beliefs stem from things which occurred within their Childhoods, right?
Women generally vote a little bit more left than men.
And the fact that we have mostly women teaching our young is one central reason as to why the young tend to be pro-leftist.
I mean, if you look at your childhood, you look at whether you were encouraged to mature into independent adulthood and so on, then you can often find out the root cause of many of your political beliefs.
And we want to find out the root cause so that we can find out if...
It's rational or not, what we believe.
It's simply a function of history that's different.
So I wanted to mention that.
I also wanted to mention something else that I think is a very common misnomer in socialism, which is this.
Okay, so let's say you're the capitalist.
You're the capitalist and I am the employee, right?
So you're the employer, I'm the employee.
And let's say that you run some lathe shop or something like that.
You need some big machinery to get things done.
Well, you sell my labor for $15 an hour, but you only pay me $10 an hour.
Ooh, suddenly doesn't it seem like I'm being ripped off?
Like the value of my labor is $15 an hour, but you're only paying me $10 an hour.
Monstrous! Theft!
Rip-off bill! Terrible, terrible stuff, right?
And it's not.
Spoiler, it's not.
It's perfectly voluntary.
And it's sensible for the worker to be only paid $10 an hour.
Now, I know this is sort of from back in the day.
My first job paid me $2.45 an hour, so feel free to jiggle these numbers if you're in Venezuela or Zimbabwe or some other paradise of central planning.
But, you know, so forgive me for the numbers are a little bit low, but we'll just go with it because the math is easier for me.
And remember, when it comes to math, I'm very pretty.
So, the question is, why on earth would the worker only accept $10 an hour for his labor, which is being sold on the open market, at $15 an hour?
Why wouldn't he just go and sell directly to whoever's willing to pay him $15 an hour?
Well, the answer to that...
Is that no one is willing to pay him, just him, $15 an hour.
So let me give you an example.
So many years ago, I was in my mid-teens or whatever, a friend of mine Asked me up to his uncle's cottage, right?
He's a friend of mine, so the same age.
Now, in Canada, getting to go to a cottage, if you're a poor kid like me, is a rare treat and a wonderful thing to do.
And I always showed up with, please feel free to put me to work because I'm taking your hospitality and there's a kind of quid pro quo there.
And I, of course, wanted to be really welcome at cottages because I love the countryside.
But So we went up to the cottage, and I said, you know, if there's anything that needs doing, like, please, I'm happy to help out, you know, and great, because the swimming is great, and the fishing is great, and the hiking is great, and they had these mopeds that you could roam around on and so on.
And the guy whose cottage it was, he said, well, yeah, actually, you and your friend would be fantastic.
I need a new well dug, right?
So we looked around, and he didn't have any shovels.
And we had to dig down, I don't know, it was like 15 or 20 feet, and it was hot and buggy, but that's a whole other thing.
So we looked around in his shed, and he couldn't find any shovels.
So then we rolled into his pickup, we rolled into town, and we spent 50 bucks picking up a couple of good quality shovels.
Hmm. Now why?
Why? Why would we do that?
Well, you understand why. Because if we have to dig by hand, it's going to take forever, and it's going to hurt our fingers, right?
You scratch down, you hit some sharp rock or something like that.
It's much more efficient to spend 50 bucks to get the shovels, right?
So... Me plus shovel is like 10 times as productive as me without shovel and far less likely to be injured and so on.
So yeah, we spent like two or three hours digging down this hole.
Actually turned out to be... I like good, solid physical labor.
I always have. And so we dug down and we got the well.
So why did the guy go into town and pay 50 bucks?
Because it meant we got the well done in two hours as opposed to 20 hours.
And less chance of injury.
Plus, of course, now he has the shovels forever because he's going to need to dig other stuff.
Trust me, work at a cottage, from what I've heard, is never, ever done.
So, isn't that interesting?
Why would he pay to get that done?
Why would... Now, if I had been told, you know, you're going to be paid 75 bucks for digging this hole, of course I would have gone to spend 20 bucks on a shovel or 25 bucks on a shovel just for myself or whatever because...
I'm making money, you understand?
I'm making money. Because if it takes me, you know, if it's like, you know, let's just make it easy, you're being paid $100 to dig this hole, and it's going to take you 20 hours, that's $5 an hour, right?
That's no good. Whereas if you're being paid $100, you spend $75, and it takes you two hours, well, suddenly you're doing a whole lot better, right?
So me, dig in the hole, no good.
Me plus shovel dig in the hole, really, really good.
So if you're working in a factory, at least I'm working in a factory, and what is there?
Well, there's all this infrastructure that makes my labor hugely valuable, right?
There's a factory, there's a giant expensive piece of capital machinery, like a lathe or a welding machine or whatever it's going to be, right?
These things cost tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There's insurance.
There's heating or cooling in the summer.
There's protective gear, which I don't have to bring myself.
There's a whole sales and marketing apparatus.
I don't have to do the taxes for the whole business.
Like, there's a whole infrastructure that I just get to plug myself into.
And it's me plus that infrastructure that is worth $15 an hour.
Just me alone? I'm not worth $15 an hour.
So how much am I worth alone?
Well, we know that it's less than $10 an hour because I'm willing to be paid $10 an hour.
Now, if I could produce $11 worth of value without all of this big machinery and factory and all of that, then I'd go out and do that because I'd be making a buck more per hour, right?
$40 a week, $160 a month, not bad at all, right?
So, that's really important.
It's not that there's this $15 an hour that the worker is worth, and then the capitalist just takes away $5.
An hour. Because he's mean.
Because that indicates that the worker has no brains whatsoever.
And it's just willing to, like, they're beaten down, oh, okay, well, if you just want to pay me 10, even though I'm worth 15, okay, all right?
Like somebody in dire need of Jordan Peterson's assertiveness negotiation advice, right?
So, it's not that.
It's that the worker is paying the capitalist.
Now, you can say the capitalist is paying the worker $10 an hour, sure, but what you don't see, what's hard to see because it's so obscured, although it's very obvious when you point it out, is that the worker is paying the capitalist $5 an hour to rent the factory and the machinery and the sales and the marketing and the advertising and the heating and the cooling and the taxes and the regulations and the safety equipment and you name it,
right? So the worker is sitting there saying, okay, well, let's just say I try and do this stuff all by my lonesome.
Maybe it's only worth five bucks an hour.
But if I pay the capitalist five bucks an hour to rent all of his stuff, then I can make ten bucks an hour.
So I'm making double what I would make without the factory.
Right? That's pretty cool.
It's the same thing when I was a waiter for many years.
You make a certain amount of money.
But you don't make the money by carrying food around.
You try that in the woods, you get nowhere.
So I say, okay, well, I'm going to make 15 bucks an hour as a waiter with, you know, base pay and tips or whatever.
I'm going to make 15 bucks an hour as a waiter.
Now, I'm giving five bucks an hour to the restaurant.
Good! Because if I don't give five bucks an hour to the restaurant, I'm just carrying food around in the middle of nowhere and I make nothing!
So you understand, it is not a one-way imposed, top-down economic relationship.
It is a negotiation.
And yes, the factory owner is paying the employee, but the employee is paying the factory owner for the use of the factory, which multiplies the productivity of the The worker.
That's really important. Imagine you've got...
Well, we do this all the time.
You've got to hang a picture in your house, right?
So imagine if you had to sit there and try and figure out how to make a nail and a hook and a hammer and, you know, a little stepladder.
It would take you forever.
It's fundamentally impossible.
It's a great essay called iPencil.
You should read it. Nobody knows how to make a pencil, even something as simple as a pencil.
Nobody knows how to make a pencil.
It's all coordinated through the free market.
So if you've got to make a hanger, you've got to make a nail, you've got to build a little stepladder, it's going to take you forever.
So what do you do? Well, if you don't have these things, you go down to your local hardware store and you pick these things up for 20 bucks, 30 bucks, whatever, right?
So good, bang, bang, bang, Bob's your uncle, you're done, right?
Why don't you do it all yourself?
Because it's ridiculously inefficient.
Now, there are more workers than there are factories.
And so it is natural that the person who has invested a million dollars, five million dollars, ten million dollars or more to create a factory, well, that's a substantial investment of time, resources and risk.
Whereas the worker is only investing five dollars an hour, If you go build a factory for $5 million and it doesn't work out, you're out a lot of money.
You can sell some stuff or whatever, but you're going to be out a lot of money.
You maybe lose half of that. So you've got $2.5 million on the line if it doesn't work out.
If you are the worker and you go and you invest $5 an hour to rent the factory so you can produce many more goods than you would otherwise on your own, What's your risk?
Well, maybe the factory doesn't work out, in which case you get two weeks notice, you get severance, but you're not out two and a half million dollars, right?
You are minimizing your risk enormously.
Now, there could be a slight risk, I think Peter Joseph talked about this in our debate, that if the factory really goes tits up in a horrible way, then you might not be able to get some back pay in someone and you might be out five hundred, a thousand dollars.
But that's bad and shouldn't happen.
But the entrepreneur's out $2.5 million.
So should you get the same reward with thousands of times the risk?
I mean, of course not.
Of course not. I mean, just imagine, it's not hard to figure it out.
Just imagine you go to a casino, right?
There's some one-armed bandit there, right?
There's some casino, some slot machine or whatever.
And there's two slot machines, like one next to each other.
And one says, you know, $5 to play.
And... There's a 100 to 1, like a 1% chance of winning, right?
And there's another one says, and it pays $1,000 or whatever, right?
And there's another one which says $5 to play, a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning, and it pays $500.
Well, that would all, like, you know what, you'd go to the first machine, right?
Higher payout and greater chance of winning.
So the risk and the reward have to be proportional.
The more risk you take, the more reward you should get.
And so the worker is giving up virtually nothing by paying $5 an hour.
In fact, he's not even risking $5 an hour because he's getting paid.
Here's $10 an hour for sure.
There's a slight chance that he might not get paid if things go really badly really quickly, but he's taking virtually no risk.
Whereas the guy who creates the factory, if it doesn't work out, taking a massive risk.
Now socialism, and this comes out of what Marx calls a labor theory of value, which is that he kind of, it's weird, he kind of forgets that there's this whole factory, there's this whole entrepreneurial ecosystem that surrounds the worker that adds a massive amount of value to what the worker does, right? I mean, I've known a lot of people who've said, oh, I'm going to get into jewelry design or handbag design.
Okay, wait a minute. And they say, you know, well, it only takes me five hours to make a handbag.
You know, I can sell it for a hundred bucks.
That's 20 bucks an hour. That's 40 grand a year.
And I'm like, that's not even close to the right math.
Because they're so used to being employees that they don't understand everything that the capitalist has been doing, everything that the factory owner has been doing.
It takes you five hours to make the handbag.
And then you have to find a customer.
You have to ship it.
You may have to accept returns.
There may be fraud. You may have to spend time doing your taxes.
You have to incorporate.
Like, who knows, right? There could be any number.
And then what happens is people start this, and they've got this weird rudimentary calculation, like somehow magically stuff that you make walks off and gets out into the world, and people just send you money for it and so on, and they don't recognize.
It's a lot of work to get stuff sold.
Making stuff is relatively easy.
It's pretty easy to record a podcast or a vlog or whatever it is, but getting people to see it, back in the day, like I've been doing this for about 11 years, back in the day when I was starting, I spent five to ten times as much time promoting the show than I did recording it.
Why? Because I've been an entrepreneur for most of my adult life.
I basically... After I got my masters, I worked for a little bit under a year as a COBOL programmer on a trading floor, stock trading floor.
And after that, with very, very brief exceptions, I've pretty much been an entrepreneur since my mid to late 20s.
It's been a long time. So I understand that, oh, I've just recorded a great video of me talking about things.
Nobody cares. You have to find some way to get it out.
So I used to spend a lot of time promoting and figuring out where people could do it, buying ads and experimenting with this and all that kind of stuff.
And getting the word out is, well, arguably more important than even just making the product.
So... People forget all of that because they're not taught how much value the entrepreneurial infrastructure brings to what it is that they're doing.
And they look there and they say, well, my labor is being sold for 15 bucks an hour, but I'm only getting 10.
It's a ripoff. No, it's not.
It's a very, very good deal.
It's a far better deal for most people than you would ever get by doing it all yourself.
I mean, it's simply not... We offload things to people all the time.
Every now and then, I, like I guess everyone who runs their own studios...
You do something dumb, right?
You do a video and something's wrong with the sound.
Or the video is flickery or jerky for some reason.
Or you leave the lens cap on.
You know, something retarded, right?
And so... Basically, I don't end up with a video.
I mean, if I was just down here doing these conversations without the camera being recorded, without the audio being recorded, without uploading it, without all of this infrastructure that actually delivers it to you, well, I'm still doing exactly the same thing.
But where's the value?
Before I recorded doing...
I don't know why you need this. I'm on the phone.
Before I recorded doing...
Podcasts in my car. For those who don't know, that's how I started.
Long commute and I just recorded thoughts in the car that I'd had over the decades that I've been studying and thinking about philosophy and stuff like that.
I actually did speeches just for fun.
I'd just be driving along and rant about this.
It didn't all come out of nowhere.
Lots of practice ahead of time.
But the rants that I just did on my own...
I mean, it's good practice, I guess, but you understand, without the infrastructure of everything that gets the message out to you, I'm still doing the same labor.
I'm just not getting any value out of it.
If this was all turned off and I was doing and saying exactly this, I would make no impact, get no donations.
And by the way, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Please, please help out the show.
It's very, very important. freedomainradio.com slash donate.
But the labor theory of value says that the only...
Real value that's being provided is the physical labor, and that's nonsense.
Human beings have been deploying physical labor for 150,000 years.
Basically, since they were people, we've been using physical labor.
But what's the difference? What has been the difference over the past few hundred years, where we've broken free of this endless cycle and shackles of poverty?
Now, we've actually been able to achieve that because we've allowed people to negotiate in the free market, more or less, for what they want, for what they're willing to give up, for...
The remuneration that they feel they deserve.
And we've not given anyone priority over this, right?
So people say, well, it's unfair that the capitalist makes more money, as if the capitalist can somehow will additional profit.
And that's just not true.
That's only said by people who've never been an entrepreneur, have never been in charge of payroll, never been in charge of all of this kind of stuff.
I mean, I guess everybody would like to charge a billion dollars an hour for their services, and everyone would like to pay their employees zero dollars an hour, and it's not really realistic.
But the profits that the factory owner makes is a complicated negotiation.
There's his wishes, there's the employee's wishes, there's the shareholders' wishes, there's his wife's wishes if she wants to redecorate the kitchen, I don't know.
But most fundamentally, the profits that are made Well, they're up to the consumer.
They're up to the end consumer who purchases the goods, whether it's consumer goods or business-to-business goods and so on.
It's the consumer who decides.
So if I want to be a waiter, I go to the restaurant owner and I say, I want to be a waiter at your restaurant, but you've got to pay me $100 an hour.
Well, he's going to say no.
Why? Why? Because he can't sell my services for that amount of money, plus his profit, right?
He can't sell my services for that.
Because it's the customers who are not willing to pay me $100 an hour, at least, or more, right?
So that's the fundamental thing.
It's not up to the capitalist how much he pays his workers.
Fundamentally, it's up to the consumers how much they're willing to pay the workers.
I mean, trust me, the producers of a major Hollywood motion picture, they don't want to pay their movie star $10 million.
And they don't, out of the goodness of their hearts or any of that, the reason they pay $10 million to the movie star is because that's what the customers want.
The customers want that movie star in that role to the tune of $10 million plus.
So it's the end customers who decide how much the movie star gets paid.
If they can't sell $10 million worth of his acting, at least, to the customers, then they won't pay him $10 million.
And understanding that Means that you understand that the relationship between what you get paid is the relationship of how much your customers value what it is that you're doing and how confident you are in that value.
That's really, really important.
If you think it's you and the boss, you're missing the whole equation.
The boss is just a flow-through mechanism.
He's like the windowpane through which you see a beautiful view.
The boss is merely passing along the value that you provide to his customers.
And so if you want to make more money, then you provide more value to the customer.
So, I mean, if you're just an extra in the background of the movie, you won't make that much.
But if you're in the foreground and you've worked to become a great actor and you've had your teeth capped and hair plugged, whatever it is that they do these days, well, then you're adding a lot of value to the customer.
End consumer to the person who picks up the movie tickets, right?
So the lighting guys for a rock concert, yeah, they're important, but they're kind of interchangeable.
You can probably find some other person to do that.
But the star of the show, right?
Like the Taylor Swift or the, I don't know, whoever's here, Katy Perry, whoever's big these days, right?
DJ Khaled. Those guys...
Well, if they're not there, there's no show.
They're unique.
Because the value that they provide in terms of songwriting and performance and spectacle and charisma and looks and dance moves or whatever it is that they provide, well...
That's the value to the audience.
How much is the audience willing to pay for great lighting?
Well, a certain amount of money, otherwise it wouldn't be done.
How interchangeable are the lighting, guys?
Kind of interchangeable. Not 100%, but certainly they're more interchangeable than the star of the show, the Taylor Swift or whoever, right?
How much are people willing to...
Pay for Taylor Swift. Well, without Taylor Swift, there's no show-off.
If it's just a bunch of lights, no one's coming.
If it's Taylor Swift without any lights, people will pay less.
They'll feel disappointed. So you hit that sweet spot, right?
You understand? So it's not...
If you've got a problem with how much someone is making, Then you need to go and talk to the customers.
You know, because you always hear this thing like, oh, these big box stores are pushing out these mom-and-pop stores.
You know, the mom-and-pop store, that's just kind of a heart-tugging thing and so on.
Like, there's some big mean business that's coming in and they're undercutting.
It's like, you're missing the whole point.
And it's a shame that you don't get taught this stuff.
It's really tragic because it's so important and it's so illuminating and it's so relaxing once you understand this kind of stuff.
There's no one to get mad at, really.
I mean, you can get mad at the... And consumers, if you want, and if you can change their decisions, you can change what happens.
But the reason why a Walmart moves in and the mom-and-pop stores close down is because that's what the customers want.
If the customers wanted the mom-and-pop stores, then Walmart would open up, they'd make no money, and they'd close down again.
It's not that complicated. Or Walmart would do the research and say, if there was a big box store here where the prices were 25% lower, would you shop there?
And if people said, no, I love the mom-and-pop stores, I'll never shop at Walmart.
I hate that place. Well, then they won't build a place there.
So the reason that Walmart moves in and the mom-and-pop stores close down is because that's what the people want.
That's what they're willing to pay for.
And so they may have a certain amount of sentimentality.
Oh, that store is where I bought my first lollipop and so on.
And it's like, yeah, sentimentality is nice and cool and warm hearted and all of that.
And there's a dollar value attached with it too, which is like, am I willing to pay 25% more to go to the mom and pop store with the great memories?
Or do I want to go to Walmart and save all that money?
Well, that's pretty clear.
And so the reason why people, they look at sort of the free market, they get mad at this, they get mad at that, they always get mad at the wrong thing, if there's even anyone to get mad at at all.
If you want to save the mom and pop stores, you need to go to the neighborhood and you need to say, it's better for you To pay more!
It's a false economy.
Like, you're going to buy all this stuff from Walmart or wherever, and then all the mom-and-pop stores are going to go out of business, we're going to lose the quality of the neighborhood, and whatever, right?
Like, maybe the stuff won't last that you buy.
You know, people are always willing to pay more.
I mean, that's the reason why high-end coffee shops exist, because people are willing to pay more.
Like you see these people ordering these ridiculous polysyllabic Welsh village nicknamed drinks that come with more drizzles and diabetes than, you know, a salt lick of a hippo sugared butt.
And that's because people are willing to, some people are willing to pay $6 for a cup of coffee when you can...
You know, get a cup of joe for like a buck and a quarter at some other place.
They're certainly willing to pay more.
It's not like the mom-and-pop source that charge more are necessarily going to lose out.
I mean, the reason why there's more than just the very cheapest car that you can get, like there's crazy expensive cars like Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis, and so on, people are willing to pay for it.
It's way more. So getting mad at the capitalists making too much money, it's like, well, get mad at the customers.
Because if you want the capitalists to make less money, Then convince the customers not to buy there.
Not to buy from him or not to buy from her, and then the profits will decline.
But everyone gets mad at the capitalists.
It's ridiculous. If you want to ask a girl out, and you go and ask her out, and she says yes and she goes out with you, you want that, right?
That's why you... Screw your courage to the sticking place and go and ask her out, right?
But saying, well, you shouldn't ask her out.
It's like, well, no.
If you want to ask her out, you ask her out.
And if you want to sell to customers, you sell to customers.
And if they say yes, then it doesn't mean you can't have any effect.
But just getting mad at the capitalists is just ridiculous.
The capitalists cannot impose low wages on the workers while they leave.
The workers cannot impose high wages, very high wages, higher than their value on the capitalist, otherwise he can't compete because whatever he produces is too expensive.
So it's all a complex negotiation.
If the customers want to spend more money for a better quality coffee or better coffee as they see it, then they will.
And if they don't, they won't.
It's all a big complex negotiation.
And that's what's so fascinating about it.
And that's why in this big complex world of all of these negotiations, of all of these very complex, should I buy it?
Should I not buy it? Is it too expensive?
Is it right? Is it good? It's fascinating to watch.
But the idea that you can just pick out one Person or one category in this whole complex ecosystem of choice and resources and buying and selling and bidding and all of that.
The idea you can just pick out one group, the capitalists, and it's evil.
It's like, I don't know, finding one snowflake in the sky and yelling that that's the opposite of all the other snowflakes.
It's just a big, complex thing.
And the idea that you can step in and make decisions better than the market as a whole is completely insane.
I'm not kidding about this.
It is completely insane.
It is megalomania of the highest order.
I mean, I just want to say to the people, I know what the price of this should be, and I know how much of this should be produced.
It's like... Who the hell put you in charge of everything?
Who made you econ god of the universe?
Who are you to substitute your will and your force for the complex decisions of millions of people all negotiating in the wild and exciting beehive of free market interactions?
Who are you to put your thumb on the scale?
Who are you to point guns at people peacefully trading and say, you got to do this, or it's jail time?
It's madness.
It's immoral.
It's violent. It's vicious.
And as we see so often when this plays out all over the world every single time, when you destroy choice, when you initiate the use of force against peaceful traitors, you destroy the choice, of course. You destroy the economy.
