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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:03:04
An Honest Conversation with a Bernie Sanders Supporter
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Stefan, you do a lot of negative videos about liberals, republicans, and everyone you deem to be stupid.
Being a left libertarian myself who wants less government power and is concerned about corporate power controlling our politics and our country, how would you stop monopolies without a government busting them up?
How can we bridge the gap between liberals and libertarians?
That is from John.
John, I know you're on the left already.
Yes, I am on the left, but I am a left libertarian.
No, no, but I know you're on the left already.
I know you're on the left from the very first sentence of your question.
Yes, but I want to point out how I'm not a stupid democrat who does not take in new information.
I don't believe in PC bullcrap or any of that stuff.
Let me go back to my statement, which you seem to have not have heard.
I know, John, that you're on the left from the very first sentence of your question.
OK.
How do you think?
Yes.
How do you think I know that?
Well, I said I'm a left, so you know I'm a left.
No, you didn't say you were leftist in the first sentence.
You said it in the second sentence.
OK.
Oh, about how you do negative videos.
OK.
Well, okay, negative is not right.
I mean, they're either true or they're false.
Negative is a characterization of the videos that has no content, but is emotionally manipulative.
And then you say, Steph, you do a lot of negative videos about liberals, Republicans, and everyone you deem to be stupid.
Yes.
That's very, it's a bullshit statement.
It's very manipulative and it's crappy, right?
So first of all, negative is, What does that mean?
Oh, you're so negative.
It's like, I don't know, is it true or is it false, right?
There's no truth evaluation in this.
And then, everyone I deem to be stupid.
Now, I don't think I've ever done a video where I say, so-and-so is wrong because they're stupid.
Right?
So you're putting me into a category of, I'm just calling people stupid, and that's why my videos are negative.
Which is a bullshit non-argument.
And it's emotionally manipulative, and it's insulting.
And that's how I know you're on the left.
Because that's the left's tactic.
The right have their own tactics, which are bullshit too, but that's the bullshit tactic on the left, is just to create this negative view of someone and to mischaracterize their argument in an insulting way, rather than deal with any facts, right?
So if you think that I have videos that are incorrect, why don't you tell me where the videos are incorrect, rather than characterizing them as negative and me just calling people stupid, which is not an argument.
All right.
So which of my statements are incorrect that you wanted to correct?
So, I don't want to go on individual videos and say, okay, this is right, this is wrong.
We agree on a lot of different points, even in economics.
And I think the most of what we disagree on... No, no, no, hang on, hang on, hang on.
You say that I'm incorrect in my videos.
That's what you imply by calling them negative and saying that I call people stupid.
So where have I made errors?
This is just how you actually have a civilized discourse, right?
Rather than just insulting people... Since I've watched your videos, I could say that, you know, that you mischaracterize countries like, you know, Finland and Denmark.
And we could go on for days about how I don't think that high taxes is necessarily a bad thing.
Using the word mischaracterized is not an argument.
You talk about how Scandinavian countries aren't really doing that well and I think they are.
I think you're going on and on about how these countries are eventually going to collapse is incorrect because during the financial crisis You know, Finland and Denmark did a lot better than more than countries that were actually more right wing.
So, you know, sometimes I don't quite get why you were saying things like, oh, you know, you know, welfare states, not not not, you know, Greece, that's not a welfare state, but Denmark.
Okay, so where in the video did I make an incorrect statement?
You're just talking around a bunch of stuff and making a bunch of noise.
Where in the video did I make an incorrect statement?
Well, your point in the video was that... It's been a long time since I saw that particular video, so bear with me.
And you can remind me.
because you're the one who did the video, so you're the expert.
So in the video, you were talking about how we are going to run out of other people's money.
The high taxes are working because they're benefiting off of capitalism in the past and people making money before, and right now they're just using that money from the past, and it's eventually going to run out.
I believe that was your point, correct?
Yeah, so in general, there was some real socialist experiments in the 60s and 70s, and then later on, a lot of the Scandinavian countries became more free market in many ways than the United States is, and now that they're swinging back towards their socialist experimentation, there's a lot of stored-up and now that they're swinging back towards their socialist experimentation, there's a lot of stored-up value and a lot of vestiges of the free market that is allowing them to spend, but it's a result of preying upon past successful free market policies that are in general no longer
And so do you feel that that's incorrect?
Did I make an incorrect statement regarding the fact that there were more socialist policies in the past or that there was an interim period of more free market policies, which I described in significant detail with sources below the video?
Or do you disagree that there have been some more socialist-style reforms in these countries?
This is how you actually rebut an argument, just saying, well, you've mischaracterized X, Y, and Z. It's not an argument.
You have to say where I've made incorrect statements.
Yes, yes, I agree.
I do agree with you on that point.
I am just not sure about if these countries are, you know... See, I'm not trying to, you know, look at a certain sentence and say you made a certain error.
The point of this conversation was to talk to you about how left libertarians and right libertarians can come together.
Wait, hang on, hang on.
Wait, wait, wait.
Why are we switching topics?
Well, because I'm...
Right, so you said that I...
Hang on, hang on.
You kind of insulted me by saying my videos are negative and I just call people stupid.
So I asked you for more detail and you brought up a video and I asked you for more detail and you said...
And then I provided you my argument and...
And now you seem to not be able to follow through on that.
Is that because it's harder to actually rebut someone's argument than just characterize their position in a negative light?
No, it's because I need to watch the video again.
No, but you wrote to me and told me that I was wrong and calling people stupid.
And then you said I mischaracterized people's arguments.
So you're putting out very... John, let me sort of explain.
I'm not trying to be mean here.
I'm just trying to give you a reality check about what it's like being non-John, right?
Being not inside your head.
Is that you made some very serious negative accusations towards my integrity.
Right?
The videos are negative, everyone I deem to be stupid, right?
So that makes me sound like I'm just calling people stupid and so on, right?
So that's kind of, it's very critical of me and it's not critical of me like, Steph, you made a mistake or your source was incorrect.
You know, these things happen, right?
And so on, right?
But you're saying that there's something very negative about what it is that I'm doing and I take that quite seriously.
Like, I don't want to pretend you didn't say that because I'm into listening and having real conversations with people.
So I don't know if you're aware how hostile and critical you're being just in the very first sentence of your communication with me.
I don't know if you're not aware of that or if you're conscious of what you're doing.
But I take it quite seriously and so I don't want to get onto the argument until you either prove that I do a lot of negative videos about everyone I just deem to be stupid, which is very insulting against me, You either have to prove that, in which case I have to apologize to the world, or we have to find other ways.
I just don't want to pretend that that first sentence didn't occur, because I take what people write very seriously, particularly the first thing that they say, because first impressions are pretty important.
Yeah.
So I take that point, and I think that everything you say when you say people are wrong is It's not so much that you do negative videos, the deals are bad, I disagree with all of them.
It's that sometimes when you're arguing with people, you take someone and I feel that you mischaracterize them.
So, you know, I don't necessarily think that all Democrats... Hang on, hang on.
Hang on, hang on. Hang on, hang on.
First of all, hang on, hang on.
First of all, that I mischaracterize someone is not a feeling.
That is a judgment.
Feeling is like mad, sad, bad, and glad, right?
Those are feelings.
Angry is a feeling.
Steph, you mischaracterize someone is not a feeling.
Like, if you had a feeling chart that you had to point to, there wouldn't be like, bald guy on the internet mischaracterizes someone right next to bemused resignation or something, right?
That's not a feeling, right?
So, the reason you say it's a feeling is so that you can Disparage me without having to prove it by pretending it's a feeling.
If you say that I mischaracterize people, then that is a judgment on my intellectual integrity or my ability to process basic information.
Because either I'm mischaracterizing people because I don't understand what they're saying, like if somebody gave me a very complicated argument about physics and then two days later somebody asked me to repeat it, I'd probably get a lot of it wrong because I wouldn't be smart enough or experienced enough or knowledgeable enough to understand this complicated argument about physics.
Or I do understand it, but I'm mischaracterizing it for some dishonest or manipulative emotional or sophisticated purpose, right?
To make something appear true that I wanted to appear true or whatever it is, right?
So you can say, I feel that you mischaracterize people.
If I mischaracterize people, first of all, you need to tell me what that even means.
I'm not even sure what that means, but then you need to provide evidence.
You can't just say you have a feeling.
You know, it's like me saying, John, I just, I just feel that you're an untrustworthy liar, right?
That's not a feeling.
That's a negative judgment, in which case I need to either prove it or withdraw the accusation and apologize.
So how do I mischaracterize people?
Provide me an example, please.
Okay.
So, but again, I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm just, you know, I don't want to pretend.
You have called Bernie Sanders a communist.
Yes.
I don't believe so.
He's a democratic socialist.
Yeah, well, I believe he said that he's a commie, he just wanted to give you free stuff.
That was a statement you said.
Was that a joke statement?
Because I don't know in what context I'm saying these things, I can't answer that, right?
Okay, so, okay.
But if I call someone a commie, it doesn't sound like the most reasoned argument.
Yeah, okay.
So, I don't believe that everyone on the left just wants to give away free stuff, and that everyone who votes for a Democrat just wants free stuff.
And if I said that everyone who votes for a Democrat wants free stuff?
No, though I think you talk about, just now in this conversation, you talked about how, you know, people are just trying to buy votes.
They're trying to say, I'll give you free stuff to buy votes.
Yes.
And I think that in many cases, with corporatist Democrats or statist Democrats that are part of the corrupt system, Um, that don't really want to change the status quo.
They do buy votes.
They say that we want to, you know, improve social programs.
I want to end wars.
Basically, Obama.
You know, I think he tried to buy votes.
He didn't believe in half the stuff he was saying.
Or he believed it and then got in office and said, well, you know, I can't change it because, you know, I really don't have much power.
I'm just, you know, a puppet between other people.
So people like him, yes, I agree with him on that statement.
Though I disagree with some of the characterizations you make with people like that with Bernie Sanders.
He actually believes what he's saying.
His liberal policies you might think are bad, but he's an honest person who isn't just trying to buy votes.
How do you know that he believes what he says?
Because he hasn't flip-flopped.
He's been saying it for the last 40 years.
So?
Well, let's just put it this way.
I believe that it's more likely, since he's been saying it for so long and he hasn't changed his views, he hasn't flip-flopped like Hillary, like Obama, like most politicians, it's more likely that he actually believes it.
So, what you're saying is that somebody who is consistent, it's evidence that they actually believe what they're saying?
It's not proof.
No, but it does help someone like me believe in them.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
So if somebody's a consistent racist, you'll believe in them because they haven't flipped on racists?
No, if someone's a consistent racist, I'll believe they're racist.
If someone's consistently liberal, I'll believe they're liberal.
If someone's, you know, liberal half the time, conservative half the time, then they want me to vote for them.
They say, vote for me, I'm conservative.
I will say, no, you're conservative half the time.
See what I'm saying?
Alright, so you're saying that he doesn't want to just give away free stuff.
So we're going to go on a little journey to BernieSanders.com slash issues.
We're not going to do them all because they're quite a long presentation.
Hang on, hang on.
You had your say, now I'm going to give my pushback, right?
So his number one thing is income and wealth inequality, right?
Yes.
Income and wealth inequality.
Now, do you think that when he talks about income and wealth inequality, that that's wrong and unjust and it's number one issue, do you think that involves the redistribution of some of that income and wealth?
Yes.
Okay, so he is going to be taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.
Or poorer, right?
Yes.
Okay, so that's giving people free stuff.
Okay, number two issue from Bernie Sanders.
It's time to make college tuition free and debt free.
Make tuition free at public colleges and universities.
Stop the federal government from making a profit on student loans.
Substantially cut student loan interest rates and just go on and on and on, right?
Yeah.
And fully paid for by imposing a tax on Wall Street speculators, right?
Is that about giving away free stuff?
Yeah.
Okay.
In a way, yeah.
Another one of his issue is something called a living wage.
A living wage.
Proposed a national $15 per hour minimum wage.
That's what he has sort of proposed.
And so he wants to give money to people who aren't earning what he calls a living wage, right?
Is that about giving away free stuff?
I would say no, but I can believe you could say yes.
Oh, okay.
No, that's worth having a debate.
Okay, so he says, millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages.
We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty.
The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage.
We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.
How is that not giving money to people who make less than $15 an hour?
Okay, so I believe that people, someone who works full-time, 40 hours a week, should not be in poverty.
And I believe that the welfare state is too strong, in the sense that someone who's on welfare should not... No, no, hang on, hang on!
I'd love to have that debate, but is this not about giving more money to people?
Yeah, the welfare point's important, though, because if we reduce the welfare and it forces people to work, and they have to, you know...
Actually, it was a debate in England that I heard, and it was the Conservatives.
It was the Prime Minister of England who said this, and he said, I want to raise the minimum wage so that someone who's working makes more than people who are on welfare.
And I like that statement.
That's a Conservative statement that he said.
And I believe in that.
I believe that.
When someone's working, they should make a lot more than someone on welfare.
And right now, someone working at a minimum wage doesn't make that much more.
Why does that have anything to do with forcing employers to pay money they can't afford?
Why not fix the government education system so that people graduate after 12 years of government education with valuable and viable skills so they can make $30 an hour or $50 an hour?
For that, I think that, unfortunately, It's unrealistic to believe that everyone can do that.
There's a low IQ.
Not everyone is smart enough to do that.
And not everyone has the capability to do that.
And we just need a large number... Hang on, hang on.
Sorry, sorry.
One step at a time, man.
You can't just keep going.
I mean, because you're making really big points.
And I'm sorry to keep interrupting.
Go ahead, go ahead.
So you're saying that there are people who can't earn above poverty because they're not smart enough.
And they'll never be smart enough.
I'm saying that, yes, there's always going to be someone out there who just isn't, you know, managing material, who can't climb up the ladder.
It's a fact of life.
No, no, no, we're not talking management.
You're saying that they can't earn more than how much in current dollars?
I'm not putting a value on it.
No, no, you are, because when you talk about living wage, there's a value that's being put on it.
I'm not trying to trap you here, I'm just trying to understand.
So you're saying that there are a certain proportion of people whose IQ is so low that even better government education won't give them the opportunity to earn a wage that allows them to live in some reasonable degree of comfort?
No, it can't help.
I'm just saying that we can't have everything equal or you can't say that anyone is able to, with the right education or with the right you know, training, get some great job of $30 per hour.
There's always going to be...
Okay, and what proportion, hang on, hang on.
What proportion of the population do you feel is unable to earn a wage that would give them some, with great education, with a free market economy, with, you know, like a third of Americans need government permission to even have a job these days, with the removal of licensing so that like a third of Americans need government permission to even have a job these days, with the removal of licensing so that people can actually go and start businesses and become things like hairdressers and
So what proportion of the population do you think in a more free society would be unable to fend for themselves, would be unable to have a living wage?
change.
Okay, so in a more free society, your idea is that it would work a lot better.
I'm saying that the way the system is set up now with all the regulations was you have to, you know, get some license to give back rubs because, you know, if someone complains and they can sue you and blah blah blah.
With the way that's set up now, The low minimum wage is horrible.
If we had more free society and you could do more bartering and you could do more...
I feel like you're not answering my question, John.
What proportion of people do you think are unable to earn a living wage?
What percentage of people?
I mean, it's different if it's 90 or 1%.
all these regulations okay sorry i feel like you're not answering and it's not that's not a feeling you're not answering my question john what proportion of people do you think are unable to earn a living wage what percentage of people i mean it's different if it's 90 or one percent that's a big difference right so what it's a very it's a very low um a low number and there's two to that is not just that certain people can't do it.
There's also a certain number of people that we need to do low-waste jobs.
We need a certain number of people to work our grocery stores, to work in the fast food, to clean houses.
We need a certain number of workers.
Sorry.
I mean, that's like saying we need a certain amount of people to pick cotton.
Well, until you get cotton picking machines because technology advances, right?
I mean, I mean, how long will it be before there are robots who can clean your house?
Well, who knows, right?
But I don't know that we can say that sure.
Eventually, yeah.
I'm just saying right now is that I'll set up now.
Okay, so what percentage of people, for God's sake, man, please answer my question.
Let's say half a percent.
I'll give you half a percent.
Okay.
Half a percent?
Okay, fantastic.
So one out of 200 people are too dumb to make a living wage, right?
Okay, yeah, sure.
Okay, got it.
And would you feel comfortable, and what level of IQ do you think they'd have, roughly?
Would it be like 60 or 65 or 70?
Because that's a very small percentage of people.
I'd say 65.
65.
Now would you feel comfortable giving votes on complex socio-economic issues to people with an IQ of 65 who couldn't earn enough to live on on their own?
Yes, because I live in democracy.
It's unfortunate People who aren't most intelligent can vote, but we... No, no, hang on, hang on.
We're not talking about people who aren't the most intelligent.
We're talking about 1 out of 200 dumb.
Yeah, okay.
Right?
So do you think that they can make intelligent decisions about who to vote for based upon moral principles that are universal rather than just immediate self-interest?
In most cases, no.
Right.
And I think that there would be lots of people who would agree with you that if you have an IQ of 60 or 65, It's pretty impossible to engage in a democratic process with any degree of abstract intelligence and integrity, right?
It's not a criticism.
It's, you know, they're not going to be rocket scientists and their vote is going to be dependent on which color they like or which font is used in some promo, right?
It's not going to be any analysis of the actual policies and their long term effects, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So you would be comfortable giving a minimum wage to people while stripping them of their right to vote.
See, I said that it's unfortunate that, and I would be uncomfortable that someone who's ill-informed is going to be voted, but I do not want to strip away the right to vote.
It is a fundamental right we all have, it's part of democracy, and it's liberally so.
First we say someone 65 can't, then 70, then 75, then 80, or then we say, okay, this group can't do it, You have to keep it intact.
Oh, you've given me a slippery slope argument, which is completely unsubstantiated, right?
No, the test would be if you can't survive economically on your own, you get subsidies, but because you can't survive economically on your own, if you're not competent to have a job and live in a room somewhere, then you're not competent to vote on complex socio-economic issues.
Now, I have a solution called no government, but given that we're talking about Government societies at the moment, this would seem to me to be the logic of where you are.
And we have this, like, so the IQ of 65, I don't know what that would be, an eight-year-old?
Well, eight-year-olds aren't allowed to drive cars, they're not allowed to vote, they're not allowed to enter into contracts.
And so on.
And so when we have low IQs we have very little problem when it comes to kids removing particular rights from them.
Certainly if somebody has no capacity to live alone then they will get a certain amount of assistance but they may not have a right of suffrage because that's sort of necessary to have a vote as you need to understand the issues, right?
Yeah, okay.
Okay, I just wanted to check on that.
So we're talking about a very small percentage, like half a percentage of people, right?
Yeah, yeah, small percent.
Okay.
So we don't need a government for that.
Because if it's a small percentage of people, let's say that somebody, just bear with me for a second while I do some quick mental calculations that will doubtless go awry at some point.
But let's say that People, somebody, let's say you need $20,000 a year to live reasonably decently, and let's say that you're so dumb that you can only earn $10,000 a year, so you need an extra $10,000 a year to survive, right?
That's the rough, and again, this is all back of the napkin stuff, right?
Okay.
So out of 200 people, There are $199 available to make up that $10,000.
So if I take $10,000 and I divide it by 199 people, that's $50.25 every year that people would have to pay to make up the salary that is required or make up the difference between what the person's earning and a sort of living wage.
So that's $50 and change to make that difference up.
And there's no way that that's necessary in a state.
People give way more than that in charity.
People give thousands of dollars on average a year, at least families do, thousands of dollars on average in charity every single year.
Fifty bucks they wouldn't even miss.
So as far as that goes there's no need for a giant government program called a minimum wage which is going to affect a lot more than half a percentage of the population Especially if it's 15 bucks.
You just have to say to people, listen, for 50 bucks a year, you can take care of all the poor people in your society.
You don't need a giant government program.
Okay.
So for me, the idea of the minimum wage is three main points.
Okay.
So there's a small portion of people that aren't really that big of a problem that just aren't going to advance.
Okay.
I'm sorry, I was just reading something.
Could you say that again?
I apologize.
Yeah, so for me, for the minimum wage, there's three main points.
And the first main point we agree on.
There's a small percentage of people who just, because of lack of skills or lack of intelligence, they are most likely not going to advance and get a better paying job.
And they would probably live with their parents anyway, right?
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Second one is that for right now, At least until technology increases, we still need a lot of unskilled workers.
If every unskilled worker just said, you know what?
I'm not going to, you know, keep working at McDonald's.
I'm not going to keep working at a grocery store.
I'm going to go to college.
That would be horrible.
We'd have all these, you know, college graduates that have these degrees where there would be so many positions that would already be filled.
They'd have no job.
And at the same time, there'd be many positions at Walmart that no one would be taking because all the unskilled workers left.
I'm sorry, I don't even remotely, and that's like saying, well, what if everybody decides to become a professional basketball player?
Like, I don't understand how that's realistic.
Yeah, sorry, I'll put it this way.
There are many people that are unskilled workers who could become skilled workers and are just too lazy.
And I know them on a personal level.
Hang on, how do you know that they're lazy?
I'm saying on a personal level, I know people who have decided not to get the skills of education or get a job and stay with it for a couple years to learn the skills and move up the ladder.
I know those people on an individual level and they're always going to be there.
Hang on, hang on.
Sorry, I'm a little confused.
We're talking about general society and you're basing it on a few people you know?
Tell me, do you think there are, I'll ask you the question this way, do you think there's people out there who have the skills to do better and they, because either being lazy or because of lack of motivation, they don't seek the skills to get better, to get better jobs?
I don't know what you mean by better.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I'm not trying to be obtuse.
I'm genuinely confused.
I don't know what you mean by better.
So there were, There were people, like so in my office, there was myself who was an executive, there were managers, there were team leaders, there were programmers, all the way down to people who came into the office and cleaned the office at night.
I have no idea what it means to say what a better job is.
All jobs have costs and benefits, right?
So, I get paid more.
Hang on, I'm right in the middle of talking here, right in the middle of talking.
I got paid more, but I had more responsibility.
I had legal liability.
I had to work extra.
I had to travel more.
And also, I had to have accumulated a lot of skills early on.
I mean, I started programming when I was 11 or 12 years old and continued for many years at home.
So I had developed all of these problem-solving skills.
I've read huge numbers of management books and gone to seminars and got myself educated on business and taught myself a whole bunch of stuff, and I have a certain amount of native intelligence that helps with all these things, but I would never go to the programmers and say, your job is deficient and my job is superior.
It's choices.
And maybe, you know, maybe there are some people maybe who could do, who could make more money, but they don't want the additional responsibility.
Like I had a guy, he was smart.
And he I think he could have gone further.
And you know what he said to me?
He said, you live to work, Steph, I work to live.
In other words, he's saying, you really enjoy your job.
You get off on it, you get up and you want to work weekends and you want to travel and it's your baby and it's your company and you want to do it.
And I was kind of a workaholic, to put it mildly, during those years, as I am a little bit even now.
But he said, I want to come to work at nine o'clock in the morning.
I want 45 minutes for lunch.
I want to go home at five o'clock in the afternoon.
I don't want to work any weekends.
I sure as hell don't want to travel.
Because I have a very rich social life.
You know, I play hockey, I play baseball, I have great cookouts with my family, and I work so that I can do fun things when I'm not working.
You live to work, I work to live.
Now, am I going to tell him he's wrong and he shouldn't forego The teams, and the sports, and the family, and the cookouts, and the friendships, and the camping, and all the stuff that he does, so that he could work 70 hours a week like me?
No!
That's not fair.
He's doing what he wants.
I'm doing what I want.
What I'm doing is not better than what he's doing.
It's better for me, because that's my preference.
But it's not better for him.
And I, you know, you could go to the maid and the maid could say, I don't have a boss to deal with.
The maid, sorry, the woman who cleaned the offices of the men.
I was actually, I had a job for quite a while in my early teens cleaning a doctor's office, a travel agent's and a dentist's.
And, you know, it was great.
You know, I mean, I could put on my headphones.
I remember very distinctly walking through the mall at 10.30 at night when it was empty with my cleaning equipment, listening to Abbey Road.
I could sing at the top of my lungs because there was no one around, there were no bosses, there were no customers, there were no complaints, there were no problems.
I just went in and cleaned these offices at night and made my money and it was fine for me at the time.
When I was working in a restaurant I always think of Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, the plonger!
I love that word, plonger!
But it sounds like porn.
But I was working as a waiter and there was a manager, like so stereotypical, he was an Italian guy, an Italian guy running a pizza place.
And he was so stressed, it was ridiculous.
He had shingles, he used to throw up, and you couldn't pay me enough to do that job.
I don't care how much money it is, it's not worth it.
So I would come in and I would do my shift and I would go home, you know, I had my pockets full of change, I'm walking along like some medieval knight full of inconsequential coined armor.
And I would go home and whereas he'd be there like dealing with supplier issues and making sure the restaurant was ship shape for the next day and dealing with health inspectors and all the corporate stuff he had to do and it's like... So for him to come to me and say, Steph, your job is bad, my job is a big improvement.
I'd be like, thanks but no thanks.
I really wouldn't want that at all.
Now of course people want the benefits without the cost, right?
They want the high wage.
But they don't necessarily want all of the extra work and commitment and risk and responsibility and crap that goes into it.
So I'm sorry to give you a long answer, but I'm not sure what it means to say they could get a better job.
I'm not sure what that means.
What I was trying to say is that they could acquire skills and they're not acquiring skills.
They're not going to school, whether it's free or inexpensive or expensive.
learning programming, they're not learning a different language, and I consider that either because they're lack of motivation, or lazy, or just not, you know... But why the pejoratives?
Why is it bad for them to not want to, like, if they want to go home and play with their kids, why is it bad that they don't go to a programming course instead of having dinner with their family?
I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that if they don't acquire skills, they can't always expect to be able to find some better paying job, right?
So?
So what?
Okay, we agree on that, correct?
That if someone doesn't strive to be better, doesn't acquire skills, then It's possible that they don't move up the ladder and get a better job, correct?
Well, no, because simply by being in your job, you're going to make more money over time because you get better at your job.
Like if you're a programmer, a programmer with 20 years experience is worth more than a programmer with 20 minutes of experience, right?
Simply by staying in the same job, they're going to accumulate relationships with customers or an understanding of the business, right?
Because the programmers are supposed to solve business issues ideally, which is why I always have to remind my program and myself.
So the programmer is going to understand the business, is going to understand the client environment, is going to have a track record of dealing with new technology.
But whether that programmer, maybe he's an introvert, and almost all higher paying jobs outside of the finance industry require a lot of interaction with people.
I mean, the one thing that my employees loved about me, hopefully it's more than one thing, Was that when the customers were snarling, I would take the calls and deal with the problems and so on.
And I remember being cornered by customers who were irate over the course of my career for a variety of things and having to negotiate my way through various things.
And they were like, Occasionally they'd be in those meetings.
They'd be like, you couldn't pay me enough to do that.
That would just be horrible.
Because they were shy.
They were introverts, right?
And that's one of the reasons they like computers.
So I don't know that you will make more money over time just by staying in the same job.
But will they end up being the CEO if all they want to do is program?
Well, no.
But if you're a great artist, why do you want to become the manager of the studio?
If all you want to do is make art, why not just keep doing that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Point taken.
I was just mentioning that some people don't want to get more skills and they want to just work their regular job.
Okay.
But you were saying that they were lazy or unmotivated or something like that.
It may be the very best decision in their life, right?
That's respect for people's choices.
Yeah, it's possible.
I was saying some of them can be lazy.
But not all of them.
Not everyone's lazy.
I do believe that some people don't want to acquire skills for whatever reason.
Because they have a good social life and they like their job or because they don't believe that they can get a better job or they're lazy.
Whatever it is, there's people out there who, for some reason, don't strive to do better to get better jobs.
Okay.
All right.
And I'm saying that there's people like that out there because a lot of the argument Okay, so there are people out there, but so what?
People make different choices.
Some people focus on work, some people focus on family.
I'm not sure what the point is here.
One of the big arguments for non-exclusive minimum wage is minimum skills, minimum wage.
So they're saying that because you have these minimum skills, you've been working the same job, and you haven't worked out, or you haven't changed jobs, and you haven't, you know, went to college, gotten a college degree, you shouldn't be able to have a A better wage.
That's the main argument for people who don't want to increase the minimum wage.
On the right wing anyway.
Hang on, sorry.
So minimum skills, minimum wage.
So I started programming when I was 12 and I used to spend my Saturdays in the computer lab and I used to sign out the computers and take them home and that cut into my promiscuous dating life.
Actually it didn't, I was 12.
But I mean, so I made those choices and there are other things that I didn't
do as a result of that now if some kid wants to play video games and assuming he's not fatality and gonna make a living at it if some kid wants to play video games rather than learn how to program and again we should fix the school system but you don't want to talk about that and the reason why Bernie Sanders doesn't want to talk about it is he's on the left so he doesn't want to piss off the teachers unions which is where he gets a lot of his money from and people hate Wall Street speculators so taxing them is just appealing to mob prejudice rather than actually trying to fix the school system because people are
have this weird crazy respect for teachers which is like a Stockholm syndrome.
We should do both.
He's not going to fix the school system.
That's no part of it.
I can't imagine that's any part of it.
Let's privatize the school system so the bad teachers can get fired and let's give vouchers back to the parents so they can choose where their kids go to school.
Because he needs the money from the teachers union so all he's going to do is attack the But who people consider the capitalists and who they dislike, he's not going to go against any of the sacred cows of the left because he's not an idiot and he's a politician.
So he's not going to do any of that stuff.
I guarantee you it will never happen.
I will eat my own microphone should he end up doing, implementing or even advocating any of that stuff.
So that's never going to happen.
I don't think he won't privatize the school system.
I agree with the school system that they have in Finland where teachers actually get paid more and there's a lot more selective.
Teachers have to have a lot higher qualifications and be a lot better at teaching to be a teacher in Finland.
And I believe that's one way how we can improve the school system.
Oh, listen.
I mean, American school teachers, you have to have a master's degree for the most part.
It's not a lack of education that's causing it.
It's a whole other issue.
It's not about education, it's about quality.
No, it's a lack of choice.
It's a lack of choice.
And also it's the problem with multiculturalism.
Lots of different languages, lots of different cultures.
It becomes very... It becomes impossible in this sort of Tower of Bamble to provide quality education when you've got to deal with five languages and twelve different religions and fifteen different cultures and all of that.
It becomes impossible, right?
Anyway, so... So you want people to have more skills, for sure, but... And of course, you know, Bernie Sanders' wife was a college president.
kind of part of the problem, right?
But no, involuntarism is the only way to get quality in a society.
I mean, nobody buys roses to an arranged marriage, right?
I mean, so to speak.
What I mean by that is nobody romances and woos an arranged marriage because you're going to get married no matter what.
She's got no choice in the matter.
So quality is the result of voluntary interactions.
And there's no other way.
There's no substitute for it in any way, shape, or form.
So he's not going to introduce any voluntarism into the educational system.
So he's dealing with a symptom.
And the symptom is that after 12 years of education, people aren't worth even eight bucks an hour.
That is such a condemnation of government-run education that that should be the only argument that anybody ever needs for privatizing education.
And so what he wants to do is he wants to pretend that government education is worth more than it's worth, not by improving it, but of course by jacking up the prices by forcing people to hire people at wages they're not worth.
Because what you get paid is based on how much value you produce.
What you get paid is based on... And I remember this lesson when I worked in a hardware store.
I was 14 or so.
And the guy said, do you know how to fix screen doors?
And I was like, yeah.
I lied.
Sorry.
I really needed the money.
So he hired me and we spent a day or two.
And he said, there's a bunch of screen doors down in the basement you got to fix, right?
And I didn't want to go down to the basement because I didn't know how to fix a screen door.
And so what I did was I was lifting up Baskets of nuts and like bolts and nuts.
And I was cleaning underneath and I was cleaning his store and I was making it all look shiny, right?
And he came over and he said, I need you to do something that's going to make me some money.
Cleaning these is not making me any money.
That was an excellent point.
So I fessed up.
I said, listen, I'm happy.
I lied.
I'm happy to do this.
And he took me down.
He was a nice guy.
He took me down, taught me how to fix the screen doors.
I learned in about 10 minutes, spent the rest of the day fixing the screen doors.
And the time I was there fixing the screen doors.
And so if I had only cleaned his store he wouldn't have been able to keep me because I'm not producing enough value to pay my wage.
Now if I fix screen doors and he can sell fixed screen doors for 40 bucks and he can pay me I don't know what I was making four bucks at the time an hour or something like that then he can afford me.
But if I'm just cleaning he's not making any money off that and so he can't afford me.
A wage is not set by some arbitrary dictate of the employer.
The wage is set by the customer.
The wage is set, not by the employer, but by the customer.
And so if Bernie Sanders thinks that people should be paid more, then you should go to customers and say you should pay more for your goods and services, as Peter Schiff did outside.
He went outside of Walmart and said to people, do you think Walmart people should be paid more?
And everyone was like, yeah!
And then he'd say, OK, well, how much more would you be willing to add to your bill?
Nothing.
It's the customers who said that.
OK, so I actually watched that video and for raising the minimum wage, the price is going to go about 23 cents, you know, or something, you know, it would be very nominal.
And he was saying, oh, would you add $15 to your bill?
So is it different for someone saying, would you add a nickel to your bill or a quarter to your bill and $15 to your bill?
And he was acting as if we raised the minimum wage, prices would quadruple.
Wait, are you saying that, hang on a second, are you saying that if the minimum wage was raised to $15, that it would only add how much to the bill?
It would not double the prices, and that's what Peter said.
No, no, no, you said it would add how much money.
I just want to check your numbers here.
It would be cents on the dollar.
That's the starting value.
It would be how much?
Cents on the dollar.
So a couple of pennies.
Yeah, a few pennies.
Did you look this up, or did you do the math yourself?
I read something somewhere.
I wish I had it in front of me.
We'll have a quick look, and I'm not disagreeing with you.
I just want to make sure, because I'm surprised at that.
There's another thing I need to mention.
about how I agree with you in a sense that someone needs to get paid with their worth.
And I think a lot of people who work are getting paid with it.
Sorry, just before we go on to that.
Walmart's just raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour may cost retailers $4 billion.
That seems like quite a lot.
Again, this is only $10, not $15.
Let's see here.
So Walmart cast a harsh light on the issue last week when it warned its profits would shrink next year, hurt by spending $1.5 billion to hike pay for about 500,000 workers.
Yeah.
The news sent Walmart shares down 10% in a single day, marking their worst decline since 1988.
And that is going from $9 an hour to $10 an hour.
That is going from $9 an hour to $10 an hour.
So there are 500,000 workers.
Okay, I'm going to just do some quick math here.
Yeah, okay, so we've got five hundred thousand workers and Let's say we're gonna add five dollars an hour to their wages, so we do that times five And then let's do times thirty seven point five which I know times yeah thirty seven point five That's a week times fifty two and Yeah, that's five billion dollars.
Just for Walmart.
Okay, so I'm going to have a certain study.
And we can look at the study together.
So this is in the Huffington Post that I read this.
Oh, the Huffington Post!
Okay.
Okay, okay.
Just, you know, it's important to know the source.
Okay, go ahead.
And the study as well.
So it says, CEO pulls host stunt in attempt to discredit Walmart workers.
And it's a video of Peter Schiff saying 15 for 15 contribute.
In a 2011 study by CUNY's, Stephanie Luce at University of California, Berkeley, Ken Jacobs and David Graham Square, found that raising the retail giant's minimum wage to $12 an hour, not $15, excuse me, would found that raising the retail giant's minimum wage to $12 an hour, not $15, excuse me, would have cost
So, you look at that study and maybe you think, maybe the primary of the study, all wrong, you're in the fall.
Give us a link.
Let's have a look.
You said that he said that it was going to double their prices.
That's not what Peter Schiff said.
He said he approached shoppers in the retailer's parking lot and told them he was representing an organization called 15 for 15.
He said the organization, which doesn't actually exist, wants Walmart to raise its prices by 15% to support a $15 minimum hourly wage for workers.
So 15% of the bill, not 50%.
15% is a lot different than $0.46 on an average trip.
You got the source, right?
Just put it in Skype and let's have a look.
a lot different than 46 cents on an average trip.
- Yeah, okay, but you got the source, right?
Just put it in Skype and let's have a look.
- Yeah, yeah, I just put it in there.
- Oh, you got it.
- Yeah, okay.
- Because I'll tell you this.
I mean, if I were the CEO of Walmart and I could pay my workers 50% more and it would only add 46 cents to a bill, I would pretty much do it because it would be so great for the workers and they would make them so happy and it would be almost non-existent to the customers.
That would make, that would be amazing.
Okay.
Um, so I honestly should read that study.
Um, maybe it's, maybe there, uh, actually there's a link to the study.
46 cents per trip.
That's really quite astonishing.
And that's going from I think $8 or $9 to $12.
Yeah, just $0.46 per trip.
That's really quite astonishing.
And that's going from, I think, $8 or $9 to $12.
So that's a 25% or more increase in $500,000.
In 500,000 people's salaries, a 25% increase in 500 people's salaries, 500,000 people's salaries, that that would only add... Well, yeah, if millions of people are all buying something that costs 30 cents more, then maybe, yeah, maybe they could actually make that extra.
It makes sense.
I mean, if you have millions of people buying... Oh, don't say it makes sense unless you've done the math, right?
Just because it feels right to you.
Oh, you get the math.
You do the math a lot, so add it up.
Okay, I'm just looking for the source here.
Yeah, exactly.
They don't provide a source here.
Okay.
Yeah, which is... I like Huffington Post.
The articles seem to be all right.
I need to find the source.
You've got to mix it up a little there, brother.
I mean, the Huffington Post is like lefty central.
And how?
Yeah, well, I do read other things as well.
So let's assume, let's do a little bit of math right here.
Oh wait, there's a link.
Oh, it links back to the Huffington Post.
Alright, maybe there's a link here.
So it says here the average Walmart shopper spends about $1,200 per year and it would cost them $12.50.
That's really remarkable.
Okay.
Store prices would still only increase by 1.1% if it decided to pass 100% of the cost on to customers.
Anyone who argues that the recharge on prices would be little affected by such wage increases has, quote, a limited understanding of how a business operates.
Okay, so where's his argument?
So this guy, Steven Restiveau, Senior Director of Communications for Walmart, he said that I'm at least going to listen to the guy who runs Walmart, as opposed to some academic who thinks they know exactly how it's going to work.
I think the guy who runs the business should be included, but they haven't included any of his rebuttals.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, uh, hang on a sec here.
Mike, you linked something.
Is this the original study?
I found the study as well.
Yes, that's the original study.
know we probably won't get anywhere but just you know humor me for a second here because um i'm curious what what his rebuttal was um yeah i don't see anything um All right.
Let me try one thing, minimum wage.
I linked you to a study in Skype, the Berkeley study.
Yeah, no, I've looked at it, but it links to another study, it links to another article where they says that there's a rebuttal, but they don't list any of his rebuttals.
All right.
Okay, well, obviously I can't jump through an entire article live on the show, but I do find that interesting.
Right.
Okay, so let's just go over the conclusion of the study.
It's at the bottom.
And I want to know if you disagree with their conclusion.
Wait a minute here.
Okay, I think I might be able to see why this is... Okay, so on page 2 it says... So they're talking about raising the wage to $12 per hour, right?
Do you know what the average hourly wage is for full-time associates at Walmart?
No, I do not.
It's $11.75.
Okay.
So they're talking about adding 25 cents to their salary.
Okay.
Now that doesn't seem like a massive... I don't work at Walmart, but... Where in the study does it say it's 11.75?
So it is on page 4.
Sorry, on page 4.
I haven't read the whole thing, so maybe they explain it, but they say, what would the raise to $12 per hour look like for the Walmart workforce?
Walmart notes that its average hourly wage is Dollars and 75 cents for full-time associates.
However, not all employees earn the average.
Payroll data from 2001... Oh God, how old is this?
When did this come out?
Why are they doing 2001?
Studies from 2011.
Why are they doing 10-year-old studies?
It's a publicly traded company.
That should all be available.
Yeah, that's what... Okay, I'm already suspicious.
Why on earth are they going for 2001 data?
So they got... They do 2001 data and then adjust it for 2010 dollars.
But that's 10 years ago.
Things may have changed.
The composition of the employees may have changed.
Yeah, I gotta tell you, I have some skepticism.
And John, I just want to add, too, don't ever suggest just to skip to the conclusion of a study.
Oh, Mike knows where he speaks.
Give him the speech, Mike, about your examination of studies.
As someone who has poured through more research studies than I care to even think about or remember, there is so much incredibly terrible research in science out there.
And you can go back to the call we had with a research scientist.
A couple of weeks ago on the show, I think it's up, the video is "The Death of Science" explaining the perversion in financial incentives within research fields.
For example, this is the one I always bring up when just total terrible science, terrible research.
A study came out saying that breastfeeding has no impact on IQ, which completely contradicted a lot of other studies saying that the longer you breastfeed your child, the more IQ points they're going to gain.
There's some back and forth about if that's them reaching their genetic potential versus adding additional IQ points on top of what they'd have.
That's going back and forth, but there is a link between breastfeeding and breastfeeding duration and IQ points.
So, what this study did, this wonderful study that wanted to disprove this connection, They said, do you breastfeed?
Did you breastfeed your kid or did you not breastfeed your kid?
It was binary.
Therefore, the person that, you know, breastfed their kid for like two seconds and said, oh, this hurts, that counted as breastfeeding, despite the fact that this is dose dependent.
So the longer you breastfeed your kid, recommended 18 months or so, the better it is for the child.
They counted, oh, it hurts after the first attempt as breastfeeding.
Whereas, you know, that's essentially saying like, there's no connection between smoking and lung cancer.
Because if we look at the people that have smoked, including the guy that took a drag of a cigarette back behind a high school, didn't like it, never tried it again, put him in the exact same category as the person that smoked two packs a day, oh, there's no connection between smoking and lung cancer.
Just be very careful about the stuff you look at because there's so much nonsense out there from just about every side.
Every side!
Yeah, every side.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Be skeptical of everything.
And the other thing too is that it would seem to me that if you could pay people a lot more and not charge customers a lot more, then what you should do is start a competitor to Walmart and bid away all their employees.
Yeah, well, I think that's where again, hang on.
So when it comes to sort of free free market stuff, these academics are saying like, so the people who run Walmart have been doing it for decades, and it's a huge and successful company.
And if they don't phone up Walmart, And say, wait a minute, here's our numbers.
What are we missing?
Like, you guys run this business.
You want happy employees.
You want happy customers.
Now, if you can disproportionately make your customers, make your employees happy relative to a tiny ping on your customers' prices, why aren't you doing that?
Like, I'm always concerned when, when, um, you know, there's, there's this old question in economics, which is why the hell is movie popcorn so expensive?
It makes no sense.
I mean, popcorn is dirt cheap, but you gotta pay $3.50 for a tiny bag, right?
It makes no sense.
And economists debate this ad infinitum.
And I won't get into all the minutiae of all of the scholastic angels dancing on a head, but why not phone up a goddamn guy who runs a movie theater and say, what's up with this?
You know, why aren't these guys calling?
Like, so they could call Walmart and say, look, here are numbers.
We don't want to call you guys cheap out in public.
We don't want to call you guys really terrible business people out there in public, wherein you could pay your employees a lot more and have virtually no impact on your customers.
What are we missing?
Why not call up Walmart and ask them?
Because the Walmart said, listen, you're missing a whole bunch of stuff.
That's what I'm sort of concerned about.
The Walmart Director of Communications would be ecstatic If these academics had sent him their preliminary calculations and said, look, this seems kind of weird to us, like you could forty cents a customer but you get
Twenty-five percent, or here it says twenty-five, it seems to be twenty-five percent or whatever, but here is, like, help us understand why this isn't happening, because it seems to us this would make, now maybe Wal-Mart are completely starved by brain-dead, neck-beard, mouth-breathing idiots, in which case it's like these guys should quit academia and find a way to pay, to really pay their workers fantastically, in which case all the workers will leave Wal-Mart and come to them, in which case they'll end up making a company worth billions of dollars.
So I'm a little, you know, when the academics crunch the numbers without talking to the people actually running the business or don't sit to themselves and say, shit, there's no way we're publishing this, but what we're going to do is take this to venture capitalists and say, look, we can pay employees huge amounts more money.
It has almost no impact on the customers.
You know what the venture capitalists are going to say?
They're going to say, why hasn't Walmart done that?
If this is such a great business move and such a great business decision, why hasn't Wal-Mart done that?
And if they say, well, we've never asked Wal-Mart, they'll say, you're not getting any money from us until you do.
Because assuming that Wal-Mart is really bad at running their business is not a great assumption, given that they're one of the most successful companies in the world.
So again, this is not a huge rebuttal.
And maybe, Mike, if you could remember to put a link to this, and if people want to give us more feedback on that.
But I would be suspicious of this stuff.
But sorry, go ahead.
Actually, with Walmart having these employees that are staying with them, I believe the government is the problem in this case.
Because many Walmart workers who work there, and it's not all across the board, in some places minimum wage is lower, and some of them working full-time, and I believe that some of the Walmart workers actually get food stamps and get government aid.
If the medical things weren't there, they wouldn't take that Walmart job.
They would say, sorry Walmart, I can't take that $7 wage job because I can't pay for food.
If you want to bring up the wages of people at Walmart, then stop having the government subsidize Walmart with free education, with free health care, with food stamps, with welfare, with whatever it is that's going on.
Let Walmart pay the real costs of its employees and that will drive the wages up.
Now the real wages probably won't budge that much, but it's a ridiculous, the welfare state and all of this government education stuff.
It's all a gigantic subsidy to these huge corporations.
Well, for education, I just believe that it's better to have an educated society and a healthy society.
You're from Canada.
Universal health care is in Canada and I'm assuming you disagree with that.
You don't like the universal health care of your country, correct?
You keep using these terms that I don't understand.
I don't like it?
What does that mean?
I'm a philosopher.
You think that A privatized version of healthcare would be able to cover more people and have more people healthy and maybe run better.
No, I'm not a magician.
I have no crystal ball.
That's like you saying, well you want to end slavery because you think that it might be more efficient to have paid people pick the cotton crops.
I have no idea, I mean I genuinely and generally believe it'll be a vast improvement over a healthcare system that came 99% close to killing me in my sleep, but I don't care what happens when we do the right thing.
I don't care what happens after we free the slaves, slavery is immoral.
And I don't care what happens fundamentally after we achieve freedom in the realm of medicine, it's just it's immoral to point guns at people to get Things done in society.
It's immoral to point guns at people to get your cotton picked and it's immoral to point guns at people to get your health care provided.
So as far as what happens afterwards, who cares?
People didn't say, well, you know, I'm concerned that if we give women the vote, women have different economic interests than men.
So I'm concerned that we're going to end up with a whole bunch of women who are going to vote for a whole bunch of socialist policies and a whole bunch of old age pensions and a whole bunch of free health care because they tend to take care of the old and they tend to use more health care than men and women also end up voting for a whole bunch of like really crazy laws around alimony and child support and divorce and so on and so I don't you know it's the consequences of doing the right thing are incalculable.
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows what's going to happen after you do the right thing.
The important thing is to do the right thing, and it's immoral to point guns at people to provide health care.
It's violence.
It's the initiation of force.
Yeah, well, I disagree with your idea that taxes are theft, and we're not going to get anywhere on that one.
Hang on.
What do you mean you disagree?
You think that taxes are not theft?
I believe that for society to run, we need to somehow pay for roads and education and healthcare.
No, no, that's not the argument.
The argument is... Hang on.
No, no, no.
That's not what I asked.
You've got to stick with the question.
Yes, taxes are not theft.
They are voluntary in most cases.
Taxes are voluntary.
Okay.
So if you don't want to pay your taxes, nothing bad will happen to you.
Well, I don't think anything bad should happen to you, and it's unfortunate that it does.
Wait, no.
Are taxes currently voluntary?
They're currently not voluntary.
Most people pay them, and I think would pay them to run society if they... Yes and no.
I mean, I think a lot of people Yes and no.
Come on, man.
They're voluntary for some people, but not voluntary for others, is what I'm saying.
So what you're saying is that someone, like, it's not rape if the woman would have had sex with the guy who raped her voluntarily.
No, no.
Like, if she would have just had sex with him, then it's not violence if she's raped.
No, not at all.
It's not, if the person was already, you know, if you walk into a store, and you walk into that store, and then you walk into the store anyway, and you walk into a store, and someone puts a gun at you and say, walk into that store, if you're already walking into that store anyway, yes, that is coercion. if you're already walking into that store anyway, yes, that Yes, you can, there was some force there, but the end result would have been you walk into the store.
Right, so if the woman was going to have sex with the man anyway, the fact that he puts a knife to her throat and rapes her means that it's not rape, because the end result is she has sex with him either way.
No, because that's the thing.
Walking to the store is painless.
And there's no... Well, yeah, I get your point.
I think you may be doing sex wrong if it hurts.
I just really wanted to point that out.
I'm sorry?
No, I get your point.
I'm not arguing against it.
Okay, so then taxation is coercion.
Just because people would pay it voluntarily if it wasn't coercive doesn't mean that it's not coercive.
I agree.
Okay, so taxation is coercion?
It's coercion, yes.
It is coercion.
Look at that!
Look at that!
That was, first of all, admirable integrity on your part.
Really wanted to point that out.
Props and credit, where props and credit are due.
Because you originally said, we're not going to get anywhere on this and it's not coercive and, you know, three minutes and you listened to a reasonable argument and you adjusted your position, which I just wanted to say I hugely admire.
Just wanted to lick your leg in that particular transaction.
Good job.
But anyway, go on.
When have I ever, ever said that I believe that people would voluntarily give to roads?
would give money to pay for roads and things like that.
And I just don't believe that would happen.
When have I ever, ever said that I believe that people would voluntarily give to roads?
Okay, so if...
Wait, weren't you the guy who accused me of mischaracterizing others?
I think...
Do you really want to take that road?
I don't think you do.
I think in certain videos you have talked about how if people were not forced to pay taxes that society would still run in a certain way, charities would give, and other things like that, and I think that Well, we know that.
We know that when taxes go down, charity goes up.
Charitable donations go up when taxes go down.
That's not my crazy hypothetical theory.
That's an actual fact.
But there's no real world, you know...
Example where taxes went to zero and there's no sales taxes, no VAT taxes, no income tax, and charity runs society.
You know, helps pay for roads, helps give health care to poor people who can't afford it, helps do this, helps do that.
Oh yes, there's actually, well again, is there a society with no taxation at all?
There have been some in history, but that's not particularly the point now.
But this argument from it's not happened before makes you extremely conservative.
We can't give women the vote because there's been no society in history that's ever given women the vote.
We can't free the slaves because there's been no society in history that's ever been slave free.
It makes you ridiculously conservative.
We can't ever have anything new.
Nothing can arrive with the wrapper still on it.
We must continually recycle history.
And if somebody brings up something that deviates from history, we must destroy it with Massive conservatism.
I thought lefties were a little bit more progressive than that, willing to try out new things and explore new ideas, but it's never happened before.
I mean, that's every single advancement in human society.
There can't be cell phones because a hundred years ago there were no cell phones.
So cell phones must be a figment of my imagination.
Ooh, good imagination.
I wish I'd invested in my own imagination when cell phones first came out.
Computers, a myth, CGI, it's a complete myth that can't be movie theaters because they used to have hand... Anyway, you get the point.
But as far as how would society run without a government, I mean, peacefully.
You care about the poor, right?
Yeah.
So you would give money to help the poor.
I care about the poor.
Do you give money now to help the poor?
I do.
I give money now to help the poor.
You give money to help the poor.
Mike one day might, you know, quit his video game addiction.
No, I'm just kidding.
So, you know, we all helping the poor and all that.
And there are tons of examples of people getting health care for free throughout history.
I read Dr. Rod Long, best porn name in academia.
I read his whole article about how health care used to be provided in the past before the government got involved.
And the problem with health care about a hundred years ago was it was too cheap.
That was the big problem.
Doctors couldn't figure out a way to make a lot of money.
So they ran to the government and they said, well you've got to ban people from doing this and you've got to ban people from doing that.
We're the only ones who can grant a license and now we're the only ones who can give prescriptions and now we're the only ones who can do this.
And so they created a government-sponsored monopoly because they couldn't make enough money by providing health care for other people and it used to cost people the modern equivalent of fifty to sixty dollars to get good health insurance a hundred years ago.
And so, yeah, so I just, there's tons of examples throughout history of healthcare.
Like education, this is, again, I checked these numbers three different ways from Sunday, but education used to cost tens of dollars a year for high quality education in modern dollars, not in past dollars, in modern dollars, $20, $30 a year to get a quality education for your child. $30 a year to get a quality education for your And it was called the Lancashire School and it was really effective and very powerful.
So this idea that it costs, you know, the government drives up the costs of everything and then everyone says, well, we couldn't cover that by charity.
It's like, but this is...
It's only expensive because there's a government.
Why the fuck do we even need roads?
What if we didn't have roads that were paid for?
First of all, there were roads before there were government roads.
But what's happened is government roads have made a completely planet-raping, oil-dependency culture, where people move all over the place, they live far away from work because they don't pay direct costs for their roads.
And so we've got this really twisted, nature-destroying, ecologically catastrophic society because the government's paying for all the roads.
And people are saying, Gosh, what would society be like without roads?
Well, it'd be a lot more neighborly and the air would be a lot cleaner, at least because there'd be private roads where things would be justified by economic value rather than government building stuff to please the taxpayers and to have contracts to sell to the unions.
And to have armies around.
Yeah, armies, of course.
I disagree with the military-industrial complex 100%.
So a lot of your views on how things would work in society, a lot of things would have to change.
For people that are liberals or people that are conservatives, society doesn't need to change nearly as much.
Say a liberal wants to You know, raise taxes by 5%, and he wants to have more regulation for police so they don't kill innocent people, and he wants to, say, pay teachers more.
With you, you want to take out the government completely in certain aspects, and it is a can-say-and-can't-be-done, though it's a lot more radical than the new average liberal or even average conservative.
No, it's not radical.
It's consistent.
That's like saying that the Sun being the center of the solar system is radical, compared to the Earth being... Radical is a useless term.
It is consistent.
If we are against the initiation of force, we are against the initiation of force.
The government, by its nature, by its definition, is the initiation of force.
Barack Obama's got a video on the internet describing just that, and he should know.
He's initiated force against a whole bunch of countries and groups.
But the government is the initiation of force.
All men are created equal, said one of the founding documents of the United States.
And if all men are created equal, we can't have slavery.
Because all men are created equal.
If no man or woman can initiate the use of force, then we can't have a government.
It's not radical.
It's consistent.
Okay, so now I want to move on to another point.
And I believe you have an answer, and the answer is going to take away the government influence, and I think that would be a good answer.
But I also believe that taking away corporate power would also solve the problem.
So, for... Let me see if I can find my question.
Oh, do you want me to read the question that you handed out at the beginning?
Yeah, read the second end of the question.
Yeah, yeah.
How can you stop monopolies without a government busting them up?
So you're very, very concerned about monopolies, right?
Yeah, I believe that.
You understand that the government is a coercive monopoly.
A corporation, without the government's help, even if it achieves a monopoly, it achieves a monopoly because it pleases the customers the most.
So it is achieving a voluntary monopoly because it is pleasing the customers the most.
Now, if you're concerned about monopolies, You must be concerned about violent monopolies more than non-violent monopolies, right?
Of course, right?
Because when you get married, generally people say, I'm going to be monogamous.
Now that is a non-violent monopoly over the squishy bits in the nice dress right opposite you.
So you have a monopoly on sexual access to your marriage partner, for most people who get married.
That is a peaceful monopoly.
Now a violent monopoly is, I'm gonna hold a knife to you while I rape you in the ass.
That is a coercive monopoly.
Now clearly a coercive monopoly should get far more of our moral attention than a voluntary monopoly.
Would you agree with that?
I do, I agree.
Okay, so then saying that a company that achieves without the government its value by appealing to the self-interest of the consumers That that is a big problem.
A voluntary monopoly is a big problem, and we need to solve it with a coercive monopoly.
It's like saying chastity or fidelity in marriage is a big problem, and we need to solve it with rape gangs.
We need to replace a voluntary monopoly, or control a voluntary monopoly, or disrupt a voluntary monopoly, with a coercive monopoly called the state.
Yeah, so... I'm saying the state's not there, okay?
And if this monopoly, um, you know, gets part of the market because they, you know, initially they have more customer base.
So probably the customers like them, but then they could.
Okay.
So hang on, let's, let's just use a real world example here.
So, so let's say there's no government and we've got Apple and Microsoft.
Okay.
So what happens from here?
Okay.
Let's, let's say Microsoft has more money.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, hang on.
How do they have more money?
Okay, Microsoft sells computers that are cheaper.
More people bought the cheaper computers.
The CEO of Microsoft has more money, and with his money, he decides to buy out Apple.
Could that happen?
What, with his own money?
With his own money, with the corporate money.
However, he decides to buy out Apple.
Wait, okay.
Mike, could you look up for me, I'm sorry to be annoying about this, could you look up for me Microsoft's income per year and Apple's current valuation?
And we'll come back to that in a sec, but I think that buying out Apple might be just a little challenging for Microsoft.
No, I agree and you're the one who gave that example.
There are certain monopolies that have formed.
We only have six banks now.
I think it's ridiculous.
You can't talk about banks as being anything to do with the free market, right?
Okay, alright.
Government really doesn't help with that.
I see a lot of monopolies that happen are because of the government.
You know, like for the oil industry, they get subsidized all the time.
That's limiting free market for green energy.
You know, we're subsidizing oil, and oil companies make billions of dollars in profits, and we subsidize them at the same time.
But I do believe that it is possible that a certain company could buy out other companies, and if there's no competition anymore because they bought everyone out, they could decide to raise the prices.
So for example, the pharmaceutical companies, you know, a certain person has this one drug that cures cancer, And they decided to raise the price 700%.
And because they're the only company that, you know, has that drug at that time, in that country, American example, people either have to buy that drug or die.
And I want to know what you would do in that case.
Because in Canada, where you live, the government, you know, negotiates with pharmaceutical companies and somewhat forces them to give lower prices.
And they do that all throughout Europe.
All throughout Europe, you need the same drug for curing cancer at, you know, one-tenth or even less than that of the price.
And I like how the government does it.
It's a good thing the government does.
Because in certain aspects of, you know, take the medication or die, you either take the medication or die, so you don't really have a good, you know, argument.
You can't take some of the medication.
You can't, you know, use an alternative.
And you can't let the free market in that particular case solve it.
Because, you know, it's not like, you can vote and say, I'm not taking this because it costs too much, but your vote doesn't count that much if you die in the end.
All right, so one thing at a time, if you don't mind?
Yes.
Okay, so Microsoft made $79 million last year.
Profit.
See here.
No, that was revenue.
Gross profit.
Sorry, 57.
Gross profit.
What's the net profit here?
Sorry, it's been a while since I've gone through one of these.
Seems kind of low.
Revenue, cost of revenue, gross profit.
Okay, let's just take the gross profit.
That's fine.
Okay.
So, 57 million dollars of gross profit.
Now, Apple's market cap was $741.8 billion.
So I'm just going to plug that in. - Yeah.
So it's going to be a lot of 0, 7, 41, 8, that's million, that's billion.
Okay.
Divided by 57, 6, 0, 0.
57,600.
So it's, this is gross revenue even, not net revenue.
So Microsoft would have to save up for 1,287 years to buy Apple.
Okay.
And that's assuming that Apple would retain its value if Microsoft bought it.
Yeah.
Which is probably not the case, right?
Yeah, in that particular case... Because people would say, well, I don't want to be You know, I don't want to... like, Apple is cool because it's not Microsoft.
So if Microsoft buys it, then a lot of people would... the value of Apple would go down because you got Apple fanboys who, you know, you understand, right?
Yeah, I understand.
And the two different products are doing quite well, and they're different, and they're doing well for different reasons.
But for the case of, you know, a certain medication, you know, having the only medication on the market, because whoever that person did bought out the other medications, say they made more money.
Okay, hang on.
So let's say that there is a company that has developed a cure for cancer.
And how much does that cure for cancer cost the company, including R&D, just roughly, to produce?
Let's say it's a pill that cures cancer.
How much, let's just take a guess, does it cost a thousand dollars to produce?
Because, you know, it's a lot of research and people have been trying to cure cancer for decades and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So we assume it's a difficult thing to do.
So can we sort of say roughly a thousand dollars a pill?
I mean, it wouldn't be that, I mean, at a certain point, the, say, $10 million of research that they spend.
Oh, no.
$10 million will get you nothing in medical research.
I mean, that buys you a laptop and an assistant.
It would be billions of dollars to cure.
Let's just say it's $1,000 a pill.
We can say it's $500 a pill.
I don't care.
It doesn't really matter.
I would say it's $500 a pill.
Okay.
So it's $500 a pill to cure cancer, right?
Yeah.
Now, not to pull the C-card, but as someone who suffered from cancer, I can tell you I would have paid a lot more than $500 to not have had surgery and to not have had to go through chemo and radiation treatment.
Okay.
So let's say they're selling it for 10 times what it costs them to make.
$5,000 to cure cancer, right?
Okay, yeah.
That is way cheaper than what I went through.
Yeah, I understand.
So I'm saving huge amounts of money.
I don't get my sexy neck scar.
That's true.
And I don't get to hang around throwing up a lot.
And I don't get to lose my eyebrows.
Not a lot of the rest of the head to go.
So let's say they're charging 10 times.
That's $5,000 for curing cancer.
What was the cost of all my treatments?
I mean, I know the direct costs I had to pay in the United States, but tens of thousands of dollars perhaps.
So at $5,000, society is still saving a huge amount of money.
So that's good.
It's win-win.
People get cured for cancer at far cheaper than they would have had to pay otherwise, and the company makes a lot of money for curing cancer.
Where's the big problem here?
Well, let's take a real-life solution, a real-life example.
So, say the company was selling you for $5,000, and the company increased the price by 700%, which has happened several times in pharmaceutical companies.
So it goes from $5,000 Well, no, no, no.
$5,000 is already 10 times what it costs them to make.
So, they've already jacked up the price a huge amount.
Now, if you want to say the pill cost them $5,000 to make and they jack it up to $50,000, they can certainly do that.
Is that what you mean?
Yeah, let's go with that.
that.
So now I can't file on it.
Okay, so the pill, hang on, the pill costs them $5,000 to make and they're selling it for $50,000, right?
Okay, yeah. - Yeah.
My question is, what happens to people who just don't have that money?
Well, hang on.
You're just assuming that they have this power to do that.
Okay, so if there's no government and... Okay, so I think your argument would be that no one can pay you because it's too much money, and so the company's out of business.
Would that be... No, no, that's... Oh my god.
Have you ever... You've never run a company, I assume.
I don't mean to be annoying, but you haven't, right?
I have not, no.
You have no experience with Stockholder agreements with CEO liabilities.
You're talking about shit you have no clue about.
I mean, it would be like me lecturing people on quantum physics, right?
You don't know any of the legalities.
You don't know any of the business realities.
You don't know anything about takeovers.
And I'm not trying to insult you.
I mean, these are just facts that you're coming up with these theoretical candy-ass solutions with no knowledge and no research into the knowledge of what would happen.
Because I can tell you what would most likely happen as someone who has experience in these things.
Okay, tell me what would happen.
Okay, so what would happen is this.
I'm the CEO of Asshole Cancer Enterprises.
Wait, do we have a show title?
Anyway, I'm the CEO of Asshole Cancer Enterprises.
I can produce a cancer pill for $5,000, but I wish to sell it for $50,000, right?
Now, I don't have monarchical power as the CEO of a company.
I don't like, I'm not like Louis the 15th, right?
And even he got, one of those Louis got overthrown, overthrown, overthrown.
Actually, that's a good way of putting it.
They turned the throne over and overthrew him.
But I don't have monarchical power.
So what I would do is I would go to the board and I would say, I think we should sell cancer medication for 10 times what it costs us to produce.
Now, the normal profits for businesses in a free market are 3 to 4 percent.
Maybe 5, 6 if you're really new to market with something.
That's traditionally in a free market.
You can't get more than that.
So I'm talking about a 3.
Yeah.
thousand percent when the market in general punishes anyone who goes over five or six.
Okay?
So, but we say, I have, we have, nobody else has our secret formula, right?
So, so I'm going to charge this massive, massive amount, right?
Okay.
Now, there are board members who have fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, which means that they must act to maximize the value of shareholder stock and, And if they don't, they get sued into atoms and scattered in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
So you have to do that, which maximizes the value of the company.
And if you don't, you lose everything.
Okay.
Now, hang on.
Hang on, you still don't know much about this world, so please don't come up with stuff unless you've got something really simple.
It's just a question.
So, how is, in the free market that you're going there, that it shouldn't be too much more, it shouldn't overcharge something, because it might proselytize the company.
What do you say about price gouging?
It might hurt the profits of the company.
Then they have to go through CEOs and you know, it's not, you know, like... Oh, okay.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Wait.
Are we doing... You said you had a quick question.
I told you not to bring in other things.
Did you just not listen to me completely?
Yeah.
So, how can you explain price gouging?
Especially in the pharmaceutical sector.
I'm just in the middle of explaining something.
I asked you not to bring up something else.
Okay.
Go ahead.
And you just went and brought up another complex topic.
Can you continue tie and price gouging please?
No, I'm going to continue with my original topic which I asked you not to interrupt and then you just interrupted it while telling me you weren't about to interrupt it with another topic so I'm gonna keep going.
You have a fiduciary responsibility to provide maximum value to your shareholders and if you don't you will get sued and you will lose your house and you will lose your savings and you will be ending up living in a rain barrel under a bridge.
So I say I wish us To take a deadly disease that kills millions of people a year and cause untold heartbreak and I was to price gouge sick and desperate people and the board is going to look at me and say, are you insane?
Are you crazy?
They would have my head checked for brain tumors.
Because very few people could afford $50,000 again in a free society maybe they could, I don't know, maybe the health insurance company or whatever, who knows, right?
But we don't need to charge $50,000.
We will make less money charging $50,000 than we will if we charge $6,000, which is still 20% more than the $5,000 it costs us to produce, right?
20% in a free market is a pretty healthy profit.
OK.
So if I say, let's sell it for $50,000, they're going to say, that makes us much less money than if we sell it for $6,000, which is still a damn good profit.
That's number one.
So there's a sweet spot in supply and demand, right?
Which is that if you sell it for $50,000 in one penny, you will get sued by your shareholders because you're not maximizing the value of their shares because you're underselling the value of a product, right?
That's number one.
If you charge too much, you might get sued by your shareholders.
And maybe it's not sued.
Maybe they'll just sell their shares, saying there's a bunch of dipshits running this.
You know, we might as well have the kid from the life of Pi and the dead zebra running this company.
Your share prices will crash because you're making such ridiculously bad decisions that Nobody's going to want to be part of yours.
So your share prices will crash, which destroys the value of the shares, which means you're going to probably get sued anyway for not maintaining the value of the company.
So there's a sweet spot.
And that sweet spot is going to be highly calculated and highly calibrated.
So you're not going to be able to sell it for $50,000.
Because if you try, there will be a shareholder revolt.
And what that means is the shareholders will get together and fire all of your sorry asses and then sue you.
Because they wish to maintain the value of their company, and if they've got their life savings in your company, maybe because their wife died of cancer, or their wife is dying of cancer, they don't want you ass-clowns destroying the value of their life savings.
And if you do something ridiculously stupid, like charging ten times for a life-saving medicine, that company will be destroyed.
Well, the company may survive and probably will, but you, your career will be over.
And you don't get to be the CEO of a major company that has enough resources to come up with a cure for cancer without knowing how to run a business.
And that is a terrible way to run a business.
It will never happen.
And if it should happen because someone, five or 10 or 20 people on the board all get brain tumors at the same time, There will be a shareholder revolt.
Everyone will be fired and competent managers will be brought in to sell it at the most economically productive price, which is not ten times what it costs to make.
So that's important to understand.
This is how it works.
Number two, there is an interesting thing in business called goodwill.
And goodwill is the positive view that people have of your company.
And that's really, really important.
Look, you've got a lot of lefty friends.
I have some lefty friends.
Talk to them about Blackwater.
What do they think about Blackwater?
Blackwater is sort of a semi-private mercenary paid for by the government, substitute for bad soldiers run by the government.
Now, how many of your lefty friends would want to buy shares in Blackwater?
We would not.
We would not, right?
And I'm sure a lot of writers' friends would not want to buy shares in Blackwater, because Blackwater, for a lot of people, has not a lot of goodwill.
So goodwill is just the positive view that people have of a company.
And it has a direct impact on share price.
Because is it socially acceptable to buy this company?
If it's not, you know...
Like BP lost a lot of goodwill when they had that big oil spill in the Gulf and so on.
So people like, oh, I don't want to buy this company, they're environmentally irresponsible, whatever people thought.
So there's something called goodwill, which is people's positive view of the company.
Now, can you imagine, my friend, a scenario under which a company would lose more goodwill in the marketplace than vastly overcharging for life-saving drugs, for diseases, a disease that slowly and painfully kills millions of people a year.
Well, it's happened.
Your example actually happened.
You said that person who did that wouldn't be fired or they wouldn't be running their business.
And the person who did that, Martin Shkreli, he was fired as CEO.
The person who raised it from $13.50 per pill to $700 per pill, he was fired.
And he's facing a decade in prison.
Yeah.
For God knows, I don't even, I haven't even read the, but oh my God.
Security's fraud.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fraud.
Okay.
So here's an example of a guy, you know, and, and for instance, the guy who tried to pay everyone in his company, $70,000 or whatever it was, his brother is suing him for destroying the value of the company.
Yeah, so this guy essentially, now this is accusations, this is not proven as yet, this is Brooklyn US Attorney Robert Capers at a press conference said this guy, Shkreli, essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company.
So this guy was, you know, dishonest and he's accused of this, who knows what the truth is, it'll come out over time if it ever comes out at all.
But so that is the cause and effect.
So if you destroy a company's goodwill, if you turn the company from loved into hated, you have destroyed the value of people's shares and they will sue you.
And so this is why corporations, other than the fact that there are lots of nice people who run corporations despite what a lot of people think, this is why corporations engage in
pink ribbon campaigns and give to charity and and do all of these nice things because it's called accumulating goodwill so that they're considered to be good corporate citizens people like them they want their stocks in their portfolio that has a direct material effect on the price of the shares and so I guarantee you that any competent CEO will say we have a cure for cancer we have a great opportunity and we have a great liability.
The great opportunity is we can cure people of cancer.
The great liability is people will not be able to afford our cure, so we need to have a program in place to ensure that we can give medicine to people who can't afford it, so that we're not accused of pandering to rich people who can afford the $6,000 we have to charge to cure them for cancer.
Now, first of all, of course, insurance companies will pay.
And insurance companies, I don't know, what does it cost?
Like we got, when I first got lymphoma, we saw some insane quotes, like up about a million dollars to treat, right?
Insane, insane amounts of money.
That's if you could even get a price quoted to you.
Some of them were like, what?
What do you mean a price quote?
We don't do that.
Right, right.
Now, so again, I don't want to get into the details of what I paid, it's kind of private, but it was a good deal.
$6,000 Canadian.
It's a good deal just for the operation.
So the insurance companies will be thrilled because the insurance companies are going to start saving money like crazy.
Like not Obama bullshit promises Mirage fall off a cliff of costs, but an actual savings, right?
So I don't know what I'm going to guess that for somebody who's got to go through any kind of surgery and chemo and radiation, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000.
So it's at least a 90% saving to pay for a $6,000 pill.
Okay.
Right.
And also, if the person also has a life insurance, then not only are they saving the money on the cancer treatment 90%, but they also don't have to pay out a quarter million or a half a million or a million dollars in life insurance.
So the insurance companies are going to be ecstatic about this and they're going to be able to vastly reduce the price of insurance.
Because they'll all be competing with each other to give people a lower.
So the moment that a cure for cancer comes in, people's insurance is going to crash.
People's medical insurance is going to crash in terms of price.
Like in a good way crash.
That's bad.
But it's going to go down enormously because it's going to be far cheaper to treat them and they're going to have to get to defer the payout for life insurance and so on.
So people are going to be saving thousands of dollars a year already in life insurance and health care insurance.
Maybe not thousands, but a lot, right?
And let's say that they save five hundred dollars.
Let's take a lowball estimate and say that a cure for cancer lowers people's combined health and life insurance by five hundred dollars a year.
Well, that's rounding it off ten or twelve percent of the price of the pill.
It means they can take a loan out and they can pay back that loan with the money that they're saving from their health and life insurance to pay for their cancer treatment.
Yeah.
You understand?
And let's say they don't have health insurance.
They only have life insurance.
So it's going to take 10 years.
Well, people take out loans that they pay back over 10 years.
So you could borrow the money against the savings on your insurance, right?
Yeah.
So that's another way.
But for sure, there will be criticism and there'll be the media.
I don't know what the media will look like in a free society.
Maybe like me.
I don't know.
But there will be the media and the media will find the poor person who can't afford it.
And they will say, look how unfair and unjust because the lead media just loves provoking that kind of class warfare.
I don't know what to do in the future, but let's say right now.
So the company will be perfectly aware that the media will be sniffing around looking for poor people who can't afford it.
So the media, sorry, so the company is going to put processes in place to make sure that this stuff is available to poor people because they wish to protect the value of the stock that is buoyed up by the goodwill that people feel towards the company.
Because if they say, well, fuck it, poor people die in the streets.
If you're homeless and you've got cancer, we're not giving you a pill because you can't get a loan.
They know what a negative perception that is going to give incompetent CEOs.
And I'm telling you, if you're big enough to like the cancer research just from the official cancer body is close to $5 billion a year.
That's just research, let alone everything else that you're doing.
So if you're the CEO of a multi tens or hundreds of billions of dollar corporation, you are the very best CEO because they can afford you because you need to be the very best.
So you're going to be making good decisions.
So you're going to make sure that poor people get the health care that they need.
You'll set up a Charity agents, charity areas, employee drives.
You'll do whatever it takes.
You'll pay out of your own pocket.
Because if you don't, let's say that you talked about one person out of 200 being able to, like, unable to function or whatever it is, right?
But let's say that 1% of people can't rustle up $5,000 over 10 years.
In a free society, of course, we'll be making much more money and it won't be a big issue.
But let's say one person out of 100.
Okay.
So giving them free medicine, is going to cost you one percent of your profits.
However, not giving them free medicine is going to cost you five to ten percent of the value of your company because you're going to be bleeding away your goodwill because there'll be pictures of people dying lumps in an alley because you're too cheap to give them free medicine even though they can't afford it and they're desperate and so on, right?
So it's economically advantageous to you, even if there's no compassion and it's all economic calculation, it's economically advantageous for you to give out free medicine to buoy up the goodwill that keeps your stock prices high.
And there's no CEO on the planet who wouldn't understand that if they've gotten to the level of running multi-hundred billion dollar corporations.
And there's so many checks and balances in corporations, right?
There's the board.
There's the customers.
There's the employees.
There's the shareholders, all of whom can get dissatisfied.
Like if your researcher has worked night and day for 10 years to come up with a cure for cancer and you overcharge, he's going to leave you and he's going to go work for someone else.
And all of his accumulated genius is going to go with him and that's going to be a big problem.
Because he didn't do that so that you guys could all get rich.
Like, there's so many checks and balances in a free market.
You could be punished by all of the customers who say, you know what?
These guys are way overcharging for their cancer medication.
We'll buy that shit from them if we have to.
We're boycotting them on everything else we don't need to buy.
Like they've got a hundred products, this one cancer medication they've been complete assholes about.
We're going to buy that because they've got the only ones who've got it.
We're going to not buy anything else that they sell.
Just that one thing, that's going to crater your entire income.
And so again, I'm just, this is just off the top of my head, but you need to study these things if you're going to create these scarce scenarios.
At least you need to study the checks and balances that would be there in a relatively free society, some of which are kind of there now.
I'm not a big fan of corporatism as it stands, but that's sort of neither here nor there.
So that issue of what happens if they develop this, that, and the other, because you don't know anything about how corporations work, or how fiduciary responsibility works, or what goodwill is, or how shareholder arrangements work, or how a board works, or what the sweet spot is for selling products and so on.
Because you don't know anything about this, you should stop talking about it, because you're dangerously spreading confusion and fear among people when you don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, so I know very little.
Nothing would be a stretch, but very little.
Let's go with that.
And actually, I hadn't heard a lot of the arguments, and they make sense, and I'm gonna look into them, and I'm taking in new information, and that's great.
And so, I want to ask another question.
I read an article that... Okay, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is gonna have to be quick.
Very, very quick, like five minutes, if that, because it's been a three-and-a-half-hour show, and I'm ready to pack it in, but go ahead.
Okay.
I'm gonna go with something instead.
So, for... I assume that you would like for the hemp industry to be stronger, correct?
I don't even understand that.
What do you mean, I would like?
What do you mean?
No, I mean, right now, because of the government and how, you know, marijuana is illegal, I'm against the initiation of force and buying and using drugs is not initiating force and so anyone who's banning that is initiating force.
using hemp for construction, creating this product that could make money all around the world.
Well, I'm against the initiation of force, and buying and using drugs is not initiating force, and so anyone who's banning that is initiating force.
I don't know what any specific industry would have to do with it.
Well, I believe that the reason why hemp is illegal was because they were cutting into profits of cotton corporations, and the cotton corporations bribed politicians to make sure that hemp was illegal and the cotton corporations bribed politicians to make sure that hemp was illegal so that they wouldn't So my solution would be to end money in politics.
You know, so that, you know, there would be no way for a corporation to buy the government.
And your solution, I'm assuming, would be to give less power to the government.
Correct?
To give what power to the government?
To give less power to the government?
Yes.
No, my solution is the non-initiation of force.
Consistently applied.
I mean, I'm not prejudiced against the government.
I'm also prejudiced against rapists and thieves and murderers and assaulters.
Anybody who initiates the use of force, you know, of which the government is obviously a pretty key or large component of that tribe.
Okay, so do you see how getting money out of politics could be positive?
Do I see how getting money out of politics could be positive?
Yes.
I don't understand the question.
Sorry.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do you agree that money in politics can lead to corruption and that causes problems?
I don't understand.
Sorry.
I still don't understand the question.
It's not money in politics that drives corruption.
It's the fact that politics violates the non-aggression principle.
Like, I'm less concerned about bribery than I am about, say, war.
So, I mean, the corruption is the monopoly violence power that the government has.
The effect of that is that there's money in politics, right?
I mean, people give money to politicians because politicians have the power to give stuff to people.
And the people give votes to politicians, because politicians have the power to give stuff to people.
If you take away their power to give stuff to people, I don't... I mean, solves the problem.
Yeah, but I do believe we could have politicians that, you know, do things that are good for society.
I mean, I guess you're more... No, no, no, no.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
I believe that there are slave owners who do things that are good for society.
It's a principle thing.
I don't know what this consequence thing is for you.
I don't know if you're not processing what I'm saying, and I know it's maybe a new perspective to take on and all that, but violence is the problem.
The initiation of force is the problem, and it's immoral, it's wrong, it's evil.
How is an elected official using violence?
I'm not quite understanding you with that.
Well, how is a mafia boss using violence when he doesn't pull any triggers?
Well, he could tell someone else to, you know, to do a certain thing.
I mean, he uses...
So a politician passes a law with the direct knowledge that passing that law usually results in the initiation of force against people.
So the politicians who said we want a war on drugs were signing laws that they knew would result in the initiation of force against peaceful people.
Now, if I hire someone to kill someone, that's illegal, even though I haven't pulled the trigger.
If I talk someone into killing someone, that's illegal.
Hell, even advocating, like it's called hate speech, advocating violence against or advocating anything which could be interpreted as risking violence against particular groups or individuals is illegal.
And so a politician who passes a law, look, they're not responsible, they're not moral agents because they don't usually have the knowledge and they're operating within the matrix, within the system, so I'm simply talking about the moral reality.
But a politician who signs a law saying I'm going to increase taxes by five percent knows that people better pay that or they go to jail.
And so he is in charge of the initiation of force and he's taking actions which directly cause the initiation of force.
Though he does not use it himself directly, but so what?
Okay.
Yeah, so for the drug war, for example, I believe that the politicians passed those laws because lobbyists at private prisons wanted to have more prisoners, and so they lobbied Congress to pass laws like the three-strike law to fill up prisons so they'd make more money.
Yeah, well that was one of the many things that the private prison have lobbied for.
Three strikes law was relatively recent.
The war on drugs has been going on for decades.
Yeah, well, that was one of the many, many things that the prison, the prison, private prison have lobbied for.
They lobbied for the three strikes, strikes law.
And I think originally marijuana was legislated against because of anti-Hispanic feelings, but not particularly important.
But okay, so I don't know, I have no idea, and I don't think you do either, what secret deals were made between lobbyists and the government.
That's the whole point, right?
I mean, you don't know.
And it doesn't really matter.
We know that the government has the power to provide things to people without them paying for it.
Monopoly powers, patents, restrictions on competition, tax advantages, tariffs, you name it, right?
Subsidies, breaks, you know, preferential legislation of every kind.
And so, if you can't... Power corrupts!
And you're looking at the shadow cast by power and saying, well, how do we change the shadow?
Well, you can't.
Giving people the monopoly power of coercion, whether it's in the legal or the financial or the whatever sphere, the educational sphere, giving people a monopoly on violence will corrupt them and will corrupt everyone who deals with the system.
It's inevitable, it's inescapable and you can't manage the symptoms.
The only thing you can do, right, there's a thousand people trimming the tree of evil for every one person hacking at the roots and the root is violations of the non-aggression principle and the most virulent manifestation of that is the state and parenting with spanking and aggression and so on.
And so, that's the only thing that I'm concerned about.
You know, you want to try and reform slavery.
I say no slavery.
You want to try and manage the effects.
Well, maybe we can find a way to have slave owners beat their slaves less or work them nicer.
No!
You don't manage the effects of a fundamental violation of the non-aggression principle.
You don't manage the effects.
You eliminate the cause.
You say, what is immoral?
And then a generation or two later, it changes.
This is what happened with slavery and people started talking about how immoral it was and then a generation or two later, you just have to keep consistently pointing out how wrong it is.
But this idea that you can manage the effects of such a fundamental violation of the non-aggression principle of the state is like trying to make slave owners nicer.
Well, I mean, there's countries that have more corruption, less corruption, so there is a difference.
It's not I mean, I get the point of, you know, power corrupts, but there is countries, you know, um, I think, uh, that are very corrupted, you know, say South America, uh, where, you know, everyone's bought off and they have all the money and, and, and, and, you know, uh, poor people have no money.
They don't share the wealth.
And then there's countries, um, like Denmark, which like you said, they're, they're weeping their capitalist ways in the past and possibly now.
Yeah, because South America has a population that has a low IQ and Denmark has a population that has a high IQ.
On average, in general.
And of course, in Denmark there's the fruits of 2,500 years of Western philosophy and statecraft and political theories, you know, all the way from Socrates through John Locke and other thinkers, Spencer and other thinkers who focused on political freedoms.
A long and slow, patient march, but we're not done.
Yeah, of course.
You know, the fact that there's less corruption in some countries, let's keep applying those principles.
Let's keep expanding those principles.
The fact that slaves are better treated in America rather than in the Islamic States in the 19th century doesn't mean that we say, okay, it means that we continue to work with what we've got and improve what we've got.
I agree.
We should improve.
I have one last point.
Okay.
I want to find out where inequality There should always be inequality.
I don't believe in equal pay for everyone in the company.
There should always be a CEO who makes a lot more money, and it should be the basic person who cleans the floors to make less money than the CEO.
What I have read is that in recent years, CEO pay has gone up from, say, 80 times the lowest worker to 400 times.
The greatest inequality is between the citizen and the government.
Not between a poor person and a rich person.
A poor person and a rich person are on the same continuum.
point is it 50% of 50 people owned half the wealth or two people owned half the wealth or one person owns.
Now, at what point do we want to try to limit inequality?
I know you don't want to redistribute wealth.
David Kahn: The greatest inequality is between the citizen and the government, not between a poor person and a rich person.
The poor person and the rich person are on the same continuum, again, assuming that it's not a rich criminal.
So, poor person and rich person are on the same continuum and neither of them is violating the initiation of force.
The only inequality that matters a damn in the world is the inequality between government agents and citizens because government agents are commanded to initiate the use of force.
Private citizens are banned from that.
That is the only distinction and the only inequality that means a damn in this world.
Now, as far as CEO pay increasing, measuring it relative to lowest worker pay doesn't particularly matter.
What matters is, first of all, government education has gotten worse and worse over the past 40 years, which means that people are coming out much less economically valuable than they were when the vestiges of the trivium was still around in the 50s and 60s.
So that's one thing.
Secondly, you don't want to measure CEO compensation relative to Worker compensation, you want to measure it relative to corporate size.
Corporations in general are much larger and much more international and much more difficult to manage now than they used to be, which means that those who have the skill and ability and willingness and work ethic to manage them are going to get paid more because it's more challenging and more difficult to do.
And so that's another thing.
The other thing of course is that CEO salaries are artificially boosted.
by artificially boosted stock prices and stock prices are artificially boosted because the government forces everyone to invest in the stock market uh... or lose their money to taxes right so you 401ks and pension schemes and all these sort of plans where people have to put their money into the stock market when they don't want to be in the stock market which is you know because they have to be forced to do it that drives rises up well manipulation of interest rates manipulation of money supply preferential uh...
benefits, bailouts, preferential benefits to banking institutions and other financial institutions from the Federal Reserve.
The fact that when money gets printed or created by the Federal Reserve, rich people tend to get it first when it's at full value, poor people get it last when it's at lower value, also further creates an imbalance.
So I don't care where imbalance ends up at the end.
I don't care.
I think it'll be much less, but I don't care.
I don't care.
So asking me, you know, what is the ratio that is acceptable to me?
What is acceptable to me is a society without the initiation of force, or where there's a bare minimum initiation of force as humanly possible by people who've got struck by lightning, had their brains addled, are possessed by demons, or who have a brain tumor.
Those people initiate force, maybe they're not responsible, we deal with them if a medical issue or whatever, I care about a world where we do not have the initiation of force as a justified foundational moral and social organizing principle because that's what we have right now.
What we have right now is a massive justification for a blood-soaked set of machine guns pointed mostly at the unborn.
That is a repulsive and disgusting Kafkaesque revolting society.
That needs to change in the same way that slave-based societies were disgusting, morally reprehensible societies that desperately needed to change.
So as far as what fucking ratio of ownership is by the rich and by the poor, I don't care.
I do care that we stop pointing guns at each other and consider it somehow a civilized society.
I do care that we challenge the assumption that putting a blood-soaked monopoly of violence at the center of society is going to produce anything other than disaster in the long run.
We need to be consistent.
If we tell a three-year-old I think one can care about both issues at the same time.
I recommend, no, sorry, the initiation of force is immoral.
We've got to look for alternatives.
That's all that matters to me.
These consequences and these details, you know, I don't think it should matter to you either.
Just deal with the principle and don't worry about the details.
They're not under our control.
They're impossible to predict.
We focus on doing the right thing, though the heavens fall.
I think one can care about both issues at the same time.
I don't think it has to be either or.
Well, it is for you because you've not mentioned any principles whatsoever.
So I've got to finish up the call because I'm running out of steam.
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