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Feb. 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:03
Kropotkin's Critique of Capitalism! Part 4
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Time Text
All right.
Well, good afternoon.
Actually, it's good evening.
And we're going to just do Kropotkin part four.
Where are we at here?
Maybe I'll get through it.
Maybe I won't.
Production is social.
This is a continuing series on examining why it is that people believe this socialist stuff.
Production is social.
Production, he writes, this is an article about Kropotkin.
Production is not carried out by isolated individuals.
Whose economic contribution can be isolated from that of each other worker, so that its value can be determined.
Okay, production is not carried out by isolated individuals.
Right.
So, if you've got 100 people working on a car, who should get paid what?
That's fair.
To illustrate this, Kropotkin turned to coal mining.
At the time, miners worked either individually or in gangs at the coalface and were paid piece rate.
In today's coal mines, of course, the issue of individual production would never arise.
Quote, From Kropotkin.
One man controls the lift, continually rushing the cage from level to level so men and coal may be moved about.
If he relaxes his concentration, for an instant, the apparatus will be destroyed.
Many men killed, and his work brought to a standstill.
If he loses as little as three seconds at each movement of the leaf, production will be reduced by 20 tons a day or more.
Well, that's a very fine observation.
No problem with that.
Well, is it he who renders the greatest service to the mind?
Or is it perhaps the boy who from below signals to him when it is time to raise the cage to the surface?
Is it instead the miner who is risking his life at every moment of the day?
Or, again, is it the engineer who would miss the coal seam and have the miners dig into stone if he made the smallest error in his calculations?
All the workers engaged in the mine contribute within the limits of their powers, their knowledge, and their skill to mine coal.
And all we can say is that everybody has the right to live to satisfy their needs, and even their fantasies, once the most pressing needs of all have been satisfied, but how can one estimate their labors?
Right.
Everybody has the right to live to satisfy their needs, and even their fantasies.
I'm not sure what this means in sort of practical terms.
Everybody has the right to live.
You know, it's kind of hard to make up rights that are not granted by and exist nowhere in nature.
I mean, nature does not provide us the right to live.
Right?
I mean, with nature, we have to work to live.
We have to produce in order to consume.
We have to go hunt in order to eat.
So, nature doesn't provide us the right to live or to satisfy our needs.
Again, if we're looking at children, then, of course, we can say that children have the right to live from the standpoint of the parent, right?
Of course.
Children have the right to live because children do not have to produce in order to consume, right?
And it's an old sort of fairly cliched thing to say.
I mean, it doesn't mean it's false, but it's an old sort of fairly cliched thing to say to someone, oh, the capitalist is the parent and the workers are the children, right?
But this is really what's being appealed to.
What does it mean to have the right to live?
Well, it means you have the right to someone else's labor.
Right?
You have the right to someone else's labor.
Okay.
Now, who is it in life who has the right to someone else's labor?
Well, it is, of course, children.
It is children who have the right to the labor of others, that parents must provide for their children the means of survival.
Right?
We understand.
We understand that, right?
It is parents that must Provide to their children the materials for survival.
or to put it another way, children have an absolute right to the labor of their parents.
Children have an absolute right to the labor of their parents.
So, when you say workers have an absolute right to life at the expense of the capitalist profits, what we're really saying is children have a right to life, though it what we're really saying is children have a right to life, though it diminish the money
I know this sounds so crazy simple, but it really has to be explained in some manner because it's so illogical to treat adults like children that it can only be because children are being considered in an unconscious fashion.
That children are being considered in an unconscious fashion.
So, if we say all children have the right to live and any parent who sacrifices the child for the sake of his own greed is an abusive parent.
I mean, I think that's fairly safe to say by definition, right?
So, if a parent who is a glutton Causes his child to starve to death because he takes all the food for himself.
Well, that would be a murderous parent worthy of the worst punishments we could consider, right?
I mean, somebody who starves a child to death in order to feed his own obese gluttony, that would be pretty terrible, right?
Someone who refused to shelter the child or refused to allow the child into the home for various reasons, and then the child died of exposure outside, well, that would be...
A murder, right?
So, you owe children life and resources.
And, of course, when you provide resources to your children, then you have fewer resources for yourself, right?
If I go and buy my daughter a doll when she was younger, I go spend 20 bucks on a doll.
A doll, that's 20 bucks less than I have for myself.
And, of course, we're supposed to.
We're supposed to earn money for the sake of the next generation in particular.
So, how can people say people have a right to life when it's not granted by nature?
Now, children does grant the right to life to children, in a sense, right?
Children, sorry, parents do.
Nature does provide the right to life to children, but through the parents, through the devotion and attachment of the parents.
So, just important, right?
All right.
He says, it's obviously you can't, right?
How can one estimate their labors?
Obviously you can't.
No one but a Marxist would attempt such an absurdity, and yet we still have not identified everyone who contributes to the production of that coal.
What are the construction workers who built the railways to the pit head, without which the coal would sit useless?
What are the farmers who raise the food the coal miners eat?
What are those who build the machines that will burn the coal, without which coal is merely a rather useless dirt?
There was a time, Kropotkin concedes, when a family could support itself by agricultural pursuits, supplemented with a few domestic traits, and consider the com?
What is that?
The com they raised, and the cloth they weaved as products of their own and no one else's labor.
Well, what does that refer to?
Does he mean corn here?
Does he mean corn?
I wonder.
Does he mean corn?
Maybe.
All right.
So, even then such a view is not quite correct.
Quote, There were forests cleared and roads built by common efforts, but now, in the extremely interwoven state of industry, of which each branch supports all others, such an individualistic view can be held no more.
If the iron trade and the cotton industry of this country have reached so high a degree of development, they have done so owing to the parallel growth of thousands of other industries, great and small, to the extension of the railway system, to an increase of knowledge, and above all, To the world trade, which has itself grown up.
The Italians who died from cholera in digging the Suez Canal have contributed as much towards the enrichment of this country.
It's a British girl who is prematurely growing old in serving a machine at Manchester.
How can we pretend to estimate the exact part of each of them in the riches accumulated around us?
Now, that's an interesting question.
And it is, of course, a challenging question.
But in a free market, the challenge of that question is taken up.
Or taken on by the capitalist.
But how do you correctly price things?
It's insanely complicated, which is why it can never be part of central planning.
And it's why, you know, average or lower than average IQ proletariat or workers, on average they would be, they can't do it.
They can't do it.
So, Yes, it is insanely complicated to figure out how to price things.
Sometimes.
You want to price enough to gain people's business, but not so much that you lose their business.
Sometimes people want to pay more because they view it as a mark of high status, right?
Like, I don't know exactly how Starbucks did it, I assume, by getting the Kardashians or some celebrities to do it.
But having that white Starbucks cup is a mark of high status and therefore people are willing to pay five bucks for a coffee they could brew for 50 cents at home or buy from two bucks from some coffee shop, right?
So it's very complicated.
It's very complicated to know what people are willing or are not willing to pay for things.
It's also not clear, of course, that you should Automatically, if you got excess money, invest it in new production capacities when you could, in fact, invest it in something like advertising, right?
So Coca-Cola was a summer drink, but then they did a lot of work and spent a lot of money to associate Coca-Cola with Christmas, with it being a winter drink, and that made them a lot of money.
So he says, So, yes, you can't possibly figure out the exact part of each person's labor in the richest accumulated around us.
You can't do it because there is no such thing.
There is only supply and demand.
People who are really good at screwing on the front plates of rotary dial telephones lost that skill or lost the value of that skill when touch phones were introduced.
People who made physical keys on, I guess, the numeric pad on early cell phones lost the value of that when touchscreens were introduced.
There were people, especially young people, who were insanely good at typing out messages on the sort of 1 to 0 to 9 keypads.
Each keypad had a series of letters.
DEF and so on.
So you'd have to push twice for B and then once for D and so on, right?
So people were insanely good at typing out lengthy messages using the 0-9 keypad and those people have lost that ability now.
They no longer have a use for that ability because now there are touchscreens.
People were good at the old BlackBerrys.
They could type out messages on the tiny keyboards that BlackBerrys had.
Now, you don't need to do that because, again, everything's a touchscreen, right?
People were really good at using those little joysticks that came with the old IBM ThinkPad, the little red joysticks in the middle, which was the mouse substitute.
Now those are very rare.
There's a lot of touchscreens and so on.
So you kind of get all of this, right?
The purpose of more sophisticated operating systems is to make it easier to use and to program.
So all of the skills that people had, like I was very good at writing batch files to accomplish particular tasks in DOS, right?
And now there's really little point doing that.
I mean, I had an old notebook.
That had 640x480 screen, but if you attach an external monitor to it, you could get to 800x600.
But changing the resolution was a real pain in the neck, so I took the Windows Innie files and copied them over and created a whole batch to copy over the necessary files.
So if I was using the local screen, I would open Windows 3.1 or 3.0 using one set of batch files, and then if I had an external screen, I would open it using second batch files, and that saved me a lot of time.
It saved me a couple of minutes because I didn't have to go into Windows and change the settings and come back, right?
So, people are gaining and losing skills all the time as technology improves and increases, right?
I used to be very good at what was called, I don't know, I think it was called high loading.
So the RAM between, what was it, 768k and 1 meg was normally reserved, but you could load programs up in there, thus freeing up more RAM. My wife was very good at using WordPerfect 5.1, which was a DAS program, and it had reveal code, so you could see all of these sort of quasi-HTML that it used to format all of its stuff.
I remember the very first time I saw something that had been produced by a laser printer, the guy basically had to use C programming to make the laser printer work.
Now it's just WYSIWYG, right?
What you see is what you get.
So what is the value of all of these things?
It comes and goes.
I can't even tell you the number of skills that I have lost, that have lost value for me over the years.
I mean, I used to remember all the key combos for my word processor.
When I was running low on.matrix ink, I used to know ZOAC4 control.
I used to know all of the key codes from my Atari 800 when I was running low on printer ink to make it double print and bold to get another, you know, 50 or 70 pages out of the.matrix printer.
I haven't used that in, my God, I haven't used that in 45 years, right?
Never will again, right?
So, I also remember on the Atari 800, it normally would only allow you three lines of programming, but if you used short forms like gr.
instead of graphics, you could get even more.
So, anyway, it's impossibly complicated, which is why it has to all be left to the free market, because no one person can ever figure this out.
No committee can ever figure this out.
All right, so...
What does he say next?
And if there is no individual production, then how can private ownership of property be justified?
If there is no individual production, then how can private ownership of property be justified?
Well, everything is individual production.
So try producing something without ever using an individual of any kind.
Try producing something Without using any individual, so even this computer that I'm producing this show on, all people build their computers, they build the operating system, they build the screen, right?
They're all in everything.
All production is individual production.
So saying that because there is nothing that is produced solely by an individual, therefore there's no such thing as individual production, to me, doesn't make.
Much sense at all.
It's like saying, well, some of my cells are dead, right?
Scratch my nose, right?
Kill millions and hundreds of millions of cells.
Some of my souls are dead, therefore I'm dead, right?
So there is no individual production.
How can private ownership of property be justified?
What does he say?
Just as it is impossible to argue that any one person created a lump of coal or a bolt of cloth, so...
It is impossible to justify private ownership of buildings or land.
Homes, after all, are not built by their owners.
Their construction is a cooperative endeavor involving innumerable workers in forestry, timber yards, and brickyards.
Homes are not built by their owners.
Well, there is to build and to cause to be built.
To be built, sorry.
I used to know English.
I was pretty good at it, too.
Right?
There is to build something, and then there is to cause to be built.
Now, if you cause something to be built, in general, you own it.
So, let's say that Bob has a big backyard, he's got a bunch of little kids, and they're all desperate for a swimming pool.
So, Bob goes out and finds someone who's going to build him a swimming pool.
And pays that person, I don't know, $50,000 to build a swimming pool.
Now, Bob has not built the swimming pool.
Bob has caused the swimming pool to be built by exchanging his labor for the swimming pool.
It would be the same if Bob and his neighbor, Bob's neighbor was really good at building swimming pools and Bob was really good at re-roofing, and they simply exchanged labor, right?
So you build me a swimming pool, I'll re-roof your two houses and three barns.
I don't know, 50 grand, whatever it would be, right?
So you build me a swimming pool, and I will re-roof your two houses and three barns.
Okay, so what is causing the swimming pool to be built?
Well, the exchange of labor with the re-burning, right?
Re-roofing the re-burning.
Rebarning the re-roofing.
I really was good in English, I swear.
There's evidence.
All right.
So, by trading his labor for a swimming pool, a barb is causing the swimming pool to be built, and by building the swimming pool, Bob's neighbor is causing the two houses and the barns to be re-roofed.
Do you see what I mean?
Building something, and then there is causing something to be built.
And both of these establish ownership.
And I'll give you another example that is why we're all alive.
So, no individual can make a baby.
It takes two baby, right?
So, no individual can make a baby.
However, Two individuals cause a baby to be born, for the egg to be fertilized, for the sperm fetus to grow, to be born.
So no individual makes a baby, but two individuals cooperating together produce a baby.
They cause a baby to come into existence, therefore they own the baby.
They have not made the baby, but they have caused the baby to come into existence.
Now, we can think of this, of course, in terms of a crime.
If Bob shoots his neighbor, maybe the swimming pool is no good, Bob shoots his neighbor, Bob has not directly caused the neighbor's death, right?
Because Bob has simply pulled the trigger of a gun, and Bob may be at a hunting range or a shooting range and shoot as much as he wants and not kill anyone, so it's not just the shooting of the bullet, right?
So you say, oh, but it's the bullet that did it, right?
Well, no, but Bob has not directly killed his neighbor, but he has caused his neighbor to die by pointing a gun and shooting.
By directly killed, I mean in the same way that if I stabbed him in the throat or strangled him or something like that, right?
So there is the direct creation of something, and then there is the causing of things to come into existence.
So you've heard me, of course, say, On my show, a million times when I'm doing a live stream, I will say to people, thank you so much for coming by because if you're not here, there is no show, right?
If people don't come by and ask the great questions that they do and inspire me to hopefully decent heights of rhetorical eloquence and so on, then there is no show, right?
Think of love.
If you act in an honorable, noble way, And you take reasonably good care of your appearance, and then someone, hopefully, will fall in love with you.
You didn't make that love, but you caused that love to come into being, the love being the admiration of your moral excellence, right?
So, he says, just as it is impossible to argue that any one person created a lump of coal or a bolt of cloth, justify private ownership of buildings or land.
Homes, after all, are not built by their owners, right?
But why is there forestry, timber yards, and brickyards?
Because there is a demand and an exchange of labor.
So if the doctor says to the home builder, I will treat you and your family for whatever medical issues you have for the rest of your life, if you build me a small house, then the doctor offering his services for free is what causes the house to be built.
And that is why he owns it, because he's trading.
Moreover, and it is here that the enormity of the whole preceding business becomes most glaring, the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it.
Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town, which is the work of 20 or 30 generations, has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful.
That the ground they stand upon, like the ground they stand upon, buildings are a common heritage.
He writes, for instance, take the town of Paris, a creation of so many centuries, a product of the genius of a whole nation.
How could one maintain to an inhabitant of that town who works every day to embellish it, to purify it, to nourish it, to make it a center of thought and art?
How could one assert before one who produces this wealth that the palaces adorned in the streets of Paris belong in all justice to those who are the legal proprietors today?
It is by spoliation that they hold these riches.
Well, I mean, if you're talking about palaces, then yeah, I mean, the aristocracy gets there.
Stuff through spoliation, through exploitation.
I get all of that.
And of course, there is this constant, constant saying, some property is acquired unjustly, therefore property is unjust.
Which is the same as saying, some sexual activity is rape, therefore all sexual activity is rape.
Now, when we say there's an incredibly complex thing, That no one person creates, therefore that thing should not be owned.
We're talking about children.
It's always coming back to the kids.
There is an incredibly complex thing that no one person can create, and therefore it should not be owned.
Right?
So we're talking about children.
Of course, parents don't own children in the same way that you own property.
Parents have a property relationship to children similar to that of a trust fund, right?
A lawyer who has ownership or Has control over a trust fund.
It's not his.
He's just supposed to protect it until a certain amount of time has passed.
So, if some parents are killed and their five-year-old kid, the money goes into a trust fund managed by a lawyer, and then the kid gets the money when he's 21. The lawyer does not own the trust fund, but he has care, custody, and control over it, with the goal of relinquishing that control in the future.
That's the same sort of thing when it comes to property.
So, can readily be seen by examining the value of today's office buildings and shopping complexes.
Without even the slightest improvements, their value rise so long as the local economy prospers.
No sum of money invested in maintenance or beautification is sufficient to maintain their value when the local economy fails, for their value is not derived from the money invested or from the bricks and mortar and plastic steel and cement of which they are constructed.
Right.
Not even the labor of the workers who build and maintain these modern temples to capital.
It undermines the value.
The value in the final analysis depends almost entirely upon the wealth and prosperity of the greater society.
That's false.
The value of malls is not dependent almost entirely upon the wealth and prosperity of the greater society.
No.
It is people who have labor.
They are willing to trade for the labor in the mall.
The labor concentrated in the goods and services, the labor of building and maintaining the mall, the labor of the owners, and the labor of the clerks and so on, and the retail workers in the mall.
So, I mean, society has, at least in many ways, either stayed as wealthy or, in some ways, you could argue has gotten more wealthy, but malls, in general, have begun failing, or more than just begun, it's been quite a while that they've been failing, for a long time.
Because Amazon and other things have replaced mall culture.
So society has not had a massive catastrophic loss of wealth, at least in terms of people's everyday perception of things, but malls have become less popular.
The value does not depend almost entirely on the wealth and prosperity of the greater society.
I mean, a cell phone that cost $2,000 20 years ago, you can't give away today.
Even though society has not become broke relative to 20 years ago.
It's just to do with demand.
He writes, The most luxurious hotel built in a dying sitting will soothe Faber's surroundings while the meanest hovel increases in value of surrounding properties are developed.
Yes.
We enrich each other, not only spiritually, but materially as well, as we work, complete and play together.
And without the effects of society as a whole, no one prospers.
Yep.
Yes, so trade involves more than one person.
Therefore, there's no such thing as ownership.
I mean, my gosh.
That's like saying that all children should be orphans because no individual can produce a child.
Good lord.
Okay.
Private ownership, then, is not merely unjust.
It is absurd.
As early as 1873, when he was only beginning to become active in revolutionary circles, Kropotkin recognized that true equality was impossible under capitalism.
True equality is impossible.
True equality is impossible.
Because people are different, and even people who are the same often age differently.
Some people get fat, some people exercise, some people don't.
True equality is impossible in any system, no matter what.
Because the only way you can solve economic Inequality is with political inequality.
So the only way you can solve differences in incomes and wealth is to give some people the right to point guns at hundreds of millions of people or billions of people around the world and force transfer of wealth under threat of jail.
The only way you can solve economic inequality is with political inequality Which is infinitely worse.
Can't solve the problem of inequality.
Can't happen.
Will never happen.
It's a devilish thing.
So, if you give some people the right to steal from others and keep the proceeds, some significant portion of those proceeds for themselves, then that's political inequality.
That's an inequality in the capacity to initiate the use of force, which is Moral inequality.
So the only way to solve income inequality is with moral inequality.
In other words, the only way to solve relative wealth and relative poverty is with absolute good and absolute evil.
Respect for property rights and violations of property rights.
It is a great delusion.
Now, why do people believe that?
Because they believe that parents are not coercive when they redistribute things.
And this is very much the case in many ways, right?
So if the older kid, let's say that there are two brothers and the older brother keeps stealing the food from the younger brother, right?
You give them each equal portions and then the older brother steals the food, takes the food, and then the parent makes him give it back.
Well, the parent is not initiating the use of force.
The parent is respecting property rights, right?
Because it was the younger child's food and the older child took it, right?
So, I think that's why people believe it, right?
But again, adults aren't children and the state is not the parents or vice versa.
He says, Kropotkin says, it is desirable that a person beginning to work not enslave himself and not yield part of his labor.
his strength is independence to private individuals whose arbitrariness always will determine how great the part should be, then it is necessary that private persons control neither the instruments of labor nor the earth nor the means of existence during work.
Thus we arrive at the elimination in the future society whose realization we desire of any personal property.
Okay, which means nobody can control property.
you Thank you.
Nobody can control property because all property is controlled by individuals.
All property is controlled by individuals.
And, I mean, if a monkey steals your glasses and runs off into the jungle, it's now unowned, right?
Because they haven't actually stolen it, just taken it, right?
So all property is individuals.
All property is individuals because concepts and collectives don't exist.
Like, if you say, oh, well, the government should own everything.
Well, the government is composed of individuals and it's individuals who control everything.
They simply control that which they have not created or traded for or was given to them voluntarily in some other fashion.
So, if you're going to say there's no personal property, then no one can use anything.
Because all exercising of property rights is performed by individuals.
If some bandit comes along and steals your stuff, well, he's unjustly gained control of your property, but it's still an individual.
I mean, has the concept of a bandit, the idea, the concept, the definition of a bandit ever stolen anything from you?
No.
It's always an individual.
Always an individual.
Because only human beings can exercise moral control over property.
And so, all property transfers are based upon Individuals.
And so, saying there's no personal property, since all control of property is through individuals, you say, oh, well, you can have your own toothbrush, maybe, but you can't have control over the means of production.
You say, okay, well, who does have control over the means of production?
Oh, it's a collective syndicalist of workers.
It's like, okay, but someone at some point has to exercise individual control.
Someone has to push a button.
Somebody has to lift up the broom.
Somebody has to...
Put the bolt on the wheel of the car.
Like, somebody has to exercise control over property.
To say no one can exercise control over property, well, of course, that would mean that nobody could eat.
Because eating is exercising self-control, using your body as your personal property.
So nobody can exercise property, which means nothing gets grown, nothing gets touched, nothing gets moved.
People don't even get out of bed, right?
It's crazy.
All property, says the writer, no matter how it was created, must become the property of all.
Available to all who contribute to society through their labor.
Okay?
How do you know who contributes to society?
Are you going to say, I know what is valuable?
I objectively know that which is most valuable to society.
But my God, if you objectively know that which is most valuable to society, you can end up ruling and controlling just about everything.
In a capitalist society, because you'll become the most stupendously wealthy capitalist in the known universe, because you know objectively that which is most valuable to society, so you'll simply create an entire massive amalgam of companies to produce that which is most valuable to society, and then you can be as nice to the workers, and you can be as socialistic and capitalistic as you want.
You can have anarcho-syndicalism run the whole thing, you can be an anarcho-communist, because you know.
That which is most valuable to society, so you can produce it and gain staggering amounts of Crocian-style wealth, a Midas touch, but you can still eat a burrito.
And so, if you know, objectively, that which society most needs, then you can have your socialist paradise in a capitalist society.
Of course, if it turns out that you don't have a big idea of what society most needs, wants, and desires, because you don't have the price mechanism, To tell you these things, then you're going to go broke and then whine that the reality is unfair.
All right.
Let's see here.
This was and remains necessary not only in grounds of social justice, but because all production is necessarily social.
Yeah, all production isn't necessarily social.
Sure.
Yeah.
I get that.
I get that.
So I've interacted with other people in order to produce this podcast, right?
Microphone, computer, internet.
Uploads, cables, blah, blah, blah, wires, fiber, whatever, right?
So I have interacted with others, and we've traded.
I've traded my labor, they've traded their labor, and it only exists because we've individually traded our labor.
All right.
Production for needs.
Kropotkin refused to separate his analysis of what was from what could be.
He insisted on asking not merely if the present economic order worked on its own terms, but whether, quote, The means now in use for satisfying human needs under the present system of production for profits was really economical.
So his argument, I think, is that if people have no sense of profit or loss, things will become efficient.
Things will become efficient.
If people have no skin in the game, they're spending other people's money, they suffer no negative consequences for bad decisions and no positive consequences for good decisions.
So what he's saying is if the test is meaningless, you can't be failed.
Then people will be much more economical in studying for their tests, and the tests will be much more effectively prepared for.
That's completely false, of course, right?
Do they really lead to economy in the expenditure of human forces, or are they not mere wasteful survivals from a past that was plunged into darkness, ignorance, and oppression and never took into consideration the economical and social value of the human being?
The economical and social value of the human being for Kropotkin, It was the key to anarchist economics, to the building of a free society, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so that's the end of the article.
I think it was an interesting article and so on.
It is, I mean, satanic, right?
It is satanic to say, we can create a society where you don't have to work and you'll never be exploited.
And, I mean, this is just a fantasy.
It's just a fantasy.
It's offering up some sort of bizarre, diaper-based, pre-toddler infancy where all of your needs get taken care of and you can be selfish.
Right?
So, saying that the economy should work for me, we're saying that the economy should work for everyone.
Well, I don't even know what that means because there's only individuals.
There is no everyone, right?
Who are you going to sell to?
Everyone.
That's not an answer in the entrepreneurial world or in the rational world at all, right?
So, if you're going to say to people, the economy will work for you, and you're going to get paid more, and things are going to be better for you, and you'll get free stuff, and all of that, it's saying that the economy is going to work for you.
Okay?
And you're going to get more.
Okay.
So, that's selfish, right?
Because the way to get more is to give more.
I mean...
If you want your kids to enjoy your company as you get older, you should be nicer and more available to them when they're younger.
To get is to give.
If I want my wife to continue to love me, I should be kind and generous and helpful and virtuous and, you know, arouse her admiration and other things or whatever, right?
So, to get is to give.
And it is an appeal to thwarted and frustrated toddlerhood to say you should get without giving.
That you have value.
Independent of what you provide.
Well, that's doing babies and toddlers and little kids.
Of course they should have value outside of what they provide.
Of course they should.
No question.
You should have value outside of what you provide.
But only when you're a baby and a toddler and a little kid.
When you get older, then parents have to start training their kids for reciprocity, right?
To not just figure out what they can get, but also what they can give.
The growth from immaturity to maturity is recognizing the mutuality, Of humanity.
That just as you want things, other people want things.
Just as you have preferences, other people have preferences.
And negotiating for win-win solutions is an adult thing.
To simply say, well, you should just get things without having to give them, which is this sort of anarcho-syndicalist madness, is an appeal to regression.
It is an appeal to narcissism, to selfishness.
To saying, I should get without having to give.
I should get more without having to give more.
I should get more value without having to provide more value.
Well, that's greedy.
And it is actually an appeal to the very aristocracy and greed that these people always project onto the capitalists unjustly and on the aristocracy justly.
So, I hope this helps.
I really do appreciate your attention in these matters.
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Have this half a glorious, wonderful, beautiful evening.
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Take care, my friends.
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