1 Capitalist vs 20 Anti-Capitalists (ft. Patrick Bet-David) | Surrounded

This is not the United States of Patrick, but David, this is the United States of America.

Would you take money from a capitalist to help you go see a specialist?

I mean, yeah, sure, why not?

But would you also be open to seeing somebody else, I choose as a psychologist that may...

No.

You're not?

No, no.

When you're offering people here jobs, right, you're saying that,

they would have to pay you money to be part of your company. Be careful with your claims of defamement. Be very careful defamement when you don't know the facts. I'm Patrick Bedevin. I'm an entrepreneur and founder of Peabody Podcast. Today I'm surrounded by 20 anti-capitalists. My first claim is incentive is the engine of capitalism. Remove it and the system fails.

Hey. Great to meet you Patrick. What's your name?

My name is Mason.

Mason, good to meet you.

Yeah. I'm value tamed. I'm a big fan of the channel. Are you really? Yeah, I do watch you quite regularly. Very cool.

I just, I do not agree with your claim. I don't think that incentives are only born out of capitalism. Most capitalist defenders say that incentive is because of scarcity, and people's ability to get what is necessary pushes them to work harder. I disagree with that. I'd say that some of our hardest workers

are single moms working three to four jobs, and the resources that they're able to acquire compared to those that utilize their workers in order to build profit for their own companies

is not equivocal. So how would you do it? How would you change it?

Yeah, so I think that humans inherently want to be meaningful. They want to contribute to their communities, they want to contribute to society. When you look at depression rates, oftentimes it's people who aren't able to do anything

besides laying in their bed and basically barely taking care of themselves. So I think that it's just a human intrinsic value to want to bring value to their community or grander society. So I don't think that it has to be through scarcity alone that scares people into working.

I worked for scarcity. I think there's levels to it. You have the survival folks who work for survival to pay their bills. Some work for status, some work for freedom and some work for legacy.

The folks that work three or five jobs, you know, to pay their bills and do what they're doing, if the incentive wasn't there, they wouldn't work three to five jobs. Some of the guys that build a bigger business that solve a lot of problems.

The incentive there is either I die or I work. That's not really a system that rewards merit. That's a system that pushes people into insecure positions. Not necessarily. cases we put ourselves in situations as well. But when we're talking incentive... Are you saying that it's an individual failure for these single mothers that are working three to four jobs? For some of them it is. I'm glad you bite that bullet because most people are not gonna say that it's a moral failure of people

that are born into poverty that continue to live out cyclical poverty.

For someone like me, I came from the single mother system. My mother was a single mother. My parents got a divorce twice. They married each other, they divorced, they remarried each other, divorced again. I came up. We didn't have a lot of choices. I joined the Army. I got at that system. Kind of wanted to see what I was going to do for myself. Do I stay in the Army? Do I get out of the Army? I started working in sales. And then the incentive of working harder, eventually

I built a good life for myself. Again, you're totally dismissing the hard work that a lot of these people are putting into for just basic survival. I'd say that mechanics and plumbers, and most people work in blue collar jobs that are probably watching this video

are working tirelessly day after day.

I don't disagree.

They still feel insecure positions to where they don't even know if they're gonna be able to afford rent in the next six months. So let me ask you, most Americans have a 400 to $500 emergency. They can't even afford that with the basic savings that they have. So this is not something that we should celebrate as promises of a system that gives you more if you work harder.

We should say that this is something that rewards few. And I'm glad that you're an outlier that's been able to build a lot of success for yourself. I know that you're a multimillionaire. That's fantastic. That you have those resources. But the thing is that cannot happen for everybody in society. It's possible for each individual to do it, but not everybody can be a millionaire.

That's guaranteed. I don't think not everybody can be a billionaire or a millionaire, but I do think people can find ways to use their time to effectively increase their market value. And I don't think many people do that. When I talk to people and they tell me, I've watched this show, I've watched every one of these shows, I've watched every one of these Netflix shows. You can use that time to increase your market value instead of kind of focus on what's going on

with the stories and shows that are out there. Let's move away from Netflix and TV shows and talk specifically about, do you think that capitalism is a system of merit that rewards people that are of higher merit? I do. a meritocracy when we have some people that are born into excessive wealth and some people that are working minimum wage jobs to provide for three or four kids.

How would you say that that's a meritocratic society?

Those are two different things.

Right, they are two different things, very unequal things.

Well, no, not necessarily. The parents get credit for making responsible decisions so they can take care of their kids. The parents get credit.

So it's not a meritocracy that we're building dynasties of wealth. I didn't come from dynasties of wealth. I know, you're an outlier. I get that, I get that individually, but we're talking about systems.

Capitalism is a system, it's not an individual testimony.

But it's a system that you get to use in your advantage.

It's a system that's produced the best results this based on the incentive. History is a march of progress, right?

So there are gonna be advancements that we make or there's gonna be solutions that we make to previous ailments. I'm not saying that capitalism hasn't brought in better things in systems like feudalism or monarchy, but that does not mean that we're at the end of history.

Do you think that capitalism is the final solution?

And this is what we're going to last I think capitalism is the best economical system because it gives an incentive for you to decide how big of a life you want to build. And by the way, the best way to judge it, the best way to judge it, let me just say this to you, the best way to judge it is in a very simple way. Take all the countries around the world. There's many different economical systems. What has the longest line of people wanting to get in there?

It's America.

Why is that? 15 million people came here illegally. Millions came here illegally just the last four years. But a lot of that is because of economic scarcity in other countries.

Why did they choose to come here? Well, one of them, we could talk about one, is American exceptionalism, which is continuing.

Good to meet you.

Thank you.

How are you? What's your name? Hi, I'm Alana. Nice to meet you. Okay, so I think the issue is the framing of incentive here. Incentive doesn't disappear in a socialist or a communist society. It just changes and evolves. So we see in capitalism, the incentive is obviously monetary game, maybe even collecting capital itself through land ownership. In a

communist or a socialist country, you would see incentive would just evolve into, I know it's a vague term, but the common good. You have an incentive to do your chores around your house because you don't want to live in a filthy house, right? That makes sense. It doesn't have to be just monetary. So you don't think

monetary incentive drives people, or you're saying that people should be excited to do their job whether they're getting incentivized for it or not that's what you're saying? People will be

incentivized to do... Give me a case study of that that worked. We don't even need to look at case studies we can just look at charity work.

Why don't we actually look at a case study? You got two countries, North Korea, South Korea. One is communism and one is capitalism. North Korea's GDP last year was $23 billion. Are we judging countries' values based on GDP and not what they value for our human interests? If you lived in North Korea, you wouldn't be able to do what you're doing right now.

You wouldn't like if you lived in North Korea, you wouldn't be able to do what you're doing right now You wouldn't have a voice in South Korea. I'm gonna give you stats in South Korea. Their GDP is

1.7

You like to be free I'm not gonna be free in a country like South Korea where I'm only employed in five

companies or no job.

Do you like to be free to call somebody out like me? Do you like to be free where you can have a strong opinion? Do you like to be free to have your dreams be as...

I like to be free, but that's why I'm anti-capitalist.

Maybe you are. because the incentive is survival. If I were to... When you get into communism, the incentive is for the common good.

I love that. I got an offer for you before we move on. If I were to give you your $2,350, which is the cost to renunciate your citizenship, and I paid you your first class flight to whatever communist country, and $20,000 of spending

money...

Name me a communist country. Would you give up your citizenship to go to that country? Name me a communist country and I'll move out of there. Whichever communist country you want to go to. Cuba? We can give you Venezuela.

That's not a communist country.

We give you North Korea.

Any one of those you want to go to.

Those aren't communist countries. Hi.

What's your name?

My name's Hunter. I'm going to be honest, I've never seen your videos before. Even though there is some real value to free enterprise, the profit motive often creates a perverse incentive and worse outcomes in certain situations. For example, healthcare. How much would you pay for a life-saving treatment for yourself or one of your family members?

How much would I pay for it? Say you have cancer and you have an 80% survival rate with chemotherapy and less than 10% without it, how much would you pay? Whatever it takes, right? Sure. That's a situation of inelastic demand when the amount that you're willing to pay is not

based on the value of the service because your life does not have a finite value. In the US, 66.5% of all bankruptcies are because of medical debt. In most other developed nations, that number is way lower if not zero. And at the same time, the US does not have

one of the best healthcare systems in the world. We pay over 13,000 per capita. Meanwhile, Taiwan, which by most metrics has the best healthcare system and a national health care service, only pays about twenty five hundred per capita per year. So what does that tell you? That tells us that's

wasted expenditure. Yes, that is a massive waste of expenditure. So that tells you the government doesn't know how to spend our money. No. They keep raising taxes, we keep more money, and they don't know how to spend the money. No, most of that money is coming from private insurance. In fact, 77% of the people who went bankrupt from medical debt had insurance and then lost it because they couldn't pay.

So we can address that, the fact that 60-something percent of bankruptcies are due to health, which is your right. We've done many content on that piece. I want you to come back to

incentive. Address the issue with incentive right now, with capitalism. The reason why the medical debt is so high in that is because of the profit motive. If people will pay whatever it takes to not die, the profit motive in that case is perverse, because healthcare shouldn't be a market in the same way that other things might be a market.

So you don't think the motive to have profit to come out with a solution

is a good thing for the marketplace, specifically in healthcare side? I think it depends on which market you're talking about. It's way different when we're talking about video games or cell phones or TVs or other goods that aren't as necessary as healthcare treatments.

You're specific to healthcare.

Yes, I'm talking specifically about healthcare and certain other markets where there's a natural... You ever heard of Home Depot? Yes, I'm aware. of Home Depot is Ken Langone. His father died at 62 years old. Ken Langone today is roughly 90 years old, give or take. When he died at 62 years old, he tells the story that if there was a simple thing as blood thinners, his father would have lived to be 90 years old just like he is

today. That came because of innovation, which he's been on for many years. My dad's been on blood thinners for the last 40 years. So I think you're, you're, you're deflating two things right now. Not all innovation is the result of the market because many healthcare developments are created by research grants from healthcare funding, whether it's in the United States or other countries, most other first world countries, the result of medical research developments, which are massively outpacing that in the U S now because of our inefficiency, because we have a market-based system for health care.

A very basic question for you. A very basic question for you. Basic question for you. If that's the case, it keeps going back to the same thing. If it's better in other places than it is here, why are Americans and others not going there?

Why are people coming here? It's very basic.

How much does a plane ticket cost?

No, they have the money to go to different places. They don't because they know America is the greatest country in the world. They know it. Appreciate you.

Nice to meet you, by the way.

Hey, I'm Luke.

Luke?

Yes. Like the hat. Good to meet you.

Oh, thank you very much. Good to meet you, too. So, I think incentives are exactly the fundamental problem with capitalism. You say incentives are what make it work, and I think that's the whole issue, is that the primary incentives are either greed, a mass of – as much personal wealth as you

possibly can.

You think that's the problem, is greed?

Yeah, exactly. And – Because you're not greedy at all. And like you said survival. Yeah, right the person, you know working five jobs You know that they're they're doing that to say they wouldn't have to they wouldn't want to do that if they didn't need to survive

But that's such a horrible dystopian world to live in if someone has to work five jobs just to survive

How did they get there? How much of that is on their decision-making?

How much of that is on their doing how much of that is on the market where they're not finding ways to improve themselves

I doesn't matter how much onus is on the individual. We want to create a world It is no no no no see we want to create a world

This is on you which people don't have to earn their right to exist And we live we live in a country where majority of the world wants to come here the most important Citizenship country is America right people give up their lives to come here. Have you ever lived in another country before?

No, not lived.

No.

Why do you think so many want to come here?

I think the people coming here are coming from gang ridden, corruption ridden, violence

ridden. You think that's just all it is? You think I came from a gang ridden in Iran? I lived there 11 years. I'm certainly coming from South America. Most people come here because what you're doing to me, you're sitting across from me right now. Millions of people are going to watch this. In America, you can call me out. You can say whatever you want.

Nothing's going to happen. You're free and safe here, right? Sure. Freedom of speech is not the only thing with capitalism. You can't do that in Iran. Of course it is. There's so much higher where somebody with big dreams, incentives, they're willing to come and say, I want to come to America, please let me in. And some come and take advantage of it.

But to say the individual that's working three to five jobs, if you do that for a season, if you do that for two years, if you do that for five years, fine.

If you do that for 20, 30 years, you're doing something wrong. But the point is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right? Those are the inalienable rights. We shouldn't have to earn those rights. We shouldn't have to earn the right to health care. You do have to earn it. No, because we just want to live, just exist. We can't work our

blood, sweat, and tears just to survive. That's a horrible dystopian world that we live in right now. No, then what do you think we're here for? To just sit around and play video games? What do you think we're here for? To sit around and watch TV shows? To sit and watch cat videos?

What do you think we're put here to do? We are here to create a prosperous community,

to lift everyone up.

How do you create a prosperous community? Matter of fact, for you, how have you positively

impacted a community? It's volunteering, food banks, Habitat for Humanity. I appreciate you for doing that. Have you created jobs for others?

Created jobs?

No, I wouldn't say so.

Why have you not?

I haven't had the ability to do so.

Do you think it's easier or do you think it's hard? To create jobs is probably hard, yeah.

Okay, so the people that create jobs, somebody like you can work for that company. Sure, but that is not... That is the incentive.

And bravo for them, but that does not give them the right to pay themselves $2 million

bonuses while their workers are scraping by at like $10 an hour.

You don't get to choose how much money I choose to make. That's not your business. That's my business to tell you can't have four girlfriends I think if you play seven hours of you know fortnight every day right and I don't play fortnight at all should I tell you don't you shouldn't be

able to play seven hours of fortnight it in my view hey appreciate you

absolutely how are you what's your name Zina. Awesome. So this claim about incentive is one that we see often promoted by capitalism enjoyers, right? And it's this idea that profit incentives is the only thing that can make humans do things, get up out of bed every day, which has never been the case. Historically, it's not the case. Psychologically...

Historically, it's never been the case? No. What has been the case?

So we've seen... What's been the case? No. What has been the case? What's been the incentive? The incentive is intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation?

Of course.

Have you ever heard of intrinsic motivation? Of course I have. So you think people are going to go just do anything for no incentives?

The incentive is intrinsic, meaning passion, interest, and honing your skills. Whether you get paid or not. to need to work to survive. And system. So what's the alternative? So give me another solution,

another economical system.

May I finish the talking point?

Yeah, actually I'm curious. So yeah, the psychological theory of self-determination is widely accepted in psychology. It basically explains that intrinsic motivation and passion is actually what predicts incentive. You're arguing that incentive is integral

to profit-driven motivation. That's not true. Intrinsic motivation at all times, at every single case, is going to predict less creativity, less motivation, less skill, etc. Intrinsic motivation is what causes things like technological development. Some of the greatest breakthroughs have been from people who are devoted and honing their

skill. So should they get paid for it?

I think that we shouldn't live in a system that privately owns the means of production

and forces people in this position.

What college did you go to?

USC.

You went to USC.

What did you major in?

Sociology. Sociology. Who's your hero as a professor? Wow, these are...

Who's the professor you look up to?

This doesn't seem like a topic that's related to capitalism.

Do you know why I asked this question? Somebody convinced you that that is the way that producing is. Yeah, but unfortunately to your claim, results show that the greatest economical system is capitalism that allows people to go above and beyond and solve every single issue out there.

An entrepreneur who gets up, who says I'm going to be...

Incentive.

What about incentive?

The entrepreneur who has an incentive to go out there and build their lives and you put

Incentive that you're talking about. Yeah, what predicts the most the best incentive the best drive and the best creativity What do you think about it? I'm proven by psychology Elon Musk. Can we respond to my claim? This is about incentive. Awesome. So you're arguing that incentive is intrinsic and tied to extrinsic motivation

What we find is that the best incentive comes from intrinsic motivation. So a person that's passionate about solving an issue is going to build something bigger

than somebody else that's not. Yes, so someone who has a true passion for this. So profit motivation is not the thing that's driving innovation, right? Of course it is. So psychology proves that that's not the case. That profit's not the reason that we have the greatest inventions that we do today I don't know if I disagree with the fact that there's a passion behind it

Are you saying people with passion even if there wasn't the incentive to make as much money as they would make? People would still pursue it even with or without money. That's what psychology. Well, your claims are wrong because not true Whoever your psychology professor is if you look at data and you find out how America, that's only been around for 249 years, schooled all the other countries that have been around for hundreds of thousands of years more.

They did better than others because the incentive was free market capitalism. Right, to 1% of the population and continue to produce on that basis.

Not necessarily. Right, we have this, okay. It's not necessarily.

Do we want to respond because you can say that.

You've been interrupting the entire time. So if you're saying about the 1% are the problem and they're the only ones that make money. A lot of people make money.

You said profit goes to the 1%.

I'm explaining how it is that America has become the dominant power that it is now. What we see is that because we have this engine, this desire to accumulate profit, we morally justify things like going to other countries, imperializing them, colonizing them, extracting their resources to funnel our country. Social democracies in the Nordic countries don't do this. So yeah, they might not be the wealthiest power, but they have higher rates of education, literacy, human satisfaction, et cetera. So it depends on

what we actually value in society. Do we value well-being or do we value profit accumulation?

Human behavior validates your point. If that's the case, people would move to those states. They don't. When you judge a great restaurant by the amount of people that come in, you can say the food sucks here. You can say the service sucks here.

But everybody's lined up to want to come here. They're not lined up to go into those countries. They're just used by professors as theories.

There were millions of people that also lived in Germany in the 1920s. I lived in Germany before as well, for two years.

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Now, let's get into it. My next claim is capitalism has lifted more people out of

poverty than any other system. How are you? Gabby. Yeah. Good to meet you. So I would argue that

governments have actually lifted the most people out of poverty. If you look historically, we look How are you? I'm Gabby. Gabby? Yeah. Good to meet you. So I would argue that governments have actually lifted the most people out of poverty. If you look historically, we look at China, for instance, had the most significant poverty reduction in all of human history. They poured eight, they pulled 800 million people out of poverty using state owned enterprises and state centralized planning.

They did work with the capitalist system, but they did it, most of it was done through state funded infrastructure, education, and contributing to strong literacy programs, redistributing the wealth. I think that my other argument would be that there hasn't been an opportunity

for alternative systems like socialism to pull enough people out of poverty.

So we look at examples.

There hasn't been?

There hasn't been enough opportunities for them to succeed. And so when we say, I think that is because partly because of the US and I think because capitalist forces and global market insecurities have sabotaged these attempts to do socialism. So we look at an example in Chile in the 1960s, they elected a democratic socialist and he proposed literacy reform, wealth redistribution, land reform, and all of that was a threat, obviously, to the United States because McCarthyism was on the rise at the time.

And so instead of allowing Allende to have a chance with that, the U.S. orchestrated a CIA-backed coup to take over and to have a military dictatorship that led the country instead of Hollande, who actually was having a lot of success in reducing the poverty rates before the US interfered. And so I think we look at other parts of Latin America, like Venezuela, for instance, and we see the same thing. We see that the US has interfered several times with Chavez in Venezuela. he was able to reduce the poverty reduction

in half in the first decade of him being in office, and he was sabotaged ultimately by the US and by a military dictatorship. So that the people that replaced them were actually...

So may I respond? Sure. It's a lot of different cases here. Sure. So let's... Thank you for that.

Of course. So let's go China first. Okay, so when you say China was able to recover and because they use state funded, you know, nationalized system. So in 1978, Xiao Ping, the leader of China went to Japan. He saw what was going on with Japan for two decades. Every year, their GDP was grown by 15%. The economy was doubling pretty much every four years. They go over there, they say, we got to find a way to compete with Japan. How do they have fewer people but they're beating us? They sit down with their leaders after a few drinks. Eventually they say, how did you fix your economy to be growing the way that it is? A capitalistic society that they had in Japan. They asked

a question from Zhao Ping, the Prime Minister Fukuda, asked a question. How many banks do you guys have in China? He says, we have one bank. He said, it's a nationalized bank. He says, yeah, that's it. Yeah. How many loan officers do you have? Not many. You want to compete with one bank? Yes. He says, if you want to compete with us or others, here's what you have to do. You need 5,000 banks with 35 branches with 30 loan officers. That's a total of 5.25 million loan officers in a population of 600 million people that are living there. You do that every week. You take 10 applications with these loan officers for small business owners and you allow the small business owner to compete.

They did that. China started competing. By the way, in America in the 1920s, we had around 30,000 banks when we were really, you know, competing in a marketplace. In the 80s, we end up having around 14,000. Today, we only have 4,100 banks in America. That concept of allowing just one bank to compete, it's not gonna work. China takes on the idea from Japan. They start growing with certain capitalistic philosophies.

I think you're thinking about this in very capitalist terms, which makes sense, you're a capitalist. Because it works, that's the idea idea because it's produced a result about these scenarios in a situation where market mechanisms are in place and this is the problem that I have with so many Capitalists is they can't exit their worldview and try to see a world where socialism Could be in place because they don't understand the untapped potential of socialism and I'm a democratic socialist I think that we need to build forward to that towards that with reforms and I think we need to work with the government I don't think that we should abandon the state I also don't think that we should give state elites the

complete control over society I do think that we should work with the state to instill these reforms and then eventually erode capital but

unfortunately socialism has had hundreds of years in terms of produce results and it hasn't worked do you know why it doesn't work though? It's been sabotaged It's been sabotaged or it's because it forces people to do something. They don't want to do does capitalism not do the same

No capitalism gives you seven million people in this country multiple jobs just to get They're forced to do that because either they do that or they starve

So if the options are to work or to starve, that's not freedom

Respectfully if you do that for a period of your life I understand it if you're doing that for 30 years. You're doing something wrong

You shouldn't be working multiple jobs for the rest of your life. So first of all, I'm not gonna argue with this moral argument I think that people who live in poverty Especially when we look at how many people live in poverty in this country and also it depends on how you define the poverty line But there's 40 million Americans who live below the poverty line in this country. There's three guys in this country that own 40% of the wealth. How does that work in a country that is built on-

You really want to go there? Sure. You want to go there? Okay, so let's talk about it. So when we talk about the rich people at the top, okay, and you say, well, the rich don't pay enough taxes. You know what the bottom 50% of taxpayers in America pay towards the revenue that the government gets in taxes? Do you know what the bottom 50%

pays? Tell me 2% of taxes. Do you know what the top 1% pays? There's been several years. Do you know what the top 1% do you know? Hang on a second. This is from the IRS. I'm not writing a blog from Huffington Post. This is not Daily Beast. I'm telling you the story. The top 1% pays 42% of all tax revenue.

I'll say this, the top 1% is about to pay a lot less in taxes because of the provision

that just went into Trump's, your guys' big beautiful bill.

They'll actually end up paying even more revenue to the government.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

That was fast. Hi. I'm Anne. I

Man and good to meet you. Nice to meet you

So I do want to address part of the claim about poverty But I also want to address what you brought up about like paying taxes He said the top 1% pays a large amount of taxes The problem is is that the bottom two quintiles can't pay taxes because they quite literally have no wealth Do you understand that like that the bottom quintile of the United States doesn't have any wealth? In fact, they're in depth so they have literally like negative wealth. Why do you think that is? I think that's for a lot of reasons. I think that's because workers have been exploited I think that they haven't had the opportunity to gain social mobility

Why do you think that is because I because of exploitation you think they're being exploited? Yes

Oh, so people are being forced to work at companies. They don't have a choice

I didn't say that they were so people they are they are being forced if the other option is starboard job

Do you have right now? What do you do for a living? I I do work from home stuff. Okay, so so you chose to do That right. That's your choice. Great If somebody works at Starbucks for as a barista, it's their choice. If somebody has a job that they're working, it's their choice.

If somebody is not utilizing their time properly and accordingly, of course the market's not

going to pay you more. Do you think that, like they brought up single mothers earlier.

Do you think that single mothers are sitting around playing Fortnite 15 hours a day?

Unfortunately, single mothers were manipulated on what happened. Is that a yes or no? Single mothers were manipulated by what Lyndon Johnson came out with a change the benefits on giving single mothers the incentive to have kids on all the welfare program. That changed our system in a major way. The feminist movement got single mothers

to believe they don't need men and they're going to do everything by themselves and they don't need a man to help them out. This division that's happened between us

caused many people to be in the situation that they're at. Most households are 50-50. They're closer to 50-50 today. So that has nothing to do with feminism. Feminism didn't just like convince women because they're too stupid to think for themselves.

Feminism was one of the worst things that happened in America because it pinned men against women.

Do you think that women are so stupid that they've been brainwashed? Okay, so you don't think that they've just fallen to this feminist propaganda. You don't think they're idiots. No, I don't think that. But I do think people can be manipulated and brainwashed. But they're not stupid enough to do that because

the majority of people are splitting nearly towards 50-50. There are so many people that

bought into a philosophy that stole decades away from their lives. Decades away from their lives because they bought into an idea that didn't produce the results. What are you talking about? I'm talking about capitalism is the best economical system that provides the best results for

people. But we can't just jump back and forth between claims to claim to claim. So the claim about feminism brainwashing people into being single mothers.

No, no, I didn't. I said feminists originally brainwashed women to believe men are the enemy that led to where

we are today.

Last week report came in.

That has led them to being single mothers?

Yes, in many cases, because they don't need men.

Do you have evidence for that?

100%.

You really think a single mother wants to be a single mother?

Absolutely, we have evidence of that.

You think the single mother making minimum wage down the road, like working for some grocery store,

having to take care of all of her children Independent percent live in abject poverty percentage of the u.s. Revenue that we get in you think we use for entitlement programs What percentage I don't remember the exact what do you think the number is so we bring in four point? I'm gonna do in private spending we bring four point nine trillion dollars in okay the u.s. Revenue comes in what percentage Do you think goes to entitlement programs? I don't know what do you think is a reasonable number? Well, what you're calling entitlement programs, I'm actually not sure what you mean by that. I'm talking about Social Security, I'm talking about Section 8, I'm talking about any of

these.

It's much less than other OECD countries.

What percentage do you think it is?

I don't remember the exact percentage, but it's much less than other OECD countries.

We are far behind.

You think it's 10 Can you guess the number? I don't remember the number off the top of my head. I've already said that.

It's 68%.

How much more entitlement?

68%.

Can we fact check that? You can fact check that. Please do so.

Please.

68% goes to entitlement programs.

Of our federal budget?

No, of the revenue that comes in. 68%. different things here. Actual tax revenue that we get, 68% of it goes towards entitlement

programs. 68%. Thank you.

Hi. How are you?

Good. Grace?

Yes, Grace. Hi. I want to say that I think it's pretty comical that an elite such as yourself has the goal to tell us Average Americans who's in poverty and who's not a lot. I was an average American. I was a guy that was in poverty You're not anymore. You can also change you can also change anyways

Do you believe you're talking about a lot of times that the market for poverty is actually very low. So a lot of times like $2 a day is the line for how they measure poverty.

$2.15, yeah.

And that's ridiculous. So if I make $5 a day, I'm not in poverty.

That's because it's around the world, not in America.

I can actually live, I can pay the rent. Sure. But we're talking about this country, right? We're not talking country in the world. Anyways, it's the greatest country ever. We are at the highest that we've ever been with homelessness. Since we started collecting data.

Why is that? Are you from California?

Because we haven't had a pay raise since 2009. Do you live here? Our minimum wage nationally is $7.25. And you wonder why we have the highest poverty rate. You think that capitalism's winning? Can you survive? Would you like to live off $7.25 an hour?

I used to work for 4.25 at Haagen-Dazs. Right, and that was a very different time. Then I went and worked at Burger King for 4.75.

And how much do you make now?

Then I went to, I make millions today.

Then I worked at Bob's Big Boy. A millionaire is critiquing the people in poverty and saying, you should work harder, you should work, you know, you can be me.

You can't all be.

My hope is that you believe you can change and improve,

that you believe you can upgrade yourself.

That's my belief.

You know what, that's what rich people like you want to keep telling us. You can be just like me. Do you want to be like me?

If you work hard enough, able to be like me because you wouldn't work that hard Would you work that hard?

If you don't choose to measure my like I don't have to measure my work ethic to be worthy

You don't have to then you can't be upset for others who do so you can't Because they were part of the new capitalism because but go back to the homelessness work so hard live in the state of California. I do okay. You said homelessness Yes, do you think about your governor Newsom? What do you think about? I don't like it. Okay? Do you know when he was he takes corporate money fantastic people like when he was I've never given him money

But do you know when he first? But when he became a governor first when he became a governor first, when he became a governor first, from then till

today he's raised the amount of homelessness in this state by 36,000 people.

He was given 24 billion people.

Taxpayers gave him 24 billion.

Taxpayers gave him $24 billion and he didn't do nothing with it.

Vote him out.

Vote him out.

You vote him out.

You have him.

It's not that.

I'm not here to defend Newsom. And he didn't do nothing with it and it increased. Vote him out. Vote him out. He's just like you.

You vote him out.

You have him.

It's not that it's...

That's what I'm saying. I'm not here to defend Newsom. You can go...

But you're not much different than him.

That's all I'm saying. You're in the same class... My dad, do you know where? This is the United States of America. I know and I'm so grateful to be here.

I'm so grateful to be here.

And you say that, but are you willing to pay more taxes so that other people don't suffer? I am so grateful to be here. Are you willing to pay more taxes so other people don't suffer?

I am so grateful to be here.

So you're starting the question.

You're not willing. That's great. We had nothing. I'm the guy that had no, no, I'm the guy that had a propaganda that you don't, but what

you don't want to hear is that because it's the truth.

We can ask you a question.

When's the last time you read a business book?

When's the last time you read a self-help book?

I don't need to answer that.

When's the last time you read a self-help book?

I wrote a self-help book. I'm not giving one. Give me one you read. Are you willing to take one recommendation? No, you're not not then I can't help you. That's okay. I don't need your help. I didn't

Awesome

What's your name

Armin. Armin? Yep, Armin Crowe. When you said capitalism is the best form of economic organization the world has ever seen, it made me think of a very particular picture from history. So I don't know if you know this. It's a little history lesson. In 1900, King Leopold II of Belgium

determined that the entire land of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was his personal property. And within 10 years capitalists came out, they exploited all the land, extracted trillions of dollars of resources, 15 million Congolese died. For reference, the Holocaust killed 6 million people.

And the most famous picture from that time in history is a rubber worker staring at the disembodied hands of his And the most famous picture from that time in history is a rubber worker staring at the disembodied hands of his eight-year-old daughter because he didn't hit his rubber quota. I'm willing to bet that man worked harder to hit that rubber quota than anything you've ever worked for in your entire life.

And I think when you say this is the best system that's ever been created, to me, that's the result. That's what happens when there's no rules.

It's devastating when you hear stories like that. I don't disagree with you. They had it hard. They worked very hard and they had risk on the line. Many times it was their lives that was on the line. And you see that in many different places when you go back and study history.

That's why today in America, that have a choice to do what you want to do with your life. When we go back and look at those stories, we can go to see what communism did. How many lives were killed because of communism control. You don't need to go through that number. The number is between 60 to 100 million. We can go that route. But if you're talking about which provided the best economical system today,

you judge it by how many want to go live somewhere that gives you that opportunity.

And that is America. Do you know why kids can't work in America? Why kids can't work in America? Yeah, why there's child labor laws.

Yeah, because of child labor laws.

It was labor unions. They were getting shot at by police officers to fight for the weekend, to fight for the 40-hour work week. Another good example is the 1908 Mill Children's Strike. It was thousands of kids who were working 80-hour workweeks

That's what happens when there's no rules right and then the government had to come in and say you can't employ children

So I think capitalism don't disagree here with that. I don't think we're sitting here talking about child labor Are you hearing me talking about capitalism is the best system because it provides child labor I'm saying that capitalism There's no guardrails inherently the government has to come in people have to go and organize and I think what you've seen for the past 50 years under neoliberal politics Is that slowly being chipped away all the good things of the New Deal like Social Security before you think you need law and order? I do think you need law and order but also at times

You know the the amount of rules you put in place can prevent incentives. Now, if you think about drones, warfare is changing. And 70 to 80% of all drones that are being built today are being built by a company called DJI in China. Ukraine was building 1,000 drones a day at 500 bucks and going and hitting $5 million equipment of Russia, destroying them.

68% of their attacks was from drones. When you come to America, look at us. We're at 1% to 2% at the top. Let me explain my point to you here. Part of it is over-regulation. Over-regulation, FAA laws, this laws, that laws.

So 500 startups that got into the drone business, they walked away because it's over regulation. Many cases, when you say, I want to put this rule in place, great, another person, no, I want to go this much, no, no, I want to go this much, no, no, I want to go this much, it eventually gets to the point that it chokes the innovator and that's also not good.

I would disagree. I think regulation is the reason why there's no lead in our gas. You were talking about incentives. really matters to a good capitalist is profit. It is profitable to put lead in the gas and doesn't matter if it lowers the IQs of kids living nearby by 15 points. Unfortunately, someone's convinced you at a young age that these capitalists are bad people, that they're terrible human beings. Well, then why are they fighting against taking lead out of their gas?

Think about it this way. The main thing, I don't know if you know Michael Burry, has you ever seen the movie Big Short? You know, at the end of the movie where it says Michael Burry now is focused on water because he thinks water is the future gold or whatever he calls it, right? Okay, go to the company that's Coca-Cola, that sells Coke, and how much criticism have you had over the years with Coke, right? human right for the... That's a different conversation. If I may finish the point, one thing with Coca-Cola is the following. Do you know even Coke got to a point that they realized in order for Coca-Cola to be around 50 years from now, 100 years from now, they went and invested billions of dollars

to fix the water issue around the world. They're trying to get cleaner water. Capitalists eventually get forced to take care of the person because having lead in

the water is just not a good policy long term.

Okay.

Surrounded is now a podcast. Available wherever you listen. Search Surrounded, plug in, and stay part of the conversation. Anywhere, anytime.

My next claim is if all the money in the world were divided equally it would return to the same pockets within five years What's your name Caleb Caleb, yeah

So you just said that you were proposing if we divided all the wealth equally in like five years How would you propose we divide the wealth in that way? In this thought experiment, again, if we're gonna give it a serious look, I wanna understand, how would you propose that happens?

I hope you realize this is just a question we're asking everybody, right? But if you take all the wealth, which is around $500 trillion, okay, give or take, you divide it by eight billion people, it would be around $62,500 each. Within five years, the people that don't

know how to handle money themselves, they would lose it all. And within five years,

the same wealthy would get the same amount of money.

As someone who certainly doesn't make that much money, I'm willing to take that as a gamble just for fun, I'll be honest. But at the same time, like, okay, so you're just now claiming that people who don't have wealth don't know how to manage it And that's fair because a lot of them have never had it before so what do we do to? Basically ensure that people like myself who are currently. Thank you to the United States Thank you to the state of California for giving me medical insurance to get blood work for giving me food stamps So I can have food. I've applied to I don't know how many hundreds of jobs. I can show you the receipts.

I can show you the email confirmations. Like I am trying my best to use my values

with the freedom that we have here.

So if I give you a job, you would work 40 hours a week?

If the job is in alignment with something that's noble and good, I think I could. The issue is, and again, you may say that this is a personal weakness, but like right now, substitute teaching, tutoring, trying to help in that way is making it so that I'm able to scratch by. But without the supplemental income and the help from the society of people who make more

money, I'm going to not have enough food.

I want to address something which you made a point that I agree with on why don't some people create wealth. In my family, when I was growing up and I was telling this young lady over here, when my dad was a cashier at a 99 cent store, we've never owned an insurance policy before. My parents, we've never owned a house before. I've never lived in an apartment with a swimming pool before.

We've never had a 401k stock mutual fund, none of that stuff. I had no clue how money worked. So for me, when I got out of the Army with a 1.8 GPA, out of high school, I went straight to the Army because I didn't know how money works. If you look at our system today, in high school, we learn about a lot of different things. They don't teach us about taxes, finances, mutual funds, stock funds. Colleges don't even teach a lot of that right now. So you come out...

Did you work in had you have you have experience like me someone who's essentially on those front lines working?

I've I've worked with many high school teachers and the directors of psychology to talk to the youth

Yes, I have right now. I'm in a position where I have options like you said I do have some options, but they seem to be somewhat destructive and exploitative of me of my peers

So I'm trying to think you're too selective for jobs right now You don't you don't have the ability to be selective at this stage

Well, but the thing is I do because I'm instilled with a freedom that is maybe God universe given and I don't actually have to Because of the system like you said, I don't have to play along with some corrupt game So I gave up think California is perfect for someone like you. Well, thank thankfully California agrees, but you mentioned earlier in a previous discussion that we have free speech we can say what we want, right? But the thing is have you been punched on the train for how you look and how you how you share your ideas?

Do you do I look like an American to you? Do you see this nose? No, I'm just I'm middle-eastern You know what's happened to me when I was discriminated all over the place. I don't mind I don't I don't I don't mind it because I understand there was a risk that you may be disrespected They're like here. I've been disrespected here many times I've been offended here many times a lot of you will come in here finding a way to attack me tell different stories I'm okay with that. I don't want to attack you. I you're being very respectful

I'm not talking about you But what I'm saying to you is when you say have you ever been punched in a face on a bus? You don't want to hear about what things has happened to me because the way I look But I don't want to use that. You've been through a lot of trauma in your life

But what I and now you're kind of clinging to things. I'm not everywhere. I want them to see that it's okay, people are gonna disagree with you.

You have to be comfortable with this.

I am with 13 year olds all the time.

You are with 13 year olds all the time?

Because of my job, because I'm a substitute teacher and a tutor. The thing is, you can apply many different things, and that is your right. But what I'm using my freedom now, but the issue is you're saying we have all these options, but whenever I tour the globe, I see

franchises that have monopolized pretty much everywhere. So when you talk about options, it's really there's these select few people who have this infrastructure that's really benefiting them more than others. And without some sort of conscious spiritual moral awakening What can we do except for beg and appeal and well, you can't be too selective

At the beginning when I work that I don't like that word can't because you're saying I can't whenever I can It's a choice Thank you so much. I appreciate you for being respectful.

I'm glad y'all tripped over each other because I did too. How's it going? James. So one of the things that you have stated is that we have options. Okay, so just to give you a little bit of my background, I come from a divorced family and we lived below the poverty level from the time that I was born until now, frankly. So I'm one of those people that you're talking about that isn't pulling themselves up by their bootstraps enough, which like, I didn't have boots to begin with. And like, I don't know if you've ever had boots, but like legs or load-bearing structures.

I relate.

And like, you can't really pull up a boot when you're wearing it, you know? So where exactly am I failing? When I am working 80 hours a week, I am taking the only jobs that will hire me. I have put in 477 applications over the last two and a half years, not even gotten a call back once. Why do you think you tell me you're the you're a job creator, but I don't know your resume

You know your life better than I do Why do you think you have not got a call back on 477 because because a lot of do not have a degree? Okay, because I do not have a degree because I could not afford do you live? I live in rural, Texas

Okay, so in that like in the town that I grew up in for instance, there are eight jobs

Period does all does your family live there mom that everybody's in that same city?

Everybody was at one point. Okay, most of them are dead now. Okay, sorry to hear. Yeah, it is what it is

It's poverty, you know, we're kind of used to that on this side.

Why do you feel like you're a victim? Why do you feel like you're a victim? Why do you feel like the way you speak, like, you know, you're the victim

where all this happened to you?

Because I exist and things happen to you. And as such, things happen.

And that's why I say that they happen to me good-looking guy. Why do you think you're a victim? Why do you think you're somebody that's got into situation because it's not fair what happened to me Let me let me give you a couple options. Are you open to leaving the city? You're in I've already left it So what's it I've left multiple cities? So if somebody else gave you a job in a different place, you'd be willing to move there 100% on your resume, on your resume. It says that. What do you have on your resume? Skill set, what do you offer?

Transportation expertise, logistics expertise.

You consider yourself a hard worker.

I mean, I feel like 80 hours a week.

That's a hard worker. Sure. How about we do this? How about I interview and I give you a job? Would you move to Fort Lauderdale?

Ooh, my house Florida.

Sure, why not? How about you and I document this. After this, you come, I do an interview with you, and I give you a job. And let's see what you do 90 days later.

Okay, let me, and I'll look up your company and all that kind of stuff, and I'll see it.

But like, regardless, Mike-

But you see what just happened right there?

But watch what you just did. Sure. you. A business owner who's hiring aggressively just made an offer to you. You said you're

willing to move. Then you said, I'll look at it. You became selective.

I didn't say I look at it. If you'd let me finish my sentence. I want to hear it. I would like to look into your company to see exactly what you guys do. You would like to, because I don't know what you guys do. So as far as I'm concerned, I may be wasting my time. If you guys are a finance company, if you guys are a bank or something like that, I don't have the certifications, I don't have the degrees. So even interviewing me would be a move point.

But what if I gave you a job, period, to work 80 hours a week, would you take it? And I paid you a reasonable wage.

Are we talking a livable wage or a reasonable wage?

What do you see so now for me what I'm noticing from you is is I need specifics. No, no, not necessarily You know, I'm most of the people I hired need specifics

The difference is I'm trying to hire them in this instance. You're trying to get a job and you being selective

It's gonna work again. I'm not trying to get a job Originally, I was trying to ask you where the moral felt my office off the table because you're going to be difficult to work with. Okay, sure. But my question was, where is my moral failing?

Like where is it that you are saying that I am not working hard enough and I am not

doing enough?

I just experienced it right now because the way you just handled this situation here was

Got it.

So I should accept anything that somebody gives me first blush if it is a guaranteed

thing.

No, not necessarily. I agreed to do your interview. I agreed to be interviewed by you and you agreed to consider me for hiring. So therefore, I am taking that opportunity. I've chosen to. But because I am asking you for specifics, your immediate reaction is that, oh, well, you're trying to be picky.

Not specifics.

I'm asking... I said I need to look up your company. That's all I did. You would have had the interview. And I did. No, you said it depends.

I said, yeah, sure.

I don't know. Let me look.

Yeah, sure. I would look into your company. That's all I said.

I appreciate you. Thank you, James.

Hi. What's your name? I'm Faye.

Faye?

Yeah. I think you're kind of misunderstanding what anti-capitalist ideals look like. I think we are just trying to advocate for basic rights for our people in this country and across the world, of course. But I don't think it's necessarily about equal wealth disparity around the world. For most people that are anti-capitalist, I think it's more about just standard rights

that are provided by the government.

Standard rights that are provided by the government standard rights that are provided by the government Yeah, okay great Yeah, so go a little bit deeper so for you when the claim here is if the money in the world were divided Yeah, so I return to the same pockets within five years. Do you disagree? Yes. Tell me why you disagree

Yeah, so I disagree because I don't even think many people are trying to argue for that.

People are not trying to argue for that?

So like, who are you arguing in this debate?

Yeah, what I'm trying to say is...

There's like a very select amount of people that are trying to argue for equal wealth disparity. Yeah. Most people are at least trying to at least advocate for wealth at all for people that have that don't have access to health care right now that don't have access to a good education right now That don't have access to their basic needs like food

Do you think our system right now allows people to stay in those situations long term? They forced them to stay in those situations long. Okay, so part of me actually agrees with you

But why do you think they forced them to stay in those situations long term?

I think because the they are trying to convince the working class that they don't have rights.

I actually don't think that's what it is, although that's fair. It's your point here. What's the chances that any of you here voted for Donald Trump in 2024? Exactly. Right. What is the what is the chances that all of you here can't stand the phrase MAGA, Donald

Trump, any of that stuff? Is that a fair assessment? Fair. Okay. Yeah. So think about it this way. So maybe you're right that the Democratic Party that's been earning your vote for a long time wants to keep you there because they'll have you vote

for the rest of your life. They have never earned my vote. Who did you vote for in 2024? In 24, I voted for the socialist candidate. Who was that? Claudia de la Cruz, I believe who did you vote for in 2020? I was actually not able to vote. I was in a hospital Oh, I'm sorry. Yes because of results of capitalism. Tell me more Yeah, so I didn't have access to proper health care or even access to a proper job that would sustain me as a disabled person Are you comfortable being specific on what happened? I guess I mean, I'm also mentally ill So that was something I had to deal with but I'm mainly mentally ill because I am disabled in a capitalist country

It tell me more about mentally ill who qualified you as somebody that's mentally ill Me and my doctor a team who who convinced you that you're mentally ill Me and my doctor. What's the specific category of mental illness? Is there one? You know why I ask this question? Let me explain to you why I ask this question.

So I don't even like the psychological industry. I don't really stand for like Sigmund Freudian politics or anything like that. So if you're going to debate the ethics of psychology.

I'm not. Where I'm going with this is going back to the same thing with if the money was worth to divide it equally it'll end up Being worth that within five years. My trouble is in many cases Somebody you and I look up to will say something to us that we choose to believe for the rest of our lives Unfortunately, it could be something where you have ADHD you're mentally ill You're poor you're this you're that we get to choose to buy into that or not. And if you do...

So you're saying I'm not mentally ill or I'm not disabled?

I'm not saying you are or you're not. I would challenge you to go a little bit deeper to see if there's anything you can do about

it. So you're asking me about my health? You're asking me about my disability?

I'm not. where, stay with me here, there is a market where there's profit to convince you to have, you have issues to take the medication because they're making money and I'm not supportive

of that. Yeah, but I don't have access to the medication. I don't have access to even a result or a solution to my disability as someone with a connective tissue disorder. It's genetic.

Have you been able to go to different doctors and get yourself tested? Yeah.

You have?

Yes. In California?

Yes, but not enough. I can't find a specialist.

You can't find a specialist?

I can't find a specialist for who I am. Is there anyone in your life that's willing to pay for a specialist? Well, they could or they would if they had money, but yeah.

Would you be okay if I pay for a specialist for you to go see? Yeah. Would you take money from a capitalist to help you go see a specialist? I mean, yeah, sure, why not? I'm going to have you go see two, do you live in California? Yeah. I'm going to have you go see two specialists, but would you also be open to seeing somebody else I choose as a psychologist that may...

No.

You're not.

No. You choose as a psychologist, you're choosing who gets to determine what my mental health looks like?

No. No, no. Okay, then I wish you nothing but the best. Yeah, so I think

All right, thanks for talking so much yes anytime

How you doing man, what's your name Seth Seth good to meet you I think your claim kind of doesn't make any sense because it would not inherently be a capitalist society You're describing because I'm surprised nobody's really addressed this issue. We haven't even defined what socialism is. Capitalism is a system in which all businesses are funded by millionaires and billionaires, investor classes. If this society, everybody had the same amount of money, I don't really know how the money would be generated up and down.

I don't know in this theoretical. It sounds more like an anarchist society which Would make more you know, we're using this as a hypothetical

I want to make sure I qualify that we're not we just even describe what capitalism but stay on this point here because you Came here. Let me go back to this one

If all the money in the world divided equally it would return to the same pockets within five years. Do you agree or disagree?

Well, I disagree. Tell me why I believe in a system more akin to that kind of system. I think that a system with people with more wealth and equality.

But do you know why the wealth would go back to the same people and the same people at

the bottom would be poor?

I know why it wouldn't.

Why do you think it would? Well, it wouldn't go back to the same places because I don't think that we have an inherent equal starting point in the beginning. What I'm saying to you is if we right now did a case study... That's what I'm saying, why it wouldn't go to the same places, because we have never even tested some sort of free market. We've never seen any sort of system akin to that, a genuine free market, not one that's distorted by capitalists, by business owners. Capitalists generally protect their own, their own class.

That's why people rise to the top.

Yes, absolutely.

I don't know about that. be. No, there's not. Not at all. People start at the very bottom. They have no shot to even. Do you know why I make the claim of if all the money in the world were divided equally

would return to the same pockets within five years? I'm assuming that you think that because

people work harder or something like that. But I would argue that the people that work

the hardest are the people that make the least amount they own. I don't know if I agree with that. I was just in Arkansas three days ago.

I was just in Arkansas a week ago and I went to a city called Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was a two friends from high school started a windows company, 250 employees. The city loves them. They work their tails off.

I'm not really referring to small businesses.

But I'm talking about, but many big businesses started small. Walmart was a big day one Walmart was small when it was Why are they still a monopoly because they exist? They're not a monopoly Amazon is taking a big share away from the gobbledy Whatever they own a large market share because their ability to Use their money to how many jobs they've created around the world Walmart test. I'm not even referring to three million jobs

We're the point being is they distort the capitalists distort the market so it's unfree. How could it be a free market? Okay, so.

If everybody in the market inherently wants to make it unfree because they want to rise

to the top.

I'm watching you. If everybody has the incentive to maintain a free market, then that's something that.

So let me go back. it would return to the same pockets within five years. To me, it's because of market value, what value you bring to the place, your contacts, your relationship, how hard you're working, all of those combines. Habits that you have in place, habits that you have in place,

and also habits at the bottom. The habits at the bottom are not long-term thinking, it's short-term. When I didn't have any money and I was broke $49,000. If I had $500 to my name, we're driving on the freeway to go to Vegas to party for the weekend and come back. If I had a penny to my name, I'm having a blast. Until 25 years old, I changed my habits financially. Then things

changed. But this point that we're talking about with the wall.

Some people are so far off from that point, they're so far in debt that small decisions

would not alter. It's not true. Yes, absolutely.

It's not true.

You're just privileged and you've lived in a certain example.

You think I'm privileged? Yes, you're privileged. You've become a millionaire because of your hard work.

That's amazing.

My mom ran out of money and went back to Iran. You're talking to a guy that would have done 20 years in the army if one guy doesn't call me if one guy would have gone into the government funding you I understand that and I joined You're gonna fit for the government up online social programs. No, no, I had absolutely I was not confident on what I could do, but I changed so can you look at the way you're speaking to me? You can change somebody hard

But you know somebody like you do you know somebody like you that speak speaks this eloquently if somebody gets a hold of you in real estate, insurance, finance, you can learn how to sell. And you can make some real good money.

Somebody like you that I'm watching.

But not everybody's born with those abilities. You have to be, like, somebody who's white, tall,

six, four, whatever, they're much more.

I'm Middle Eastern, I'm from Iran. Do you realize a lot of stuff that goes against me? Okay, but many people have the opportunity to compete because you're pre-designed. I appreciate you being respectful. Truly, you need to know that. And I'll be respectful to everybody. But I appreciate you for being respectful.

Right now, everybody that's here, me changing your mind, it's not a very high likelihood. The audience that's watching, 40% of them are going to agree with what you say, what you say, what you say, what you say, and they hate me. 40% of the audience is gonna agree with me. 20% of the audience is in the middle saying, I don't know, man, what do you think I should do? Should I feel like a victim or should I not make excuses?

Or what does that guy say? Or should I do this and should I sympathize? The 20% that's watching this, that has a fighting chance, I'm hoping they realize they can do something about their lives. We're not going to be able to solve 100% of people's problems, unfortunately.

I don't think people should keel over, but that doesn't mean most people have an equal competitive advantage to some.

I think everybody has a certain gift to offer.

Somebody like me is more privileged inherently.

I think everybody, listening to her present, she could be a lawyer. Listening to her present, she's got fire in her belly.

Everybody here has got a gift. Every single person here has got a gift. Whether they choose to use it in a way to help them advance in life, that's not my

fault. That's on them.

Not everybody can afford to increase their market value.

You can. You actually can.

No, you can. Not everybody.

Well, we respectfully disagree.

Sure. I appreciate you.

Thank you again. Appreciate you.

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be interested.

My final claim is the US is more socialist than capitalist today. If you hate the system, you're anti-socialist.

We're back at it again.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's super important here for all leftists alike, but for the audience in general to define what these terms are. I think the best way to do it would be to look at the theorists, right? Over history we've seen communism and socialism talked about by governments and by, I guess, programs, but we never actually read the actual theory. And what theorists all agree on is that socialism would be a transitionary state between capitalism and communism, where the means of production are specifically owned by workers, not privately. The idea that any country now is anywhere near socialist, let alone communist, would simply be ridiculous and it wouldn't reflect theory whatsoever.

What is the definition of communism to you?

Stateless, moneyless class of society.

And you prefer that?

Yeah, so I think that we should be moving towards... Communism. Yeah, stateless, moneyless class of society. So you don't think a person like me should exist with the amount of wealth that I have? Yeah, because I think that we're getting to this point where we're creating fake scarcity

for people like you to accumulate the wealth that you have on the basis of private ownership.

Okay, so you're not even, you're not even not capitalist, you're definitely not capitalist, you're not socialist, you want to go full communism.

So what do you think that looks like though, is the thing, right? So what Marx actually wanted was for us to reach a point where we no longer have the scarcity of resources that has kind of predicted history as it looks like now. It wouldn't happen now. It would happen as we automate. At this point in time, we can decommodify housing and food and education for around 5% of the government budget.

That's one fifth, a little bit over one fifth of what we spend on the military already. We don't because we were living in the state where we,

it almost seems utopian that things like food and shelter can be free.

How old were you the first time you thought you wanted to be a communist?

How old were you the first time?

Is that a response to any of the statistics?

No, because the statistics are against you. It's never worked. There's so many Cubans that moved to Miami, they loved their country, they hate the politics. In Russia, they even run away from communism because it didn't work.

It killed so many people.

Because that almost like it wasn't communist. It's almost amateurish to debate a communistic argument. It's almost like you're not replying to any of the statistics that I've presented to you. I think that's the biggest problem. You're a dictator telling you what dreams should be. would not be allowed under communism. Dictators end up of course running communism. But they weren't. If somebody's taxing 100%, what is a dictatorship? So again, how much money do you think...

If I'm paying 100% in taxes, what is communism?

How much money do you think... That's dictatorship. How much money do you think would it take to, I don't know, allow everyone food, shelter,

water, and education in this country?

How much money would it take? take. But going back to your question here with communism, stay on that point there with communism. Nothing I say is responding to... But I'm trying to find out from you here. You're saying communism is not dictatorship.

No.

Define dictatorship.

Yeah. So when one person or one small entity is able to enforce its will on the people, when we have a private ownership, when we have a system based on private ownership,

that's what happens every single time.

That's dictatorship? Yeah. Dictatorship as private ownership? Yeah. So private ownership.

So let me get this straight. Under communism, can I... How much... Under communism, does an Elon Musk exist?

Yeah. No.

No. So that's dictatorship. Thank you.

That's completely incorrect. Under capitalism, we don't have, you know, the freedom for people

to...

You do. You do. Under capitalism, right? We don't see that the commodification... Would you consider China communism right now? Would you consider China communism right now?

...of food, shelter, or water, or education when we can with 5% of the budget?

Why don't we see that?

Would you consider China communism right now?

Why haven't you answered any of my questions?

Would you consider China...

Why haven't you responded to any of my statistics? Would you consider China communism right now? We are having a conversation where you have an argument that's been proven that it's not work. It's almost like I just gave you a definition of communism for you to critique and you haven't

been able to.

If it's such a great system, why are other nations not?

Because we've never been at a point for it to happen. Because we've not found a noble person that can you wouldn't have said that capitalism today is socialist. Have you read Wealth of Nations? Yeah, so I've read Das Kapital, I've read the Communist Manifesto as well, Engels' Collective Works, etc. What do you think, if you think that communism is in any way us having wages, or us having a are you arguing with? You don't get to dictate my dreams.

Where did you get that from?

What do you mean?

Well, haven't I? You know, that was, that was interesting.

Woo!

Let's go. Justin, nice to meet you. Justin, good to meet you.

How you doing, Patrick?

I'm doing good. How you doing? Doing pretty good. So I need to pick your brain a little bit. You're saying us is largely socialist. I want to focus on the word largely

So why do you believe it is largely socialist because?

68% or so of the money that we the money that we take in goes towards entitlement programs

So I think one of the things that is gonna be major to me It's like Xena was touching on earlier is going to be the fact that socialism is a big part of it is going to be workers owning the means of productions when we have President Biden, for example, telling that the railroad

strikers it's going to be illegal for them to strike. I don't see that as much of a workplace

democracy. Did you want did you have a question or you're just saying the fact that you don't agree with President Biden and what he said? I'm just saying a core tenant of socialism

is the workers owning the means of production production Workers currently do not own the means of production. So you're saying you believe it is largely socialist

So you're saying the workers should own the means of production is correct. Okay, so to you that's the definition of socialism

That is a core tenant of it. What else would you define as socialism? I'm curious. Um, there's a lot of different things It's like Xena was touching on as well money moneyless, stateless class of society, but I think more important than not, workers owning the means of production and workplace democracy. Are you more communist or are you more socialist? They're the same term, man. Marx used them interchangeably.

Okay. The only difference I would put is because where I see in America, I think we are extremely getting close to being a socialistic nation with the amount of taxes that we have in place right now. That's great. But at least under communism, I can't survive. I would prefer us staying at the 10% tax rate. I think we're paying way too much taxes. Why would you not be able to survive? I wouldn't be able to pursue my dreams

that I have in place under communism. I think you're still good. My mother's family, they were part of the two-day party. The two-day party in Iran was a communist party. They had escaped Armenia and Russia and came down to Iran and they pursued communism. I grew up in a family where everything was about the rich are greedy, the rich people are bad, the rich people are this and the rich people are that. My dad said they were imperialist. My dad said they said poor people are lazy. So one side, rich people are greedy. The other side, poor people are lazy. Who's right?

I would say that neither are right, of course. I would say

both are right and wrong is what I would say. Both are right. And wrong. Both are right and wrong. Because I do believe there are extremely greedy rich people. And I do believe there are extremely lazy poor people. But I also believe there's a lot of hardworking poor people that are working, but they haven't found a way to get out of it. I agree with that as well. So that's actually a major point right there.

They're not able to get out of it.

But on the top, you can get out of it.

You could actually get out of it.

But you just said they're not able to.

No, because they're choosing not to, I just made an offer for a book recommendation here.

So I'm not interested. and somebody's giving you feedback and saying, what about if you think about finding me for me that book, then I'll take it out.

Sure.

Why not?

I'll give you a handful of them.

We'll talk about this. I'll give it to you after. The point I'm trying to make to you is if you can exist under a capitalistic society and I can exist under a capitalistic society, so can she. But we can both exist under a socialist society. It's not a mistake and under socialism, the incentive would be bad. Think about it this way. Do it. If it's hot under social. During COVID take the two states, California, New York.

They lost a trillion dollars of wealth that left. Do you know where they went to? Where did they go to Texas, Nevada, Florida, Tennessee? You know why? Because it's a better climate for entrepreneurs. Today, if you look at New York City, you know Mamdani.

That's just how the market works.

You know who Mamdani is.

I understand how the market works.

You know who Mamdani is.

Are you a fan of Mamdani?

Yeah, of course.

Okay, from New York.

I love Zoran. should exist and he's going to be the mayor of a city that has the most billionaires in America, 123. I hope he wins so we can see what happens to New York when the billionaires leave. When they leave, here's who's going to pay the price. The people that are left behind who were taking advantage of the taxes that billionaires were paying. You think the government's going to change their budget and spend the $30 minimum wage? I can't imagine

middle America is going to take the biggest hit if billionaires leave the state of New York.

You'll see.

Oh, you're back. How are you? Good to see you.

Learned a bit more.

Okay.

Firstly, I want to start by saying that the U.S. is not largely socialist because that's not what socialism is. Socialism is social or collective ownership by the workers or a community of the means of production. So we're talking about city-run grocery stores, or we're talking about worker cooperatives, or even in some cases credit unions, where a local community owns

the bank that they take part in. That's what socialism is. Socialism is not when the government does stuff for you. It's not when they build roads. That happens under capitalist economies. It happens under socialist economies. But I'm also not sure you entirely know what capitalism is.

And if it's okay, I'd like to ask a couple of questions about your job. Sure. Cause you're offering that. I know that you're value tainment, right? You run a YouTube podcast.

You also run PHP agency, right? Yep. Yes. I read an article by the Daily Beast which argued that you make more money from recruitment fees to get people to work for you, then you make money from selling those policies. Capitalism is when you provide a service and sell the labor of yourself or the person who works for you in return for money. But you're not really doing that,

right? You're selling, being part of the company through recruitment fees. I'm not sure that's capitalism.

How familiar are you with the insurance industry? Pretty familiar. Are you? Yes.

You've been in the industry before? No, my grandfather was.

Okay, so in the insurance industry, when you're in it, you get paid by selling life insurance policies and you get paid by selling annuities. Yes. We built a distribution channel of a company right after I left Morgan Stanley and Transamerica. We started the insurance company. We grew it helping middle-income families who didn't have another opportunity

to create wealth for themselves. I just came back from our event in Vegas. Let me say this to you. Hold on, I'm not sure that's correct though.

It is though. It's not correct though because what do you make more money from? I just came back from, we don't make money from the, we don't make more money from recruiting. I read the Daily Beast article that did that. I also watched CoffeeZilla's debate with you where you pulled up receipts that the majority of the employees of your company don't make any money.

Here's a question for you. Here's a question for you. Sure. Of course. Do you think if I was worried about my business model, I would go on CoffeeZilla? What do you think?

I think that it's not really capitalist.

Hang on a second. Do you think if I was worried about my business model, I would go on CoffeeZilla? They were actually very strong when they came back after me. We had a two hour conversation. We finished it. It was good to go.

We moved on. only 1% or 2% make and nobody makes an insurance, they're right. Most people don't make it in insurance, just like most people who move to California don't make it in Hollywood.

And most people don't make it in real estate. So I believe the technical term for when you make more money from getting people to be part of a company than from actually selling a service is called a multi-level marketing scheme. Do you think that that's a fair characterization of your company? Why not? multi, do you know what multi-level is? Yes, I know. It's where you make more money from, it's sort of like a pyramid scheme wherein you

make more money from getting people to be part of it and selling them to be part of the company.

Let me educate you. A pyramid scheme doesn't have a product. That's criminal.

A multi-level marketing company is more like an Amway, an Herbalife, a Nu Skin, those companies. Because it pays you multi-level. You are making more money from getting people to be part of your company than you are from making money from actually providing a service. That's not true.

It's a coming by daily beast. By the way, do you know what a quality of earnings is? Yes. What's a quality of earnings? Tell everybody what a quality of earnings is.

Go ahead.

Fair point. The quality of earnings is, isn't that like the value that's produced from when you make the money? Like how much from the labor that's produced or am I wrong? What is quality of earnings? I give you what I think the definition is.

That's the definition.

Okay. So quality of earnings is I sit there and I want to sell the business to you. You make an offer of $250 million. Okay. I tell you, this is my business. Here's how much profit we make. You leave and you say, great, let's make a deal. I'll pay $250 million.

We shake on it. Then you validate whether it is worth that or not by going and paying a big company a few hundred thousand

dollars to check the quality of your earnings. Okay, so same deal as like having someone look at the quality of the gold that you're gonna buy.

No, PwC came and they do a quality of earnings to say, is this company really worth this? They get to make a decision whether the company is truly doing what you or Daily Beast claims

to do.

The value comes from your brand. It comes from going on podcasts like that, even when they expose the business model because you're not selling. Do you know what ended up happening?

Don't make claims you don't know about.

Do you know what you're selling? Do you know what ended up happening. Do you know what you're selling? The company ended up buying. You're selling your personal brand. You're selling the idea because when you're offering people here jobs, right, you're saying that, they would have to pay you money to get that. So in reality, you're trying to convince them to pay you money to be part of your company. Be very careful defaming. We know you don't know the facts.

You have a recruitment fee.

No, those are two different things.

Hi. Hi.

How are you? Good, how are you?

Tatiana.

Tatiana?

Yeah, Tania.

Good to meet you.

But yes, and your name's Patrick, right? It is. And I don't know a lot about you before coming in today. That's even better. But why do you use socialism and capitalism like in this instance? I've noticed a lot of people have defined the vast differences, but you're insisting that we're still like a more socialist like country.

Why are you insisting on that?

That's a fair question. So for me, there's different definitions you can have. Under communism to me, it's 100% taxes, meaning I can't go create my own property. If I want to build a billion dollar company, I can't do it under communism. Is that a fair assessment?

Yes, I guess it is.

It is. Okay. So capitalism, I would ideally like to see taxes between 10 to 30% max. I'd like a flat tax, but somewhere between 10 to 30% because I still do think there are certain things that the government needs to do. Military, protection, certain things. Socialism to me is 30% and up. Anything above that, that you're taking the money away from me, without my choice, to use it for things where we get to 68% of entitlement programs, I'm not a fan of that.

Okay, so let's talk about where we're at. I believe you said reasonable wage and minimum wage. What about a livable wage? And we haven't really talked about livable wages because they kind of differ.

What do you think about minimum wage? So what do you think minimum wage should be?

So I think you have a long way to go. I'm not really a big fan of these little increment things, especially when it's like, it's not like rent, it's, you know, stopping and leveling out. It's like, it's, you know, far exceeding I don't disagree for sure. Yeah, and so I'm just wondering how you still can sit here and say that when you I know You like to talk about you came up from Haagen-Dazs and all this other stuff in Glendale

Galleria 20 minutes away from here love that for you But we're talking about where you are today and where I am a majority of these people in the room Yes, we can't change but I think that there's certain systems are you talking minimum wage you want to address the minimum wage top minimum wage but I like to say livable wage because I think they're two very different things what do you think it should be I think that we should go per state because every state is different in terms of number where do you live you

live in California so based on the MIT living wage calculator it's an actual livable wage calculator it's 2781 should be the starting. And then if you have kids and so forth, then you can like go up from there. Let's starting at about $27 hourly.

So, so what, let's look at case studies of what happened. California chose to increase the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour restaurant workers. Do you know what happened to state of California? Mass exodus people left and went different places. You know what restaurant owners did? Like, I can't compete with these guys if you raise the minimum wage. But the challenge with minimum wage is also the following. So say there's two companies. You have Walmart, okay,

in Bakersfield, pick a city, and you have a different supermarket that's been in the same family for 60 years. The governor here says we're going to raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour. Who do you think can afford it? The market that's been within a family, the small business, or you think Walmart? Who do you think can afford to go to $20 an hour minimum wage?

So that's why I think we have to factor in other systems other than capital.

I think you're kind of making the point that's been made a few times today where we can't just look at one thing. No, this hasn't made. The point I'm making here is anytime a Bernie Sanders gets up and says, let's raise the minimum wage for $15. And he was caught in his campaign, not paying his own workers $15, $13 an hour. And he had to talk about it and apologize that even a guy that's a socialist

wasn't paying a minimum wage. But if you raise it to $15, Amazon celebrates.

Walmart celebrates.

Do you know why? Because the employers from this supermarket that have been working for this family for the longest time, they can't afford to pay that. So they leave and go to Amazon and Walmart. What happens? The bigger companies keep getting bigger.

The small businesses go out of business because of minimum wage.

Okay. So you've mentioned Bernie Sanders. I didn't mention him. Cool. For Bernie Sanders, whatever. Do you pay a livable wage or a minimum wage for your employees?

There's not a single soul in our company that I pay 15 bucks an hour or 20 bucks an hour.

Okay. So are you paying them livable wages though?

Absolutely.

Okay. Based on your standards or based on like the stats? Because of my choice. So you're determining what people's livable ages are?

Well, no, I look at the marketplace and I see what's going on and I get to pick and choose what percentile of people I want to hire. Do I want to hire bottom 10%, 25%, 50%? I'll pay a little bit more because I want to get somebody that's got a little bit more experience.

Okay.

Okay.

Tanya. Titania. Thank you.

Hi again. How are you? Good, how are you doing? Good. Can you remind me again why you think this

country is largely socialist? Out of the 4.9 trillion dollars of revenue that we get in, 4.8, 4.9, 68% goes to entitlement programs.

That's the reason why I say America socialism.

Do you think that we should have a say in where our taxpayer dollars go?

That's what we have elections.

Okay, you vote for it.

So you agree that we should have a say in where our taxpayer dollars go? If you're asking me who should have a right to vote, I will change the system in a major way of who would have the right to know asking you'm not asking you if people should... You're asking me a question and I'm giving you... I'm not asking you who should have the right to vote. I'm asking you, do you think that our... The current system allows...

Taxpayer dollars should be dictated by us.

Where that goes. The current election allows you to vote and decide who you want to be your candidate.

Absolutely. Okay. Billions and billions of dollars in subsidies to billionaires every single year Elon Musk just got a huge raise not sure why he's worth over

Like that hundreds of billions of dollars you tell us be specific you talking about SpaceX We fund as taxpayers so why did we never vote for that? Why did you never vote for the money going to some of these companies issue with the fact that we as taxpayers didn't have a say in first of all electing this tech oligarch and deciding where our taxpayer dollars go? Once you elect who you elect, what they do next, you don't have a say during that time. We didn't elect him.

Until the next election.

No, I'm talking Congress, Senate.

They make a decision on who they give the money to and they approve. He's been he's been getting this amount of subsidies through every administration. I'm not just referring to the Trump administration. Let's talk about how the how he's done. OK. So the NASA was shut down many years ago. OK.

Since then, how has NASA done trying to find a way to go to space? What are SpaceX done? SpaceX has been able to do.

What has NASA NASA gave us one point satellite which you used every time you use your phone if you let me finish

NASA versus SpaceX Elon Musk as much as you hate him Elon Musk was able to go to space for 1 20th of a cost because government

Organizations has the ability to eradicate extreme poverty in this country and he chooses to send rockets into space and make extremely ugly cars

That we never actually funded I believe it liberals drive his car. So well, I would say the cyber trucks. It's a poor decision Aesthetically the cyber truck. I'm not discussing the aesthetics of his products

It's so funny because when you say what you say about say the the Democratic side on the climate change side The guy that's worked towards that the most, you guys loved him until he supported Trump. Elon was your favorite eight years ago until he supported Trump. The moment he went into Trump, this guy's a horrible guy. This guy's a terrible guy.

To be fair, I've hated Elon Musk consistently throughout my adult life. And I also think that he is someone who has benefited immensely from the government. That's why I find hypocrisy in what you're saying. I don't disagree in that side. He's benefited immensely from the exploitation of labor overseas He's benefited immensely from his extremely aggressive Union tactics Union busting tactics tactics

So I'm saying like why are we positive to you for society? It's you know positive for me personally is he a net positive for society not for you I wouldn't say so you don't think he is no I would choose a net positive to society Bernie Sanders I would I mean Bernie Sanders is I would say he's a compromise candidate, but I would say that he's a compromise candidate Yes, it was a you'll see a net positive to society. I would say net positive. Yes more than Musk is yes

Really?

Tell me why because AOC wants to introduce a green new deal and I think that the new deal is the closest 30 trillion dollars the okay Trump literally just added $3.4 trillion to our deficit. So I really don't want to hear 30 trillion. Okay. So I'm saying, I'm saying that I think that, you know, when we look at, um, the system that we currently have, I think that we need to redistribute the wealth in a significant way and we need

to reintroduce something like the new deal. And I think AOC has been the closest to doing that. I'm not saying I'm the biggest fan of her, but I'm saying that we need a marginal tax rate that is something similar to the New Deal, 70 to 90%. Ideally, I would go for a wealth tax. Anyone over $999 million has to pay every year. But I'm saying that-

Say that one more time. You would do what?

Anybody that makes over- I would introduce a wealth tax. So I'd say that anyone who makes over nine hundred and ninety nine million dollars needs to pay So I think that no one should be a billionaire. I think that we should put the cap No one should be a billionaire. Absolutely not. Do you think that people can survive on nine hundred ninety nine million dollars?

This isn't how life works. Do you think someone can survive?

I'm asking you. Do you think someone would be okay dictate? Do you think someone's life would be impaired? to dictate how a person drives and deals. You don't get to dictate that.

You're not answering the question. Answer my question. Why are you avoiding my question?

Do you think someone could reasonably survive on $999 million?

How big a person wants to build their business. That's not your goal. By the way, why don't you elect someone that pursues those policies? Bernie was your hero for many years. He became compromised.

I never said he was my hero. How did Bernie become compromised?

I said that he is a compromised candidate.

You said he's a compromised candidate.

Why is he a compromised candidate?

I mean, he was definitely compromised by the Democratic Party, who didn't want him elected. What happened? I'm saying he's a compromised candidate in that I would like to see him as president ideally or someone similar I think Zeron Mamdani who you mentioned earlier I

think he's an excellent candidate. I can't wait for him to win. You know why I can't wait for him to win? Because I can't wait for the data that comes out after he wins. I can't wait to show you all the numbers the next four years after he wins. If rich people have to flee New

York because of his policies that means that they're too economically fragile to handle those taxes. No, because if you don't appreciate people that create jobs, they will go somewhere that

they're appreciated.

What kind of jobs are we creating?

A high-paying job.

We have to look past job creation.

They pay high-paid jobs. Many of the jobs. If you bring value to the market.

The reality is that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, they have huge monopolies over our market and they're able to pay as little in wages as they'd like. I think the only company that has a monopoly. They quite literally control the wages and the costs in our economy. Right. If when Amazon has 60% control over e-commerce. I am. They can quite

literally decide what wages and what costs people can earn and pay. Your candidate AOC. I never said she was my candidate. You said she's a net positive to society. You're making false endorsements on my, yeah. You said AOC is a net positive to society more than Elon Musk. I said she's, absolutely, yes. Perfect. When AOC was in New York, Amazon wanted to bring 25,000 jobs to New York. These were jobs that were paying 150 a year.

What do those jobs look like? 10 to 15 miles per shift. They have higher injury rates than the industry average. These were jobs that were paying $150 per year.

These were jobs that were paying $150 a year. She went against it. They went to a different place. 25,000 jobs they lost in a year.

And what would those jobs look like?

$150k a year minimum. Thank you. I'm going to go with my friend here. So I chose Mason because he was the only one that came up to me and said, Pat, I'd like to have a reasonable conversation with you. You came up, there was three other people I was thinking about.

And because you were fair and respectful, I chose you. So my claim is America has never been a meritocracy, okay? Tell me why so I think that when you see wealth disparity and the amount that it gives influences to certain individuals specifically from a starting point if we're looking at America like a race and Someone is starting two inches from the finish line and somebody starting a mile back

We would not say that this is a judgment of their merit. We'd say that this is a system that allows those with the most influence to continue to be successful.

So you, is your, is it about some of the people that got generational wealth have an advantage over others that didn't get it?

Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that that's a moral failure. I'm just saying when people claim that capitalism is a meritocracy,

that's just factually inaccurate and we shouldn't be allowed to lie here Like what you try to be coming to a common consensus capitalism is not a meritocracy

No, so you mean to tell me nobody here can go out there and win if they wanted to at the highest level

No, I think that there's a probability that people can't have social mobility or increase our economic conditions

It does not mean that everybody is able to so well, some people right billionaire. No, no

No, you're saying not everybody's able to I fully agree. I can play baseball, but I'm probably not gonna play Yeah, I can spend the money on a lottery ticket doesn't mean I'm guaranteed to win the lottery. So what's your point? I agree with you then. So my point is that America is not Meritocracy you said that you said there's two things Anybody at what levels you can have success. To me in life there's three different types of people. You got overachievers, you got achievers, you got underachievers. Let me unpack this for a second, we got ten minutes. You can. Overachiever, achiever, underachiever. Okay?

You can find a guy in school, we all remember the kid in school that was going to go like that kid's going to win in life and he didn't. He was supposed to be an underachiever. And there were kids in school that we looked at, we said, that guy's not going to do anything with life. Dude, stay away from that guy. He ends up winning. He's an overachiever. So it's not about what you're, you know, do end up doing in your life.

It's what you, how close you reach to your capacity. The winning that you're talking about000 a year, they have a good life, they're happily married, got two kids, and they chose to go live in a place like Victorville, they chose to go live in a different place, but to me, that is winning. They're contributing to society.

I have a genuine question for you, Patrick. Do you think that a nurse or a hedge fund manager

offers more social utility?

This is documented. 14 years ago I made a video talking about the 10 most honorable professions and a hedge fund manager wasn't on that list, but a nurse was. I believe what nurses do, when my father's at the hospital and I see how they attend to him, you have no idea how much respect I have for nurses. It's a tough job.

However, the market- But I would say the hierarchy of what our society looks like does not prioritize that

in the same way that you're saying that it does. It looks like but does not prioritize that there's a difference, but there's a difference Do I think a nurse is more important to the market than a basketball player? Yes, but the market wants to watch a basketball player play so they pay Steve Steph Curry So we both agree that America's failing right your last claim was about how America's socialists and that's a bad thing I assume that you're saying because of government intervention absolutely so you think capitalism can exist without government intervention? I think you need law and order because there will be abuse if you don't have it. In our insurance company when I was running the company, I had to make sure there was law and order in there. If you don't have certain compliance, abuse will come in. When abuse comes in, if it's a free for all.

Are part of those laws like labor laws? That can also be abused. No, it's a fair question you're asking, but a part of that can also be abused. A lot of those guys go in with the right intentions, then they become dividers and they pin the employer against the employee. So then that is a, the divide and conquer model is very effective.

I just want to break this down. Do you think that there are not mutually exclusive interests

in owners and workers?

Do I think there's mutual interests with owners and workers? Do I think there's mutual interest with owners and workers?

Do you think that they have a symbiotic relationship

and when they're trying to achieve the same goal?

I like to give my employees equity because if you own equity in the company, you no longer are an employee. You treat it as if it's your own company. So I prefer to give my employees equity, but it's my choice.

I don't want the government forcing me to give them equity. I'll give you a story. Do you remember that story of a guy who said, I pay every single one of my employees $70,000 a year. What was this guy's name? I don't know if you remember this guy. This story went viral.

Socialism, what a noble guy. Everybody retweeted it. The Bernie's of the world. I said, so tell me about your noble cause that you pay everybody 70 grand a year. He says, well, I don't think anybody should make over 70 grand a year. You can live off of $70,000 a year. I said, perfect. How many employees do you have?

Let me make the point.

I said, how many employees do you have?

I don't think that this is conducive to our conversation.

Wait a minute. I said, how many employees do you have? share of your company. None of them do. Who does? I do. You're a socialist, claiming everybody should make that much money,

but you're not giving equity?

I'm not endorsing this particular person. I'd love to look into this, and maybe I'll watch the interview later. But what I'm trying to say is that

there's a lot of contradictions in socialism

when it comes down to action.

There are contradictions for the labor that I put into it. A owner wants to do the exact opposite. It's not that they want to pay people what they're deserved, they want to pay people what they can get away with. That's just virtually true.

I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the case.

No, you already agree that coercion exists in this system. You're just saying that socialism is the government mandating owners to do it, but you're saying that markets do the exact same thing. You just said that the market price determines.

Don't put words in my mouth. I like you, you're respectful, you're a nice guy.

Don't put words in my mouth.

Did you not say that markets determine market rates?

I haven't, what I'm telling you is there will be abuse in business, and if there There is abuse in business. Some people will take advantage of that. But the benefit of a free market capitalism is if I don't treat you fairly, you go work for him. If he doesn't treat you fairly, you go work for him. Eventually, if you bring enough value, guess who can't afford to lose you?

I can't afford to lose you.

Do you think that markets determine market rates?

If I can't afford to lose you. Guess what I have to do to you? Do you think that markets determine market rates? You didn't answer my question. If I can't afford to lose you, guess what I do to you?

Do you know what a monopsopy is?

Tell me about it.

So do you know the difference between a monopoly and a-

I know a monopoly, tell me about monopsy.

Okay, so a monopoly is a single seller who has rare competition within the selling of the distribution. That creates like inflated prices and that can hurt consumers. But a monopsony is one single buyer. So this is an employer, there are things called company towns. You brought up the example of Walmart outpricing small businesses.

I think that's a fantastic example.

On the minimum wage side.

Right, of how there are large businesses that utilize their leverage and their influence and their capital in order to determine what those wages look like in a given particular place. So what I want to argue is, minimum wages seem to stifle monospemies because they allow people to start at the same floor rate. You're saying that big businesses have an advantage when there's a minimum wage because they can pay more.

We are also advocating for higher taxation rates and capital gains taxes on these businesses that are supposedly taking advantage of the system. And wait, wait, wait. taxes on these businesses that are supposedly taking advantage of the system. You can invest this in tax breaks for small businesses for people that have less employees. Maybe you say that less than five employees, they have certain tax incentives, so they're not taxed at the same rate as these large conglomerates.

But that does not mean that a minimum wage is a bad idea, because like most people here

said, you can't survive on less than $7 an hour in most places. You know what's the great thing about business and numbers and data? Is every idea is getting exposed. During COVID, all the policies that came out from the leftist side, they're all getting exposed today.

Name two.

Within time, everybody realizes what works and what doesn't work.

Wait, can you name those policies besides just saying that they failed?

When states chose kids to stay home instead of going to school

When is that a socialist policy?

That is a control because when a government is ran in a way that they're controlling

That's not socialism my friend

Socialism is a form of control

Socialism is a workers control of their own

Communism is the ultimate control

No, socialism is workers control of their own workplace

Socialism is a form of control Communism is the ultimate control You're using this rhetorical device as saying that capitalism equals freedom, socialism

equals control. I want to be respectful to you and I've given you a couple of questions that you haven't answered yet. I'll answer any question. I want to go back to the question that I asked you.

The rhetorical strategy that you're using might be beneficial for a large media platform.

It's not based in reality.

If you bring value to me and you're so effective to my company, if you get to a point that I don't give you a good salary and I don't give you equity, what's gonna happen to you most likely?

I'm gonna try to start a union with my workplace so that way we can collectively bargain on how to raise the floor for all of us.

That's one of the options, but guess typically what ends up happening?

What happens?

They're busted? You leave and you go to a different company and you I think in some places they work. I told you earlier many cases. They're divisive agree You also mentioned wealth of nations you like Adam Smith. I think a lot of his ideas Yes, you disagree or you do also agree that landlords are parasites. I don't agree landlords I'm sorry Adam Smith even wealth of nations author said that I don't I said that rent is your cherry-picking I don't, I know you're cherry picking. I don't think landlords are parasites. I think in many cases, when you think about what's happening with New York right now,

this is why I'm telling you guys, I hope all of us reunite in four years and we have a conversation and I hope Mamdani wins. I am hoping Mamdani wins because that case study is going to get opened up and all of

you guys are going see me both can we both agree that corporate Democrats are a stain on this country? Corporate Democrats that utilize their leverage and utilize their influence to maximize their own private wealth is a bad thing that we should discourage I think if it's their choice I don't think you want to get to tell them what to do what not to do so you think that like insider trading should Be allowed I'm not for insider trading you just said it's your choice. No, if you're being specific. You can use your influence. If you're specific with insider trading,

that's a different conversation.

I just think that all of these are examples of why capitalism is not a meritocracy, especially when you're saying that politicians who utilize their influence to maximize their own wealth. You could be right. When you're talking about landlords

who are profiting off of necessity for people. Right.

Or you're talking about business owners for people that just want to collectively organize. You could be right if the data was shown. I'll shake your hand absolutely.

I'm not trying to disrespect you.

No.

Thank you. You've been very respectful. No, no.

But for me to tell you this, everything here

can be proven based on data.

Correct. If your policies are so attractive, I'm going to come to you.

Empirical data shows that worker cooperatives are not only sustainable to market collapses, but they also provide more of an actual attachment to the work that those workers have the alienation of labor is Absolutely making people hate their jobs Why do you think most people watching probably don't like the workplace that they're in but still agree that there's some problem in America? Whether they're saying it's immigrants or whether they're saying it's billionaires

What the problem is in America is people don't feel an actual attachment to what they're producing in the world about Social Security

What do you think about what FDR did? Wait, do you have nothing to say

about those worker cooperatives?

No, because your point's been made. Go back to social, this has been done with, right? If we have a couple minutes,

what do you think about social security and how FDR got a lot of things great. I really like his second bill of economic rights I think it's very vital that we provide people with housing and we decommodify things that are necessities Do you know the difference between elastic and inelastic goods stay on Social Security? I don't know the difference. What do you think about Social Security stay on that? Okay. Well Social Security I think was initially had as a social safety net to add a supplemental income to people's pensions. So most people going into like the 1950s, all the way up to the 1980s, were given pensions by corporations as a promise

to if you work for my firm, I'll make sure that I supplement the exact same salary that you're getting throughout the rest of your life. Now what Ronald Reagan did was he changed the pensions to contribution-based retirement, which means I have to put this into 401k,

I have to put it in the stock market, and if the stock market collapses, uh oh, I don't have anything. I think that social security is definitely needed as a supplemental income, and right now, since we have contribution-based retirements, it's absolutely needed, because if you don't want old people eating cat food, we probably need

some sort of sustainable income for them.

So when he came up with social security, do you think his intention was to have 74 million

people use it today. Do you think that's what he thought was gonna happen? Yeah, and I think it's because you're not gutting the program in its entirety. You can say that Social Security is a failure if you take the wheels off the car, the car's not gonna run. When Social Security-

But you can continue to buff it up and you make sure that you have good guardrails,

it can be a successful program. something today ends up getting bigger and you never expected it. When social security first came out in 1935, the first benefits were paid in 37 and it was paid in a lump sum. At that time we had 128 million people living in America. Do you know how many people got social security? Tell me 54,000. Do you know when benefits started? Tell me 65 years old. So let me say this again to you. Life expectancy was 61.

Social security benefits started at 65.

Right, so you're saying because we've increased life, people need to work longer, right?

Only .04%.

So grandma should be working at the mill right now.

Let me make my point, and you can say anything you want to say.

Well, I'm just saying, you said as life expectancy increases, people should be working longer.

Let me tell you where we are today. People should be working longer. Let me tell you today. You want to extend the retirement age, right? No, no. If you bring that to today and you bring the math, exact same formula as the great FDR

came up with. See, Patrick, here's the difference between our worldviews. You're saying that because Social Security, right now.

Today, there's of 128 million people, .04%, life expectancy 61, benefits start 65. Today, it's 74 million out of 340 million, that's 21%, when life expectancy is 78, benefits start at 65.

Do you know who's gonna pay the price on social security? Not my generation, yours is.

Yeah, if we keep doing cuts, correct. If we keep doing cuts and social security tax payments.

No, because you're gonna run out of money.

You're gonna run out of money.

No, that's not how it works. So the difference between our worldview, Patrick, is you're saying not only should people work longer into life because life expectancy has increased, without preventative care, and that's not only going to increase the deterioration of people's living conditions, it's also going to lead to a worse economy. Because let me tell you, 70 year olds,

not going to be the most productive members of our economy. They should be spending time with their families, they should be easing into their passing away, we shouldn't be forcing grandma to go to the mill.

It's going to be on your back.

You'll be paying for this in 30 years. Yeah, I think that Patrick is a really great salesman. I think that he came in and confidently sold what capitalism is. But I think that the main point of today really showed that capitalism's best product is giving

excuses for its own failures.

I don't think that we should be giving these people a large platform to amass a larger following, but I do think that we should expose these people to the light. And I think that even if people have horrendous and repulsive views like he did, I want to hear them because I want to know who those people are.

I also don't think that he really listened to a lot of the claims. I also don't think everyone listened to his claims either. So I don't know how productive of a dialoguer was,

but maybe we convince some people at home one way or the other and maybe there's some value to that, maybe not. My vision for America is if there's anything that's happened after COVID, we used to be here. We disagreed on issues here. This is center, this is libertarian, this is conservative. And then during COVID, we went here, here, here, here, here, where we are in a very interesting place that some people don't even want to talk to somebody else that they don't agree with.

It's gotten to the point that we are a little bit too divided right now, It's gotten to the point that we are a little bit too divided right now, and I'd like to see America be more united than as divided as it is.