Against Socialism with Keith Knight

27:49It raises the cost of production means we're less productive. It raises the cost of social cooperation and contracting. So we get less cooperation, less contracting, less wealth and lower standards of living. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think there's some questions that you just hit on here in this already on the podcast and that you hit on in your in your longer video where it's like these kind of very basic questions that you I really would like to hear. And we're taking this back to like basic philosophical stuff here but i would like to hear answers from this from some of the democratic socialists like questions like why doesn't everyone make the minimum wage why why is such a small percentage of the workforce make the minimum allowed wage like why are employers voluntarily giving more money that they don't have to and as you also said why do prices of things ever go down you know like why do the prices of electronics you know you got to think here you have a producer who's already gotten you to pay so much money for an iPhone and they're going to lower the price or they're going to make it better than it was when they already know they got you.

28:55I mean, why on earth? I mean, why wouldn't the greed that spiked during 2008 and spike during during 2021? Why wouldn't that same greed spike right there and have them raise the price? I mean, there it does seem I got to say over here, there is no coherent answer to this question under the democratic socialist worldview. Why would it not? You know, if this is a thing, you know, as they say, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer or whatever like that, it's like, okay, but you would say like at a certain point, what happens there, right? To all the poor people, like if there's only pressure in one direction, which is the capitalist class always being more greedy and driving our wages down and down and down, wouldn't you expect to see 95 % of the workforce at the minimum wage?

29:39And if the poor get poorer, what we should see is instead of looking at money or dollars, it's so hard to compare how much is$100 in America versus$100 in Great Britain's currency versus the euro. How do you compare today to 1970 countries? It's so difficult. The best measure to use are time prices. This would be the average amount of time a person has to work in order to access a product or service. In short, the time prices of accessing products and services has drastically decreased in the last 100 years. Now, that is a microscopic amount of time that the human race has been in existence. And in the last 100 years, since 1926, there's no democratic socialist explanation outside of price controls, which obviously disincentivize production and lead to shortages, clearly.

30:35So what we should see if the poor get poor, there is no increase in accessibility to the average person of anything that's privatized, Tylenol, Dayquil, computers, LASIK eye surgery, water bottles, printers, paintings, books, televisions. All of these things should have been at 1 % because only the 1%, only the bourgeoisie can afford such things. In 1926, 1 % of people had them. In 1966, 1 % of people had them. And today only the top 1 % can afford these things because they are privatized. So that's one way to measure wealth. Another way, if you want to use dollars, is to look at the average earnings of a 16-year-old and then compare it to the average earnings of a 46-year-old.

31:23By looking at these groups, we see that one group, even though the same minimum wage applies to them, one group earns a lot more than the other group. That disparity alone disproves the idea that it's about greed or if you happen to have a nephew, it's all about nepotism or it's, well, because of white supremacy. Other groups get paid different. Of course, Nigerian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans all have higher incomes than white Americans. So the fact that there is a disparity, the fact that when someone starts a job, they're getting paid a very small amount of money, each year they get on-the-job experience, the average person's wage tends to increase.

32:04If the poor got poor, what we would see is the average person's income over time starts at a spot and then decreases. You start at$10 an hour, and then after five years, you go to$9.50, and then after five more years, you go to$9. We see literally the exact opposite. Now, say that there was the stagnating wages that Paul Krugman loves to lie about. If prices are drastically decreasing in the economy because there isn't a central bank and there's mass production and the producers are trying to appeal to mass consumption, that actually wouldn't be an issue because your purchasing power would be increasing and you wouldn't really mind.

32:43okay, I'm going to get 20 bucks an hour for the rest of my life. But over time, that money's going to buy more and more and more. So even that wouldn't really be an issue if you had no central bank, if there were mass production, if there were fewer regulations. One more thing, I don't, I should have made this on the self-interest point, because do you agree with me that the rejection of self-interest is critical to the foundational dispute between us and democratic socialists? Yes. I think that there's, um, uh, I think that, and maybe this is like some kind of Adam Smith basic, uh, stuff here, but I think that, um, capitalism incorporates, uh, the human reality of greed and self-interest, um, and it can channel it.

33:31And socialists essentially have to just pretend it's not there. Um, and they have to, because they, or certainly at least they have to pretend it's not there for those in government, for sure, because otherwise you got major problems, is that individuals who are this selfish in the market are now also this selfish and now with the power of the state, which has to be stronger than the market in order for the whole thing to work anyway. So you have to give them more power. And yes, also, I think there's an enormous, but socialism doesn't have a cleansing mechanism for the negatives of selfishness, the way that that markets do in other words so you can only get successful if you're serving other people in a free market whereas for for example if you were having which is something socialists never even try to deal with but like if everything in the economy is democratically decided well like how how exactly does it help for everyone who works in the typewriter industry to get a vote on whether the home computer should be produced because obviously they're going to vote against that.

34:35We all recognize that it was really not in the typewriter store's interest that home computers became the thing that they are. But when you have a market, you can go, well, the consumers wanted it and some producer wanted to produce it. And so sorry, that's like, in other words, there's going to be losers. It will be against their self-interest and democracy only mucks that up. So yes, I think you're absolutely onto something huge there. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Prolon. If you want to be your most radiant this summer, check out Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet.

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36:27Thank heavens NBC, ABC, and Fox weren't able to vote on whether or not podcasts could enter the competition market. So one thing about criticizing the rich and just supporting the poor, we can say to them or just supporting the masses instead of the bourgeoisie. One thing we can say in their favor is being rich almost necessarily meant you were evil for the vast majority of history because the only way to acquire large amounts of wealth and resources was theft and conquest. It wasn't until there was the concept of private property, the freedom to contract and make mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges that people then could reasonably create large amounts of wealth in a first-generation timeframe by meeting consumer demand.

37:17And that – so for the vast majority of history, being rich could necessarily equate with evil. So what I use for the self-interest proof or way as a – to provide some evidence, you can look at what I call the Donald Trump test. What we can do is take someone, have them in the private sector, and then put that same person in the public sector because according to democratic socialism, in the public sector, they have to answer to us, the voters. So they're going to be trying to please us. But in the private sector, evil, greedy, self-interest, individualism, dog-eat-dog mentalities and externalities, that's horrible.

37:59We want people in the public sector. What happened was we actually took someone, Donald Trump, from the private sector where he had the apprentice, he had buildings, which whether or not you like them, Donald Trump was not that much of a threat to society as far as being totally detrimental when he was in this voluntary sector. Even if you didn't like him, he had no right to conscript you with the Selective Service. He had no recognized right to declare war. He had no access to a central bank. He had no right to take 20, 30, 40 percent of your annual income by force with the threat of putting you in jail if you don't chip in.

38:38So this actually provides an insight into the reality. This is not just theory. This tests the theory. If we have a nefarious actor, are they more detrimental to society in the voluntary sector, in the private sector, or in the coercive sector of politics? Because I don't like that building in Vegas. I think it's really hideous. But compare that to tonight a civilization might have to end. I don't want it to, but it probably will. That's a little different. Killing 156 civilians on February 28th of 2026, a little bit worse than the horrible episodes of The Apprentice. This is a real-world example.

39:20If you don't like something, make sure there's not an apparatus that has a lot of power that those bad people can occupy because humans are inherently self-interested. The example I use in the video is compare the thought of someone who passed away in your life that you cared about. Take one person and compare your emotions with how you feel about that one person to the 500 ,000 deaths that took place during the Crimean War in the 1860s between the British, the French, the Ottomans, and the Russians. If people weren't self-interested, they'd get 500 ,000 times as sad about those as they would about this one, or they would get, according to World Population Review, 167 ,000 people across the world die every single day.

40:07you would thank god we're self-interested or we wouldn't be able to operate you should be get if you're not self-interested you should be getting 167 000 times as sad about everyone else who dies every day than you would about your boyfriend girlfriend mother father because those people are just as equally worthy of life as anyone else you can even put the scandinavian test why are there luxury item goods in denmark finland and sweden when those people know that they're starving people in Africa, India, Indonesia? Shouldn't they take their scarce resources and say, we can't have any bars, any TVs, any computers.

40:45We have to give this money to the poor. Every time a democratic socialist watches Netflix or watches YouTube or takes a nap or goes to a restaurant, they are spending scarce time and resources that could be allocated to helping the poor. Why don't they do that? Because they're self-interested just like everyone else. So the difference between the free market and socialism is not whether or not people are self-interested. Self-interest is a universal condition of the human race. The difference is under which constraints are self-interested actors operating. Can I as a self-interested person only get money if I first please you or do I have access to the coercive apparatus of the state and I could meet my ends absent your consent?

41:29Then I don't have to raise your standard of living before I get your money. yeah no that's absolutely right you know so i want to okay i want to end on against me and actually i want to kind of do i do against me last and i want to do maybe gene epstein's i think go together with with against me like the um the gene epstein argument about voluntary uh cooperatives and stuff like that but i want to do let's do like another economic one before we get to that because i do find more and more that i did the example i use i can't i got to look this up because Like, I don't know what the term for it is, but I think it was like an ancient Rome.

42:05I think this for like a thousand years, humans, best scientists thought that viruses came from the clouds and that that was just how you got sick. Like if you had a runny nose, your doctor would just be like, I know the damn storm clouds coming in. That's what happens. It is just totally wrong. This is not true. And, you know, it's just they thought they were doing science, but it's not science. It's just they had it all wrong. And that's kind of how we feel about everyone else with economics. like we really do like almost the Austrians really do feel like, listen, I don't know what it is that you econometrics start doing, but like none of this is science.

42:37This is all just kind of nonsense. And there is, so like, I don't know, there's something about how the idea that you're, you're trying to use a tool that cannot deliver prosperity for prosperity. You know, there's, you're there's something about like you're trying to it's it's all comes down to just price controls and price controls don't work essentially when it comes to economic arguments one of i uh one of the ones i use is uh fallacy number 49 the surplus value myth so a lot of democratic socialists which makes them different from your average democrats will necessarily see the surplus value aspect of the economy as the rich, not necessarily the employer, but the stock owners, the rich, the influential people are in some ways extracting surplus value from the labor.

43:33A few things about this. On the concept of getting money from the worker, notice they don't differentiate between voluntary and coercive if you're benefiting. So even if I voluntarily contract with the employer, they still say the employer is extracting my surplus value. Or take this concept and extend it to stay-at-home moms. The stay-at-home mom is reaping benefits from her husband who works. She would be extracting the surplus value of the husband. There's nothing wrong with this, according to you or I, but the Democratic Socialist needs to make sure that this mom is also part of the working class or else she's not contributing to the workers' production of goods and services.

44:18She is extracting the labor surplus of her husband. This would mean immediately all welfare has to end because welfare recipients are necessarily getting tax money. That is the surplus value of the workers. Anyone who goes to college or is in school, the colleges make money by getting the students to work. That is extracting their surplus value. Any internship should be illegal automatically because the employer is benefiting with the surplus value that the laborer creates. So this is completely psychotic, obviously. These are voluntary transactions where people see, well, I'd like an internship because I want on the job experience so I could have a better income in the future.

45:04I work for zero dollars an hour at school in hopes of getting more money in the future. I go to work to give money to my wife because this is a relationship that I greatly value. So by not differentiating between voluntary surplus value and involuntary, a socialist is already at a complete deficit. Also, notice how this only applies to profitable industries where the surplus value is being extracted. The majority of businesses are not profitable. So in that case, it would be the employees extracting surplus value from the employers. And then the employees, I guess, are the criminals in this case.

45:45And then they lie and say, well, we're just against, we embrace the spirit of Karl Marx. It's not that we're anti-private property. We're just anti-bourgeoisie private property. But these morons are always taxing the working class with sales tax, income taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, or death taxes. So even in the economic realm, by regulating the actions, by coercively limiting the actions of the employees, they're making the employees worse off than they otherwise would be by rejecting their freedom to contract and have access to an employer who comes up with the, okay, before the value of the capitalist, comment on the surplus value thing.

46:27Yeah. Well, well, look, I'll say this, right? So right here, and this is the way I said it a few episodes back was that I think, you know, in Marx's use of the labor theory of value, it's just, I think this is right at the heart of what messes up this whole kind of understanding. And look, the labor theory of value is just objectively wrong. It's been disproven. It's the clouds cause viruses. It's no, it's not. It's germs. There's a different answer. That's not what's creating the value. This can be demonstrated and logically proven that the labor is not what's great. Now, Adam Smith, for despite his flaws, like he relied on the labor theory of value, but it didn't really muck up the theory of the invisible hand, let's say.

47:11But socialism is destroyed by that because their entire worldview here, which is just, again, objectively wrong, is that essentially the worker is creating the value with their labor. Now, if that were true, then in a sense, they've got a little bit of a case because you would go, yeah, you're going into work. You're bringing in 15, you're creating$15 an hour of value and your employer is only paying you 10. His job is just to sit there and siphon off the excess value that you created by working. But the fact is that none of that's true. And we all know that on a human level. And actually we wouldn't even go get the job if that were true because we already have the work.

47:51I got the value. Why do I need to go to an employer then? No, look, if I'm a really good salesman because I'm just I got a silver tongue and I'm really good at selling and I go get a job selling computers and I make 300K a year because I'm such a good salesman. It's not that I just brought in 500K and my boss chooses to only give me 300 of it. So this is stealing 200K from me. If you look at things like that, you got it all. No, I didn't have any computers. All I had was my skills to sell. This dude was sitting on a factory of 10 ,000 computers. I didn't have that. In order to get that, I would have had to lay out like$5 million, you know, in order to eventually go make the 500 ,000.

48:36I would have had to take enormous risk. I would have had to put a ton of work into building a store and building a brand name and getting a customer base and all of these other things. So the deal was you take care of all that and I got the selling and we agreed upon a split of the value that both of us are creating by coming together. If somebody built a factory, that was because they had money. They could have spent that on present consumption. Instead, they spent that on a factory that now people. So again, And the point is that, yes, your employer isn't stealing from you. You came to an agreement in the same way your housewife isn't stealing from you.

49:15You came to an agreement. So, yes, I think the whole idea of the value being derived from the worker and then being stolen from everybody else is made up. It's all nonsense. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Trollco. Troll Co. was built by two guys from the oil patch who were sick of clothing companies pretending blue-collar workers didn't exist. While most brands chase trends and influencers, Troll Co. was made for the people who work with their hands, solve real problems, and keep the world running. It's built on that simple, dirty hands, clean money mindset.

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50:34Imagine going on to Shark Tank. This is how we can test the value of an idea, either to investors or to customers. And when you go on, you say, I have an idea. I'll have 1 ,000 workers for my company. Or actually, I want it to be more valuable. I want more workers. I want 10 ,000 workers. I don't have an idea of what to sell, how to sell it, how to market it. I don't know where we're going to be located. I don't know if it's going to be a product or a service. I don't know what training methods we'll use for these 10 ,000 employees, but I have the 10 ,000 employees. And this is where all the value comes from.

51:13So just give us an idea that's going to generate billions of dollars in revenue by meeting consumer demand, and then we're all good. Anyone watching that would realize, huh, I think the idea of coming up with what to sell, product or service, kind of does play an important role, a vitally important role in determining a company's value or the value that workers have when they have access to capital equipment. So what Marx would say. Look, I mean, well, again, look, because and look, it's just it sometimes it comes off like you're being a dick to like to low skilled workers or something like that.

51:54But like you kind of got to tell the truth to people. Otherwise, you know what I mean? Like in the same way that like your kid. Well, maybe when they're real young, you want to lie to him about some stuff like everything always works out and is going to be OK. And there's no chance that you die in a horrible car accident or something. You might tell your four year old. But you wouldn't tell your 18-year-old that there's nothing wrong about them and they're perfect. And actually, the reason the world exists is because you and everybody else is just taking value away from you. And the truth is that, say, for example, look, if you, I don't know exactly what to use, but let's just say, so here in this podcast, right, I got people who work on them.

52:32Natalie produces the show here. We have people who sell ads for the show. We have people who do, you know, there's people who do a bunch of different jobs. Now, you could look at this and you could say, oh, like, well, because Dave gets paid more, that means he's ripping all these people off. He's he's taking advantage of them and they're just making like a little salary, but he's making more money. But and it's like, well, no, look, the reality of the situation is that you're these people that I'm talking about are much younger than me. They're 20 years younger than me. I wasn't making any money 20 years ago.

53:05They're paying their dues. They're learning the industry. They're coming up. But the truth is that if I've had people, if somebody said like, well, I demand$500 ,000, I'd go, okay, well, we can't afford to pay you that. And we'll find someone else who can do the job. And that's that. Somebody else can come in and do this. That's why you're not worth more money. I mean, it's just like, look, if you, I'm sorry, like if you are a minimum wage worker, then no, you're not the one producing all of the value who everybody else is ripping off. You are replaceable. Get your skills up. Sorry, this is real life.

53:37and that's how things get produced and how things work. And Jordan Peterson brought that to the dating market. And that's why it's so important. I'm alone because I'm just too terrific. No, clean your room, better yourself. This is one metric to use to determine whether or not a democratic socialist is a nefarious person or a well-meaning person who is mistaken. And this is their willingness to accept voluntary solutions in the interim. So they could say, I want the state to coercively fund and monopolize healthcare and education. And you can say, all right, well, that's probably going to take a while, even if you think it's right or wrong.

54:19Is there anything the working class can do in the present to increase their income or make themselves healthier? You want to get healthy? Go to YouTube, search the keto diet. That'll change your life dramatically for the better. We have an obesity epidemic because people have not watched enough keto videos on YouTube, which I did and lost 110 pounds. And if you want a higher wage, we could stage a protest outside the White House, raise the minimum wage. But there's another way, which is look at people in a company. Some get paid more than others. What are these people doing that the others are not?

54:55Showing up on time, getting on the job experience, requesting a raise, increasing their skill set. And in order to get an even higher wage, you want a general foundation where people have access to a lot of employers. So you can tell an employer to shove it more easily, but with more regulations, you have fewer employers than you otherwise would. Or take the concept of education. The democratic socialist, even after After all the internet and computers and Amazon has given us with free books, they still want you to go to those four years of university for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then they say, but wait, I want the state to coercively fund that.

55:36So you'll pay for it through taxes instead of having to pay tuition. If you want to invest in a business, you've got to do that yourself. But we want you to go to college, the place where Marxists are disproportionately influential. That's where we want everyone to go for four years. Well, maybe I could wait until I'm college age and all those things, or I could go back and spend four years of my life. But also, I have access to Grok. Grok is now free. I set my grandma up with it two or three weeks ago. You could educate yourself there. You could use Google. You could use Internet Archive. You could use Wikipedia.

56:10You could use the Libertarian Institute and get a ton of free non-coercively funded education that way. Those would be solutions that if you came to the Democratic Socialists, they'd say, well, it's really good that in the health care industry, Tylenol and Dayquil and NyQuil and a ton of things at Walgreens, those improve your health care. And those are really cheap. And that's good in the meantime. And you could do things to get a raise in the meantime at your job. and you could improve your educational value by using things that you already have access to. Yeah. If they reject those, then you're dealing with someone who's just a domestic imperialist, not someone who actually wants to improve the wellbeing of the poor.

56:52These fuckers every week should be celebrating the drastic decrease in absolute poverty that the human race has experienced in the last hundred years as a causal result of private property and the freedom of contract. Anyone who doesn't is a domestic imperialist, not someone who cares about the workers. Yeah. Amen, brother. I mean, look, it's like and look, I mean, I guess this is and so we could do kind of the Gene Epstein one here because this is real in line with what you're just saying and then do the against me. But I think kind of the broader message and some of you guys, you more astute listeners who really follow the Libertarian Institute and all the great work they do, you probably got this if you watched Keith's awesome video.

57:29But really kind of the the secret theme there. Right. That isn't exactly expressed out loud is that all this kind of applies to statism in general. Right. Like all of this is really arguments against coercive intervention into the political life and the economy. and that it's not essentially right. It's not just the democratic socialists. It's basically just that they exist on this spectrum of how much you want this instance. And look, I'd say it like this. What we're saying, and I mean this in the most good faith way to any democratic socialists who might listen to this. What we said at the beginning is like, hey, let's just define our terms.

58:12Let's admit what the disagreement here is really about. It's not that me and Keith hate kids learning stuff or hate hip surgeries or anything like that. We believe these things should be provided voluntarily on the market. And you are arguing for statism. Like that's the core of the disagreement here is that you, and to your point, Keith, that I'll kind of segue into the point that Gene Epstein makes, which is very in line with what you were just saying, but that he likes to throw out a lot of these statistics. One of them I remember is that the bottom half of the population, So forget this 99%, you know, the rich 1%, the bottom 50%, right?

58:50So we're giving you like everyone making 80K a year is out, okay? Like this is the bottom 50 % controls one third of the consumer spending, okay? So now that's not quite as equitable as maybe the socialists would like it to be. Perhaps they think the bottom 50 % should control 50%. Now, of course, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to be misleading. The top 1%, if we were looking at investment numbers or something like that, it would be way more skewed. But just looking at consumption, okay? The bottom 50 % controls one-third of the consumption of the United States of America, the biggest consumption engine in the history of the world.

59:27One-third of that consumption power is completely controlled. Do you know one-third of the entire consumption economy can move mountains, okay? So all the voluntary path is wide open to the democratic socialists. All you have to do is like, look, like let's say let's say a first year intern here at the podcast network goes, hey, I don't think Dave should be the boss of part of the problem. I think we should all own it equally and we should also. OK, well, you can't violently overtake my company, but you can go start your own company where everybody owns it equally. Nobody works for anyone. Right.

1:00:03So you can go start worker co-ops and let it be known that, hey, the system here is that we do it democratically. There is no owner. There is no employee. We're all in this together. And all you got to do is convince the workers of the world. You don't even got to convince the workers of the world. You got to convince like a percentage of the workers of America to only shop at co-ops, only shop it at worker owned businesses, all that. So essentially, you can have all of this right now. You can have your socialist utopia if you can persuade people. But the bottom line is that you know you can't.

1:00:39You know you can't persuade people. You don't even want to try. And again, Keith, to your point, correct me where I'm wrong, but somebody show me one instance where the democratic socialist is arguing, actually, in this case, it should be voluntary. Actually, in this case, we don't believe in government intervention. Actually, like where is any of that? Where is any impulse to let, because obviously, look, on some level, we all know there's a difference between me sitting here and saying, hey, I believe in universal health care, so I'm a good person. Hey, I believe in fighting the war in Iran, so I'm a good person.

1:01:14Hey, I believe in taxing the rich, so I'm a good person. And then there's a difference between me volunteering at a soup kitchen two nights a week, right? Like, on some level, you do understand things have to get done at some point. And so what are you actually doing other than just advocating violence, just advocating the state do something else? Exactly. And if we want to look at the results, you'd think they'd be very appreciative of Jeff Bezos is of the world giving people more access to books than anyone else. For Steve Jobs innovating the computer and saying, well, at least that was a really good thing.

1:01:47He really empowered the average member of the working class to have access to a computer. Instead of only the rich and their Ivy Leagues having all this information, now an average member of the working class can use Grok. Or I'm also using Claude. That also has a free version. But imagine the power. AOC, Momdani, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren all get on the phone. Hey, we're starting a GoFundMe. Everyone is going to tweet this out every single day for six months. and the GoFundMe is going to be a eventual replacement for a public option. If you can afford your health care, do whatever. If you can't afford it, you come to us.

1:02:27That would be extraordinarily powerful, but it would be voluntary. And that's why it's not heavily focused on in that aspect. And that's why the definition of socialism is not people coming together and having dignity and being nice. It's actually the institutionalized aggression against private property. And I think that's why and that's why I kind of wanted to close on the against me one here. So we'll do that next, because if if you concede this, which I really just don't see how if you at least concede, say that the difference between me and or you and Ryan Grimm or Crystal Ball, you know, antiwar leftist who I really like a lot.

1:03:07But the difference between our economic policy simply is that they believe in the government and I don't. They believe the government should do all these things. I believe the government should stay out of all of them. That is the difference in our policy. And what this does come down to just, again, objectively assessing the thing like we kind of did the economics and this is getting more into just kind of the moral argument of all of that. But I do think there's something really important here to be made because, Keith, it's kind of like this, right? If me and you could still try to put ourselves in their mind, we're sitting here and saying, objectively, you are arguing for an institution which is predicated on the initiation of violence.

1:03:45This is not an institution that goes around and negotiates with people. This is an institution that says we will throw you in a cage and kill you if you resist coming to the cage. If you don't do as we say, this is a law. There's a gun behind this opinion. Whereas in the market, it's voluntary transactions with people's individual property. Now, they somehow always feel like they are in some way the noble ones. They are the ones saying, hey, we should have health care. Dave, Keith, you guys are sitting here. There are people struggling here and we're telling them, no, we can help that. You know, like they they have it in their mind that they're kind of the noble ones and they're the anti fascists.

1:04:27And to me, it's like one of the biggest things that has to be that we have to get across here, because it's obviously true, is that I am sorry when it comes to someone like me versus Hassan Piker. Hassan Piker is a goddamn fascist. Like, what are you talking about, dude? You absolutely support. There's a reason why, like, as you said here, there's a reason why you're saying nice things about Mao Zedong. You'd never say a nice thing in a world about a capitalist who built a factory. Oh, but all of a sudden Stalin or Mao built a few factories. That's nice to them. But so this was an argument that you describe really well here.

1:04:58Stefan Molyneux was the first person I ever heard put this forward. But why don't you explain this here? Because I do think this kind of does to me really get down to the core difference between the libertarian and the democratic socialist. and as they, you know, kind of pride themselves on being anti-fascist or something like that. Like this, I think, gets at the authoritarian nature of advocating for government. So you go ahead and give this argument. So this is either from his book, Everyday Anarchy or Practical Anarchy. And Molyneux asks people, if I were committing a rape, would you have the right to use violence against me to stop me from doing that?

1:05:39The average person, before you finish the sentence, says, yes, absolutely. And then Molyneux says, well, if I were committing a murder, would you have the right to use force, a gun, a knife to kill me and stop me from doing this? And if I did commit a murder or a rape, would you be justified in putting me in a cage afterward? And people say, yes, absolutely. Then he asked, well, what about kidnapping? Or what if you caught me owning like five or six slaves? Would you have the right to use violence against me? And people unequivocally say absolutely. So then he says, I don't want to chip in for the current educational system that the state runs because I think the costs exceed the benefits.

1:06:21I believe in on-the-job training for skills. I don't want to chip in for this war in Iran or the education system. I think the state health care system is a complete joke. I think the courts are at this point not doing a good job. They might do a better job in the future, and then I'll fund them. So I'm not going to chip in in property taxes, sales taxes, or income taxes this year. Do you have the right to use violence against me if I don't chip in for those? And then the excuses start to pile on. We know that this person is okay with using violence in the case of rape, murder, kidnapping, enslavement because in that sense, it's defensive.

1:07:00They're attacking you, the aggressor. But in the case of what if I don't want to chip in for the Affordable Care Act because I predict health care prices will increase since it limits competition in the health care marketplace. Do you want to put me in a cage if I don't chip in for complete bullshit? What I think is bullshit. Maybe you think it's totally virtuous and it's going to be terrific. I just don't want to chip in. Do you have the right to send the police to my house to threaten me? If I resist them, they'll kill me in front of my kids. So you better be damn sure that you're willing to use violence against me.

1:07:38So when mom Donnie is happily talking about free libraries to John Stork, what he ignores is the implicit threat that if you don't chip in, the police will come to your house, put you in a cage. And if you resist, they will shoot you. We as the civilized world need to be very careful with the amount of violence we are willing to use. And if it's people not chipping in for the U.S. government producing something, it'd be one thing if it was like a good organization. That would be evil enough. But notice, they only believe the state has a monopoly right to do this. If taxation weren't theft, Ben Burgess will say, well, it's not really theft because you don't really own it.

1:08:18Okay, why can't Walmart and Amazon issue taxes? It's not theft. Why can't I issue taxes why can't dave smith issue taxes what the hell is wrong with dave smith you have a standard for donald trump he can't issue taxes but dave smith can't what the fuck is that about stefan molyneux takes a very egalitarian exactly stefan molyneux says we have north and south korea we have east and west germany how do these idiots still think socialism's okay so he takes it into the realm of the personal he says dave i don't want to chip in for this evil bullshit in iran will you use violence against me and the people I live with if I don't chip in for this?

1:08:59And the lesson that Molyneux extracts is because people are so hesitant to say unequivocally yes, as they are in the case of rape, murder, kidnapping and enslavement, people don't really believe this bullshit. It's all propaganda that was taught in schools. How do you explain the one group that has a monopoly on compulsory education is the one group who you happen to believe has a right to initiate violence against everyone else. What the fuck are the chances of that? Yeah, well, look, I mean, no, that's right. And very incredibly well said. You know, the thing I think about a lot is like the, you know, the civil rights movement.

1:09:34And the, look, I mean, it really was a stunt that Martin Luther King and them pulled in Birmingham, Alabama. They went there intentionally because they knew they were going to get that reaction. And they had done a bunch of like peaceful sit-ins before and just didn't get that reaction. And so it just didn't like blow up the weight. But there was something about making Americans watch young black men in suits and ties get sprayed with fire hoses and have have, you know, golden or excuse me, German shepherds, you know, sick on them and all this stuff that you had to look at like the enforcement arm of this.

1:10:07You know, it's easy to support segregation in abstract, but like, do you really support German shepherds being unleashed on 17 year olds in suits and ties for standing up and demanding equal treatment? That's pretty harsh. And just saying, if your whole thing is going to be about supporting government policy, which is what you guys, you know, you won't define it. But clearly it's all about the government should do more in all of these areas. It's like, OK, well, this is the actual nature of the beast, like the actual way that this system that you're advocating works is like, OK. hey, I have a house.

1:10:39We accept that I own my house. In the same sense as you said, that nobody else can take it, right? Only the government. But okay, if I don't pay my property taxes or if I don't pay my taxes or I don't pay my, they will come for this house. They will come for what I have. They will come for me eventually and throw me in jail. And I also, by the way, I got a fair amount of weaponry here at this house. And if I simply do nothing else, but defend myself and say, I'm not going, they will kill me in front of my children. They will murder me in front of my children. Like that is what you support. That's the system you support is them murdering you in front of your children over education, housing, and not over whether we should have education and housing over whether one centralized monopoly ought to be the ones who provide it.

1:11:27So like, I'm sorry, you support killing citizens for the purpose of maintaining the only true monopoly. So don't give me this hippy dippy stuff about how you're the ones for dignity and you're the ones against authoritarianism and you're the ones against monopoly control of the economy. You are for the monopolizer and you are willing to kill people for it. I think it's something you should look in the mirror about. Exactly. And it's not just the logic behind the law. It's out of all the groups. This is literally the same group who democratic socialists are rightfully advocating is complicit in a genocide in Gaza, starting a war with Iran, killing civilians.

1:12:09They mentioned the atrocities in Iraq and Libya and Syria and Afghanistan. They've been mentioning mass murder, accusing the government of mass murder since at least Vietnam. The more well-read ones will understand that the Second World War and the atrocities against Japan and Germany were also unnecessary and unjustified or the First World War. how many millions of members of the working class does the government or u.s government have to kill maim and enslave with conscription before the socialist says you know what i think we should go to voluntary mutual aid the state appears to be too dangerous to tolerate they never even really seem to suggest that there'll be a period where we get all of these criminals out and then new people in before we expand their power like that never even seems to be stressed I guess it's like theoretically in there kind of implied, but it's like we got this problem.

1:13:01We all agree. Hey, look, we got two groups of people, libertarians like me and you, Keith, these free market gold bugs. And then we got the anti-war leftists over here. And we all agree that there's this gang. Let's call them the Crips. They just committed a genocide, man. They're killing tens of thousands of people. They're starting wars. They're murdering little girls in a school, all for no reason. They're just horrible. You know, and we go, man, we disagree on everything, but we could come together that this group, the bloods, what they just did was the most evil thing ever. We hate them. And they're like, hey, what do we disagree about again?

1:13:34And they go, oh, we disagree about health care. And what's the disagreement? And they're like, oh, we say put the bloods in charge. We're like, wait, what? These bloods, these same bloods is who you want to put in charge? And they go, ah, well, maybe we'll get like some new people in the gang. But like the same mechanism is what we're going to use for this. There you go. You're going to get some new people in the gang. Like, do you have all of the new people in the gang there yet to go? It's about 95 % still the old people, but we'd like them to start having much more power right away. I mean, come on.

1:14:02You got to admit guys, like on the face of it, that does sound kind of absurd, right? Listen, man, I hope Keith, I hope to continue this actually as a conversation. I would love to do a thing with me and you and maybe two democratic socialists who we like all get together and talk about these things. But I'm sorry, man. I'm like, we're not going to go down without a fight on this stuff because you guys are just wrong about this. It's like free Austrian economics is correct. There are laws of economics. If you want to pay attention to them, that's nice. If you don't, they're still going to exist.

1:14:39And there's the matter of human liberty and dignity and prosperity. All of these things can only be found in a system of freedom. It's the only way you can ever have to. It's, you know, one of the beautiful things, and I'll say this in closing, I'll give you the final word because we're over time. We got to wrap. But OK, Austrian economics and libertarian theory might technically be separate. You know, like they might technically be like Austrian economics is descriptive, not prescriptive, whereas libertarian theory might be prescriptive or whatever. but there is something beautiful about the fact that like you can only have you can only have prosperity under the conditions of liberty and to the extent that you have them and the same way you can only have prices under the condition of voluntarism you know it's not even necessarily that like like I do think voluntarism is a more ethical and moral way to interact I think it's immoral to like impose your will on other people who are peaceful but at the same time it's also the only way that we can have a real pricing system and a real economy and have real prosperity for prosperity for everyone.

1:15:45It's just what works. What works is people voluntarily interacting. What doesn't work is war and destruction and violence and aggression. Exactly. And I would be open to I would love for this to be a continuous discussion. I would happily discuss with Hassan Piker whether or not the United States or world in general should decriminalize all economic activity between consenting adults. That can be the premise. Gene Epstein, you have my phone number. The final word is for those who are not that interested in economics, thank you for listening this far, check out my video, Everything You Were Taught About World War II Is Wrong Churchill's Own Words.

1:16:24That is a two-and-a-half-hour presentation I use. I provided with primary sources, making the case that the US and Britain were not justified in entering the Second World War. Dave, thank you so much for having me, brother. Keith, keep up the great work, man. You're incredible. If you guys don't already, go follow Keith Knight. His work is incredible. Of course, support the Libertarian Institute. Get Keith's book, Domestic Imperialism. Really phenomenal book. If you got anyone in your life who's more like on the left liberal side, but is willing to hear this stuff out, give them a copy of that book.

1:17:01It's very approachable and very readable and make some, like if you're looking to hit a liberal with some points that are going to like maybe stick with them and hit them with some punches, like, oh damn, that's something to think about. This is, this is really the attack in the left from the left, you know, uh, book. So it's really great. You're the man, Keith. We'll do this again real soon. Thank you everybody for watching. Catch next time. Peace.

1:17:35We'll see you next time.