00:00:04.120 We are social creatures for the most part, so we want to ensure that the people around
00:00:11.880 We don't want to see our neighbours struggling to make ends meet, and in the cases where
00:00:17.480 they are struggling, we want to be able to do something to help them.
00:00:21.640 The unexpected can always happen, and so there needs to be some kind of safety net in order
00:00:27.520 to help people who find themselves in a precarious situation.
00:00:33.160 It might be a precarious health situation in which case they need.
00:00:36.840 Some kind of medical care provided by the state, by the society in which they live.
00:00:42.920 No one says that we shouldn't have state-funded roads, do they?
00:00:47.160 The roads are there, built by the state, so that everyone can get from here to there
00:00:53.880 How much more important is the health of the society, the physical well-being of people,
00:00:59.640 and for those people who can't afford to pave their own health care because by virtue
00:01:04.560 of accident, by genetic accidents, they're going to be suffering cancer while someone
00:01:17.560 Compassion and love means coming together as a group in order to identify the people who
00:01:23.360 are at most risk in society, at risk of falling through the cracks.
00:01:28.960 So for this reason, we have things like welfare.
00:01:32.120 We have benefits paid to people who are unemployed or who reach old age with insufficient
00:01:38.440 savings, people who have a disability of some kind or other.
00:01:42.920 We have these kind of safety nets, this social welfare payments by the state from people
00:01:49.440 who can afford it, from people who are wealthy and who pay their taxes to the extent
00:01:57.360 And that tax money goes to those in their society who can't otherwise afford to meet their
00:02:05.320 For example, the health care, for example, even feeding themselves and taxation is on a sliding
00:02:11.560 People on low incomes in a place like Australia pay nothing in taxes whatsoever, and the people
00:02:16.680 on the highest incomes, they still don't pay too much.
00:02:19.640 They pay more, however, than people on the lower end of the tax scale.
00:02:24.200 But whatever the case, taxes are a net benefit to society.
00:02:28.760 Taxes go to paying for the roads that already exist and to maintain those roads.
00:02:34.280 They go towards things like hospitals and schools.
00:02:40.320 Without these things, in particular, the police and the court system, there would be anarchy.
00:02:46.360 There would be a society without institutions that maintain the stability required in order
00:02:53.320 for us to make fast progress off into the indefinite future.
00:02:57.800 In other words, we need at least some level of socialism.
00:03:03.160 All we're going to debate now is precisely how much socialism we need.
00:03:07.640 The poorest among us need to be sustained in some way so that they can flourish.
00:03:14.800 In the case of where they actually have a job, they need to be given a minimum wage.
00:03:19.240 They shouldn't just be able to be paid anything by the employer that's seeking to employ
00:03:24.360 That state needs to regulate and set a minimum wage, a minimum living wage so that people
00:03:32.320 And for those who do not have work or cannot find work, then they're going to need to
00:03:40.520 They need to be able to have the freedom to go out and to buy the better essentials they
00:03:44.600 need, the food they need, the shelter to put roof over their head.
00:03:49.160 They need to be able to clothe themselves so that they can eventually hopefully get to
00:03:53.920 So we need socialism to stop people from falling through the cracks.
00:03:58.800 If you yourself have ever been a student or you've been unemployed or you've suddenly suffered
00:04:04.840 severe sickness or some other kind of natural disaster where you need the state to step
00:04:09.840 in, where socialism is required, where society comes together to help you, people who
00:04:15.960 don't even know you, the taxpayers around you, coming to help you, the state coming to help
00:04:21.520 Socialism provides that net and the term safety net should not be derided.
00:04:27.400 It's important that people know and have the security of realizing that should the
00:04:32.180 worst go wrong, then some entity will step in to help them.
00:04:37.480 The state will step in, this you are not alone, the state is able to help you.
00:04:42.200 And the amount that the state gives to people isn't like they're going to become rich.
00:04:50.160 This is why socialism is required so that people can meet their basic needs.
00:04:54.720 In situations and circumstances where they otherwise wouldn't be able to, where they
00:04:58.680 might otherwise die of starvation or die of serious illness.
00:05:05.200 So that when you don't have a job, you won't go hungry and starve to death.
00:05:08.840 We need a minimum wage so that when you do have a job, you have enough to survive and
00:05:13.480 perhaps even save some so that you can get out of that lowest income bracket and maybe
00:05:20.840 At this point, we should realize that it would be better if we taxed the top earners in
00:05:28.040 The top 1% as we talk about, a little top 0.001%.
00:05:32.880 If we just talk about the most wealthy people in the United States, it's often said we
00:05:36.760 should tax them more and then we could pay for so much more.
00:05:39.760 The United States, for example, could have free health care for everyone.
00:05:45.880 This is straw man by saying, well, people who claim this, you know, if we were to just
00:05:50.040 tax the top 100 earning billionaires in the USA, somewhat more, then we could pay for universal
00:05:57.760 health care and perhaps a universal basic income.
00:06:00.720 Well, the straw manning of this is that people don't realize what we're really talking
00:06:04.720 about is not just taking the personal income of these people, but taking a little bit
00:06:08.400 of the revenue of the top companies, the top earning companies across the United States.
00:06:13.760 I mean, look at this table, look at how much money companies like Walmart and Amazon just
00:06:22.680 That amount of revenue, if it was taxed at a higher rate than what it is, would easily
00:06:26.680 provide enough money for universal basic income and universal health care across the country.
00:06:39.920 What we need to do is to have more compassion in society.
00:06:43.520 We need to consider people who can't make ends meet at times, who can't find the healthcare
00:06:49.440 they need, who can't afford the healthcare they need, and who can't afford the food they
00:06:57.360 This is why happiness is very strongly coupled to how socialist a country is, and this
00:07:09.800 We are social creatures for the most part, so we want to ensure that the people around
00:07:14.760 us aren't suffering needlessly, who can disagree with that.
00:07:19.120 It's a strange impulse that people have, that if you were to object to the first part,
00:07:25.640 namely that we live in a society typically, and scientifically speaking, where social creatures,
00:07:32.000 even if there are a whole bunch of people who aren't particularly social, they're called
00:07:35.640 introverts, it's a strange impulse to then think that if you don't endorse socialism,
00:07:42.120 that you're unconcerned about the suffering of others.
00:07:45.960 This really does, this debate about socialism versus other ways of organizing society,
00:07:53.320 and particularly economic systems, that people on one side of the debate don't care about
00:08:01.440 the suffering of people, or care less about the suffering of people.
00:08:05.080 Maybe they've thought through the logic of the situation, which is what I want to try
00:08:09.800 and do today to try and think through the logic of how best to help the most number of people.
00:08:17.160 This isn't necessarily utilitarian argument, but if you begin with certain ideas, certain
00:08:22.600 explanations about how people behave and about how knowledge is created and therefore
00:08:28.400 how wealth is created, maybe you will find that pursuing particular ways of trying to get
00:08:36.720 the most number of people, the most wealthy you possibly can, will lead to a dead end, whereas
00:08:42.120 the on the flip side, if you thought your entire life, that the only way to help the
00:08:47.200 most number of people is for everyone to join together into a collective and help each
00:08:53.400 other, rather than for everyone to pursue their own happiness in their own ends, we don't
00:08:59.040 want to see our neighbours struggling to make ends meet, and in the cases where they are struggling,
00:09:06.280 we want to be able to do something to help them, again, no matter what your economic perspective,
00:09:13.480 it's independent of whether or not you want to help other people or not.
00:09:18.840 There can be socialists who don't care about helping other people, and they can be capitalists
00:09:28.120 One thing that many people who identify as capitalists are concerned about when it comes
00:09:33.040 to socialism is that takes away from them the very real opportunity they would otherwise
00:09:39.760 have to help someone, instead it's handed away to the state, and the state is an entity,
00:09:47.520 but it's not a thinking thing, it doesn't actually have compassion, and this is the really
00:09:52.400 worrying aspect of things, that if you hand over to an entity which lacks compassion,
00:09:58.240 because it's not capable of having compassion, it's after all just an entity, it's not
00:10:02.400 an individual person, only individuals can have compassion, then it will deal with people in a way
00:10:08.960 which is not compassionate. On the other hand, if you enable individuals to help one another,
00:10:14.960 they will have compassion one for another, and they can show kindness one to another.
00:10:20.720 The unexpected can always happen, and so there needs to be some kind of safety in order to help
00:10:27.200 people who find themselves in a precarious situation. It might be a precarious health situation
00:10:34.240 in which case they need, some kind of medical care provided by the state, by the society in which
00:10:40.960 they live. No one says that we shouldn't have state-funded roads today, actually some people do.
00:10:49.360 Some of us recognize that the state-funded roads are particularly poorly kept, and if you compare
00:10:55.440 them to the toll roads, the privately-funded roads, those privately-funded roads work so much better.
00:11:01.760 The only thing is that these roads have been grandfathered in, so to speak. The roads that
00:11:07.680 were built by the state were built by the state precisely because, and maintained by the state
00:11:11.280 precisely because they insisted that no one else build roads. They insisted on total control of
00:11:18.160 the roads, and so they passed laws saying they are the only entity able to build the roads,
00:11:23.520 except in certain situations these days where great freeways are made that are private,
00:11:28.480 and you have to pay a toll to go on to those roads. There's absolutely no reason why this day and
00:11:33.040 age of technology and Google Maps. You couldn't have entirely private roads, and you would
00:11:38.640 pay for the roads to the extent that you drove on them and actually utilized them, or use some sort
00:11:43.200 of transportation that went along them, whether that's walking or riding a bike or driving your car
00:11:47.760 or catching a bus, and then people would be interested in maintaining the roads that they use every
00:11:54.000 day, and the roads that get used more often would end up having more income put into them
00:11:59.200 if they were privately owned and maintained far better than the roads that barely ever got
00:12:03.680 used, which of course wouldn't need as much maintenance, whatever the case. This so-called
00:12:08.480 public goods issue, the idea that there are certain things out there in society,
00:12:14.000 the by virtue of the fact that we've always done it this way, need to continue to be always
00:12:18.800 done this way, is a silly idea of looking at any form of innovation that just because the road is
00:12:25.440 there built by the government doesn't mean it needs to be forever owned by the government and
00:12:30.000 maintained by the government. There are entities out there more creative and better suited
00:12:35.280 at looking after things like roads than the government is. The government as I like to say is
00:12:39.520 expert at almost nothing, except the use of force that's about it. The roads are there,
00:12:45.200 built by the state, so that everyone can get from here to there faster than they otherwise would
00:12:50.000 have. How much more important is the health of the society, the physical well-being of people,
00:12:56.480 and for those people who can't afford to pay for their own health care because by virtue of
00:13:01.840 accident, by genetic accident, they're going to be suffering cancer while someone else doesn't,
00:13:07.600 just because of their DNA. Why should they be punished? Why shouldn't the state step in to help
00:13:13.520 them? One reason is, in the counterfactual world, the alternative world, okay, in Australia,
00:13:19.760 we do have this so-called universal health care, but in an alternate world where we didn't have
00:13:24.720 universal health care, and we actually pay something called the Medicare levy. We pay normal tax,
00:13:30.000 which is quite substantial, and then on top of that, we pay the Medicare levy, so everyone
00:13:35.200 actually pays a separate amount of tax. It's about 2% of your usual income of your overall income,
00:13:42.560 just for the purpose of having health care, and so that is some number of thousands of dollars per
00:13:47.280 person per year. Now, if people weren't paying that, for example, if I wasn't paying that
00:13:52.400 every single year, I certainly do not consume in costs all of those thousands of dollars that I
00:13:58.080 paid to the government for Medicare, for the universal health care each and every year. I
00:14:03.200 know we're neither. I also have private health insurance, as well as paying the Medicare.
00:14:07.920 Everyone in Australia pays the Medicare, but if they didn't pay the Medicare, that money could go
00:14:12.160 into savings. That money could go into private health care, so everyone would be much more wealthy,
00:14:18.000 much more able to invest in their own health care to the extent that they require it,
00:14:23.360 and one may say, well, what about the situations where you are confronted with a vast cost
00:14:29.840 of your health care? You're involved in a traffic accident, or you have cancer and you need
00:14:34.720 very expensive treatments. Again, this comes down to private health care, and private health care
00:14:40.320 would be far more affordable in the case where people don't contribute so much money in taxation
00:14:48.720 to the government, if they're able to keep it forward themselves. What about people who can't
00:14:53.360 still can't afford it? This already happens, by the way. There are many, many situations where
00:14:59.520 even with universal health care, people still end up requiring treatments that are experimental,
00:15:07.040 or that the government simply doesn't fund. Although Australia, for example,
00:15:11.200 isn't able to provide, and people have to travel overseas, for example, to the United States,
00:15:15.040 in order to get particular treatments. And in those cases, what happens is we have charities,
00:15:20.640 we have GoFundMe's, and these things are actually very effective, and they require no coercion,
00:15:26.480 no force. People just announce that they need particular treatments, particular health care,
00:15:30.640 that the government isn't providing, and the generosity of the society in which they find
00:15:34.960 themselves reveals itself through the voluntary donations towards these crowd-funded things.
00:15:41.360 When they say, well, why should people have to do that? Well, isn't it demeaning that a person
00:15:45.280 has to do that? I don't think so. It wasn't it Jesus who said, ask, can you shall receive?
00:15:50.240 People should be willing to have gratitude for the people that help them.
00:15:54.080 If the state is merely providing things, very few people who receive health care ever
00:15:59.600 thank the people in society who've paid the taxes in order for them to receive their health care.
00:16:04.560 But at least in this situation of voluntary donations, the person actually can show their gratitude
00:16:10.400 to specific people who have helped them. It concentrates both the compassion and the gratitude.
00:16:15.600 This is good for a society, whereas if you disperse and dilute both the gratitude and the compassion,
00:16:22.720 no one seems to care about anyone else. And this is a bad thing.
00:16:26.480 Compassion and love means coming together as a group in order to identify the people who are
00:16:33.520 at most risk in society, at risk of falling through the cracks. And so for this reason,
00:16:39.600 we have things like welfare, we have benefits paid to people who are unemployed,
00:16:45.680 or who reach old age with insufficient savings, people who have a disability of some kind or other.
00:16:52.240 We have these kind of safety nets, these social welfare payments by the state,
00:16:58.480 from people who can afford it, from people who are wealthy and who pay their taxes to the extent
00:17:03.920 they can afford, they pay more tax. And that tax money goes to those in their society
00:17:10.400 who can't otherwise afford to meet their basic needs. For example, the health care,
00:17:16.320 for example, even feeling themselves, it's interesting I began that part of the defense of socialism
00:17:22.160 with this idea of love and compassion, a loving and compassionate society would ensure that people
00:17:27.040 don't fall through the cracks. But in fact, as I've also said, compassion and love are the
00:17:32.800 very things that are distilled out of a socialist society. There is no such thing as a compassionate
00:17:39.360 society, there are compassionate individuals. And if you take away the capacity of an individual
00:17:45.600 to go and help another individual, then there is no compassion there. All that's happening
00:17:50.800 is that a government, which again is made up of systems and institutions incapable of loving,
00:17:57.840 incapable of showing compassion. What those things do is merely enact processes, enact legislation
00:18:05.600 and regulations. That's all that's going on. It's a big, unthinking machine. It's the difference
00:18:10.400 between artificial intelligence, a regular computer that is unthinkingly going about its business,
00:18:16.320 the wheels and the cogs are turning, the transistors are on or off, and an actual person
00:18:23.200 who is thinking and feeling, deliberating and considering the extent to which they're going to show
00:18:29.920 compassion or not show compassion. That person is deserving of their charity or not deserving of
00:18:35.360 their charity because the person giving the charity either has sufficient wealth to share it around
00:18:40.960 or not. What the state does is take away that love and compassion. It takes away the capacity
00:18:47.520 of the individual who might not have enough money to actually sacrifice, to some extent.
00:18:53.120 Now, I'm not for sacrifice, but at least a person has a choice in the situation where the state
00:18:59.920 hasn't removed the choice from them. There are many people just below the threshold at which
00:19:05.200 if only they were above the threshold would be giving charity far more frequently. But they can't
00:19:10.560 give to charity more frequently, precisely because the government has taken away much of their
00:19:16.560 money through taxation. Socialism therefore is not compassionate. It is the opposite of compassionate.
00:19:23.520 It is cruel by the imposition of systems and regulations on people who otherwise would be able to
00:19:30.400 show generosity, charity and compassion. And taxation is on a sliding scale. People on
00:19:37.040 low incomes in a place like Australia pay nothing in taxes whatsoever. And the people on the highest
00:19:42.400 incomes, they still don't pay too much. They pay more, however, than people on the lower end of
00:19:48.160 the tax scale. But whatever the case, taxes are a net benefit to society. Taxes go to paying for
00:19:55.440 the roads that already exist and to maintain those roads, they go towards things like hospitals and
00:20:01.600 schools, they go towards police and the court system. If the government could run things
00:20:07.440 really efficiently and really well, then the logical conclusion one should reach is that they provide
00:20:14.080 almost everything in society. For example, equally as important as healthcare is food,
00:20:20.080 why doesn't the government distribute food? Forget McDonald's, forget your local supermarket,
00:20:25.120 forget the local Chinese takeaway, have the government deliver food to people. Food is very,
00:20:31.040 very important after all. As important as healthcare, you have no health if you don't have any food,
00:20:36.160 why don't we do this? Because it's quite obvious that private enterprise, the free exchange of
00:20:41.840 goods between people, works far more efficiently in a society where people are freely able to
00:20:48.320 exchange goods and you end up with more food in such a study. You end up with much more food
00:20:53.440 production in society, much more consumption in a society where there is the free exchange of
00:20:59.200 money for food. Repeat for mobile phones, repeat for cars, repeat for air travel, etc. But there
00:21:06.320 are certain things where people say I know the government is better at this particular thing.
00:21:10.240 For example, healthcare is the one that comes up most frequently in roads as well. As I've already
00:21:14.720 said, I think the roads that are private end up being a lot better maintained than the roads that
00:21:20.800 aren't, the healthcare one is very contentious. And the reason the healthcare one is contentious is,
00:21:26.320 as many people have observed, it's mainly an issue in the United States. It's mainly an issue
00:21:32.240 in the United States because there is not universal healthcare there. And they have a less regulated
00:21:39.920 pharmaceutical industry. And it is true. The United States subsidizes the rest of the world's
00:21:46.960 pharmaceuticals. This is simply a fact. The pharmaceutical companies that are there in the United
00:21:52.160 States are able to develop, experiment and research new drugs, new medicines, and then sell those
00:22:01.840 to the most wealthy market in the world, which is the United States. And the United States happily
00:22:06.960 for the moment, at least to some extent, not as much as should be able to, is able to sell
00:22:13.760 those drugs and make a profit so that they can then put that money back into research to make
00:22:19.920 new drugs, for example, COVID vaccines. Other countries have governments that make regulations
00:22:26.560 on the cost of medicines. And all Australia does, Australia makes deals with pharmaceutical companies.
00:22:33.760 Such that the drugs can come into the country, the medicines can be imported into our country,
00:22:38.480 but at a specific price point. And that price point is just enough so that the profit margin
00:22:46.240 is very, very, very slim for any drugs that are imported into Australia. Because Australia,
00:22:52.640 the Australian government being a huge market, is able to demand that. Now, of course,
00:22:58.000 the pharmaceutical companies could turn around and say, no, we're not going to sell you
00:23:01.840 any pharmaceuticals at that price. But then, of course, their reputation and their marketing
00:23:06.960 looks terrible. The Australian government says, well, the company is refused to sell us those drugs.
00:23:11.840 So the pharmaceutical companies make very little money. They make some, but they make very little
00:23:16.000 money by selling their new drugs, especially the new drugs to places like Australia. But they make
00:23:21.520 good money in the United States, or at least better money. This is unfair. It would be far better
00:23:27.600 if the drug market was largely unregulated, which is largely what happened, by the way,
00:23:32.960 with these COVID vaccines. A lot of the regulations were dropped, so that there was
00:23:38.400 natural competition arose and very fast development, faster than ever happened before,
00:23:43.360 because the regulations were removed. I know some people strangely enough, the people that are on
00:23:48.480 the more conservative side of the aisle, are worried about the fact that some of these drugs were
00:23:53.280 pushed through very quickly. But in fact, that's a good thing. It's better that they didn't have to
00:23:57.600 go through so many trials and be so heavily regulated. As almost all other pharmaceuticals are,
00:24:03.040 the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry is a travesty. We can see that now that when
00:24:08.800 the stakes are high for a global pandemic emergencies, such as the COVID-19 emergency,
00:24:14.880 we had fast development of vaccines, and these companies were able to make profits,
00:24:19.600 regulations, slow things down. And the government is not sufficiently expert in being able to
00:24:26.080 determine the efficacy of something or other, the safety of something or other. They have
00:24:31.440 some scientists, they have some doctors, but they're not necessarily the best,
00:24:35.840 they don't necessarily know what they're doing better than the people who work in those industries
00:24:40.640 who are actually at the front line. Without these things, in particular, the police in the court
00:24:45.520 system, there would be anarchy, there would be chaos, there would be a society without
00:24:50.480 institutions that maintain the stability required in order for us to make fast progress off
00:24:58.560 into the indefinite future. So I agree, there is one exception to the rule here. We need to have
00:25:05.440 a state apparatus that includes police. To maintain, as I say there, stability while undergoing
00:25:12.320 great change. Rapid progress is something that has only happened over the last few centuries,
00:25:18.640 and it's only happened in places which have robust institutions, steering society,
00:25:24.560 carefully within the guardrails that would otherwise, if they weren't there, cause chaos and anarchy.
00:25:30.480 So we need courts to settle disputes. We need police to have a monopoly on violence.
00:25:35.360 We need a military to protect ourselves from those other countries, which are not stable in the way
00:25:41.520 that we are stable. If everyone was perfectly reasonable, all of the time, if they were just
00:25:47.760 using their reason, then we would never get into a situation where the threat of force ever arose.
00:25:55.200 We would simply talk it out and talk it out indefinitely. We would use our reason all the time.
00:25:59.200 And in that case, we could indeed have an anarcho-capitalist society. But in that case,
00:26:05.280 in this anarcho-capitalist society, we wouldn't even need private security because everyone
00:26:10.480 would be using their reason all the time. But in a situation where force is actually used
00:26:16.320 sometimes when a dispute arises, sadly, then we need a monopoly on violence. If we don't have
00:26:22.800 a monopoly on violence, if we have a private industry of competing police forces as the anarcho
00:26:30.320 capitalist say that we could have, then you've got warfare. It's effectively the difference between
00:26:35.360 one state actor and another state actor, where everyone has their own little fiefdoms and people
00:26:40.800 go to war. This is not good. So to me, anarchy is kind of like the abstract ideal which can never
00:26:47.840 possibly be reached, the ideal where everyone always and only ever uses their reason all the time.
00:26:54.640 And there is never a possibility of force because people simply don't even consider it.
00:27:00.080 That's not the situation we're in. It's not the situation we're going to be in for the foreseeable
00:27:04.400 future. I cannot imagine a scenario in which people always forever use their reason because I think
00:27:10.240 we humans are error prone. And reason is that very thing which corrects errors. And we're never
00:27:15.360 going to be without errors to correct. If we were without errors to correct, then I grant we could
00:27:19.920 have an anarcho capitalist society. But we're not there. We're not going to get there anytime soon.
00:27:24.960 And so therefore we need a monopoly on violence. We need a state police force. And so therefore
00:27:31.680 we need a court system to settle disputes between the citizens and the police. And we need a
00:27:37.760 government of some kind, setting the laws that would determine how the courts are going to
00:27:42.960 arbitrate disputes. And of course, one hopes all three of these things are utterly independent,
00:27:48.480 one from another. It was independent as you possibly can have them be the government and the courts
00:27:53.600 and the state apparatus and the police, all acting according to law, but not easily influenced by
00:27:59.840 the power of each other. We don't want the courts being influenced by the government who are using
00:28:05.440 the police to intimidate them, for example. And we don't want the police to be intimidating the
00:28:10.000 government, certainly not. And we don't want the courts constantly telling the government what to do either.
00:28:14.720 In other words, we need at least some level of socialism. That much is obvious. All we're going to
00:28:20.720 debate now is precisely how much socialism we need. The poorest among us need to be sustained in
00:28:27.360 some way so that they can flourish. That might mean a minimum income. In the case of where they
00:28:33.040 actually have a job, they need to be given a minimum wage. They shouldn't just be able to be paid
00:28:37.680 anything by the employer that's seeking to employ them. That state needs to regulate and set a
00:28:43.520 minimum wage, a minimum living wage so that people can live at least somewhat comfortably.
00:28:49.840 That there is a classic slippery slope argument and the slippery slope is real. It's very real.
00:28:55.440 I concede many people who regard themselves as free marketeers, free market capitalists or just
00:29:01.920 capitalists, libertarians, whatever. Those of us who concede, yes, we need a government,
00:29:07.280 yes, we need a police force, yes, we need the courts. I'm not arguing for socialism. That's not
00:29:12.160 socialism. These are essential components of a capitalist society so that we can preserve
00:29:17.760 the free trading of people one amongst the other without coercion, without having coercion in that
00:29:22.960 system. So when I begin there by saying if we admit that we need to have government funded police
00:29:30.800 forces, then therefore we admit that we need some level of socialism. Therefore we're just talking
00:29:36.240 about degrees of socialism. So now let's talk about how much money to give the unemployed and the
00:29:40.880 poor. This is the wrong way to think about it. Capitalism requires that there is a monopoly on violence.
00:29:46.800 Capitalism requires that there are rules of the game and the rules of the game can be enforced
00:29:52.000 by what? By the police. Under the direction of courts, implementing laws that the democratic system,
00:29:58.960 the legislators, representing the people, have decided that the rules of the game should be.
00:30:04.080 This is not socialism. And by the way, many of us of course think that in the distant future,
00:30:09.920 not as far away as the ideal and archaic system where everyone's using reason all the time,
00:30:15.200 but certainly in the not too distant future, we could have a situation where society is so wealthy
00:30:21.680 that tax rates fall almost as zero because the only thing that we would be funding in such a
00:30:28.000 need to ideal world and need to ideal capitalist society is all we need to fund our police and courts
00:30:35.040 and the government. And when I say the government, I mean literally the parliament or the Congress,
00:30:40.560 that's all we need. And the cost of these things then becomes minimal even for the military.
00:30:45.920 And in that case, you then have a situation where you really can have voluntary taxes.
00:30:51.360 This is a long way off into the future. Many people might think this is fantasy talk
00:30:56.480 and for now it is, but give it time. Okay, we are so much more wealthy today than what we were
00:31:01.600 100 years ago compared to 1000 years ago. We're becoming healthier, wealthier, wiser, and often
00:31:08.880 to the distant future will have less and less and less coercion. And the logical outcome of that
00:31:13.280 less and less and less coercion in society is the capacity to have very minimal taxation and indeed
00:31:21.840 voluntary taxation off into the distant future. None of this is an argument for socialism.
00:31:28.160 And for those who do not have work or cannot find work, then they're going to need to be given
00:31:33.280 a minimum welfare check of some kind. They need to be able to have the freedom to go out
00:31:39.200 and to buy the better essentials they need, the food they need, the shelter to put roof over their
00:31:44.480 head. They need to be able to clothe themselves so that they can eventually hopefully get to a job
00:31:49.120 interview. The freedom to go out there and to buy the food they need to get the job they need.
00:31:56.000 In a system, which is a socialist system, which has things like minimum wage,
00:32:01.840 this means that if you are unemployed and I've been unemployed before, but it means that
00:32:06.880 there are certain deals as an unemployed person you can't make. It's illegal for you to make.
00:32:11.280 You can't turn up to someone and say, will you pay me $5 per hour to clean your house?
00:32:17.680 You're not allowed to do that because there's a minimum wage that cleaners need to be paid.
00:32:22.320 But if someone needs the house cleaned, but they're not a very wealthy person, and they cannot
00:32:27.040 afford the minimum wage, let's say the minimum wage for a house cleaner is $12 per hour,
00:32:31.440 but they can't pay $12 per hour. So what do they do? They clean their own house.
00:32:35.520 Okay, and so they waste their time cleaning their own house when they could be doing something better.
00:32:38.880 If they could pay half that amount, $6 per hour, then they could easily find a cleaner to do it.
00:32:44.400 So what the minimum wage does is it actually means that some people are not able to be employed.
00:32:49.200 And of course minimum wage puts up costs for everyone. If you have a minimum wage on delivery drivers,
00:32:54.320 well, that's going to be passed on to the consumer who buys the food. A minimum wage for
00:32:59.280 white staff is going to cause the price of food and the restaurant to go. They need to be able to
00:33:03.600 have the freedom to go out and to buy the better essentials they need. So as to freedom,
00:33:09.200 you know, they're not free actually. They're far less free. They're not free to get the job that
00:33:14.400 they might otherwise want. And of course aside from minimum wage, we have unemployment benefits,
00:33:19.440 and we should observe here that in Australia, for example, these unemployment benefits are
00:33:26.960 of such an amount that people can survive on them. It depends on where you are. If you're in
00:33:33.040 Sydney, then you're really going to struggle to find a house which your unemployment benefits
00:33:38.960 will enable you to pay the rent, pay for your food, pay for your transport, all that sort of thing.
00:33:44.000 Indeed, it's going to be quite a low wage, but indeed, the amount of benefits that you get from
00:33:48.800 the government is going to be too low for you to exist in a place like Sydney. But you only have
00:33:54.080 to go a few tens of kilometres out of Sydney, maybe a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.
00:34:00.880 And you will find places where the rent is far cheaper and where you will be able to survive,
00:34:05.520 at least in a share house or something like that, until such time as you find a job.
00:34:10.400 Of course, people don't want to do this quite often. People want to be paid by the government
00:34:15.040 a sufficient amount so that they can live wherever they want, eat the kind of food they want.
00:34:19.760 But this just means that they're not motivated to get a job and do something productive with
00:34:24.880 their life. So we need socialism to stop people from falling through the cracks. And you'll know
00:34:30.160 this, if you yourself have ever been a student or you've been unemployed or you've suddenly suffered
00:34:36.880 severe sickness or some other kind of natural disaster where you need the state to step in,
00:34:42.400 where socialism is required, where society comes together to help you. People who don't even know you,
00:34:48.880 the taxpayers around you coming to help you the state coming to help you. If people weren't
00:34:53.760 taxed so much in the first place, they could build up a bank of savings such that if they
00:34:59.680 suddenly did lose their job, then they would have something to fall back on to tide them over until
00:35:05.040 such time as they were able to get another job. As for being a student, well, if you're living
00:35:10.560 at home with your parents, then most of your costs are being met anyway. When I was a student,
00:35:16.160 I was working simultaneously while being a student. I think this is less common for some reason
00:35:21.520 these days. As for getting sick, the same argument applies as I was saying earlier. If you weren't
00:35:27.120 taxed so much in the first place, you could build up a bank of savings in order to prepare for
00:35:32.400 that rainy day, or at least to be paying to private health insurance. There's also unemployment
00:35:38.320 insurance that people can get as well. As to natural disasters, yes, this is a place where the state
00:35:43.120 sometimes steps in. In Australia, we have something called the state emergency service so that when
00:35:48.400 there is a huge storm or a flood or a drought or a fire, the state emergency service can step in.
00:35:55.120 But these people are largely working voluntarily and so volunteers, the society comes together under
00:36:01.040 those times of crises to help one another out without needing to be paid, largely speaking,
00:36:07.040 by the state. Socialism provides that net and the term safety net should not be
00:36:13.520 derided. It's important that people know and have the security of realizing that should the
00:36:19.600 worst go wrong, then some entity will step in to help them. The state will step in. This,
00:36:26.320 you are not alone. The state is able to help you. You're not alone in either case.
00:36:31.440 You don't need the state to step in. When the worst happens, and this is clear to us,
00:36:37.040 almost every single year at least here in Australia, advertisements appear on the television
00:36:42.000 around about Christmas time, talking about the Salvation Army, for example, and various other
00:36:46.800 charities who are there to help people during those times when they're going without,
00:36:51.920 and it might be a difficult time for them. So the state doesn't always step in anyway, and once
00:36:57.760 more, if people weren't already taxed so much, then they would have the capacity to be more
00:37:04.800 generous with the money that otherwise they're giving away to the state, not being giving away,
00:37:09.840 that is being taken from them by the state. The state is spending money in a way that it
00:37:15.360 deems fit, rather than the way in which the individual deems fits. I'm a strong advocate for,
00:37:21.040 working locally. So if you see homeless people in your locale, then you should definitely help them.
00:37:26.960 I think that's an important thing that you can do within your own community and builds a sense
00:37:31.440 of community as well, even with strong social welfare programs, such as Australia has. We still
00:37:38.000 have homeless people. I think almost every country in the world has some kind of homeless problem,
00:37:43.360 or people in need, people unemployed, people who can't work, and the state isn't particularly
00:37:48.000 good at solving that problem. Charities are, however, because when people work one-on-one,
00:37:53.120 it's not some bureaucrat who has very little interest in the person in front of them. So some
00:37:57.920 entity will indeed step in. It doesn't need to be the state, however. It's preferable that it's
00:38:04.800 neighbours, that it's charities, that it's people who know personally the people in need,
00:38:10.640 in many, many cases. This is family and friends. And this, by the way, is an argument for
00:38:16.800 a strong family connection, such that when you are in trouble, if you have these strong family,
00:38:23.040 the strong family unit, then the state isn't needed at all in the first place. The family
00:38:27.760 will help out. And then friends can help out. And in those situations where, unfortunately,
00:38:33.680 someone doesn't have family and friends, you have charity. The whole point of
00:38:37.840 stateism and socialism is to devalue the family, to denigrate these smaller, more local
00:38:45.840 connections, and to dilute the networks, the local networks in favour of this grand,
00:38:53.520 overarching state apparatus at a very high level, to make the family seem less important
00:39:00.480 that in fact what you need is you need to be able to look to state officials for help.
00:39:05.760 And the amount that the state gives to people isn't like they're going to become rich.
00:39:10.400 It's just enough to meet their basic needs. This is why socialism is required,
00:39:16.000 so that people can meet their basic needs. In situations and circumstances where they otherwise
00:39:21.200 wouldn't be able to, where they might otherwise die of starvation or die of serious illness.
00:39:26.720 No one is dying of starvation in a place like Australia. No one is dying of starvation in a place
00:39:31.040 like the United States unless something has gone severely wrong with the family, friends,
00:39:36.000 and local community. It's not up to the federal government in any of these wealthy nations,
00:39:42.720 to be ensuring that people do not starve. This problem has long since been solved.
00:39:48.640 As for people dying because they're not getting sufficient medical care,
00:39:52.000 that happens within countries like Australia anyway, even with so-called universal healthcare.
00:39:58.480 They happens, people die. Sometimes treatments are too expensive even for the state,
00:40:03.440 but people should have private health insurance. And where private health insurance can't be
00:40:08.320 afforded, people can get loans. And as I said, people can seek donations and get charity.
00:40:14.320 All of this anyway is a moot point in a more wealthy society and a more wealthy,
00:40:20.160 healthy productive society happens when you tax people less. When you stop confiscating their
00:40:27.280 wealth, when you allow them to make decisions about their money better than the state can.
00:40:31.680 By, for example, investigating such a way they make even more money and are even more resilient
00:40:36.800 to problems like bad health when it happens. We need a minimum wage so that when you do have a job,
00:40:43.120 you have enough to survive and perhaps even save some so that you can get out of that
00:40:48.880 lowest income bracket and maybe save some money for a house. At this point, we should realize that
00:40:54.080 it would be better if we taxed the top earners in society more than what we do. The top 1%
00:41:00.560 as we talk about a little top 0.001%. If we just talk about the most wealthy people in the United
00:41:07.040 States, it's often said we should tax them more and then we could pay for so much more. The United
00:41:11.840 States, for example, could have free healthcare for everyone. And sometimes this is straw man,
00:41:17.520 this is straw man by saying, well, people who claim this, you know, if we were to just tax the top
00:41:22.800 100 earning billionaires in the USA, somewhat more, then we could pay for universal healthcare
00:41:30.160 and perhaps a universal basic income. Well, the straw manning of this is that people don't realize
00:41:35.680 what we're really talking about is not just taking the personal income of these people,
00:41:39.040 but taking a little bit of the revenue of the top companies, the top earning companies across the
00:41:44.400 United States. People move between tax brackets. The top 1% and the top 0.1%. Isn't the same
00:41:52.560 year on year and decade after decade and generation after generation. That's simply not true.
00:41:57.760 When I first got a job, I was absolutely in the minimum tax bracket. I wasn't paying any tax,
00:42:03.840 and then I gradually moved through the tax brackets. I'm still not in the highest tax bracket,
00:42:08.640 but people are so-called upwardly mobile. They move between tax brackets. Sometimes you move down,
00:42:15.120 sometimes you move up. As for taxing this top 0.1%, yes. Even if you did tax them most of their
00:42:23.360 income, 90% or something, it would be a drop in the ocean in terms of trying to fund universal
00:42:28.880 healthcare for the United States. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the next 98 wealthiest billionaires
00:42:36.640 in the United States don't know where near enough money, having enough money, to fund
00:42:43.360 universal healthcare across the United States. It's nowhere near the amount that's required.
00:42:47.920 As for taxing the revenue, now if your ears didn't prick up when I said revenue,
00:42:53.200 then immediately spot an error, then you should rethink how much you understand about
00:42:58.720 issues like economics. Revenue is simply how much money you've taken in. Without regard to what your
00:43:04.560 costs are, what people are really interested in is of course profit. They want to tax profits.
00:43:09.760 But I don't know, as I've said before, how a complicated company, let's say like Amazon,
00:43:17.040 actually works. What they do with their profits exactly. I know to some extent they're constantly
00:43:23.840 innovating, they're finding new ways to get things from producer to them, distributor,
00:43:30.080 to the customer, to the person who's buying the stuff. They're using drones and all sorts of things
00:43:35.200 now in order to do this. If you take away their profits, you'll take away some of their capacity
00:43:40.560 to innovate. Their capacity to produce better services and better products. Their capacity to
00:43:46.240 create more knowledge about how to create more wealth and make things better for everyone.
00:43:50.640 The mere existence of Amazon has made so many people's lives better. Walmart is the same thing.
00:43:56.560 These companies provide competition for whatever was there before those companies existed.
00:44:03.200 People like to complain that some of these vast companies are as if they're monopolies,
00:44:08.640 but that's simply wrong. They have competed and continue to compete with many other corporations.
00:44:15.280 When it comes to a corporation like Google that has vast profits, people say it's a monopoly.
00:44:22.000 It's not. There are other search engines out there. And by the way, what it did was
00:44:27.040 compete away so many other alternatives that weren't as good. There's no reason why someone can't
00:44:33.040 create something that tomorrow isn't even better service or search engine than what Google is.
00:44:38.240 But if you start to regulate, that's a perfect way. Or if you start to tax away their capacity
00:44:43.520 to innovate, that's a perfect way to ensure that no new competitors entered the market,
00:44:47.920 because those new competitors that otherwise would have entered the market. And they are
00:44:50.960 subject to the same regulations and the same level of taxation. And it makes it all the more hard
00:44:55.760 or more difficult for that new competitor to enter the market. Big corporations often do like
00:45:01.600 regulation, by the way, because it does keep their competitors at bay. If something like Google is
00:45:07.120 regulated or Facebook is regulated, for example, then this means that they can wheel and deal with
00:45:13.840 the government. They can wheel and deal with the state, with the politicians, with individual
00:45:18.000 politicians. They can lobby for the particular regulations they want. This is what happens,
00:45:22.560 so that when the regulations are implemented, they're implemented in such a way that it is
00:45:26.880 unfavorable for any competitor to try and enter the market. I mean, look at this table,
00:45:31.680 look at how much money companies like Walmart and Amazon, just to name the top two, are earning.
00:45:39.200 That amount of revenue, if it was taxed at a higher rate than what it is, would easily
00:45:43.520 provide enough money for universal basic income and universal healthcare across the country.
00:45:50.800 Why not do this? This is not only about economics. This is about morality. What we need to do
00:45:57.760 is to have more compassion in society. We need to consider people who can't make ends meet at times,
00:46:04.640 who can't find the healthcare they need, who can't afford the healthcare they need,
00:46:08.240 and who can't afford the food they otherwise need. This is why we need a welfare state.
00:46:13.920 This is why happiness is very strongly coupled to how socialist a country is.
00:46:20.160 It is about morality. It is about morality, but morality is not primarily about compassion.
00:46:25.440 Compassion is part of it, but what it's mainly about is not using coercion,
00:46:30.960 not forcing someone to do something they don't want to do against their will,
00:46:35.440 trying to remove their capacity to reason and to create knowledge in a particular area.
00:46:40.080 If someone needs help, then the compassionate thing is to allow people around them to decide
00:46:46.400 the extent to which they can help, and in many cases they will be able to help quite a lot.
00:46:52.320 And when they do, isn't that wonderful? They get to demonstrate their compassion,
00:46:56.160 and the person knows who's helping them, and can be grateful for the help.
00:46:59.920 I've been grateful for help before from people, but if the state steps in,
00:47:04.240 who, which person, which individual, is the person being helped supposed to be grateful too?
00:47:10.560 Everyone, not really, because not everyone pays tax after all. They've got no one to think.
00:47:15.600 Maybe you think that's a good thing. Isn't it good? They don't have to thank anyone.
00:47:19.120 I happen to think it's a bad thing. I think that when someone receives something for nothing,
00:47:24.160 then this isn't good. This is a one-way transaction. Someone has given away something,
00:47:28.960 a whole bunch of people in society, in this particular case, when we're talking about welfare
00:47:32.240 payments, whole people have given away stuff, and that person that receives it doesn't know who's
00:47:37.280 giving it to them. It's a one-way transaction. The person giving away the stuff doesn't actually
00:47:42.000 even feel good about it, because they haven't willingly given it. I don't willingly give my tax away.
00:47:46.800 I would happily willingly give some of my money to someone in front of me who needs help.
00:47:51.200 And I think almost everyone else is the same. What socialism does is it takes away this opportunity,
00:47:56.480 this personal interaction, this capacity for us to help each other far more than what we do.
00:48:01.920 This is the danger of these kinds of names. These kinds of names that say,
00:48:05.440 leave it to the state, to this system, to this legislation, this unthinking machine,
00:48:13.360 those wheels and cogs are going to grind away, and some people will be helped, and other people
00:48:18.480 won't. And the system doesn't care. It doesn't have the capacity to care, unlike individuals do.
00:48:24.240 And this is why we need to defend socialism. I have called this video a defense of socialism.
00:48:29.520 If you think this is unfair that I have somehow tricked you, maybe you expected the trick after all,
00:48:35.200 it is me. I would say that I'm genuinely defending socialism. This was my best attempt at still
00:48:41.680 meaning socialism, still meaning what I've heard in terms of arguments for socialism, what I've
00:48:47.840 believed in previous lifetime about socialism, that it is supposedly the compassionate thing,
00:48:54.000 and in some cases it's the only way of doing things. And the best way of doing things,
00:48:59.440 but now I don't think that. This is a genuine defense of socialism.
00:49:03.440 But as Papa would implore us, defending something isn't showing something as true. I've provided
00:49:10.400 all the supporting arguments I can for socialism. I don't think any of them are valid.
00:49:15.840 What we need instead is to have a way of distinguishing one explanation from another.
00:49:21.760 We have a problem situation. Our problem situation is, how to ensure that we create as much
00:49:27.600 wealth for as many people as we possibly can. This is one way of framing the problem. Another way
00:49:32.640 of framing the problem is to say, how can we enable as much creativity as we possibly can,
00:49:38.160 because problems will be encountered in the future for which we don't have solutions right now,
00:49:42.880 obviously, and we're going to need to find our solutions as rapidly as possible if we don't want
00:49:46.640 to go extinct. What is the way in which we can best create the conditions such that we are a
00:49:53.600 problem-solving society that can rapidly solve problems? One way is to ensure that we can maximise
00:49:59.760 the amount of wealth in society, and the way to do that is to maximise the amount of wealth
00:50:04.720 that each individual can generate and create. This is not done best by socialism. One of the ways
00:50:12.080 to slow down progress, to slow down wealth creation and knowledge creation, and creativity broadly
00:50:18.560 speaking, is to have regulations, is to take away money from some people. Indeed, the people who
00:50:24.720 produce the most, and give it to the people who produce the least, and to have less motivation for
00:50:30.960 those people who produce the least, to actually increase the amount of productivity they have,
00:50:35.360 and to actually demodivate the people who are producing the most by taking away so much of their
00:50:40.640 hard-earned wealth. A truly progressive by which I mean a society which values genuine progress,
00:50:47.920 scientific progress, philosophical progress, mathematical progress, economic progress,
00:50:51.920 progress across all areas, enables the individual to flourish to a maximum extent,
00:50:58.000 within the confines of a society which has robust institutions, which allow for us to make
00:51:05.040 this rapid progress while maintaining stability. But what it does not require are huge amounts
00:51:12.400 of coercion and force, the redistribution of wealth from the most productive to the least productive.
00:51:18.080 This is my defense of socialism. The defense of socialism does not stand up against the criticisms
00:51:26.640 from capitalism. The capitalist theory is a critique of socialism, and this critique is an
00:51:35.440 absolutely perfect refutation of socialism. The best defense of socialism cannot stand up against
00:51:42.480 the critiques of capitalism. The critiques of the way in which wealth is actually generated.
00:51:48.800 We generate wealth best by being free to explore the space of possibilities in terms of innovation
00:51:56.240 and creating knowledge and building wealth, being able to build something which then you can show
00:52:03.840 to the other people in society, and they can say, wow, there's a lot of value in that.
00:52:07.440 I want a piece of that. I want to buy that product, participate in that organization, employ your
00:52:14.560 services, when people are maximally allowed to do that, and people are allowed to keep the earnings
00:52:21.040 from being creative to the greatest extent that they can, then everyone's boat rises with the same
00:52:26.720 tide, and where, as the socialists are concerned, people do actually fall by the wayside to some extent
00:52:33.120 through misfortune, through accident, through ill health, through unemployment, etc., etc.,
00:52:38.800 then the rest of society is so much more wealthy, and so much more ready to be generous,
00:52:44.160 that you don't need a state apparatus to step in, less and less do you need that, because the
00:52:49.120 individuals in that society are so much more wealthy, and the more wealthy people get, the more
00:52:53.680 generous they get. The United States is very wealthy, but it also gives more charity than anyone else,
00:52:59.760 so there's my defense of socialism. A defense doesn't mean that I agree with it. In fact,
00:53:04.960 I don't. I disagree with it strongly, and even the best defense, sometimes, isn't good enough.
