Stefan Molyneux
  • 2 days ago
This lecture delves into the concept of wage slavery through Kropotkin's critiques of capitalism and socialism. It begins by framing wage labor as a coercive necessity, emphasizing the struggles of the proletariat against the elite capitalists who benefit from their labor. The speaker employs an analogy comparing a concert audience to the dynamics of capital and labor, questioning societal aspirations and opportunities.

Key themes include the challenges faced by successful artists, such as Queen, and the differing journeys of performers versus their audience, highlighting the importance of talent and resilience. The lecture critiques the educational system's failure to provide necessary skills for economic advancement and discusses the complexities of social mobility. Concluding with a call for deeper investigation into socio-economic disparities, the speaker urges a nuanced understanding of success beyond perceptions of exploitation.

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Transcript
00:00All right, this is part 2 of an analysis of Kropotkin and this is wage slavery, trying
00:10to figure out the essence of what the socialists dislike about the market system.
00:17Wage slavery.
00:18So he says, like all socialists, Kropotkin recognized the self-evident truth that workers
00:23work for the employing class because they are forced to.
00:27Without their weekly wages, they and their families must starve.
00:31Right.
00:32Right.
00:33Self-evident truth that workers work for the employing class because they are forced to.
00:40Without their weekly wages, they and their family must starve.
00:44So when you go from the basic fact that most people work for other people, you have a minority
00:58of...
00:59We'll just use the nomenclature, a capitalist, proletarian working class, right?
01:03So you have a minority of capitalists and you have a majority of proletariat.
01:16Most people want to work for others, or let's say most people, even if we say they want
01:26to, most people work for others.
01:29Most people work for others.
01:31So you take this fact that there's a small minority of capitalists and a large majority
01:39of proletariat, we say that is the situation.
01:45Now they say, well, they're forced to and they're starved.
01:49So let's look at the situation and try and figure out any and all possible explanations
01:58for this phenomenon.
01:59A small number of capitalists and a large number of proletariat, a small number of business
02:08owners and a large number of workers.
02:14What could this mean?
02:15Well, I'm going to give you an analogy here that hopefully will make some sense.
02:25So I don't know, one of the largest concerts in history was when Queen played Brazil.
02:33I think there were 300,000 people in the audience and I think Brazilians had adopted I Want
02:39to Break Free as kind of a political freedom song.
02:43And when Freddie Mercury came out with giant fake boobs, they booed him because he was
02:49a tiny bit of a privileged guy, I guess.
02:53So let's look at that situation.
02:55You have four men on the stage, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Brian May and Roger Taylor.
03:03So you've got four men on stage and you have 300,000 people who are in the audience.
03:15So how can we explain this?
03:20Now, if we were to say to pretty much any one of the 300,000 people in the audience,
03:27would we say, if we were to ask them, would you rather be on stage making millions of
03:36dollars and getting basking in all of those cheers and all of that attention?
03:41If you had the choice to be on stage, would you choose to be on stage?
03:50And of course the answer to that for just about everybody would be yes.
03:54It would be a lot of fun to be prancing around on stage singing your heart out to 300,000
04:00people and making millions and millions and millions of dollars.
04:06That would be better.
04:08So if everybody or almost everybody would prefer to be on stage, then the question is,
04:16why are there four people on stage and 300,000 people in the audience?
04:25Now when we look at it that way, if we look at the members of the band Queen as capitalists
04:35and we look at the audience as workers, and that the workers would like to have the benefits
04:45of the capitalists, but the workers are in the audience and not on the stage.
04:49And in fact, if the workers were on the stage, there would be no concert.
04:56I mean, there would be no concert where you'd have 300,000 people on stage and four members
05:00of Queen in the audience, right?
05:03That's not a thing.
05:05Now I understand it's not a perfect analogy, but we're looking at a tiny minority of a
05:13preferred state, which has been the band on stage and a massive majority of a less preferred
05:19state, right?
05:22Because the people in the audience are paying and you know, it's difficult and uncomfortable.
05:29There's a Queen album from the Live Magic Tour where there's a photo of the band arriving
05:37at the concert with like Queen, a kind of magic branded helicopter, like on a helicopter.
05:45Now I went to a concert once, it was part of research for my novel Almost, which had
05:52a large crowd scene in it.
05:54I went to a concert with the Rolling Stones and ACDC and the Guess Who and a bunch of
06:04other artists.
06:06And it was fine.
06:07It was fine.
06:08It was Soros concert, I think it was.
06:10And it was fine, but not very comfortable, right?
06:14I mean, it took like 45 minutes to get to a washroom and you had to step over everyone
06:20and it was not comfortable to sit for that long and so on, right?
06:25So most people would rather be on stage and the people, so they've paid to be in the audience
06:33and it's uncomfortable, it's difficult to get to, there are no dressing rooms, you don't
06:39get flown in by helicopter.
06:42So you have a tiny minority on the stage and a massive bunch of proletariat who'd rather
06:52be on stage, the people on stage are being paid and the people who are in the audience
06:59are paying.
07:04So people on stage are being paid millions of dollars, people in the audience are paying,
07:10I don't know how much it would have been, 20 bucks or whatever it was back in the day,
07:13but you know, a lot of money relative to the wages of the average Brazilian and certainly
07:19this would have been back in the 80s.
07:21I think he died in 92, so I think this was in the 80s and so look at that situation.
07:28Now, how do we explain that situation?
07:30Do we say, well, the band members are exploiting the audience and the audience is compelled
07:36to pay for the concert because of economic injustice and like, that would be an odd approach
07:46to take.
07:49That would be an odd approach to take.
07:54Because according to the Marxist model, the capitalists are a tiny minority profiting
08:00from the excess labor of the workers.
08:07Whereas Queen are profiting from the excess labor of the audience, although, and I remember
08:12being quite surprised about this, reading about this some years ago, when Queen toured,
08:18they didn't actually make any money from their tours, they just poured all their money back
08:24into their stage show and their stage craft and so on and Freddie Mercury's rather deranged
08:34hypersexuality had them, he wanted a giant penis to simulate oral sex on the stage overhead
08:41and now just, you know, kind of crazy stuff.
08:43So, the answer, of course, as to why there's four people on stage and 300,000 people in
08:55the audience is what?
08:57What is the answer?
09:00Well, the answer is talent, hard work, inspiration and desire.
09:14So the band members of Queen were all very talented, very good musicians, which is relatively
09:23common, but each one of the band members contributed hits, right, I mean, you know,
09:32my best friend was from the bassist, as was another one, Bites the Dust, Freddie, of course,
09:36did Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Bohemian Rhapsody, Brian May did We Will Rock You and
09:45the drummer, what did he do, Radio Gaga and a couple others, anyway, so they were all
09:54very good songwriters, they were all very talented musicians, they all worked hard for
10:00many years in relative obscurity, it really wasn't until Killer Queen that they began
10:06to gain any real traction and they were going to give up several times before that and they
10:12were ripped off, of course, by the usual pillagers in the music industry.
10:16So they have natural talent, right, I mean, it's hard to be a musician if you don't have
10:24perfect pitch, that's to some degree inborn, right, just born with it and you have to have
10:33the physical dexterity and you have to have, you know, the guitarists generally have these
10:39long spider fingers that really helps them hit the notes and so on, and you have to,
10:45of course, love the guitar or the drums or whatever it is, and you have to be willing
10:53to give up on a regular life in pursuit of musical stardom, which is very rare, right,
10:59I mean, it's not rare to give up, it's not rare to aim for musical stardom, but it's
11:09rare to actually achieve it, I mean, a lot of things have to go right and, I mean, what
11:18was it Freddie Mercury said, that if he couldn't sing or couldn't do this, he'd probably be
11:21like a stripper or something, like he just was not going to be a regular life kind of
11:25guy. Now, the others, I mean, obviously, Roger Taylor, was he going to be a dentist
11:31or something, and Brian May was an astrophysicist, and John Deacon was an electrical engineer
11:37or something like that, so they all had paths to a regular life, but they all wanted to
11:40pursue musical stardom, and they worked very hard, and they, very hard working bad, I mean,
11:48for the sort of legendary performance at Live Aid, they'd practiced for like two weeks before,
11:53and Freddie Mercury sang despite the fact that his doctor told him not to, because he
11:56had a pretty bad, bad throat, and he had a flu or something like that, he had a really
12:00bad throat. So, why are four people on stage and 300,000 people in the audience? Well,
12:12it's not swappable, you can't just swap out Freddie Mercury in particular, right, because
12:20the singer has usually the most distinctive sound for the audience, right? I mean, the
12:24drummer is the drummer, and the guitarist, you know, Brian May has this red special that
12:29his father helped, or built for him when he was in his teens, so he has a fairly unique
12:36sound, the bassist is the bassist, but the singer is particularly unique, at least if
12:43you have a very unique voice, right? I remember in 90210, the Yes album, one of the non-John
12:50Anderson singers was singing, was it? No, no, so it wasn't that one, it was Anderson
12:53Wakeman Bruford and Howe, that's a good album, but the singer was kind of generic, and the
13:00record exec said you need someone with a more distinctive sound, you've got to get John
13:03Anderson back, and he has a very distinctive sound, so the singer is unique, but you can't
13:12just swap someone out, right? You have to have that amazing ability to sing, and also
13:16you have the confidence to do it in front of the audience, and Freddie Mercury knew
13:19how to sort of play with the audience in a very unique way, so you can't just swap
13:23people out. If you swap people out, you know, if Brad Pitt's in a movie, you can't just
13:28swap him out, if he's sick that day, you can't just say to some extra, you come and do the
13:33role, right? I mean, people come to see him, he's got particular and peculiar talents,
13:38and a very interesting alpha-style relaxation in front of the camera. So, if we look at
13:51the musicians, they have particular abilities, musical genius, physical dexterity, a very
14:03strong work ethic, because they keep working very hard, even when they've already made
14:07their fortunes, and they have a tolerance for risk that is outside of the purview of
14:18the general population, and this is not unimportant, right? This is sort of an underappreciated
14:25aspect of this kind of stuff, and they are willing to ditch most of their former relationships
14:36in order to pursue that level of excellence. This is really important. Because, I mean,
14:47they all had friends in college and so on, and when you become sort of this global, jet-setting,
14:56rock and roll superstar, you're not just going over to your high school friends for, you
15:03know, beer, chips, and telly. You live on a different level, and you can't really have
15:11the same relationships after you make it, particularly when you make it really big.
15:16You just can't have the same kind of relationships that you had before. I mean,
15:20there's a lot of envy, there's, of course, massive disparities in income. You can't just
15:24walk down the street with an old friend you grew up with because you'll be recognized and
15:27hounded for autographs. You have to be willing, sort of like a caterpillar, you have to be
15:34willing to shed your former life and take on this new life. You have to be willing to have
15:47virtually nothing in common with the people in your past. I mean, obviously, you've still got
15:52your family and your parents, if they're good parents, and it seems like, certainly, I think,
15:57I don't really know much about the others, but Brian May's dad was quite dedicated to his happiness.
16:02So, and of course, I mean, Brian May is like a polyglot genius of the first order, right? I mean,
16:08incredible guitar player, a great songwriter, a decent singer. He does, you know, he organizes
16:14the finances, he ran a lot of the, some of the aspects of the tours, an astrophysicist. I mean,
16:23the man is just a stone genius on just about every conceivable level. So, you have to have
16:35an ability to shed former relationships, a high tolerance to risk, incredible physical dexterity,
16:39a very hard work ethic. You have to be touched by that finger-painted godpoke of musical genius,
16:45and you have to be comfortable in front of a crowd. Like, there's a huge amount of things
16:49that have to come together, and you have to be willing to do it, and you have to love the thing
16:54for the thing itself, so that you don't just make your money and retire, right? Like, if you have
16:57some job you don't like, and you win the lottery, you'll quit your job, right? Whereas these guys
17:03win the lottery insofar as they make a massive amount of money, and they still continue to do
17:07what they do, and Brian May is still touring into his 70s and 80s, right? So, that is just a very
17:13unique combination of skills, and the fact that all of them except John Deacon had fairly unique
17:19voices that all blended very well together, and you have to be able to have the emotional skills
17:24to work in a highly volatile and often drug-fueled environment without breaking up, and yeah, so
17:30there's just a lot of things that come together to have four people on the stage and 300,000 in the
17:35audience. Now, of course, the interesting question is, and I don't know the answer to this, but the
17:42interesting question is, what percentage of people in the audience could be on the stage?
17:49Was it Journey? Is it Journey? Just a small town boy, right? Steve Perry, this is a singer.
17:58There was some guy from the Philippines who just sounded just like him, and they just went on tour
18:02with that guy. So, how many of the people in the audience could be on the stage? Well, for singers,
18:11you'd have to have that one in 100,000 people voice, and perfect pitch, and stage presence,
18:18and confidence to sing, and a willingness to leave your former life behind. If you're just
18:23from some barrio and then you become the lead singer for a Journey tour, well, you're probably
18:28not going to be hanging out too much with your old buds anymore, are you, right? So, you have to be
18:31willing to leave all of that stuff behind and be reforged in the image of new freshly-minted
18:37rock god. I mean, the people in Queen could be in the audience, right? They'd go see other bands,
18:46so they can be in the audience. They can pay their 20 bucks and so on, but how many people
18:50in the audience can be on stage? I mean, you couldn't really swap out many. Maybe the bassist,
18:59if he was sick, and Spike Edney was a keyboardist who would sit in for,
19:07Freddie went through a period, maybe just in heavy drug use or alcohol or whatever, but
19:10where he would sometimes flub the piano, so they hired a keyboardist to do some of the piano parts
19:16for a while. So, you could maybe swap that out, but you know, certainly the singer, guitarist,
19:23drummer, maybe you could swap out. There was sort of a famous, and Keith Moon was too incapacitated
19:28to drum once at a concert for The Who, and somebody from the audience just stepped in and
19:35took over the drum duties and I think did a pretty good job, right? So, if you look at
19:45the band and the audience, there's a minority of people making a huge amount of money
19:52from other people giving up a portion of their labor
20:02to go and see them, right? So, you got 300,000 people giving up $20, right?
20:13I don't know, was that six million? I don't know, that's a lot of money, right? So, you got 200,
20:16I'm just making up these numbers, I don't know what they are, right? Although, I remember in the
20:19era of Led Zeppelin, everybody, of course, used cash back then, which is these garbage bags full
20:27of cash backstage at the concert, which I'm sure were pillaged on a regular basis, but if you look
20:33at that, you have a small number of multi-millionaires making a massive amount of money
20:38from the excess labor, right? I assume that people didn't go to the concert, but they actually had to
20:41eat or starve to death at the concert. So, from the excess labor of the proletariat, the band makes a
20:46huge amount of money. Is that exploitation? Are they exploiting, right? I mean, is it impossible
20:55for the audience members to form their own band? Well, I mean, a lot of people have tried it, right?
21:00I mean, I certainly tried doing garage band stuff in my teens. So, a lot of people will
21:08try and start bands, it's kind of a common thing.
21:12And there was a friend of mine who was in a metal band, and they played the El Macombo,
21:19and they did the song Fairies in Boots, and I jumped around the stage for them because they
21:23wanted someone to liven up the song. I jumped around on stage for them and pretended to attack
21:28the guitarist, and I had these giant boots on, and it was a fun night at the El Macombo
21:36back in the day. And they were actually pretty good. And they were pretty good.
21:41So, is there anything stopping the people in the audience from becoming a band? Well,
21:48not fundamentally. I mean, you could say, well, they have to be able to afford the instruments,
21:52but if they can afford the concert, they can probably afford at least a down payment
21:55on the instrument, and then they can go busking, or they can go play at coffee shops,
21:58or they can try and get cheap gigs to get started, and so on, right?
22:04But, of course, most people will try an instrument at some time in their life. I played 10 years of
22:09violin, I got piano lessons, I learned a couple of songs on the guitar, and most people will try,
22:16and for me, it wasn't for me. It just wasn't. It wasn't for me. I'm very sensitive to sort of the
22:24cost-benefit analysis, as most people are. And if you're someone like Paul McCartney,
22:30you've got great musical instincts, and perfect pitch, and a great singing voice, and physical
22:35dexterity of the gods, and you know, he can be a fantastic bass player, guitarist, plays piano,
22:40and as did, you know, Brian May would play piano for Save Me, and all of that. So,
22:45yeah, so then you get the cost-benefit is very strong, right? For me, it wasn't that way. I could
22:54sense that there was going to be great limits, and I tend to pursue things where I don't sense
22:58great limits, at least not up front. And so, that's how you get into the better thing.
23:03So, is there anything stopping people in the audience from becoming
23:13musicians? Well, nothing major. Is it a long, hard slog? Yes, it is, for sure. And some people
23:21will, you know, I don't know if you've ever sat down and tried to write songs,
23:26I tried writing a couple of songs when I was in my teens, and I think if you have
23:35a, you know, sort of very strong musical genius, then, sorry, strong and genius is kind of
23:39redundant, then you recognize all the capacities that you have, and you end up, you know, writing
23:46really interesting stuff, like, you know, March of the Black Queen from Queen 2 is like quite the
23:51smorgasbord of pre-Bohemian Rhapsody buffet music. And there's like real flashes of brilliance in
24:01that song, although the album as a whole is okay, but that song is never more as lovely,
24:06and so on. Funny how love is, it's good. So, you get that you can go the distance, right?
24:14So, are the band members exploiting the audience? Well, the audience members can try to become
24:21a band, if they want, but they probably lack a particular kind of talent and dexterity,
24:25they may have a lower risk for tolerance, and they may be comfortably ensconced in their
24:29social environment, and not in particular want to start doing the touring and the traveling
24:39and giving up their relationships and, you know, living in a bus and all of that. So,
24:47do that life of the musician, right? Like, you load up $5,000 worth of equipment into a $500 van
24:55to go and play a gig for 50 bucks, right?
25:10So, if we look at the disparities of income, the disparity of attention, the disparity of focus
25:15at the band versus the audience, we have a number of options. Now, we can say, of course,
25:21that the band is just exploiting the audience, but then the question is, how? How is the band
25:27exploiting the audience? And of course, I'm open to arguments as to how the band is exploiting the
25:33audience, but the band is producing music that the audience wants to pay to see. Nobody's forcing
25:38anyone to produce music. Nobody's forcing anyone to be at the concert. How is the band exploiting
25:42the audience? And the band also, you know, that's the interesting thing about people who succeed
25:50have one thing in common, that they don't give themselves excuses. They don't give themselves
25:54excuses. So, the band keeps refining and, you know, they put out a bunch of songs. Every band hopes
25:59that their song is going to become a number one hit, but they've got to keep grinding, keep
26:02producing, and they just don't give themselves excuses. Now, I would imagine that a lot of people
26:08who don't succeed don't succeed because they give themselves excuses. Oh, you can't get ahead. Oh,
26:14their system is rigged against you. Oh, like they give themselves excuses, and then those excuses
26:18can harden into an ideology of sort of rage and resentment. But the people who succeed don't give
26:26themselves excuses because the only way that you can improve is to not give yourself excuses.
26:31Excuses are identical to stagnation. So, of course, if we have a small number of capitalists
26:40and a large number of workers, that is simply a situation. And the question is, what are the
26:45explanations for this? Well, what you would do, of course, is you would do some physical
26:52measurements, right? So, you would, for instance, you would measure IQ. IQ is a very big predictor
26:57of success. It's not ironclad, and I'd rather have wisdom than intelligence, and wisdom can be
27:02transferred. Intelligence, not so much. So, just to be clear, right? But if you would look at
27:09the average CEO, would the average CEO have a higher IQ than the average worker,
27:18the average janitor, let's say? Would the CEO have a higher IQ? And, of course, the answer to that is
27:24yes, and not even on occasion or on average. That would be an absolute thing. I mean, unless you had,
27:29sorry, unless there was some total genius, but emotionally troubled, goodwill-hunting-style
27:35janitor, which would be so rare as to be an outlier that would be safely discarded.
27:41But if you looked at the average, let's just take the average, the average IQ of CEOs
27:49compared to the average IQ of workers, there would be a vast disparity.
27:56And that's not the only thing, of course. It's not like everyone with a high IQ is a CEO, but that
28:03would be one thing that you would look at, right? And this would be the equivalent of saying, well,
28:08why is that guy a singer and I'm not? Well, he's a singer because, I mean, first and foremost,
28:14he has a much better singing voice, right? And you can't just change that, right? I mean, there's
28:20no amount of training that's going to make me sound like Pavarotti or Sting or Freddie Mercury
28:26or Michael Buble or whoever, right? I mean, I took singing lessons when I was in
28:34theater school for a year, almost two years, and it's a little bit of improvement and it
28:39helps to some degree. It really helped when it came to, I mean, a yap for a living.
28:46So there's a sort of physical attribute. That physical attribute could be
28:51and would be at least to some degree IQ. What about testosterone levels? So the higher your
28:55testosterone, often the higher your risk tolerance, right? Did they go through
29:01particular events in their life that may have primed them for ambition, right?
29:12Do they have access to particular family skills that might help them
29:17and so on, right? So when it comes to why are some people CEOs and a lot of people,
29:24why are a few people CEOs, a lot of people workers, the first thing you would look for is
29:28physical attributes, right? For musicians, perfect pitch, physical dexterity, musical
29:33brilliance, particularly for songwriting. And then you would look at work ethic,
29:38willingness to abandon former social structures and ambition and the emotional skills to negotiate
29:47a very volatile and complex environment. The Beatles didn't have it in the long run, Queen
29:52did, and the Eagles did, although they broke up continually. They said they'd get back together
30:00when hell freezes over, and one of their later tours was called Hell Freezes Over,
30:04right? The band The Police did not have it. So you would look for particular explanations
30:16because exploitation, just this word exploitation, it doesn't really answer anything.
30:22And you would need physical evidence for this because they call it scientific socialism,
30:26but then they create this imaginary monster called exploitation rather than exploring other things,
30:33right? You would interview a whole bunch of CEOs, you would try to measure their
30:39mental attributes, and you would measure their testosterone levels, and you maybe look at their
30:45birth order, and you look at influences and so on. Maybe it's a religious faith, maybe they had
30:51somebody who really believed in them at some point. I mean, just a whole bunch of things that
30:55you would look at. But instead, rather than being scientific and trying to understand the differences
31:01here, then you would just make up this ghost called exploitation and explain everything away.
31:13I mean, so this to me is as scientific as saying, well, weather's quite complex,
31:20but we're just going to ascribe weather to the gods. You know, rather than study meteorology
31:27and high and low pressures and mountains and other inclement factors and so on, rather than
31:32try and figure out what's going on with the weather, which is complicated and a lot of
31:35measurement, a lot of science, trying to figure out what's going on, you just create this ghost
31:39called weather gods. Why is there a storm at sea? You can try and figure this kind of stuff out.
31:46Underwater seismics, why is there a wave? Or you can just say, well, Poseidon is angry.
31:53And it is not scientific. It's the opposite of science. Say, oh, there are capitalists and there
32:01are workers. I wonder what the difference is. There are people on stage and lots more people
32:06in the audience. I wonder what the difference is. And of course, we understand that, I mean,
32:14assuming the song wasn't stolen, that when a band plays songs to a willing audience,
32:21that they didn't steal those songs from the audience. Because the other thing that's
32:25interesting about being a CEO, and I'm not being a CEO, but I've been a chief technical
32:30officer and a director of marketing. So the interesting thing about that is you have to have
32:37a very interesting combination of skills. You have to have extremely high empathy for the needs of
32:42the audience and extremely tough, in a sense, lack of excessive. You have to have excessive empathy
32:51for the audience and a deficiency, sorry, for the customer. And you have to have a deficiency
32:56of empathy with regards to your competitors and unproductive workers. So you have to have
33:01very strict standards and you have to be kind of cold towards your competitors and you have to be
33:06kind of cold towards unproductive workers and fire them. But you have to have incredibly high
33:10empathy for the needs of the customer so you can figure out what they want and how best to satisfy
33:16their needs. Again, these are very, very unusual combinations of skills. I mean, in the same way
33:22that a lot of musicians become musicians because they're kind of introverted because, you know,
33:27when you're learning the guitar, you're kind of on your own, right? And yet then to go out on the
33:31stage and be extroverted, it's just a very interesting combination of skills that's not
33:36common at all, right? So sorry for this sort of long introduction, but I'm interested in why there
33:42are capitalists and why there are workers. And I've, of course, been around the chronically
33:49unemployed. I've been around working class for a lot of my youth. I've been around the capitalist
33:56class in business and I won't get into all the details about that. I'm sure that'll come out
34:02after I'm dead. But I've seen a wide variety. I've sort of cut through the layer cake of the classes
34:13and seen in great detail what goes on in each class and it's complicated. And there is, of course,
34:18the free will element as well, right? So everybody, I remember talking to one guy in business many
34:25years ago who basically said, yeah, you know, he started up his first business and it completely
34:32imploded. He lost his house, his savings, was living in his car. And he's just like, you know,
34:37I was really tempted to get a job, but then I was like, no, no, no, I'm going to try again.
34:42And then he ended up succeeding. And it's like, why do people watch Monty Python? Because they're
34:52funnier than most people. And they had that willingness to walk away from their formal
34:56lives and to take a high risk venture into comedy and so on, right? So if you wanted to
35:04close the gaps, or if you wanted to provide more of the proletariat access to becoming
35:13capitalists, then you would, of course, have an educational system that taught them about
35:17capitalism and entrepreneurism and taxes and corporatism and regulations and so on. And you
35:22would teach them about marketing and you would teach them about product development and you would
35:25teach them about management and you would teach them about profit loss, none of which, of course,
35:29occurs in government schools, right? Government schools, sadly, are to some degree captured by
35:35the capitalist classes to make sure that the poor does not produce competitors who are willing to
35:40work for less. I mean, that's the general churn of capitalism. That's why the classes cycle,
35:46because wealthy people have a higher standard of living and poorer people are willing to work for
35:54less. So when I was competing at the beginning with very, very large companies, those large
36:00companies had very high overheads and I was living in a room and so I could charge less.
36:12All of that is important. You would teach people more confidence and so on and money management
36:18skills and how to invest and how to get investors. You would do all of that in the educational system
36:23and the fact that that's absent in the educational system is not the fault of the free market,
36:28because if the educational system were based on the free market, and I don't put religious education
36:36in free market terms because their currency is not capital but souls and salvation, so it's a
36:41different matter. So when it comes to education, you would try to close the gaps between the
36:55capitalists and the proletariat by educating the proletariat on how to compete with the capitalists,
37:02but you don't really talk about that. At least I've never really seen socialists talk about that
37:08because, of course, the educational system is in general, certainly for the last 150 years in most
37:13places, socialized, right? And socialism emerged, what, 150, 170 years ago, maybe a little longer
37:23depending on, you know, it's an early movement when it became more popular. So socialism kind of emerged
37:29with socialized education. So one of the things that socialists have to do is point at exploitation
37:36in the market rather than deficiencies in the educational system because deficiencies in the
37:41educational system, which is already socialized, would point to deficiencies in socialism and thus
37:45would torpedo their own argument from the ground up, right? So if they were to say, well, the problem
37:50with capitalism is that children aren't educated on how to compete with capitalists, you say, oh,
37:55well, who's in charge of the educational system? Oh, the government, the people, right? It's
37:59collectively owned and paid for by taxes. It's a socialist system. Okay, so if the socialist system
38:04is failing the proletariat, how the fuck can the socialist system save the proletariat? Jesus,
38:08right? So they have to create this ghost of exploitation so that they don't have to address
38:15the deficiencies in the educational system, which is fundamentally socialist. All right.
38:23So he says, whence come the fortunes of the rich? A little thought would suffice to show that these
38:29fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor, where there are no longer any destitute,
38:34there will no longer be any rich to exploit them. Right. So then poor people are very poor. Yeah,
38:41sure. Okay. So he's saying, and I understand the argument, that poor people are compelled to work
38:48because they have to pay their bills. They're broke. And because they're broke,
38:53they have to go to work. And because they're broke, they don't have the excess capital needed to
38:57start a business and so on. And yeah, I get that. So then the question is, well, why are they poor?
39:08Why are they poor? Who's in charge of their education?
39:11Right. And of course, their parents are generally in charge of their education. But rather than
39:17talk about the deficiencies in parenting, like if your parents are drunk or crazy or drug addicts or
39:22lazy or on welfare or whatever, right, then you're not going to learn work habits and
39:26effective negotiation strategies and capital accumulation and all of that. So
39:31rather than say, well, maybe the parents are deficient in how they raise their children,
39:35they're abusive or neglectful, don't take care to educate them to compete with the capitalists,
39:40we should improve parenting so that better skills are transferred to the young. Nope. We're just
39:46going to talk about wage slavery, right? It's all a coverup for socialism and abusive or neglectful
39:52parenting, right? If people had the means to support themselves, if they were capable of
39:58meeting their daily needs without hiring out their labor, no one would consent to work for wages.
40:03That must inevitably be, if the capitalist is to derive any profit, a mere fraction of the value
40:08of the goods they produce. Right. So if a man had the means to support themselves. So the only way
40:16that you'd have the means to support yourself is if you gain more calories from your labor than you
40:20expend in the production of food and shelter, right? So if you've got a couple of acres,
40:28right, 40 acres in a mule, and you then have to profit. It's like somebody has to profit
40:36because if you expend 3000 calories to produce 2000 calories worth of food, you starve to death,
40:44right? Because your body is eating itself because there's not enough food. So everybody has to
40:49profit. Everybody has to profit. Everybody. So saying that there's no need to profit if you're
41:01working for yourself is crazy. I mean, that's just such a ridiculous ignorance of biology that it's
41:07hard to even know what to say. So yes, if you work, you have to profit. And if you work for someone
41:16else, they have to profit. But what you do is you are not being underpaid by the capitalist.
41:25You are sacrificing a portion of your wages in order to gain access to the capital equipment of
41:33the capitalist. So if you're a worker on Henry Ford's Model T line, then you are sacrificing,
41:40you are paying Henry Ford for access to his capital equipment and his marketing genius and
41:47his advertising budget and his organizational genius and the fact that he's got to hire an
41:51army of accountants to pay the taxes to the corporation and the property taxes to the
41:55factory. You are paying him to get access to his corporation in order to increase your wages.
42:03I mean, you could dig a hole by hand or you could go and pay 20 bucks for a shovel,
42:13in which case you are paying 20 bucks in order to be able to dig far faster and with much less
42:20injury. So you're not being exploited by the guy who sells you the shovel. You are paying 20 bucks
42:31so that you can get holes dug way quicker and with less injury. So what can I tell you? So
42:40the worker is paying the capitalist a portion of his wages in order to get greater wages by
42:48having access to the capitalist goods and services. Goods being the capital equipment,
42:54the services being the advertising and the marketing and the tax paying and the
42:58heating and all of that sort of stuff, right?
43:03Now, is heating a good or a service? It's intangible in a way, so it's not exactly a good,
43:10but everything that is required to produce the heat is a capital equipment in a factory. So
43:15anyway, I'll leave that to the accountants to figure out. So the worker is not being exploited.
43:23The worker is making more money by paying the capitalist for access to the goods and
43:32services of the capitalists in order to increase the worker's own wages. Because
43:37the fundamental question is, if people could make more money out in the country,
43:46why are they working in the city, right? If they could have a better income. Now,
43:51of course, they would say, well, the aristocracy owns all the land and you can't get a hold of the
43:56land and so on. Okay, well, that's an interesting argument and I get all of that. But in most
44:07places in the world, there's land that you can get a hold of. I mean, I worked up in Northern
44:11Ontario, like 90% of the Canadian population has been in a couple of degrees of the US-Canadian
44:20border. So there's tons of land up there. You can go and homestead it. Obviously, you're
44:26going to have to pay some taxes. And you can find a way to produce further north or in the
44:39countryside. And even in England and other places, there's sort of countryside. You can
44:43get a little cottage, you can rent some land, or maybe you can buy the land over time.
44:48So the question is, if it's vastly more economically profitable for people to go
44:56out and grow and produce their own food, why are they working in a city?
45:03We have to answer that question. And just saying exploitation is not the answer. You have to follow
45:09people's choices and assume to some degree, at least, that people are rational actors and say,
45:15well, why? Now, most people who consume music rather than produce it consume music rather than
45:24produce it, because consuming music is a whole lot easier than producing music.
45:32But if you like a particular song, when I was a kid, it was what, like $1.50 for a 45, like for a
45:38single. And if you enjoyed a song, then you could either learn, let's say you like the song Yesterday
45:49by the Beatles. Well, you could go out and learn guitar and you could hope that you sang like Paul
45:56McCartney or find someone and pay them to sing like Paul McCartney. And then you would be able
46:02to listen to the song whenever you did that. Of course, if you learned it all yourself,
46:07learning how to play that song, hoping you can sing like Paul McCartney,
46:12it's going to take, I don't know, how long does it take to learn that song on guitar? Well, you've
46:17got to go buy the guitar, you've got to buy the notation, you've got to figure out how to play it,
46:22and so on. So, 50 hours, 100 hours, who knows, right? So, or you can just go drop $1.50.
46:31So, back in the day, I was making $2.45 working in a convenience store, and so for about 40 to 45
46:39minutes of my time, I could get that song whenever I wanted for infinity. My first album, my first
46:47single was 10cc's Things We Do For Love. I remember feeling slightly tense when the things we do for
46:54love, the things we do for love, the thing they just repeated, repeat and fade. It's like, can
46:58you finish the song already? Good lord, stop with all this filler. So, if you want to hear the song
47:05yesterday, you can either spend 50 to 100 hours getting your guitar, learning the song, hoping
47:10you can sing like Paul McCartney, or you can just spend 45 minutes of labor to go buy the single,
47:15and then you can play it whenever you want, and it's going to be perfect each time, right?
47:22So, which makes more sense? Is it easier to produce music, or is it easier to buy music?
47:34Well, if you enjoy music, obviously it's virtually infinitely easier to buy music than it is to
47:38produce music. Is it easier to start your own company, or is it easier to use a portion of
47:47your wages to rent somebody else's capital equipment and services in order to enhance
47:53your own productivity? Well, we know the answer to that, right? Are they rational? Well, if they're
48:01rational, they're not exploited. Some people prefer hanging out with the friends of their
48:08youth than trying to become phenomenally successful. I'm not going to argue with that.
48:11That's not a good or a bad thing. That's not a right or a wrong thing. That's just a thing.
48:15Now, for the ambitious, that would feel too confining. For people who are more homebodies,
48:26maybe more introverted, the life of the ambitious looks pretty horrible, but that's just a thing.
48:34I'm not going to say to people what's right or wrong, but it's a rational choice.
48:39So, sorry, I didn't really get to that much of the text, but I really wanted to explain this.
48:43Just be curious. Just be curious. Be open-minded and curious. If people are being exploited,
48:51look for how they're being abused and neglected. The educational system, in general,
48:56is abusive and neglectful. It abuses people by teaching them things that are false and often
49:00self-hating, and it neglects them by not teaching them things that would actually help improve their
49:05their options. So, what can I say? Just be curious. Socialists make up this devil called
49:20exploitation, and they're not curious about why people are choosing what they choose. They're
49:29not looking for physical, educational, familiar differences between the capitalists and the
49:35workers, and I think that's anti-scientific and bigoted and prejudiced at its core.
49:43free-demand.com slash donate. Have yourself a lovely day. I look forward to your support,
49:49and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.