Lot of these books have been published about socialism in response to what has changed over the last five years and they all have a little bit of a different take on it and emphasize different points so my obvious question is, why the United States and socialism and why did you write this book . Guest i noticed that there have been a flurry of books on socialism and that is a surprise because socialism has come into the american mainstream for the first time in our countrys history and there have been socialist candidates in the past, eugene debs, Norman Thomas but they were never in the mainstream and but now in fact at a time when many of us thought socialism had collapsed at the end of the 20th century, suddenly in the 21st century it is back and back with a vengeance. I am not surprised that there are books that try to take stock of this. The unifying theme throughout these books and i think by and large it will be history, its the idea that socialism has never worked before and certainly not for lack of been tried and the majority of the world it was tried and largest countries in the world, russia, china, india all swung to the socialist direction and so the issue is socialism did not work before so it will not work now and the verdict of history argument but the problem with that argument is the socialist left, first of all, a lot of people dont know the history so it doesnt really get them and the second part of it is even those who do say listen, were trying a new form of socialism number one and it is not authoritarian socialism but democratic socialism number two. Our model is not lennon or mao but it is scandinavia and we like the way people live in norway and sweden and those arent horrible countries to live in so why not the scandinavian model . It works right there and you can see it. And three, we have new types of socialism that our socialism isnt just about class grievances but includes racial grievances and gender grievances and transgender agree vances so in other words, the left is putting forward this kind of new socialism, if you will, and interesting that this time it actually can and will work. Host lets start there then and demonstrate what it is that we are talking about when you read a book about socialism what socialism that you are talking about and the classic sense and meant something to marxist and lennon it was very economic concept because some form of collective ownership of the means of production and abolishing private property and that form of socialism is a very common today at least in large scale so what do you mean when you say socialism in this context . Guest the new socialism is not, i would call a classic socialism. Socialism has evolved over the last century and a half and originally this was socialism for marks meant these voluntary communities about people who would come together on their own share all their possessions and usually free love component of the state was not involved. Marx came along and proposed his socialism which essentially was the revolt of the proletariat and the working class that would presumably overthrow the capitalist class and take over and take over the means of production and ultimately take over the whole community and that prediction has never come true even marxist day to this day anywhere in the world and there never has been that kind of a work revolt ever and in the early late 20th century socialism meant for many countries nationalization so i grew up in india and the Indian Government took over the banks and took over the airlines and controlled ultimately the farming industry so socialism in practice meant state ownership of massive Major Industries and critical industries. The left today is not interested in any of this. The new socialism is an economic component and it has all these ideas like the Green New Deal, medicare for everybody, free college and you can see these ideas are now the mainstream mechanic party ideas but it is a cultural component and i write somewhere in this book where i say the typical socialist today is not a union guy demanding higher wages but it is an eco feminist who marches in black lives matter or anti for rally and throws blocks at her opponent so that is not a character that marx could have foreseen and it reflects the fact that we are dealing with an interesting hybrid of cultural and Economic Issues with a lot of socialist today care more about abortion than the minimum wage and care more about the transgender bathroom than they care about the universal basic income. There is a cultural component that overtakes the economic component. Yes, but lets start on the economic component and get to these cultural components. I thought it amusing in the book that you define the types of socialist, i believe, hardcore socialist, because i socialist and socialist like so what do you mean by those . What falls into those categori categories . Guest a good way to think about this is to compare biden against, for example the Ernie Sanders paid bErnie Sanders is an expose that socialist. He sounds like an oldtime socialist. Theres a comic element to it. Heat honeymoons and the soviet union, praises bread lines and says they are a good thing but this is a bit too much. This is not socialism you can get sold in the United States. The demonstrates have opted socialism light or perhaps more accurately creeping socialism and that is biden. Biden, for example, opposed free college but now he is for it. Why . Because the poll in the Democratic Party is toward the left and so a good way to think about socialism now is not so much as a defined thing but to think of the free market on one end of the spectrum and socialism on the other end and asked this question, which democrat is pulling in the free market direction which democrat is pulling in the socialist direction and a simple answer is they are all pulling in the socialist direction without exception. Its just a matter of whether they are pulling hard or pulling crossly so the democrats have decided lets go to with creeping socialism and is more marketable than bernies socialism and that is why they picked biden over bernie. Host i think youre right to talk about this as being on a spectrum because even in defining the narrow version of socialism or nationalizing the means of production there are varying degrees of that in the present and the soviet union during the time of war communism or mao during [inaudible] and then they partially liberalized but are still overwhelmingly socialist so countries like us that are more on the capitalist end of the spectrum may be running so let these Office Policies run [inaudible] one of them is singlepayer healthcare or some version of nationalized healthcare that socialist would like. That fits into the traditional definition of socialism a little bit better. Guest yeah, it does. Of course, there are welfare states in europe that have National Control of healthcare part of this is you cant debate these things without being honest about them and knowing what you are talking about. When i listen to people like Elizabeth Warren talk about medicare for all your singlepayer healthcare to begin producing a kind of rhetoric that has to be unpacked. They say things like we want to take healthcare away from the Greedy Pharmaceutical Companies and turn it over to the people. That we want the people to be in control of their healthcare and the weight their healthcare is administered but then i asked the obvious question, well, what role would do or will the people have in any of this . Lets look at other government institutions. Post office but what control do you or i have been running the post office . None. What control do you or i have in running the dmv . Nonverbal control does the ordinary british guy have over the British NationalHealth Service . None. The people here its a little bit of a ruse on the people will not be running anything good Elizabeth Warren is so right away realize that socialism offers something to the socialist class that is proposing it and it is not just the pharmaceutical companies or the third player in the politicians who they themselves have a great deal of power to gain and power that is ultimately convertible into money and that is very important important component socialism in america gets very rich and if people are able to parlay their position ultimately into vast amounts of cash and this is happened to the bidens and the clintons and the obamas, al gore so how these people go from zero to a hundred Million Dollars in the government salary, they do it ultimately by cashing in on their public position. That is the first point i want to make is that the people are not in charge in fact. The real question is who will run healthcare and Healthcare Industry including the Insurance Industry or the Political Class that makes it more of the actual choice facing us. Host i think youre absolutely on point here and this is true of socialist revolution everywhere done in the name of the people but end up benefiting the nomenclature or some pigs are more equal than others. One thing they will draw as part of this Economic Policy that they do say is treating everybody more equally, universal basic income. We will guarantee minimal income to allamerican so they can be free from the oppression of want. How do you respond to that proposals on that . Guest i think this is where we have seen a little bit of a preview of, nasty preview i would say, of socialism on the coronavirus where we have had some swarm, in miniature of universal basic income and for the left this is almost a recipe and i almost want to say to the markham people hey, youve been sitting on your couch for months so how would you like to keep doing it or why you want to put on an outfit and shave and go to work and punch a time clock and listen to your employer or raven rants . What if we give you a thousand, 2000 a month and essentially make you a permanent slug. I have to admit there is a little bit in human nature that says wow, thats fantastic because who wants to get up or off the couch . It appeals to all of us. Ultimately i think it points to the type of socialism by the way the democrats are selling. Family got a ration card for example so under coronavirus we got a temporary case of what socialism would feel like on a permanent basis and we shouldnt also get the attack on civil liberties. Thats a key part of what socialists do. Its not just economic confrontation. Its also no religious liberty, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of speech, no guns. Its funny, when you pay people not to work you dont get production and weve seen some of that these recent months. Another one to bring up and this obviously doesnt fit with traditional marxists either is free college. I dont see College Students as the oppressed class but free college or forgiveness of student debt as part of this package. I was watching 60minutes and i see this fellow , his name is joel lapinski, hes studying to be a doctor and he goes man, i would be such a better doctor if i didnt have to worry about paying for medical school. It would be so great if this education was free. I could put all my attention into being an outstanding doctor and heresleslie stall nodding and im waiting for her to ask the key question which is joel, if you want other guys to pay for your education , once youbecome a doctor are youwilling to work for free . The answer is obviously not. He wants the pool in the backyard, he wants to have the big house and so on so heres my point. He wants the privileges of and perks of being a doctor but he wants a foreman to pay for his education area the shamelessness of this i think is a little shocking and i dont think again mark would have any sympathy for this guy. He would consider him part of the bourgeoisie and a part of the class that would be thrown on its back when the workingclass became angry enough to read the problem with the workingclass today is there less likely to be found at the union revolt and they are to be found at the trump rally so the left has lost the workingclass. The workingclass rather than beingcommiserated has become wildly prosperous over the last hundred 50 years. Its changed this whole game to find their constituency on this. One of the new policies being proposed by them is on the face environmentalism but really has a lot of socialist components underneath. So why is the Green New Deal a red new deal . If you look at the Green New Deal a number of its remedies have nothing to do with Climate Change and i believe many of the politicians pushing the Green New Deal neither know nor care whether the earth is getting hotter or colder area and they experience it exactly the same as when they were kids so this is ultimately a pretext and a ruse. By the need for a ruse at all . You touched on it a moment ago when you said the workingclass is not going to deliver what the socialists want. An economist about 100 years ago raised the question why has socialism not become mainstream in america and his answer is all socialist utopias have come to agree on roast beef and apple pie. In other words the working guy is living so well he wants to join the capitalist class, not to violently fling it to the ground and the leftists figure this out they know this too so they realized we need to pit. We need new ways to get to socialism without the kind of revolt which is never going to happen so now they rely on the politics of beer. Fdr learned in the new deal that fear is a great way to get things done that you couldnt do otherwise so since then, since the 70s when i first came to america from india ive been hearing this and in the 70s the world was running out of food. In the 80s it was nuclear apocalypse. In the 90s the ozone layer was apparently dissipating and the last 20 years and Climate Change. The oceans are rising, the penguins are coughing and lately coronavirus and in every case the idea is to create panic and try to get people to do in a stampede in a crowd mentality what they would not do if they thought about it and acted in a common deliberative manner. Thats been the strategyof the left hence the importance of Climate Change. You also identified this period of fear in the 1930s is kind of how america again its transition to socialism. In the presidency of fdr and the policy was putting in place there. Would you elaborate on that . Id like to highlight two elements of fdr that are not all that wellknown. One of them is that fdr favored and this seems almost comic to say today 100 percent tax rate. He thought if you made over a certain amount of money the money should take up the government should take everything and at one point he said why should any american make over 25,000 a year and obviously in his time he didnt mean 25,000 in our purchasing power but the statement itself is revealing. He wanted aceiling or limits on what americans could earn. The other thing fdr did was he introduced the politics of demonizing the rich which has been critical to the politics of the american left. Not just the socialists but the Democratic Party in general and this is worth noting because its not necessarily a characteristic of socialist countries. Look at scandinavia. In the scandinavian countries you will never see people demonizing the guy whos running no kia or demonizing the guy who runs erickson. Hes a bad guy, were going to make him pay lagging finger, bErnie Sanders indignation, all this is absent from scandinavian socialism so when the left says theyretrying to follow the scandinavian model , youre not. Youre following the fdr model and model ice would say that far closer to venezuela, the politics of dividing the society not just one way but many ways that i call scandinavian socialism unification socialism , were all in this together. He contrasted with what can be called division socialism which isabsolutely critical to the politics of the left. Look at the way they create racial divide, they literally seize upon it because its part of theirsocialist strategy. I saw found a surprising couple of years ago while i was researching i found a book called socialism sucks. And while we travel the world, we finished up by going to the big socialist conference in the United States and i went to socialism thousand 18 and talk to young people there because there was basically nobody in our age range there. Everybody was either in their 70s now, ask 1960s hippies or 35 and under mostly 35 and under area and i went there to understand what they mean by socialism, what are they talking about and just to learn and i didnt hear very much about nationalizing production, i heard it from some hardcore over there black lives matter, immigration issues, climate issues. Gender issues, pick as you go across the spectrum of different things. None of them traditional socialism, abortion was a big one they all chatted about in there. I dont remember seeing that in marks anywhere area i was a little bit surprised by that and i come to see more of that now and maybe we have some differences on this area i have 70s with some of the issues they point out but their solutions to me almost always seem wrongheaded area you identified this as i think you call it identity socialism. Would you like toelaborate on whats going on. I think this is just one of the signal contributions of my book is that i identify and try to dive knows if you will the new type of socialism, identity socialism which is a marriage of classic socialism and identity politics so they can classic socialism as essentially a strategy of marxian division between the rich and the poor. Loosely speaking area classified area or the modern american socialist left, be divide in society is but its not just that but its also a race divide, black against white. Its a gender divide, mail against female its a Sexual Orientation by, straight against gay and transgender and its also an immigration divide, legal against illegal so one may say that while marx was going to carve up society just into two groups, the left is trying to slice American Society into many different, across many different lines. Why are they doing this, theyre doing this because they think that if we divide society in these different ways, we can assemble a Majority Coalition of aggrieved Victim Groups that come together and then it sort of take on everybody else so theyre trying to get the 51 percent and the firm belief that democracy itself will then legitimize them looting and oppressing the other 49 percent. This is what they call democratic socialism and for me its a form of gangsterism because it to me is not a whole lot different area if i was a kid going to school with 10 marbles in my pocket whether one guy jumped me forcibly teases my marbles or i in a group of 10 and the other nine jump me, a majority and take my marbles either way im being robbed. What you think it is about the batter socialism that gets those various to me, very individual issues that dont necessarily stick together read what is it about thebanner of socialism that pulls them all together. I think the socialists are unified really by a hatred that is, a hatred of capitalism but more broadly a hatred of what can be called the infrastructure of western society that has made capitalism flourish within it. So in other words they dont just hate the market or the insurance companies. They also hate the family. They also hate the idea of a judeochristian picture of morality. They hate the idea of these churches which are a vehicle for people to express their freedom of conscience, i think its if the left had its way their targets would be the family, property and the church and this is not unique to me, the russian dissident workshop or image said also a started these free institutions and they do it right away. That was true in the former soviet union as well wasnt it. It was and its striking to me that even though we have advocates of democratic socialism, how quickly they become radical. How quickly they suddenly say no, you cant go over your area were going to have drones monitoring your movements. How quickly they say were happy to shut the churches down. No ones denying theres a coronavirus but the truth of the matteris theres also a first amendment. And theres nothing in the constitution that says unless theres a disease or unless Health Authorities say otherwise. The truth of it is that these asic constitutional liberties are not up for democratic referendum. It doesnt matter if a majority opposes them. I still have the right to say what i think. I still have freedom of conscience so the idea that even without the debates, it would be one thing if there was debate and there was agony and you said on the balance i think mel, you have the governor of new jersey saying he shut down the churches, he wasnt even thinking about the constitution. Obviously the book was entirely written before the covid19 pendant. What youve seen here with government here in the United States but also around the world and the United States at the statelevel , in terms of crackdowns on authoritarian government policy, dictating what we can do with our economic civil and religious minds, how does that make you think any differently about anything youve heard about the progress of socialism when you werewriting the book . I have to say that the book has been vindicated in a kind of chilling way not only by coronavirus even by the aftermath of the george lloyd killings. If i had said to socialists in americaenvision the bombing the police, basically this banding the police force. I think i would have considered that far too extreme thing to say. People would say youre a little crazy here. I wouldnt have dared to say that yet im hearing it so whats happened here and ill do that if i make a little bit to the riots and the mayhem seattle autonomous zone is what we see here is anattempt to enforce a social conformity. That is, that goes to almost anything foreseen in orwell even the liturgical genuflections , the white people having the feet of black lives matter activists, the pacing of statues instantly not just confederate statues, the statues of columbus,churchill and Abraham Lincoln , of the unknown soldier. This show you whats really going on. Its not about george lloyd s is a specific injustice of george lloyd and the truth of it is that there was a unified howl of outrage from the right and the left, me included when this video first service. It was an opportunity for National Unity but for the identity socialists, it cant work like that. They need race as an instrument of division only immediately george lloyd killing and put on top of it a much larger narrative. The larger narrative is not what you would think would be the normal narrative the normal narrative would be bad cops, lets now try to make more good cops but no, their view is to have, because the cops are racist. Institution is racist and thats no surprise because our freemarket society is allied with White Supremacy and america itself is structurally racist and its been that way since 1690s but you got this remarkable and gigantic narrative and its on to the george lloyd killings. Because if you disagree with the merit narrative, you are then accused of being insensitive george lloyd so this is the strategy ifyou will of the identity socialists. They force you to embrace the larger narrative, even though you are morethan willing to go along with them on the original injustice , youre just not willing to sign on a wholebunch of other stuff that has nothing to do with. I dont want to go too far afield here but im going to see if i can fit this into the theme of socialism in the book thats related a little bit and try out something different, a different narrative by you on this similarly recognizing the injustice that occurred but also recognizing freemarket capitalism and to minimize racism as the people who discriminate pay the consequences. But the specific industry of course that theyre protesting is one thats largely government run throughout the entire country might there be any opportunity for freemarket capitalists to talk about how privatization and competition in policing and maybe better adjust on these issues that arelegitimately of concerned people . I think that there is an opportunity there. Ive been what struck in my lifetime to see that services that even i took for granted would be government monopolies. Post office, have now found ups, federal express, Prison Services are sometimes contracted privately, so much of our Defense Services are farmed out to private corporations so there are all kinds ofopportunities and by and large things are always better done in the private sector. This is almost a law of the universe. If you left it to the post office they would not have figured out mail could be delivered overnight to this day. Its only when fedex figured out that they went we can do that too. Plan that existed 400 years so this is the level of innovation that you get from the government, mainly close to zero so i agree, on the other hand i would say that the very reason we have a government, the very reason we have a social compact not just according to locke was even according to hobbs is that we need Protection Area we need to be protected from or and domestic dollars and hobbs who favored leviathan, the large state even hobbs said if the state does not do that , if it doesnt give you the protection you came into this society in the expectation of, basically all bets are off area you go no more allegiance to the state and you have every right over for the state, you certainly dont need to pay your taxes. You are back in the state of nature so i want to emphasize the radicalism of what the left is putting on offer here to refund thepolice to me means dissolve the social compact. Lets bring this back into the book a little bit now for the tv show here and nobodys going to play theprivatized police idle back at you. So taking about the identity politics and the divisiveness then , you bring up the fact that my favorite chapter in your book was on venezuela versus sweden. And i think it was Something Like venezuela see, sweden know about whereall this is heading. And bernie despite honeymooning in the soviet union likes to talk about the scandinavian model and he says things like denmark and sweden and norway, those are nice places, thats what i need which by the way until i read your book i did not know he had never visited there area very telling area but people bring up and ive done this before in my own writing that these summaries are very socialist area have big welfare state with big high taxes or lots of people and actually as an economist i think theres lots of problems withthat and thats one reason why their growth slowed and are not as they could be but thats not socialist. I often have sympathy for thatyou but you have a differentpoint and you said whether it is or not , its basically not attainable in the United States. Why not read. The american socialism is based on a simple idea. An idea outlined by George Renard shaw a century ago. Any government that robs peter to pay paul can count on pauls support. So the left in this country is trying tosay to people listen , we can offer you this and we can offer you that the really good news is its truly free. Its not truly free because college isnt free. You need buildings and professors and technology, hospitals on three , you have to pay doctors but what they mean by three is the good news for you is that we are going to make somebody else pay area at the key to american realism. It would collapse without you if you throw the whole bErnie Sanders, aoc demonizing the rich, stop promising to pay a would be renderedcompletely. As you know this canadians dont do this. They are first capitalists and wealth creation, theyhave low corporate taxes, lots of payments here most of them have no minimum wage. Can hire and fire people for any reason with one exception they dont have a wealth tax. Theres no inheritance tax. The kind of financial track session piece Elizabeth Warren and ray sanders have proposed for wall street, theres no scandinavian country that does that. Tried universal income, they declared it doesnt work so that the actual scandinavian model. And they dont demonize the rich. So the left doesnt want that. This is a key to what they do. Second point is the scandinavians at high taxes they distribute them evenly across the board. Even the middle class pays high taxes, if you make 75,000 and sweden are going to pay close to 50 percent tax rate so its not the millionaires and billionaires okay, they still the whole society and theres no callback for the consumption tax of 25 percent, that follows as you know as an economist disproportionately on the poor so this idea of determining the load, everybody wants benefits, everyone you have to pay the scandinavians dont use the vocabulary of free stuff because they know it isnt free. Paying, they are so we can adopt that model but thats not the model the left want. The key to theirstrategy and this is thepolitical element is weve got to offer people something for which they dont have to pay so we can trade back something for their vote. The scandinavians do not do that. I think you use the label in the book jokingly that you call it spanish socialism, that were more in this together and paying for it as a group. That you make the arguments that you can even pull off that pitch in the United States. Why not. Because it essentially their medicine. You could go to the American People and say guys, the government will now provide you with certain key services. Free school and free college. You would have your retirement provided for. You would never have to pay another childs care bill in your life in return we have the entire society just take your paycheck, cut in half. And send that half into the us government. That would be the truth scandinavian model. So if you make 50,000 just write a check for 25,000 and send it in area and thats what the scandinavians do. Most americans would be like im not going to do that, thats ridiculous and the left knows that. Thats why even bErnie Sanders in a strange way in his early career he would be denouncing millionaires and billionaires and he became a millionaire so now if you notice the only denounces billionaires so the key to american socialism is the robbing peter to pay paul approach and the other thing i pointout as my wife is from venezuela. All the things we see in american socialism you can see in venezuela read venezuelan socialism is identity socialism area hugo chavez introduced the politics of Race Division into venezuela. Itwas the indigenous and the blacks against the whites. Venezuela has these sort of militarized gangs, allies of the socialist regime. They go onmotorcycles and what do they carry . They carry sticks , they carry cement blocks, they even look like antifa so this is a cellular similarity between venezuela and the United States. Wheres scandinavias version of antifa . Theres no such thing so all the elements, the left says we are following their socialism, where trying to be like norway but in reality theyre followingthe caracas model, the venezuelan model and is not a model that ends well. The scandinavian model while slow down growth because of the incentives of the welfare state it doesnt kill the goose that lays the golden a it spreads out pain across everybody doing it together. So one question that im interested in that you didnt address to directly in your book that relates to this why the model is not sellable in the United States although its kind of implied in your comments about spanish socialism, its all a pretty homogenous society area its a smaller society that views it as a helping each other out instead of us subsidizing them or vice versa. So i wonder what role immigration has played in the United States as you mentioned ilLegal Immigration. You didnt say much about the history of illegal migration of course for much of our history essentially all migration waslegal. What role that plays in making socialism impossible in america. Marks, if we go back to his writings he was complaining socialism wasnt advancing as quickly as it was in europe because immigration divided the workers so they didnt have as much solidarity and we have some legacy of that today which makes then socialism harder to pitch in the us. What role do you think that place area. I think its played an important role. I thought i would say, im a legal immigrants and i see the history of america through those eyes. In fact when i was in college one of the most writing things to me as many of the questions of an immigrant i was curious about never addressed in the progressive if you will curriculum. A progressive curriculum was so focused on things like how did america extend its prosperity and its regime of legal rights to free the previously excluded groups and my question was how did america becomeprosperous in the first place . Is this socalled third world country, a backwater nation at the time of the founding of the richest country in the world in less than 100 years . How does it make this abundance available to the common man and i think aggressive is him and this is a little bit of a side point your question progressivism has pushed these questions under the rug. The left is very focused now on ilLegal Immigration for a while that puzzled me because i said why. Illegals can vote this is ultimately a boat buying scheme are you trying to achieve by appealing to people who cant ultimately vote for you at least not legally, not lawfully area i realize what the left is up to your. Its part of their broader politics of demonization or it a conflict the idea of the legal and illegal, the objective of which is ultimately to try to portray republicans on the right as not just being against illegal against mexicans or against immigrants generally so the idea here is to try to comment a kind of immigrant rebellion against trauma against the Republican Party by erasing a very important line between a lawful entry into the United States and an unlawful entry to theUnited States. Again, i dont want to take us far afield from the book on these things i guess a reasonable question from a freemarket perspective might be one with the great defense against this before freemarket supporters to come out and say you need to expand Legal Immigration so that ilLegal Immigration isnt as much of a problem is the waitlist, the legally migrated, the founding is coming from some countries its this kind of retraining labor which is part of free markets. I also think that i agreed that our country can and should take a large number of legal immigrants area i also think by the way that immigration systems are broken in the sense that we take immigrants for example in the family unification provision which is ultimately a kind of a racket. If i had wanted, i will only member of my family here in america over the past 30 years i could probably have 50 or 60 of my family members through a kind of chain process. This was notthe intention of the law at all. So i would say , i would love to see america take Illegal Immigrants but specify that we wantenterprising , hardworking industrious people who believe in the American Dream and a coming here to assimilate to it i think immigration would be uncontroversial if we took those kinds of people and the democrats would be horrified because those type of people would be very likely to vote republican. I think running the sector socialism then is opting precisely the type of people being the socialist country that fits the characteristics that you are speaking of area i can think of no more antisocialist voting bloc in the United States and human immigrants in florida area and i wanted to bring this back then to the venezuela part of your book as nursing people leaving venezuela now. Whats going on there to democratic freedoms and ideals that we hold, a lot of people dont know the history of venezuela and i know youre more familiar with not just through your writing but your personal relationship so it was once a rich country. It was economically free, capitalist and now we have this basketcase here today at the left doesnt want to own anymore when they say they want socialism but it really is a telling story. If you could tell us what happened there. Its so poignant andsad. My wifes variance has been kind of theopposite. I grew up in a country that was a beggingbowl of the world. I was thoroughly socialist. And india now is much better, whenever i go back to New Buildings and people who used to go to the need to watch their clothes and now they now have washing machines and the writing indian middle class, india is better. My wife threw up in the venezuela of the 70s was fantastic and it was so fantastic and she gave america the age of 10, according to the Rio Grande Valley she thought she had moved to a third world country area to keep up america was poorer than venezuela and she happened to be in a poor part of america but its sorevealing so to see a country that is multiracial , prosperous with a flirting democratic system, rival parties with corruption and all, its not perfect but to see that break down into kind of a third world barbarism, caracas is now the most dangerous city on the planet. To see the oil industry that flourished in venezuela being raised to the ground in part because the socialist government fired all the technical personnel and replace themwith bErnie Sanders types. These lobe eating people who didnt know how to get oil out of the ground. This is what happened by and large with the socialist takeover. Were seeing it alittle bit in the seattle autonomous zone. If they were truly autonomous and would starve in weeks but theyre putting up long lists of supplies, send us medicine, send us gatorade. They are parasitic from the larger freemarket society is sustaining those guys. The bottom line is venezuela has been destroyed. We could go the way of venezuela and i think abby and i are determined to put our hands to the wheelto make sure that doesnt happen here. Another thing in venezuela was the confiscation of businesses, they were trying to fund their socialism by just going after the wealthy and as a result theres no wealthy. Of course, except for the ruling regime. Hugo chavez had a president ial Television Show and hes walking down the street in that as well and he talking to an aide and the guy goes it some jew and he goes, appropriated and literally at that moment they go in and they forced the owners to get out and he goes who owns that they say hes an opponent of our resume. Expropriated. So this is socialism carried to its logical endpoint. I dont think its that different from what the left has in mind here. When a guy like de blasio sees these shooters and the looters, its hard to condemn them too much because they want to do in a systematic way what the looters are doing in an unsystematic way so the looters are just driving a bunch of shoes and running out. What de blasio would do is have an 80 percent marginal rate so he could run these businesses into the ground, confiscate their resources legally and ultimately offer them to other people again in exchange for their dependency on political support. You said something important there when describing chavez and his political opponents nationalized and this is what happened to democratic freedoms. When people say they want democratic socialism they dont seem to get get the connection that the roads to the serfdom, both of them said that basically without a large degree of Economic Freedom its hard to maintain your democratic freedom. Once you become dependenton the state for yourlivelihood and for permission to engage in Economic Exchange , you lose your voice. People seem to forget venezuela was democratic socialism. As was india and i think a very profound point i got out of hyatt, he doesnt say if this is way but im going to say it my way as we hear people say today, theyre only destroying property. Thats completely different from harming a person or taking their life. Property does not have the same kind of value that other things have and ill want to reflect on our own experience as i think this is actually not true. Things i own that are my possessions if you will, everything from my close to my glasses to mybooks , they are as much an extension of me as my thoughts, my memories, my experiences, to some degree my relationships. All of this encompasses if you will the larger world that is me, that is my life so the idea that somehow you can take my things because they are merely things and thats not the same as violating my purpose, this is a deep fallacy and misses the way in which the things that are blood sweat and tears have gone into building and acquiring are in fact part of who we are. This is a great transition because one of the goals in your book was to not just talk about the economic problems of these or identify the factions to make a moral argument against identity socialism and the moral argument or freemarket capitalism. Maybe you can elaborate on what you are saying to make a broader moral case for freedom and free markets. This tune is absolutely critical because i think a lot of the anxiety, a lot of the appeal of socialism arises out of the moral anxiety of capitalism and the moral anxiety of capitalism is often i think ineffectively defended by certain types of libertarians are always pointing out how capitalism works. Capitalism disperses information most effectively, capitalism is the best way to organize Human Behavior and the left sense we concedes this area capitalism is efficient yes but their point is it immoral, its unjust and the core of theirargument isnt even the argument of inequality. Its that somehow capitalism is undemocratic, it does not allocate rewards in proportion with what people do so this is the argument i really try to , this is the ball i tried to take by the horns and ill address it in a small way here, i want to make the point that the democratic socialists are always saying we need to extend democracy from the political sphere into the economics fear. That their argument for democratic socialism, its authorized by the moral legitimacy of democracy itself but my point is the market is more democratic now and our political system because think about it, and our political system we are voters and we vote every two years or every four years. We dont vote to make decisions directly. We vote in a Representative Democracy for other guys to make decisions on our behalf in the market, as consumers we vote all the time you every single day, many times a day. We vote with our hard earned dollars and this is a form of participatory democracy where actually giving up something thats important to us, that represent our own efforts whereas when we vote in politics it costs us nothing. If its not raining a lot of people stay home or if it is raining they stayhome so the point is that we dont have to extend democracy from the political to the economics fear because we already have. Capitalismis far more reflective of popular will and and popular consent then democratic socialism. I think some people might complain that youre referring to them as your hard earned dollars you might say those are unjustly earned dollars so your marketplace is unjust to start with you i think personally what theyre missing is the wealth generation process that comes through cooperating by Holding Serve your fellow humans and how you make profit and the vast majority of Economic Activity but theres still a kernel of truth to some of it of what i would call crony capitalism. Of where people do learn dollars and vote in a marketplace of which its illgottendollars, what you say to the justice or the morality of that situation . Crony tech and wasnt is actually not capitalism at all area its an unholy alliance between the state and the sort of business class. Adam rick was on to this and suspicious of it and i think rightly so. But on the other hand its important to notice that the reason we have a lot of inequality, the reason we have these billionaires and aoc said recently on social media she said no one burns 1 billion, you take 1 billion. I want to explore that for a minute because it seems to me its not entrepreneurs who have created this enormous inequality. We have read why . Because you have these supplyside entrepreneurs and a good example is the job. We traditionally think of entrepreneurs as responding to demand. People have to eat so entrepreneurs by food, etc. But people want to drive cars, entrepreneurs apply the cars but nobody wrote steve jobs and he said what about making a phone that takes nose and allows you to text and has a built in gps and does this and does that, no one did that. He envisioned it and he built it and he marketed it before we knew wecouldnt live without. So the enormous rewards that have accrued as a result is because they have done thing that one would think isalmost impossible. They anticipated a need even before we knew we wanted those things those are the most successful and ingenious entrepreneurs area its not even just that they came out of target and hit it. They target the rest of us cant even see you. This of course is a big one with steve jobs but its also every day monday innovation of finding ways to lower costs or better serve your customers that they do all the time to create value. So with just a few minutes left , id like you to ask, average american was watching this interviewand sitting here nodding his head with you , he be concerned with socialism spreading in the United States. I can think of at least one, maybe two things one is they could buy your book and the other is they could buy socialism talks, my book and what should they go out and do to deal with the threat of socialism in the United States . Can also watch and share my movie coming out this summer. Its called trumpcard and it is , i like to do the book and the movie as a onetwo punch read the book lays out the intellectual spine and its an argument as all books are but the movie is more of an emotional narrative, a journey but telling the same story in a different way and reaching a wider audiencethat books can never reach. Most importantly we have to be , we have to understand socialism and understand the new socialism that we can effectively answer it read a lot of the young people are attracted by , its not that theyre dumb area part of it is they have been again dies by theirprofessors. This is a whole other story they havent gotten into. Even those of the left was dominant, there was debate over the types of issues the reagan revolution was all about and now i go to campuses and speak and i find young people, when i say things they look at me as if ive slapped them because theyve never heard them before. No one on the campus has ever said that before so we have ultimately i think unfortunately a little bit of a brainwashed class of young people and its desperately important we find other ways to reach them so they at least know that they can subject their existing prejudices to socratic questioning. I teach at Texas Tech University and its a much healthier climate of discussion out there all things related to this. I also think its important to identify with young people and say where the injustices theyre seeing are instead of dismissing them. Instead say lets think about how voluntary cooperation solve this better than fake socialism. I couldnt agree more and for a lot of young people when they look at these escalating College Costs they blame the free market system and they dont realize the vast presence of telegrams the whole panoply of government provisions encourage universities to jack up the prices. We are not dealing withthe free market. Sometimes use analogy where if youre in a Grocery Store and people say you have a right to food so help yourself to whatever you want people would say instead of taking two cartons of milk ill take 30 because theres no one to stop me filling up my car but when you show up at the counter its going to occur to the grocery guys on the other side of the counter that dinesh isnt paying for his groceries, when we charge 30 in other words whats happening here is the ripoff scheme is emerging, a ripoff scheme in which i and the Grocery Store are complicit in robbing a third guy who is not present and has no say in this debate, mainly the taxpayer. Hes the one footing the bill so thedemocrats their politicalstrategy is based on that. Its based on looting the invisible third man who is not present in the debate. I think youre right and its no accident that things like healthcare are also on that list. Thank you for joining us today, i really appreciate it. Great new book. Youre watching the tv on cspan2, every day with nonfiction books and authors, cspan2, created by Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you by yourtelevision provider. Hi everyone, im heather moran. Sticks and i is a nonprofit for arts, entertainment and ideas and a synagogue that reimagines how religion and community can advance every day lives. Embedded in the dna of our organization is dialogue among the most Critical Issues of our time area where gathered here tonight virtually at the time when so much feels uncertain. Over the past two weeks and has become abundantly clear there is no more urgent time to tk