Transcript for:
Exploring Socialism: Concepts and Misunderstandings

oh well how do you I didn't hear you come in normally I'd shoot you for unlawful entry but series this is your first offense someone let it go you know when I'm not will dinner cleaning my rifle something I like to do is to help out my friends and neighbors with economic interpretations of various phenomena we see around the country and why just today I received this letter from a woman in Tyler let me read it to you dear cowboy economist I think my children are becoming socialists what are the tell-tale signs and where is the closest re-education camp signed terrified and Tyler well let me answer your second question first every college station but to the first question more that's a doozy what is a socialist is it somebody who wants the social ownership for the means of production is it an individual who's in favor of universal health care is it that guy down the street that won't take his bed oh yard sign down well probably it's all of these to some extent but you know what in order to really get at this we need to be a little bit more scientific about it we need to come up with a definition now because it's impossible to hunt down socialists without a wanted poster one mistake people often make in this approach is to define by example what this means is to say for example what's a cow while a cow is like Bessie or what's a mountain well a mountain is something like Mount Everest but damn it what do we do with an entirely new phenomenon like for example my wife where does she fit in here you know when I first thought about this I thought to myself she's a lot more like a cow than she is like a mountain well I'm here to tell you from bitter experience that that's the kind of logic she rejects and that what she recommended to me was instead that one define a cow by its functions or by its innate characteristics so I thought well that's not a bad idea so I went and got myself a dictionary and look here's a definition of account a fully grown female animal of a domesticated breed of ox kept to produce milk or beef well friends that's not my wife and I sure wish I'd read this first but it's saved a whole lot of trouble so what definition should we use for socialism well we want to avoid the air of so many others who say things like well socialism's like what they had in the Soviet Union or what the head in Korea and so forth instead we want to come up with something more scientific like our definition for account furthermore I don't want to break socialism in the two major groups I'm gonna call it biggest socialism and little less socialism let's start with the latter now look in this set the best definition I ever found and as I mentioned earlier there's many but I think the best one I found was this socialism is the distribution of a good or a service by means other than income what this means is this we distribute Saddles my income if you got enough income you can have yourself a saddle we're distributing horses by income forget enough income and get self a horse we distribute leather-bound copies of mocs Marx's copy top my income you got enough income and get yourself a leather-bound copy of Marx's copy top however we do not distribute police protection by income all you're gonna do is downline one one when you describe your emergency they do not say can I have a credit card number please what's the three-digit number on the back they don't say any of that they say what is your emergency if it sounds as if it's something that can help you win they're gonna come right over and it doesn't matter whether you're not even a citizen of this country and have never given any money into the taxes that pay these fine young men and women salaries you are still entitled to police protection in short in this country we distribute police protection by a means other than income we distribute it by means of those who need the protection at the time and a crime being committed and so forth now that makes the police department a socialist institution I'm sure some of y'all are reacting the same way my wife did when I compared her to account but even though I stand well corrected on that is you I'm right on this indeed comrade there's socialism all around us right now I made a list public libraries public schools national parks fire departments NASA the United States Army Navy Air Force Coast Guard and Marine Corps are all socialist institutions I know it's horrifying before we dig deeper into that nest of vipers though let's step back and have a look at big s socialism now this is quite a bit different from little s socialism it's a much more specific I guess theory you should say and that is a recommendation that what we want but with big s socialism is we want social ownership of the means of production we want for example Ford Microsoft Exxon Walmart Citibank all to be owned in this country in the same way NASA is owned and the basic goal here is that we're eliminating a class of people who earn income from nothing but owning you can earn income from working you can earn an income from managing you can earning income from directing but you shouldn't earn income from just owning I think the easiest example of this is perhaps someone who has inherited wealth they have done nothing to earn that wealth and yet because they have inherited say for example the the Hilton Hotel Empire then they can receive an income from that ownership the goal of big s socialist is to eliminate that class of people and have us all own the means of production in a social manner in the same way we do with the Marine Corps and with NASA well that gives us a chance to think about some wanted posters here and to help this horrified woman in Tyler determine whether or not her children are socialists let's start with big s socialist here's my cinema wanted poster oh no if you see this guy night and if you're trying to figure out if your children are becoming big s socialists this is what you need to look for are they occurring around copies of the Communist Manifesto are they going on about labor being the only source of value do they talk about the different stages effect development if so they're probably getting ready to X procreate the expropriate errs now fortunately very few of these types exist but on the other hand if your children have gone down this path there's not a whole lot you can do Wow they're easy to spot but these are people who have gone through the work of reading Marx's copy Tom and try to understand it it's not gonna be an afternoon conversation to dissuade someone of what they've read in these books so I apologize rather I'm very sorry for you if this turns out to be the case now I suppose you could if you were desperate as a parent read through these yourself and work up some sort of an intellectual argument to have with your children to try to bring them back to the ways of God and freedom but very few parents actually love their children enough to do that so very soon could your children the little s socialists like this man right here well you know what it could be that's a very strong possibility but the problem is that pretty much everybody is a little less socialist anybody who believed that we should be distributing some goods and services by means other than income is a little s socialist if you think it's okay that you don't have to pay to go to a public library you're a little less socialist if you think it's okay that you don't have to get out your checkbook if you have a fire at your house then your little s socialist if you think that it's okay for the United States Army to not be run as a private enterprise I'm gonna Majan what that would entail the United States Army would have to operate like an insurance company they would have to come from buddy house hello are you the moment of the house my name is captain Johnson United States Army are you afraid of Canadians me too we have three levels of protection against Canadian aggression and then you signed up form and so forth and that's how they financed the United States Army well we would have lost World War two for sure if we dated that way so once again if you're okay with any these things you already are a little less socialist in fact what we're witnessing today in towns across America including Tyler Texas is actually not a an argument over whether or not there are some goods and services that should be distributed by means other than income but which ones should be distributed by means other than income that's been the argument now they so-called Democratic socialists for example their idea is not to introduce a new concept in the economy that is a little less socialism but to extend the less socialism the things like health care they believe that things like health care should not be driven primarily by how much money you have now when it's certainly free to disagree with this notion just as one can disagree that the poor do that the Porsche deserve police protection but that doesn't make it an attack on the American Way of life so what I would say to you worried mother where's your letter again worried a mother terrified in Tyler what I would say to you is that feel free to argue with your children about this remind them that the poor are lazy and undeserving but don't worry about them becoming card-carrying communist these are very different things now another thing I hear from many of my viewers is that they're worried that little s socialism can perform a role as a gateway drug into big s socialism in fact there's a lot of people out there who would quite the - who Saudis - are essentially the same these are either ignorant people or fear mongers do not listen to them instead yes it is true that big s socialists generally also embrace little s socialism but very few little s socialists also embrace biggest socialism in other words of all those people who believe that there are goods and services that should be distributed by a means other than income very few of them also believe that we should have social ownership of the means of production I don't know of a single political party in the United States that takes such a position I mean there might be two or three people try to run for office now now but nobody important and certainly nobody here in Fort Worth so terrified in Tyler don't know you worry about that now one thing that we do hear a lot about again going back to these these social democrat democrats whatever whatever their call is that they want to make the capitalist system more democratic-- with a small d-- now what they mean by that essentially is to return to the days of Adam Smith the high levels of competition that prevent few individual firms and and owners from accumulating the power that enables them to well accumulate even more power that's not how capitalism is supposed to work the invisible hand does not operate when it's got its hand in the back pocket of a politician that's right waiting back so I hope this was in some way helpful to everybody and to perhaps put your minds at ease I know I feel a lot better having thought through these issues myself well well will this prevent me and my militia group from worrying about various other issues probably not but I don't think we need to worry about socialists for now we've got them under control