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Welcome to the Programming Lions podcast.
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Today we have a very special guest all the way from down under.
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Alexei joins us and he's an Aussie teen embracing unique outlooks on communism, having family going all the way back to Soviet Russia.
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He's very knowledgeable of history and why he believes the world needs to shift.
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Let's get into it.
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Alexei, welcome to the podcast.
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We're excited to have you on.
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You come all the way from Australia.
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So maybe to get things started, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself, where you live, what you're into?
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Yeah, sure thing.
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Well, I'm 16.
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10 16, a few months ago.
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I live in Victoria, which is a state in Australia.
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We have states like YouTube, but we have six of them.
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Uh, it's in the very south, so it gets recently cold in here.
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Uh, not like what you expect Australia to be.
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With.
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My interests quite varied, but I like natural science as well as politics.
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Uh, I like particularly electrical engineering and computer software.
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I've done like a few coding projects in my life.
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For sport, I play volleyball and I also go to the gym.
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I know you guys, uh, do CrossFit, isn't it?
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Uh, quite regularly.
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So you might have common ground there.
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And I guess for a while I've been very interested in history, uh, sort of as a bonus to my political stuff.
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So I'll say those are my interests.
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Alright.
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Very cool.
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Nice.
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Yeah.
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What's it like living in Australia?
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Yeah.
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Pretty similar to the USA actually.
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I mean, although I've never been there, but I can imagine, uh, except, well, right now it's spring for us, so like Christmas for us is in the middle of summer.
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It's very hot during it, it,
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alexei is kind of a Russian name.
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So what, what's your background?
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Well, both my parents were born in Latvia, which I'm not sure if you know the country or not, but it's very small.
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Around 2 million people border as Russia.
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Uh, but both of them, so I have Latian heritage, but my grandparents out of the four, which I have, three of them were born in Russia.
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The other one was born in Poland.
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So it's sort of all spread out and because it was the same country for a while, there's lots of movement within the country, but now some sort of from everywhere around there.
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But Latvia is where my parents were born.
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Uh, but I can speak Russian, but I can't speak Latvian.
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They taught me Russian, not Latian, because it's far more useful to know Russian.
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so
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See, this is great.
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Wow.
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Well, so you?
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probably saw we, we visited Russia recently.
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I did.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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We were there for a couple of weeks.
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And have you visited,
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I actually haven't, I visited Lathia many times, but Russia, no, not yet.
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I plan
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I've heard Latvia's a beautiful country.
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Yeah, it's nice.
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I imagine if you had grandparents that were born in Russia and Poland, they must have told you some stories or they must have told your parents some
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well, yeah, if you wanna get into that, we can,
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another kind of curiosity question is how did you find us?
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Pretty sure on Instagram reels.
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There's actually a few people in my school that have seen you guys, like, I tell them that I'm gonna do a podcast interview, and they're like, yeah, we've heard of them.
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I've heard of, I've seen them like on Instagram reels.
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So you've
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wow.
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like, whether it's your account directly or like other accounts, you know, stitching or whatever, but they've, they've heard of you guys, so yeah.
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Okay.
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All right.
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Yeah, well, we've had, we've had a few things go viral and, uh, interesting.
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So we're, we're, that's pretty cool.
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We're getting seen in Australia, boys.
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That's good.
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Yeah.
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I think, yeah.
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Uh, it depends on what their opinion of us is.
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Nonetheless.
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Nonetheless, we were always interested to talk to, uh, you know, interesting people with different perspectives, and I think, we'll, we'll, we'll kind of get into that today.
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So without further ado, why don't we get into some of the questions we had queued up and go from there.
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All right.
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So how did you first get into the realm of politics and how do you lean.
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Yeah, so with politics, again, this is sort of segueing into family history.
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I was interested in history as a young age, not sure why.
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I just was thought it was cool tanks and guns and all that.
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And I, uh, my grandparents, you know, when the US aside during World War ii, the biggest roar on the planet in the history of the world.
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So I looked very heavily, heavily into that.
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And from there I sort of skewed on looking at the Soviet Union in general and how it's viewed in our society and how it actually was, you know, asking my parents and just looking on the internet.
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And from that sort of spread out, you know, just into general politics.
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Uh, so it sort of began with an interest in history.
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Which turns into like World War II and Cold War history sort of thing.
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Uh, how E Lean, I think the Soviet Union is pretty badly represented in Western society.
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I think it was a lot more nuanced and there's a lot of, you know, admirable aspects, whether it work, some parts work, some parts didn't.
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But people are very quick to just disregard all of it.
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Especially due to the Red Scare McCarthyism in the USAA while ago.
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But it's very misrepresented.
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I believe I have the, that's the flag of the Latin Soviet Socialist Republic.
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So each republic had a flag,
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Oh,
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that's the flag and black one, which is where my parents are born.
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And it serves as a bit of a patriotic symbol, but also of my ideology.
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So how I lean is, is it that way?
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And I'm also quite negative to US foreign policy over that time.
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Uh, I've.
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Like had a look at what they did and there's been lots of wars and regime change, which people often overlook and don't talk about again, due to American propaganda during that time.
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So that's, that's the way Eileen,
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Okay.
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Huh.
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And are you very interested in American politics because just of our presence in the world or what?
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What's the reason?
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It's, it's very important like American politics and a lot of Australian people understand that.
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Like, we follow the American elections just as heavily as we follow our own.
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So like, yeah, it's very important.
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And not, not even just from an interest, but even economically, like the tariffs and all that, they've been like key talking points.
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Like I do economics at school and we've talked about them extensively even though we're men's just talk about Australia because they affect us a lot.
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So it's yeah, America is important to us.
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Yeah.
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Right, right.
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And so if I was to sum up your kind of political ideology, maybe it's still forming a bit, you're young, but it leans towards
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the
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a, let's say, a, a sympathetic view of historical USSR and some of the things that happened.
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More of a communist type of governance structure.
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Is that fair to say.
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Now the, I find, we've talked to some other communist.
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Uh, ideology people on our channel, and yeah, it's definitely interesting.
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But what we found is that there's vast differences between some communist ideology.
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So can you maybe tell us a little bit more about like where, where you are in that kind of spectrum?
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It's very true to say there's vast differences.
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I'd say we, we argue with ourselves much more than with anyone else.
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Yeah.
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I hear this a lot, but I'm not, I'm not into any of these forums, but, uh
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Yeah.
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Well, a few of the differences are some people support a violent revolution, other people support, uh, gradual reformist sort of way to power the people which support the reformers might be called Democratic socialists.
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Uh, I'm for, it's sort of a bit of a mix and it was a bit more pragmatic, but I like to view history not as what we should do, but what happens and why it happens.
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And so when I view revolutions in history, I don't see them as, like someone came up with the idea and said, yes, let's start a revolution, and then everyone died and they had a big war.
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No, I view it as there was deep contradictions in that society which caused misery.
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And those people were so downtrodden that they had to fight and start the revolution.
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And it's violent, but it's violent because of the.
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Uh, contradictions in their society.
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So when there are revolutions it's a matter of whether the goal is admirable or not.
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If there's a fascist revolution, I would not support it because the goal is not admirable.
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So I wouldn't support violence to achieve a non-ad admirable goal.
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But if there is a, a socialist communist revolution, which can produce real change, and that's the most pragmatic way to change, I believe that it may be warranting of support.
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Okay.
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So it's justified if the outcome is like kind of matches up with your worldview.
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I suppose is,
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Okay.
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so that's, that's the solution aspect.
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Uh, the other stuff I'll say is pretty in line with like standard Marxism, Leninism of the states.
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I do have a few like critiques of the Soviet Union.
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One is collectivization, which is a policy I'm sort of.
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I'm not, I'm 50 50 on it.
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Uh, and I'm trying to look into it more.
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On one hand, I've read a book recently, which said that collectivization essentially just caused excess deaths because Ku Larks who were being collectivized, who were taking their, getting their farms taken off them would directly sabotage their farms, like as a means of revolt.
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And in return the Soviet government has to imprison or kill them, and then it just gets worse and worse.
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And they caused a fair few deaths.
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But, uh, I read another study about a year ago, and it was comparing Poland Communist Poland, which didn't have collectivization and Communist Bulgaria, which did, and the communist Bulgaria had much better farming productivity.
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So it's a bit of a topic I'm trying to look into.
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And then the other critique I probably have is their democracy.
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I've recently read very interesting stuff, advocating for some levels of sortation, you know, like how juries are picked.
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Just by random selection for some government positions, I believe that some require some level of skill.
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So you can't just pick it randomly.
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But we should have randomly selected committees because that represents the actual population more.
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What they found is that when you have elections, uh, the best people in society are chosen, which generally ends up being the upper class, which is why we have, uh, lots of rich politicians, but not many actual working class common people in power.
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So the Soviet Union also suffered from that.
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They had like this fringe minority of, of politicians who had not extreme inequality with the rest of society.
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They had, like, they earned about five times more, which is still very, very equal compared to capitalist society standards.
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But there was still inequality and there was a divide over that.
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So that's the critique.
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Yeah, I think that's a fair critique of almost all political positions even around the world.
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I've often, like, we've talked about this at home, where wouldn't it be great if we hired our politicians, kinda like American Idol, like they had to go and, you know, sort of like you could apply and then the people actually chose them based on their talent, their, uh, moral hygiene and all, all of that, versus like, who gets the most funding.
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Yeah, because funding determines a lot of elections in it.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And of course, and of course something that I, I think like we, we agree with a lot of leftists and and even, you know, anti-capitalist on to some extent is the two party system.
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There's really no other options and.
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And an independent can't win in America, for
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Yeah.
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Even in Australia, we, we have a, I'll say objectively better system than you do.
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What we have is preferential voting.
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So say you really like an independent.
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But you prefer, say Republicans or Democrats.
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So there's three parties, independent, republican, democrat, you can vote number one independent, but then when they lose, say they get the least votes, then all their votes get discarded.
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And they look at the number two on your list, and that vote goes to number two.
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So you put number two Republican and your vote goes to the Republican then, and then you put number three Democrats so that it's just,
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Yeah.
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And that, that system's been talked about and proposed here, but of course, the parties in charge of actually voting for that voting regulations don't want, it's not,
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yeah.
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not advantageous for them.
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but even with that, we still have yet two very dominant parties, labor and liberal, which is, I'll say, pretty similar with your parties.
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I think labor is a bit more left than your, uh, Democrats.
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But yeah, it's very similar.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Well maybe we'll come back to,'cause I think the, the, how communism might take hold when America, or, or globally is a, is a deeper question.
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So maybe we'll, we'll circle back to that, but we had a few other, like topics we wanted to get through with you too.
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Yeah.
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So first of all, you've probably, you probably have to get your sources from somewhere, right?
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So I'm wondering which, like, news, news channels or news sources, do you prefer more and trust more for well news.
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yeah.
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Well, with, with like direct news, like immediately after an event happens, I really just look at anything just look it up and go on whichever, you know, publisher makes it first.
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But with my more like deep political thoughts, I usually, uh, look to YouTube.
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There's this one channel, which I've watched extensively over the last few years.
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His name is William Paul Haw.
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I think his, his YouTube channel is just Paul Cock shot.
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He's a Scottish professor.
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Uh, his.
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Very deep communist.
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And he is post a lot of videos on many, many topics such as like physics, but a lot of economics, politics.
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And it's commented on like modern events as well, like the Russian Ukranian war.
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Apart from that, so there's him and there's like a lot of other academic sort of people that I look to which are more restrained from like the popular news sources, which I think, uh, you know, they're more generated just to get clicks and views rather than actually give you information.
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So I have like a few like that.
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But generally it's just academic sources and whichever, you know, popular media outlet makes it first.
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Okay.
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And we, we didn't act, I don't think we asked you this earlier, but your family, like, what?
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Do they lean similar to you or do you have differing opinions?
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I, we have differing opinions.
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I'll say they're mostly apolitical, but you know, they have, you know, obviously a few views in the Soviet Union.
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They live there and I've asked them on it, and again, they gimme a sort of a, a nuanced view of what it really was, which I think is very important.
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But they're mostly apolitical.
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Again, have a few views, maybe slightly left-leaning, especially compared to America.
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I'll say in Australia, people are more left-leaning compared to America on average.
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But not, not like me, but my grandparents on the other hand.
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Two of them worked as teachers and in the Soviet Union to work as a teacher, you had to be a member of the Communist Party as a part of the, so they were, they were trained as, you know, communists.
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So, two of them were one of them, my Polish grandparent, she's a Polish Catholic and very, very anti-communist.
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Absolutely hated the whole system.
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She was very anticommunist, very religious, and again, in the Soviet religion, it wasn't banned, but it was frowned upon.
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That's sort of my family story.
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Okay.
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Very interesting.
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So do you like, or what are your thoughts about like kids talking about politics like us?
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Yeah.
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Well, look, it's important, especially at a certain point once the kid's mature enough, which I think is for, it doesn't happen a certain age, you know, it's different for everyone when someone gets, you know, mature enough to be able to speak on issues properly.
00:16:12.509 --> 00:16:19.080
But I think politics is important and talking to children about politics is important.
00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:22.710
As long as they understand why things happen.
00:16:22.799 --> 00:16:26.399
It's not just a matter of this is good, that's bad there.
00:16:26.820 --> 00:16:31.559
It's, you know, actually understanding why that works, why that doesn't work, why this might work, might not work.
00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:32.220
We don't know.
00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:37.320
It's a very nuanced subject and it requires a lot of nuance when teaching, especially to children.
00:16:37.399 --> 00:16:47.450
Now you got interested in, let's say, politics, economics, pretty young, maybe because of your background, but are like, what are your friends like?
00:16:47.500 --> 00:16:51.309
Yeah, well I'm definitely the furthest into politics out of anyone.
00:16:51.730 --> 00:16:54.039
When I got in, I was definitely alone.
00:16:54.340 --> 00:16:56.799
There was no one else who was 12 years old.
00:16:56.799 --> 00:16:59.350
There was also like, looking at the stuff I was looking.
00:16:59.740 --> 00:17:04.359
But as I've gone through my schooling years, uh, you know, other people have also sort of gone into it.
00:17:04.670 --> 00:17:13.440
And they usually come to me sort of asking me stuff and I tell them my views and we sort of have a little,'cause they usually develop their own views from the internet when we have little talks.
00:17:13.769 --> 00:17:15.839
So there are now at school, there's probably.
00:17:16.529 --> 00:17:24.630
Four or five others who or a few of them are my friends, who of them are just random people who were, I would say, interested in politics not necessarily communists or socialists by any means.
00:17:24.690 --> 00:17:28.710
Most of them are sort of, don't have any coherent political views, I would say.
00:17:29.279 --> 00:17:35.579
But they do, they are clearly interested and they, like, each time something happens, they, you know, talk about it or they talk to me about it.
00:17:36.119 --> 00:17:39.539
So now there are people like that, but when I first started there, there wasn't,
00:17:40.722 --> 00:17:41.012
Okay.
00:17:41.238 --> 00:17:41.478
Okay.
00:17:41.478 --> 00:17:41.778
Yeah.
00:17:41.778 --> 00:17:44.958
I imagine at 12, like, it's very young.
00:17:45.067 --> 00:17:45.357
Yeah.
00:17:45.357 --> 00:17:55.012
That's pretty young to, especially to be getting into,'cause you had, you had sent us like a, a, a bit about some of your reading material and it's pretty dense, like it's pretty advanced and dense.
00:17:55.234 --> 00:17:56.615
shelf here, back there.
00:17:57.279 --> 00:17:58.355
It's, it's quite dense.
00:17:59.157 --> 00:18:02.093
I mean, it was like Marx, Lenin yeah.
00:18:02.192 --> 00:18:02.913
John Locke.
00:18:02.913 --> 00:18:03.452
I think so.
00:18:03.452 --> 00:18:05.222
So like, you've, you've read some pretty deep,
00:18:06.029 --> 00:18:10.650
Yeah, the, the marks and Len is definitely the hardest to read just'cause it was so long ago.
00:18:10.680 --> 00:18:12.509
Like, the writing's clearly outdated.
00:18:12.809 --> 00:18:16.980
But I've read yeah, lots of other stuff, which is also like academic.
00:18:17.130 --> 00:18:20.670
But yeah, so I've, I've gone into a fair bit of that over the years.
00:18:21.782 --> 00:18:22.742
Well, good, good.
00:18:22.772 --> 00:18:24.032
Uh, good, good for you.
00:18:24.032 --> 00:18:26.613
But I, yes, it's dense at that age for sure.
00:18:27.212 --> 00:18:36.323
So, what are some key points in either your current politics in Australia or politics here possibly that you were very passionate about?
00:18:37.910 --> 00:18:47.900
Uh, well look, I'll say naturally as a socialist, communist type private property it's like a key part of society, which people, you know, they're born with.
00:18:47.900 --> 00:18:55.640
They have that idea that people can just buy whatever they want and they just grow up and they, they live with that idea, not realizing that.
00:18:56.930 --> 00:19:01.670
Over our thousands of years as a society, it's changed a lot.
00:19:01.740 --> 00:19:14.009
Our laws around who can own what have been vastly different, you know, from slavery where you can own people, which is like very extreme to, egalitarian societies where owning anything was, was banned.
00:19:14.009 --> 00:19:20.880
Like by egalitarian, I mean the primitive ones, you know, the tribes thousands of years ago where owning anything was banned.
00:19:21.329 --> 00:19:32.549
And everything was the same, but there's been a vast difference over society and it's, I think it's time to revise what we think you should be able to do again.
00:19:33.210 --> 00:19:34.140
So private property.
00:19:34.200 --> 00:19:38.609
So the, so ability to own private property is, is a, is a topic.
00:19:38.609 --> 00:19:38.880
Okay.
00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:40.259
That's a big and a, that's a deep one.
00:19:40.289 --> 00:19:40.500
Okay.
00:19:40.977 --> 00:19:41.336
topic.
00:19:41.336 --> 00:19:41.606
Yeah.
00:19:41.997 --> 00:19:46.676
Like apart from that, I'll say.
00:19:47.967 --> 00:19:50.906
Again, democracy sort of one, which I was talking to you about.
00:19:50.967 --> 00:19:54.416
But you know, I think it's important for people to hold power.
00:19:55.076 --> 00:19:56.517
The key communist idea.
00:19:57.207 --> 00:19:57.957
Uh, what else?
00:19:57.957 --> 00:20:07.906
Like, I have general, like most leftists, you know, they talk about, you know, poverty and, dignified right to live and free water and free housing.
00:20:08.086 --> 00:20:09.406
I have those ideas.
00:20:09.507 --> 00:20:18.207
But I think that it's like a, a more service level resting upon the whole idea of private property and how we manage things as a society.
00:20:18.386 --> 00:20:18.866
And
00:20:18.916 --> 00:20:19.207
Yeah.
00:20:19.477 --> 00:20:19.767
Okay.
00:20:20.544 --> 00:20:25.193
so those, that's probably the big one, which is like uniquely sort of socialist and communist and those
00:20:25.406 --> 00:20:26.067
Right, right.
00:20:26.067 --> 00:20:26.696
So, okay.
00:20:26.696 --> 00:20:27.987
That's actually a good way to put it is.
00:20:27.987 --> 00:20:34.557
So the, the deeper issues are the ones that you're interested in while surface level, however, they're massive issues, which
00:20:34.703 --> 00:20:35.269
Even though they're massive.
00:20:35.606 --> 00:20:38.487
healthcare, universal income yeah.
00:20:38.487 --> 00:20:48.477
Foreign conflicts, wars, I imagine, you know, Gaza and Ukraine, all like, these types of things are, are, uh, what you would consider sort of, maybe not the, the core.
00:20:48.983 --> 00:20:52.614
yeah, because again, they're very big issues and that's what we're trying to solve.
00:20:52.943 --> 00:20:57.743
But the communist outlook is that that rested upon the bedrock of capitalism.
00:20:57.743 --> 00:21:02.784
Capitalism creates these issues through its contradictions, through the way it operates.
00:21:03.023 --> 00:21:06.534
And to solve those issues, you have to solve the core problem.
00:21:06.564 --> 00:21:09.894
And the reason why we can't solve those issues is because we haven't solved the core problem yet.
00:21:10.584 --> 00:21:13.199
So that's, that's my view on it.
00:21:15.227 --> 00:21:15.307
Hmm.
00:21:15.311 --> 00:21:15.761
Okay.
00:21:16.422 --> 00:21:20.682
Well, do you mind if we unpack communism a little bit this wasn't set up as a debate.
00:21:20.682 --> 00:21:26.142
However, like we, we want to ask what I'd say are common critiques of communism that I'm sure you're familiar with.
00:21:26.382 --> 00:21:36.612
So, if you look at history and you do some queries, let's say through Google or a, a lot of means, you'll find that communism has, let's say, the highest death toll.
00:21:36.612 --> 00:21:43.541
It's had very difficult times implementing itself in the eutopic format that Marx talked about, et cetera.
00:21:43.991 --> 00:21:50.402
So, in terms of actual implementation, it's had a lot of historical challenges.
00:21:50.402 --> 00:21:52.471
So how do you, like, how do you think about that?
00:21:52.844 --> 00:21:58.663
Well, firstly, a key thing which I want people to realize with when they talk about death toll.
00:21:58.693 --> 00:22:06.044
'cause everyone always, they spurred out numbers on the internet or wherever they say 20 million here, 60 million there, a hundred million, whatever you want.
00:22:06.523 --> 00:22:10.364
Uh, the general numbers come.
00:22:10.394 --> 00:22:13.394
There's 20, there's a 20 million number which comes for the Soviet Union.
00:22:13.963 --> 00:22:26.223
It comes from the Black Book of Communism, which is, has been sort of rejected by academics because it it goes for like the higher estimates and also it counts a lot of things which you originally wouldn't really call deaths.
00:22:26.614 --> 00:22:32.554
Uh, it counts Nazi soldier fatalities from the war, which again, they were being invaded.
00:22:32.644 --> 00:22:36.544
I don't see, I don't find a Nazi to be a victim of communism.
00:22:37.402 --> 00:22:38.811
You're talking about like World War ii?
00:22:39.318 --> 00:22:39.949
World War ii.
00:22:40.281 --> 00:22:40.701
Yeah.
00:22:40.701 --> 00:22:42.142
The Russians lost a lot.
00:22:42.741 --> 00:22:43.162
A lot.
00:22:43.162 --> 00:22:43.642
of soldiers.
00:22:43.642 --> 00:22:44.182
A lot of soldiers in World War ii.
00:22:44.211 --> 00:22:44.961
More than any other
00:22:45.259 --> 00:22:46.519
Yeah, exactly.
00:22:46.618 --> 00:22:56.638
I think some sources, they count like the Soviet can re legalize abortion, uh, and they count deaths from aborted babies as deaths of communism.
00:22:57.169 --> 00:23:03.259
Which again, like whether you're for or against abortion, I'm not sure whether you would call a fetus Same
00:23:03.652 --> 00:23:06.172
those numbers aren't typically included in any stats,
00:23:06.499 --> 00:23:06.798
Yeah.
00:23:07.249 --> 00:23:07.548
Yeah.
00:23:07.548 --> 00:23:07.729
Yeah.
00:23:07.729 --> 00:23:09.949
So there's a few sketchy numbers
00:23:09.999 --> 00:23:13.269
What about things like the Bolshevik revolution and the famines?
00:23:13.655 --> 00:23:14.076
Yeah.
00:23:14.076 --> 00:23:24.276
So, well, with the famines, you thinking of the halor happen in Ukraine in the twenties, thirties, under Stalin, which is with a collectivization, which I was talking about before.
00:23:24.836 --> 00:23:28.945
But the death ranges, they go from 3 million to 7 million starved.
00:23:29.455 --> 00:23:39.875
Again, like it was mostly due due to, uh, the collectivization, which happened, which in one of the books I was reading Farm to Factory, it's called, they heavily critique the collectivization.
00:23:40.145 --> 00:23:45.455
They, the guy actually says that Stalin did a very good job with industrializing the country, which he objectively did.
00:23:45.846 --> 00:23:50.615
The Soviet Union had the fastest growth rate out of any country ever in the world except Japan.
00:23:51.096 --> 00:23:52.296
Japan beat it.
00:23:52.826 --> 00:24:01.375
But considering that the Soviet was a much bigger country, like it was like a growth rate per, like, per the starting how much the industry was starting with.
00:24:01.776 --> 00:24:01.925
It's
00:24:01.943 --> 00:24:02.814
country to mobilize.
00:24:02.814 --> 00:24:03.084
Yeah.
00:24:03.306 --> 00:24:03.935
yeah, exactly.
00:24:04.415 --> 00:24:13.276
Anyway, but he does critique collectivization which again, I've said I'm not fully decided on, but it's important to know that the famine was from there.
00:24:13.816 --> 00:24:25.665
And it's also important to remember that the Russian Empire before being the USSR had regular famines that had a famine, I think at the end of the 18 hundreds, which killed a few million a few 30 years before that.
00:24:26.010 --> 00:24:37.080
It was just a symptom of pre-industrial society that whenever there's a bad harvest, there's a famine, a few thousand, few million maybe people die and you go on with your life.
00:24:37.560 --> 00:24:43.351
Only in the last a hundred years or so, we've had the privilege of having foods all throughout our lives.
00:24:43.750 --> 00:24:47.951
And the Soviet Union gave its people that privilege by industrializing the nation that quickly.
00:24:48.601 --> 00:24:53.040
So that's what the Soviet Union, but the biggest death numbers come from, uh, China,
00:24:53.919 --> 00:24:54.138
Mao.
00:24:54.211 --> 00:24:58.320
uh, under Mao and the, the sparrows and all that.
00:24:58.711 --> 00:25:16.980
Uh, the, the first number to come out was from den Oping, who was the later the leader of China, but he was a critique of, of Mao, and he went to the countryside and he said that like by using his own estimations and calculations, he said 14 million people have died due to the policies.
00:25:17.431 --> 00:25:18.570
So it was 14 million.
00:25:18.691 --> 00:25:20.730
Which again, I'm not sure if it's true or not.
00:25:20.780 --> 00:25:21.830
But there was something around that.
00:25:21.830 --> 00:25:29.851
But then later in this black book of communism, which again, it sort of uses these very do dodgy estimates, they inflated that number to around 40 million.
00:25:30.211 --> 00:25:34.320
They just inflated it a fair amount and that's the number we they rolled with.
00:25:34.421 --> 00:25:46.560
So, so the nu, so E yeah, so e, even if the numbers are inflated, like what about the fact that, these societies haven't had longevity, like they, they tend to crumble and, and, and fake.
00:25:47.817 --> 00:25:48.778
Well, they have crumbled.
00:25:48.778 --> 00:25:59.988
They the Soviet Union and China in the nineties was all one big event because these communist societies, because they're sanctioned and embargoed by the, by the capitalist block, they rely on each other for trade.
00:26:00.407 --> 00:26:05.837
So when the Soviet Union collapsed, all these small countries, which are being, which would rely on it for trade, they also collapsed.
00:26:05.837 --> 00:26:06.528
They had the big choice.
00:26:07.248 --> 00:26:21.077
Basically all these countries had the choice either go capitalist and accept IMF, you know, demands and capitalist trade, or they can go in this really, really seclusive society where they just live by themselves.
00:26:21.077 --> 00:26:22.758
And one country did that and that's North Korea.
00:26:23.087 --> 00:26:32.597
So before the Soviet collapse, North Korea was a very different country because it had ability to trade and it was much, much, much more developed.
00:26:32.688 --> 00:26:40.188
Now it's like the way it is because it just was the most stubborn one, which chose to not go capitalist other than serving collapsed.
00:26:40.218 --> 00:26:42.708
Anyway, so yeah, there was a big collapse.
00:26:42.807 --> 00:26:46.288
The reasons for that I can go into, but they're quite lengthy.
00:26:46.998 --> 00:27:02.327
What's important to remember is that when capitalist society was founded, because, you know, before the enlightenment and capitalist ideals, we had feudalism and absolutism and all these different, more authoritarian regimes, uh.
00:27:03.018 --> 00:27:11.117
The first sort of instance of capitalism in Europe, in America, you could say the USA sort of founded it first and they had a very good run.
00:27:11.538 --> 00:27:19.907
But in Europe, the French, in the 1788, they killed the king, established a republic based on what we call capitalist ideas, right?
00:27:19.968 --> 00:27:23.327
The legal code, which Napoleon established in France is still used there.
00:27:23.867 --> 00:27:28.778
They, you know, said, every person is sort of equal, but private property should exist.
00:27:28.877 --> 00:27:36.048
We are a capitalist society and that's why Marxists call the French Revolution, AB Bourgeois Revolution, you know, it was a revolution of the capitalists.
00:27:36.508 --> 00:27:41.097
They created that and 30 years later they were destroyed at loo.
00:27:41.617 --> 00:27:44.107
And France was given back to a monarchy.
00:27:44.528 --> 00:27:49.567
They were given back a monarchy last as a monarchy for a while, and then they've again had.
00:27:50.347 --> 00:27:51.728
Tumbles trying to become republic.
00:27:51.817 --> 00:27:53.637
There's been the big struggle in Europe.
00:27:54.337 --> 00:27:57.877
In 1848 there was many revolutions all across Europe.
00:27:57.968 --> 00:27:58.688
You can look it up.
00:27:58.688 --> 00:28:02.948
Revolutions of 1848 in Italy, Germany, even the uk I think.
00:28:03.127 --> 00:28:06.008
Anyway, all for the republic, they're all crushed, destroyed.
00:28:06.637 --> 00:28:12.127
So with changing political systems in across the world, it's a lengthy process.
00:28:12.127 --> 00:28:13.057
It doesn't happen overnight.
00:28:13.448 --> 00:28:16.147
And when it does happen, it's not immune to failure.
00:28:16.627 --> 00:28:19.448
It often takes a few tries to get the right one.
00:28:19.688 --> 00:28:26.198
So I would say that the collapse of communism isn't some, you know, divine truth.
00:28:26.198 --> 00:28:29.407
Saying that communism is doomed for failure is just a process of history.
00:28:29.768 --> 00:28:30.938
Something which, which can happen.
00:28:30.938 --> 00:28:31.597
And it did happen.
00:28:32.201 --> 00:28:41.840
You mentioned that the onset of capitalism is one of the factors that may have disabled or handicap communist countries.
00:28:42.441 --> 00:28:49.070
So does that suggest that we have to have a world communist like society
00:28:49.070 --> 00:28:52.661
that's well of communist support is like, you know, global
00:28:53.068 --> 00:28:55.318
it seems like a convenient factor though, don't you think?
00:28:55.499 --> 00:29:02.989
Like, like why can't, like, why can't communist, why can't a communist, for example, trade with a capitalist country?
00:29:03.570 --> 00:29:15.851
or because they sort of, or they can, they have it's a bit more nuanced again, like by, I say they can't, I mean the Soviet Bloc and the Western Bloc and the Cold War because they had tensions with each other before that.
00:29:16.300 --> 00:29:21.671
The Soviet Union, after it was created, after the Bolsheviks took power and won their war, the western powers of Europe.
00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:27.131
Europe firstly, they invaded Russia in 1919 to support the whites, and then they lost.
00:29:27.401 --> 00:29:29.125
So British and French troops invaded.
00:29:29.125 --> 00:29:32.711
They lost, and then they, uh, stopped recognizing the Soviet Union.
00:29:33.161 --> 00:29:37.270
And they placed embargoes on them so they couldn't trade with with them.
00:29:38.080 --> 00:29:43.300
And for a while no country even recognized the Soviet Union in 1920s.
00:29:43.300 --> 00:29:49.421
I was just reading a book about this, uh, the German foreign minister, because Germany was also very isolated at this time.
00:29:49.451 --> 00:29:50.351
You know, they just lost the war.
00:29:50.351 --> 00:29:52.270
They lost their monarchy, their empire.
00:29:52.711 --> 00:29:53.971
They were looking for friends.
00:29:54.391 --> 00:30:01.691
They saw the Soviet also didn't have any friends and they created this treaty of rappel, I'm pretty sure it was called where they sort of recognize each other.
00:30:01.691 --> 00:30:09.651
And they started trading just general trade and also munitions which is a bit sketchy under the treaty of the size, which said the Germany cunt free arm, re-arm.
00:30:09.701 --> 00:30:10.901
But anyway, they did that.
00:30:11.980 --> 00:30:19.931
So it is not, the Soviet countries can't trade, but it's just when there's two big blocks and they're diametrically opposed as capitalism's, very much against communism.
00:30:20.050 --> 00:30:20.891
They don't want the trade.
00:30:20.951 --> 00:30:25.661
Just like, we don't really want to rely on Russia or China for trade when they're fighting us.
00:30:26.336 --> 00:30:28.316
It's, yeah, just a thing which happens,
00:30:28.749 --> 00:30:30.189
I like history, so Yeah.
00:30:30.219 --> 00:30:30.429
Yeah.
00:30:30.429 --> 00:30:30.818
The voice.
00:30:31.719 --> 00:30:32.618
That's my favorite subject.
00:30:32.618 --> 00:30:33.189
Least me.
00:30:33.368 --> 00:30:33.788
So,
00:30:34.431 --> 00:30:34.721
yeah,
00:30:34.929 --> 00:30:35.259
yeah.
00:30:35.259 --> 00:30:37.269
Well, you've obviously read your history, that's pretty cool.
00:30:37.278 --> 00:30:40.338
Yeah, you like your books and I like books, so I like that.
00:30:40.816 --> 00:30:41.566
It's good to hear.
00:30:41.566 --> 00:30:42.375
It's very good to hear.
00:30:43.173 --> 00:30:50.009
How about so there's, let's just say there's countries today, North Korea, you could say Cuba.
00:30:50.009 --> 00:30:56.878
Venezuela, like, they're, they're all in the, the midst of they've, or they've gone through some changes, but they, they all do struggle.
00:30:56.878 --> 00:30:59.368
And so what, like what do you attribute that to?
00:31:00.750 --> 00:31:07.740
Again, I'll say probably the embargoes and all that, but also it's important to recognize.
00:31:09.121 --> 00:31:13.980
It's hard for poor countries to get rich and it's hard for, well, it's easy for rich countries to say rich, right?
00:31:14.280 --> 00:31:18.661
Over the countries 150 years ago, which were very poor, are rich Nowadays there's probably only a handful.
00:31:18.711 --> 00:31:20.931
You know, Korea comes to mind.
00:31:21.111 --> 00:31:24.951
Japan, uh, China, Singapore is probably a big one.
00:31:25.611 --> 00:31:31.730
But apart from that, basically all the countries 150 years ago, which were poor, have stayed poor.
00:31:31.830 --> 00:31:34.711
It's a hard, hard struggle to become.
00:31:35.911 --> 00:31:38.161
To emancipate yourself as a third world country.
00:31:38.520 --> 00:31:41.010
So when, you know, Cuba has always been one of the poor ones.
00:31:41.080 --> 00:31:44.945
They were oppressed by the Spanish and then the Americans, they had, a dictator in the fifties.
00:31:45.516 --> 00:31:47.826
It's, it's hard to get it to be good.
00:31:47.915 --> 00:31:49.655
And I think the Cubans have done a good job of that.
00:31:49.655 --> 00:31:57.675
They have now, I think it's very similar, even higher life expectancy than the USA they have reasonable living standards.
00:31:57.675 --> 00:31:59.895
You know, again, not, not as good as the rich countries.
00:31:59.895 --> 00:32:01.816
Historically China has been very rich.
00:32:02.175 --> 00:32:11.145
But about 200 years ago there were sort of mutilated in the process of, uh, colonization, it's called like the century of humiliation in China.
00:32:11.576 --> 00:32:14.155
And again, the communists took it, and now it's.
00:32:14.951 --> 00:32:15.701
At the top again.
00:32:15.951 --> 00:32:18.290
You wouldn't consider China a communist country today, right?
00:32:19.097 --> 00:32:21.637
It's, yeah, I wouldn't like it's sort of a mixed economy.
00:32:21.738 --> 00:32:26.748
People like to say, oh, the, the victory of China is a victory of capitalism, not communism.
00:32:27.107 --> 00:32:33.137
But if we implemented the same policies China has in the west, a lot of guys would call it socialism.
00:32:33.258 --> 00:32:42.798
Even though it's, it's not, I disagree, I'll say it, it's not, but it's very, it's much left, more left-leaning than any western society.
00:32:42.798 --> 00:32:53.657
I would say if there was a society which was most similar to, it would be the British, when the labor government had like a 20 year, uh, cement of dominance and they had like a very.
00:32:54.077 --> 00:32:57.077
Big mixed economy where the state owned like a lot of industry.
00:32:57.627 --> 00:33:02.817
And they had like a lot of government subsidized services that ended when Margaret Thatcher took into power in the uk.
00:33:02.877 --> 00:33:05.337
But it's, it's very similar to what China has today.
00:33:05.397 --> 00:33:08.607
So, no, it's not capitalist, but it's also very government guided.
00:33:09.018 --> 00:33:16.038
This is kind of related, this is related to communism, and I'm just curious because we've actually had a few communists on lately.
00:33:16.474 --> 00:33:16.765
Yeah.
00:33:17.538 --> 00:33:20.928
because, around Gen Z, they're starting to become more communist.
00:33:21.438 --> 00:33:25.768
So I'm curious why do you think that like Gen Z is suddenly now like becoming more communist?
00:33:26.170 --> 00:33:26.470
Yeah.
00:33:26.474 --> 00:33:27.565
Well, I'll say.
00:33:28.750 --> 00:33:38.710
It's not necessarily they're becoming more communist, but I think there is a bit more just political extremism and politics in general in society, again, where sort of things are ramping up in the world.
00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:41.420
30 years ago it was pretty quiet.
00:33:41.420 --> 00:33:43.640
America was the victor.
00:33:43.730 --> 00:33:45.259
People said it was the end of history.
00:33:45.259 --> 00:33:46.640
You know, communism has failed.
00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:48.500
Capitalism will be like this, it'll be all good forever.
00:33:48.859 --> 00:33:50.480
But now, you know, there's challenges.
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:56.269
There's Russia, there's China, there's more far right, uh, extremists as well as far left.
00:33:56.450 --> 00:34:04.769
As for why they're becoming communists, I would say just society in general, the poverty in the world and all that.
00:34:05.369 --> 00:34:07.079
Cause people to become far left as well.
00:34:07.079 --> 00:34:08.280
As far right as well.
00:34:08.309 --> 00:34:10.199
So there is growing
00:34:10.293 --> 00:34:14.222
interesting though because the, the, the global standard of living is higher than it's ever been.
00:34:14.228 --> 00:34:14.438
Right.
00:34:15.179 --> 00:34:16.019
Partially that's true.
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:22.440
We have like higher wealth in equality than the French did during their revolution, but back then they were actually impoverished, you know?
00:34:22.860 --> 00:34:24.300
So yeah, we have had better growth.
00:34:24.329 --> 00:34:27.789
But I think this is a good thing.
00:34:28.469 --> 00:34:30.329
But it's also a bad thing humans.
00:34:31.650 --> 00:34:32.429
Never satisfied.
00:34:32.489 --> 00:34:33.360
They always push for more.
00:34:33.719 --> 00:34:38.820
And it's sort of made us this big triumphant civilization that's taken domination over everyone else.
00:34:38.820 --> 00:34:41.880
We have grown as a species a lot, but we're still not satisfied.
00:34:41.969 --> 00:34:43.860
And I think it's just part of the human condition.
00:34:44.070 --> 00:34:44.429
So
00:34:45.257 --> 00:34:52.217
Do you think that human condition challenges some of the theory though of communism or particularly Marx Marxist ideology?
00:34:52.710 --> 00:34:54.239
I would say it actually fits in quite well.
00:34:54.280 --> 00:34:59.710
You know, Marxism sort of analyzes history is like a struggle over material conditions.
00:34:59.769 --> 00:35:06.340
You know, it's sort of, it comes from an idea that to live even nowadays, to live we need to work, right?
00:35:06.769 --> 00:35:07.909
It has been that way the whole time.
00:35:07.909 --> 00:35:12.769
You know, cavemen, they had to each day get up and make food.
00:35:13.340 --> 00:35:15.349
Buy hunting so they can live nowadays.
00:35:15.349 --> 00:35:16.190
We still need to do that.
00:35:16.670 --> 00:35:26.329
And the way in which we work well, we, yeah, like even though it might not seem that we do, we, we still do, like if everyone stopped working, nothing would happen.
00:35:26.900 --> 00:35:49.449
So, and the way in which we work and create the goods for ourselves, which we need sort of influencers, how society works in general, you know, whether you are being forced to work by a, a harsh slave owner who's whipping you or whether you are coerced to work by, monetary gain through a capitalist, but really the capitalist exploiting you, which is what Marxists say happened in capitalist society.
00:35:49.869 --> 00:35:52.929
It changes the dynamics and what goes on.
00:35:53.159 --> 00:35:56.760
It's hedged in this idea that people want better living standards.
00:35:56.789 --> 00:35:59.849
That the, the people in the oppressed class would.
00:36:00.224 --> 00:36:06.074
If they could, they would fight and they'll take over and they'll create a better life themselves, which I think has happened over history.
00:36:06.375 --> 00:36:17.324
Whether those revolutions have succeeded or not, but they have happened where oppressed peoples slaves or, or peasants or nowadays workers have taken up arms and fought, you know, to get better living standards.
00:36:18.228 --> 00:36:18.557
yeah.
00:36:19.432 --> 00:36:27.527
And, and so what's the goal like of, let's say a, a communist is living in America, who has a very high living standard, even homeless people have high living standards here.
00:36:28.038 --> 00:36:35.177
And so they don't really have economic hardship because the government will provide for them, right?
00:36:35.358 --> 00:36:38.393
General like food welfare, et cetera.
00:36:39.072 --> 00:36:43.152
They think they're oppressed, but like, are they really, if they have everything that they need.
00:36:43.885 --> 00:36:44.275
Right.
00:36:44.304 --> 00:36:49.554
Well, I'll say you can define oppression, not by whether you have everything you need.
00:36:49.554 --> 00:36:49.824
Right?
00:36:49.855 --> 00:36:58.945
Like, for example, Kings back 500 years ago, they didn't have clean water ready at the minutes notice, but you wouldn't say they were oppressed.
00:36:58.945 --> 00:37:00.175
Actually, there were the oppressors there.
00:37:00.175 --> 00:37:03.724
Were feeding on the labor of the peasants.
00:37:04.264 --> 00:37:14.105
I'll say that today we have come to a point where labor productivity is so high that, you know, even what we call high living standards is still being oppressed.
00:37:14.135 --> 00:37:18.855
We're still giving our labor to to the capitalists and you can calculate how much
00:37:19.094 --> 00:37:20.025
You're talking about like surplus,
00:37:20.697 --> 00:37:20.936
Yeah.
00:37:20.936 --> 00:37:21.686
Surplus value.
00:37:22.137 --> 00:37:22.347
Yeah.
00:37:23.007 --> 00:37:24.297
Surplus labor, which you're giving.
00:37:24.545 --> 00:37:27.724
You mentioned earlier that people like inherently want.
00:37:28.445 --> 00:37:29.855
To do better and do more.
00:37:29.885 --> 00:37:33.364
And so like, let's just say somebody who invents something really cool.
00:37:33.364 --> 00:37:35.465
This is, I think, a challenge with, with communism.
00:37:35.465 --> 00:37:50.074
I'm cur curious like how you think about this, but people that work harder and innovate more and take more risks and delay gratification further are gonna want more out of society than somebody who sits in their mom's basement and plays Fortnite all day.
00:37:50.074 --> 00:37:53.554
So like how do you, how do you like remedy that
00:37:53.836 --> 00:37:58.427
I, I envision a society which levies a base tax rate, right?
00:37:58.737 --> 00:38:02.336
And this is a tax which pays for all the public services, which the government gives.
00:38:02.726 --> 00:38:06.416
And this tax rate requires everyone with society who can work, right?
00:38:06.416 --> 00:38:10.527
Like maybe disabled people or whoever can be exempt from this retired.
00:38:10.867 --> 00:38:15.666
But every able-bodied person has to work a certain number of hours per year.
00:38:16.146 --> 00:38:20.856
And if they just wanna work that and plus a little bit of extra to buy food just for the bare minimum, they can do that.
00:38:21.186 --> 00:38:26.177
If they wanna work more they can, and they'll get extra money, which they can buy to.
00:38:26.896 --> 00:38:30.206
Used to buy extra hit things, in exchange for working more for society, right?
00:38:30.206 --> 00:38:38.246
You give in more, you get more as long as the condition is, is that they don't accumulate so much wealth that they can buy, society as a whole.
00:38:38.306 --> 00:38:38.577
Right?
00:38:38.577 --> 00:38:44.007
If they buy the factory world, the other work workers, workers at, then they can start oppressing their own workers, right?
00:38:44.277 --> 00:38:56.396
Or if they buy, if they save up so much money, they can buy all the houses in their street and kick everyone else out and offer them back in as tenants and oppress them through rent, then that shouldn't be allowed.
00:38:56.456 --> 00:38:56.757
Right.
00:38:57.126 --> 00:39:06.077
Where I can imagine this working is sort of like a, maybe a deadline on when you have to spend your money so that you don't, you can't accumulate so much wealth that you can oppress other people.
00:39:06.077 --> 00:39:06.407
Right.
00:39:06.916 --> 00:39:09.317
But I do believe if people work more, they should get more.
00:39:09.416 --> 00:39:10.347
Uh,
00:39:10.815 --> 00:39:12.045
But to a, To a limit.
00:39:12.164 --> 00:39:13.605
To a, but only to a limit.
00:39:14.414 --> 00:39:14.655
And who
00:39:14.726 --> 00:39:15.237
to a limit,
00:39:15.644 --> 00:39:16.635
who decides the limit.
00:39:17.532 --> 00:39:24.001
Well, I believe society is as a collective should and they'll be responsible that, again, because everyone wants to secure each other's needs,
00:39:24.244 --> 00:39:30.125
Won't, won't then, won't then society just keep the limit really low because they don't want people to get like ahead of them.
00:39:31.217 --> 00:39:34.532
Like, but like the people in society are the
00:39:34.625 --> 00:39:34.804
Yeah.
00:39:34.804 --> 00:39:35.764
Like how, how would they do it?
00:39:35.764 --> 00:39:36.364
Like would they vote?
00:39:36.394 --> 00:39:37.474
They would vote for this or,
00:39:37.891 --> 00:39:38.431
I suppose.
00:39:38.431 --> 00:39:50.981
So like, again, it's not like a proper sort of coherent idea yet, but, voting or sortition, it would have to be a committee of many, many thousands of people, which we can now do due to the internet and stuff.
00:39:51.402 --> 00:39:55.402
Which, have a representative view of society as a whole.
00:39:56.061 --> 00:39:58.282
That's, that's one, sorry.
00:39:58.420 --> 00:40:00.010
Like that would be like a lot of work.
00:40:00.059 --> 00:40:00.840
A poll that
00:40:00.851 --> 00:40:01.422
it would be,
00:40:01.889 --> 00:40:03.599
John has worked five extra hours.
00:40:03.659 --> 00:40:05.369
Should he get$10 more?
00:40:05.969 --> 00:40:10.440
Like, and then just like going through that constantly, that seems like it's highly unnecessary.
00:40:10.927 --> 00:40:12.947
It definitely used to be unnecessary.
00:40:12.947 --> 00:40:15.077
It was very hard to do in the Soviet Union.
00:40:15.077 --> 00:40:22.056
They had like a committee, not, not for this sort of stuff, but for uh, like government, government planning, where to invest your resources.
00:40:22.056 --> 00:40:25.086
What, which industries should you grow and allocate funds to.
00:40:25.086 --> 00:40:26.137
It was called GOs Plan.
00:40:26.646 --> 00:40:29.257
They had around 40,000 people working for them.
00:40:29.657 --> 00:40:33.976
All of them were just like accountants sort of to calculate crunch numbers.
00:40:34.547 --> 00:40:37.996
But nowadays it's much, much easier through computer algorithms and stuff.
00:40:38.056 --> 00:40:51.257
In fact, the YouTube channel guy, he wrote a book in the nineties showing that in the nineties, right when computers were very basic, that you could, uh, plan an economy and do all this stuff with like, with a state, with like an investment of like 10 million or so.
00:40:51.797 --> 00:40:54.166
Nowadays, you could probably do it with like.
00:40:54.811 --> 00:40:56.132
A good pc, right?
00:40:56.581 --> 00:41:01.621
In the 18 hundreds, there was a British industrialist called Robert Owen.
00:41:02.382 --> 00:41:05.632
He owned his factory, but he was like a socialist right?
00:41:05.722 --> 00:41:09.231
Even though he was an oppressor, he was, he had the socialist that isn't him.
00:41:09.621 --> 00:41:15.007
And he decided, well, what if I pay my workers, not money, but labor tokens.
00:41:15.112 --> 00:41:19.161
So for each hour you work, you get one hour payment, right?
00:41:19.161 --> 00:41:20.632
Which represents one hour of your work.
00:41:20.961 --> 00:41:24.052
And with that, you could buy one hour of someone else's work, right?
00:41:24.112 --> 00:41:26.722
So say, in which is, which is the whole communist idea, right?
00:41:26.782 --> 00:41:41.112
Say your computer takes 10 hours to make you work for 10 hours, you get 10 labor tokens and you can buy that computer because that computer from the scraps, which it was, iron alloy and all that, and copper in society.
00:41:41.351 --> 00:41:46.871
We have now taken all that labor and created an actual computer, which took 10 hours.
00:41:46.961 --> 00:41:48.612
So with 10 hours of your work, you can buy that.
00:41:49.061 --> 00:41:55.751
And he did that and like it worked in his little factory for quite some time.
00:41:55.782 --> 00:41:59.112
And he did that in the 18 hundreds before any technology.
00:41:59.561 --> 00:42:04.692
So now with, you know, credit cards and digital transactions, I think it's, it's definitely feasible.
00:42:04.931 --> 00:42:12.762
And I'll say the chaotic capitalist system actually creates more, oftentimes more hardship on planning than communism does.
00:42:13.255 --> 00:42:17.425
How about, okay, so I, I could, I mean, there's tons of questions I could ask.
00:42:17.425 --> 00:42:21.204
It probably we don't have enough time for, but a, a couple other, like, say common critiques.
00:42:21.204 --> 00:42:27.414
One is communist revolutions or countries seem to be very ripe.
00:42:27.414 --> 00:42:35.005
And, and even by Marx's own, I think outline, they tend to go through an authoritarian rule before they can be turned over to the proletariat.
00:42:35.034 --> 00:42:37.405
Right, So how does one avoid this?
00:42:37.414 --> 00:42:41.405
Once control gets taken place, it's hard to give it back, right?
00:42:41.405 --> 00:42:43.864
And we saw this in, in many of these regimes over time.
00:42:43.864 --> 00:42:44.195
So.
00:42:44.625 --> 00:42:48.554
How do you, how does one avoid that in a communist development?
00:42:49.481 --> 00:42:51.612
I'm not sure if avoiding it is necessary.
00:42:51.612 --> 00:42:59.532
The Soviet Union sort of tried to start implementing communism, but they couldn't because there's the, so there's the USA and their huge military right next door.
00:42:59.961 --> 00:43:07.641
Having to completely match the USA in military spending and fight proxy wars, they never really could.
00:43:07.731 --> 00:43:21.601
So I think that that's, it's an interesting question and whether how it's achieved, it's something which is worthy to figure out, but I can't use any historical examples because we've never even reached a stage where I think it's necessary to abolish
00:43:21.844 --> 00:43:22.474
Right, right.
00:43:23.315 --> 00:43:23.614
Okay.
00:43:23.644 --> 00:43:24.034
Okay.
00:43:24.065 --> 00:43:24.695
Fair, fair enough.
00:43:24.695 --> 00:43:31.894
Another common critique I see is that people in their human nature obviously wanna get the best outta life, right?
00:43:31.894 --> 00:43:39.514
They wanna earn the most, have the best place, and, uh, particularly if they work hard and they wanna do that for the least amount of effort, typically, right?
00:43:39.514 --> 00:43:42.994
Like, you wanna maximize your output by minimizing your input, let's just say.
00:43:43.594 --> 00:43:51.605
But in a communist society, you have a, you have a ceiling on your output, and so then what that.
00:43:51.965 --> 00:43:59.045
Does in theory is it drives your input or your, your work or your effort asymptotically to zero, right?
00:43:59.045 --> 00:44:02.224
And so that, that level will just keep, keep lowering down.
00:44:02.315 --> 00:44:07.414
And this is, you know, theory, but it does make a lot of sense to me just based on human nature.
00:44:07.414 --> 00:44:08.255
How do you think about that at.
00:44:08.806 --> 00:44:19.067
Well, like with the whole human nature thing people, yeah, they do want the best, and I'll say that that's something which supports communism, right?
00:44:19.067 --> 00:44:28.637
In Capital Society, there's a system where 99% of the people have around half their labor taken away by the capitalist group, and they want to change that, right?
00:44:28.757 --> 00:44:31.996
They want to you know, make it so they get their best.
00:44:31.996 --> 00:44:35.387
And when the 99% revolts takes over, that's what happens.
00:44:35.387 --> 00:44:36.257
That's what communism is.
00:44:36.916 --> 00:44:37.817
With the ceiling.
00:44:38.132 --> 00:44:43.112
Are you referencing like what I was talking about before, like with the deadline on payments or what
00:44:43.324 --> 00:44:43.715
I mean?
00:44:43.715 --> 00:44:52.324
that, that, or that, that theory, I think, is generally common in a, in a communist society where you have a, you have a maximum or you have a cap on the things that you can have own and
00:44:52.411 --> 00:44:53.012
Right.
00:44:53.282 --> 00:44:53.822
Yeah.
00:44:53.822 --> 00:44:53.831
Yeah.
00:44:54.211 --> 00:45:00.771
Well, look yeah, I'll say like there should, again, it is all, there's a big qualitative, not quantitative divide.
00:45:00.771 --> 00:45:06.681
I think if you want to have, I don't know, 50 million Legos in your house, you should be able to do that.
00:45:06.681 --> 00:45:11.601
But you can't own just one factory because that factory allows you to exploit other people.
00:45:11.632 --> 00:45:14.001
Whereas Lego, who's gonna like it doesn't matter.
00:45:14.032 --> 00:45:18.472
If you wanna work extra hours to get extra toys or whatever, I don't know.
00:45:18.472 --> 00:45:19.762
Whatever hobby you have,
00:45:20.380 --> 00:45:21.190
Or a nicer home.
00:45:21.190 --> 00:45:22.239
Maybe a nicer home.
00:45:22.266 --> 00:45:22.416
At home.
00:45:23.016 --> 00:45:23.197
Yeah.
00:45:23.197 --> 00:45:24.907
If you wanna do that, I think that should be okay.
00:45:24.907 --> 00:45:28.626
As long as it's not basing yourself on exploitation of others.
00:45:28.626 --> 00:45:28.927
Right.
00:45:29.467 --> 00:45:37.416
The only other like ceiling or sort of like disincentive to working will be taxation, which is why I'm thinking a flat base.
00:45:37.496 --> 00:45:40.407
In capitalist society we have progressive taxation, right?
00:45:40.407 --> 00:45:47.007
The more you earn, the more you pay in tax, which is meant to sort of lessen the Yeah.
00:45:47.036 --> 00:45:49.226
Balance the bad things in capitalism, right?
00:45:49.226 --> 00:45:51.967
It's, it's a remedy to what I think is a bad system.
00:45:52.105 --> 00:45:52.525
Mm-hmm.
00:45:52.697 --> 00:45:56.056
But in my view, you just have a base tax rate where you contribute to society.
00:45:56.507 --> 00:46:07.277
And then above that you can spend as much as you want, earn as much as you want, and do that with like, innovation or like technological progress.
00:46:07.797 --> 00:46:15.177
You invent something, you get like patents, When you create something, you can still give it out to society and retain a bit of the profit, right?
00:46:15.177 --> 00:46:19.617
Because if you didn't have that, as soon as you would invent something, you would just keep it secret so only you can use it.
00:46:19.797 --> 00:46:22.737
No one else in society can use it, and that's damaging to society, right?
00:46:22.947 --> 00:46:31.768
If James, what, who invented the steam engine decides to just keep it secret in his own lab and not show it to the rest of the world, we would still be digging in dirt agriculturally, right?
00:46:32.157 --> 00:46:35.588
So, but how much should we reward the people that invent things?
00:46:35.927 --> 00:46:40.998
Some people say we should reward them a lot and give them a lot of stuff, but the thing is, is that, who invented it, right?
00:46:40.998 --> 00:46:43.967
Like James Wat, he came up with the idea for the war engine, right?
00:46:43.967 --> 00:46:47.927
Which started the industrial revolution, but before that, there was the newcomer engine, right?
00:46:48.387 --> 00:46:49.378
Which was like less efficient.
00:46:49.378 --> 00:46:51.568
So only just increased the efficiency, right?
00:46:51.628 --> 00:46:57.117
But say we decided to pay him as much money that he increased the efficiency by, right?
00:46:57.447 --> 00:47:03.938
So, the first one was like, say it'll give you$10 for each use, right?
00:47:03.938 --> 00:47:06.097
That's like a weird way to cause the image.
00:47:06.097 --> 00:47:07.117
And this one gives you 15.
00:47:07.297 --> 00:47:17.347
So for each time you use it, you give them$5, then society doesn't get any benefit out of it because each, each bit of surplus we create with a machine we give away to this one guy as it becomes increasingly wealthy.
00:47:18.018 --> 00:47:36.498
And especially when you consider that the reason why he created the steam engine was not just his own brilliant mind, but was the, all the mathematics and the physics and all the work of all his predecessors, you know, to create those other machines and to create those minds where he could create the tools for his own machine.
00:47:37.983 --> 00:47:50.150
Inventions are attributed to society, really not individual people, even though one guy does the eureka moment and events it, that invention is based on the collective effort of our society over thousands of years.
00:47:50.599 --> 00:47:53.179
So I think the benefit should go to society, right?
00:47:53.239 --> 00:48:04.909
We should have like researchers and people who innovate, but the things they create, you know, they'll get paid for it, but not excess so that they can amass wealth just themselves off the benefit of our society.
00:48:04.909 --> 00:48:07.880
No, we should use those inventions to better the entirety of society.
00:48:08.449 --> 00:48:10.579
And that's the best way to operate things, I believe.
00:48:10.597 --> 00:48:11.947
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:12.128 --> 00:48:12.248
I,
00:48:12.260 --> 00:48:13.280
an interesting question as well.
00:48:13.447 --> 00:48:15.253
think I understand that argument.
00:48:15.253 --> 00:48:17.708
However, a counter argument might be.
00:48:18.503 --> 00:48:31.373
Well, that person had the ingenuity and the know-how to take this idea and make it much better, and why not give them more resources so they can do the same to some other industry and some other industry.
00:48:31.402 --> 00:48:38.512
Like Elon Musk is a great example that he's developed things that nobody else has, and you could say, well, he stole the ideas, or he, you know, robbed people's labor.
00:48:38.512 --> 00:48:46.552
But without him having that capability, we wouldn't have reusable rockets, we wouldn't have electric cars that are like ba basically the standard now.
00:48:46.552 --> 00:48:49.643
And so like there is a counter argument there too,
00:48:49.793 --> 00:48:56.233
the reason why Elon Musk has, all these industries and has implemented all this stuff is because he has the capital to do it.
00:48:56.233 --> 00:48:56.472
Right.
00:48:56.503 --> 00:49:01.302
He has the funding himself from his other businesses, which then made a profit to him, right?
00:49:01.302 --> 00:49:02.353
He's the richest guy on the planet.
00:49:02.902 --> 00:49:08.003
He could just be sit sitting in Monaco on a huge yacht, but he's, he's actually continuing to develop stuff,
00:49:08.210 --> 00:49:08.659
he is.
00:49:09.019 --> 00:49:13.400
But I believe that, his probably the, not the smartest guy on the planet.
00:49:13.400 --> 00:49:20.449
There's better geniuses than him who have less funding, and I believe, you know, capitalism misallocate that funding, again, his sort of.
00:49:21.155 --> 00:49:23.434
Yeah, it's good, good on him for inventing stuff.
00:49:23.485 --> 00:49:25.074
It's better than sitting at home doing nothing.
00:49:25.554 --> 00:49:34.664
If the state had full control over resources, we could properly allocate, funding to the actual real geniuses and the real'cause.
00:49:34.815 --> 00:49:38.804
Again, coming back to my first idea, things aren't invented by just one person.
00:49:39.244 --> 00:49:44.610
Oftentimes it is very funny to look at history because it's like, say planes, right?
00:49:44.639 --> 00:49:49.139
We're invented, we're in the vendor, we're invented, and then a southern moment, everyone can start flying, right?
00:49:49.170 --> 00:49:54.780
The Wright brothers did the first, but like weeks after that, there was all these other flights as well, which happened, which you don't hear about, right?
00:49:55.139 --> 00:49:59.909
Suddenly the technology happened, the change happened where geniuses, right?
00:49:59.909 --> 00:50:04.050
Not everyone could still, even after that happened, not everyone could fly a plane, but there was like a group.
00:50:04.079 --> 00:50:04.949
It wasn't just one.
00:50:04.949 --> 00:50:07.349
There was like a good group of people who could now.
00:50:07.695 --> 00:50:08.534
Do it and fly.
00:50:09.085 --> 00:50:11.844
Same thing with, with steam engines, with, with any invention ever.
00:50:12.385 --> 00:50:24.264
So it's not just this one person We should have, a committee where there's people who can do research and they get generous funding to do the research and a reasonable paycheck to live their life, to benefit society.
00:50:24.425 --> 00:50:24.844
I believe,
00:50:25.163 --> 00:50:25.702
yeah.
00:50:25.773 --> 00:50:33.992
What is also tricky is like who de like who decides all of these things in a communist society where it's supposedly stateless.
00:50:34.052 --> 00:50:34.382
Right?
00:50:34.413 --> 00:50:37.623
And, and so then who, who actually, who decides?
00:50:38.204 --> 00:50:38.655
Again, yeah.
00:50:38.864 --> 00:50:42.885
As a mixed, one of my first ideas, which I told you guys was Ian, right?
00:50:42.885 --> 00:50:43.965
Where people are randomly selected.
00:50:44.385 --> 00:50:46.034
That works for some things, right?
00:50:46.574 --> 00:50:49.994
Coming up with like, for example, the retirement age, right?
00:50:50.025 --> 00:50:55.934
You get all the people together, they all decide, we should allocate it to this, so then the state has more funding or no, we should make it lowest.
00:50:55.934 --> 00:50:57.315
Then people have more time at home.
00:50:57.795 --> 00:51:01.304
But then eventually they come with decision, which represents what society thinks.
00:51:01.824 --> 00:51:06.775
Other things like military generals, you don't want them to be randomly selected from the public.
00:51:06.804 --> 00:51:11.485
They need to be, you know, skilled, trained in, military strategy, right?
00:51:11.695 --> 00:51:13.974
So they should be probably not even elected.
00:51:13.974 --> 00:51:15.175
They should be selected, right?
00:51:15.204 --> 00:51:15.925
Which is what we have.
00:51:15.925 --> 00:51:23.335
Now, there probably are some middle of the road positions where you want them to somewhat represent the public, but they still need to have some skills, right?
00:51:23.735 --> 00:51:25.144
We have a mix in our society, right?
00:51:25.144 --> 00:51:35.014
We have sortation for jury duty, we have election for politics, and we have selection for, again, like generals and ministers and all that.
00:51:35.494 --> 00:51:42.994
I think should be a bit of an expansion for the sortition level because they'll increase actual democracy and representation.
00:51:43.574 --> 00:51:46.784
But there still, still should be like selection of real people.
00:51:47.034 --> 00:51:55.824
One of the things that I would say is interesting about communism is less government, less government, less bureaucracy, less administration.
00:51:56.215 --> 00:52:03.114
However, all these things still do need to happen and, and I think of also communism as less corruption.
00:52:03.114 --> 00:52:09.594
But in reality it still like has, it's still subject to corruption, right?
00:52:09.907 --> 00:52:13.177
It has had corruption and it has had like black markets and stuff as well.
00:52:13.177 --> 00:52:13.507
Right.
00:52:13.617 --> 00:52:21.117
In, in last year, if you wanted to get like a pair of jeans, which the government didn't have because, well, they'll get them, but then they'll get sold out immediately.
00:52:21.237 --> 00:52:21.597
Right.
00:52:21.907 --> 00:52:22.806
And they'll just be empty.
00:52:22.806 --> 00:52:30.157
But you'll go to like a sketchy vendor, but they're having like workarounds, you know, in modern society nowadays.
00:52:30.157 --> 00:52:36.577
I think ideally communist society will be lacking of money, and I know a lot of people like money because to them it represents freedom.
00:52:37.146 --> 00:52:40.416
But I think ultimately when the whole of society is ran by people.
00:52:41.856 --> 00:52:43.657
There's no, like, who are you hiding from?
00:52:43.686 --> 00:52:43.987
Right?
00:52:44.047 --> 00:52:47.407
Like we, the government and the states, we're all your friends because we are you.
00:52:47.706 --> 00:52:50.436
Online transactions and you can't have a black market.
00:52:50.547 --> 00:52:57.456
Now obviously people that have, let's say, assets, wealth or, okay myself, like I'm not a rich guy.
00:52:57.456 --> 00:52:59.226
However, I've developed assets.
00:52:59.226 --> 00:53:01.476
I have a home I worked hard and I got all this stuff.
00:53:02.016 --> 00:53:23.202
And so in this, let's say communist shift into our society, it would almost certainly require a revolution in my opinion, because people aren't gonna wanna give up what they have or what they've earned or what let's say earned, but but what they've attained And so it's not gonna be easy, right?
00:53:24.293 --> 00:53:24.623
Yeah.
00:53:24.623 --> 00:53:28.574
It's not, but it's something which I think just should happen.
00:53:28.664 --> 00:53:28.963
Yeah.
00:53:29.023 --> 00:53:30.043
Should be redistributed.
00:53:30.043 --> 00:53:37.034
And still, because of the amount of wealth as a society we have everyone will be given a reasonable amount, but Yeah.
00:53:37.034 --> 00:53:38.324
Like things might have to be taken.
00:53:38.384 --> 00:53:46.724
My great-grandmother, uh, she had it was either great-grandmother or great-great-grandmother, but she has four husbands.
00:53:46.724 --> 00:53:49.423
All of them just died randomly.
00:53:49.574 --> 00:53:53.853
She ended up inheriting like four, four or five houses like great big, estates.
00:53:54.244 --> 00:53:57.514
And then the Bolsheviks came and like took them except one, which she lived on.
00:53:57.994 --> 00:54:05.704
It was something which happened, but then, you know, those houses went to peasants who had never, you know, living by themselves ever in their lives.
00:54:05.733 --> 00:54:05.793
Yeah.
00:54:06.034 --> 00:54:08.463
So it's not like sometimes it happens randomly.
00:54:08.463 --> 00:54:10.804
Sometimes it, you work for it and you earn it, but.
00:54:12.153 --> 00:54:13.623
The creation of a better society.
00:54:13.623 --> 00:54:16.324
I think it's something which has to happen essentially.
00:54:16.713 --> 00:54:16.923
Anyway.
00:54:17.192 --> 00:54:18.422
We could probably talk to you for hours.
00:54:18.422 --> 00:54:22.411
I love how much knowledge you have on history
00:54:23.023 --> 00:54:23.414
yeah,
00:54:23.702 --> 00:54:32.161
on these topics, so we could, like I said, we could probably go on for hours, this is clearly catching steam for whatever reason with, with the younger generation.
00:54:32.161 --> 00:54:35.012
We talked a little bit about that, but it's definitely interesting.
00:54:35.012 --> 00:54:42.061
And so we're trying to learn more about what's propelling that in the minds of young people these days and trying to understand that a little bit more deeply.
00:54:42.061 --> 00:54:48.442
The boys are obviously absorbing a lot of this, but it's it's a deep dense topic and so hence I'm a little bit more involved.
00:54:48.831 --> 00:54:51.052
But why don't we maybe wrap this up.
00:54:51.052 --> 00:54:52.911
Maybe there's a follow up that we can do at some
00:54:53.094 --> 00:54:53.384
yeah.
00:54:53.384 --> 00:54:54.423
Maybe that's what I was thinking.
00:54:54.423 --> 00:54:54.623
Yeah.
00:54:55.141 --> 00:54:56.072
Couple of final things.
00:54:56.072 --> 00:55:08.771
What is some advice you have gotten very involved in politics, history and even political theory What's the advice that you have for young people that are out there like.
00:55:09.461 --> 00:55:10.007
Living their lives.
00:55:10.748 --> 00:55:15.699
Well, my, I think I'll say advice is if it doesn't properly affect you, right?
00:55:15.699 --> 00:55:20.858
If it's not directly a foot on your head, you know, which is oppressing you, which you have to change, right?
00:55:20.858 --> 00:55:24.878
Which you generally, if it is like that, you'll feel passionate feelings about it.
00:55:24.878 --> 00:55:29.498
You know, like how Palestinians feel about, you know, their occupation.
00:55:29.708 --> 00:55:36.099
But if you're just observing it from an outsider perspective and it doesn't really matter, like, yeah, maybe this policy would increase your food by a little bit.
00:55:36.128 --> 00:55:37.778
This one won't, it doesn't really matter.
00:55:37.778 --> 00:55:49.239
Try and look at both sides and understand why both sides have their views and understand how they developed and not just get into like a mindset of, these guys are evil, they're bad, these guys are good, right?
00:55:49.289 --> 00:55:52.559
I try and develop, even with like Nazis or Hitler, especially with Nazis and Hitler.
00:55:52.559 --> 00:56:00.208
Actually I'm reading a book about it right now, but you know why that developed in Germany at that time, like where those ideas came from.
00:56:00.793 --> 00:56:01.514
Why it happened.
00:56:01.543 --> 00:56:01.903
Right.
00:56:02.014 --> 00:56:07.353
And that will give you like a better, I think, understanding of society and just of anything in general, right?
00:56:07.353 --> 00:56:10.233
If you understand why things happen, you can do whatever you want.
00:56:10.393 --> 00:56:14.324
If there's a Nazi at your front door with a gun trying to kill you, it's a bit hard to do that.
00:56:14.503 --> 00:56:17.583
It's a bit hard to look at him and, and understand where it's coming from.
00:56:17.914 --> 00:56:28.994
But if you're sitting from a privileged position, you know, in my room, in my chair where, the Nazi innovations happened 80 years ago, try and look at it and figure out why things happen.
00:56:29.233 --> 00:56:33.733
Is like the best, like try and go as deep as you can essentially.
00:56:34.543 --> 00:56:34.844
Yeah.
00:56:34.967 --> 00:56:35.297
Yeah.
00:56:35.327 --> 00:56:39.916
Well, very interesting and we appreciate you coming on and joining us all the way from Australia.
00:56:39.916 --> 00:56:45.407
So it's your morning, it's our afternoon, and so it's, it's been super cool to have you on,
00:56:45.673 --> 00:56:46.003
Yeah.
00:56:46.639 --> 00:56:47.690
I've been absorbing this.
00:56:47.739 --> 00:56:56.559
You're probably been the most knowledgeable person that we've actually talked to that's like, read a lot of the books and like understands it, I'd say pretty well.
00:56:57.099 --> 00:56:58.150
So it's pretty interesting.
00:56:58.204 --> 00:56:59.735
I mean it's pretty awesome,
00:57:00.541 --> 00:57:00.931
Thank you.
00:57:01.565 --> 00:57:01.894
Yeah.
00:57:02.101 --> 00:57:06.242
Well, I'm, I'm glad to give you a little perspective on how I see things, and Yeah.
00:57:06.295 --> 00:57:07.675
Why don't we wrap up the podcast.
00:57:07.675 --> 00:57:10.014
We wish you the best of luck and let's definitely stay in touch.
00:57:10.045 --> 00:57:12.954
'cause I wanna see how you know where you go from here.
00:57:13.675 --> 00:57:14.635
Alright, well with it.
00:57:14.722 --> 00:57:14.871
you.
00:57:15.625 --> 00:57:16.164
Thank you.
00:57:16.164 --> 00:57:16.614
Thank you.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.975
Welcome to the Programming Lions podcast.
00:00:02.279 --> 00:00:06.240
Today we have a very special guest all the way from down under.
00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:14.487
Alexei joins us and he's an Aussie teen embracing unique outlooks on communism, having family going all the way back to Soviet Russia.
00:00:14.907 --> 00:00:19.317
He's very knowledgeable of history and why he believes the world needs to shift.
00:00:19.538 --> 00:00:20.347
Let's get into it.
00:00:27.597 --> 00:00:29.698
Alexei, welcome to the podcast.
00:00:29.698 --> 00:00:30.687
We're excited to have you on.
00:00:30.687 --> 00:00:32.787
You come all the way from Australia.
00:00:32.787 --> 00:00:39.747
So maybe to get things started, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself, where you live, what you're into?
00:00:39.965 --> 00:00:41.015
Yeah, sure thing.
00:00:41.015 --> 00:00:41.935
Well, I'm 16.
00:00:42.195 --> 00:00:43.375
10 16, a few months ago.
00:00:44.395 --> 00:00:47.304
I live in Victoria, which is a state in Australia.
00:00:47.304 --> 00:00:49.975
We have states like YouTube, but we have six of them.
00:00:50.484 --> 00:00:54.265
Uh, it's in the very south, so it gets recently cold in here.
00:00:54.414 --> 00:00:56.725
Uh, not like what you expect Australia to be.
00:00:57.505 --> 00:00:57.685
With.
00:00:57.685 --> 00:01:02.695
My interests quite varied, but I like natural science as well as politics.
00:01:03.265 --> 00:01:08.004
Uh, I like particularly electrical engineering and computer software.
00:01:08.545 --> 00:01:11.094
I've done like a few coding projects in my life.
00:01:11.295 --> 00:01:13.995
For sport, I play volleyball and I also go to the gym.
00:01:14.564 --> 00:01:17.954
I know you guys, uh, do CrossFit, isn't it?
00:01:18.825 --> 00:01:19.905
Uh, quite regularly.
00:01:19.905 --> 00:01:22.305
So you might have common ground there.
00:01:22.885 --> 00:01:29.454
And I guess for a while I've been very interested in history, uh, sort of as a bonus to my political stuff.
00:01:30.174 --> 00:01:32.515
So I'll say those are my interests.
00:01:33.462 --> 00:01:33.733
Alright.
00:01:33.793 --> 00:01:34.302
Very cool.
00:01:34.302 --> 00:01:34.393
Nice.
00:01:34.393 --> 00:01:34.662
Yeah.
00:01:34.903 --> 00:01:36.942
What's it like living in Australia?
00:01:37.003 --> 00:01:37.393
Yeah.
00:01:37.754 --> 00:01:39.375
Pretty similar to the USA actually.
00:01:39.454 --> 00:01:47.905
I mean, although I've never been there, but I can imagine, uh, except, well, right now it's spring for us, so like Christmas for us is in the middle of summer.
00:01:48.234 --> 00:01:49.344
It's very hot during it, it,
00:01:49.847 --> 00:01:53.388
alexei is kind of a Russian name.
00:01:53.388 --> 00:01:55.013
So what, what's your background?
00:01:55.424 --> 00:02:01.094
Well, both my parents were born in Latvia, which I'm not sure if you know the country or not, but it's very small.
00:02:01.094 --> 00:02:03.314
Around 2 million people border as Russia.
00:02:03.974 --> 00:02:12.824
Uh, but both of them, so I have Latian heritage, but my grandparents out of the four, which I have, three of them were born in Russia.
00:02:12.884 --> 00:02:14.235
The other one was born in Poland.
00:02:15.004 --> 00:02:23.164
So it's sort of all spread out and because it was the same country for a while, there's lots of movement within the country, but now some sort of from everywhere around there.
00:02:23.164 --> 00:02:26.164
But Latvia is where my parents were born.
00:02:26.585 --> 00:02:28.745
Uh, but I can speak Russian, but I can't speak Latvian.
00:02:29.064 --> 00:02:33.414
They taught me Russian, not Latian, because it's far more useful to know Russian.
00:02:34.495 --> 00:02:34.555
so
00:02:37.663 --> 00:02:38.707
See, this is great.
00:02:38.742 --> 00:02:38.802
Wow.
00:02:39.103 --> 00:02:39.552
Well, so you?
00:02:39.552 --> 00:02:41.923
probably saw we, we visited Russia recently.
00:02:42.324 --> 00:02:42.805
I did.
00:02:43.044 --> 00:02:43.314
Yeah.
00:02:44.112 --> 00:02:44.323
Yeah.
00:02:44.323 --> 00:02:45.853
We were there for a couple of weeks.
00:02:45.913 --> 00:02:46.962
And have you visited,
00:02:47.664 --> 00:02:51.715
I actually haven't, I visited Lathia many times, but Russia, no, not yet.
00:02:51.805 --> 00:02:52.224
I plan
00:02:52.247 --> 00:02:53.983
I've heard Latvia's a beautiful country.
00:02:54.944 --> 00:02:55.875
Yeah, it's nice.
00:02:56.353 --> 00:03:05.263
I imagine if you had grandparents that were born in Russia and Poland, they must have told you some stories or they must have told your parents some
00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:06.280
Yeah.
00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:06.340
Yeah.
00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:08.889
Well, yeah, if you wanna get into that, we can,
00:03:08.939 --> 00:03:12.360
another kind of curiosity question is how did you find us?
00:03:12.409 --> 00:03:13.610
Pretty sure on Instagram reels.
00:03:13.669 --> 00:03:19.939
There's actually a few people in my school that have seen you guys, like, I tell them that I'm gonna do a podcast interview, and they're like, yeah, we've heard of them.
00:03:19.939 --> 00:03:21.979
I've heard of, I've seen them like on Instagram reels.
00:03:21.979 --> 00:03:23.060
So you've
00:03:23.182 --> 00:03:23.453
wow.
00:03:23.689 --> 00:03:30.770
like, whether it's your account directly or like other accounts, you know, stitching or whatever, but they've, they've heard of you guys, so yeah.
00:03:31.418 --> 00:03:31.897
Okay.
00:03:32.048 --> 00:03:32.467
All right.
00:03:32.858 --> 00:03:36.548
Yeah, well, we've had, we've had a few things go viral and, uh, interesting.
00:03:36.608 --> 00:03:38.022
So we're, we're, that's pretty cool.
00:03:38.048 --> 00:03:39.457
We're getting seen in Australia, boys.
00:03:39.457 --> 00:03:39.937
That's good.
00:03:40.117 --> 00:03:40.627
Yeah.
00:03:40.627 --> 00:03:42.008
I think, yeah.
00:03:42.247 --> 00:03:44.018
Uh, it depends on what their opinion of us is.
00:03:45.098 --> 00:03:45.608
Nonetheless.
00:03:46.268 --> 00:03:53.198
Nonetheless, we were always interested to talk to, uh, you know, interesting people with different perspectives, and I think, we'll, we'll, we'll kind of get into that today.
00:03:53.557 --> 00:03:57.487
So without further ado, why don't we get into some of the questions we had queued up and go from there.
00:03:58.237 --> 00:03:58.747
All right.
00:03:59.138 --> 00:04:04.298
So how did you first get into the realm of politics and how do you lean.
00:04:05.030 --> 00:04:10.400
Yeah, so with politics, again, this is sort of segueing into family history.
00:04:10.939 --> 00:04:13.969
I was interested in history as a young age, not sure why.
00:04:13.969 --> 00:04:16.850
I just was thought it was cool tanks and guns and all that.
00:04:17.300 --> 00:04:25.149
And I, uh, my grandparents, you know, when the US aside during World War ii, the biggest roar on the planet in the history of the world.
00:04:25.240 --> 00:04:27.790
So I looked very heavily, heavily into that.
00:04:28.370 --> 00:04:39.439
And from there I sort of skewed on looking at the Soviet Union in general and how it's viewed in our society and how it actually was, you know, asking my parents and just looking on the internet.
00:04:39.839 --> 00:04:42.689
And from that sort of spread out, you know, just into general politics.
00:04:42.839 --> 00:04:45.839
Uh, so it sort of began with an interest in history.
00:04:46.680 --> 00:04:51.329
Which turns into like World War II and Cold War history sort of thing.
00:04:51.930 --> 00:04:58.050
Uh, how E Lean, I think the Soviet Union is pretty badly represented in Western society.
00:04:58.290 --> 00:05:06.449
I think it was a lot more nuanced and there's a lot of, you know, admirable aspects, whether it work, some parts work, some parts didn't.
00:05:06.779 --> 00:05:10.139
But people are very quick to just disregard all of it.
00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:14.319
Especially due to the Red Scare McCarthyism in the USAA while ago.
00:05:14.829 --> 00:05:17.170
But it's very misrepresented.
00:05:17.170 --> 00:05:22.990
I believe I have the, that's the flag of the Latin Soviet Socialist Republic.
00:05:22.990 --> 00:05:24.430
So each republic had a flag,
00:05:24.478 --> 00:05:24.658
Oh,
00:05:24.879 --> 00:05:27.100
that's the flag and black one, which is where my parents are born.
00:05:27.550 --> 00:05:32.829
And it serves as a bit of a patriotic symbol, but also of my ideology.
00:05:33.250 --> 00:05:35.199
So how I lean is, is it that way?
00:05:36.009 --> 00:05:40.899
And I'm also quite negative to US foreign policy over that time.
00:05:41.110 --> 00:05:41.709
Uh, I've.
00:05:42.550 --> 00:05:54.040
Like had a look at what they did and there's been lots of wars and regime change, which people often overlook and don't talk about again, due to American propaganda during that time.
00:05:54.370 --> 00:05:56.529
So that's, that's the way Eileen,
00:05:57.702 --> 00:05:57.992
Okay.
00:05:58.137 --> 00:05:58.348
Huh.
00:05:58.617 --> 00:06:04.858
And are you very interested in American politics because just of our presence in the world or what?
00:06:05.218 --> 00:06:05.588
What's the reason?
00:06:06.250 --> 00:06:11.050
It's, it's very important like American politics and a lot of Australian people understand that.
00:06:11.110 --> 00:06:14.769
Like, we follow the American elections just as heavily as we follow our own.
00:06:15.579 --> 00:06:17.740
So like, yeah, it's very important.
00:06:17.800 --> 00:06:25.959
And not, not even just from an interest, but even economically, like the tariffs and all that, they've been like key talking points.
00:06:26.110 --> 00:06:32.019
Like I do economics at school and we've talked about them extensively even though we're men's just talk about Australia because they affect us a lot.
00:06:32.410 --> 00:06:36.509
So it's yeah, America is important to us.
00:06:37.398 --> 00:06:37.757
Yeah.
00:06:37.788 --> 00:06:38.478
Right, right.
00:06:39.437 --> 00:06:48.458
And so if I was to sum up your kind of political ideology, maybe it's still forming a bit, you're young, but it leans towards
00:06:49.339 --> 00:06:49.579
the
00:06:49.778 --> 00:06:55.987
a, let's say, a, a sympathetic view of historical USSR and some of the things that happened.
00:06:55.987 --> 00:06:59.137
More of a communist type of governance structure.
00:06:59.617 --> 00:07:00.307
Is that fair to say.
00:07:01.028 --> 00:07:06.247
Now the, I find, we've talked to some other communist.
00:07:07.088 --> 00:07:10.778
Uh, ideology people on our channel, and yeah, it's definitely interesting.
00:07:10.778 --> 00:07:16.807
But what we found is that there's vast differences between some communist ideology.
00:07:16.807 --> 00:07:23.377
So can you maybe tell us a little bit more about like where, where you are in that kind of spectrum?
00:07:23.810 --> 00:07:25.579
It's very true to say there's vast differences.
00:07:25.579 --> 00:07:28.639
I'd say we, we argue with ourselves much more than with anyone else.
00:07:28.987 --> 00:07:29.257
Yeah.
00:07:29.262 --> 00:07:32.257
I hear this a lot, but I'm not, I'm not into any of these forums, but, uh
00:07:32.704 --> 00:07:32.975
Yeah.
00:07:32.975 --> 00:07:45.754
Well, a few of the differences are some people support a violent revolution, other people support, uh, gradual reformist sort of way to power the people which support the reformers might be called Democratic socialists.
00:07:46.115 --> 00:07:58.985
Uh, I'm for, it's sort of a bit of a mix and it was a bit more pragmatic, but I like to view history not as what we should do, but what happens and why it happens.
00:07:59.524 --> 00:08:09.785
And so when I view revolutions in history, I don't see them as, like someone came up with the idea and said, yes, let's start a revolution, and then everyone died and they had a big war.
00:08:10.125 --> 00:08:16.185
No, I view it as there was deep contradictions in that society which caused misery.
00:08:16.425 --> 00:08:20.805
And those people were so downtrodden that they had to fight and start the revolution.
00:08:20.805 --> 00:08:23.865
And it's violent, but it's violent because of the.
00:08:24.584 --> 00:08:26.595
Uh, contradictions in their society.
00:08:27.165 --> 00:08:34.215
So when there are revolutions it's a matter of whether the goal is admirable or not.
00:08:34.455 --> 00:08:38.054
If there's a fascist revolution, I would not support it because the goal is not admirable.
00:08:38.054 --> 00:08:41.264
So I wouldn't support violence to achieve a non-ad admirable goal.
00:08:41.684 --> 00:08:51.945
But if there is a, a socialist communist revolution, which can produce real change, and that's the most pragmatic way to change, I believe that it may be warranting of support.
00:08:52.712 --> 00:08:53.003
Okay.
00:08:53.102 --> 00:08:57.288
So it's justified if the outcome is like kind of matches up with your worldview.
00:08:57.524 --> 00:08:58.215
I suppose is,
00:08:58.758 --> 00:08:59.238
Okay.
00:08:59.625 --> 00:09:03.195
so that's, that's the solution aspect.
00:09:03.284 --> 00:09:10.875
Uh, the other stuff I'll say is pretty in line with like standard Marxism, Leninism of the states.
00:09:11.115 --> 00:09:13.575
I do have a few like critiques of the Soviet Union.
00:09:14.054 --> 00:09:17.115
One is collectivization, which is a policy I'm sort of.
00:09:17.940 --> 00:09:20.279
I'm not, I'm 50 50 on it.
00:09:20.460 --> 00:09:22.440
Uh, and I'm trying to look into it more.
00:09:22.919 --> 00:09:38.250
On one hand, I've read a book recently, which said that collectivization essentially just caused excess deaths because Ku Larks who were being collectivized, who were taking their, getting their farms taken off them would directly sabotage their farms, like as a means of revolt.
00:09:38.710 --> 00:09:42.789
And in return the Soviet government has to imprison or kill them, and then it just gets worse and worse.
00:09:42.789 --> 00:09:44.379
And they caused a fair few deaths.
00:09:44.769 --> 00:09:57.039
But, uh, I read another study about a year ago, and it was comparing Poland Communist Poland, which didn't have collectivization and Communist Bulgaria, which did, and the communist Bulgaria had much better farming productivity.
00:09:57.549 --> 00:10:01.029
So it's a bit of a topic I'm trying to look into.
00:10:01.720 --> 00:10:05.049
And then the other critique I probably have is their democracy.
00:10:05.649 --> 00:10:11.649
I've recently read very interesting stuff, advocating for some levels of sortation, you know, like how juries are picked.
00:10:12.490 --> 00:10:17.620
Just by random selection for some government positions, I believe that some require some level of skill.
00:10:17.620 --> 00:10:19.179
So you can't just pick it randomly.
00:10:19.629 --> 00:10:26.230
But we should have randomly selected committees because that represents the actual population more.
00:10:26.759 --> 00:10:42.960
What they found is that when you have elections, uh, the best people in society are chosen, which generally ends up being the upper class, which is why we have, uh, lots of rich politicians, but not many actual working class common people in power.
00:10:43.559 --> 00:10:46.529
So the Soviet Union also suffered from that.
00:10:46.529 --> 00:10:53.279
They had like this fringe minority of, of politicians who had not extreme inequality with the rest of society.
00:10:53.279 --> 00:10:58.889
They had, like, they earned about five times more, which is still very, very equal compared to capitalist society standards.
00:10:59.100 --> 00:11:02.399
But there was still inequality and there was a divide over that.
00:11:02.490 --> 00:11:04.019
So that's the critique.
00:11:04.577 --> 00:11:10.278
Yeah, I think that's a fair critique of almost all political positions even around the world.
00:11:10.697 --> 00:11:30.258
I've often, like, we've talked about this at home, where wouldn't it be great if we hired our politicians, kinda like American Idol, like they had to go and, you know, sort of like you could apply and then the people actually chose them based on their talent, their, uh, moral hygiene and all, all of that, versus like, who gets the most funding.
00:11:30.600 --> 00:11:33.629
Yeah, because funding determines a lot of elections in it.
00:11:33.798 --> 00:11:34.518
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:34.577 --> 00:11:46.048
And of course, and of course something that I, I think like we, we agree with a lot of leftists and and even, you know, anti-capitalist on to some extent is the two party system.
00:11:46.107 --> 00:11:47.967
There's really no other options and.
00:11:48.432 --> 00:11:50.592
And an independent can't win in America, for
00:11:50.740 --> 00:11:51.250
Yeah.
00:11:51.580 --> 00:11:56.710
Even in Australia, we, we have a, I'll say objectively better system than you do.
00:11:57.039 --> 00:11:58.600
What we have is preferential voting.
00:11:59.230 --> 00:12:00.970
So say you really like an independent.
00:12:01.554 --> 00:12:05.634
But you prefer, say Republicans or Democrats.
00:12:05.634 --> 00:12:16.105
So there's three parties, independent, republican, democrat, you can vote number one independent, but then when they lose, say they get the least votes, then all their votes get discarded.
00:12:16.225 --> 00:12:19.975
And they look at the number two on your list, and that vote goes to number two.
00:12:20.154 --> 00:12:25.375
So you put number two Republican and your vote goes to the Republican then, and then you put number three Democrats so that it's just,
00:12:26.158 --> 00:12:26.447
Yeah.
00:12:26.467 --> 00:12:35.952
And that, that system's been talked about and proposed here, but of course, the parties in charge of actually voting for that voting regulations don't want, it's not,
00:12:36.504 --> 00:12:37.014
yeah.
00:12:37.092 --> 00:12:38.263
not advantageous for them.
00:12:38.725 --> 00:12:45.985
but even with that, we still have yet two very dominant parties, labor and liberal, which is, I'll say, pretty similar with your parties.
00:12:45.985 --> 00:12:49.644
I think labor is a bit more left than your, uh, Democrats.
00:12:49.764 --> 00:12:51.774
But yeah, it's very similar.
00:12:52.513 --> 00:12:52.932
Okay.
00:12:53.023 --> 00:12:53.413
Okay.
00:12:54.043 --> 00:13:05.682
Well maybe we'll come back to,'cause I think the, the, how communism might take hold when America, or, or globally is a, is a deeper question.
00:13:05.682 --> 00:13:09.732
So maybe we'll, we'll circle back to that, but we had a few other, like topics we wanted to get through with you too.
00:13:10.722 --> 00:13:11.082
Yeah.
00:13:11.503 --> 00:13:16.993
So first of all, you've probably, you probably have to get your sources from somewhere, right?
00:13:16.993 --> 00:13:26.592
So I'm wondering which, like, news, news channels or news sources, do you prefer more and trust more for well news.
00:13:27.190 --> 00:13:27.519
yeah.
00:13:27.580 --> 00:13:39.909
Well, with, with like direct news, like immediately after an event happens, I really just look at anything just look it up and go on whichever, you know, publisher makes it first.
00:13:40.059 --> 00:13:45.039
But with my more like deep political thoughts, I usually, uh, look to YouTube.
00:13:45.070 --> 00:13:48.970
There's this one channel, which I've watched extensively over the last few years.
00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:51.250
His name is William Paul Haw.
00:13:51.340 --> 00:13:54.220
I think his, his YouTube channel is just Paul Cock shot.
00:13:54.250 --> 00:13:55.720
He's a Scottish professor.
00:13:56.289 --> 00:13:57.370
Uh, his.
00:13:57.684 --> 00:13:58.705
Very deep communist.
00:13:58.705 --> 00:14:05.904
And he is post a lot of videos on many, many topics such as like physics, but a lot of economics, politics.
00:14:05.904 --> 00:14:09.475
And it's commented on like modern events as well, like the Russian Ukranian war.
00:14:10.075 --> 00:14:27.875
Apart from that, so there's him and there's like a lot of other academic sort of people that I look to which are more restrained from like the popular news sources, which I think, uh, you know, they're more generated just to get clicks and views rather than actually give you information.
00:14:28.205 --> 00:14:29.794
So I have like a few like that.
00:14:29.825 --> 00:14:36.815
But generally it's just academic sources and whichever, you know, popular media outlet makes it first.
00:14:36.888 --> 00:14:37.177
Okay.
00:14:38.062 --> 00:14:42.352
And we, we didn't act, I don't think we asked you this earlier, but your family, like, what?
00:14:42.383 --> 00:14:45.802
Do they lean similar to you or do you have differing opinions?
00:14:45.965 --> 00:14:47.315
I, we have differing opinions.
00:14:47.315 --> 00:14:53.284
I'll say they're mostly apolitical, but you know, they have, you know, obviously a few views in the Soviet Union.
00:14:53.284 --> 00:14:59.914
They live there and I've asked them on it, and again, they gimme a sort of a, a nuanced view of what it really was, which I think is very important.
00:15:00.475 --> 00:15:03.115
But they're mostly apolitical.
00:15:03.205 --> 00:15:07.434
Again, have a few views, maybe slightly left-leaning, especially compared to America.
00:15:07.465 --> 00:15:11.215
I'll say in Australia, people are more left-leaning compared to America on average.
00:15:11.215 --> 00:15:16.254
But not, not like me, but my grandparents on the other hand.
00:15:17.125 --> 00:15:27.115
Two of them worked as teachers and in the Soviet Union to work as a teacher, you had to be a member of the Communist Party as a part of the, so they were, they were trained as, you know, communists.
00:15:27.115 --> 00:15:36.125
So, two of them were one of them, my Polish grandparent, she's a Polish Catholic and very, very anti-communist.
00:15:36.365 --> 00:15:38.315
Absolutely hated the whole system.
00:15:38.774 --> 00:15:44.534
She was very anticommunist, very religious, and again, in the Soviet religion, it wasn't banned, but it was frowned upon.
00:15:45.105 --> 00:15:46.784
That's sort of my family story.
00:15:47.523 --> 00:15:47.732
Okay.
00:15:47.732 --> 00:15:48.602
Very interesting.
00:15:49.883 --> 00:15:56.092
So do you like, or what are your thoughts about like kids talking about politics like us?
00:15:57.110 --> 00:15:57.500
Yeah.
00:15:57.559 --> 00:16:11.970
Well, look, it's important, especially at a certain point once the kid's mature enough, which I think is for, it doesn't happen a certain age, you know, it's different for everyone when someone gets, you know, mature enough to be able to speak on issues properly.
00:16:12.509 --> 00:16:19.080
But I think politics is important and talking to children about politics is important.
00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:22.710
As long as they understand why things happen.
00:16:22.799 --> 00:16:26.399
It's not just a matter of this is good, that's bad there.
00:16:26.820 --> 00:16:31.559
It's, you know, actually understanding why that works, why that doesn't work, why this might work, might not work.
00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:32.220
We don't know.
00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:37.320
It's a very nuanced subject and it requires a lot of nuance when teaching, especially to children.
00:16:37.399 --> 00:16:47.450
Now you got interested in, let's say, politics, economics, pretty young, maybe because of your background, but are like, what are your friends like?
00:16:47.500 --> 00:16:51.309
Yeah, well I'm definitely the furthest into politics out of anyone.
00:16:51.730 --> 00:16:54.039
When I got in, I was definitely alone.
00:16:54.340 --> 00:16:56.799
There was no one else who was 12 years old.
00:16:56.799 --> 00:16:59.350
There was also like, looking at the stuff I was looking.
00:16:59.740 --> 00:17:04.359
But as I've gone through my schooling years, uh, you know, other people have also sort of gone into it.
00:17:04.670 --> 00:17:13.440
And they usually come to me sort of asking me stuff and I tell them my views and we sort of have a little,'cause they usually develop their own views from the internet when we have little talks.
00:17:13.769 --> 00:17:15.839
So there are now at school, there's probably.
00:17:16.529 --> 00:17:24.630
Four or five others who or a few of them are my friends, who of them are just random people who were, I would say, interested in politics not necessarily communists or socialists by any means.
00:17:24.690 --> 00:17:28.710
Most of them are sort of, don't have any coherent political views, I would say.
00:17:29.279 --> 00:17:35.579
But they do, they are clearly interested and they, like, each time something happens, they, you know, talk about it or they talk to me about it.
00:17:36.119 --> 00:17:39.539
So now there are people like that, but when I first started there, there wasn't,
00:17:40.722 --> 00:17:41.012
Okay.
00:17:41.238 --> 00:17:41.478
Okay.
00:17:41.478 --> 00:17:41.778
Yeah.
00:17:41.778 --> 00:17:44.958
I imagine at 12, like, it's very young.
00:17:45.067 --> 00:17:45.357
Yeah.
00:17:45.357 --> 00:17:55.012
That's pretty young to, especially to be getting into,'cause you had, you had sent us like a, a, a bit about some of your reading material and it's pretty dense, like it's pretty advanced and dense.
00:17:55.234 --> 00:17:56.615
shelf here, back there.
00:17:57.279 --> 00:17:58.355
It's, it's quite dense.
00:17:59.157 --> 00:18:02.093
I mean, it was like Marx, Lenin yeah.
00:18:02.192 --> 00:18:02.913
John Locke.
00:18:02.913 --> 00:18:03.452
I think so.
00:18:03.452 --> 00:18:05.222
So like, you've, you've read some pretty deep,
00:18:06.029 --> 00:18:10.650
Yeah, the, the marks and Len is definitely the hardest to read just'cause it was so long ago.
00:18:10.680 --> 00:18:12.509
Like, the writing's clearly outdated.
00:18:12.809 --> 00:18:16.980
But I've read yeah, lots of other stuff, which is also like academic.
00:18:17.130 --> 00:18:20.670
But yeah, so I've, I've gone into a fair bit of that over the years.
00:18:21.782 --> 00:18:22.742
Well, good, good.
00:18:22.772 --> 00:18:24.032
Uh, good, good for you.
00:18:24.032 --> 00:18:26.613
But I, yes, it's dense at that age for sure.
00:18:27.212 --> 00:18:36.323
So, what are some key points in either your current politics in Australia or politics here possibly that you were very passionate about?
00:18:37.910 --> 00:18:47.900
Uh, well look, I'll say naturally as a socialist, communist type private property it's like a key part of society, which people, you know, they're born with.
00:18:47.900 --> 00:18:55.640
They have that idea that people can just buy whatever they want and they just grow up and they, they live with that idea, not realizing that.
00:18:56.930 --> 00:19:01.670
Over our thousands of years as a society, it's changed a lot.
00:19:01.740 --> 00:19:14.009
Our laws around who can own what have been vastly different, you know, from slavery where you can own people, which is like very extreme to, egalitarian societies where owning anything was, was banned.
00:19:14.009 --> 00:19:20.880
Like by egalitarian, I mean the primitive ones, you know, the tribes thousands of years ago where owning anything was banned.
00:19:21.329 --> 00:19:32.549
And everything was the same, but there's been a vast difference over society and it's, I think it's time to revise what we think you should be able to do again.
00:19:33.210 --> 00:19:34.140
So private property.
00:19:34.200 --> 00:19:38.609
So the, so ability to own private property is, is a, is a topic.
00:19:38.609 --> 00:19:38.880
Okay.
00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:40.259
That's a big and a, that's a deep one.
00:19:40.289 --> 00:19:40.500
Okay.
00:19:40.977 --> 00:19:41.336
topic.
00:19:41.336 --> 00:19:41.606
Yeah.
00:19:41.997 --> 00:19:46.676
Like apart from that, I'll say.
00:19:47.967 --> 00:19:50.906
Again, democracy sort of one, which I was talking to you about.
00:19:50.967 --> 00:19:54.416
But you know, I think it's important for people to hold power.
00:19:55.076 --> 00:19:56.517
The key communist idea.
00:19:57.207 --> 00:19:57.957
Uh, what else?
00:19:57.957 --> 00:20:07.906
Like, I have general, like most leftists, you know, they talk about, you know, poverty and, dignified right to live and free water and free housing.
00:20:08.086 --> 00:20:09.406
I have those ideas.
00:20:09.507 --> 00:20:18.207
But I think that it's like a, a more service level resting upon the whole idea of private property and how we manage things as a society.
00:20:18.386 --> 00:20:18.866
And
00:20:18.916 --> 00:20:19.207
Yeah.
00:20:19.477 --> 00:20:19.767
Okay.
00:20:20.544 --> 00:20:25.193
so those, that's probably the big one, which is like uniquely sort of socialist and communist and those
00:20:25.406 --> 00:20:26.067
Right, right.
00:20:26.067 --> 00:20:26.696
So, okay.
00:20:26.696 --> 00:20:27.987
That's actually a good way to put it is.
00:20:27.987 --> 00:20:34.557
So the, the deeper issues are the ones that you're interested in while surface level, however, they're massive issues, which
00:20:34.703 --> 00:20:35.269
Even though they're massive.
00:20:35.606 --> 00:20:38.487
healthcare, universal income yeah.
00:20:38.487 --> 00:20:48.477
Foreign conflicts, wars, I imagine, you know, Gaza and Ukraine, all like, these types of things are, are, uh, what you would consider sort of, maybe not the, the core.
00:20:48.983 --> 00:20:52.614
yeah, because again, they're very big issues and that's what we're trying to solve.
00:20:52.943 --> 00:20:57.743
But the communist outlook is that that rested upon the bedrock of capitalism.
00:20:57.743 --> 00:21:02.784
Capitalism creates these issues through its contradictions, through the way it operates.
00:21:03.023 --> 00:21:06.534
And to solve those issues, you have to solve the core problem.
00:21:06.564 --> 00:21:09.894
And the reason why we can't solve those issues is because we haven't solved the core problem yet.
00:21:10.584 --> 00:21:13.199
So that's, that's my view on it.
00:21:15.227 --> 00:21:15.307
Hmm.
00:21:15.311 --> 00:21:15.761
Okay.
00:21:16.422 --> 00:21:20.682
Well, do you mind if we unpack communism a little bit this wasn't set up as a debate.
00:21:20.682 --> 00:21:26.142
However, like we, we want to ask what I'd say are common critiques of communism that I'm sure you're familiar with.
00:21:26.382 --> 00:21:36.612
So, if you look at history and you do some queries, let's say through Google or a, a lot of means, you'll find that communism has, let's say, the highest death toll.
00:21:36.612 --> 00:21:43.541
It's had very difficult times implementing itself in the eutopic format that Marx talked about, et cetera.
00:21:43.991 --> 00:21:50.402
So, in terms of actual implementation, it's had a lot of historical challenges.
00:21:50.402 --> 00:21:52.471
So how do you, like, how do you think about that?
00:21:52.844 --> 00:21:58.663
Well, firstly, a key thing which I want people to realize with when they talk about death toll.
00:21:58.693 --> 00:22:06.044
'cause everyone always, they spurred out numbers on the internet or wherever they say 20 million here, 60 million there, a hundred million, whatever you want.
00:22:06.523 --> 00:22:10.364
Uh, the general numbers come.
00:22:10.394 --> 00:22:13.394
There's 20, there's a 20 million number which comes for the Soviet Union.
00:22:13.963 --> 00:22:26.223
It comes from the Black Book of Communism, which is, has been sort of rejected by academics because it it goes for like the higher estimates and also it counts a lot of things which you originally wouldn't really call deaths.
00:22:26.614 --> 00:22:32.554
Uh, it counts Nazi soldier fatalities from the war, which again, they were being invaded.
00:22:32.644 --> 00:22:36.544
I don't see, I don't find a Nazi to be a victim of communism.
00:22:37.402 --> 00:22:38.811
You're talking about like World War ii?
00:22:39.318 --> 00:22:39.949
World War ii.
00:22:40.281 --> 00:22:40.701
Yeah.
00:22:40.701 --> 00:22:42.142
The Russians lost a lot.
00:22:42.741 --> 00:22:43.162
A lot.
00:22:43.162 --> 00:22:43.642
of soldiers.
00:22:43.642 --> 00:22:44.182
A lot of soldiers in World War ii.
00:22:44.211 --> 00:22:44.961
More than any other
00:22:45.259 --> 00:22:46.519
Yeah, exactly.
00:22:46.618 --> 00:22:56.638
I think some sources, they count like the Soviet can re legalize abortion, uh, and they count deaths from aborted babies as deaths of communism.
00:22:57.169 --> 00:23:03.259
Which again, like whether you're for or against abortion, I'm not sure whether you would call a fetus Same
00:23:03.652 --> 00:23:06.172
those numbers aren't typically included in any stats,
00:23:06.499 --> 00:23:06.798
Yeah.
00:23:07.249 --> 00:23:07.548
Yeah.
00:23:07.548 --> 00:23:07.729
Yeah.
00:23:07.729 --> 00:23:09.949
So there's a few sketchy numbers
00:23:09.999 --> 00:23:13.269
What about things like the Bolshevik revolution and the famines?
00:23:13.655 --> 00:23:14.076
Yeah.
00:23:14.076 --> 00:23:24.276
So, well, with the famines, you thinking of the halor happen in Ukraine in the twenties, thirties, under Stalin, which is with a collectivization, which I was talking about before.
00:23:24.836 --> 00:23:28.945
But the death ranges, they go from 3 million to 7 million starved.
00:23:29.455 --> 00:23:39.875
Again, like it was mostly due due to, uh, the collectivization, which happened, which in one of the books I was reading Farm to Factory, it's called, they heavily critique the collectivization.
00:23:40.145 --> 00:23:45.455
They, the guy actually says that Stalin did a very good job with industrializing the country, which he objectively did.
00:23:45.846 --> 00:23:50.615
The Soviet Union had the fastest growth rate out of any country ever in the world except Japan.
00:23:51.096 --> 00:23:52.296
Japan beat it.
00:23:52.826 --> 00:24:01.375
But considering that the Soviet was a much bigger country, like it was like a growth rate per, like, per the starting how much the industry was starting with.
00:24:01.776 --> 00:24:01.925
It's
00:24:01.943 --> 00:24:02.814
country to mobilize.
00:24:02.814 --> 00:24:03.084
Yeah.
00:24:03.306 --> 00:24:03.935
yeah, exactly.
00:24:04.415 --> 00:24:13.276
Anyway, but he does critique collectivization which again, I've said I'm not fully decided on, but it's important to know that the famine was from there.
00:24:13.816 --> 00:24:25.665
And it's also important to remember that the Russian Empire before being the USSR had regular famines that had a famine, I think at the end of the 18 hundreds, which killed a few million a few 30 years before that.
00:24:26.010 --> 00:24:37.080
It was just a symptom of pre-industrial society that whenever there's a bad harvest, there's a famine, a few thousand, few million maybe people die and you go on with your life.
00:24:37.560 --> 00:24:43.351
Only in the last a hundred years or so, we've had the privilege of having foods all throughout our lives.
00:24:43.750 --> 00:24:47.951
And the Soviet Union gave its people that privilege by industrializing the nation that quickly.
00:24:48.601 --> 00:24:53.040
So that's what the Soviet Union, but the biggest death numbers come from, uh, China,
00:24:53.919 --> 00:24:54.138
Mao.
00:24:54.211 --> 00:24:58.320
uh, under Mao and the, the sparrows and all that.
00:24:58.711 --> 00:25:16.980
Uh, the, the first number to come out was from den Oping, who was the later the leader of China, but he was a critique of, of Mao, and he went to the countryside and he said that like by using his own estimations and calculations, he said 14 million people have died due to the policies.
00:25:17.431 --> 00:25:18.570
So it was 14 million.
00:25:18.691 --> 00:25:20.730
Which again, I'm not sure if it's true or not.
00:25:20.780 --> 00:25:21.830
But there was something around that.
00:25:21.830 --> 00:25:29.851
But then later in this black book of communism, which again, it sort of uses these very do dodgy estimates, they inflated that number to around 40 million.
00:25:30.211 --> 00:25:34.320
They just inflated it a fair amount and that's the number we they rolled with.
00:25:34.421 --> 00:25:46.560
So, so the nu, so E yeah, so e, even if the numbers are inflated, like what about the fact that, these societies haven't had longevity, like they, they tend to crumble and, and, and fake.
00:25:47.817 --> 00:25:48.778
Well, they have crumbled.
00:25:48.778 --> 00:25:59.988
They the Soviet Union and China in the nineties was all one big event because these communist societies, because they're sanctioned and embargoed by the, by the capitalist block, they rely on each other for trade.
00:26:00.407 --> 00:26:05.837
So when the Soviet Union collapsed, all these small countries, which are being, which would rely on it for trade, they also collapsed.
00:26:05.837 --> 00:26:06.528
They had the big choice.
00:26:07.248 --> 00:26:21.077
Basically all these countries had the choice either go capitalist and accept IMF, you know, demands and capitalist trade, or they can go in this really, really seclusive society where they just live by themselves.
00:26:21.077 --> 00:26:22.758
And one country did that and that's North Korea.
00:26:23.087 --> 00:26:32.597
So before the Soviet collapse, North Korea was a very different country because it had ability to trade and it was much, much, much more developed.
00:26:32.688 --> 00:26:40.188
Now it's like the way it is because it just was the most stubborn one, which chose to not go capitalist other than serving collapsed.
00:26:40.218 --> 00:26:42.708
Anyway, so yeah, there was a big collapse.
00:26:42.807 --> 00:26:46.288
The reasons for that I can go into, but they're quite lengthy.
00:26:46.998 --> 00:27:02.327
What's important to remember is that when capitalist society was founded, because, you know, before the enlightenment and capitalist ideals, we had feudalism and absolutism and all these different, more authoritarian regimes, uh.
00:27:03.018 --> 00:27:11.117
The first sort of instance of capitalism in Europe, in America, you could say the USA sort of founded it first and they had a very good run.
00:27:11.538 --> 00:27:19.907
But in Europe, the French, in the 1788, they killed the king, established a republic based on what we call capitalist ideas, right?
00:27:19.968 --> 00:27:23.327
The legal code, which Napoleon established in France is still used there.
00:27:23.867 --> 00:27:28.778
They, you know, said, every person is sort of equal, but private property should exist.
00:27:28.877 --> 00:27:36.048
We are a capitalist society and that's why Marxists call the French Revolution, AB Bourgeois Revolution, you know, it was a revolution of the capitalists.
00:27:36.508 --> 00:27:41.097
They created that and 30 years later they were destroyed at loo.
00:27:41.617 --> 00:27:44.107
And France was given back to a monarchy.
00:27:44.528 --> 00:27:49.567
They were given back a monarchy last as a monarchy for a while, and then they've again had.
00:27:50.347 --> 00:27:51.728
Tumbles trying to become republic.
00:27:51.817 --> 00:27:53.637
There's been the big struggle in Europe.
00:27:54.337 --> 00:27:57.877
In 1848 there was many revolutions all across Europe.
00:27:57.968 --> 00:27:58.688
You can look it up.
00:27:58.688 --> 00:28:02.948
Revolutions of 1848 in Italy, Germany, even the uk I think.
00:28:03.127 --> 00:28:06.008
Anyway, all for the republic, they're all crushed, destroyed.
00:28:06.637 --> 00:28:12.127
So with changing political systems in across the world, it's a lengthy process.
00:28:12.127 --> 00:28:13.057
It doesn't happen overnight.
00:28:13.448 --> 00:28:16.147
And when it does happen, it's not immune to failure.
00:28:16.627 --> 00:28:19.448
It often takes a few tries to get the right one.
00:28:19.688 --> 00:28:26.198
So I would say that the collapse of communism isn't some, you know, divine truth.
00:28:26.198 --> 00:28:29.407
Saying that communism is doomed for failure is just a process of history.
00:28:29.768 --> 00:28:30.938
Something which, which can happen.
00:28:30.938 --> 00:28:31.597
And it did happen.
00:28:32.201 --> 00:28:41.840
You mentioned that the onset of capitalism is one of the factors that may have disabled or handicap communist countries.
00:28:42.441 --> 00:28:49.070
So does that suggest that we have to have a world communist like society
00:28:49.070 --> 00:28:52.661
that's well of communist support is like, you know, global
00:28:53.068 --> 00:28:55.318
it seems like a convenient factor though, don't you think?
00:28:55.499 --> 00:29:02.989
Like, like why can't, like, why can't communist, why can't a communist, for example, trade with a capitalist country?
00:29:03.570 --> 00:29:15.851
or because they sort of, or they can, they have it's a bit more nuanced again, like by, I say they can't, I mean the Soviet Bloc and the Western Bloc and the Cold War because they had tensions with each other before that.
00:29:16.300 --> 00:29:21.671
The Soviet Union, after it was created, after the Bolsheviks took power and won their war, the western powers of Europe.
00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:27.131
Europe firstly, they invaded Russia in 1919 to support the whites, and then they lost.
00:29:27.401 --> 00:29:29.125
So British and French troops invaded.
00:29:29.125 --> 00:29:32.711
They lost, and then they, uh, stopped recognizing the Soviet Union.
00:29:33.161 --> 00:29:37.270
And they placed embargoes on them so they couldn't trade with with them.
00:29:38.080 --> 00:29:43.300
And for a while no country even recognized the Soviet Union in 1920s.
00:29:43.300 --> 00:29:49.421
I was just reading a book about this, uh, the German foreign minister, because Germany was also very isolated at this time.
00:29:49.451 --> 00:29:50.351
You know, they just lost the war.
00:29:50.351 --> 00:29:52.270
They lost their monarchy, their empire.
00:29:52.711 --> 00:29:53.971
They were looking for friends.
00:29:54.391 --> 00:30:01.691
They saw the Soviet also didn't have any friends and they created this treaty of rappel, I'm pretty sure it was called where they sort of recognize each other.
00:30:01.691 --> 00:30:09.651
And they started trading just general trade and also munitions which is a bit sketchy under the treaty of the size, which said the Germany cunt free arm, re-arm.
00:30:09.701 --> 00:30:10.901
But anyway, they did that.
00:30:11.980 --> 00:30:19.931
So it is not, the Soviet countries can't trade, but it's just when there's two big blocks and they're diametrically opposed as capitalism's, very much against communism.
00:30:20.050 --> 00:30:20.891
They don't want the trade.
00:30:20.951 --> 00:30:25.661
Just like, we don't really want to rely on Russia or China for trade when they're fighting us.
00:30:26.336 --> 00:30:28.316
It's, yeah, just a thing which happens,
00:30:28.749 --> 00:30:30.189
I like history, so Yeah.
00:30:30.219 --> 00:30:30.429
Yeah.
00:30:30.429 --> 00:30:30.818
The voice.
00:30:31.719 --> 00:30:32.618
That's my favorite subject.
00:30:32.618 --> 00:30:33.189
Least me.
00:30:33.368 --> 00:30:33.788
So,
00:30:34.431 --> 00:30:34.721
yeah,
00:30:34.929 --> 00:30:35.259
yeah.
00:30:35.259 --> 00:30:37.269
Well, you've obviously read your history, that's pretty cool.
00:30:37.278 --> 00:30:40.338
Yeah, you like your books and I like books, so I like that.
00:30:40.816 --> 00:30:41.566
It's good to hear.
00:30:41.566 --> 00:30:42.375
It's very good to hear.
00:30:43.173 --> 00:30:50.009
How about so there's, let's just say there's countries today, North Korea, you could say Cuba.
00:30:50.009 --> 00:30:56.878
Venezuela, like, they're, they're all in the, the midst of they've, or they've gone through some changes, but they, they all do struggle.
00:30:56.878 --> 00:30:59.368
And so what, like what do you attribute that to?
00:31:00.750 --> 00:31:07.740
Again, I'll say probably the embargoes and all that, but also it's important to recognize.
00:31:09.121 --> 00:31:13.980
It's hard for poor countries to get rich and it's hard for, well, it's easy for rich countries to say rich, right?
00:31:14.280 --> 00:31:18.661
Over the countries 150 years ago, which were very poor, are rich Nowadays there's probably only a handful.
00:31:18.711 --> 00:31:20.931
You know, Korea comes to mind.
00:31:21.111 --> 00:31:24.951
Japan, uh, China, Singapore is probably a big one.
00:31:25.611 --> 00:31:31.730
But apart from that, basically all the countries 150 years ago, which were poor, have stayed poor.
00:31:31.830 --> 00:31:34.711
It's a hard, hard struggle to become.
00:31:35.911 --> 00:31:38.161
To emancipate yourself as a third world country.
00:31:38.520 --> 00:31:41.010
So when, you know, Cuba has always been one of the poor ones.
00:31:41.080 --> 00:31:44.945
They were oppressed by the Spanish and then the Americans, they had, a dictator in the fifties.
00:31:45.516 --> 00:31:47.826
It's, it's hard to get it to be good.
00:31:47.915 --> 00:31:49.655
And I think the Cubans have done a good job of that.
00:31:49.655 --> 00:31:57.675
They have now, I think it's very similar, even higher life expectancy than the USA they have reasonable living standards.
00:31:57.675 --> 00:31:59.895
You know, again, not, not as good as the rich countries.
00:31:59.895 --> 00:32:01.816
Historically China has been very rich.
00:32:02.175 --> 00:32:11.145
But about 200 years ago there were sort of mutilated in the process of, uh, colonization, it's called like the century of humiliation in China.
00:32:11.576 --> 00:32:14.155
And again, the communists took it, and now it's.
00:32:14.951 --> 00:32:15.701
At the top again.
00:32:15.951 --> 00:32:18.290
You wouldn't consider China a communist country today, right?
00:32:19.097 --> 00:32:21.637
It's, yeah, I wouldn't like it's sort of a mixed economy.
00:32:21.738 --> 00:32:26.748
People like to say, oh, the, the victory of China is a victory of capitalism, not communism.
00:32:27.107 --> 00:32:33.137
But if we implemented the same policies China has in the west, a lot of guys would call it socialism.
00:32:33.258 --> 00:32:42.798
Even though it's, it's not, I disagree, I'll say it, it's not, but it's very, it's much left, more left-leaning than any western society.
00:32:42.798 --> 00:32:53.657
I would say if there was a society which was most similar to, it would be the British, when the labor government had like a 20 year, uh, cement of dominance and they had like a very.
00:32:54.077 --> 00:32:57.077
Big mixed economy where the state owned like a lot of industry.
00:32:57.627 --> 00:33:02.817
And they had like a lot of government subsidized services that ended when Margaret Thatcher took into power in the uk.
00:33:02.877 --> 00:33:05.337
But it's, it's very similar to what China has today.
00:33:05.397 --> 00:33:08.607
So, no, it's not capitalist, but it's also very government guided.
00:33:09.018 --> 00:33:16.038
This is kind of related, this is related to communism, and I'm just curious because we've actually had a few communists on lately.
00:33:16.474 --> 00:33:16.765
Yeah.
00:33:17.538 --> 00:33:20.928
because, around Gen Z, they're starting to become more communist.
00:33:21.438 --> 00:33:25.768
So I'm curious why do you think that like Gen Z is suddenly now like becoming more communist?
00:33:26.170 --> 00:33:26.470
Yeah.
00:33:26.474 --> 00:33:27.565
Well, I'll say.
00:33:28.750 --> 00:33:38.710
It's not necessarily they're becoming more communist, but I think there is a bit more just political extremism and politics in general in society, again, where sort of things are ramping up in the world.
00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:41.420
30 years ago it was pretty quiet.
00:33:41.420 --> 00:33:43.640
America was the victor.
00:33:43.730 --> 00:33:45.259
People said it was the end of history.
00:33:45.259 --> 00:33:46.640
You know, communism has failed.
00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:48.500
Capitalism will be like this, it'll be all good forever.
00:33:48.859 --> 00:33:50.480
But now, you know, there's challenges.
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:56.269
There's Russia, there's China, there's more far right, uh, extremists as well as far left.
00:33:56.450 --> 00:34:04.769
As for why they're becoming communists, I would say just society in general, the poverty in the world and all that.
00:34:05.369 --> 00:34:07.079
Cause people to become far left as well.
00:34:07.079 --> 00:34:08.280
As far right as well.
00:34:08.309 --> 00:34:10.199
So there is growing
00:34:10.293 --> 00:34:14.222
interesting though because the, the, the global standard of living is higher than it's ever been.
00:34:14.228 --> 00:34:14.438
Right.
00:34:15.179 --> 00:34:16.019
Partially that's true.
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:22.440
We have like higher wealth in equality than the French did during their revolution, but back then they were actually impoverished, you know?
00:34:22.860 --> 00:34:24.300
So yeah, we have had better growth.
00:34:24.329 --> 00:34:27.789
But I think this is a good thing.
00:34:28.469 --> 00:34:30.329
But it's also a bad thing humans.
00:34:31.650 --> 00:34:32.429
Never satisfied.
00:34:32.489 --> 00:34:33.360
They always push for more.
00:34:33.719 --> 00:34:38.820
And it's sort of made us this big triumphant civilization that's taken domination over everyone else.
00:34:38.820 --> 00:34:41.880
We have grown as a species a lot, but we're still not satisfied.
00:34:41.969 --> 00:34:43.860
And I think it's just part of the human condition.
00:34:44.070 --> 00:34:44.429
So
00:34:45.257 --> 00:34:52.217
Do you think that human condition challenges some of the theory though of communism or particularly Marx Marxist ideology?
00:34:52.710 --> 00:34:54.239
I would say it actually fits in quite well.
00:34:54.280 --> 00:34:59.710
You know, Marxism sort of analyzes history is like a struggle over material conditions.
00:34:59.769 --> 00:35:06.340
You know, it's sort of, it comes from an idea that to live even nowadays, to live we need to work, right?
00:35:06.769 --> 00:35:07.909
It has been that way the whole time.
00:35:07.909 --> 00:35:12.769
You know, cavemen, they had to each day get up and make food.
00:35:13.340 --> 00:35:15.349
Buy hunting so they can live nowadays.
00:35:15.349 --> 00:35:16.190
We still need to do that.
00:35:16.670 --> 00:35:26.329
And the way in which we work well, we, yeah, like even though it might not seem that we do, we, we still do, like if everyone stopped working, nothing would happen.
00:35:26.900 --> 00:35:49.449
So, and the way in which we work and create the goods for ourselves, which we need sort of influencers, how society works in general, you know, whether you are being forced to work by a, a harsh slave owner who's whipping you or whether you are coerced to work by, monetary gain through a capitalist, but really the capitalist exploiting you, which is what Marxists say happened in capitalist society.
00:35:49.869 --> 00:35:52.929
It changes the dynamics and what goes on.
00:35:53.159 --> 00:35:56.760
It's hedged in this idea that people want better living standards.
00:35:56.789 --> 00:35:59.849
That the, the people in the oppressed class would.
00:36:00.224 --> 00:36:06.074
If they could, they would fight and they'll take over and they'll create a better life themselves, which I think has happened over history.
00:36:06.375 --> 00:36:17.324
Whether those revolutions have succeeded or not, but they have happened where oppressed peoples slaves or, or peasants or nowadays workers have taken up arms and fought, you know, to get better living standards.
00:36:18.228 --> 00:36:18.557
yeah.
00:36:19.432 --> 00:36:27.527
And, and so what's the goal like of, let's say a, a communist is living in America, who has a very high living standard, even homeless people have high living standards here.
00:36:28.038 --> 00:36:35.177
And so they don't really have economic hardship because the government will provide for them, right?
00:36:35.358 --> 00:36:38.393
General like food welfare, et cetera.
00:36:39.072 --> 00:36:43.152
They think they're oppressed, but like, are they really, if they have everything that they need.
00:36:43.885 --> 00:36:44.275
Right.
00:36:44.304 --> 00:36:49.554
Well, I'll say you can define oppression, not by whether you have everything you need.
00:36:49.554 --> 00:36:49.824
Right?
00:36:49.855 --> 00:36:58.945
Like, for example, Kings back 500 years ago, they didn't have clean water ready at the minutes notice, but you wouldn't say they were oppressed.
00:36:58.945 --> 00:37:00.175
Actually, there were the oppressors there.
00:37:00.175 --> 00:37:03.724
Were feeding on the labor of the peasants.
00:37:04.264 --> 00:37:14.105
I'll say that today we have come to a point where labor productivity is so high that, you know, even what we call high living standards is still being oppressed.
00:37:14.135 --> 00:37:18.855
We're still giving our labor to to the capitalists and you can calculate how much
00:37:19.094 --> 00:37:20.025
You're talking about like surplus,
00:37:20.697 --> 00:37:20.936
Yeah.
00:37:20.936 --> 00:37:21.686
Surplus value.
00:37:22.137 --> 00:37:22.347
Yeah.
00:37:23.007 --> 00:37:24.297
Surplus labor, which you're giving.
00:37:24.545 --> 00:37:27.724
You mentioned earlier that people like inherently want.
00:37:28.445 --> 00:37:29.855
To do better and do more.
00:37:29.885 --> 00:37:33.364
And so like, let's just say somebody who invents something really cool.
00:37:33.364 --> 00:37:35.465
This is, I think, a challenge with, with communism.
00:37:35.465 --> 00:37:50.074
I'm cur curious like how you think about this, but people that work harder and innovate more and take more risks and delay gratification further are gonna want more out of society than somebody who sits in their mom's basement and plays Fortnite all day.
00:37:50.074 --> 00:37:53.554
So like how do you, how do you like remedy that
00:37:53.836 --> 00:37:58.427
I, I envision a society which levies a base tax rate, right?
00:37:58.737 --> 00:38:02.336
And this is a tax which pays for all the public services, which the government gives.
00:38:02.726 --> 00:38:06.416
And this tax rate requires everyone with society who can work, right?
00:38:06.416 --> 00:38:10.527
Like maybe disabled people or whoever can be exempt from this retired.
00:38:10.867 --> 00:38:15.666
But every able-bodied person has to work a certain number of hours per year.
00:38:16.146 --> 00:38:20.856
And if they just wanna work that and plus a little bit of extra to buy food just for the bare minimum, they can do that.
00:38:21.186 --> 00:38:26.177
If they wanna work more they can, and they'll get extra money, which they can buy to.
00:38:26.896 --> 00:38:30.206
Used to buy extra hit things, in exchange for working more for society, right?
00:38:30.206 --> 00:38:38.246
You give in more, you get more as long as the condition is, is that they don't accumulate so much wealth that they can buy, society as a whole.
00:38:38.306 --> 00:38:38.577
Right?
00:38:38.577 --> 00:38:44.007
If they buy the factory world, the other work workers, workers at, then they can start oppressing their own workers, right?
00:38:44.277 --> 00:38:56.396
Or if they buy, if they save up so much money, they can buy all the houses in their street and kick everyone else out and offer them back in as tenants and oppress them through rent, then that shouldn't be allowed.
00:38:56.456 --> 00:38:56.757
Right.
00:38:57.126 --> 00:39:06.077
Where I can imagine this working is sort of like a, maybe a deadline on when you have to spend your money so that you don't, you can't accumulate so much wealth that you can oppress other people.
00:39:06.077 --> 00:39:06.407
Right.
00:39:06.916 --> 00:39:09.317
But I do believe if people work more, they should get more.
00:39:09.416 --> 00:39:10.347
Uh,
00:39:10.815 --> 00:39:12.045
But to a, To a limit.
00:39:12.164 --> 00:39:13.605
To a, but only to a limit.
00:39:14.414 --> 00:39:14.655
And who
00:39:14.726 --> 00:39:15.237
to a limit,
00:39:15.644 --> 00:39:16.635
who decides the limit.
00:39:17.532 --> 00:39:24.001
Well, I believe society is as a collective should and they'll be responsible that, again, because everyone wants to secure each other's needs,
00:39:24.244 --> 00:39:30.125
Won't, won't then, won't then society just keep the limit really low because they don't want people to get like ahead of them.
00:39:31.217 --> 00:39:34.532
Like, but like the people in society are the
00:39:34.625 --> 00:39:34.804
Yeah.
00:39:34.804 --> 00:39:35.764
Like how, how would they do it?
00:39:35.764 --> 00:39:36.364
Like would they vote?
00:39:36.394 --> 00:39:37.474
They would vote for this or,
00:39:37.891 --> 00:39:38.431
I suppose.
00:39:38.431 --> 00:39:50.981
So like, again, it's not like a proper sort of coherent idea yet, but, voting or sortition, it would have to be a committee of many, many thousands of people, which we can now do due to the internet and stuff.
00:39:51.402 --> 00:39:55.402
Which, have a representative view of society as a whole.
00:39:56.061 --> 00:39:58.282
That's, that's one, sorry.
00:39:58.420 --> 00:40:00.010
Like that would be like a lot of work.
00:40:00.059 --> 00:40:00.840
A poll that
00:40:00.851 --> 00:40:01.422
it would be,
00:40:01.889 --> 00:40:03.599
John has worked five extra hours.
00:40:03.659 --> 00:40:05.369
Should he get$10 more?
00:40:05.969 --> 00:40:10.440
Like, and then just like going through that constantly, that seems like it's highly unnecessary.
00:40:10.927 --> 00:40:12.947
It definitely used to be unnecessary.
00:40:12.947 --> 00:40:15.077
It was very hard to do in the Soviet Union.
00:40:15.077 --> 00:40:22.056
They had like a committee, not, not for this sort of stuff, but for uh, like government, government planning, where to invest your resources.
00:40:22.056 --> 00:40:25.086
What, which industries should you grow and allocate funds to.
00:40:25.086 --> 00:40:26.137
It was called GOs Plan.
00:40:26.646 --> 00:40:29.257
They had around 40,000 people working for them.
00:40:29.657 --> 00:40:33.976
All of them were just like accountants sort of to calculate crunch numbers.
00:40:34.547 --> 00:40:37.996
But nowadays it's much, much easier through computer algorithms and stuff.
00:40:38.056 --> 00:40:51.257
In fact, the YouTube channel guy, he wrote a book in the nineties showing that in the nineties, right when computers were very basic, that you could, uh, plan an economy and do all this stuff with like, with a state, with like an investment of like 10 million or so.
00:40:51.797 --> 00:40:54.166
Nowadays, you could probably do it with like.
00:40:54.811 --> 00:40:56.132
A good pc, right?
00:40:56.581 --> 00:41:01.621
In the 18 hundreds, there was a British industrialist called Robert Owen.
00:41:02.382 --> 00:41:05.632
He owned his factory, but he was like a socialist right?
00:41:05.722 --> 00:41:09.231
Even though he was an oppressor, he was, he had the socialist that isn't him.
00:41:09.621 --> 00:41:15.007
And he decided, well, what if I pay my workers, not money, but labor tokens.
00:41:15.112 --> 00:41:19.161
So for each hour you work, you get one hour payment, right?
00:41:19.161 --> 00:41:20.632
Which represents one hour of your work.
00:41:20.961 --> 00:41:24.052
And with that, you could buy one hour of someone else's work, right?
00:41:24.112 --> 00:41:26.722
So say, in which is, which is the whole communist idea, right?
00:41:26.782 --> 00:41:41.112
Say your computer takes 10 hours to make you work for 10 hours, you get 10 labor tokens and you can buy that computer because that computer from the scraps, which it was, iron alloy and all that, and copper in society.
00:41:41.351 --> 00:41:46.871
We have now taken all that labor and created an actual computer, which took 10 hours.
00:41:46.961 --> 00:41:48.612
So with 10 hours of your work, you can buy that.
00:41:49.061 --> 00:41:55.751
And he did that and like it worked in his little factory for quite some time.
00:41:55.782 --> 00:41:59.112
And he did that in the 18 hundreds before any technology.
00:41:59.561 --> 00:42:04.692
So now with, you know, credit cards and digital transactions, I think it's, it's definitely feasible.
00:42:04.931 --> 00:42:12.762
And I'll say the chaotic capitalist system actually creates more, oftentimes more hardship on planning than communism does.
00:42:13.255 --> 00:42:17.425
How about, okay, so I, I could, I mean, there's tons of questions I could ask.
00:42:17.425 --> 00:42:21.204
It probably we don't have enough time for, but a, a couple other, like, say common critiques.
00:42:21.204 --> 00:42:27.414
One is communist revolutions or countries seem to be very ripe.
00:42:27.414 --> 00:42:35.005
And, and even by Marx's own, I think outline, they tend to go through an authoritarian rule before they can be turned over to the proletariat.
00:42:35.034 --> 00:42:37.405
Right, So how does one avoid this?
00:42:37.414 --> 00:42:41.405
Once control gets taken place, it's hard to give it back, right?
00:42:41.405 --> 00:42:43.864
And we saw this in, in many of these regimes over time.
00:42:43.864 --> 00:42:44.195
So.
00:42:44.625 --> 00:42:48.554
How do you, how does one avoid that in a communist development?
00:42:49.481 --> 00:42:51.612
I'm not sure if avoiding it is necessary.
00:42:51.612 --> 00:42:59.532
The Soviet Union sort of tried to start implementing communism, but they couldn't because there's the, so there's the USA and their huge military right next door.
00:42:59.961 --> 00:43:07.641
Having to completely match the USA in military spending and fight proxy wars, they never really could.
00:43:07.731 --> 00:43:21.601
So I think that that's, it's an interesting question and whether how it's achieved, it's something which is worthy to figure out, but I can't use any historical examples because we've never even reached a stage where I think it's necessary to abolish
00:43:21.844 --> 00:43:22.474
Right, right.
00:43:23.315 --> 00:43:23.614
Okay.
00:43:23.644 --> 00:43:24.034
Okay.
00:43:24.065 --> 00:43:24.695
Fair, fair enough.
00:43:24.695 --> 00:43:31.894
Another common critique I see is that people in their human nature obviously wanna get the best outta life, right?
00:43:31.894 --> 00:43:39.514
They wanna earn the most, have the best place, and, uh, particularly if they work hard and they wanna do that for the least amount of effort, typically, right?
00:43:39.514 --> 00:43:42.994
Like, you wanna maximize your output by minimizing your input, let's just say.
00:43:43.594 --> 00:43:51.605
But in a communist society, you have a, you have a ceiling on your output, and so then what that.
00:43:51.965 --> 00:43:59.045
Does in theory is it drives your input or your, your work or your effort asymptotically to zero, right?
00:43:59.045 --> 00:44:02.224
And so that, that level will just keep, keep lowering down.
00:44:02.315 --> 00:44:07.414
And this is, you know, theory, but it does make a lot of sense to me just based on human nature.
00:44:07.414 --> 00:44:08.255
How do you think about that at.
00:44:08.806 --> 00:44:19.067
Well, like with the whole human nature thing people, yeah, they do want the best, and I'll say that that's something which supports communism, right?
00:44:19.067 --> 00:44:28.637
In Capital Society, there's a system where 99% of the people have around half their labor taken away by the capitalist group, and they want to change that, right?
00:44:28.757 --> 00:44:31.996
They want to you know, make it so they get their best.
00:44:31.996 --> 00:44:35.387
And when the 99% revolts takes over, that's what happens.
00:44:35.387 --> 00:44:36.257
That's what communism is.
00:44:36.916 --> 00:44:37.817
With the ceiling.
00:44:38.132 --> 00:44:43.112
Are you referencing like what I was talking about before, like with the deadline on payments or what
00:44:43.324 --> 00:44:43.715
I mean?
00:44:43.715 --> 00:44:52.324
that, that, or that, that theory, I think, is generally common in a, in a communist society where you have a, you have a maximum or you have a cap on the things that you can have own and
00:44:52.411 --> 00:44:53.012
Right.
00:44:53.282 --> 00:44:53.822
Yeah.
00:44:53.822 --> 00:44:53.831
Yeah.
00:44:54.211 --> 00:45:00.771
Well, look yeah, I'll say like there should, again, it is all, there's a big qualitative, not quantitative divide.
00:45:00.771 --> 00:45:06.681
I think if you want to have, I don't know, 50 million Legos in your house, you should be able to do that.
00:45:06.681 --> 00:45:11.601
But you can't own just one factory because that factory allows you to exploit other people.
00:45:11.632 --> 00:45:14.001
Whereas Lego, who's gonna like it doesn't matter.
00:45:14.032 --> 00:45:18.472
If you wanna work extra hours to get extra toys or whatever, I don't know.
00:45:18.472 --> 00:45:19.762
Whatever hobby you have,
00:45:20.380 --> 00:45:21.190
Or a nicer home.
00:45:21.190 --> 00:45:22.239
Maybe a nicer home.
00:45:22.266 --> 00:45:22.416
At home.
00:45:23.016 --> 00:45:23.197
Yeah.
00:45:23.197 --> 00:45:24.907
If you wanna do that, I think that should be okay.
00:45:24.907 --> 00:45:28.626
As long as it's not basing yourself on exploitation of others.
00:45:28.626 --> 00:45:28.927
Right.
00:45:29.467 --> 00:45:37.416
The only other like ceiling or sort of like disincentive to working will be taxation, which is why I'm thinking a flat base.
00:45:37.496 --> 00:45:40.407
In capitalist society we have progressive taxation, right?
00:45:40.407 --> 00:45:47.007
The more you earn, the more you pay in tax, which is meant to sort of lessen the Yeah.
00:45:47.036 --> 00:45:49.226
Balance the bad things in capitalism, right?
00:45:49.226 --> 00:45:51.967
It's, it's a remedy to what I think is a bad system.
00:45:52.105 --> 00:45:52.525
Mm-hmm.
00:45:52.697 --> 00:45:56.056
But in my view, you just have a base tax rate where you contribute to society.
00:45:56.507 --> 00:46:07.277
And then above that you can spend as much as you want, earn as much as you want, and do that with like, innovation or like technological progress.
00:46:07.797 --> 00:46:15.177
You invent something, you get like patents, When you create something, you can still give it out to society and retain a bit of the profit, right?
00:46:15.177 --> 00:46:19.617
Because if you didn't have that, as soon as you would invent something, you would just keep it secret so only you can use it.
00:46:19.797 --> 00:46:22.737
No one else in society can use it, and that's damaging to society, right?
00:46:22.947 --> 00:46:31.768
If James, what, who invented the steam engine decides to just keep it secret in his own lab and not show it to the rest of the world, we would still be digging in dirt agriculturally, right?
00:46:32.157 --> 00:46:35.588
So, but how much should we reward the people that invent things?
00:46:35.927 --> 00:46:40.998
Some people say we should reward them a lot and give them a lot of stuff, but the thing is, is that, who invented it, right?
00:46:40.998 --> 00:46:43.967
Like James Wat, he came up with the idea for the war engine, right?
00:46:43.967 --> 00:46:47.927
Which started the industrial revolution, but before that, there was the newcomer engine, right?
00:46:48.387 --> 00:46:49.378
Which was like less efficient.
00:46:49.378 --> 00:46:51.568
So only just increased the efficiency, right?
00:46:51.628 --> 00:46:57.117
But say we decided to pay him as much money that he increased the efficiency by, right?
00:46:57.447 --> 00:47:03.938
So, the first one was like, say it'll give you$10 for each use, right?
00:47:03.938 --> 00:47:06.097
That's like a weird way to cause the image.
00:47:06.097 --> 00:47:07.117
And this one gives you 15.
00:47:07.297 --> 00:47:17.347
So for each time you use it, you give them$5, then society doesn't get any benefit out of it because each, each bit of surplus we create with a machine we give away to this one guy as it becomes increasingly wealthy.
00:47:18.018 --> 00:47:36.498
And especially when you consider that the reason why he created the steam engine was not just his own brilliant mind, but was the, all the mathematics and the physics and all the work of all his predecessors, you know, to create those other machines and to create those minds where he could create the tools for his own machine.
00:47:37.983 --> 00:47:50.150
Inventions are attributed to society, really not individual people, even though one guy does the eureka moment and events it, that invention is based on the collective effort of our society over thousands of years.
00:47:50.599 --> 00:47:53.179
So I think the benefit should go to society, right?
00:47:53.239 --> 00:48:04.909
We should have like researchers and people who innovate, but the things they create, you know, they'll get paid for it, but not excess so that they can amass wealth just themselves off the benefit of our society.
00:48:04.909 --> 00:48:07.880
No, we should use those inventions to better the entirety of society.
00:48:08.449 --> 00:48:10.579
And that's the best way to operate things, I believe.
00:48:10.597 --> 00:48:11.947
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:12.128 --> 00:48:12.248
I,
00:48:12.260 --> 00:48:13.280
an interesting question as well.
00:48:13.447 --> 00:48:15.253
think I understand that argument.
00:48:15.253 --> 00:48:17.708
However, a counter argument might be.
00:48:18.503 --> 00:48:31.373
Well, that person had the ingenuity and the know-how to take this idea and make it much better, and why not give them more resources so they can do the same to some other industry and some other industry.
00:48:31.402 --> 00:48:38.512
Like Elon Musk is a great example that he's developed things that nobody else has, and you could say, well, he stole the ideas, or he, you know, robbed people's labor.
00:48:38.512 --> 00:48:46.552
But without him having that capability, we wouldn't have reusable rockets, we wouldn't have electric cars that are like ba basically the standard now.
00:48:46.552 --> 00:48:49.643
And so like there is a counter argument there too,
00:48:49.793 --> 00:48:56.233
the reason why Elon Musk has, all these industries and has implemented all this stuff is because he has the capital to do it.
00:48:56.233 --> 00:48:56.472
Right.
00:48:56.503 --> 00:49:01.302
He has the funding himself from his other businesses, which then made a profit to him, right?
00:49:01.302 --> 00:49:02.353
He's the richest guy on the planet.
00:49:02.902 --> 00:49:08.003
He could just be sit sitting in Monaco on a huge yacht, but he's, he's actually continuing to develop stuff,
00:49:08.210 --> 00:49:08.659
he is.
00:49:09.019 --> 00:49:13.400
But I believe that, his probably the, not the smartest guy on the planet.
00:49:13.400 --> 00:49:20.449
There's better geniuses than him who have less funding, and I believe, you know, capitalism misallocate that funding, again, his sort of.
00:49:21.155 --> 00:49:23.434
Yeah, it's good, good on him for inventing stuff.
00:49:23.485 --> 00:49:25.074
It's better than sitting at home doing nothing.
00:49:25.554 --> 00:49:34.664
If the state had full control over resources, we could properly allocate, funding to the actual real geniuses and the real'cause.
00:49:34.815 --> 00:49:38.804
Again, coming back to my first idea, things aren't invented by just one person.
00:49:39.244 --> 00:49:44.610
Oftentimes it is very funny to look at history because it's like, say planes, right?
00:49:44.639 --> 00:49:49.139
We're invented, we're in the vendor, we're invented, and then a southern moment, everyone can start flying, right?
00:49:49.170 --> 00:49:54.780
The Wright brothers did the first, but like weeks after that, there was all these other flights as well, which happened, which you don't hear about, right?
00:49:55.139 --> 00:49:59.909
Suddenly the technology happened, the change happened where geniuses, right?
00:49:59.909 --> 00:50:04.050
Not everyone could still, even after that happened, not everyone could fly a plane, but there was like a group.
00:50:04.079 --> 00:50:04.949
It wasn't just one.
00:50:04.949 --> 00:50:07.349
There was like a good group of people who could now.
00:50:07.695 --> 00:50:08.534
Do it and fly.
00:50:09.085 --> 00:50:11.844
Same thing with, with steam engines, with, with any invention ever.
00:50:12.385 --> 00:50:24.264
So it's not just this one person We should have, a committee where there's people who can do research and they get generous funding to do the research and a reasonable paycheck to live their life, to benefit society.
00:50:24.425 --> 00:50:24.844
I believe,
00:50:25.163 --> 00:50:25.702
yeah.
00:50:25.773 --> 00:50:33.992
What is also tricky is like who de like who decides all of these things in a communist society where it's supposedly stateless.
00:50:34.052 --> 00:50:34.382
Right?
00:50:34.413 --> 00:50:37.623
And, and so then who, who actually, who decides?
00:50:38.204 --> 00:50:38.655
Again, yeah.
00:50:38.864 --> 00:50:42.885
As a mixed, one of my first ideas, which I told you guys was Ian, right?
00:50:42.885 --> 00:50:43.965
Where people are randomly selected.
00:50:44.385 --> 00:50:46.034
That works for some things, right?
00:50:46.574 --> 00:50:49.994
Coming up with like, for example, the retirement age, right?
00:50:50.025 --> 00:50:55.934
You get all the people together, they all decide, we should allocate it to this, so then the state has more funding or no, we should make it lowest.
00:50:55.934 --> 00:50:57.315
Then people have more time at home.
00:50:57.795 --> 00:51:01.304
But then eventually they come with decision, which represents what society thinks.
00:51:01.824 --> 00:51:06.775
Other things like military generals, you don't want them to be randomly selected from the public.
00:51:06.804 --> 00:51:11.485
They need to be, you know, skilled, trained in, military strategy, right?
00:51:11.695 --> 00:51:13.974
So they should be probably not even elected.
00:51:13.974 --> 00:51:15.175
They should be selected, right?
00:51:15.204 --> 00:51:15.925
Which is what we have.
00:51:15.925 --> 00:51:23.335
Now, there probably are some middle of the road positions where you want them to somewhat represent the public, but they still need to have some skills, right?
00:51:23.735 --> 00:51:25.144
We have a mix in our society, right?
00:51:25.144 --> 00:51:35.014
We have sortation for jury duty, we have election for politics, and we have selection for, again, like generals and ministers and all that.
00:51:35.494 --> 00:51:42.994
I think should be a bit of an expansion for the sortition level because they'll increase actual democracy and representation.
00:51:43.574 --> 00:51:46.784
But there still, still should be like selection of real people.
00:51:47.034 --> 00:51:55.824
One of the things that I would say is interesting about communism is less government, less government, less bureaucracy, less administration.
00:51:56.215 --> 00:52:03.114
However, all these things still do need to happen and, and I think of also communism as less corruption.
00:52:03.114 --> 00:52:09.594
But in reality it still like has, it's still subject to corruption, right?
00:52:09.907 --> 00:52:13.177
It has had corruption and it has had like black markets and stuff as well.
00:52:13.177 --> 00:52:13.507
Right.
00:52:13.617 --> 00:52:21.117
In, in last year, if you wanted to get like a pair of jeans, which the government didn't have because, well, they'll get them, but then they'll get sold out immediately.
00:52:21.237 --> 00:52:21.597
Right.
00:52:21.907 --> 00:52:22.806
And they'll just be empty.
00:52:22.806 --> 00:52:30.157
But you'll go to like a sketchy vendor, but they're having like workarounds, you know, in modern society nowadays.
00:52:30.157 --> 00:52:36.577
I think ideally communist society will be lacking of money, and I know a lot of people like money because to them it represents freedom.
00:52:37.146 --> 00:52:40.416
But I think ultimately when the whole of society is ran by people.
00:52:41.856 --> 00:52:43.657
There's no, like, who are you hiding from?
00:52:43.686 --> 00:52:43.987
Right?
00:52:44.047 --> 00:52:47.407
Like we, the government and the states, we're all your friends because we are you.
00:52:47.706 --> 00:52:50.436
Online transactions and you can't have a black market.
00:52:50.547 --> 00:52:57.456
Now obviously people that have, let's say, assets, wealth or, okay myself, like I'm not a rich guy.
00:52:57.456 --> 00:52:59.226
However, I've developed assets.
00:52:59.226 --> 00:53:01.476
I have a home I worked hard and I got all this stuff.
00:53:02.016 --> 00:53:23.202
And so in this, let's say communist shift into our society, it would almost certainly require a revolution in my opinion, because people aren't gonna wanna give up what they have or what they've earned or what let's say earned, but but what they've attained And so it's not gonna be easy, right?
00:53:24.293 --> 00:53:24.623
Yeah.
00:53:24.623 --> 00:53:28.574
It's not, but it's something which I think just should happen.
00:53:28.664 --> 00:53:28.963
Yeah.
00:53:29.023 --> 00:53:30.043
Should be redistributed.
00:53:30.043 --> 00:53:37.034
And still, because of the amount of wealth as a society we have everyone will be given a reasonable amount, but Yeah.
00:53:37.034 --> 00:53:38.324
Like things might have to be taken.
00:53:38.384 --> 00:53:46.724
My great-grandmother, uh, she had it was either great-grandmother or great-great-grandmother, but she has four husbands.
00:53:46.724 --> 00:53:49.423
All of them just died randomly.
00:53:49.574 --> 00:53:53.853
She ended up inheriting like four, four or five houses like great big, estates.
00:53:54.244 --> 00:53:57.514
And then the Bolsheviks came and like took them except one, which she lived on.
00:53:57.994 --> 00:54:05.704
It was something which happened, but then, you know, those houses went to peasants who had never, you know, living by themselves ever in their lives.
00:54:05.733 --> 00:54:05.793
Yeah.
00:54:06.034 --> 00:54:08.463
So it's not like sometimes it happens randomly.
00:54:08.463 --> 00:54:10.804
Sometimes it, you work for it and you earn it, but.
00:54:12.153 --> 00:54:13.623
The creation of a better society.
00:54:13.623 --> 00:54:16.324
I think it's something which has to happen essentially.
00:54:16.713 --> 00:54:16.923
Anyway.
00:54:17.192 --> 00:54:18.422
We could probably talk to you for hours.
00:54:18.422 --> 00:54:22.411
I love how much knowledge you have on history
00:54:23.023 --> 00:54:23.414
yeah,
00:54:23.702 --> 00:54:32.161
on these topics, so we could, like I said, we could probably go on for hours, this is clearly catching steam for whatever reason with, with the younger generation.
00:54:32.161 --> 00:54:35.012
We talked a little bit about that, but it's definitely interesting.
00:54:35.012 --> 00:54:42.061
And so we're trying to learn more about what's propelling that in the minds of young people these days and trying to understand that a little bit more deeply.
00:54:42.061 --> 00:54:48.442
The boys are obviously absorbing a lot of this, but it's it's a deep dense topic and so hence I'm a little bit more involved.
00:54:48.831 --> 00:54:51.052
But why don't we maybe wrap this up.
00:54:51.052 --> 00:54:52.911
Maybe there's a follow up that we can do at some
00:54:53.094 --> 00:54:53.384
yeah.
00:54:53.384 --> 00:54:54.423
Maybe that's what I was thinking.
00:54:54.423 --> 00:54:54.623
Yeah.
00:54:55.141 --> 00:54:56.072
Couple of final things.
00:54:56.072 --> 00:55:08.771
What is some advice you have gotten very involved in politics, history and even political theory What's the advice that you have for young people that are out there like.
00:55:09.461 --> 00:55:10.007
Living their lives.
00:55:10.748 --> 00:55:15.699
Well, my, I think I'll say advice is if it doesn't properly affect you, right?
00:55:15.699 --> 00:55:20.858
If it's not directly a foot on your head, you know, which is oppressing you, which you have to change, right?
00:55:20.858 --> 00:55:24.878
Which you generally, if it is like that, you'll feel passionate feelings about it.
00:55:24.878 --> 00:55:29.498
You know, like how Palestinians feel about, you know, their occupation.
00:55:29.708 --> 00:55:36.099
But if you're just observing it from an outsider perspective and it doesn't really matter, like, yeah, maybe this policy would increase your food by a little bit.
00:55:36.128 --> 00:55:37.778
This one won't, it doesn't really matter.
00:55:37.778 --> 00:55:49.239
Try and look at both sides and understand why both sides have their views and understand how they developed and not just get into like a mindset of, these guys are evil, they're bad, these guys are good, right?
00:55:49.289 --> 00:55:52.559
I try and develop, even with like Nazis or Hitler, especially with Nazis and Hitler.
00:55:52.559 --> 00:56:00.208
Actually I'm reading a book about it right now, but you know why that developed in Germany at that time, like where those ideas came from.
00:56:00.793 --> 00:56:01.514
Why it happened.
00:56:01.543 --> 00:56:01.903
Right.
00:56:02.014 --> 00:56:07.353
And that will give you like a better, I think, understanding of society and just of anything in general, right?
00:56:07.353 --> 00:56:10.233
If you understand why things happen, you can do whatever you want.
00:56:10.393 --> 00:56:14.324
If there's a Nazi at your front door with a gun trying to kill you, it's a bit hard to do that.
00:56:14.503 --> 00:56:17.583
It's a bit hard to look at him and, and understand where it's coming from.
00:56:17.914 --> 00:56:28.994
But if you're sitting from a privileged position, you know, in my room, in my chair where, the Nazi innovations happened 80 years ago, try and look at it and figure out why things happen.
00:56:29.233 --> 00:56:33.733
Is like the best, like try and go as deep as you can essentially.
00:56:34.543 --> 00:56:34.844
Yeah.
00:56:34.967 --> 00:56:35.297
Yeah.
00:56:35.327 --> 00:56:39.916
Well, very interesting and we appreciate you coming on and joining us all the way from Australia.
00:56:39.916 --> 00:56:45.407
So it's your morning, it's our afternoon, and so it's, it's been super cool to have you on,
00:56:45.673 --> 00:56:46.003
Yeah.
00:56:46.639 --> 00:56:47.690
I've been absorbing this.
00:56:47.739 --> 00:56:56.559
You're probably been the most knowledgeable person that we've actually talked to that's like, read a lot of the books and like understands it, I'd say pretty well.
00:56:57.099 --> 00:56:58.150
So it's pretty interesting.
00:56:58.204 --> 00:56:59.735
I mean it's pretty awesome,
00:57:00.541 --> 00:57:00.931
Thank you.
00:57:01.565 --> 00:57:01.894
Yeah.
00:57:02.101 --> 00:57:06.242
Well, I'm, I'm glad to give you a little perspective on how I see things, and Yeah.
00:57:06.295 --> 00:57:07.675
Why don't we wrap up the podcast.
00:57:07.675 --> 00:57:10.014
We wish you the best of luck and let's definitely stay in touch.
00:57:10.045 --> 00:57:12.954
'cause I wanna see how you know where you go from here.
00:57:13.675 --> 00:57:14.635
Alright, well with it.
00:57:14.722 --> 00:57:14.871
you.
00:57:15.625 --> 00:57:16.164
Thank you.
00:57:16.164 --> 00:57:16.614
Thank you.
