I’ve been an adult for a while now and
in recent years, I find myself wondering why things are the way they are… and more
specifically, were they always like this? You see, I’m a voter, and as any voter
can tell you, politics are complicated. So complicated that most people don’t even bother.
I certainly haven’t been immune to that fact, it’s only in recent years that I’ve made an effort
to understand certain policies and programs, which is way more difficult than you
might think. And I’m forced to ask… why? The older generation of voters who have passed
on their knowledge say that it’s always been this way – regardless of who or what you
vote for, things are so complicated that nothing will ever really get done. But now the
internet exists and… I’m not sure that’s true. Something changed in the early 70s and we’ve
been dealing with the consequences ever since. It wasn’t always this way… What happened? [Intro music] This video was brought to you
by CuriosityStream and Nebula. Alisa Rosenbaum was born in 1905 to a
wealthy Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Russia. She grew up during World War 1 and
the Russian Revolution. Times were tough and like many people, she retreated into fiction,
specifically romantic novels. Not romance novels, get your mind out of the gutter. Romantic novels
became popular during the Industrial Revolution, they glorified the past, emphasized
the individual, and put characters in a fantastical situation rather than a realistic one.
Her favorite book was The Mysterious Valley, written in 1914. To sum it up, while bringing
civilization to the primitive tribes of India, several British military officers
start disappearing one by one, presumably being picked off by tigers.
It’s a classic man-versus-nature story. But during the course of these adventures,
it’s discovered that the officers were alive and had been building their own utopia in a
previously hidden valley. A completely original story that I’m sure will never be plagiarized.
In 1921, Lenin and the Bolsheviks enacted the New Economic Policy, which confiscated and
nationalized her father’s pharmacy. This theft by the government became a rather formative
experience. That same year, the Bolsheviks opened up universities to women for the first time,
allowing her to attend Petrograd State University, where she majored in history and graduated
in 1924. Then she studied screenwriting at the State Institute for Cinematography.
That was also the same year Stalin came to power and many people, especially of
Jewish heritage, were looking for reasons to leave. Alisa Rosenbaum was granted a visa to
visit relatives in the United States in 1925. She left her parents behind and arrived in New
York in 1926; upon seeing the Manhattan skyline, she decided she wanted to live here forever…
there was a problem with that dream though. The Johnson-Reed Act prevented most
immigrants from getting jobs – especially Jewish immigrants. So, she changed her
name to Ayn Rand and moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter in the film industry.
While working on the set of The King of Kings, she met Frank O’Connor and the two were married
in 1929. When she first moved to Hollywood, most movies were silent films and as they began the
transition to “talkies” her broken English became more and more of an issue. So, she shifted her
focus to writing novels and political activism. This was during the Great Depression and FDR’s
New Deal, which reinvigorated the economy through public works projects and welfare programs like
Social Security. Rand viewed this as the first step towards a totalitarian communist regime.
One of her first books, Anthem, written in 1937, imagines a future collectivist dystopia where
the concept of the individual has been abolished, even the word “I” has been erased from the
dictionary. All of the characters use neutral or plural pronouns like they and we.
In 1943 she wrote The Fountainhead, which also explores the conflict between
individualism and conformity. This was Ayn Rand’s first real success as a novelist. Though
the book had pretty disappointing sales at first, which sent Rand into a deep depression, which
probably wasn’t helped by her addiction to Benzedrine. On top of her rampant chain smoking.
Sales finally took off after a film adaptation was made in 1949 starring Gary Cooper. He was a pretty
big deal, basically the Tom Cruise of his time. It follows an architect named Howard Roark,
who designs buildings in a modern style, while everyone else insists on using a
classical Greek style. They even alter his buildings to conform with that standard.
Now there’s a touch of the new and a touch of the old. So, it’s sure to please
everybody. The middle of the road. Why take chances when you can stay in the middle?
The main characters play perfect 4D chess against the system and each other. Howard
Roark believes that charity is wasteful, any man who works without payment is a slave.
He’s fighting to live for his own sake. My reward, my purpose, my life, is
the work itself. My work done my way! Nothing else matters to me.
In this world, each man subordinates himself to the standards of the majority,
reducing their talent to make it subservient to the masses. Innovation is bad, conformity
is good. It’s important to note that no real country acts like this, nobody enforces strict
conformity and architectural standards. Well, except for us now, apparently… The Fountainhead
is Trump’s favorite book by the way. But okay, no country takes it to the ridiculous extreme that’s
presented in this book – not even Soviet Russia. Though you wouldn’t know that if
you only ever listened to Ayn Rand. In 1947, she testified before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, where she accused the Christmas movie “It’s a
Wonderful Life” of being communist propaganda, since it portrays bankers in a negative
light. She also describes Russians as mindless drones who would barely know
what to do with freedom if they had it. That’s a great change from the Russians
I have always known and I’ve known a lot of them. Uhh. Don’t they do things at all like
Americans, don’t they walk across town to visit their mother-in-law or somebody? Look it’s
very hard to explain, it’s almost impossible to convey to a free people what it’s like to
live in a totalitarian dictatorship. I can tell you a lot of details, I can never
completely convince you because you are free. This was exactly what Americans wanted to
hear during the Red Scare. In the years after World War 2, the world was consumed with the
ideological battle between Western capitalism and Soviet communism. And thanks to people like
Ayn Rand, our understanding of Soviet Russia was cartoonishly evil. To the point that
we had to be everything they are not, if they’re atheists, we’re Christian, if they’re
collectivist, we’re individualist. And if they’re communists, we should be capitalists.
The thing is, the Soviets were never really communists, they were working towards it, but
they never quite got there. There has never been a completely communist country – or a capitalist
one for that matter. Since the New Deal, America has adopted Liberalism with a capital L
as its economic model, which is a mixed economy with regulated capitalism. This is different
from being socially liberal or conservative. If Communism is on the left end of the spectrum
and Capitalism is on the right, Liberalism lands somewhere around here. Ayn Rand saw this as just
a step away from Socialism. She wanted America to adopt the purest form of capitalism, which
had been demonstrated to be the best system in… well there are no examples of pure capitalism.
Which is why Ayn Rand invented one. Atlas Shrugged was published 1957 and takes place in
a future dystopian version of America, which most people just view as this America. And
here’s my first real problem with this book. Most dystopian novels depict a system controlled
by elites that needs to be broken or at least navigated by an average person like you or me.
Modern examples include the Hunger Games, Divergent, and even movies like Equilibrium
and Snowpiercer. But even back in the day, books like Brave New World and 1984 depicted
dystopias where the hero is an average person working against the system. Even Anthem
and The Fountainhead follow that formula. In Atlas Shrugged, the average
person is the bad guy. This book doesn’t depict a system run by the
elites that needs to be dismantled, it’s a system that needs to be implemented.
The elite few at the top are the heroes of this story. I’m not just picking on some random
work of fiction either, this is a lot of people’s favorite book – especially politicians, for
some reason. It’s regarded almost as highly as the Bible. And this isn’t a thought experiment
about how the world might look like someday, it’s a blueprint for how the world should look.
These are ideas that people want to make happen. So, before we get to those ideas… Yes I did, it’s
one thousand sixty-nine pages – nice – and took 56 hours to get through. Basically, the entire
month of January. I bring this up because I’m gonna have to skip over most of the plot in
order to cover the main political points, I’m not going to go into the finer details of the
story, but just know that I did read it. I even watched the movies, which are universally regarded
as terrible. Which brings me to my second point, the economic model suggested in this book is only
possible because of the dystopian setup. A setup which is conspicuously absent from the movies.
In this version of the world, humanity has suffered a severe cognitive decline, most people
are completely incapable of making any sort of independent decisions. They can’t even drive
through a broken stop light, that’s how bad things have gotten. The entire economy is kept
going by the elite producers, the industrialists, the Men of Action or Men of the Mind. These
are the only people capable of innovation and independent thought. Because of this intellectual
and economic crisis, the government tries to keep things afloat through regulation and taxation,
which is why the main characters refer to them as looters. In contrast to the average
person, which are viewed as parasites. Since this setup is missing from the
movies, the government is turned into a bunch of mustache-twirling
villains who just get in the way. It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that Ayn Rand
believes in Social Darwinism, the people at the top are there because they deserve to be. And
if you’re at the bottom, that’s your fault. She doesn’t view poor people as a class, but rather as
a collection of individual failures. If only you worked hard enough, you could be a producer too.
The main protagonist of the story is Dagny Taggart, a female railroad executive
struggling to keep her trains moving against an increasingly lazy work force and an overbearing
government. Luckily, she’s uniquely smart enough to predict what the looters will do and plan
accordingly. She assumes that the People’s State of Mexico will nationalize one of her
lines, so she pulls all of her best assets out of the country and intentionally lets it fall
into disrepair. And she was right, they eventually do nationalize it. But think about that from
Mexico’s perspective – they just watched someone mismanage a railroad until it became pretty much
worthless. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the other main characters is Hank
Rearden, an industrialist who invents a new kind of metal that’s stronger and lighter
than steel. He humbly names it Rearden Metal, but it might as well be unobtainium. This new
product is so threatening to the wider steel industry that the State Science Institute lies
about its safety in order to preemptively ban it from coming to market. The government
using science to hinder innovation… hmm. Because of the government ban, the
railroad workers’ union decides that it won’t let any of its employees operate
trains on lines made with Rearden Metal. Thankfully, Dagny saw through the government lies.
She creates a shell corporation and hires scabs to illegally build a new railroad out of unobtainium
anyway, which she names the John Galt Line. And it’s so successful it threatens the wider railroad
industry. So, the union and the government impose unnecessary, nationwide safety regulations like
a speed and weight limit. Which in practice, only applies to the new John Galt Line.
“Who is John Galt?” is a meme which people use to explain away the unexplainable – why
are people getting dumber and lazier? Who is John Galt? Why is the government so
grossly incompetent? Who is John Galt? Dagny only chose the name out of spite – she
hates the phrase. Her railroad continues to suffer because of over-regulation and the
fact that all of the great Men of the Mind have been slowly disappearing one by one. She
attributes the disappearances to a man she calls “the Destroyer” and starts hunting for him.
Narratively, the book feels a lot like Dante’s Inferno, Dagny and Hank travel around and
come across destitute people who have entire prepared speeches about what went wrong in their
life. Almost always shifting the blame for their misfortunes onto others. During one of these
chance encounters, they travel to an abandoned factory and find a prototype free-energy motor
which converts atmospheric static electricity into usable energy. But it’s missing parts and
doesn’t work. Realizing what this could do for her railroad – and I suppose the rest of the
world – Dagny and Hank make it their mission to find the original inventor. And this is
where that dystopian setup gets in the way. Everyone they question about the motor is dumb as
rocks and can’t remember anything, not even the name of their former supervisor. It’s like pulling
teeth to get any information out of them. But the general story is that the Twentieth Century Motor
Company decided to collectivize or turn themselves into a worker co-op. Everyone works according to
their ability and is paid based on their need. As you might’ve guessed, the workers become lazy and
start having kids or bringing in extended family just to increase their apparent need. They even
fake illnesses to receive disability payments. This led to an overall brain drain at the
factory as the few Men of the Mind resigned in protest – one of those people being John Galt. Who
vowed to stop the motor of the world as he left. More captains of industry disappear, and the
government begins nationalizing industries under “Unification Boards” and passing laws to prevent
any single business from gaining too much power. Then they passed Directive 10-289. This brings the
entire economy under government control, your job will be chosen by committee and you cannot quit,
they freeze production and wages, and seize all patents and trademarks. They also outlaw any new
products – they don’t want the economy to be at the mercy of every stray crank with a new idea.
Dagny wasn’t able to find the original inventor of the motor, but she hired a scientist who was
in the process of reverse engineering it. Then he was visited by the Destroyer and disappears. Dagny
chases after him in a plane – she’s also a pilot, don’t worry about it – and follows him into a
hidden valley in Colorado. Which is protected by a Wakanda-like ray shield. She crashes,
survives, and is greeted by John Galt, who is revealed to be the Destroyer and the
inventor of the free-energy motor. She also meets all of the missing Men of the Mind.
Turns out they all abandoned their lives in the outside world to go on strike and
come to this hidden valley they named Galt’s Gulch to create a capitalist utopia. A completely
original story that will never be – wait. You see, this is a world of Great Man Economics, when
the CEO of an oil or coal company disappears, nobody is able to step up and take their place. If
they take their ball and go home, the game ends. Most everyone else is too stupid to be able to
do their job, even their immediate subordinates have no clue what to do. The Industrialists are
uniquely gifted. Sometimes on their way out, they literally blow up their factories and mines
so nobody else can even try to get things going. So were they fleeing the collapse… or causing it?
Here in Galt’s Gulch, they only use gold as their currency, they all smoke cigarettes
with little dollar signs on them, and they’re using the free-energy motor as
a limitless source of electricity. Nothing created in the valley is allowed to leave. The
people are allowed to leave though – a few of them had even taken on menial day laborer jobs in
the outside world to keep tabs on what’s going on. Being a day laborer is the lowest, most degrading
job imaginable to them. In order to pay for her care following the plane crash, Dagny becomes John
Galt’s house slave, which isn’t much better. And then enters into a sexual relationship with him.
Here’s where I need to talk about Ayn Rand’s problematic depiction of women. Not just in this
book, but all of her work. Marriage is completely meaningless in this world, everyone cheats on
everyone, everyone knows about it, and nobody gets in trouble. Dagny shifts her attraction to
whoever is the most alpha male in her life at that moment. She starts with Francisco D’Anconia,
a copper tycoon, then moves on to Hank Rearden, the steel tycoon who invents Rearden Metal,
and then John Galt. All of the sex scenes are kind of rapey. We’re experiencing the story from
Dagny’s perspective, so we’re able to hear her thoughts – turns out, she’s one of those women
who likes to be “taken” and puts on a show of not wanting it. All while secretly enjoying it.
This same scenario plays out in The Fountainhead, she even fights back before giving into
his aggressively violent advances – but it’s okay, she’s apparently into that.
Now, I don’t think that reading this book will turn anyone into a rapist or inspire
someone to commit a sexual assault. But your brain is really bad at differentiating between
reality and fiction. We are social animals and we evolved to absorb gossip as a way to keep tabs
on the community without having to physically see everything ourselves. Who is sleeping with who,
who was lazy on the last hunt, et cetera. Whenever you hear one of these stories or read it in
a book, your brain logs that as an example, regardless of whether or not it happened to
you. That’s why crime dramas are so effective. So, let’s say that you’re sitting
on a jury and you hear someone say… Man, I didn’t assault anybody she secretly
wanted it. You see the way she was dressed?! That’s… That’s true, some women do be like that.
No, they don’t, actually – not without telling you first anyway. And that’s really my problem
with this entire book. This is fiction, none of this stuff actually happened, the people
aren’t this lazy and stupid, and the government isn’t this incompetent and corrupt. But people
act like this is the world we currently live in. Some people are just more gifted and motivated
than others and lazy people will always find a way to mooch off of them. Even using the government
to make everything unfairly equal. To pull an example from the book, anti-discrimination laws
are abused to force banks to give loans to poor people - because you can’t discriminate
against the economically disadvantaged, right? Where have I heard this before?
Some government planners decided that too few people owned homes. So the planners
decided to force an increase in home ownership. They lowered lending standards for people
seeking a mortgage. This produced a glut of sub-prime loans – and subprime borrowers.
Is that how it happened? The government held a gun up to the banks’ heads and forced them to
give loans to people who couldn’t afford them? Of course not, but it sounds plausible because
you read a similar story in Atlas Shrugged. What really caused the housing crash in
2008 was deregulation of the financial industry. Which is John Galt’s ideal economy.
He spells it out in excruciating detail when he takes over the radio waves and delivers a 60-page
monologue that in-universe takes over three hours. As if any of the parasites would sit through that.
He tells everyone what they’re doing wrong, that they’re doomed, and then he and the rest of the
producers wait out the coming dark age in their hidden valley. America then descends into anarchy,
by the end, people are using wagons again. The collapse of civilization isn’t something
to be avoided, it’s framed as deserved and even necessary so that the Men of the Mind can
come back and rebuild. They watched the world burn so that they could become rulers over the
ashes. The final scene is the industrialists planning out their new vision for America –
even adding a new clause to the Constitution. Congress shall make no law abridging
the freedom of production and trade. Ayn Rand believed in a separation between the
state and the economy – the government just needs to get out of the way. There are only three
things the government should be doing. The police, to protect individual rights and property rights
from within; the military, to protect those rights from without; and the courts to resolve disputes.
All those New Deal welfare programs need to go. In 1950s America, a lot of people agreed, she started
gathering followers and formed “The Collective” which became somewhat of a cult. She would
personally disagree with calling it a cult, but when you look at some of the things they were
required to believe – it seems pretty culty. This group included people like
Alan Greenspan, Leonard Piekoff, and Nathaniel Branden, who would go on to form
various think tanks and institutes of their own. There was actually quite a bit of drama within
the group too. Ayn Rand, who was married, started having an affair with her student Nathaniel
Branden, who was also married, but she called it off and kicked him out of the group when she
discovered he was sleeping with a third person. A person she viewed as inferior to herself – that’s
why she ended it according to her, not jealousy. Objectivism is the philosophy Ayn Rand and
her group of loyal followers pushed with her lectures and writings in the years after Atlas
Shrugged. Its basic beliefs are conveyed in John Galt’s three-hour speech. But since I don’t
expect any of you to go read or listen to it, it’s summed up by the oath the producers
have to take before entering Galt’s Gulch. I swear by my life and my love of it that I
will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
According to Objectivism, the greatest evil in the world is the philosophy
of altruism. So, what is altruism? Remember that altruism does not mean
benevolence or consideration for other men. Altruism is a moral theory which preaches
that man must sacrifice himself for others, that he must place the interests of others above
his own, that he must live for the sake of others. I’m pretty sure it’s that first one, not
everything needs to be catastrophically all-or-nothing, nobody’s asking you to sacrifice
yourself. This is a common theme in Objectivism. Ayn Rand regularly uses circular logic to
invent private, self-reinforcing definitions of words – let’s take a look at a few examples. Which
philosophy answers the question: is man free? Capitalism is the only system
that answers: yes. Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of
individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
This is a private definition of capitalism – regardless of what dictionary
you use, they all talk about private property, but none of them mention individual rights.
She added that part to make it seem like the only system to include freedom.
Capitalism is the only system based on an objective theory of values.
What is an objective theory of values? It’s the rational conclusion one comes to after evaluating
the facts of reality in relation to man – it’s not subjective or intrinsic, it’s objective.
Which means if you don’t agree with the objective reality as I see it, you’re being
irrational, and I don’t have to listen to you. I didn’t make that up, that’s Ayn Rand’s
actual approach to people who disagree with her. This is what I don’t answer. Well, wait a
minute you haven’t heard the question yet. She’s already estimated her position and my work,
incidentally, displaying the quality of her brain. Did you see our show last year? Do you want
to create an incident? No, no. Pass it up. I don’t regard this as a legitimate question. I know what kind of movement
is behind that sort of junk. Well, since she isn’t alive anymore, she can’t
stop me from taking a look at one of her examples. It can be rationally proved that the airplane is
objectively of immeasurably greater value to man, to man at his best, than the bicycle.
Can it be proved that an airplane is of objectively greater value? It seems obvious
until you think about it. I’m pretty sure that’s subjective, the mere fact that intelligent people
can disagree about this proves it’s not objective. Or that they’re not intelligent, I guess.
If the stenographer spends all of her money on cosmetics and has none left to pay for the use
of a microscope or a visit to the doctor, when she needs it, she learns a better method of budgeting
her income. The free market serves as her teacher. So, if you don’t make the objectively correct
choice according to Ayn Rand and you irrationally choose to buy lipstick instead of saving
for a doctor. I guess you’ll die then. As you might’ve guessed, this heartless approach was
somewhat of a shock to most Americans in the 50s. Here in the United States perhaps the most
challenging and unusual new philosophy has been forged by a novelist, Ayn Rand. Miss
Rand’s point of view is still comparatively unknown in America but if it ever did take
hold, it would revolutionize our lives. You are out to destroy almost every edifice
in the contemporary American way of life; our Judeo-Christian religion, our
modified government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will. Other reviews have
said that you scorn churches and the concept of God. Are these accurate criticisms? Yes.
In most of her interviews at the time, her atheism takes center stage. Phil Donahue even
grilled her on it in 1980, that’s how recently being an atheist was still seen as weird. But they
also take issue with her views on social welfare. You don’t go for altruism and charity and
do good and liberal and- No. I want to help people, I want to do good for other people, what’s
so bad about that? Nothing, if you do it by your own choice and if it’s not your primary aim in
life and if you don’t regard it as a moral virtue. Ayn Rand doesn’t believe in taxation for
the common good, which is a concept she views as undefinable and will just lead to
more and more theft in the name of society. Another undefinable concept to her.
There is no such entity as the tribe or the public. The tribe or the public or
society is only a number of individual men. Now you know where Margaret Thatcher got the
idea. She views society and class as a group of individuals who are free to prosper or fail on
their own merit. If everyone just acted selfishly, all of civilization would be improved. People
should be free to profit as much as they can doing whatever it is they want as long as it
doesn’t interfere with the rights of others. All economic transactions should be voluntary.
Which means the right to disagree or refuse is key to her philosophy, if you’re forced
to work for someone that’s basically slavery. Part of me wants to agree with this, but it kind
of assumes that everyone has good intentions. We know where the right to refuse leads us,
people won’t grant marriage certificates or bake wedding cakes for gay couples. They won’t
offer birth control in their health insurance. And if the majority of Americans still had
their way and still had the right to refuse, segregation would still be a thing.
Sometimes the invisible hand must be forced, because some of you are still stuck in the past.
Ayn Rand viewed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a violation of property rights – you can’t force
businesses to serve black people. In case you were wondering why so many white people
were drawn to this message. As a result, her cold, selfish philosophy of Objectivism didn’t
really catch on in mainstream American politics. Neither party was willing to adopt its ideas.
All that changed in 1971, when a group of free thinkers voluntarily associated with each
other and created the Libertarian Party. The first election they took part in was
in 1972. Ayn Rand never liked Libertarians, dismissing them as right-wing hippies.
All kinds of people today call themselves "libertarians," especially something
calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead
of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that
requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That's
worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It's a mockery of philosophy and ideology.
This is despite their obvious similarities with Rand. Libertarians tend to be atheists and
believe in individual liberty, which means they were pro-choice and for the decriminalization of
drugs. Both of which were very unpopular opinions at the time. They’re for a purely free-market,
laissez-faire form of capitalism and limiting or reducing the size of the government. Which
was starting to catch on thanks to her books. They were also for ending conscription,
national service should be voluntary – you shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself for some
undefinable “common good.” But public service has always been part of our national identity.
From the founding fathers’ “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” to
JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
All that changed with the Vietnam War. Thanks to the release of the Pentagon Papers in
1971, Americans were starting to realize that serving your country might mean being sent off to
the other side of the world to die for nothing. Though some would argue that that was always the
case. Suddenly, America’s attitude towards war… well, it changed.
Nixon campaigned to end the war and the draft – both times he was elected.
He eventually made good on that promise, though technically not until after he resigned in 1973 –
the military has been an all-volunteer force ever since. If you were born after 1955, the draft
isn’t something you’ve ever had to worry about. But the anti-war movement brought another related
issue to light – you could be sent off to war before you were able to vote. You could be drafted
at 18 but couldn’t vote until you were 21. So, in 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment was added
to the Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18 – specifically for the Baby Boomers who
were now coming of age. The first election these teenagers could participate in was 1972.
And one of their main issues of concern was the environment – the air and water had become so
polluted that rivers regularly caught on fire. All that changed in 1970 with the first Earth
Day. In response to these demonstrations, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency
and a few years later, he signed the Endangered Species Act. Which quickly got to work preserving
our land and wildlife. A lot of corporations saw this as excessive government regulation,
needlessly hamstringing industrial progress. Did we really need to create more federal agencies?
But at the same time, he was spinning off federal agencies into independent corporations. The Post
Office used to be a department of the government. All that changed with the Postal Reorganization
Act of 1970, which allowed the Postal Service to change prices and salaries without an
act of Congress. For decades afterwards, the Postal Service was actually turning a
profit. The debate started to shift to whether the Post Office should be run as a business
or a service – and whether the government should be in charge of that service at all.
Unlike the police, which is one of the few government entities endorsed by Ayn Rand. Police
forces didn’t really exist until the late 1800s, even then they were mostly local entities keeping
the peace in their community. All that changed in 1971, when Nixon declared a War on Drugs. This
popularized the use of militarized police units or SWAT teams, no-knock warrants, and a practice
known as Civil Asset Forfeiture. Which became a great source of revenue for police departments.
The War on Drugs also unlocked federal funds for police to buy equipment and provide
anti-drug education in school. Man, remember DARE? Memba Scruff McGruff?
Ooo I memba! Memba holidays and long weekends? Well, that actually didn’t
start until 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act went into effect. We always had
holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, but now we had more. This act made Memorial Day,
Labor Day, and Columbus Day federal holidays and fixed their position on the calendar to a Monday.
Giving us three-day weekends! As the saying goes, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus gave
us a day off of schoo- And in nineteen hundred and seventy-one, Nixon gave it to everyone.
Which kind of devalues it, right? It’s not special if everyone gets it. Devaluing stuff was kind of
Nixon’s thing. The dollar used to be worth a set amount of gold, you used to be able to go into a
bank and convert it. All that changed in 1971 with the Nixon Shock. Now it’s a free-floating fiat
currency that’s just worth a dollar – it could collapse at any moment. Which is why Ayn Rand said
that gold is the only objective currency. Which I just happen to be selling, so come
on by and trade in your worthless paper money for something a little more valuable.
Or you could use it on goods and services, I guess. In 1971, Nixon officially recognized
the communist government of China, which opened up trade between our two countries. Now we have
all sorts of cheap products to choose from! What am I doing here, these are Japanese, you do
know there’s a difference right? Besides, you’re talking about politics, which I have nothing to
do with. There are no politics in sports, I mean, it would be pretty ridiculous if this whole
thing started with a shoe video that none of you watched… Jogging as an exercise wasn’t
a thing until 1967. That’s when Bill Bowerman released his popular book, but most people
didn’t have the proper shoes to use the techniques he suggests. All that changed in
1972 with the release of the Nike Cortez. There was a lot going on in the country at the
time and people needed a recreational outlet to vent off their frustrations. So, 5Ks, 10Ks
and Marathons all became a thing. Initially, women weren’t allowed to participate because it
was thought that running for an extended period of time would tear their reproductive organs. But
in 1972, Title IX was passed, providing funding for women’s sports. That same year, the New York
City Marathon finally allowed women to compete, as long as they started ten minutes before
the men. Now everyone can enjoy running. As long as you have the right equipment
anyway – women who are used to wearing high heels should probably start with a
pair of flats. And maybe a skirt, women seem to perform best when they feel well dressed.
Heh, that guy knows what’s up, I mean if you’re gonna be equal you might as well look good doing
it, right? This all happened during second-wave Feminism, otherwise known as the Women’s
Liberation movement. Though I don’t know why, what do they need to be liberated from, being a
housewife is the easiest job in the world. I mean, unless they want a divorce or something. Which
used to be a lot harder to accomplish since women weren’t allowed to have their own bank accounts,
credit cards, or mortgages. All that changed in 1974 – and not for the better if you ask me.
It used to be that if you wanted a divorce, you had to have a good reason like infidelity,
domestic abuse, or even impotence. Not a problem I’m familiar with. But thanks to feminism,
many states started allowing no-fault divorces, which means the only way you can keep
‘em around is if you knock ‘em up. All that- you know these are bad for you right?
Secondhand smoke is a myth. Just because Ayn Rand says it doesn’t
make it true. Oh you didn’t know that’s where that comes from? She even got lung
cancer in 1974 and still denied the link. Anyway, the birth control pill had been
widely available since 1960 and that began America’s moral decline, which was
capped off by the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. This legalized abortion across the
United States. Life begins at conception, babies aren’t a mistake that you can just erase,
they’re a gift from God and we need to protect them. America is a Christian nation after all.
Yeah, not like those Arabs in the Middle East. Am I right? During the various Arab-Israeli conflicts
in the 60s and 70s, America threw its support behind Israel. Causing the Arab Oil Embargo in
1973. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries stopped selling oil to the United
States, causing gas prices to skyrocket, shortages around the country, and even rationing. This
is why we’ve increased our domestic production. Eventually, Nixon was able to get OPEC to agree to
exclusively price their oil in dollars. Creating the petrodollar, which has kept our currency
mostly stable ever since. It’s good to know that we have strong leadership in the White House.
All that changed after Watergate in 1973. You see, after the 1968 DNC Riots, both parties decided
to reform the way they choose their candidates, making the process more democratic. They
used to be chosen by party insiders. So, when people say Nixon swept the country in 1972,
that is true, but that was the first election that allowed 18-year-olds to vote. And it was the
first to use the current primary election system. Nixon’s campaign figured out how to use that to
make sure McGovern was his opposition, because polling showed that he was the weakest candidate.
That’s what the break-in at the Watergate hotel was about. Watergate is
probably a video in itself… Come to think of it, just about everything
we’ve talked about is a video in itself. Someone should really get on that.
Anyway, Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974 and was replaced by Gerald Ford, who became
President without a single electoral vote cast in his name. Yes, just like Frank Underwood.
To prevent another Watergate, the Federal Election Commission was established in 1975,
establishing the current campaign finance rules. Now we can rest assured that
our elections have tegridy. The first election to take place under the FEC’s
watchful eye occurred a year later between Ford and Carter. That’s why they made him give up his
peanut farm. These rules were new. But ultimately, there were few differences between these two
candidates - they were both Liberals with a capital L and the economy had been pretty stagnant
for a while. Every President since FDR had been a Liberal. The millions of people who read Ayn
Rand’s work were ready to try something new, but there weren’t any major candidates
who held Libertarian or Objectivist views. All that changed in 1976.
Hello friends, my name is J.J.! So the Libertarian Party had proven a gigantic
flop. Their presidential candidate had only won a measly 3,000 votes in the 1972 presidential
election, and subsequent elections weren’t much better. In fact, it wasn’t until 2016 that
the Libertarians even passed one percent in the popular vote. Likewise, in fifty years
of existence, they’ve only ever elected five state legislators, including one in 2020.
Atlas Shrugged was a bestseller, but orthodox libertarian theory wasn’t exactly winning the
hearts and minds of voters. America may have been in the midst of all sorts of disorienting,
and increasingly unpopular changes, but a lot of what the libertarians had to say about foreign
policy and drugs and religion and gender, was— and to a large degree remains — broadly
disliked by much of the American public. But luckily there was another hot new ideology
on the rise, an ideology capable of taking the popular parts of libertarianism and
cutting out all of the weird stuff. An ideology known as CONSERVATISM.
While there have always been “right wingers” in American politics, in the sense of people who
just dislike change or support the status quo, the idea of Conserva-TISM as a coherent
philosophy was very much a postwar phenomenon. This movement, what Rand had sneeringly
called the NEW RIGHT, also known as the “neo-conservatives” was backed by a coalition
of discrete groups from American life, forming the so called “stool with three legs:”
-national security conservatives -social conservatives
-and fiscal conservatives. National security conservatives, or HAWKS, are
basically just people who believe that America should have an aggressively interventionist
foreign and military policy. In the context of the Cold War, this meant doing whatever it took
to curb the power of the Soviet Union and the spread of Communist regimes, the two things
the Hawks believed posed the biggest danger to American safety and international
peace. And after the loss of Vietnam, Nixon’s recognition of Red China, and the spread
of Marxist governments across the third world, there were a lot of Americans who felt the
Commies were clearly gaining the upper hand. Social conservatives, meanwhile, were
religious Americans who opposed many of the social reforms that had taken place over the
last couple of decades. The liberalization of divorce, the mainstreaming of porn, pot,
homosexuality, and of course, abortion. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in
particular had begun to make themselves a more aggressive presence in American culture beginning
in the 1970s through the televangelism craze, which saw charismatic preachers get their own TV
shows and speak directly to the American public. You can learn more about it in my award-winning
video about the rise of the Christian Right. And then as the third leg of the stool you
have the fiscal conservatives. These were basically libertarians, but confined to the one
area where they were taken the most seriously. Now Ayn Rand and her cuddly cast of characters
obviously had no shortage of theories about how the American economy should be run. But by
the 1970s you no longer had to rely on some made-up railroad middle manager to hear a
robust defense of capitalism; there were now living breathing John Galt's out there capable
of giving their own three hour lectures on why America’s real-life economic woes were
the result of liberal government policy. The list included a growing number
of respected economists, including: - Milton Friedman, the author of “Capitalism and
Freedom” and a firm believer that the private sector could do almost anything better than the
government, and that state regulation almost always caused more problems than it solved,
I believe the FDA, as it has been operating, has done vastly more harm than good.
- Arthur Laffer, whose famous curve posited that America’s high tax rates were discouraging
success and immiserating the government, since productive Americans would actively
avoid pursuing opportunities that could wind up putting them in a higher tax bracket.
Is not whether or not we raise taxes but how much we’re gonna lower them next term.
- and George Gilder, author of “Wealth and Poverty,” who argued that American
welfare had grown so generous, there was no longer much incentive for
the poor to work their way out of poverty. That the state financially punish the virtuous
mother in order to make her subsidize the mother who pushes her children aside.
One thing that Rand certainly did get right is that there was a lot of
business support for this stuff as well. Now, some have always claimed that the
Conservative stool is inherently unstable. I mean, what do anti-statist capitalists
have in common with fundamentalist Christians and militant Cold Warriors?
Well, quite a few things actually. Take opposing the Soviet Union,
the big issue of the hawks. The USSR was not only a geopolitical
threat to the United States, it was also the world’s leading exemplar of
socialist economics and godless atheism. So the other two legs of the stool certainly
saw their values reflected in that crusade. Or how about the cause of shrinking the
government, the most important thing to the fiscal cons? Well, limiting the size of its
government was another way America could prove its deep commitment to the anti-socialist cause
— which the hawks liked — as well as preventing the government from making any further changes to
American social norms, which the so-cons liked. And upholding Christian values? Well, that also
helped reinforce America’s anti-Communist bona fides, but it also encouraged the
importance of things like family, community, and charity, which fiscal conservatives
often claimed would fill the vacuum after the New Deal welfare state was hollowed out.
By the late 1970s, the leaders of all three factions of this conservative coalition,
the televangelists, the cold warriors, and the free-market economists were starting to line
up behind one man who seemed uniquely equipped to rescue America from the clutches
of liberalism: RONALD WILSON REAGAN. Reagan, a former Hollywood actor, had
been a strident anti-communist in the 50s, served as California’s right-wing,
business-friendly governor in the 60s, AND was a born-again Christian to boot. All three
factions saw him as their guy, especially the economic libertarians. Friedman, Laffer, and
Gilder all served as economic advisors to Reagan, with Gilder’s book about poverty even dubbed
the “Bible of Reaganism,” given how much Ronnie loved it. In fact, even that guy from the
PragerU video helped him with debate prep. Reagan repeatedly ran for president — first
in a longshot bid in 1968, and then a more credible one in 1976, where he made use of the
new primary system in an attempt to wrestle the Republican nomination from President Ford.
Most of his adult life he has been a part of the Washington establishment. Most of my adult
life has been spent outside of government. But he kept failing, and many political
analysts of the time concluded that Reagan and his conservative coalition simply
represented the most extreme, unelectable right wing faction of the Republican Party.
All that changed in 1980. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 and he gave it his best shot,
but he was just more of the same – Liberalism. Complete with another Arab Oil Embargo and a
Hostage Crisis in 1979. The economy was stagnant, our morals had deteriorated, and America was
losing respect on the international stage. It was time for strong leadership in the White
House. So we elected someone who promised to “Make America Great Again” – it’s like we’re
living in an episode of Black Mirror and everything’s repeating. Ayn Rand famously
denounced Reagan over religion and economics. What do I think of President Reagan? The best
answer to give would be: But I don’t think of him. And the more I see the less I think.
And Mister Reagan in particular is not an advocate of capitalism. He’s an advocate of a
mixed economy – with a different kind of mixture. That different mixture was America’s shift from
Liberalism to Neoliberalism. This meant reducing the overall amount of government regulation in
the economy, cutting social welfare programs, reducing taxes on the wealthy, and union busting.
Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
In 1981, the Air Traffic Controller’s union went on strike for better pay and working conditions,
and rather than negotiate, Reagan fired almost all of them. Rather quickly, state governments
and private corporations realized they could do the same. Being a grocery store clerk used to
be a job that you could retire on. You could afford college after working there for a summer.
And the reason minimum wage was allowed to stay so low for so long was that there was an
expectation that your job would provide benefits on top of that. Like health insurance,
sick leave, paid vacation, and a retirement. The thinking was that the free market would
incentivize companies to offer those benefits in order to attract talent. But these benefits
are expensive and eat into a company’s profits. Since this was just an expectation and not
a requirement, following Reagan’s example, they realized they could just stop offering them.
Under Neoliberalism, they had the right to refuse. So, if you’re working a minimum wage job and your
employer stops offering health insurance… It’s on you to find a better job. And what happens to
someone who, despite their sincerest efforts, just can’t seem to get ahead? They start
looking for explanations. Some outside group must be holding them back, whether it’s
feminists, the government, or you know… “them.” Or they just blame themselves.
Maybe if you weren’t such a parasite, relying on government handouts, you wouldn’t be
in this position. Some people are just gifted with that entrepreneurial spirit and others aren’t.
If your job isn’t paying you enough or the video platform you use to host your business has too
many restrictions, you should create your own. Which is what a bunch of us educational creators
did over on Nebula. Nebula is a subscription streaming utopia built by a voluntary association
of YouTubers in a secluded valley, allowing us to innovate new ideas free of regulation by
the algorithm. All of my content is hosted over there ad-free and viewers who watch this
video over on Nebula get to see a few additional character appearances and alternate lines. Check
it out by also signing up for CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service that offers
thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles which you can access across multiple
platforms. Check out the Watergate episode of History to find out how a campaign finance
violation changed literally everything. So, head on over to curiositystream.com/knowingbetter.
For a limited time you can get a subscription to both CuriosityStream and Nebula for
only 14.79 a year. It’s in your rational economic self interest to do so but you’ll
also be supporting the channel when you do. We don’t have a left-wing economic party
in the United States. They may disagree on the finer details, but when it comes to the
broad strokes of the economy, the Democrats and Republicans pretty much always agree. Every
president since Reagan has been a Neoliberal. The Baby Boomers came of age in the 70s and
they changed the entire government to match their ideology. And then they never let go of
that power. They completely froze Generation X out of politics, sure, they gave us some
good music and pop culture. But name a Gen X politician – you can’t. Name a Millennial
politician – Actually, never mind, we all thought of the same person and she took office in
2019. We just elected another Boomer president. Millennials are now the same age the Boomers were
when they elected Nixon and changed everything. They made it this way and then told us this is
how it’s always been. We’re in our thirties now, and we’re starting to realize this
system isn’t working for everyone and we’re being told that it’s our fault.
We just aren’t working hard enough. Huh well, it worked fine for me, have you thought
about adding some arch support or maybe some gel injections? It might be your socks,
what kind of socks are you wearing? Maybe it’s the giant heel cushion that
you introduced in the first place! I know you thought it would improve things
and unlock your inner potential – but look at how many people are being hurt in the
process. And none of the little modifications you’ve added over the years seem to be helping.
Maybe it’s time for this new generation of voters to consider going back to the way things were, or
even better, try something new entirely. Anything is better than continuing to slam our heels
into the ground. It hasn’t always been this way, we can change it, and now, you know better.
This video was the culmination of over a year’s worth of work and would not have been possible
without the input of fellow creators and my Discord community. There’s been a lot of exciting
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