Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way through the Unfree World

good afternoon and welcome everybody to the cato institute I'm Ian Vasquez I direct the Center for global liberty and prosperity here at Cato the title and the style of the book we are featuring today socialism sucks is admittedly more irreverent than the typical more staid public policy books that we usually organize events around here at Cato but I can assure you that the authors that we are featuring today are serious accomplished economists whose decades of scholarly work inform this publication the subtitle of the book two economists drink their way through the unfree world gives a flavor of their unconventional approach for a couple of academics that subtitle didn't surprise me though I tend to run into Ben Powell and Bob Lawson at economic or academic conferences around the country and around the world and inevitably they have drinks in their hands probably because we we chat at event receptions hotel bars and the like but the conversation is always interesting informative and fun and that's also true of this new book this is a light book about a heavy topic so it's fortunate that fortuitous rather that we are featuring it today on the birthday of the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman one of the greatest economists of the 20th century and the champion of economic and overall human freedom we were lucky to have known him and for some of us to have worked with him to a limited degree I'm sure he too would agree with the title of the book though I can't really recall him ever putting his opposition to socialism and quite those terms today socialism has gained an appeal among some Americans especially young Americans as a viable alternative to market economy and to this market economy that has prevailed and characterized the United States this is so much the case that leading political candidates and others openly espouse their admiration for the ideology and the policies that it implies yet how much do Americans really understand about socialism and are there aspects of its appeal that are well-founded one of the goals of the authors of socialism sucks is to disabuse readers of any idealism that they may have for the ideology by appealing to reality and direct observation that most readers can relate to rather than by relying on reams of data statistics and other empirical hard evidence that are so damning in and of themselves but also dry compared to the approach they take in this book they achieved this by traveling to places where real socialism has been put in place Cuba North Korea Venezuela for example along the way they also visit other countries that have experienced socialism or are said to be socialist and explain through anecdotes and observation how those systems really work the end result hopefully is to dispose of any romantic notions of socialism that the authors felt that they needed to write such a book is a reflection of our polarized times where extreme ideologies on the left and the right are having far more of a sway among the American public than was a man imaginable even a few short years ago we will also be discussing why that has been the case and what else we might do about it but let's the let's let the authors tell their stories and we'll begin by hearing from Ben Powell and Bob Lawson and then by comments from Matt kibbe Ben Powell is the director of the free market Institute and a professor of economics in the Jerry Hall's College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University he is the North American editor of the review of Austrian economics he's been the past president of the Association of private enterprise education and a senior fellow with the independent Institute he is a number of he's the author of a number of books including out of poverty published by Cambridge University Press and making poor nations rich published by Stan's Stanford University Press his research findings have been reported in more than a hundred popular press outlets such as the New York Times in The Wall Street Journal Bob Lawson is the professor of practice and Jerome em full winder Centennial chair in economic freedom and is a director of the O'Neill Center for global markets and freedom at Southern Methodist University at the Cox School of Business he previously taught at Auburn University in Capitol University and he is the co-author of the widely cited economic freedom of the world annual reports that present and in the presents an economic freedom index for more than 150 countries over the course of decades he also is a past president of the Association of private enterprise education he's a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society please help me welcome Ben thank you very much Ian Cato for hosting this said I just learned that it was Milton Friedman's birthday before coming on and it's quite fitting actually the publishers original blurb for the book said that socialism sucks is the bastard stepchild of Anthony Bourdain and Milton Friedman and that's exactly what we were going for that if good solid economics but communicated in a fun entertaining way that will reach people who wouldn't otherwise read the usual academic stuff that Bob and I ride so the timing on it is obviously good with the popularity of socialism we actually started the book over two years ago and part of the motivation when the book's theme kind of took shape was the growing popularity of socialism in 2016 this is the ever prominent Michael Moore tweeting out that young people like socialism over capitalism but confusing these things with fairness and selfishness and what Bob and I wanted to do is write a book that actually explained what socialism is and is not how it functions and to do it in an entertaining way it's also the case that Bob wanted to get drunk in Cuba and I wanted to way to write it off my taxes so we decided we'd do that as the trial chapter and in fact as I was thinking about it if the book does well I'm pretty sure I should tell the IRS that I'm gonna be researching a sequel for the next few years and writing off all of my bar tabs from now till then so it's no surprise to anybody now that socialism is back and popular a lot of the focus has been on young people and Millennials who are attracted to it but of course with the presidential debates you see it among mainstream Democrats as well now the New York Times said a year long on the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution a year-long column called red century I think exactly one column in that year was dedicated to the economic stagnation of the system a handful mentioned that atrocities and almost always it was Stalin I think one smile instead you got articles like why women had better sex under socialism which even if true I don't know how we weight this against 100 million dead bodies but this was the atmosphere that was taking hold as we were doing the book it's obviously grown now and we have confusion from politicians like Bernie Sanders who says countries like Denmark Sweden in Norway are examples of socialism they're not I was gonna insert a quote from AOC here and that was just a placeholder then I decided it was better just to leave it like that so the the book the tour that we go through we start in Sweden go to Venezuela Cuba Korea China Russia Ukraine Georgia and then we end up back in the US sa by attending the largest socialist gathering in the United States last summer so let's start briefly with Sweden let's get the definition of socialism here correct socialism is some form of collective ownership or control over the major means of production so this means abolishing private property and the major factors of production replacing it with collective ownership in practice in any large society the de facto means state ownership and/or control of those means of production if you're going to have large-scale production that then means that you're also going to have some form of central planning in order to do the coordination it's a lot of these young socialists like to say oh we want socialism from below and everybody's just gonna decide cooperatively what to do well listen your hippie communes not going to produce an iPhone comrade you need somebody to coordinate the diverse areas of the economy and when you don't use property rights that give you prices and profit and loss that has to be replaced with something that something is a central plan I'll let Bob talk a little bit more about democratic socialism later so first of all Sweden but in these other Nordic countries they're not socialist they're highly capitalist they all for the major factors of production have private property they have good contract enforcement a tolerable degree of the rule of law basically free trade light regulation of businesses now they have problems Sweden's got a big welfare state and high taxes this is true of the other Nordic countries as well and these interventions in the free market have consequences but they don't equal socialism that's right when we go to social excuse me when we go to Sweden the beer is great the place is beautiful it's not socialist in Bob does the co-author of economic freedom of the World Index when we were writing this Sweden was ranked 27th freest in the world ie most capitalist least socialist and this is true of other Nordic countries as well so we can have great baby they are in fact that saw sitting in front of a Belgian beer bar and the Belgian beers even though Belgians really close by cost a ton of money more than you're gonna pay for him in Washington DC and in fact we drank some in South Korea on the other side of the world and they were cheaper there than they are in Sweden and this big welfare state has dragged down Sweden's growth and you know they are not as wealthy relative to the rest of the world as they used to be but they're still a prosperous place because they're mostly capitalists Venezuela is the other end of this Vectren so Venezuela's dead last in Bob's economic Freedom Index Cuba and North Korea are not ranked but we could guess where they'd be but Venezuela it's important to remember this is not a place that was always like that the earliest year of the index in 1970 Venezuela's among the ten most economically free countries in the world what we saw is a long period of decline in the economic freedom in Venezuela as they were moving away from capitalism into worse and worst forms of intervention ISM so that they had stagnated failed to grow but back in 1970 when they were capitalists they were also wealthy in fact they were wealthier per capita incomes than Spain itself that's not true by 1998 when Chavez comes to power but this was a capitalist prosperous economy and it's also you don't have to go far back very far to have people pointing to it as successful democratic socialism Chavez unlike the other ones came to power in a democratic election that international observers widely said was fair he began putting his socialist policies in place and what was happening is Venezuela sits on the world's largest oil reserves oil prices were high as a result his socialist policies were cutting out the core of the economy food production was plummeting in Venezuela but they were using the revenues from oil to import food and other things for the population and give the big free handouts our politicians like to talk about socialism but once prices came down shortly after Chavez's death in 2013 and by the way production also went down because the state-owned oil company remember state ownership and control of the means of production doesn't give very good incentives for maintaining equipment and pipelines and such so production as well as prices are down they no longer have the affor in exchange to import the necessities we have the crisis that we see today and that Bob and I saw when we were there in January of 2017 firsthand in fact the picture on the top left corner is of the bridge that's been in the news recently where the aid trucks were all stopped from going in from Colombia the time we were there people were free to move back and forth across them and Venezuela by Venezuelans by the thousands every day we're coming across and into Colombia to buy basic necessities that were unavailable in the Venezuelan economy and one striking thing that we saw it in this too is it wasn't typical third-world poverty Bob and I both been to a lot of poor countries what you saw crossing the borders people who were middle class upper middle class Venezuelans who still had some access to money that they could use to buy goods when they crossed the border this is illustrating what a socialist economy does to those people who were previously prosperous in a capitalist society it's seeing them struggling to make ends meet there on the border while we were there I should also say since we have this beer theme running throughout the book Venezuela ran out of beer if I were a socialist dictator like toilet paper beer these are the things that like we'll always have by the way that's not like a election speech but what actually happened is they have Paul R which is a nominally privately owned company but government planning over the economy allocates foreign exchange and it didn't allocate them in a foreign exchange to import the barley to make the beer as a result the country ran out of beer so next honored oh and I should just say about the democratic socialism with them of course this is what I think young democratic socialists often miss is the necessary connection between a lack of economic freedom and a lack of political freedom so once you abolish private property you have to move towards planning and State Patrol if you're gonna have any sort of advance production but that's also gonna be extremely inefficient and meant with stagnation people don't like that that means they're gonna throw you out of power if they let you let them voluntarily reelect you but precisely because you've centralized to the power of the economy you're able to repress them so that they can't throw you out of office in a democratic election which is exactly what we've seen with Maduro he was reelected last year by wide margins yet at the same time people on average lost something like 24 pounds they didn't all find Jenny Craig when your population is literally not getting enough to eat there's no way you get reelected instead what did you have yet state employees being ordered to reelect the person already gonna lose your job they had food aid stands next to polling places so that is the necessary connection between socializing your economy and democratic tyranny Cuba is not starving socialism this is subsistence socialism it's kind of struggle chugging along and here I'll just give you a few anecdotes from the travel or rather than a political economy story that illustrates some of the disc function of a centrally planned system so first remember state ownership of means of production hotels are part of the means of production so you have your state-owned hotel industry so we weren't trying to snow you could stay at the hotel Nationale that's their five-star a diplomat hotel which by all reports is nice but other than that the state-owned hotels suck we stayed at why don't we weren't trying to sandbag it we uh this one was supposedly three stars and one of Bob's friends actually recommended the place it's called the hotel Trent on it looks okay and it's picture from when it opened in 1979 looks a little less nice today as you see the exterior we're going to go to our rooms now remember to see how tall this building was there's exactly four elevators and three of them are out of service that's our bathroom ceiling this is another what Ella the hotel Carib I think in central Havana when we stayed at that one later and that's the glass that came out of the sanitary bag in the room with the stain on it that's the soap that they kindly left us from the previous guests that's the hole in the towel they gave to dry ourselves that's the bolt missing from the toilet so that when you're on the seat you can just slide right off now same industry providing lodging they've allowed limited private property rights and the ability for people to rent out their apartments for a profit so they call them Casa particular ours now we prearranged one through Airbnb which itself is a miracle because one the Internet's not widely available in Cuba and to your credit cards don't work there but enough of them have relatives in Miami that the people in Miami will put it up on air B&B you make the reservation through them they take the money they call their relative back in Cuba and tell them when you're coming so this one's in central Havana it was basically the same price as our god-awful hotel rooms it's got a little kitchen a dinette two bedrooms that are nice and it's right downtown in central Havana we stayed in another one for half that price I think twenty-five dollars a night in Trinidad it was conveniently located directly above a bar which was great it had had a porch too so I could change smoke my cigars basically the Cuba trip was not fun at least from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. but after that I basically drank and chain smoked cigars until 12:00 p.m. and until 12:00 a.m. and that made everything alright sort of other oddity so this is the power of property rights giving incentives so no incentives under the hotel's incentives under the causes what's missing from this picture it's a commercial district in central Havana signs signs aren't missing because Cubans are poor signs are missing cuz no one gives a damn whether you come into their store or not they don't make extra profits by bringing you in there and if you do show up at the stores what you're confronted with is an utter lack of variety this is a well-stocked store but you could probably count approximately maybe two dozen at most distinct items in that store by the way continuing with the beer metaphor Cuba they have beer that didn't run out while we were there but you got two types Cristal and Bucanero they're both roughly 5% alcohol about a half percent difference between the two and they both taste like a skunky Budweiser that's your variety of Cuban beer also private restaurants so they've allowed them so well first of all estate ownership of means of production is widespread state ownership of restaurants but they've been given limited freedoms to open private restaurants they initially had restrictions on serving meat and seafood those have been lifted they have restrictions on how many people could be seated in them but it's kind of widely ignored or worked around and they're pretty good at first it it's because they're trying they've got the right incentives but they're still in a socialist command economy and have to deal with that supply chain so what you find is all of the private restaurants have the same about 12 to 18 items on the menu they all taste basically the same which is bland Cuban food and Cuba sucks Cuban food in Miami is delicious a Cuban sandwich in Miami is a crappy ham and cheese sandwich in Cuba and it's because of the ingredients that even when they have the right incentives the supply chain the economy isn't there to provide it so instead just pick a restaurant based on the venue of a rooftop or something like that because the food's gonna be the same oh I'll end with on Cuba here just an illustration because everybody knows about the 1950s American cars in Cuba and then people think well it's because we have it in bar go on Cuba that they're still stuck with American cars but we have an embargo not a blockade although they like to call it that there's no one stopping Kia's from going to Cuba except Cuban government and as a result they have to keep using popsicle sticks and to make their 1950s American cars tick and as a result in a country that's very poor per capita income statistics are BS in socialist countries but something on the order of $3,000 is per capita income you've got 1950s cars selling for fifteen sixteen thousand dollars when they're traded the we're not there in the picture that's more like a thirty thousand dollar car because it's a better suspension and brakes and it might even have AC it doesn't exist in the United States you don't even give this to your high school kid anymore but if you stamp down supply hard enough price even when incomes are low goes very high so I'll stop with that and let Bob continue the tour with you okay so I'm gonna talk a little bit about about North Korea and our wives were very very generous and letting us travel all over these crazy places but they did say you we can't die or get arrested so we didn't go through yeah we yeah in prison we so we didn't go into North Korea we went to the border of North Korea and China the northern North Korea border where there's just a river the Oulu River which separates the two countries and you've made many of you actually go forward one you many of you have seen the the satellite photo of North of the Korean Peninsula the North except for the capital is essentially dark and the South of course is these wonderful lights and filaments um of light going every direction then you see China in the northern side China of course is developed quite nicely but this is dark section there of North Korea when we arrived in North Korea it was dark and we looked we got to the river we were very excited Holland we're gonna see North Korea it's right across the river it's a hundred yards away and it's there's it's just dark over there's like nothing over there we were worried we were worried the guidebook said there's a city over there we were worried it may be we went to the wrong City because there didn't appear to be anything on the other side of the river when we woke up in the morning though there is in fact a substantial City over there so that satellite photo isn't photoshopped it's actually real you can literally stand on the Chinese side and look over into complete darkness the Chinese side meanwhile the the city is called Dan dong it's not Shanghai or Beijing by any means but it's a it's a substantial a modern prosperous Chinese city with skyscrapers and lights and advertising of all the modern modern modern things so so that was North Korea and here you see the dark picture again the upper upper left over there a sort of North Korea and then we wake up in the morning and you can see there's all this there's actually a few hundred thousand people living on the North Korean side of that border but at night they're there empty the as we went up and down the river and at one point I remembered thinking because there were Chinese patrol boats Chinese Navy Coast Guard and I was I was very happy to see them it's just a strange feeling really because I'm like if our if our boat are a little ferry it's on the river if it breaks down and drifts to the North Korean side I really would hope the Chinese Navy would come and get us before we got over the wrong side of the border but this is typical of what you would see see broken down homes anecdotally and I still feel sorry we went into some upriver there's some farming areas and everybody we saw working in the fields was with it was like 19th century using hand tools and and animals to drag plows and things there was one guy we saw on a field and he had a diesel tractor look ancient and it you could hear you know that chug of a diesel that you know that chug that they'd make an old diesel engine and it was a little incline on the on the farm field and he was in the but he couldn't he what he just couldn't make it up it you could hear he was ejected and eventually and I'd really felt sorry for the poor guy eventually gave up and then the the tractors sort of rolled backwards in and so very very sad situation again meanwhile you're looking on the Chinese side if you look this election direction you're seeing highways with tractor-trailer trucks whizzing by at sixty miles an hour the contrast between the two that you can see in North Korea is really really really start again there's the Chinese side of the river and been in the river we do talk in the book a lot about the the tragedy that's gone on there you know the irony is if you go back to the end of the Korean War now the Korean War did create massive damage to the entire country but if anything the northern side was the prosperous the northern slide was the industrial prosperous part of the peninsula the was sort of backward farmers and of course it's reversed today and and we cite some statistics about the the incomes been is right in comes statistics in socialist countries are really almost meaningless in a lot of ways but the best estimates we have or income in north today is maybe a couple thousand dollars per person that's probably generous North Korean of course South Korea's now one of the richest countries in the world so segwaying over to the to the China side we hit Beijing and and and Shanghai and the title of this chapter is called fake socialism immediately upon landing you realize when you see signs for the gap and Gucci and all the Western brands and so forth this is not socialist country these are private firms they're making profits the people are busy the beer is good again and so it's it's a fake socials and we talk about that we do take the time to talk about the history of Chinese socialism and it is in fact a of a schizophrenic place today they're trying to have economic freedom for large portions of their country and as a result of that economic freedom China has developed quite rapidly and people have gotten quite prosperous in general at least compared to the old days but it's also still trying to be a totalitarian political regime as we've all seen and then and I attended a conference it was a really weird thing what we were talking about Iran and Friedrich Hayek the Austrian economist Nobel Prize winner in Beijing which was Hugh Matt how cool is this we're talking about Iran and Hayek in Beijing at a conference and it was filled with with locals Chinese academics and journalists and - but to remind us all that the Chinese Communist Party is still in charge the very next day the very morning next morning thugs showed up from the government and padlocked the doors with chains and and the conference was was called off so so China is trying to do this dance now where they are giving away the freedom to engage in commerce and better your condition and prosper and have profits but also they're they're trying to control their their their thoughts and their minds and their political freedoms and I we suspect this is not a sustainable path but there quickly I mentioned Russia Ukraine chapter there that's us standing in line at the standing in line of course was popular the thing to do in the old Soviet Union well guess what you still have to say end in line if you're going to see Lenin because they don't charge for Lenin's tomb so when prices are too low as they are in socialist countries sometimes you get lines sure enough you get a line there and there's still some Soviet art but it's what we call this hung over socialism because it's not socialism anymore there's no central plan there's no private property has been re-established for the most part but it's hung over they're still suffering the after-effects they haven't really moved the China or she's me Russia and Ukraine really haven't moved towards economic freedom but the country that has the former Soviet republic of Georgia is really now a capitalist country and the economic freedom of the world index that I write Georgia is now in the top ten highest ranked countries in the world this is me flipping the bird just of Stalin in his hometown of Gouri drinking some wine just in terms of the alcohol theme George is a great wine country and in Soviet times they made lots of really bad wine the central planners plowed under major massive amounts of acreage they planted French grapes they made French style wines Cabernets and such and it's just terrible but the entire Soviet world was was supplied from Georgia with with wine today all those fields have gone to file it's terrible day they've just let him go to seed but the Georgians are bringing back their own local grapes their own local varietals and their own old-fashioned non French style of making wines a different style of making the wine and so if you're a wine snob George is becoming a mecca worldwide mecca for people who want to enjoy unique wines that just don't literally don't exist in the rest of the world George's success since there they're what they call their rose revolution we talk about that in terms of the the signaling of the new country the new new way of doing things in Georgia that's a police station police stations are always made out of glass now in Georgia to signal their transparency which I think that's we don't really literally mean transparency when we say that we're usually but the Georgians took that literally and then last I'll talk about the Chicago conference we went to the socialism conference in Chicago and bills itself as the largest gathering of American socialists and when we arrived Ben and I stood out not because we were wearing blue blazers but we stood out because we were middle-aged I worked my Cincinnati Reds had I thought that would be funny right you know come on they no one caught the joke that was really angry that no one thought that was funny and so and you know we found a lot of confusion the same confusion that been talking about with Bernie we found here we talked to a lot of kids who were just sort of leftist kids who had who saw the world they saw injustice in the world in various ways and they wanted to do something about it and somehow another they thought socialism was that thing and and we would even ask them so you think we should get rid of private property and some of them said yeah and other ones like no why would we do that like well that's what socials and means means getting rid of private property so we kids out of socialism conference calling each other Conrad we're unclear on what the definition of socialism actually was the the clothes on talking about the beer theme beer became again a running metaphor for us to talk about kinda we're back in the USA a capitalist country there's a brewery in Illinois called revolution brewery they're they're bar tap is a raised fist with a red star on it and all of the labels for their barriers they have a couple dozen varieties of wonderful craft beers they're all commie themed sort of sort of marketing but they're really the irony is that we're sitting here in Chicago drinking revolution brewery and that company which is a private for-profit company makes a greater variety and a better quality of beer than all the socialist countries in the world combined and we thought that was an ironic thing the kids who are just drinking it thought this is just look great Stalin's on a label okay just to close up the book has done pretty well we are number one new release in the category beer how about that so so there you go thanks a lot thanks very much guys now we'll hear from Matt kibbe who is the president chief community organizer at free the people which is an organization educational organization turning the next generation on to the values of Liberty he is an executive producer at blaze TV where he produces the kibbeh on liberty podcast as well as deadly isms a documentary series about the dangers of all flavors of authoritarianism in 2004 Matt kibbe founded Freedom Works where he served as president for 11 years he is the author of various books most recently New York Times bestseller don't hurt people and don't take their stuff Matt at the end of the book there's a discussion with Matt about what how to interpret the the appeal of socialism in the United States and Matt was very involved with the Tea Party movement and so he's always had his finger on the pulse of political sentiments in this country and that's what he discusses at the end of the book and he can help us understand what is going on in this country it's great to be here and I should start by pointing out that these two economists you know they're not just ivory tower guys if you try to slog through some of their academic works you might think so but a serious amount of hands-on empirical work was done and I'm counting this empirical work and the number of beers and a number of hangovers we actually did a podcast about a month ago my podcast kept me on Liberty where we did in empirical comparison of American craft beers and we had a North Korean beer which you smuggled back illegally we had some pilar cerveza por la from from Venezuela which not ironically is is made in Florida because they can actually produce it in Venezuela anymore and the North Korean beer you'll be shocked to know was was so undrinkable that even been ported out that does not happen and you got to ask yourself with all this empirical evidence about socialism failing and all of the the slideshow you just saw it seems it seems pretty stark it seems pretty visceral it seems pretty obvious that socialism doesn't work in practice we have a we have a history of the last 100 years of really horrible experiments Pol Pot managed to kill one in four Cambodians in less than four years how do you do that you have to try really hard and you have to have an ideologies that is so dysfunctional as to shut down any sort of conceivable market and yet when when I post these videos when you guys post these videos someone from socialists of America will say that's not socialism that's oligarchy that's state capitalism that's filling a blank there's all sorts of sort of workarounds as to why it was that mal wasn't really a socialist or Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro they're not socialist they're doing something else and you get so frustrated so because it seems like logic economics empirical evidence none of these things seem to hold sway as young people as you pointed out in the beginning of your talk are now sort of conflicted it runs about 50/50 depending on the scare poll that you look at that young people are saying you know what socialism I want that more than capitalism so what are we to do with this I recently reread as I am want to do an old essay by Frederick Hayek because when I don't know what to do I was asked myself well what would Hayek do what would Hayek do and it turns out that he wrote an essay in 1949 he's literally communist to the left in fascist to the right he's thinking that the darkest days of liberalism and free markets are here and that we're never going to recover and he's trying to figure out how what to do about the rise of socialist sentiments it's called the intellectuals and socialism please read it it's a short read it'll it'll give you a sense that possibly with a few exceptions it was written yesterday because he's dealing with all the same stuff that we're dealing with today and there's a couple points that he makes it that I want to tease out the first is and Ben's batshit crazy quote aside he says to take your intellectual opponents seriously and all of us have participated in sharing memes on Facebook where we love to make fun of Alexandria Ocasio Cortes or some other socialist Democratic Socialist saying things that that we know are obviously not true but Hayek would say take them seriously he would also say in that same essay and I feel like he's talking about Mitch McConnell here that just because you're criticizing socialism doesn't mean that you have any idea what a cogent critique of socialism actually is Mitch McConnell famously a couple weeks ago declared himself the Grim Reaper of any legislation proposed by Democrats that was socialist I'm not sure that's good messaging I think if I'm 20 years old and I'm trying to decide between Mitch McConnell the Grim Reaper or aoc the happy warrior for democratic socialism who are you gonna choose who am I gonna choose we should think about that and we should take Hayek seriously but I happen to believe that that young people as was alluded to if you ask them whether or not they believe that the government should own the means of production and reason did a poll about this a couple years ago the answer almost categorically is hell no that's a stupid idea so they're talking about something else when they when they put that qualifier democratic socialism socialism that that seems to suggest in the narrative of Alexandria or Castillo Cortez a belief in community a belief in people at the local level working together to solve problems in respecting each other and somehow that bottom-up process is a way that we can solve all of the problems you go watch go back can watch her original viral video that got her elected to Congress you will find yourself agreeing with her probably all the way up into the last minute of that video 90% through your nodding your head yes because she's railing against crony capitalism she's railing against insiders in Washington DC who don't give a damn about her folks back home she's railing about incumbents for life she's talking about that sense of community and she uses the word dignity a lot community dignity bottom-up peaceful cooperation these are not socialist concepts that's us that's what we believe which leads me to my third point and the most important in this Hayek essay Hayek says that the reason that socialists in 1949 have had so much sway with intellectuals and with popular opinion is that they were able to craft a vision that imagined a utopian future that was better than the status quo something big something beautiful a promise that just around the corner we could do something better together than we've ever done before and the critics and I'll go back a toe I can pick on Mitch McConnell right is that okay and then we're gonna protest Mitch McConnell when he criticizes socialism he is doing what Hayek warns against it sounds like he's just defending the status quo all the Wall Street bailouts all the permanent Wars whatever it is that you see in Washington it's you find so repugnant the critics of socialism here in Washington DC generally identify is what they're against they're against aoc but what are they for are they actually for free markets are they actually for that peaceful bottom-up cooperation I'm not sure that they are but all of us if we want to win the next generation we have to imagine something utopian something beautiful something bigger and better than we've seen in the past which brings me to beer look at that that's an IPA snikt IPA from our friends at Flying Dog brewery Jim Caruso a fellow libertarian he actually applies his libertarian principles to his production of beer but if you go to any grocery store almost anywhere in America and you go to the the beer section that that beautiful cooler it is a shrine to free-market capitalism it is a holy place things get a little bit quieter there as you try to figure out which double dry hop triple IPA you are going to choose there you can't do that in Venezuela then suggested this like you can't get even crappy warm beer in Venezuela so maybe there's something about that of anybody here that's into craft beer if you go to your local producer I'm sure this is true at the brewery that you reference it's a beautiful place started by entrepreneurs people that are thinking about entrepreneurship in the way that Mises thought about it when he said that entrepreneurship is imagining an alternative future even as people laugh at you and if you know anything about the craft beer industry those triple hop double IPAs most people sort of make fun of that stuff the rest of us are waiting in line for six hours to buy a four pack that's the beauty of creating something that's never been done before and they come together in cooperation and they hang out and they have a sense of belonging and community and it's all driven by that entrepreneur in his right in a free-market capitalist society to create something and to share it with his neighbors maybe that's the metaphor maybe beer is exactly what we're trying to talk about you know we always use downward sloping demand curves and you know if you're real libertarian like me and you're hanging out with your friends you start arguing about the non-aggression principle and things that normal people have no idea what we're talking about but if you don't understand the beer metaphor there's probably something wrong with you you probably are not going to be helped by anything we have to say so we're going to write you guys off but the rest of the world particularly young people young people that are flirting with the idea of democratic socialism let's connect with them with those stories and I have to save as a final thought the final chapter where you go talk to the young socialists in the United States it would be easy to make fun of them it would be easy to troll them it would be easy to take a picture of the most ridiculous person and post it on Instagram and say what these guys are silly but that's not what you did you were empathetic you were listening you were trying to understand where they were coming from if we do that and we explain the beauty of liberty and freedom I think this generation the generation flirting with democratic socialism will prove to be the most libertarian ever thank you thanks very much Matt we have time for questions if you have a question please raise your hand and when you're called on wait for the microphone identify yourself and your affiliation and make a brief question so do we have questions we'll take question right here in the front we need microphones please there we'll take this gentleman in the white shirt here in the second row oh thank you my name's Dave Rubin with son retired and it seems to me in most cases when there are really strong disagreements it's a question of semantics people are using the same word with totally different definitions so you're using the classic Marxist definition of socialism and if you look at the young socialists they're using a totally different definition they're basically thinking in capitalism everything's owned by somebody you step off your property you're on someone else's property they can control whatever it is and as soon as you have Commons you have public streets you have parks stuff like that that's socialism my question is who gets to define the term is it Karl Marx is it Bernie Sanders it's a Wikipedia booth what socialism is I think I mean language is a spontaneous order right it's so that it's incumbent upon us to be clear about what we're meaning when we use our words and make sure we communicate effectively with them I think the young socialists and you know what Bob said many of them just don't identify with abolishing private property I think a lot of them think in aspirations and goals rather than means of achieving them so like in the last chapter in the book one of the things we do while we're at this socialist conference we heard talks on immigration anti-war anti-imperialism black lives matter and police brutality a whole bunch of things were we're like yeah we basically agree with you this is a problem in the United States so we need to do better we need to be you know more Pro immigration we need to be more anti-war we need to roll back the police in the United State and it's just the kids with them then saying and the answer is socialism I'm like whoa the answer is like freedom in the voluntary system what what that's referring to yeah you know we use the term socialism socialism sucks its title of the book and but you know in the book we we take pains to define our terms we define it in the classical way but we also you know there's no black and white it's not a zero one world out there there's socialism in the United States you know we have public schools that's the government's literally owning and centrally planning the education system for most of the country but and that's where the economic freedom index that I work on comes in it's really a continuum from on the one end of the spectrum more socialism that's the suite or the the Venezuela's of the world and the Cuba's and then on the other end of the spectrum it's the more capitalist countries it's not a zero one there's no bright line between you know when you stop being capitalism start being socialists Adam what's the saying from a descent there's a lot of ruin in every nation well there's a lot of socialism in every nation and so we do in the book we use the index and it's really the shades of grey that the something like an index can give us that I think really helps helps move the conversation having said that since socialism is the buzzword of the day we thought it was important to make that you know this focal point for the book and by the way this is why why listening is so important because these buzzwords like capitalism and socialism I generally don't even like to use the words because they have so much so much baggage that you may be talking to someone and they may not be hearing what you're trying to say I like to focus on on sort of simple human values based language because I think that's where there's a lot of connection with with young people even though when it came to those two words we might find ourselves on opposite sides yes a question in that row the gentleman in the blue shirt please thank you my child I'm a retired member of the Foreign Service I wonder if you can help us understand what should we think of when we hear a candidate like Bernie Sanders saying he's for democratic socialism help me understand what what does he mean if you know what that means and what what should we think of when people say I'm on a social welfare state so I think that wouldn't you hear birdy and others say this that they don't mean real socialism as in the way Bob and I define the term of the government owning most of the means of production however Bernie and aoc and the rest of them do want to march you down that Road to Serfdom farther in that direction and that's the shades of grey' that Bob's talking about it the index of you know whether it's moving to medicare-for-all or socializing the healthcare industry in time well that's one more means of production that's being moved over there it doesn't mean the government's going to own Walmart but if you listen to Elizabeth Warren she wants government for somebody else outside on the boards of directors of these private companies so I think keep thinking about the continuum is really about what the the debate is from the candidates there's nobody who's going to nationalize the means of production if they're elected a question here in the front with Voice of America screen room service and so I have to ask you about North Korea you said North Korea right after the Korean War economically superior to South Korea so do you think the socialism was the reason behind that and the second question is I understand that North Korea is right now twitting its options to imitate china's or Viet Nam's growth path do you think it's a viable option for them so I mean after I mean dirt I mean the Chinese Peninsula was means occupied by Japan for many many years and Korean it was was run by the Chinese and so it was sort of a dictatorship but it was mostly a private private property kind of system so what was the reality was mostly the electricity most of the heavy industry that existed in Korea was on the northern side and it wasn't result of socials and was just a result of the sort of the conditions that were were present there that I would applaud North Korea moving in the Chinese direction I mean just because you you can't have all the freedom in the world doesn't mean some freedom is gonna not going to help millions hundreds of millions of Chinese people are living dignified comfortable material existences because the Chinese government now lets them engage in trade and markets and that should be something we applaud now the fact that China hasn't gone as far down the road to freedom as we would like is is regrettable but I would I think that that would be great for the Koreans I mean right now they're they're on the edge of starvation so moving towards a opening up markets of the of the type that this happened in in China or Vietnam is absolutely a great idea for North Korea and I hope they do it I hope they move all the way to freedom but if they can't move all the way at least move a little way yeah I'll follow up on that too so one two just very clearly answer the first part of your question yes this is like the the global example of one place one people one language one history one culture and you change one factor your economic system you get socialism and one you get capitalism and the other that's a natural experiment and it shows side-by-side what capitalism or what freedom really will do for people versus state control the second thing in terms I agree with Bob entirely moving in the Chinese and Vietnamese direction of reform would boost incomes and make people better off their one copy and I want to just draw this out about China for people in China you have vast differences in the economic freedom across regions of China particularly coastal cities and enterprise zones who have even more economic freedoms but here's what's interesting within China the fact on out de-facto now you basically have freedom of movement so you have billion over billion people and free migration with income differences and freedom differences between rural interior provinces and coastal cities that are not unlike differences between Latin America and the United States today where you see immigrants who want to move to get the productivity of the place rather than the productivity of the people and that type of big growth a lot of China's growth has been fueled by internal migration of going to freer places something on North Korea's scale is unlikely to get that part of the dynamic like it's still like Bob says move in that direction but I think it's important actually also for our outreach with the book on this to point out that you know freedom of movement free trade and labor is part of the free market system to the internal migration in China is probably the largest mass migration in our times and by far question in the back please there in the in the corner a lot vital with the victims of communism and Morial foundation so regarding the rising popularity of socialism how much of that do you think is like a result of short-term anger on the left against Trump like the ballooning of the DSA membership and how much of it do you think is a longer-term trend that's here to stay thank you I'll start it I'll say first it the fact that socialism is clearly going to be a defining campaign issue going into 2020 may not necessarily be a good thing for those of us who would love for people to fully understand the difference between however you define trumpism versus what alexander el castillo cortez and seemingly all almost all of the the Democratic candidates for president seemed to be espousing so part of it is partisan and and part of the opposition to it is also partisan but I also think going back to an earlier question there's a similarity in a lot of ways between the the attraction of a candidate like Ron Paul an outsider a iconoclast someone that was raging Against the Machine someone that was taking on the Republican establishment and Bernie Sanders a couple years later he was he was attracting that same cohort of young people and I don't think it had a lot to do with it i ology I think it was an ethos I think it was a sense that that guy's authentic that guy he's angry about the same things I am The Wall Street bailouts and the permanent wars and mass incarceration I just described both of those candidates of course I have very different policy conclusions i I don't think this is about a shift in ideology I think it's I think it's it's it's it's sort of a cultural those guys seem cooler and again I'll say it again just to pick on Mitch McConnell one last time on the cool factor AOC Mitch McConnell you do the math here in the second row the socialism I mean you don't own yourself government owns you it's a nationalization not only of means of production but its nationalization of people and people do not have choices and who does not have choice slaves do not have choice and what do you think about about that that that that socialism is just another form of public slavery and that's why they were disposing millions of people the way they did because the people were not only an asset but they were also Villas yeah yeah thank you Eric huh I agree completely you are a part of the means of production which means now the people are a means not an end and I think this is a huge waste and problem for any ideology that puts people as means instead of the ultimate ends okay we'll take a question in the third row there gentlemen the white shirt will take one question please and identify yourself please would you please identify yourself are you talking about those have been killed man destroyed by USA CIA and Western countries all over the world in Vietnam in Middle East in Africa and all over and why don't you just why do you close your eyes with what capital is not in the sense of equal opportunity but but the sense of what they really are doing all over the world has come to this situation is because of the isn't it because of the what the US is doing to a more Western country or including Cuba including Iran okay thank you all right so first this books on socialism sucks I would love to have it be successful enough for the sequel to be fascism sucks too economists travel their way through the fascist world but I sympathize with you and agreed but I would not call say that capitalism has killed all of these people that you're mentioning capitalism is voluntary interaction among consenting adults what you've described as imperialism of various sorts of states which both Bob and I I think are fully on board with you and would oppose and if I could just add I can't remember the author there's a book called dem aside and irj rummel thank you and that the number of the hundred million that we we generally use doesn't involve war and if you add war into that you get a much bigger number and of course all sorts of ideologies that that centralized government power have killed all sorts of people in war and we we're not generally supportive of authoritarians killing people you and everybody else in this room are invited to our many forums here at the cato institute where we have scholars criticizing us adventurism abroad which has nothing to do with the free market model next question gentleman over there please thanks Mitch beagle private participant I'm just curious you didn't mention the kibbutz is in Israel just a little bit please could you speak up just a little bit please you didn't mention the kibbutz is in Israel is that just an aberration in your thought process as a successful socialist yeah I'd be happy to take that the you know private socialist experiments on a small scale have had some limited success and probably the Israeli kibbutz have been the most successful although they haven't been greatly successful one of the things that been mentioned though that I think is critical is large-scale production and iPhone that kind of scale of operation is very difficult to imagine in this sort of socialism from below model where you've got sort of a network of small worker run democratically worker democracy kind of enterprises in fact the Israeli kibbutz although they have had some staying power have mostly been economic failures most of them have closed most of them have sort of evolved into sort of homeowners associations really so the empirical reality is that that kind of operation is not been all that successful I think for good economic reasons but you know the wonderful thing about capitalism proper capitalism is we invite people to to create invites it invites anyone to make whatever managerial style for an operation you want you know so is kibbutz as communes worker run cooperatives all of these types of things are perfectly legal and allowed and it kept within a capitalist system and I applaud these experiments and if they are successful if they are truly superior so so much the better I don't think they're actually frequently very much superior but but that's an empirical question yes just related to that too I mean neither Bob nor I run our family like a market economy my kid doesn't bargain for you know we run it along something along the lines of from each according to his ability to each according to his needs but that that family right is an island of socialism interacting in a world of capitalism with everywhere else and that's what makes it function and as soon as you scale up from that very small family to the kibbutz or something about you start getting these bad incentive problems first and then as you try to scale up bigger to the society or what that's where your information problems completely back breakdown but I'll mention one of these kibbutz like experiments in our own history that's worth thinking back to his Plymouth Plantation and the pilgrims when they originally came here they had communal property rights everybody was supposed to work and produce in the fields together it went to a central warehouse it was distributed by need and here you've got a religiously and culturally homogeneous group of people who have gone to a new world they're like a big family in it together and it's not really advanced material production it's very basic production they have to do and they start for years and years but you know the nice Thanksgiving story of they planted corn they taught how to do that and how they feast while true that wasn't the end of their starving they continued to starve for two more winters until William Bradford's of I think on Plymouth Plantation or of Plymouth Plantation is the history that he wrote of it in 1647 and then he describes we created private property and all of a sudden and I'm paraphrasing because I don't know old English but basically all the idle hands became industrialists women and children went to the field so used to never do it before and that's just the incentive problem on that small scale like that yeah I think we can all tow anybody who has a family can identify with that girl me how much money my kids owe me we got a question way in the back please a lot a lot of money thank you Rick Leeds I've got a blog 53 percent government cost crisis the two-party system is based on a single round voting how much well if the Republicans don't make the free-market argument convincing enough then for a lot of people there's just one alternative so how much do you think that the two-party system is responsible for this situation I'll take a stab at that I think I think you're in this this this awesomely democratized and decentralized process that we're going through right now where where everything is shifting back to the end user and they want the one place that isn't happening is in politics we still have two parties and on a lot of days from a libertarian perspective it's kind of hard to tell the difference if you look at things that we used to care about like like spending and and executive authority and and and war and those kinds of things but but I think the this whole idea that that there's a left versus right there is a red pill and a blue pill I think I think it's simplistic and wrong I don't think that's what it's all about at all I think I think the the real measure is is authoritarianism on the bottom of the scale upwards towards this thing I was talking about earlier where we were we get to cooperation and dignity and liberty and and all the beautiful things that happen when we when we work together so you know is there a difference between Pol Pot who was a nationalist and Adolf Hitler who was also a socialist I don't I don't think so in practice and I reject that sort of left-right thing we we got to get outside of politics if we want to connect with people once we join our little team the other side that we're trying to convince stops listening but if we focus on values and and things that that we share and agree upon that's that's how we connect if it if it comes down to a political fight I think everybody loses question in the back there in the aisle please Robert Anthony Peters filmmaker with tank man the movie.com just wondering if there's anything you guys found that socialism does better whether its product or services propaganda no so I'm thinking about not giving a non snarky answer I'm doing my best here but I also when we were interviewing people I remember we were interviewing a man from Belarus and this was I think in the Ukraine when we were interviewing him and I asked him like well come on I listen I know you're a free-market guy but I'm like you got to pick something if you think back prior to 1991 I'm like what what one thing was better for you and he pauses nothing nothing was better Fabi the Russian army sent me to Siberia had that was the answer he gave me so that's all I'll give you you know I misery loves company is a saying for a reason and just like older Americans people like my grandparents generation they they actually sometimes look wistfully back to the Great Depression you know you know the Great Depression was was a terrible time but we were all in it together we all sort of suffered collectively and there's a certain nostalgia almost for that so I mean if there's a this is a backward compliment if socialism which does one thing well it sort of throws everybody into this sort of horrible existence but there is a certain camaraderie that that I think that might engender among the people who are suffering under it that's about as good as I'm gonna get Robert I'm sorry by the way there's there's winners and losers under socialism and I think that Hugo Chavez his daughter and Nicolas Maduro son they love socialism it's awesome for them it's a very lucrative situation you'd you know to follow up on Bob's comment on this see Robert the economist Dan Klein has done some work years ago on what he calls the people's romance and it's people wanting to have a collective experience of us doing it together and he comments that people that have more individualist and libertarian have a harder time making the non-aggression axiom or something the collective experience which by the way is I think important why we have a substitute collective experience for for politics which means things like professional sports we're all in it together I'm much happier to be a member of Redsox nation that some political identity it also works out better that my sports nations are better than Bob's this is true that actually in the 10 seconds while Ben was blathering on I came up with a better answer so when we were in Cuba one of the things you find about Cuba is the liveliness of the locals the the music the music is is wonderful every restaurant and bar you go to and especially a get out of the tourist here you go into central Havana wonderful music and people singing and dancing and and you know but but the plumbing is all falling apart and the buildings are crumbling but you know this is actually a hallmark of socials and they've they've leveled wages so much I mean basically you make the same if you're a plumber as if you're a musician so do the math folks I mean who wants to be a plumber that's a terrible dirty job so everyone decides to be musicians so you get you get oversupply and we weren't into ever it's like almost everybody you meet who's from Soviet times in Georgia or Ukraine like everybody what did you study in college physics because people with any integrity would would have try to avoid political science or economics they said I'll study because math doesn't have many ideological overtones so they they they massively over produce physicists and mathematicians and chess players and gymnasts while they were massively under producing plumbers you know people that can you know fix brick that's falling down and things like that so you get these weird imbalances but in those areas that are being oversupplied you can say oh wow look at all the great art look at all the great music any other questions right there hello my name is Grayson McSwain I'm an intern at Chartwell Strategy Group and recently the Ukrainian Parliament had election where serpent of the people president solinsky's party won a majority their self-described as libertarian and also they are largely reformist my question is if they are to actually implement reforms for the Ukrainian economy they would have to delve into real complex issues such as pensions privatization of land companies and these could prove very unpopular among Ukraine so for these hungover socialist countries that you talked about earlier how would you recommend that they start implementing reforms so that they can implement them and actually sustain the reforms I think you need to do what Georgia did Georgia was in exactly the same situation in 2004 when they had their Rose Revolution in fact in many ways Georgia's situation was bleaker than what currently exists in Ukraine and they elected a libertarian leader Saakashvili and had been two kids uh and they they quickly handled all these issues but I think the thing though is quick you don't get time to dilly-dally around because there is going to be opposition they handled I mean give you a couple examples on police corruption was was one of the most worst problems in Georgia they fired thirty five thousand police officers in a day now this is a country of about four million people so this would be the equivalent of firing every cop in Washington DC just like tomorrow there are no police officers and of course crime went down when you fired the cops because the cops were the criminals and in a span of about 12 to 18 months about a year and a half they tackled pensions they tackled the incredibly Byzantine tax system they got rid of all their tariffs they they did a laundry list of sort of libertarian laundry list of things and the opposition to almost didn't have a chance to to gather itself eventually they did and those reforms slowed down and eventually stalled but they have stuck it's now we're ten years out now well more than ten years out and the Georgia new government which is not a libertarian government by any means in Georgia they have not undone those those libertarian reforms in Georgia so my smite my my advice is look at Georgia is a great example of how it can be done but doing it quick having a a real leader who's willing to take the take those hits though because people criticize from day one but the government you know stuck with it we have time for one or two more questions we'll take a question here thank you very much my name is Todd Wiggins my website is called meet me DC I have a quick question about the happiness quotient it's an abstract idea but that you can actually be happier in a less developed society than you can be in some cases in any more developed society did you see that facet and I think you did a loo tune when you talked about music and art and so on some of the things that you saw in Cuba that you felt were ideal so I'll try with that I'll give you two different answers the first part is I completely agree with you some people can be happier and a less developed society to a degree but we also have to realize that most of the things that we care about with quality of life come with that development whether its life expectancy infant mortality literacy all of these go in the same direction and but at least could separate level of economic development and more or something else that said the inter the empirical literature that does this happiness survey stuff I think is all junk science it's the equivalent of me getting punched in the nose and Mike place and getting punched in the nose and then asking us both on a scale of one to ten how much did that hurt and adding us together and averaging as if that meant anything if everybody has a different scale it's meaningless to put people together just quick you know it is it is a mistake to equate happiness or satisfaction with material well-being in actually a good example of it as in the history of socialism the Soviet Union when it was created in 1917 was the Soviet people the Russian people got rich her they got richer very quickly and the forced industrialization in fact brought Russia into a more modern industrial leak the capacity grew and so forth but it amiss rated people I mean so they developed you know in a very real way they killed 50 million people but they the country developed and people got richer in a lot of material ways but I don't think too many of them were happier so it is it's him it goes both ways I guess what I'm saying you can develop and get and have happy people developing but you can also develop in a way that that it really creates a lot of misery along the way the means matter a lot having said that it is also true that the happiness literature finds that as countries grow richer people get happier doesn't mean it's not junk that may be so but the actual literature does find that if you are willing to take that literature seriously we'll take one more question from the front here wait for the microphone please simply silly idea this is not what I say I have no authority to say that this is what James P Conant told me in personal conversation and he was saying this because when he was in his twenties he said he was sort of a romantic you know a socialist nevertheless said let's say he was a twenty in 1950 or forty now you know looks like people become interested again in the idea of a socialism why because socialism appearance to our reason or because appeals to our emotion if I remember what Gustav Lebon said what can people become interest in socialism and he says people who cannot adjust the find is a place in modern civilization and then you know they tend to become socialist and what is their purpose simply destroy the institution we have in other words it's destroyed the civilization and he said that there is no answer for that you know so what do you think if there is no ends of all he says the cause is because most people are indifferent to this problem and his he says that the only thing we can do is be patient on panic but keep on tolerate keep on with it so I wonder if you have any answer to in Gustave Le Bon's pessimism so and this is related to the happiness question as well recently Alexandria Ocasio Cortes said that her generation had never known authentic prosperity which those of us that that crunch numbers and I think Bob Lawson could could help us with this but by any conceivable measure we are living in the most prosperous most opportunistic most beautiful times in the history of the universe but understanding the context for for which she can say something like that she grew up watching Wall Street get bailed out she her generation grew up saddled with 20 50 $100,000 worth of college debt and and there's a there's a lot of reasons why from her perspective things could suck even though things are the best they've ever been so appreciating the context of where people are coming from I think I think is is part of the key of understanding why they they think socialism might be better but I I don't think it's about economics at all and I don't think most people process world that they live in through economic calculation facts and figures she also famously said that it's more important to be morally right than factually correct and we all laugh at that but but she's making sort of a values-based point about how a lot of people that are attracted to her sort of ideas process the world so so understanding where the other side is coming from and not just hitting them with with that the laws of supply and demand is is probably the first step towards towards making that connection well and I'll just say pragmatically since we're kind of ending on this what Bob and I did is we wrote a book that tried to well we do use the laws of supply and demand we drink a lot of beer and try to talk to people who are willing to listen and might want to be entertained but learn some economics and history along the way guys plug yeah it's a book event and where can we buy this book it's available on Amazon right now socialism sucks Lawson and Powell thanks very much I'm afraid we've run out of time thank you guys for joining us and I'm looking forward to your [Applause]

Channel: The Cato Institute

Views: 136,459

Rating: 4.5737338 out of 5

Keywords: Socialism, democratic socialism, venezuela, north korea, cuba, communism, marxism, nicolas maduro, fidel castro, bernie sanders, jeremy corbyn, donald trump

Id: zTJqC25S0j8

Length: 78min 18sec (4698 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 07 2019