Ten Things You Should Know About Socialism | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

I want to thank all of you for making it to Professor dilorenzo lecture he were very very pleased that he's a longtime friend of the Mises Institute someone who of course personally knew Murray Rothbard knew James Buchanan knows all about the public choice school and of course is a a thoroughgoing and deep Austrian but I think a lot of you probably know him better as an historian and Thomas is just from that era where you could you could be both they didn't have this stay in your lane mentality among academia so much so he's a tremendous scholar not only of Alexander Hamilton but also of Abe Lincoln for whom he seems to have a bit of distaste and he's here to today talk about his great book which came out a couple of years ago about the problems with socialism please welcome Tom DiLorenzo [Applause] the Mises Institute won't allow you to leave the building unless you purchase a copy of my book the problem with socialism and so I thought I put together this talk doing a few times on that 10 things Millennials should use should know about socialism and because a couple years ago there you know there began taking polls of so-called Millennials I guess what born after 1983 is how they used to define that and you know something like some of the polls said 50 to 60 percent preferred socialism over capitalism and it's probably the people you see riding on the streets in the last couple of months there's a big part of that 50 or 60 percent and so on and so you know we thought my publisher and I regularly publishing thoughtful we should do something about this and they have they asked me to write a book short book and it's almost pocket-sized they said well make it small like this so it'll fit in a knapsack a student knapsack and it's not there's not a big tome like let me see socialism and so that was the purpose of that book and so uh so anyway so I'm going to talk about 10 things problem and I get to all 10 things that you should know about socialism and first one is you know in ludwig von mises famous book socialism the last couple of chapters he talks about something called destruction ISM okay and let me quote me sees himself in explaining what he means by destruction ISM he says this socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be it is not the pioneer of a better and finer world but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created it does not build it destroys for destruction is the ant essence of it it produces nothing it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership and the means of production has created since a socialist order of society cannot exist unless it is be as a fragment of socialism within an economic order resting otherwise on private property each step leading towards socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists now the and he has a section on sort of methods of destruction ISM in his day this was the early 1920s and he lists labor legislation like the minimum wage maximum hour and legislation Social Security taxes and that sort of the nationalization of old-age insurance labor unions unemployment insurance taxation in general and inflation and those are those are some of the tools of destruction ISM destructing this day you know the way he thought was it going to destroy or work at destroying the capitalist economy and what he called social cooperation and I forget who it was I don't know if it was Jeff or somebody else the other night mentioned that the original working title of a human action was social cooperation and it's another word for the international division of labor and that's what in fact in the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels mock the whole idea of the international division of labor and say they want to destroy it that's that's always been the the essence and destruction ISM there so that's that was my meeseeks day and night in the early day for even for him the 1920s that has changed quite a bit over the years there's a new form of destruction now you may be familiar with something called the Frankfurt School it's where political correctness comes from it's where so-called cultural Marxism comes from and after after the Marxist failed to instigate socialist revolutions in Europe you know based on the old Marxian theory of a inherant conflict between the working class and the capitalist class they decided that the work of the factory workers was not a big enough group of people to be on their side to overthrow the existing institutions of society they need more than just factory workers plus the factory worker has just won at better wages and working conditions they didn't want to destroy society and run the factories themselves they just want to better pay and so they invented a new theory a group of Marxists who came to America from Germany Italy and a few other places and known as the Frankfurt School and the new class conflict became not a capitalist class in a working class but the oppressor class and the oppressed and the oppressor class is essentially white heterosexual males and the oppressed is everybody else and so they that's that's where all these categories come from women minorities the transgender this and that everybody is categorized because they their their their scheme or their their strategy was that well that's a heck of a lot more people than just factory workers that's just about everybody and so they they built working for decades and decades in creating conflicts between the oppressor class and the oppressed class there's even a famous essay by Herbert Marcuse ah the Marxist perfect late market Marxist professor on cold I think it's called oppressive tolerance he makes the case that free speech should only be allowed to the oppressed class the oppressor class does not deserve free speech so when you see all these attacks on free speech in universities the people who are instigating the attacks believe they're taking the moral high ground by abolishing free speech and academic because there they think that they say anyway that they're attacking speech of the oppressor class and and that's that's a virtuous thing and so and that's so when you see today the attacks on Christianity last weekend there were church burnings and a taking down statues of the Virgin Mary and things like that the institutions that they want to destroy now are the traditional family the nuclear family religion especially Christianity and in addition to capitalism itself so when you see all these attacks that's modern-day destruction ISM and we've seen it on television here in the United States over the past couple of months day in and day out night in and night out with the taking down of the statues nothing I'm a big fan of statues I I once told people that I don't think anybody should be on Mount Rushmore let alone eight Lincoln but but I don't want to say that anymore because I don't want to encourage the lunatics to go out there and dynamite the place and kill somebody now what while they're doing it so that so so that's point number one about socialism as Mises said destruction ISM was always a key element of it and the type of destruction ISM has evolved over the years point number two is that socialism will destroy your economic future this is the really odd thing about the young people who are the Bernie Sanders followers who who happily marched behind like the Pied Piper this picture by the way that's supposed to be put out here cover my book we had a debate should it be the Pied Piper or Pinocchio the artist who works for the publisher had a I preferred Pied Piper he had the Pied Piper and whole bunch of college kids behind them you know following here going they were headed toward a cliff they're walking toward a cliff and I kind of like that one better but they chose Pinocchio instead okay it'll destroy your economic future well study a little bit of history of course the Soviet Union you know when you think of socialism you think of the Soviet Union in the 20th century and even as late as 1988 the Nobel prize-winning pulse economist Paul Samuelson was predicting in his textbook that by the year 2000 the Soviet economy would be bigger than the US economy that's what you've got by the distinguished MIT a Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson whose book was the biggest-selling economics book for 40 years in and of course the CIA was saying at the time that the Soviet economy was about 65% of the US economy but then after the collapse the worldwide collapse of socialism our friend Yuri Maltsev who was an economic advisor to Gorbachev apparently convinced our government that it was a more like 5% and the Yuri once told me that after he defected he defected it he ends up in Dick Cheney's office Dick Cheney was the defense secretary at the time and they Yuri they brought Yuri in to debrief Dick Cheney on the Soviet economy and he said he told me that Cheney said well our CIA says it's 65% and Yuri said no 5% and Cheney went back and said well surely it's probably somewhere between five and sixty five and you and Yuri said no no five and Yuri told me is that Cheney said sweet that's what he said so it is possible that our friend Yuri is the guy who convinced our government the Cold War is over they the Soviets can to finance any kind of military aggression it seems out of the question because it caused a very economy okay so everybody knows that you know I have in my second chapter I have some our first chapter I have some brief statistics on some countries around the world that have destroyed their economies with socialism Chile in this 1970s a nationalized almost all their industries and adopted socialism and they ruin their economy as they always do and then as also as they always do they tried to print their way out of it by printing money and they created 746 percent inflation after World War two the British adopted their version of socialism known as Fabian socialism they kicked out Winston Churchill and brought in Clement Attlee and in an adopted socialism and by the 1970s the whole world was talking about the British disease meaning British industry they nationalized all the the commanding heights of British industry and they all operated like nationalized industries do with all them all the compassion of the IRS and all the efficiency of the Department of Motor Vehicles and as they say and and so and that led to Margaret Thatcher's Revolution in which she privatized a lot of these industries and that's that's really the only reason why Britain today is reasonably prosperous compared to what they were it was the British disease back in those days Argentina adopted its version of socialism in 1950s and then tinkered with it with different varieties for decades and they ended up trying to bail themselves out too with printing money and they created 12,000 percent inflation by the 1980s in Argentina India after independence adopted Soviet style central planning there was a man named Mahalanobis who was their guru there their economic guru and he claimed to be able to essentially plan the Indian economy with a single equation a single mathematical equation he was he was a brilliant mathematician and of course it didn't work India became synonymous with poverty for decades after that no longer today today India is much more prosperous because they've moved away from this for decades now but but that's what they did after independence from the British Empire Africa after independence and colonialism began to disappear the theme was this quote only socialism will save Africa so they tried that in the rest is history to eyesight there's an economist named George I get a from Ghana he's in America he said Ben it's not an American University for many years but he's written some very good books if any of you are interested in a free market economists who critiques what what the Socialists in Africa did to his countenance I recommend Georgia a day's book books on the subject Sweden we have like the impaired is back there so so if you want to know anything about Sweden just a spare hell yeah I'll tell you well Sweden was one of the most prosperous countries in the world in the late 19th early 20th century you know had these great entrepreneurs that created Volvo and in all sorts of you know electronics industries in the early days and for a while it had the most rapid growth in GDP of any country in the world and then they adopted their version of socialism beginning in the 1950s and according to the the Swedish Academy of Economics I think that's the name of it so look it up in my book the exact name they claimed that there was no no net new job creation in Sweden from 1950 to 2005 55 years of no net no new job creation as a result and I ran across one article that said but then you know then they did what all other countries do who destroy their economies with socialism and try to print themselves print money to bail themselves out build a government out anyway and they created 500 percent interest rates by the 1980s as far as that goes and so you know you know that's one of the things you need to learn about most students need oh then the Millennials know they don't know know anything about this so it seems to me so that's point number two socialism will destroy your economic future point number three is you cannot fix socialism I'll tell you a little anecdote where I was teaching at the University I was teaching at at at during the the collapse the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 80s and early 90s one day I left work and I was up in the parking lot that I ran across one of the two Marxists in economics departments and it was a very sort of nasty person you know hated him he's always insulting and he wasn't even interested in an honest debate or he's insulting in name-calling and stuff like so I ran into him and I said his name is John I said John what are you gonna do now bricklayer carpenter yeah you know social and said oh no no this is all good for us you know we're no longer associated with these monsters like Stalin and Ceausescu and all these tyrants no they're so now no we can fix socialism once once once and for all you know that was his attitude and so and so they never gave up but of course of you you're here at Mesa University this week you know that you know socialism doesn't have the market feedback mechanism that competition in the marketplace does yeah you know that without the price system trying to have an economy without a price system determined by profit private property and and price is determined by supply and demand by reality in other words it's kind of like trying to find your way through a New York City after they take away all the street signs yeah that's that's what it's like to try to have an economy without the signals of prices okay and so you cannot fix a reform socialism any more than you can maybe analogy I used to give since we're in Alabama you might have noticed on the road from down from from the airport there are all these gigantic vines that creep up over the tall pine trees and and they even pull them down to the ground and crack them in half some sometimes it's called kudzu since I called Kozue and you cannot reform kudzu you can't get a pair of scissors on clip them around and and then it keeps growing and growing grow you have to pull it out by the roots and then burn the roots and so anyway guys you see you can't reform kudzu any more than you can reform socialism where you can't reform socialism any more than you can reform pezoo is is the way I would I would put it you know people around the world have tried and tried and tried leave they've tried found hundreds of different types of socialism of all kinds and and you should be a little suspicious that no matter what variety or what they call it it doesn't work not only doesn't work but it's very destructive of everything and so that's another thing about socialism point number four democratic socialism can be just as disastrous as any kind there's one little book that everyone in the room should read if you haven't already it's the law by Friedrich Basquiat so online for free or you can buy it for five bucks and from the Mises Institute the benefit of buying it for the five bucks is I wrote the introduction to it was worth at least five bucks okay but anyway democratic socialism well Argentina Venezuela and Brazil have all destroyed their economies with democratic socialism and in the law this is you know published in 1850 by Friedrich masti on the law there's one little passage in there where he's criticizing socialism and he says of course it doesn't really matter whether you have socialism with a dictator or socialism with a democracy if you have if you vote in one central plan to be imposed by coercive force of government on the whole population what does it matter with if it's voted into place or a dictator puts it into place you're still gonna have socialist central planning for example if we get the green New Deal what does it matter that it's imposed on us by the coercive powers of the American democracy or the course of powers of a dictator we're still going to have you know we've you know they want to abolish the automobile abolish airplanes and they abolish windows and buildings and all these these things so-called green New Deal and so it doesn't really matter it can be just as as disastrous as as anything anything else okay so democratic socialism can be just just as bad and we have plenty of evidence of that speaking of that he's the Wizard of Oz now isn't a if you Joe Biden is making speeches out there on economics in last couple days and he's saying everything that the the sander rights are armed in favor of so I I suspect Bernie's been writing the speeches he's no longer the frontman but there's all the crazy things that are talking about but when Bernie was running and and that's that's how the Millennials really on the socialism of the you know Ernie in an exam question I thought of course by the way on the called capitalism and its critics and one of the exam questions I asked him at the end the final exam question was sort of well yes I said many of your peers to the students think that their economic future will be better off if the economy is placed in the hands of a 77 year old lifelong communist yeah what do you think of that it was a question so but anyway you know Bernie was touting democratic socialism and I remember seeing him on I think was The Tonight Show and and Larry David was opposite it was Larry David the actor played Bernie Sanders on me Saturday Night Live I think it was so they had Bernie and and Larry David suck so in the but Larry David was kind of skeptical of his democratic socialism and he asked them so you're you're a socialist socialism is a bad thing you know Larry David knew about Russia what happened in Russia the Soviet Union but but you saying democratic the place is better and and and Bernie says oh yes huge difference and then Larry Sanders made a big deal of huge he like repeated there were huge several times and they waved his arms around like that and so so Bernie is you know he's pointing to Denmark Finland the Scandinavian countries democratic socialism as his model and but what he's really thinking of he's he's thinking of say Sweden in 1950 where the Scandinavian countries when they started experimenting with with the socialism but even Sweden yeah I can say you can a spare they've taken a big step or two back from this in the last couple of decades and so Bernie's not talking about today's Sweden now some of you might be familiar with something called the index of economic freedom is there's something published by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal had been involved in this the Fraser Institute in Canada Walter Bloch was one of the founding fathers of this whole episode index of economic freedom I was at one of the first conferences to work this up in 1990 with Walter and Milton Friedman and charles murray and a bunch of other economists to work up the whole idea of an index of economic freedom and and there are it's not perfect of course but here's the latest some of the latest states they may work up an index based on how you know how much free trade how you know how oppressive or not so oppressive taxes are how oppressive are not so oppressive regulation is and so forth and i think of it as sort of a scale of you know socialism on on the left side with a zero and capitalism on the right side free-market capitalism you get a hundred and so every country in the world is given a score on the index of economic freedom and on this issue of democratic socialism Denmark and the latest index had a score they're given is seventy eight point three which is higher than the United States Finland seventy five point seven Sweden seventy four point nine so they're all in the same ballpark so when you hear people like Bernie Sanders saying we should be more like Denmark or Sweden well if we're more like Denmark would be more capitalistic according to this anyway about how better ranking today as far as that goes a lot goes into this you know you might have business taxes that are lower in in one country but income taxes are higher and so it's kind of complicated but the point I'm making here is that when you hear people say these things they're talking about the Scandinavia of thirty and forty years ago they're not talking about today and they learned that some of them anyway learn their lesson from this so don't fall for that this is what is what I'm saying okay the next point is socialism does not produce equality it's that's always been the other point and and of course you know the the definition of socialism started out as government ownership of the means of production or government ownership and control of the means of production and so the so at the beginning I meant basically nationalization of industry by the government but in the road to serfdom Hayek the 1976 and Hayek made the argument that the definition has been expanded because a lot of it early socialist countries gave up on the whole idea of running the factories because they they realize you know what the heck that we know about running factories and they and they may produce mass poverty and starvation and so they switched it to me too that you know some nationalization but but also the institutions of income redistribution through the welfare state and the progressive income tax you know the second plank of the communist manifesto says they a heavy progressive income tax the first plank is the abolition of private property second plank is a heavy progressive income income tax and so it's a so Hayek said the goal has always been coerced equality but the me the the method has changed somewhat yes it's also nationalization as much as they can get away with but also primarily the institutions of the welfare state and the progressive income tax okay and my old professor and colleague for a while James Buchanan that once said if you understand public choice economics you cannot be a socialist in other words if you understand how politics works you cannot be a socialist and I would combine that with another slogan that Hayek is known for when he said under socialism the only power worth having is political power and so in all the socialist countries of the world it's the politically connected who do very well and they are not equal to you I guarantee you that they're not at all equal in Venezuela when you know the daughter of the former dictator Chavez was revealed in the Wall Street Journal to have a net worth of four billion dollars and she was a young woman in her 30s and I don't believe she was one of the founders of Microsoft or Apple Computer or anything like that to have a net worth a four billion dollars of the be I also said the former finance minister of Venezuela in Chavez's time left the country went to Europe somewhere maybe probably Switzerland be my guess and the Wall Street Journal says his net worth is about eleven billion dollars and so you know what did he do to produce goods and services that earned him 11 billion dollars nothing he stole the money and so and I did a little research on Venezuela a few years ago when when they first started their economy first started becoming totally destroyed with socialism and a lot of articles on the web about how all the cronies they still have their country clubs and they still eat well and and you can see pictures alongside of that of the ordinary people who used to have good paying jobs in the oil industry for example rooting through garbage looking for something to eat for dinner and and so and that's always been the case with socialism you know it's Bernie Sanders owns three houses you know I don't know how many of you own three houses so it's a so that's it's a myth that socialism produces equality I wasn't who was a George Orwell that said all people are created equal but some are more equal than others I can't remember if that was an animal farm or one of the other books okay another point is uh I've always been the sort of amused or maybe disgusted no you know after a long academic career that the Socialists on campus always strut around pretending to take the moral high ground especially where I worked I worked in a Catholic institution so you had these hardened communists with priests callers why walking around everywhere they're pretending to think the hard moral high ground when the ideology that they espouse is associated with the worst crimes in human history you know the worst crimes in human history you just take a look at the black book of communism as just one there's no thereby offered by seven French scholars there's also a book called mo side by a sociologist named Rudy Rummel from retired from the University of Hawaii who takes ago what dem aside was was government's who murdered their own citizens for being dissenters not war not a lot of governments who invaded another country and how many people died in World War two or anything like that it was murder of your own citizens because they they refused to - but you know buckle under and knuckle under to your your your dictates and your commands your socialist commands and just this one both the black book of communism and I've seen much higher estimates of this how many people did the Russians killed 20 million China 60 million Vietnam 1 million North Korea 2 million Cambodia 2 million Eastern Europe 1 million Africa 1.7 million in Latin America 150,000 and so these are not war related deaths these millions of people that's the 20th century that's what socialism did this is that's what I mean when I say it kind of sickens me to have these academics strutting around always taken the moral high ground when they're associated with this ideology now in his famous book the Road to Serfdom probably the most famous chapter in Hyatts book the Road to Serfdom is one called the worst rise to the top and what he was talking about he says under any kind of collectivist system social why they call it socialism or anything else typically what happens the socialist will impose central planning price controls all the usual things that will that will cause economic catastrophe and so they have a choice back off and admit you were wrong or double down and they always double down more more coercion more planning more controls and so forth and of course that takes more coercion more orders more dictates more police more guns you know more jails to do that and so Hayek argues that in a system like that it evolves to extent where the worst kind of people will rise to the top and a political system like that the people with the fewest qualms about brutalizing their fellow man and there might be a scale kind of like my capitalism socialism scale okay you might you might think of it as a tear no meter you know the meter different mentions of tyranny you know left and right but but that's that's why he said the worst rise to the top and so again you're not going to reform this socialism depends on this it spends on on the use of coercion and it doesn't work economically for all the reasons you're learning this week and so they will always be confronted with a choice well some countries have backed off England did away with Fabian socialism Sweden moved away from their version of 1950s era 1960s era socialism somewhat they still have a huge welfare state where they're like we do in the United States but but some people learn their lesson but but not everybody okay so that's that's that's that point also under equality you know if you if the government wants to pursue equality it can only do so by treating people unequally and that's another point that Hayek makes actually you know if you what does it mean to pursue equality and material equality it means you have to take money out of the pockets of one group of people and give it to another group of people to try to make it equal well then so you have to by definition you have to treat people unequally in the pursuit of your goal of equality and so it's just a silly contradiction that that under socialism you can do that the Hayek says that in his chapter on the rule of law he argues that collectivism in general is inherently incompatible with the rule of law which means everyone treated equal under the law because inevitably leads to this big bundle of policies that treats different groups unequally that's that's been pursuit of equality okay next point fascism is a form of socialism okay don't get confused by an Tifa in other words this morning I didn't have a printer in my room this is from me C's book socialism nobody could surpass Mussolini and Marxian zeal he's talking about the early days of Benito Mussolini in Italy and then another quote that's on page 574 of the book socialism another quote is the slogan into which the Nazis convinced their economic philosophy which is the commonweal ranks above private profit it's likewise the idea underlying the American New Deal and the Soviet management of affairs that's so that's what the von mises was saying so it's all the same the same gang the New Deal Mussolini Hitler and in terms of economics anyway he's not talking about the Holocaust and all these these things okay so fascism is a form of socialism and it always was Hayek points out as does me sees that all of these so called fascists all started out as Marxists like Mussolini did he was in a hardcore Marxist and so let me read you a couple of things from the horse's mouth Mussolini himself he wrote a book I mean it he was a PhD and I think political philosophy he wrote a book on them fascism doctrine and institutions I said this the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the state and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with the state it is opposed to classical liberalism classical liberalism the free-market libertarianism John Locke James Madison and all the ideas the judge talks about of constitutionalism and and mostly if they knew who the enemy was the enemy is a free society classical liberal the ideas of a free society classical liberalism he said because classical liberalism denied the state and name of individual you can't do that the state comes first and so that's that's what me Caesar was talking about where he said it's you know collectivism is collectivism whether you would never watch what you call it and so and of course the the Nazis National Socialism the main difference between the Nazis in a Soviets were they the Soviets called themselves International Socialists and the Nazis call themselves nationalists socialists nationalism and so that was the key but they were all socialists I mean it's right in there in a word and and I don't distinguish I agree with me me see is one of his writings he says communism socialism same thing when I went on I did 65 radio interviews after this book came out my publisher had me running all over you know running ragged doing radio interviews all in about a month time and I would always be asked well yeah communism was bad but it's not the same thing as socialism well now I would usually tell them well remind them that the name of the Soviet Union the country Union of Soviet Socialist Republics it wasn't called the Union of Soviet communist republics of the youth they worse they call himself socialist because communism was this utopian ideal that would it be achieved in 500 years but in the meantime we're all socialists that was the whole basis of the Soviet Union that's what it was a union of a union of socialist countries okay so there so I don't neesee's said that that there's no difference in this era I don't distinguish between between either it's all the same gang so fascism yeah it's really a form of socialism fire Hayek sit and wrote a serfdom they said all the leading men of German in Italian fascism began as socialists and ended as fascists or or Nazis so it's just a matter of degree the next point I'll make is the progressive income tax you know the the second plank of the Communist Manifesto economists all know that you know one of the things about the income tax it penalizes work it's a tax on work no nothing and so it can deter the work efforts and it really does fuel they what the Catholic Church would say is the deadly sin of envy you know the seven deadly sins envy is one of the worst in my book because that's really what has been behind Soviet Union and communism everywhere is is envy and resentment of other people I used to have on my office door a short quote look up on the web that Henry Hazlitt socialism in one minute I mean he says it's basically you know you can explain socialism by a sort of envy and hatred of the man who was better than you that's it that's not an exact quote but it's the essence of what what the great Henry Hazlitt said was the essence of socialism okay now the progressive income tax yeah it sort of smokes the fires of envy and I also quote the Frank charter of there's a great book downstairs I think he's that still for sale downstairs might be online also on mises.org the income tax route of all evil I like that title it's kind of its kind of title I would I would pick in the this is my latest Lincoln book by the way I wanted to call it that stinkin Lincoln but they chose they chose the problem with Lincoln and anyway but and maybe that'll work out better but on the income tax let me get the right page here shot her off let's find him oh this might take my 15 minutes now here we go let's see recent here's one salmon he made about the income tax here's what when we thought to be income tax in 1913 in the United States and this goes for any country that has an income tax China Roth said here's what the state is saying to you he's saying quote your earnings are not exclusive exclusively your own we have a claim on them and our claim proceeds yours we the state we will allow you to keep some of it because we recognize your need but not your right but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide yeah that's that's the meaning of the adoption of an income tax is basically the nationalization of your income and and what is the difference between that and slavery by the way you know what do you call a system where people are forced to work for the benefit of others for four or five months out of the year let's you know the National Taxpayers Union computes a Tax Freedom Day every year and that's the end of April they they just divide total tax revenues taken in by the government divided by national income and they usually come up with April 27th or something like that okay and I used to I used to ask my students that but what would you call a system where one person is forced with threats of violence in imprisonment to work for the benefit of other people it takes about two seconds for somebody to say slavery and then then I asked him well what's how is that different from the welfare state and they get very uncomfortable because they've been taught their whole lives that the welfare state is a good and virtuous thing they never thought I got that from Walter Williams that's one of his techniques and speech making techniques another thing the income tax does is to create a tremendous centralization of power okay let's do I get shot her off again anyway I'll skip over that another one to give you another long quote you know the one way to look at it is you know during the Civil War since I've written about Lincoln and all that there was one of the things I've written about over the years is there was a huge desertion crisis on Lincoln's army you could read stories of how on the eve of a big battle there would be 80,000 soldiers in camp ready for you know the Battle of Manassas or something like that and then the Sun would come up and there'd be 20,000 where'd everybody go disappear into the woods and then this happened over and over again and the US government did not have the revenue with which to to to you know pay people to run down the deserters but they do today you know once they adopted the income tax you're not going to evade the conscription law they'll find you anywhere and they'll root you out because they can they got all the money in the world and of course the Fed came in at the same time as a conscription law and so that's not going to happen okay and so that's the progressive income tax I guess the last thing I'll mention I want to leave time for a few questions or comments but it is as one of the things I've written about over the years is when when the socialism collapsed in the late 80s in the early 90s one of the things we learned is that the socialist countries of the world were by far the most polluted maybe in the worst environmental nightmares in the in the world when they were in the socialist countries there even books published with titles like ecocide and the USSR and and I wrote several articles about this there are stories all of a sudden people who go into these closed societies and look around and see it with you what things are like scientists journalists and there are stories like a man in Poland when I could pull up his car alongside a river to have a picnic and use the river water to wash his car you know to eat lunch and go back and the paint had come off his car because of all the chemicals that were in the river there were signs on steamboats in the Volga River in Russia that said do not for cigarettes overboard that River may catch on fire yeah because there's so many the soil and former Czechoslovakia was toxic down to a foot deep from decades of overuse of chemical fertilizers and things like that I had a friend who who was from Zagreb in former Yugoslavia who came to America and he worked was a lawyer for the government and he told me he lived on the 30th floor of a high-rise they had no elevator and I asked him if he was a mountain-climber or you know physical fitness fanatic or something oh yeah he said no the pollution was so bad that you can't open your windows unless you're at least on the 30th floor and I didn't want to live in you know without my being able to with my windows and so and in Poland there were stories of fire trucks going through the streets with water cannons to knock they bled and zinc and cadmium dust off out of the air you know that was their version of pollution control I guess back in the under communism and so it's just you know we've had our problems here in this country but nothing like happened there because everything was one big Commons you know no private property and with private property comes responsibility you're responsible for how you use your property and so to the extent that governments and enforce this enforce the harm that you impose on other people and the use of your property pollution can be reasonably reasonably controlled but if you have a system where everything's a Commons you don't have that and the Russians had a great-sounding Constitution said many wonderful things about the environment but then they destroyed their environment and anyway they almost there was so much overfishing that the sturgeon population was almost destroyed they almost ran out of caviar you know you know thank God communism end is so we could save caviar but they they almost damn was ran out of sturgeon who produced the caviar and so so I would that's the last point and that's true of some of the democratic countries to Brazil that the beach at Rio de Janeiro is one of the most polluted waterways in the planet for example Mexico you know we had this awful oil spill in the Gulf Mexico not too far from here several years ago an oil platform blew up people died there was an oil slick for a while in the Gulf and in the American environmental the watermelons what I call them they were green on the outside red on the inside went nuts over this and but Mexico does this all the time and you know British Petroleum set aside 20 billion dollars to compensate the victims and to suffer lawsuits and everything of this Mexico does the same thing and they just thumbed their nose at the world they just say you know though you know we're we're not going to pay anything and they've done and and they have you know yeah that's you know democratic socialism isn't it basically they have a nationalized oil industry and so so this is not just the Soviet Union and the communist countries it's it's a lot of these other countries as well and so maybe I'll stop it there those are some of the things that then everyone should know about and follow up on study and learn more about and I think we have a few minutes if you wanted if you have a question just shout it out you know we don't want we don't want to have to pass a microphone around and spread the plate did anybody if you don't want to but if you're also convinced of everything yes sir what that is you know we we know what socialism is government ownership of the means of production and then you have high X sort of footnote that it also includes the institutions of the welfare state and a progressive income tax so you can identify with what socialism is they always say that and and they always will say that and but it's it's a big cop-out isn't it's it's because we've tried hundreds of different types of socialism they've all had the uniform result of economic destruction and you need to rely on economic theory too that's why you're here this week you know what say what works and what doesn't work in terms of economics and so if it's a if it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck it's a duck you know and that's that's basically what you're learning this week when you learn about the importance of the price system socialist calculation and so so forth now to identify a duck when you see it you know so that's that's what you need to rely on yeah we don't have as many lemons as we used to like I guess is what you're saying people like that although that guy who's the head of the Democratic National Committee is a spitting image with Vladimir Lenin is he I forget what his name is but he looks just like him you guys creeped me out when I saw him this guy's in charge of the Democratic Party look invited beer let him come back to life he's look like should they trotted out his corpse and stood in front of a camera but yeah that's a good point you know you got you got the dopey college kids who are out there setting fires and raising hell your classmates who have been indoctrinated in this since since grade school apparently but they're but like you said maybe their highest aspiration is to be a bureaucrat at the Department of Motor Vehicles and get a government job from life where they don't have to work and get paid every day and so but you do have you know the Bernie Brigade and you do have people like Pelosi and you know the people who run Chuck Schumer I had a student once that I brought the Mises University is a straight-a student he he spent six years in the Marine Corps before I went to college and he was very smart and he had that Marine Corps discipline and high intelligence and our friend the late ralph Rico who used to teach me said you know the great historian yes this student of mine let's say his name was Jim I don't want anybody to be able to guess who was he said Jim could you pick out senator schumer in a crowd because he was a sniper in the Marine Corps so he was a sniper instructor let's say you just anyway I just thought of it and with kind of a silly silly joke like that but yeah that's a good point yeah we don't have a thank God we don't have quite as many Lennon's but you do but you do have Schumer's and Pelosi's and if a young woman from Brooklyn is about 14,000 votes and became a congress person what's her name AOC yeah yeah you know you have people like that but we'll see if they succeed you know whoever created the green new deal is a lemon you know that's an atrocious the Soviets were never there so so ambitious and in central planning is that you know they were much more piecemeal than that the Soviets were never is so idiotic is saying hey let's abolish all the cars and airplanes you know let's let's do that yeah yeah that's just plain stupid but we may have that we have that I told my old friend amar Montano we had a little debate over the impact of Bernie Sanders and what he's up to a while back and and I then I told Dom that I think he's probably sick of being a senator and or like the job say of EPA director to be a guy to enforce the green new deal on us if if Joe Biden wins the election and so so even so we might have another another linen come along sometime but hopefully not I think my time is just about up and so thank you for you [Applause]

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 145,532

Rating: 4.8156261 out of 5

Keywords: Socialism, DiLorenzo, Mises, Myths, Freedom, Property, Peace, lecture, MisesU, 2020

Id: V_NvazLOYIo

Length: 52min 4sec (3124 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020