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  • My name is Peter Joseph and the following is a critique of the Bernie Sanders

  • March 19th Town Hall with Michael Moore, Elizabeth Warren and others

  • from the standpoint of a structuralist.

  • Structuralism simply means you're accounting for larger order contexts

  • when addressing a given situation.

  • The point being that much of what was discussed

  • in the context of root causes and solutions was rather disappointing to me

  • as the true origins of the problem of socioeconomic inequality

  • and loss of democracy was not really addressed at all.

  • Naturally if you do not understand the root problem

  • you cannot create viable solutions to problems or symptoms.

  • And it's frustrating to see how this representative group of influencers

  • still don't seem to have the awareness or perhaps the courage

  • to go after the market economy and its incentive psychology

  • and procedural dynamics.

  • When I say incentive psychology I'm referring to the individualistic,

  • effectively antisocial incentives generated through competition,

  • seeking short-term profits

  • generally at the expense of long-term sustainability

  • not to mention humane ethics.

  • An obvious example is that when a person works to invent something,

  • they do it first and foremost to sell, to make money.

  • The incentive is to make money, not advance society.

  • While some argue this relationship - this proxy relationship -

  • has been fruitful, which of course it has on one level,

  • it has also simultaneously been unnecessarily destructive,

  • especially when other economic alternatives that remove this proxy incentive system

  • could be applied to human society.

  • Also, things do not get done in our society because

  • they have no profit possibility,

  • which is extremely depressing and one of the main core reasons

  • so many problems go unresolved today,

  • from the resolution of ecological decline

  • to the prevalence of poverty and homelessness.

  • Similarly, when I say procedural dynamics

  • I'm referring to the game of market trade and how it orients human rationality.

  • In the same way a person plays a sport,

  • orienting behavior around the structure of the game itself,

  • there's a near automatic pattern of response

  • happening throughout human society

  • working to game itself in effect

  • for each individual or group's advantage.

  • For example, a universal constraint inherent to this market game

  • is the need for cost efficiency.

  • Cost efficiency simply means people are trying to save money on input

  • while maximizing gain upon the final sale of course.

  • And what has this led to? Well, slavery for one.

  • Whether abject slavery,

  • or the millions of slaves that exist in the world today

  • getting paid virtually no money or so little that it doesn't even matter,

  • in various degrees of coercion

  • driven by poverty and vulnerability.

  • And keep in mind - and I think it's an important distinction -

  • that what we call capitalism or a capitalist society,

  • isn't really capitalist by any absolute definition

  • because there's no such thing as a purely capitalist society nor could there ever be

  • in terms of the free-market foundation.

  • It's more accurate to say that it is capitalistic:

  • a qualitative property.

  • And this capitalistic tendency

  • was birthed by the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago

  • molding and evolving society and culture ever since.

  • It's a specific structural framework that we've been inside of.

  • And if you're not familiar with that I can point you to my book

  • 'The New Human Rights Movement' which details it

  • along with other issues related to socioeconomic inequality.

  • But suffice it to say, it's very important to understand that there's a

  • long term geographical determinism that has set

  • the characteristics of our society in motion.

  • That said, and put another way,

  • countless people are pulling levers on a giant machine,

  • engaging the market economy's gaming

  • through cost efficiency and so on,

  • not realizing that the long term result

  • includes human exploitation and abuse

  • along with a loss of earthly sustainability.

  • It's built into the collectively-operating mechanism.

  • without the need for individual malicious intent

  • on the part of any single individual.

  • Cost efficiency is often confused with the idea

  • of technical or natural efficiency and design.

  • The truth is cost efficiency is deeply destructive

  • because it doesn't actually employ any kind of true science.

  • Systems science would define true efficiency

  • in the design and production of a given good.

  • True efficiency is about doing things correctly from a scientific perspective in other words,

  • and cost efficiency is simply about doing things in order to maximize income

  • and reduce loss in the process of production and sale.

  • This again leads to enormous earthly waste and perpetual human abuse

  • as empirical and formal evidence shows.

  • And when you put these two things together -

  • incentive psychology and procedural dynamics of capitalism -

  • you begin to understand why any attempt to push back against the outcomes,

  • the inevitabilities of this system that we see consistently,

  • will either be short-lived or they will fail.

  • It will also happen, again regardless of the moral aptitude of the society,

  • because this isn't some trivial matter in decision-making.

  • This is about survival:

  • individual self-interest coupled with familial or group self-interest,

  • coupled with an expansive materialist culture now derived from our need to

  • keep consuming and having growth and GDP and creating jobs and so on,

  • will forever condemn any hope of improvement

  • in the context of socioeconomic inequality or class war

  • without large-scale structural economic change,

  • which effectively voids what we consider to be

  • the purest form that we've ever known of market economics.

  • In other words if you want to change the behavior of people and how we relate to each other

  • you have to change the framework they are operating in.

  • That said, let's begin with the basic opening by Sanders stating their cause.

  • [B. Sanders] But tonight's discussion is not just an analysis of our problems.

  • We're going to talk about solutions,

  • about where we go from here,

  • and how we create an economic and political system

  • which represents the needs of all Americans

  • and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors.

  • Elizabeth, what's going on in America?

  • [E. Warren] Okay.

  • So I want to start this where

  • we're picking up where Bernie left off and that is

  • look at all the data right now about inequality in America,

  • inequality in wealth, inequality in income.

  • But I want to reframe this a little bit.

  • I see this as inequality in opportunity

  • and that that is one of the most corrosive parts

  • about what's happening and what's gone wrong over a generation.

  • [PJ] The synergy of influences that limit human potential,

  • individual by individual, is vast

  • and the idea of equality and opportunity

  • or equal access to potentials of society

  • become increasingly dubious, tenuous and confused

  • when the entire society is actually premised

  • in something that moves against any type of balance or equality.

  • In other words, the foundation of the society we have today

  • is premised in scarcity, competition,

  • and the game of seeking income to support future interests

  • and hence greed and so on.

  • You can't have equal opportunity in a society

  • that for example makes money out of debt,

  • selling that money like any other good.

  • You can't have equal opportunity

  • when there is an actual boom and bust cycle that periodically

  • wipes out the lower- and middle-class potentials.

  • And the list goes on, and it's a little bit disappointing

  • and even though I agree with Warren's gesture,

  • that no one brings up the other forces that limit human potential and public health.

  • And I think the general gravitation of the Democratic socialists and others of this mindset

  • is also that you can kind of regulate it in hard rigid laws

  • that will preserve some degree of equal access,

  • even though the entire society is premised on unequal access

  • as a driver of industry and innovation, by the way.

  • And once someone does even attempt to create such legislation like FDR did decades ago,

  • you'll notice that the general pressure

  • is always to dismantle such programs in the name of free markets

  • and the problem here effectively is consistency.

  • You cannot have contradictory social patterns and expect both of them to preserve themselves.

  • And while we do see, as I'll talk about moreso later in the video,

  • differences between the United States and say the Scandinavian countries

  • and other social democracies, in terms of how they "collar" capitalism,

  • the United States itself exists in a completely different level of the sickness.

  • That even if you regulate in free education, free health care,

  • free medical leave, free extended vacations, all these other things common of

  • the pop culture socialism as we know it today,

  • it would just be a matter of time before a new constituency

  • would come in and remove those safety nets

  • in favor of larger order capitalist rationalization.

  • So I hope all of that makes sense because equal opportunity,

  • to define that and make it real and make it applicable,

  • requires far more than what these folks are proposing.

  • - So for me, what this generational shift is about

  • is a shift in this fundamental question about who this government works for

  • and who it creates opportunities for.

  • [PJ] You can't pose the question of who the government works for

  • without understanding what gives birth to the structure of government to begin with.

  • Governments are fundamentally premised economically.

  • That may seem odd since we're led to believe

  • government is the starting point of our society in action.

  • But if you examine the nature of governments since the Neolithic Revolution

  • you will see that they are first and foremost concerned with economic behavior.

  • Feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism

  • and even socialism and communism as they have existed,

  • have had institutions of governance that organize around those economic foundations

  • explaining their differences.

  • This only makes sense since the economy is what produces survival.

  • And as a related aside,

  • I'd like to point out that this understanding that economics

  • is the root of survival has led to some deeply superficial perspectives

  • that further misunderstand the nature of government,

  • such as with modern Libertarians.

  • They see a false duality between markets and government

  • and as the argument goes, government is a problem

  • as it restricts the so-called free market

  • and hence if we reduce government power or regulation,

  • as was notably done by the Thatcher and Reagan administrations,

  • you will open up markets and wealth will spread, more people will be supportive and so on.

  • Obviously it didn't work out that way nor would it ever work out that way.

  • And my point here is to not debate the libertarian perspective directly

  • but to show the pervasiveness of this false duality,

  • or confusion which is even present in the Sanders panel.

  • The truth is government and business are inseparable

  • because you have to have regulation

  • of the individualistic and self-interest-driven anarchy

  • that defines market behavior.

  • The invisible hand may exist to some degree

  • but that degree is so limited,

  • far too limited to be universally workable.

  • Markets simply are not a viable system when it comes to accounting

  • for human sustainability or social stabilization.

  • It's old and out-of-date.

  • If government did magically vanish,

  • the negative externalities produced by market behavior

  • would pretty much destroy the planet overnight, gesturaly speaking.

  • So regulation becomes critical to collaring this primitive economic model

  • that simply can't take into account what is required.

  • That stated, overall government has two roles:

  • the democratic or regulatory rule,

  • where the general population sees problems and tries

  • to vote in regulations to solve those problems,

  • while the other role is to facilitate business

  • and work to preserve national business in a competitive global context

  • along with encouraging and assisting the expression

  • of the most successful in business.

  • Now this second rule explains why there is a natural gravitation in America

  • for high-level corporate power to create legislation

  • and in effect control government.

  • More succinctly government is a regulator on one side

  • and government is a tool for groupistic business power

  • and economic advantage on the other.

  • Even more, since market economics guarantees inequality and class hierarchy

  • due to its very structure,

  • money and power become intertwined

  • and suddenly you have perpetual class antagonism

  • and competitive threat.

  • And within that climate of antagonism and threat

  • the power elite naturally become fearful,

  • then generating feedback loops of lower-class disregard, oppression and so on,

  • weakening them like a country weakens another country's infrastructure in war.

  • All of this is systemic and should be expected

  • given the nature of the economic structure that serves as the foundation

  • of government behavior.

  • Now, that stated, coming back to that structure,

  • remember government, even though it makes money out of nothing through its central banks,

  • still wishes to limit inflation, so they tax.

  • Taxation is important income for government.

  • Likewise a thriving economy also allows government to maintain its geopolitical dominance.

  • This occurs through economic power emerging in the form of

  • colonialistic and globalistic trade agreements for example,

  • and the United States being the empire that it is,

  • while also housing the vast majority

  • of the most powerful transnational corporations on the planet,

  • we can better understand why the sickness of political preference

  • in support of the wealthy class is so much stronger in the US

  • than in many other governments.

  • It just makes perfect sense, systemically.

  • So the real question is not "Who does the government work for?"

  • The question is "What defines the government's inherent nature?"

  • What are its natural gravitations?

  • And it's interesting how people don't pick up on that.

  • The corruption against Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary

  • could be considered an anomalous thing.

  • But maybe it's not.

  • Maybe it's a natural gravitation of those

  • in positions of hierarchy and business and financial power

  • working to preserve their positions and so on,

  • and they move in like a swarm against anyone

  • that wants to deplete their power.

  • And if it's found that say the US government's nature is inherently there

  • to favor business, wealth, class and power hierarchy,

  • maybe it's time to rethink how the democratic process

  • is to be approached since this system can only be fundamentally antagonistic

  • towards anything that we would consider true democracy or

  • egalitarian democracy, whatever you want to call it.

  • [M. Moore] And these films I make, they're about a country

  • that has an economic system that's unfair, it's unjust,

  • and it's not democratic.

  • You cannot call this a democracy

  • if the democracy means we just get to go vote,

  • but with the economy, we have no say in this,

  • then it's not a true democracy.

  • [PJ] I got excited for a brief moment when Moore said this

  • because he seemed to hint at the fact that

  • economic democracy is required for a true social democracy.

  • Yet that focus quickly gets lost in vagueness,

  • which I guess shouldn't be too surprising since he made a movie about capitalism

  • that didn't even address the structure of capitalism.

  • Just more vagary,

  • highlighting certain corrupt extremes while still supporting general market practice

  • as if general market practice doesn't inevitably lead statistically

  • to a vast spectrum of corrupt extremes.

  • You're only as free and powerful as your purchasing power will allow you to be in today's society.

  • And because all these folks still subscribe to the market religion in general,

  • the idea of economic democracy really only implies

  • being able to influence the regulation of how the economy unfolds,

  • never really touching the actual structure.

  • Again, if the structural nature of the economy works against

  • higher order democratic possibilities,

  • reinforcing rather than alleviating oppression,

  • perhaps it's time we addressed that structure

  • rather than dance around it

  • or avoid it because it's too inconvenient, taboo or complicated to talk about.

  • [D. Hamilton] And the key frame in which to address these solutions

  • is to empower people.

  • What is really pernicious is that the most vulnerable people,

  • when trying to do something for themselves,

  • they're the most exposed to predation,

  • be it from the financial sector,

  • be it from colleges and universities that might be

  • incentivized by for-profit as opposed to a non-profit motive,

  • so that rhetoric has a harm on those that really try hard.

  • We don't want that, we want a society where your efforts will truly be rewarded.

  • Hamilton seems to bring up predation and lower class vulnerability and exploitation

  • as if it's separate from the incentives and procedural dynamics of market logic.

  • This observation needs to move past the fact

  • that poor people become more vulnerable to exploitation,

  • rather focusing on the fact that the economic system generates this

  • class hierarchy or inequality by its very design.

  • How extreme that class inequality becomes

  • is subject to other forces of course as we see across the world.

  • But it doesn't change the fact.

  • Where does one draw the line between predation and strategic cost efficiency?

  • Where do we draw the line in the gradient of overall human exploitation

  • in the capitalist machine?

  • Because it is just that: a gradient or matter of degree.

  • For example, I am a low-budget independent filmmaker

  • and I have to find people to do things cheaper than industry standard.

  • I have no choice, if I expect to produce quality that will draw income in the end.

  • This means as a systemic result,

  • those who I can afford to hire are often young, or starting out,

  • or in a deprived condition whereby they can't demand as much money for their service.

  • Now do I like doing this? No!

  • But I have no choice in the market game and neither do you

  • when it comes down to it.

  • Each one of us every moment of our lives

  • is engaging in some form of cost efficiency or savings

  • to try and secure our futures.

  • And that inevitably leads to some form of taking advantage

  • of other people's circumstances whether we intend it or not.

  • And the solution certainly isn't to pretend

  • that some forms of human exploitation for another's gain is fine

  • while some forms are not.

  • That would be a matter of degree fallacy or continuum fallacy.

  • And the way folks intuitively combat that

  • is to fall back on morality.

  • They may say "Well it's okay for a poor person with $100,000 in student loan debt

  • to work as a janitor in a coffee shop due to that pressure,

  • while it's NOT okay for a poor person to work for six cents an hour in a sweat shop in Asia."

  • Once again, in order to understand what's happening in the structure of capitalism

  • you have to become objective,

  • removing both your familiarity with the practice of markets,

  • how you've been rewarded - that operant conditioning if you have been successful -

  • while also removing the tendency to draw moral lines

  • when in truth they don't actually exist logically.

  • - I'd be remiss not to point out that these vulnerabilities

  • are more pronounced for marginal groups.

  • Race, gender, disability status,

  • formerly incarcerated,

  • they face obstacles that the general population don't.

  • [PJ] Once again we need to go deeper.

  • If we don't understand how groups became marginalized or what keeps them marginalized,

  • if we don't understand the root causes we can't develop proper solutions, once again.

  • For example, black-white race inequality obviously cannot be understood

  • until you at least go back to early American slavery,

  • in turn considering the arduous and heavily fought process of integration since.

  • And the question then becomes

  • "What incentivized or set in motion abject African slavery?"

  • The answer is simple: cost efficiency.

  • Economic motivations.

  • Racism itself as we see vividly in sickness today

  • is a side effect of this older period of time.

  • Race was developed as a social construct in fact,

  • a perception to help preserve the economic institution

  • of abject human slavery, and effectively classism.

  • As Dr. Martin Luther King often talked about,

  • the black-and-white divide in America was used to preserve the power establishment,

  • keeping poor whites and poor blacks fighting amongst themselves.

  • In fact if you think about it, this race class divide-and-conquer

  • is still occurring today, for few are talking about this fact

  • that slavery was an economic decision,

  • a business decision, a capitalist decision.

  • So you can't explain the ongoing deprivation of African Americans today

  • without seeing this chain of causality

  • and fundamentally linking the oppression to capitalism itself.

  • Now since then racism has grown and taken on a life of its own as we know,

  • and coupled with all the other procedural dynamics

  • black society has remained regimented and poor

  • even though there has been general improvement through technology really

  • as time has gone on.

  • In fact I think the only group that ever really went after

  • this system in terms of how it creates group racism and oppression of course,

  • besides Dr. King and his Poor People's Campaign late in his life,

  • was the work of the Black Panthers movement, a very large movement in its time,

  • who were originally opposed to capitalism based on principle,

  • which is an important historical footnote

  • that we don't hear much about anymore.

  • How many movements out there are actually going after

  • capitalism in the way we obviously should?

  • Anyway likewise, other marginalized groups cannot be understood

  • without the competitive element of capitalist society also being considered again.

  • Gender inequality has cultural roots

  • no doubt linked to the history of patriarchy and sexism.

  • Women have historically been paid less and of course marginalized

  • because male dominated societies simply got away with it.

  • But you can't look at wage inequality

  • between men and women today for example and not consider cost efficiency.

  • That's really the motivation.

  • It's not that men sit back and say "Women are inferior,

  • I'm going to pay them less because they don't deserve it."

  • It's because they know this pattern still exists

  • and they can get away with it to a certain degree.

  • I point this out again because you have to look at human-induced group deprivation

  • from an economic perspective

  • before considering cultural matters.

  • Obviously culture is a big part of things, it's not always economic,

  • but you'd be surprised how much economic involvement past and present

  • culminates the social condition we see today

  • including ongoing oppression, marginalization of groups, etc.

  • Now as far as disabled people as he brought up,

  • it should be readily apparent that the economic value of people

  • that have limited capacities, physically or mentally,

  • make them of less commercial value by default.

  • If the libertarian theory of human value in financial terms,

  • meaning you get what you work for and so on,

  • if that's true,

  • then those that unfortunately suffer from disabilities of whatever kind

  • are always going to suffer because the system simply isn't humane enough to respect them.

  • The people are worthless to the system.

  • And as far as those that have been incarcerated,

  • which is characteristic of the US social approach

  • to further repress those that have committed crimes on one level,

  • keep in mind that the history of convict leasing,

  • the modern corporate employment of prisoners for a fraction of minimum wage,

  • coupled with modern for-profit prisons that seek increased prison capacity

  • so they can get more money, presents a cloud

  • of economic pressures that have very little reason, very little incentive,

  • to do anything but continue limiting people's rights

  • and literally oppress them and exploit them.

  • [A. Kasparian] Income inequality continues to be a great tragedy in a country

  • such as America where

  • you have so much productivity, so much wealth,

  • but so much of it is concentrated at the top 1%.

  • And the reality is another portion of that tragedy is how

  • we have allowed the wealthiest individuals

  • to essentially take hold of the narrative

  • regarding all of us

  • and stereotype us as individuals who expect entitlements,

  • who expect to get things handed to us, when in reality as Senator Warren

  • brilliantly put: we want equality of opportunity.

  • [PJ] So I wanted to throw this part in by Kasparian because it sets up a couple of interesting points.

  • First, income inequality is a problem in the 21st century regardless of country,

  • including the fact America is not an island.

  • If people are going to complain about inequality generated from the loss of jobs

  • due to outsourcing, you have to then take into account

  • the existing deprivation or inequality

  • in the outsourced areas that are being exploited.

  • Companies would not outsource unless they can get people to work cheaper, obviously,

  • so this is an international synergy.

  • We should also remember the economic differences between the north and southern hemispheres

  • considering this macroeconomic inequality that has been created

  • largely through the force of colonization and globalization.

  • I want to point out that without exaggeration,

  • America is basically this spoiled child empire that has,

  • at least its business and government culture,

  • has raped and pillaged its way to wealth since the dawn of the 20th century;

  • its economic growth has occurred on the backs of other nations.

  • And then the American public is surprised

  • when the US business-driven leadership

  • enables the exact same kind of abuse in its own populations domestically?

  • That should be no surprise.

  • In the game of economic exploitation of class there are no nations,

  • there are only those who can dominate and those who are vulnerable to domination.

  • This is another reason why the Union argument, which will be talked about more later,

  • really falls flat today.

  • Companies simply are not bound by national borders,

  • they will influence any legislation to restrict their movement,

  • and hence unions can be sidestepped very easily

  • by simply moving operations to economically weaker nations.

  • The second thing I want to point out is this narrative she mentions which is a good point,

  • which condemns anyone seeking non-market support or benefits, entitlements,

  • and they're considered lazy freeloading socialists as we know.

  • This has been a powerful tool of propaganda.

  • But rather than counter it through just kind of moral objection

  • it's best to point out that society as a whole

  • IS the generating force of innovation and hence wealth.

  • Everything we see in terms of material and intellectual progress

  • is a social outcome.

  • It is a social outcome whether it's generational,

  • building upon people's knowledge as time goes on,

  • or its lateral in the sense of sharing ideas in the short term

  • as exemplified by say the power of the open source movement,

  • advancing industrial and scientific development through the group mind.

  • And that's just the way it is; no one comes up with anything on their own.

  • There are no true geniuses.

  • There are geniuses in the temporal sense that have built upon other people's work

  • but no one just spontaneously comes up with anything.

  • It's always a social process.

  • So the propaganda that people should get what they work for -

  • as if the competitive market we see is a level playing field or

  • in some kind of equality,

  • where each individual is working to climb their own individual mountain,

  • and if they reach the top of that mountain they should be rewarded

  • disproportionately against those that don't reach the top of that mountain -

  • this is preposterous from a systems perspective,

  • a true sociological perspective,

  • a true epistemological perspective.

  • Not only is there no level playing field,

  • people are also not equal in their abilities or in their biology

  • and have different strengths and weaknesses.

  • These are not strengths and weaknesses that are universally assumed, in other words,

  • what seems like a strength or a weakness in one context

  • could very well be the opposite in another context.

  • This propaganda will say that those with weaker strengths

  • mental or physically or, who are just lazy,

  • they deserve less in this sort of socially Darwinistic assumption,

  • and it's a very dangerous assumption, and it's a very false assumption.

  • So, culture has become obsessed with individual success,

  • so-called success, ignoring the collective reality of our existence.

  • So coming back to Kasparian's point

  • people today more than ever should be receiving a dividend

  • of society so to speak.

  • There's nothing wrong with the idea of people being born into a society

  • that's actually designed to take care of them,

  • building upon the fruits of what prior generations have done.

  • There is no greater means to generate real equality of opportunity

  • than to actually remove the stress of survival.

  • Providing people with the necessities of life is the root

  • of allowing people to actually be creative and free

  • and to develop and prosper.

  • So if people could just be relieved of that foundational stress of survival,

  • having to worry about their children's education,

  • worried about their next job, worried about their health costs and so on,

  • if we can alleviate that, there is your precondition for true

  • equality of opportunity to allow people to flourish,

  • as promoted by organizations like The Zeitgeist Movement

  • and new forms of economic models.

  • So anyway let's not confuse equality of opportunity with something like

  • equal opportunity employer or other market-based notions once again

  • because equality simply doesn't exist in this type of socioeconomic structure.

  • - But business won't come

  • to this area because there's no sewage infrastructure.

  • And if there's no business there's no tax base

  • to build any sewage infrastructure - do you see a pattern here?

  • about how this works.

  • So you get these areas of poverty that just get

  • locked in poverty.

  • [PJ] I threw in this comment because it's just another example of the

  • procedural dynamics of market logic once again,

  • even though no one is speaking of these types of feedback systems

  • in that context.

  • These dynamics have to be pointed out not as though they are some anomaly

  • but underscoring the core logic of the way the system works.

  • Of course investors are not going to come to regions that they can't exploit

  • because there isn't proper infrastructure.

  • So it becomes a self feeding cycle of more and more poverty and deprivation

  • and isolation and so on.

  • This is a structural problem, not a problem of policy.

  • [C. Flowers] Some of those same type of attitudes that existed prior to the 1960s,

  • the structural racism that was reinforced by racial terror is still in existence today.

  • [PJ] Flowers brings up structural racism, and again

  • you can't really talk about racism without talking about classism.

  • Classism is racism's father

  • and racist tendencies, which are created through economic fear of other groups,

  • can only be resolved through removing that economic fear in the end.

  • Now this isn't to say that all bigoted views are somehow economically related.

  • But generally speaking if you view history

  • and look at patterns of bigotry across groups,

  • you will see a history of economic oppression or economic fear.

  • And I can't emphasize how important that foundation is to understand

  • to try and stop modern bigoted behavior.

  • There is no silver bullet, but the closest thing to a silver bullet today

  • is working to create true economic equality on this planet,

  • removing groupistic fears.

  • [M. Moore] Water doesn't just get dirty.

  • Those are the decisions that get made.

  • And you don't have clean drinking water because of decisions about money

  • that are made- we were talking backstage about Flint.

  • And there are many Flints around this country and it's not just

  • that we have an environmental problem

  • but we have an economic problem

  • where those people - in your case in Alabama, in my case in Flint -

  • where decisions get made where they say "You know what?

  • These people, they're not worth the investment."

  • [PJ] I again almost got excited here

  • hoping Moore would link what he just described to the inherent incentives

  • and procedural dynamics of the market economy.

  • Instead the phenomenon pointed out of economically poor or dead regions,

  • is explained in an almost conspiratorial way.

  • Apathy is not malicious intent.

  • Business logic doesn't care.

  • Same with the homeless crisis.

  • Homeless people don't have any money, they're not economically viable,

  • so they are ignored.

  • So these decisions he speaks of

  • are about what's profitable and what isn't,

  • and deep poverty-riddled areas in America

  • are really systemic outcomes.

  • Primary logic of markets - efficient regional exploitation -

  • if it can't be exploited investment doesn't occur.

  • So, Flint Michigan and other such regions really need to be understood as

  • "negative market externalities,"

  • negative externalities of capitalism that are inevitable like pollution,

  • not some failure of policy.

  • - Economic justice should be a moral imperative.

  • Why are we relying on the private sector to begin with?

  • Somebody's dignity should not be based in the profit of a firm-

  • that's just the bottom line.

  • [Audience cheering]

  • [PJ] And the crowd goes wild!

  • Yet it's this kind of moral invocation that continues to stifle

  • any type of technical progress in the activist community.

  • We have to stop thinking in terms of what is right morally,

  • demanding people act against their own self-interest in the market game.

  • Because that's what the invocation implies.

  • It's exhausting listening to the platitudes and righteousness

  • of what "should be" in this public debate on effectively human rights,

  • when we are entrenched in a system that is really morally bankrupt by default

  • and isn't designed to favor equality or justice.

  • It's designed to favor hierarchy and INjustice.

  • Everybody's dignity so to speak

  • is contingent upon income and profit in this type of system.

  • One's dignity is proportional to their purchasing power in other words,

  • for only their purchasing power gives them in effect

  • any human rights, to whatever degree.

  • - When we talk about the decline of the middle class

  • clearly were talking about the loss

  • of 50,000 factories in this country since 2001,

  • of jobs being sent abroad to China, etc.,

  • of workers now working for much lower wages than they use to,

  • and the decline of the trade union movement.

  • I want to say a few words about those issues.

  • [PJ] And this begins the extensive conversation about unions

  • which seems to be at the core of the solutions proposed by this panel.

  • While unions are important to keep some balance

  • in market class warfare as I touched upon before,

  • remember we live in a different condition today.

  • The unions had strong force decades ago and political power

  • but the natural gravitations of capitalism have eroded that,

  • and rather than look at this as an ebb-and-flow let's look at this as an evolution.

  • Sanders mentioned the sending of jobs overseas, declining wages,

  • marginalization, battles against unions, etc.

  • The implication is that these things are supposed to not happen?

  • When of course the truth is that the entire gravitation of our economy ensures

  • this constant diminishment, attenuation and antagonism from the ownership class

  • which really holds power, as naturally would be the case

  • in this type of government

  • with the foundation being markets once again.

  • It may seem redundant for me to say all this,

  • but if this Town Hall was supposed to be progressive and in-depth,

  • we can't keep falling back on these old notions of economic warfare

  • and the idea that the lower classes will simply organize more strongly,

  • develop strong unions, influence political party and somehow maintain

  • a social justice equilibrium.

  • While it is certainly possible with very heavy improbable,

  • but counter-system legislation to stop international capital flows,

  • the outsourcing of labor and so on,

  • along with perhaps the application of universal basic income to give

  • the working class less vulnerability,

  • enhancing their ability to fight back against

  • being manipulated into lower wages or poor circumstances -

  • that's simply not the way it's gonna go if government is composed of business power.

  • I'm not saying anything is impossible, once again I'm saying that it's improbable.

  • And I know the conversation is difficult

  • regarding trying to make structural changes to our economic system.

  • It's extremely difficult and requires a deep mass movement and sharp focus

  • about what the changes need to be.

  • But the fact that we're leaving this out of the conversation here is the actual problem.

  • [C. Estrada] But even 15 isn't a living wage.

  • It's not the wage that we grew up with

  • and so we have to have 15 and a union.

  • Workers have to have a seat at the table

  • because if it's left up to employers

  • they're always going to make a decision on their bottom line.

  • It is about their bottom line,

  • they're always going to send it to their shareholders in corporations

  • so I agree with what you said, we can't leave it up to the private sector.

  • Workers have to get a seat at the table,

  • and how do we build that trade union movement again

  • when employers are spending a billion dollars a year

  • fighting and union busting,

  • fighting workers as they try to organize.

  • [PJ] Not to run this into the ground

  • but I keep trying to find a fitting analogy that embraces

  • the kind of naivety we hear along the lines of what Estrada is saying.

  • She points out the actual problem

  • but doesn't give the gravity of that problem the weight it deserves.

  • For lack of a better analogy it's like capturing a lion in the wild from Africa,

  • plopping it in the living room as a pet,

  • and then being surprised when it attacks you.

  • It's also important to point out that unions are really no different in their incentives

  • than business owners.

  • If a union had the option and power to increase its wages a hundredfold,

  • you can bet that they probably would in the exact same self-interest,

  • self-preservation that business owners have,

  • to pay as little as possible to their employees.

  • So unions and management, unions and company,

  • are really two sides of the same coin

  • of economic warfare.

  • And the goal should be to remove the need for war to begin with.

  • So yes, the working class needs a seat at the table obviously,

  • in the context that we are in,

  • but I'm tired of people once again speaking of unions as though they are a solution

  • when they're really just a reaction.

  • - Because 60% of workers want a union

  • so you ask why don't they get one?

  • And they don't get one because

  • they're being fired,

  • they're being told that their jobs will go to Mexico

  • where they're competing with $3.95.

  • [PJ] What did you expect?

  • Estrada again makes it seem like these behaviors are anomalous

  • and the implication is that some kind of legislative force

  • has to come in and limit the ability of businesses to diminish union power.

  • But if the ownership class runs government as it does,

  • as it would be expected to

  • given the economic foundation of government,

  • why would it favor any such legislation?

  • Even with mass voter force it still runs against the current.

  • We also can't forget the dark violent history of unions

  • as the most central expression of class warfare.

  • When unions were considered anti-American and communistic, the Red Scare

  • worked to try and diminish union power and so on in the mid 20th century.

  • I want to again reinforce that there's a current,

  • a trend in our society, and that current flows one direction.

  • Anything that moves against that current,

  • of the market's inherent incentives and procedural dynamics,

  • will periodically drown or be pulled in the other direction

  • one way or another, just a matter of time.

  • - Unions built America's middle class,

  • it'll take unions to rebuild America's middle class.

  • I just think that's ... [Applause]

  • [PJ] No, unions today will not rebuild the middle class

  • because conditions have changed.

  • They will help to whatever degree they can be enforced

  • but they have very diminished efficacy in the current

  • condition we have on the planet now.

  • What allowed for the middle class after the post-World War 2 era

  • was a synergy of influences.

  • The middle class flourished in a short-lived domestic and international condition.

  • With Europe and much of the industrialized world in shambles,

  • emerging US hegemony enabled a delicate period of stress reduction;

  • it was a petri-dish stage of a new era.

  • US-based industry started to grow and dominate as a result.

  • These industries then expanded to absorbing wealth from other regions

  • through emerging globalization, hence reinforcing the US Empire,

  • still semi-loyal to the nation.

  • In this, union power was far more tolerated

  • because there was less pressure on American society to be competitive on the whole

  • against other nations.

  • At the same time the ongoing Industrial Revolution allowed for

  • increased productivity and hence a more relative abundance,

  • again easing social stress.

  • Sorry to be rambley here but with anything sociological it's complex.

  • You can't understand the post-World War 2 period of US growth

  • and the rise of the middle class without taking into account the international condition

  • and recognizing new trends.

  • It was really just a matter of time before self-interest

  • of these new powerful industrial capitalist organizations evolved

  • into evermore greedy and ruthless action,

  • including working against its own domestic population

  • just as it works against third world nations in exploitation.

  • Transnational corporations simply stopped having respect for the borders,

  • suddenly this grace period of middle-class respect ended,

  • as corporate America expanded globally.

  • So the middle class diminished in America because the very idea

  • of the American middle class became irrelevant.

  • Companies became international.

  • The entire dynamic changed, and hence it makes sense that the US,

  • which houses most of the transnational corporations that are empowered today,

  • at least houses in the sense of "we are the origin nation,"

  • but that is not to be confused

  • with the idea that there's any loyalty to the US middle class

  • as these folks basically imply.

  • Today businesses really don't see nations.

  • Transnational dominance and capitalist expression doesn't care about regions.

  • It's not loyal to anything

  • so what's basically happened is the abuse that you've seen

  • through colonization and globalization

  • has been transferred domestically as corporations became more international.

  • And good luck trying to legislate around that kind of global dynamic

  • to somehow magically improve the American middle class.

  • - Back when I was growing up in Flint Michigan

  • nearly every job was a union job.

  • The person who bagged the groceries in the checkout line-

  • there was a union for grocery bag baggers.

  • And everybody did well. And you only needed one income.

  • [PJ] Here we have again the nostalgic position that America can simply return

  • to some institutionalized systemic state that existed prior

  • when that can't happen, again because of international dynamics

  • and just general technological change and so on.

  • Things evolve, they don't just ebb and flow once again,

  • in society, sociologically.

  • Like Donald Trump's "Make America great again!"

  • we're obsessed with this as a society, we can't seem to think

  • systemically or from an evolutionary perspective,

  • understanding how outcomes change circumstances as time moves forward.

  • And I want to give an analogy for this, an analogy for market capitalism itself.

  • Think about the discovery of hydrocarbons and oil.

  • If it wasn't for the discovery of hydrocarbons and oil

  • we would not have all of the great progress that we've seen.

  • But now what is hydrocarbon energy doing?

  • It's destroying our atmosphere, it's polluting the environment

  • to almost a deadly extent.

  • So at once it used to be fine, best we knew,

  • turned out to be deeply problematic on another level as time moved forward.

  • And this is exactly how people should be thinking about market capitalism:

  • as an evolutionary phenomenon.

  • [G. Lafer] As a political scientist I'm asked sometimes how does it happen

  • that in a democracy laws get passed that go against the interests of the majority.

  • And to answer that question we really have to look

  • behind the politicians and behind the parties

  • to see what is the real power that is writing our laws.

  • And that's not just the Koch brothers but it's a handful of the biggest

  • and most powerful political actors in America which is the big corporate lobbies.

  • The biggest vehicle through which corporate political activity happens in the States

  • is called the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.

  • They meet several times a year

  • in committees that are made up half of elected legislators and half of corporate lobbyists.

  • [PJ] So Lafer here continues the common general outrage argument

  • that politicians are corrupted by lobbyists for money,

  • laws are being written by lobbyists and so on and so forth,

  • as if that should be a surprise.

  • And I'm not gonna go through the litany of detailed incentives and causality that explain this.

  • Rather I'm just gonna put it this way:

  • If legislation is not for sale

  • in a social system where everything else is for sale,

  • we have a consistency problem.

  • Market economics as the foundation of our social system

  • says that people should be able to operate without coercion

  • on a voluntary basis,

  • and whatever happens within those parameters

  • anything can be exchanged and so on and so forth.

  • So buying and selling politicians is like buying and selling pizzas.

  • This whole idea of getting money out of politics is possibly

  • the most naive platitude and argument I've ever heard,

  • because it goes against absolutely everything we are taught about how our society is run.

  • So as far as I'm concerned if we're going to be consistent

  • the Koch brothers SHOULD own and run America.

  • If you want to stop the corrupt influence of groups that

  • are disproportionately gaining advantage over other groups

  • then maybe, just maybe, it's time we begin

  • asking what kind of economy would actually facilitate that

  • as a social precondition.

  • - Describe for our audience how it happens

  • that not only here in the Congress now

  • but in state after state,

  • the needs of working people are ignored,

  • the needs of the wealthy and powerful are addressed.

  • - Well first of all I think it's important to say that it's not a partisan issue.

  • As you said a majority of both Republicans and Democrats

  • support a higher minimum wage, support a right to paid sick leave,

  • think that Citizens United should be overturned, and a bunch of other things.

  • And the corporate lobbies are not cheerleaders for the Republican Party.

  • They want more money and power for themselves

  • and they're not hesitant about going after

  • pro-working-people Republicans. In Michigan,

  • when right-to-work (which is a law that's designed to kill unions in the private sector) was passed,

  • the Senate majority leader who was a Republican was opposed to it.

  • And he was taken in a backroom with big money donors who essentially said

  • "Do what we say or this will be your last term in office because

  • we'll pull our money from you and will fund a primary opponent."

  • [PJ] Building upon the consistency of money

  • and how those with the most money are going to win

  • (they vote with their dollar, no pun intended),

  • we also have to think about the evolution of this society once again.

  • For the first time in history the United States

  • has both a plutonomy and a plutocracy.

  • Plutocracy simply means the government is run by big elite business interests

  • in favor of money and capital and so on,

  • and a plutonomy is an economy

  • that has such a large percentage driven by the 1%,

  • the enormously wealthy are spending so much money amongst themselves,

  • that they actually have more importance on a certain level

  • to the entire overall economy,

  • making the lower class economic behavior virtually irrelevant.

  • The amount of money that's being moved amongst the upper 5-10%

  • is so extreme that it greatly diminishes the importance,

  • economic importance, of the middle and lower classes.

  • When you take that into account

  • you begin to see something very interesting and that is that

  • capitalism is basically a precondition for fascism.

  • And plutonomy and plutocracy emphasizes the wealthy class

  • while diminishing the lower classes

  • and hence different forms of constraint will always exist to dominate

  • because power and money are so deeply intertwined.

  • - The issues with regards to politics is beyond just voting and that's

  • clearly evident with the ways in which

  • corporatists can lobby and control things.

  • So I think we need to be even more sophisticated than just talking about voting.

  • Voting is obviously essential and important

  • but beyond voting we need social movements

  • and Senator Sanders has talked a lot about this, building a social movement,

  • he's used the word political revolution.

  • [PJ] I certainly agree that we need something more sophisticated than just voting.

  • Social movements however need to have an actual platform.

  • What kind of platform are you people proposing for these social movements?

  • Just people saying they want more equality and using old techniques to achieve that,

  • that have proven a lack of efficacy?

  • People standing in free speech zones yelling at buildings, holding up signs,

  • hoping someone will look out the window from Congress and listen to them?

  • And that's another thing by the way:

  • have you ever noticed that the political process effectively for the general population

  • is really just this half-assed kind of public display technique?

  • People have no say on direct policy unless there's a referendum.

  • And yet we actually sit back and call this democracy,

  • holding up signs, yelling at buildings, electing people that don't pay attention to us.

  • It seems ridiculous as a concept but yet people are still locked into that world.

  • So I ask again: what are these social movements exactly proposing?

  • So there needs to be a very defined platform

  • which is why I'm advocating more radical approaches here

  • because unfortunately the platforms being promoted are just more of the same

  • and accomplish little.

  • - And the vision that all of us are talking about,

  • I know we get criticized "we're too radical, we're too extreme,"

  • you know what? All of the stuff that we're talking about

  • exists in other countries around the world.

  • [Applause]

  • [PJ] And I'm gonna conclude this critique with this.

  • It seems rational to say

  • "Well, we can just superimpose the policies

  • of other more successful social democracies

  • like Norway and Finland, on the United States

  • and everything will be fine."

  • If only it was that simple.

  • And this is probably one of the more complicated sociological considerations

  • because you have to look at the state of any nation

  • as a consequence of the entire global evolution.

  • Like in domestic society,

  • on this planet we have upper-class nations, middle-class nations

  • and lower-class nations, generally speaking.

  • Upper-class nations are the empires: China, the United States, Russia;

  • middle-class nations include European social democracies:

  • Finland, Norway, Scandinavian countries,

  • while lower-class nations include much of the Global South

  • such as in Africa or destitute regions of the Middle East.

  • And just as inside the domestic economy of the United States

  • the dynamics of trade and politics merge together to create hierarchy.

  • Global hierarchy mirrors domestic hierarchy

  • in terms of class relationships.

  • At the same time

  • each individual nation of course has pertinent histories

  • that define the nature of that nation and culture

  • such as the history of North Korea or the history of Cuba.

  • It's very easy to track to a certain degree the influences that have generated

  • those nations and why they are the way they are

  • due to geopolitical policy, war, sanctions and so on.

  • And it's within this synergy of history

  • and the real-time dynamic of national classes

  • that explains why the United States is such a bizarre anomaly

  • and why simply imposing reforms that we see in other nations really won't work

  • because they don't fit the dynamics.

  • As an analogy if you drive your car into a traditional middle-class neighborhood somewhere,

  • you might get the impression everyone's happy, doing the jobs they love and so on

  • IF you don't take into consideration the extremes on other ends.

  • So you have a housing project of poor people on one end,

  • you have Beverly Hills-styled neighborhoods on the other,

  • and you have the middle-class neighborhoods in the middle.

  • This gives a false impression if you saw nothing else

  • that this pocket of middle-class happiness exists on its own.

  • Oh capitalism works! the middle class is there.

  • But it's a pocket, and it only exists because of the extremes on either side.

  • So without going into any more detail as to why

  • the United States has become so bizarre in this upper-class national nightmare,

  • it is within this context we have to understand that

  • the system of political and economic power we have in the United States today,

  • how its evolved, where we are,

  • will simply not allow, easily, basic human interest

  • and public health advancements such as say universal health care.

  • It's representative of a different stage with the capitalist sickness

  • and that much harder to change.

  • Anyway much could be said on that but I'm tired now so that's enough for me.

  • I hope this has been helpful and I would appreciate

  • if people share this video with others

  • that are not informed about these relationships.

  • Thank you.

My name is Peter Joseph and the following is a critique of the Bernie Sanders

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批判する。バーニー・サンダース「アメリカの不平等」タウンホール 3.19.18より ピーター・ジョセフ著 (Critique: Bernie Sanders "Inequality in America" Town Hall from 3.19.18, by Peter Joseph)

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    王惟惟 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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