Capitalism or Socialism: Which One Is More Democratic? | 5 Minute Video — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:02Why is socialism so popular?
2. 0:05Less than ten years ago you couldn’t  refer to “socialism” in a positive way
3. 0:09and hope to have a career in American politics.
4. 0:12Socialism was referred to as the “s” word.
5. 0:15Now it is affirmed, either explicitly or  implicitly, by just about everyone on the Left.
6. 0:21And, amazingly, given socialism’s record of  failure, the socialists seem to be gaining ground.
7. 0:26Why? What makes socialism  so attractive to so many?
8. 0:31Socialism, according to its proponents,
9. 0:33is more democratic and therefore  more moral than capitalism.
10. 0:38Leftist filmmaker Michael  Moore explains it for us.
11. 0:41“Democratic socialism means everyone has a seat at  the table and everybody gets a slice of the pie.”
12. 0:47The famed socialist writer Irving Howe wrote  something similar in his 1982 autobiography,
13. 0:53“We believe that the democracy…in our political
14. 0:56life should also be extended  deeply into economic life.”
15. 1:00The basic idea here is that socialism is  vindicated through its roots in popular
16. 1:05consent.  If a majority of people, working  through their elected representatives,
17. 1:10declares something to be a public entitlement—say free college or free healthcare—then
18. 1:15they are justified in extracting resources  from those who create wealth to pay for it.
19. 1:20As Nathan Robinson argues in his  book, "Why You Should Be a Socialist",
20. 1:24the moral imperative is to place the  economy under the control of “the people.”
21. 1:30Sounds good, at least superficially…  until you dig a bit below the surface.
22. 1:34First, what direct control do “the people”  really have over any government institution?
23. 1:41What control do the British people have over the  National Health Service? What control do Americans
24. 1:46have over the Department of Motor Vehicles or the  U.S. Post Office?  The answer of course is none.
25. 1:53Given its practical impossibility, genuine popular  control over government institutions is a mirage.
26. 2:00Second, what if 51 percent of Americans  vote to confiscate the resources
27. 2:05of a single person, say Bill  Gates?  Does that make it right?
28. 2:09Under an authoritarian socialist  government, a single dictator seizes
29. 2:14the fruits of your labor. Everyone is  against that. Under democratic socialism,
30. 2:18a majority does. The end result  is the same–you’ve been robbed.
31. 2:24The fundamental problem with  democratic socialism, however,
32. 2:27is its assumption that in a free-market system, the economy is not
33. 2:31under the control of the people. This is  exactly the opposite of how things work.
34. 2:36Let me explain.
35. 2:38Each of us are not only citizens; we are also
36. 2:40consumers.  These are overlapping  categories: every citizen is a consumer,
37. 2:45and every consumer is also a citizen.  The  consumer, like the citizen, is a voter.
38. 2:50As citizens, we vote once every two or four  years; as consumers, we vote many times a day.
39. 2:56The citizen votes with a  ballot which costs him nothing,
40. 2:59except the inconvenience of going to  the polls. The consumer votes with
41. 3:04his money which costs him a lot—all the  time and effort he put in to earn that money.
42. 3:09Only a fraction of citizens are eligible to vote  at the ballot box, but every consumer votes in the
43. 3:15marketplace—even felons, even children.  Illegal  aliens cannot vote for political candidates,
44. 3:21but they too vote with their money. Moreover,  citizens participate in a system of representative
45. 3:26democracy—their views are filtered through  the politicians who represent them. Consumers,
46. 3:32by contrast, vote in a system of direct democracy.
47. 3:35If you prefer an Audi to a Lexus or  the Apple iPhone to the Samsung Galaxy,
48. 3:40you don’t have to elect some other guy to exercise  these preferences; you do it directly yourself,
49. 3:45by paying for them.  Here we see the secret of how  those billionaires like Jeff Bezos got so rich.
50. 3:52We made them rich!  The inequality  that socialists complain about
51. 3:56is the result of popular mandate.  Want  fewer billionaires? Stop buying their stuff!
52. 4:02Free markets work not through “greed” or  “exploitation” but by satisfying our wants,
53. 4:08and the most successful entrepreneurs  are those who anticipate our wants
54. 4:13even before we have them.  No one wrote Steve Jobs
55. 4:16asking him to make a phone that that took  pictures, allowed people to text messages,
56. 4:20and listen to music.  He conceived it and built  it before we knew we couldn’t live without it.
57. 4:27Market economies involve a  level of popular participation
58. 4:31and democratic consent that politics  can only envy.  We don’t need to extend
59. 4:37democracy from the political to the  economic sphere; we already have it.
60. 4:42And the moral grounding of free markets,  just like that of our political system,
61. 4:47is in the will of the people—in the latter  case, a will expressed only on Election Day;
62. 4:52in the former case, a will expressed  deliberately, emphatically, constantly.
63. 4:58We don’t need socialism.
64. 5:00Because we already have something  more moral and more democratic.
65. 5:04It’s called capitalism.
66. 5:06I’m Dinesh D’Souza for Prager University.