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Jordan Peterson's Critique of the Communist Manifesto — Transcript

by Jordan B Peterson · 4,865 words · 886 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00what i did instead was return to what i
0:02regarded as the
0:03original cause of all the trouble let's
0:05say which was the communist manifesto
0:08and what i attempted to do because
0:10that's marx and we're here to talk about
0:12marxism let's say and um
0:16what i tried to do was read it and to
0:19read something
0:20you don't just follow the words
0:23and follow the meaning but you
0:26take apart the sentences and you ask
0:29yourself
0:30at this level of phrase and at the level
0:32of sentence and at the level of
0:33paragraph
0:35is this true are there counter arguments
0:38that can be
0:39put forward that are credible is this
0:41solid
0:42thinking and i have to tell you
0:46and i'm not trying to be flippant here
0:48that i have
0:49rarely read a tract now i read it when i
0:52was 18. it was a long time ago right
0:54that's
0:5540 years ago but i've rarely read a
0:57track that made as many errors per
0:59sentence
1:00conceptual heirs per sentence as the
1:01communist manifesto
1:03it was quite a miraculous re-read it and
1:06it was interesting to think about it
1:08psychologically as well because
1:10i've read student papers that were of
1:13the same ilk in some sense although i'm
1:15not
1:16suggesting that they were of the same
1:17level of glittering literary brilliance
1:20and polemic quality and i also
1:23understand that the communist manifesto
1:24was a call for revolution and not
1:26a standard logical argument but that
1:28notwithstanding
1:30i have some things to say about the
1:32authors psychologically
1:33the first thing is that it doesn't seem
1:35to me that either marx or ingles
1:38grappled with one fundamental with this
1:40particular fundamental truth which is
1:42that
1:43um almost all ideas are wrong
1:47and so if you and it doesn't matter if
1:49they're your ideas or someone else's
1:51ideas
1:52they're probably wrong and even if they
1:54strike you with the force of brilliance
1:56your job is to assume first of all that
1:58they're probably wrong
1:59and then to assault them with everything
2:02you have in your
2:03arsenal and see if they can survive and
2:06what
2:06what struck me about the communist
2:08manifesto was it was akin to something
2:10jung said about
2:12typical thinking and this was the
2:13thinking of people who weren't trained
2:15to think
2:16he said that the typical thinker has a
2:18thought it appears to them
2:20like an object might appear in a room
2:22the thought appears
2:24and then they just they just accept it
2:26as true
2:27they don't go the second step which is
2:30to think
2:31about the thinking and that's the real
2:33essence of critical thinking and so
2:35that's what you try to teach people in
2:37university is to
2:39read a text and to think about it
2:40critically not to destroy the utility of
2:42the text
2:44but to separate the wheat from the chaff
2:46and so what i tried to do when i was
2:48reading the communist manifesto was to
2:50separate the wheat from the chaff and
2:52i'm afraid i found
2:54some wheat yes but mostly chaff and i'm
2:57going to explain why
2:58um hopefully in relatively short order
3:02so i'm going to outline 10 of the
3:05fundamental
3:05axioms of the communist manifesto and so
3:09these are
3:09truths that are basically held as
3:11self-evident
3:12by the authors and um they're truths
3:15that are presented in some sense as
3:16unquestioned
3:17and i'm going to question them and tell
3:20you why
3:21i think they're unreliable
3:24now we should remember that this tract
3:26was actually written 170 years ago
3:29that's a long time ago and we have
3:31learned a fair bit from
3:33since then about human nature about
3:35society about politics about economics
3:37there's lots of mysteries left to be
3:39unsolved but left to be solved but
3:41we are slightly wiser i presume
3:44than we were at one point and so you can
3:46forgive the authors to some degree for
3:48what they didn't know
3:49but that doesn't matter given that
3:52the essence of this doctrine is still
3:55held as
3:56sanchros act by a large proportion of
4:00academics probably
4:03are among the most what would you call
4:06guilty
4:07of that particular sin
4:10so here's proposition number one
4:13history is to be viewed primarily as an
4:16economic
4:16class struggle all right so so let's
4:20think about that for a minute
4:22um the first of all is there the
4:25proposition there is that history is
4:26primarily to be viewed through an
4:28economic lens
4:29and i think that's a debatable
4:31proposition because
4:32there are many other motivations that
4:34drive human beings
4:35than economics and those have to be
4:37taken into account
4:39especially that drive people other than
4:40economic competition
4:43like economic cooperation for example
4:45and so that's a problem
4:46the other problem is that it's actually
4:48not nearly
4:49a pessimistic enough um description of
4:53the actual problem because
4:54history history
4:58this is to give the devil is due
5:02the idea that one of the driving forces
5:04between history
5:05is hierarchical struggle is absolutely
5:09true
5:10but the idea that that's actually
5:13history is not true because
5:14it's deeper than history it's biology
5:16itself because
5:18organisms of all sorts organize
5:20themselves into hierarchies
5:21and one of the problems with hierarchies
5:23is that they tend to arrange themselves
5:26into a winner-take-all situation and so
5:29and that that is implicit in some sense
5:31in marx marx's thinking because of
5:33course marx believed that
5:34in a capitalist society capital would
5:36accumulate in the hands of fewer and
5:38fewer people
5:39and that actually is in keeping with the
5:41nature of hierarchical organizations
5:43now the problem with that isn't so much
5:46the fact of the so there's the there's
5:50accuracy in the accusation
5:52that that is a eternal form of
5:55motivation for struggle but it's an
5:57underestimation of the seriousness of
5:59the problem
6:00because it attributes it to the
6:02structure of human societies
6:04rather than the deeper reality of the
6:06existence of hierarchical structures per
6:08se
6:08which as they also characterize the
6:11animal kingdom to a large degree
6:12are clearly not only human constructions
6:15and the idea that there's hierarchical
6:18competition among human beings
6:20there's evidence for that that goes back
6:22at least to the paleolithic times
6:24and so that's the next problem is that
6:26well
6:27the this ancient problem of hierarchical
6:30structure
6:32is clearly not attributable to
6:34capitalism
6:35because it existed
6:38long in human history before capitalism
6:40existed and then it predated human
6:42history itself so the question then
6:45arises
6:46why would you necessarily at least
6:48implicitly link
6:50the class struggle with capitalism given
6:52that it's a far deeper problem
6:54and now it's also you've got to
6:55understand that this is a deeper problem
6:57for people on the left
6:58not just for people on the right it is
7:00the case that hierarchical structures
7:01dispossess
7:02those people who are at the bottom those
7:04creatures who are at the bottom
7:06speaking say of animals but those people
7:08who are at the bottom
7:09and that that is a fundamental
7:10existential problem
7:12but the other thing that marx didn't
7:13seem to take into account is that
7:15there there are far more reasons that
7:17human beings
7:19struggle than their economic class
7:21struggle even if you
7:23build the hierarchical idea into that
7:24which is a more
7:26super comprehensive way of thinking
7:27about it human beings
7:29struggle with themselves with the
7:31malevolence that's inside themselves
7:32with the evil that they're capable of
7:34doing
7:34with the spiritual and psychological
7:36warfare that goes on within them
7:38and we're also actually always
7:41at odds with nature and this never seems
7:44to show up in marx and it doesn't show
7:45up in marxist
7:46marxism in general it's as if nature
7:49doesn't exist
7:50the primary conflict as far as i'm
7:52concerned or a
7:53primary conflict that human beings
7:56engage in
7:56is this struggle for life in a cruel and
7:59harsh natural world
8:01and it's as if it says if that doesn't
8:04exist in the marxist domain
8:06if human beings have a problem it's
8:08because there's a class struggle that's
8:09essentially economic it's like no
8:11human beings have problems because we
8:13come into the life
8:15starving and lonesome and we have to
8:17solve that problem continually and we
8:19make our social arrangements at least in
8:21part
8:21to ameliorate that as well as to
8:24as to well upon occasion exacerbated and
8:27so there's also
8:28very little understanding in the
8:30communist manifesto
8:31that any of the like say hierarchical
8:35organizations that human beings have put
8:37together
8:37might have a positive element and that's
8:39an absolute catastrophe because
8:41hierarchical structures are actually
8:43necessary to solve complicated social
8:45problems
8:46we have to organize ourselves in some
8:47manner and you have to give the devil as
8:49due
8:50and so it is the case that hierarchies
8:52dispossess
8:53people and that's a big problem that's
8:55the fundamental problem of inequality
8:57but it's also the case that hierarchies
8:59happen to be a very efficient way of
9:00distributing resources
9:01and it's finally the case that human
9:04hierarchies
9:05are not fundamentally predicated on
9:07power
9:08and i would say that biological
9:10anthropological
9:11data on that or crystal clear you don't
9:14rise
9:14to a position of authority that's
9:17reliable in a human society
9:19primarily by exploiting other people
9:21it's a very unstable
9:22means of obtaining power so so that's a
9:25problem
9:29well the people that laugh might do it
9:30that way
9:40okay now the other another problem that
9:42comes up right away is that
9:43marx also assumes that you can think
9:46about history as a binary class struggle
9:48with clear divisions between say the
9:50proletariat proletariat
9:52and the bourgeoisie and that's actually
9:54a problem because
9:55it's not so easy to make a firm division
9:58between whose
9:59exploiter and whose exploitee let's say
10:03because it's not obvious like in the
10:06case of small
10:07shareholders let's say whether or not
10:09they happen to be part of the oppressed
10:11or part of the oppressor this actually
10:13turned out to be a big problem
10:15in the russian revolution and by big
10:17problem i mean
10:18tremendously big problem because it
10:21turned out that you could fragment
10:23people into multiple
10:24identities and that that's a fairly easy
10:26thing to do and you could usually find
10:28some access along which they were part
10:31of the oppressor class
10:33it might have been a consequence of
10:34their education or it might have been a
10:35consequence
10:36of their of their of their uh
10:39of the wealth that they strived to
10:42accumulate during their life
10:43or it might have been a consequence of
10:44the fact that they had parents
10:46or grandparents who were educated or
10:48rich or that they were a member of the
10:49priesthood or that they were socialists
10:51or
10:52anyways that the listing of how it was
10:54possible for you to be bourgeois
10:56instead of proletariat grew immensely
10:59and that was one of the reasons that the
11:01red terror
11:02claimed all the victims that it claimed
11:04and so that was a huge problem
11:06it was probably most exemplified by the
11:08demolition of the kulaks
11:10who were basically peasants peasant
11:13farmers although
11:14effective ones in the soviet union who
11:16had managed to raise themselves
11:18out of serfdom over a period of about 40
11:20years and to gather
11:21some some degree of material security
11:24about them
11:25and about 1.8 million of them were
11:27exiled
11:28about 400 000 were killed and the net
11:31consequence of that
11:33removal of their private property
11:35because of their bourgeois status
11:37was arguably the death of six million
11:40ukrainians in the famines of the 1930s
11:42and so the binary class struggle idea
11:45that was a bad idea
11:46that was a very very bad idea it's also
11:49bad
11:50in this way and that and this is a real
11:51sleight of hand that marx pulls off as
11:53you have a binary class division
11:56proletariat bourgeoisie and you have an
11:58implicit idea
11:59that all of the good is on the side of
12:01the proletariat
12:02and all of the evil is on the side of
12:04the bourgeoisie
12:05and that's classic group identity
12:07thinking you know it's one of the
12:08reasons i don't like identity
12:10politics is because once you divide
12:12people into groups and pit them against
12:14one another
12:14it's very easy to assume that all the
12:16evil in the world can be attributed to
12:18one group
12:19the hypothetical oppressors and all the
12:21good to the other
12:22and that
12:26well and that's that's that's naive
12:28that's naive beyond comprehension
12:29because
12:30um it's absolutely foolish to make the
12:32presumption that you can identify
12:34someone's moral worth with their
12:36economic standing so and that actually
12:38turned out to be
12:39a real problem as well because
12:43um
12:49marx also came up with this idea which
12:51is a crazy idea as far as i can tell
12:54of the that's a technical term crazy
12:56idea
12:57of the dictatorship of the proletariat
12:59and that's the next
13:01idea that i really stumbled across it
13:03was like okay so what's the problem
13:04well the problem is the capitalists own
13:07everything they own all the means of
13:08production
13:09and they're oppressing everyone that
13:11would be all the workers
13:13and there's going to be a race to the
13:14bottom of wages for the workers as the
13:16capitalists strive to extract more and
13:18more
13:20value from the labor of the proletariat
13:22by competing with other capitalists to
13:24drive wages downward which by the way
13:26didn't happen
13:27partly because wages wage earners can
13:30become scarce and that actually drives
13:31the market value upward
13:33but the fact that that you
13:36assume a priori that all the evil can be
13:40attributed to the capitalists and all
13:42the good that the bourgeoisie and all
13:44the good could be attributed to the
13:46proletariat meant that you could
13:48hypothesize that a dictatorship of the
13:51proletariat could come about and that
13:52was the
13:53the first stage in the communist
13:55revolution and remember this is a call
13:56for revolution and
13:58not just revolution but bloody violent
14:00revolution
14:01and the overthrow of all overthrowing of
14:03all existing social structures
14:21um anyways the the the
14:25the problem with that you see is that
14:28because all the evil isn't divided so
14:29easily up into oppressor and oppressed
14:32that when you do establish a dictator of
14:34the proletariat to the degree that you
14:36can do that which you actually can't
14:37because it's technically impossible
14:39and an absurd thing to consider to begin
14:41with not least because of the problem of
14:43centralization
14:44i mean you have to hypothesize that you
14:46can take away all the property of the
14:48capitalists
14:49you can replace the capitalist class
14:51with a minority of proletariats
14:54how they're going to be chosen isn't
14:55exactly clear in the communist manifesto
14:58that none of the people who are from the
14:59proletariat class are going to be
15:01corrupted
15:02by that sudden access to power because
15:05they're
15:06well by definition good so so then you
15:08have the good people who are running the
15:10world
15:10and you also have them centralized so
15:13that they can make
15:14decision decisions that are insanely
15:16complicated to make
15:17in fact impossibly complicated to make
15:20and so that's a failure conceptually on
15:22both
15:23dimensions because first of all all the
15:25proletariat aren't going to be good
15:27and when you give put people in the same
15:30position as the evil capitalists
15:32especially if you believe that social
15:34pressure is one of the determining
15:35factors of human character which the
15:37marxists certainly believe
15:38then why wouldn't you assume that the
15:40proletariat would immediately become
15:42as or more corrupt than the capitalists
15:44which is of course i would say exactly
15:46what happened every time this experiment
15:48was run
15:49and then
15:54the next problem is well what makes you
15:57think that you can take some system as
15:59complicated as
16:00like capitalist free market society
16:04and centralize that and put
16:06decision-making power in the hands of a
16:08few people
16:09the mechanisms by
16:12without specifying the mechanisms by
16:14which you're going to choose them like
16:16what makes you think they're going to
16:17have the wisdom or the ability to do
16:19what the capitalists were doing
16:22unless you assume as marx did that all
16:24of the evil was with the capitalists and
16:26all the good was with the proletariats
16:28and that nothing that capitalists did
16:30constituted valid labor which is another
16:33thing that marx assumed
16:34which is palpably absurd because people
16:37who are
16:38like maybe if you're a dissolute
16:40aristocrat from 1830
16:43and or earlier and you run a feudal
16:45estate and all you do is spend your time
16:47gambling and and and chasing prostitutes
16:50well
16:50then the your labor value is zero but if
16:53you're
16:54if you're running a business and and
16:55it's a successful business first of all
16:57you're a bloody fool to explo
16:59exploit your workers because even if
17:01you're greedy as
17:02sin because you're not going to extract
17:04the maximum amount of labor out of them
17:06by doing that
17:07and the notion that you're adding no
17:08productive value as a manager rather
17:11than a capitalist is
17:12it's absolutely absurd all it does is
17:15indicate that
17:16you either know nothing whatsoever about
17:18how an actual business
17:19works or you refuse to know anything
17:22about how an
17:23actual business works so that's
17:30that's also a that's also a big problem
17:33so then the next problem is the
17:36criticism of profit
17:38it's like well what what's wrong with
17:40profit
17:41exactly what what's the problem with
17:43profit well the idea
17:45from the marxist perspective was that
17:46profit was theft
17:48you know but profit well can be theft
17:51because crooked people can run companies
17:53and so sometimes profit is theft but
17:55that certainly doesn't mean
17:56that it's always threat theft what it
17:59means
17:59in part at least if the capitalist is
18:02adding value to the corporation then
18:05there's some utility
18:07and some fairness in him or her
18:10extracting the value of their
18:12abstract labor their thought their
18:15abstract abilities
18:16their ability to manage the company and
18:19to
18:19engage in proper competition and product
18:21development and efficiency
18:23and the proper treatment of the workers
18:25and all of that and then if they can
18:26create a profit well then they have a
18:28little bit of security for times that
18:30aren't so good and
18:31that seems absolutely bloody necessary
18:33as far as i'm concerned
18:35and then the next thing is well how can
18:37you grow
18:38if you don't have a profit and if you
18:40have an enterprise that's valuable and
18:41worthwhile and
18:42some enterprises are valuable and
18:44worthwhile then it seems to me that a
18:46little bit of profit to help you grow
18:47seems to be the right approach and so
18:50and then the other issue with profit and
18:52you know this if you've ever run a
18:54business is it's really useful
18:55constraint
18:56you know like it's not enough to have a
18:58good idea
18:59it's not a good enough to have a good
19:00idea and a sales and marketing plan
19:03and then to implement that and all of
19:04that that's bloody difficult like it's
19:06not
19:06easy to have a good idea and it's not
19:08easy to come up with a good
19:10sales and marketing plan and it's not
19:11easy to find
19:13customers and satisfy them and so if you
19:16allow
19:17profit to to constitute a limitation
19:20on what it is that you might reasonably
19:22attempt it provides a good constraint on
19:25on wasted labor
19:30and so most of the things that i've done
19:31in my life even psychologically that
19:33were designed to help people's
19:34psychological health
19:35i tried to run on a for-profit basis and
19:38the reason for what
19:39that was apart from the fact that i'm
19:41not averse to making a profit
19:42partly so my enterprises can grow but
19:44was also so that
19:46there were forms of stupidity that i
19:47couldn't engage in because i would be
19:49punished by the market enough to
19:51eradicate the enterprise
19:52and so
19:53[Applause]
20:00okay and then so the next the next issue
20:02this is a weird one
20:04so marx and angles also assume that this
20:08dictatorship of the proletariat which
20:10involves absurd centralization
20:13the overwhelming probability of
20:15corruption
20:16and impossible computation as the
20:19proletariat now try to
20:21rationally compute the manner in which
20:22an entire market economy
20:24could run which cannot be done because
20:27it's far too complicated for anybody to
20:29think through
20:31the next theory is that somehow the
20:34proletariat dictatorship would become
20:36magically hyperproductive
20:38and there's actually no theory at all
20:42about how that's going to happen and so
20:44i had to infer the theory and the theory
20:46seems to be that
20:47once you eradicate the bourgeoisie
20:50because they're evil
20:51and you get rid of their private
20:53property and you
20:55you you you eradicate the profit motive
20:58then all of a sudden magically the small
21:00percentage of the proletariat
21:02who now run the society determine how
21:06they can make
21:07their productive enterprises
21:11productive enough so they become hyper
21:13productive now and they need to become
21:14hyper productive
21:16for the last error to be logically
21:19coherent in relationship to the marxist
21:22theory which is that
21:23at some point the proletariat the
21:25dictatorship of the proletariat will
21:27become so hyper productive
21:28that there'll be enough material goods
21:31for
21:31everyone across all dimensions and when
21:34that happens then what people will do is
21:37spontaneously engage in meaningful
21:40creative labor which is what they had
21:43been alienated
21:44from in the capitalist horror show and
21:47the utopia will be magically ushered in
21:49but there's no
21:51indication about how that
21:52hyperproductivity is going to come about
21:54and there's no also there's also no
21:56understanding that
21:58well that isn't the utopia that is going
22:01to suit everyone
22:02because there are great differences
22:04between people
22:06and some people are going to find what
22:08they want in
22:09love and some are going to find it in
22:11social being and some
22:13are going to find it in conflict and
22:15competition and some are going to find
22:17it in creativity as marx pointed out
22:19but the notion that that that will
22:21necessarily be the end
22:23goal for the utopian state is
22:26preposterous and
22:27then there's the dostoyevsky observation
22:29too which is one not to be taken lightly
22:31which is
22:32what sort of shallow conception of
22:33people do you have that makes you think
22:36that
22:36if you gave people enough bread and cake
22:39and the dostoevsky in terms and
22:41nothing to do with busy them to be
22:43except busy themselves with the
22:44continued
22:45continuity of the species that they
22:47would all of a sudden become
22:49peaceful and heavenly dostoyevsky's idea
22:52was that
22:52you know we were built for trouble and
22:54if we were ever handed everything we
22:56were we needed on a silver platter
22:58the first thing we would do is engage in
23:00some form of creative destruction
23:02just so something unexpected could
23:04happen just so we could have the
23:05adventure of our lives
23:07and i think there's something well
23:08there's something to be said for that
23:15so and then the last error let's say
23:18although
23:18by no means the last was this and this
23:20is one of the strangest parts of the
23:22communist manifest it was
23:24marx it agree admits and angles admit
23:27repeatedly in the communist manifesto
23:30that there has never been a system of
23:31production
23:32in the history of the world that was as
23:34effective at producing
23:36material commodities in excess than
23:38capitalism
23:39like that's that's extensively
23:41documented in the communist manifesto
23:44and so if your proposition is look we
23:46got to get as much
23:47material security for everyone as we
23:50as as possible as fast as we can
23:54and capitalism already seems to be doing
23:55that at a rate that's unparalleled in
23:57human history
23:58wouldn't the logical thing be just to
24:00let the damn system play itself out
24:02i mean unless you're assuming that the
24:04evil capitalists are just going to take
24:06all of the flat screen televisions and
24:08put them in one big room
24:10and not let anyone else have one the
24:13logical assumption is that well you're
24:15already on a road that's supposed to
24:17produce the proper
24:18material productivity and so well that's
24:21ten reasons as far as i can tell that
24:23and so what i saw in that that the
24:26communist manifesto is
24:27is like seriously flawed in in virtually
24:30every way it could possibly be flawed
24:32and also all in in
24:37evidence that marx was the kind of
24:40narcissistic thinker
24:42who could think he was he was very
24:45intelligent person and so was angles
24:47but what he thought what he thought when
24:50he thought was that what he thought was
24:52correct
24:53and he never went the second stage which
24:55is wait a second
24:57how could all of this go terribly wrong
25:01and if you're a thinker especially a
25:03sociological thinker especially a
25:04thinker on the broad scale
25:06a social scientist for example one of
25:09your moral obligations
25:10is to think you know you might be wrong
25:12about one of your fundamental axioms or
25:14two or three or ten
25:16and as a consequence you have the moral
25:19obligation to walk through the damn
25:21system and think
25:22well what if i'm completely wrong here
25:24and things invert and go exactly the
25:26wrong way
25:27like i can't i just can't understand how
25:29anybody could come up with an idea like
25:31the dictatorship of the proletariat
25:33especially after
25:34advocating its implementation for with
25:38violent means which is a direct part of
25:39the communist manifesto
25:41and actually think if they were thinking
25:45if they knew anything about human beings
25:47and the proclivity for malevolence
25:49that's part and parcel of the individual
25:51human being
25:52that that could do anything but lead to
25:54a special form of hell
25:56which is precisely what did happen and
25:58so i'm going to close
25:59because i have three minutes with with
26:02a bit of evidence as well that um
26:08marx also thought that what would happen
26:11inevitably as a consequence of
26:12capitalism
26:13is that rich would get richer and the
26:15poor would get poorer
26:17so there would be inequality the first
26:18thing i'd like to say is we do not know
26:20how to set up a human system
26:22of economics without inequality no one
26:24has ever managed it
26:25including the communists and the form of
26:28in inequality changed and it's not
26:31obvious by any stretch of imagination
26:33that the free market economies of the
26:35west have more
26:36inequality than the less free economies
26:39in the rest of the world
26:40and the one thing you can say about
26:42capitalism is that although it produces
26:44inequality
26:44which it absolutely does it also
26:46produces wealth and all the other
26:48systems
26:49don't they just produce inequality
26:58so here's here's a few stats here's a
27:01few free market stats okay
27:04um from 1800 to 2017
27:07income growth adjusted for inflation
27:09grew by 40 times by for production
27:11workers and 16 times
27:13for unskilled labor um well gdp fact
27:17gdp rose by a factor of about 0.5
27:20from 180 to 1800 so from 180 to 1800 a.d
27:24it was like
27:25nothing flat and then all of a sudden in
27:28the last
27:29217 years there's been this unbelievably
27:32upward movement of wealth
27:34and it doesn't only characterize the
27:36tiny percentage of people at the top
27:38who admittedly do have most of the
27:40wealth
27:41the question is not only though what's
27:43the inequality the question is well
27:44what's happening to the absolutely poor
27:46at the bottom
27:47and the answer to that is they're
27:49getting richer faster now than they ever
27:51have in the history of the world
27:52and we're eradicating poverty in
27:55countries
27:56that have adopted moderate free market
27:59policies at a rate that's unparalleled
28:01so here's an example
28:02the u.n millenni one of the u.n
28:04millennial goals to was to reduce the
28:06the rate of absolute poverty in the
28:08world by 50
28:10between 2000 and 2015 and they defined
28:13that as a dollar 90 a day
28:14pretty low you know but you have to
28:16start somewhere
28:18um we be we we hit that at 2012. three
28:21years ahead of schedule
28:22and you might be cynical about that and
28:24say well it's kind of an arbitrary
28:25number
28:25but the curves are exactly the same at
28:29dollars and 3.80 cents a day and seven
28:30dollars and sixty cents a day not as
28:32many people have hit that but
28:33the rate of increase towards that is the
28:35same the bloody u.n
28:37thinks that we'll be out of poverty
28:39defined by a dollar ninety a day by the
28:41year twenty thirty
28:42it's unparalleled and so so the so the
28:45rich may be getting richer but the poor
28:47are getting richer too and that's
28:49that's not the look i'll leave it at
28:51that
28:52um because i'm out of time but one of
28:55the i'll leave it with this
28:56um
29:02the poor are not getting poor under
29:04capitalism
29:06the poor are getting richer under
29:07capitalism by a large margin
29:10and i'll leave you with one statistic
29:12which is that now
29:14um in in africa the child mortality rate
29:17in africa
29:18now is the same as the child mortality
29:20rate was in europe in 1952
29:23and so that's happened within the span
29:24of one lifetime and so if you're for the
29:27poor
29:27if you're for the poor if you're
29:29actually concerned that the poorest
29:31people in the world
29:32rise above their starvation levels then
29:35the all the evidence suggests that the
29:37best way to do that is to implement
29:38something approximating a free market
29:40economy

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