Jordan Peterson: Why Communism Doesn't Work — Transcript

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1. 0:01john you we were circling around
2. 0:03the idea of socialism and communism uh
3. 0:06a little bit i wanted to ask you given
4. 0:09what you as a psychologist
5. 0:10know about human beings do you think
6. 0:13that
7. 0:14there's something fundamentally
8. 0:16incompatible with in that
9. 0:18world view with humanity or do you think
10. 0:21quote-unquote hasn't been tried properly
11. 0:24oh well it hasn't been tried properly
12. 0:27means that the world hasn't been
13. 0:28fortunate enough to have
14. 0:30me run it that's that's the constant
15. 0:33claim well it hasn't been tried properly
16. 0:34what that means is well i understand
17. 0:36this system deeply and if those
18. 0:38if if i was in charge or people like me
19. 0:40then it would work
20. 0:41it's like no it wouldn't that's that's
21. 0:44what would happen is you'd be wiped out
22. 0:45by the next
23. 0:46batch that were even worse than you
24. 0:48that's what would happen
25. 0:50so it's such an arrogant claim that it
26. 0:52hasn't been tried properly
27. 0:54it's so but having said that
28. 0:57like it's not i understand the
29. 0:59motivation for
30. 1:01uh like the desire for an egalitarian
31. 1:05distribution of of valuable resources
32. 1:07and we should walk through that
33. 1:09so uh it systems have a tendency
34. 1:13marx commented on this but it's much
35. 1:16deeper than marx's
36. 1:17uh realization systems have a tendency
37. 1:20to
38. 1:21radically distribute resources unequally
39. 1:25and that's really destabilizing
40. 1:29yep so and there's a couple of reasons
41. 1:32for that one reason is
42. 1:34um as you get more
43. 1:37you're offered more so i'm in a position
44. 1:40now where
45. 1:41i am offered an indefinite array of
46. 1:44opportunities
47. 1:46and i don't need them i'm not ungrateful
48. 1:49for it but
49. 1:51once you're saturated with opportunities
50. 1:54and your time is completely taken up
51. 1:56more opportunities can't be utilized and
52. 1:59so
53. 2:01and if you have money well it's way
54. 2:03easier to make more money i mean you can
55. 2:05lose it too but
56. 2:06it's way easier to make more money once
57. 2:08you've got started
58. 2:09and so once you are educated you have
59. 2:12some capital you have a connection
60. 2:14network
61. 2:15um and then let's say on in in addition
62. 2:18to that you're well known
63. 2:22you can just multiply that endlessly and
64. 2:24but then on the other end of things if
65. 2:26you have
66. 2:26nothing well you can't even afford to
67. 2:29get
68. 2:30started yeah so like if you start a
69. 2:32business
70. 2:33the most difficult customer to get is
71. 2:35the first one
72. 2:36once you have 10 getting a 100 is not
73. 2:38that hard but
74. 2:40getting from zero to one is virtually
75. 2:42impossible
76. 2:43and so zero is a really tough
77. 2:46it's a hole that's really hard to climb
78. 2:48out of and it's not good for society
79. 2:51to have a lot of people at zero
80. 2:54so there's this propensity for people to
81. 2:57fall off the end and to
82. 3:00degenerate down to zero and another
83. 3:02propensity for resources to aggregate in
84. 3:04the hands of very very small number of
85. 3:06people and it
86. 3:06look it doesn't matter what dimension
87. 3:10you measure that on so
88. 3:11if you look up among basketball players
89. 3:13you look at
90. 3:15successful number of points scored
91. 3:18there's a few people way out on the
92. 3:20extreme if you look at number of records
93. 3:23sold records produced
94. 3:25songs written popular songs written it's
95. 3:27like uh
96. 3:28five composers account for 95
97. 3:32of the classical repertoire but it's
98. 3:34only
99. 3:355 of the music they wrote that's played
100. 3:39and so you see that happening in two
101. 3:41ways there
102. 3:42and the problem with that is that it
103. 3:45produces this radical inequality
104. 3:48in society and that's really
105. 3:51unsettling because you have a mechanism
106. 3:54that's very deeply embedded within you
107. 3:56that runs
108. 3:57as far as we can tell on serotonin a
109. 4:00fundamental brain chemical
110. 4:02and the the degree to which serotonin
111. 4:06regulates your negative emotion
112. 4:08is dependent on your status within the
113. 4:11group that you
114. 4:13strive for status within and what that
115. 4:16means is that
116. 4:18if you're on the bottom end of the
117. 4:20status hierarchy
118. 4:22you're much more prone to negative
119. 4:24emotion
120. 4:25and that actually hurts you physically
121. 4:27you're you'll die sooner you'll age
122. 4:30faster
123. 4:30you'll develop all the age-related
124. 4:32diseases faster it's a real
125. 4:34calamity psychologically and physically
126. 4:38and so there's endless motivation to to
127. 4:41to work against that tendency for
128. 4:44resources to be distributed so unequally
129. 4:47the problem is we don't know how to do
130. 4:50it
131. 4:51it's so power is such a powerful force
132. 4:53we don't know how to do it and
133. 4:54simultaneously
134. 4:56maintain creative and productive
135. 4:58endeavor for example
136. 5:01so because you want you want everything
137. 5:04to be more productive
138. 5:06right because you try to wipe out
139. 5:08absolute poverty
140. 5:10and maybe even give everyone you can a
141. 5:12certain amount of luxury
142. 5:14and maybe that's even better for the
143. 5:15planet because richer people tend to
144. 5:17take better care of the environment
145. 5:18so you want absolute wealth to rise and
146. 5:21you don't want inequality to
147. 5:24become too extreme but the systems that
148. 5:27have been set up to manage that
149. 5:29are not good at it they don't work you