WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:45.680 Mahler. And I'm still woe. 00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:49.920 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the evils of 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:56.960 capitalism. Capitalism is effectively a competing moral system that we 00:00:56.960 --> 00:00:59.680 have all been inculcated in our entire lives. 00:00:59.680 --> 00:01:02.880 So just saying the evils of capitalism, I'm sure made some people 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:03.840 angry already. 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:07.360 That's one of the things that we enjoy doing here is pushing 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:09.600 buttons that no one ever pushes. 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:14.160 The reason that we're tackling capitalism today is that as I mentioned 00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:16.880 a few weeks ago when we were talking about the Reformation, there's 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:20.560 a lot of confusion of kind. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:24.640 So I mentioned the Reformation episode that there's the history of the 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:28.880 Western Christian Church and the fact that for a long time Roman 00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:32.000 Catholicism was the only Christianity in town. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:35.680 And so when someone looks back prior to fifteen hundred, there are 00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:38.720 those who say, Well, if it's Christian, then it is Roman Catholic 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:42.080 and therefore they're interchangeable, without being able to separate the things that 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:47.360 were distinctly Roman Catholic from the things that were more generally Christian. 00:01:47.360 --> 00:01:49.440 Catholicism kind of works the same way. 00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:53.840 We're going to go through a definition from Mises.org. 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:57.200 As I mentioned before, I used to be huge into Austrian economics. 00:01:57.200 --> 00:01:59.520 I read a lot more about that than I've read or ever 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:02.320 read about theology, wish I could have that time back because it 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:03.200 was a waste. 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:05.120 But I learned some interesting things. 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:07.120 It turned out mostly to be false. 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:11.280 They're the number one resource for finding out what the best form 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:12.880 of these ideas are. 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:16.880 So we're going to use their definition of capitalism to show what 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:18.160 complete nonsense it is. 00:02:18.160 --> 00:02:20.000 As we go through it, I'm going to be laughing a lot 00:02:20.160 --> 00:02:22.080 because some of it's just fake. 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:27.600 false. It's is literally historically just wrong. 00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:28.720 It's a lie. 00:02:28.720 --> 00:02:31.200 And yet it's the sort of thing that as you are listening 00:02:31.280 --> 00:02:35.280 and we say capitalism is bad, everyone is going to be thinking, 00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:37.120 oh, you don't like private property? 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:40.880 Oh, you don't like prices for things being low? 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:42.400 Oh, you want communism? 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:43.600 Are you a socialist? 00:02:43.600 --> 00:02:48.640 Like these are all the knee-jerk responses to any criticism of capitalism. 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:51.680 And the problem here that we're facing is that there's been a 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:57.840 complete confusion of the category of the capitalist moral system with just 00:02:57.840 --> 00:03:02.400 basic human action, which to Ludwig von Mis' credit, that is his 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:05.520 magmopus was titled human action. 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:09.680 That is a good description of human economic activity. 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:11.120 It's human action. 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:16.400 And he adopted the path of praxeology to describe a sort of 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:19.600 science of human action and how people would make choices, trying to 00:03:19.600 --> 00:03:21.200 be neutral about it. 00:03:21.200 --> 00:03:24.320 It's kind of one of those spurgy things that is another problem 00:03:24.320 --> 00:03:28.080 when we're talking about a subject Like this, you know, there's we're 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:30.320 gonna give their definition of capitalism. 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:34.160 You will almost undoubtedly, if you've ever studied this, disagree with some 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:34.800 aspect of it. 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:38.160 And so say, Oh, well, no, there's this other better definition with 00:03:38.160 --> 00:03:41.840 these different terms, and so if you'd only address that one instead, 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:44.160 all your criticisms would be invalid. 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:48.160 What we're going to do today is firstly we're going to carve 00:03:48.160 --> 00:03:52.160 out all the things that capitalism takes credit for, that it has 00:03:52.160 --> 00:03:55.920 no claim on, because they've existed for thousands of years, before anything 00:03:55.920 --> 00:03:58.560 that anyone would have considered capitalism existed. 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:03.120 And secondarily, we're going to illustrate that what is left of capitalism 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:08.320 that is actually some of its novel contributions to human action are 00:04:08.320 --> 00:04:09.200 all evil. 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:12.480 It's all bad things that hurt your neighbor in ways that you 00:04:12.480 --> 00:04:17.760 wouldn't be hurting your neighbor without the moral license from the religion 00:04:17.760 --> 00:04:20.240 of capitalism, which is fundamentally what it is. 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:24.720 So we'll we'll make that case throughout this hour or two. 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:26.080 Please hear it out. 00:04:26.080 --> 00:04:28.400 One other thing that I want to say up front, we're not 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:29.920 gonna offer any alternative. 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:34.240 We're not gonna say instead of this, do this other thing instead. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:36.320 This is explicitly a critique. 00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:37.920 And no, we're not being lazy. 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:39.600 And no, we're not being shifty. 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:42.720 It is entirely permissible to look at a thing as it is 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:46.160 and say, okay, here's an existing functioning system. 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:47.600 Here's what these people do. 00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:48.640 Here's how it all works. 00:04:48.640 --> 00:04:50.800 That's here's what we've all bought into. 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:54.160 Is it achieving the goals it was intended to achieve? 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:56.400 Is it achieving harmful things? 00:04:56.400 --> 00:04:57.920 Is it hurting people? 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:01.840 That is entirely not only permissible, but it's necessary. 00:05:01.840 --> 00:05:04.320 It's something should have been going on for hundreds of years, and 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:06.480 pretty much just kind of went by the wayside. 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:11.280 So today, when a man speaks out against capitalism, of course you're 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:12.320 going to think he's a commie. 00:05:12.640 --> 00:05:15.840 Of course he's some radical leftist, because they will criticize it. 00:05:15.840 --> 00:05:20.160 You know, critique itself is something that Marx sort of formalized. 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:21.680 We're not being Marxist here. 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:26.000 In fact, capitalism itself as a category is in a way essentially 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:30.400 Marxist. It is a it's creating the same sort of dichotomy where 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:34.640 assets are and capital are allocated to various classes. 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:39.760 And the fundamental definition of capitalism provided by Mises, you know, dot 00:05:39.760 --> 00:05:42.400 org, not necessarily von Mises himself. 00:05:42.400 --> 00:05:48.080 The definition is effectively the transfer of capital from the bourgeoisie to 00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:48.880 the proletariat. 00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:53.200 That was that was the gist of the big win that they 00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:54.560 are taking credit for. 00:05:54.560 --> 00:05:58.720 So it that that aspect is just it's fundamentally Marxist on its 00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:01.040 face. This isn't an ex episode about Marxism. 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:03.520 We're just going to talk about when we're doing the things that 00:06:03.520 --> 00:06:06.160 we all think are permissible, are we sinning? 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:08.480 And so there's going to be some Bible study in here, but 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:11.200 not a whole lot, because frankly a lot of these things are 00:06:11.200 --> 00:06:12.640 a matter of wisdom. 00:06:12.640 --> 00:06:15.280 You don't need a proof text, and the Bible is not an 00:06:15.280 --> 00:06:16.560 economic treatise. 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:22.000 There are various legitimate ways of going about one's economic activity that 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.600 don't fall afoul of what God commands. 00:06:25.600 --> 00:06:29.600 There are are, however, numerous things that fall afoul of what God 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:31.840 commands that are normal today. 00:06:31.840 --> 00:06:37.600 And not only normal, but again, capitalism as a moral framework necessitates 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:43.360 the pursuit of profit, of the increase of competition and efficiency. 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:45.040 And all of those things 00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:48.960 in some cases do have upsides. 00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:53.520 So we're not condemning those per se, but in every single case, 00:06:53.440 --> 00:06:57.440 the pursuit of those at the expense of neighbor will always be 00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:00.720 sin. So that's the the overview of what we're going to tackle 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:04.480 today. I'm just going to begin briefly by reading through a few 00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:06.720 parts of the definition from Mises.org. 00:07:06.880 --> 00:07:08.560 And we're going to kind of discuss it. 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:11.360 This will be a skeleton and jumping off point. 00:07:11.520 --> 00:07:14.960 Mises.org website begins: What is capitalism? 00:07:14.960 --> 00:07:19.120 The civilization of mankind can be traced to the establishment of property 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:23.520 rights. With property rights, individuals could own land, capital and goods, and 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:25.360 then trade or sell them to others. 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:28.400 This economic activity is referred to as the market. 00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:31.520 This doesn't mean it necessarily takes place in a physical market, it 00:07:31.520 --> 00:07:34.480 simply means the goods and services are voluntarily traded. 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:37.680 For most of human history, property rights have been limited to those 00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:38.400 in power. 00:07:38.400 --> 00:07:42.560 For example, a king or lord had ultimate control over those who 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:44.240 lived under their protection. 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.840 If the king desired beets, farmers were to farm beets. 00:07:47.840 --> 00:07:52.720 If the lord needed horseshoes, blacksmiths forged horseshoes. 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:55.920 Ordinary people had the ability to trade among themselves, but those in 00:07:55.920 --> 00:07:58.720 power could direct their production if they so desired or punish those 00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:00.240 who resisted. 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:03.520 The emergence of p capitalism changed this. 00:08:03.520 --> 00:08:08.640 So when I said there are facially false arguments predicated in the 00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:11.280 definition of capitalism, this is what I'm talking about. 00:08:11.280 --> 00:08:15.680 To say that private property rights emerged as a function of the 00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:16.800 capitalist system 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.600 flies in the face of all recorded human history. 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:24.720 You can go back thirty, seven hundred fifty years to the code 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:26.480 of Hammurabi. 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:31.120 And there are numerous sections that deal specifically with private property rights 00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:32.240 for individuals. 00:08:32.240 --> 00:08:34.640 Now, when you read through the code of Hammurabi, I was reading 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:35.040 it last night. 00:08:35.040 --> 00:08:35.520 It's interesting. 00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:36.480 I recommend reading it. 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:38.480 We'll link in the show notes or you can just find it 00:08:38.480 --> 00:08:44.080 anywhere. When you look through it, there's a clear distinction in classes 00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:47.840 where there are different grades of men in civilization. 00:08:47.840 --> 00:08:50.640 Some are the lowest station, some are the highest station, and they 00:08:50.640 --> 00:08:52.800 have different rights accorded to them. 00:08:52.800 --> 00:08:57.680 But even at the very lowest station, anyone was accorded private property 00:08:57.680 --> 00:08:59.600 rights in the code of Amarabi. 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:01.440 This is nearly four thousand years ago. 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:04.400 This is not that long after the flood. 00:09:04.400 --> 00:09:08.000 One of them reads If anyone is committing a robbery and is 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.480 caught, then he shall be put to death. 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:13.760 Another says, If fire break out in a house and some who 00:09:13.760 --> 00:09:16.560 come to put it out cast his eye upon the property of 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:19.040 the owner of the house and take the property of the master 00:09:19.040 --> 00:09:22.800 of the house, he shall be thrown into the selfsame fire. 00:09:22.800 --> 00:09:26.000 That's dealing not only with private property, but dealing with looters. 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.320 Someone tries to loot your house when it's on fire, you throw 00:09:28.320 --> 00:09:29.200 him in the fire. 00:09:29.200 --> 00:09:31.840 That is a protection of private property. 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:33.920 And Hammurabi didn't make this up. 00:09:33.920 --> 00:09:36.400 This is basically godly morality. 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:39.920 And we know this because three hundred years later, about thirty, four 00:09:39.920 --> 00:09:44.080 hundred, fifty years ago, roughly, give or take, Moses recorded the same 00:09:44.080 --> 00:09:45.440 thing from God's own hand. 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:50.480 Well God recorded on stone tablets by his hand and handed them 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:51.760 to Moses. 00:09:51.760 --> 00:09:56.080 In the Ten Commandments, the entire second table of the Ten Commandments 00:09:56.080 --> 00:09:57.920 is about private property. 00:09:58.080 --> 00:09:59.520 Thou shalt not kill. 00:09:59.520 --> 00:10:02.560 Your life belongs to you above all other men. 00:10:02.560 --> 00:10:06.000 Obviously it doesn't belong to you because in a sense, because we're 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:07.360 all bought with a price. 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:10.160 So in the slavery episode we talked about that. 00:10:10.160 --> 00:10:10.720 And then you have 00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:16.400 your wife, you have your reputation, your goods, your chattels, everything that 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:18.480 belongs to you, your your real property. 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:21.200 All of the different things that are listed in the second half 00:10:21.200 --> 00:10:25.440 of the Ten Commandments are explicitly private property and they're not class 00:10:25.520 --> 00:10:30.080 based. Everyone, every man is accorded the same private property rights. 00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:34.080 So right off the bat, if we say capitalism is evil and 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:37.840 you say, oh, you don't like private property, you've fallen for the 00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:40.880 trap that is found everywhere capitalism is defined. 00:10:40.880 --> 00:10:42.160 It's not just this one page. 00:10:42.160 --> 00:10:44.240 You can look at any any of the various definitions in a 00:10:44.240 --> 00:10:45.680 dozen different places. 00:10:45.680 --> 00:10:52.000 They all predicate the creation of capitalism as that's the beginning of 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:53.280 private property rights. 00:10:53.280 --> 00:10:54.720 It's complete falsehood. 00:10:54.720 --> 00:10:56.560 It's completely false. 00:10:56.560 --> 00:10:58.560 And so right off the bat, one of the things that we 00:10:58.560 --> 00:11:01.360 do treasure, and we should I mean, if you have something that's 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:03.920 yours, that is your treasure, great or small. 00:11:03.920 --> 00:11:05.200 Yeah, there are parables about this. 00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:07.440 If a man has a you know a single calf or a 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:10.880 lamb, it's a greater treasure to him than a king who has 00:11:10.880 --> 00:11:13.840 ten thousand cattle on the hills, 'cause the king has more than 00:11:13.840 --> 00:11:15.200 he could ever need. 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:19.200 The man who has only one thing, that's everything he has. 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:21.040 that's a greater treasure to him. 00:11:21.040 --> 00:11:22.480 And it's his private property. 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:25.920 It's his possessive, the genitive. 00:11:25.920 --> 00:11:31.040 That has spiritual significance because these are blessings from God that are 00:11:31.040 --> 00:11:33.760 distributed by God to us unequally. 00:11:33.760 --> 00:11:35.760 All men are unequal. 00:11:35.760 --> 00:11:42.960 All men receive inequal gifts and abilities and talents and material. 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:45.360 That's part of God's plan. 00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:47.760 So the fact that there are class systems and the different men 00:11:47.760 --> 00:11:52.240 have different stations and different degrees of wealth doesn't reduce the value 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:55.600 of the poorest man for that which has been given to him 00:11:55.600 --> 00:11:58.240 as a gift and for him as a steward. 00:11:58.240 --> 00:12:02.800 So please don't think that capitalism is synonymous with private property because 00:12:02.800 --> 00:12:07.680 it pre exists and it which means it exists without capitalism. 00:12:07.680 --> 00:12:09.840 Capitalism could have never existed. 00:12:09.840 --> 00:12:14.240 None of the premises that you hold dear as a capitalist are 00:12:14.240 --> 00:12:16.880 necessary for private property to exist. 00:12:16.880 --> 00:12:19.280 I think that's a crucial place to begin because a lot of 00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:23.760 what's downstream is predicated on just this sort of nonsense. 00:12:23.920 --> 00:12:29.200 And just reading through that first part of this definition from Mises, 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:32.640 you would almost be tempted to try and give them the benefit 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:36.160 of the doubt and say they're speaking about real property. 00:12:36.160 --> 00:12:40.240 But then they go ahead and list land, capital, and goods. 00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:44.560 And so they're speaking both about real property and chattel or personal 00:12:44.560 --> 00:12:47.440 property. And for those who aren't familiar with the terms, that's just 00:12:47.440 --> 00:12:50.720 the distinction, real property essentially is land. 00:12:50.720 --> 00:12:53.920 There's a little more in the definition, but it's essentially land and 00:12:53.920 --> 00:12:57.840 personal property and chattel property are interchangeable. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:00.800 That would be all of the things you own that are not 00:13:00.800 --> 00:13:06.800 land. And so capitalism really can't claim either of those, but they 00:13:06.800 --> 00:13:09.360 really would have had a stronger argument if they'd tried to just 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:11.120 base it on real property. 00:13:11.360 --> 00:13:18.480 Because the emergence of more widespread ownership of real property and the 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:24.160 recognition of those rights historically to some degree coincides with the rise 00:13:24.160 --> 00:13:28.160 of capitalism, but it's not causally related to it. 00:13:28.160 --> 00:13:32.880 And of course, even historically you had men who owned property, but 00:13:32.880 --> 00:13:36.400 you did have in feudal systems and others like that, it was 00:13:36.400 --> 00:13:39.200 larger ownership of property that was then 00:13:40.080 --> 00:13:45.040 through various contracts and such relationships delegated to others. 00:13:45.040 --> 00:13:47.840 I don't think we need to get into how those worked, even 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:51.600 though they are related to how capitalism arose 00:13:52.640 --> 00:13:56.560 and really it arose as a function of usury, which we'll definitely 00:13:56.560 --> 00:14:00.800 get into in this episode, because you cannot really speak of capitalism 00:14:00.800 --> 00:14:03.200 without speaking of usury. 00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:06.960 There's one specific thing that I want to refer to on feudalism 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:11.440 and serfdom because it is true that capitalism was seen as sort 00:14:11.440 --> 00:14:14.320 of flipping the tables on those things. 00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:18.560 When you look at the feudal systems at Barons and Lords of 00:14:18.560 --> 00:14:24.960 the Manor and the contractual duties of serfs, the duties were tied 00:14:25.280 --> 00:14:26.720 to land. 00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:30.640 And so if a man was a serf, if he was either 00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:33.840 a freeman who made himself a serf to pay off a debt 00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:37.760 or something, he became tied to the land in such a way 00:14:37.760 --> 00:14:40.320 that it was transferable to his to his children. 00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:42.800 So when you're a serf, your kids are going to be serfs 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:44.800 tied to the property. 00:14:44.800 --> 00:14:49.600 So the Baron didn't own you per se, but he owned the 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:52.080 land to which you were tied contractually. 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:55.840 So he could sell the land and you effectively went with it. 00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:59.680 So if your baron sold the land that you lived on, you 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:02.080 know, that you had your small plot on that you worked on 00:15:02.080 --> 00:15:06.400 for him to someone else, you would then answer to them. 00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:09.200 That'd be your new boss, same as the old boss. 00:15:09.200 --> 00:15:12.160 And we think, oh wow, that's you know, that's that's slavery, you 00:15:12.160 --> 00:15:15.120 know, Road to Serfdom is another famous book that came out of 00:15:15.120 --> 00:15:17.440 the Austrian school. 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:20.160 The interesting thing about that is we still have effectively the same 00:15:20.160 --> 00:15:21.280 thing today. 00:15:21.280 --> 00:15:25.120 I was born in Northeast Ohio in Ashabila County in a town 00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:28.320 that my family built 200 years prior. 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:32.960 When I was born, I automatically became a citizen of Ohio. 00:15:32.960 --> 00:15:35.040 I had to obey the laws of Ohio. 00:15:35.040 --> 00:15:37.200 I had to pay taxes in Ohio. 00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:40.320 Everything. Not because I agreed to any contract. 00:15:40.320 --> 00:15:42.080 I didn't sign anything. 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:43.200 I was born. 00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:46.240 And because my father lived there and I was born there, I 00:15:46.240 --> 00:15:49.600 inherited all the same legal obligations that he did. 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:55.040 Now, the primary difference between a surf and an Ohioan well, there's 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:58.560 several, but I'm not sure how many of the Ohioans actually win. 00:15:58.560 --> 00:16:01.440 The primary difference is that a serf wasn't just free to leave. 00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:04.480 He was bound to the land, where someone in Ohio is free 00:16:04.480 --> 00:16:07.040 to leave, and many of us have. 00:16:07.040 --> 00:16:09.360 Other than that, it's kind of the same thing. 00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:12.240 You can absolutely inherit something that's tied to the land. 00:16:12.240 --> 00:16:16.320 That's how citizenship works, how nationality, you know, small land works. 00:16:16.320 --> 00:16:19.840 When you are born in a in a place, you become a 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:22.800 citizen of that place if it's your own people. 00:16:22.800 --> 00:16:27.520 And so even though the the idea of serfdom and being tied 00:16:27.520 --> 00:16:31.600 to land sounds alien to us, we all have the same system 00:16:31.600 --> 00:16:36.000 today. Now there are variations, but I own my house free and 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.480 clear. I have no mortgage or anything. 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:42.240 I still have a very large property tax bill every year. 00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:45.760 If I don't pay that, the state takes my property, my house, 00:16:45.760 --> 00:16:48.480 everything, and sells it to pay off that debt. 00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:51.040 And then someone else has it and the other person will pay 00:16:51.040 --> 00:16:53.040 the property tax instead. 00:16:53.040 --> 00:16:56.320 And the state doesn't care who lives here as long as that 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:57.760 tax gets paid. 00:16:57.760 --> 00:17:00.320 That's another aspect of serfdom. 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:02.800 There's a parcel with a duty on it. 00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:05.280 It's got to be paid annually. 00:17:05.280 --> 00:17:09.120 It's these these systems are thousands of years old. 00:17:09.120 --> 00:17:12.640 And so, you know, the formal structures around them change, but the 00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:13.760 principles don't. 00:17:13.760 --> 00:17:17.120 You know, you don't pay your property tax, you lose your house. 00:17:17.120 --> 00:17:20.560 If you don't pay your your baron when you're a serf, you're 00:17:20.560 --> 00:17:23.440 gonna get thrown in prison or you're gonna face worse punishment. 00:17:23.440 --> 00:17:24.400 Same deal. 00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:27.280 You know, in even in our t system today, the penalty is 00:17:27.280 --> 00:17:28.080 always death. 00:17:28.080 --> 00:17:31.200 If I If I were to refuse to pay my taxes and 00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:34.640 when the the county said you gotta do this, the town in 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:37.600 this case said you gotta pay your taxes like you know, no 00:17:37.600 --> 00:17:41.040 way I'm not paying anything, eventually they're s then send the cops. 00:17:41.040 --> 00:17:45.920 And if a confrontation continue continues to escalate, someone's going to be 00:17:45.920 --> 00:17:49.120 hurt or killed because they're not going to take no for an 00:17:49.120 --> 00:17:52.000 answer. Because one of the properties of a state, something that the 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:55.520 libertarians do get correct, is that the state is in essence in 00:17:55.520 --> 00:17:55.600 one 00:17:56.480 --> 00:17:56.800 form 00:17:57.760 --> 00:18:02.080 the monopoly of violence for a particular geographic area. 00:18:02.080 --> 00:18:06.080 And my town and my state have a monopoly on violence here. 00:18:06.080 --> 00:18:10.080 I can't go around committing violence to enforce my will, they can 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:12.160 and their will is passed by statute. 00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:16.080 And one of the wills that are expressed by statute are that 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:17.760 I have to pay property taxes. 00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:20.800 So you know, I have the take it or leave it of 00:18:20.800 --> 00:18:24.160 option of selling this property and maybe going somewhere where there's no 00:18:24.160 --> 00:18:27.680 property tax, but I'm still a type of serf. 00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:31.120 It's not called by that today, but again, these ancient things that 00:18:31.120 --> 00:18:34.400 we're told, oh, capitalism set all that aside, nonsense. 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:35.760 It's all still here. 00:18:35.760 --> 00:18:37.680 New boss, same as the old boss. 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:39.680 All they did was change the flag. 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:41.680 Most of the rest is the same. 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:47.200 I think maybe I will go into very briefly the history of 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:48.000 some of how 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:55.120 these systems arose just because they will give people a general understanding 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:59.360 of how we got to some of the systems we see today 00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:02.640 and some of the interest charges and such. 00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:05.520 And so under the feudal system 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:09.600 Actually before I get to the feudal system, I want to point 00:19:09.600 --> 00:19:11.600 out just a quick historical fact. 00:19:11.760 --> 00:19:16.000 We're not going to go over extensively the history of the church's 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:19.360 treatment of the charging of interest and usury because we went over 00:19:19.360 --> 00:19:25.200 that previously in another episode, but just to give an idea of 00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:29.760 how uniform the condemnation of the charging of interest was historically, it 00:19:29.760 --> 00:19:34.720 was condemned by, for instance, Aristotle, Chrysostom, and Augustine. 00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:40.160 So pagan and Christian alike condemned it as inherently wicked, the charging 00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:40.640 of interest. 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:46.880 And notably, usury historically means the charging of any interest. 00:19:46.880 --> 00:19:50.240 It doesn't mean excessive interest, it doesn't mean interest over a certain 00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:57.520 percentage. It means money making a return, because money was held historically 00:19:57.520 --> 00:20:02.320 to be infertile, to be unproductive, and so it should not see 00:20:02.320 --> 00:20:03.520 a return. 00:20:03.520 --> 00:20:09.440 And that's important for this history, this little tidbit about feudalism, because 00:20:09.520 --> 00:20:14.000 the church knew this, and all the Christians knew this, the Christian 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:17.760 rulers knew this, but they wanted to get around it. 00:20:17.760 --> 00:20:21.760 And so one of the ways they got around it was they 00:20:21.760 --> 00:20:24.560 set up a legal fiction. 00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:27.600 This is essentially pill pull, is what we're getting into, but they 00:20:27.600 --> 00:20:29.520 set up a legal fiction. 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:35.520 whereby the owner of property could lease the property through a contract 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:41.200 to another individual, and then that individual would pay a fixed sum 00:20:41.520 --> 00:20:46.320 back to the owner of the property, and you would effectively wind 00:20:46.320 --> 00:20:50.560 up with a charging of interest on the sale of that property, 00:20:50.560 --> 00:20:54.960 but in such a way constructed, contractually and legally in such a 00:20:54.960 --> 00:20:58.720 way that the church said, the Roman church said that no, that's 00:20:58.640 --> 00:20:59.680 not interest, that's fine. 00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:01.840 That's not usury. 00:21:01.840 --> 00:21:06.240 And so that is the beginning of where we see the charging 00:21:06.240 --> 00:21:11.680 of interest entering into the economic system, and we see this throughout 00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:15.360 Europe under the Roman Catholic Church. 00:21:15.360 --> 00:21:20.160 This is one of the things that was condemned by the conservative 00:21:20.160 --> 00:21:22.400 wing of the Reformation. 00:21:22.400 --> 00:21:24.320 Luther condemned this. 00:21:24.320 --> 00:21:28.640 Luther has a very good treatise on usury and just on the 00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:30.560 economy, trade generally. 00:21:30.560 --> 00:21:34.240 If I can find a free English version of that, that is 00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:37.200 a decent translation, I will put that in the show notes. 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:43.200 Again, unfortunately, the American edition is copyright encumbered. 00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:47.440 But that basically is the outline of where we have some of 00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:51.440 the modern problems we see today entering into the system in the 00:21:51.600 --> 00:21:56.560 1500s. And this really is proto-capitalism, is what we see. 00:21:56.560 --> 00:22:01.600 We see the rise of capitalism, the beginnings of capitalism in this 00:22:01.600 --> 00:22:03.520 era This era. 00:22:03.520 --> 00:22:10.320 And notably, those who critique capitalism in this era, the 1500s, 1600s, 00:22:10.320 --> 00:22:16.000 perhaps a little after that, they're not using the word capitalism. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:20.800 They describe the system, but what they call it is usury. 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:25.920 And so for a while in Christian thought, capitalism and usury, in 00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:29.760 certain writers at least, are essentially interchangeable. 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:34.000 Because the entire system is built on usury. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:36.880 And we see that today, obviously. 00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:38.560 Look at our system now. 00:22:38.560 --> 00:22:42.480 Everything is built on debt, on debt slavery, quite frankly. 00:22:42.480 --> 00:22:43.600 It is interest slavery. 00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:47.040 It is usury, which is impermissible for the Christian. 00:22:47.040 --> 00:22:48.720 We went over that in the previous episode. 00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:51.520 We went over the verses, the parts of scripture that very clearly 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:56.160 condemn the charging of interest, and yet that is what this system 00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:57.840 is built on. 00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:02.160 And so if a system is built on something that is per 00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:07.680 se sin, Christians cannot support that system, and that is the fundamental 00:23:07.680 --> 00:23:11.440 problem that we see with capitalism. 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:17.840 But as a related point, I would want to highlight neither Woe 00:23:17.840 --> 00:23:18.240 nor I 00:23:19.360 --> 00:23:21.840 has a real economic ideology. 00:23:21.840 --> 00:23:25.200 I believe that is fair to say at this point, since you've 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:28.560 rejected the Mises stuff. 00:23:28.560 --> 00:23:31.120 And the reason for that is very simple. 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:34.320 Economics is a tool. 00:23:34.320 --> 00:23:36.400 The market is a tool. 00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:40.400 As I've said before and elsewhere, I don't have an ideology of 00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:43.520 hammers. Because a hammer is a tool. 00:23:43.520 --> 00:23:44.800 I don't need an ideology 00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:48.080 with regard to tools. 00:23:48.080 --> 00:23:52.960 Yes, you use good tools, because that typically winds up with a 00:23:52.960 --> 00:23:56.560 better outcome, but you don't have an ideology attached to the tool. 00:23:56.560 --> 00:24:00.240 You don't have You don't look at the tool and say you 00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:02.080 must use this tool. 00:24:02.080 --> 00:24:06.400 You use the tool that is appropriate for the task at hand. 00:24:06.400 --> 00:24:10.560 And the problem we see when it comes to economics is that 00:24:10.560 --> 00:24:15.360 certain economic ideas and certain economic systems are raised to the level 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:18.720 not of a tool, but of an idol, and so it becomes 00:24:18.720 --> 00:24:22.240 something where you have to say capitalism is right and you have 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:24.960 to pursue this because it is capitalist. 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:27.200 And that just doesn't make any sense. 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:29.680 Because you have to look at the point of the economy. 00:24:29.680 --> 00:24:31.920 What is the goal of an economy? 00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:35.280 And obviously it has a number of goals, but not least of 00:24:35.280 --> 00:24:36.960 them is serving your neighbor 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:41.520 and serving all of your neighbors as best you can. 00:24:41.520 --> 00:24:43.680 Capitalism doesn't do that. 00:24:43.680 --> 00:24:47.360 And so you have to look at the economic system and look 00:24:47.360 --> 00:24:50.160 at what the goals are and figure out what is permissible for 00:24:50.640 --> 00:24:53.840 Christians to do and how best to pursue that. 00:24:53.840 --> 00:24:58.480 And capitalism does not do that because it becomes this idol that 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:01.760 you have to you have to worship essentially, because you have to 00:25:01.760 --> 00:25:05.440 say capitalism is good because it is opposed to X, Y, and 00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:08.640 Z, and so I have to do A, B, and C because 00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:11.120 capitalism tells me I have to do that. 00:25:11.120 --> 00:25:13.120 And that just doesn't make any sense. 00:25:13.120 --> 00:25:18.640 Because again, economics, the market, all of these related things are tools 00:25:18.800 --> 00:25:22.400 and they should be used and treated as tools. 00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:26.640 There's a great clip from a Tucker Carlson interview with someone else 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:30.080 that I wasn't able to find the exact quote, but the gist 00:25:30.080 --> 00:25:35.200 of it was someone was asking him about economics and he said 00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:39.600 in effect, I don't see capitalism as some sort of religious thing. 00:25:39.600 --> 00:25:41.840 If your economic system means that my child 00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:46.240 cannot grow up and have a family, I will burn your system 00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:47.360 to the ground. 00:25:47.360 --> 00:25:49.840 I believe he used those exact words I was having trouble finding 00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:52.000 it. Maybe I'll if I find the clip we'll put it in 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:55.440 the show notes, but that's pretty much what Corey just said. 00:25:55.440 --> 00:25:58.800 You know, and Tucker and Corey and I don't agree on many 00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:00.400 things, but we agree on others. 00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:03.520 And Tucker came to that conclusion as a moral conclusion. 00:26:03.520 --> 00:26:06.560 Uh he's mentioned that he's been reading the Bible a lot more 00:26:06.560 --> 00:26:09.920 recently as an Episcopalian for the first time in his life. 00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:13.120 He was he was astonished after he got fired by Fox, he 00:26:13.120 --> 00:26:16.240 started reading the Bible and realized there was some great stuff in 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:18.080 there and it blew him away. 00:26:18.080 --> 00:26:21.200 And so he came to that moral conclusion, you know, he that 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:25.200 was his instinct to begin with, but the principle is absolutely right. 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:28.160 I don't care about your so called system. 00:26:28.160 --> 00:26:32.000 If you're going to harm my family, then that makes you an 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:34.880 enemy. And if you want to say that the enemy's name is 00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:36.880 capitalism, game on. 00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:38.400 That's a moral position. 00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:40.320 And it's an entirely illicit one. 00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:42.480 And it's one that frankly we should all be able to at 00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:43.520 least evaluate. 00:26:43.520 --> 00:26:47.040 Even if you disagree with us, you should be able to separate 00:26:47.360 --> 00:26:50.720 the principles of the thing from 00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:55.680 its outcomes to to say, well, as Corey just said, if if 00:26:55.680 --> 00:26:58.960 it's doing harm, it cannot be permitted. 00:26:58.960 --> 00:27:01.760 And I don't care what excuses you have for, you know, that's 00:27:02.080 --> 00:27:06.000 I mentioned earlier that Mises, you know, adopted praxeology and fleshed it 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:11.040 out. And the the idea of formalizing human action to explain why 00:27:11.040 --> 00:27:13.600 people make economic calculations. 00:27:13.600 --> 00:27:14.720 And that is part of this. 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:19.600 That it is valuable that we all make economic calculations all the 00:27:19.600 --> 00:27:21.600 time. A price is a signal. 00:27:21.600 --> 00:27:24.640 It's a signal to the customer, it's a signal to the market. 00:27:24.960 --> 00:27:27.600 It's a signal to competitors. 00:27:27.600 --> 00:27:30.320 And these sorts of signals exist in everything. 00:27:30.320 --> 00:27:34.400 When you spend your time on something, that is a signal. 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:37.680 You know, we said before, when we first started Stone Choir, we 00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:39.840 were shooting for about an hour per episode. 00:27:39.840 --> 00:27:42.400 I think the first one we did was like seventy-five minutes, and 00:27:42.400 --> 00:27:44.400 then the second one was ninety minutes, and we were kind of 00:27:44.400 --> 00:27:45.360 shy about that. 00:27:45.360 --> 00:27:48.240 And then almost immediately we did one that was two hours long. 00:27:48.240 --> 00:27:49.520 And we called it a double episode. 00:27:49.520 --> 00:27:51.040 We're like, oh, this is way too long. 00:27:51.040 --> 00:27:54.000 No one's ever gonna spend two hours listening to a podcast. 00:27:54.000 --> 00:27:57.120 And it turned out that wasn't true because we have a lot 00:27:57.120 --> 00:27:59.760 of you know, it's it's dense content, there's good content here, which 00:27:59.760 --> 00:28:00.880 a lot of people agree with. 00:28:00.880 --> 00:28:02.640 We're thankful for that's our goal. 00:28:02.640 --> 00:28:05.360 We don't want a lot of fluff and repetitiveness. 00:28:05.360 --> 00:28:08.560 So So it turned out the people were willing to allocate two 00:28:08.560 --> 00:28:12.480 hours, maybe more in some cases, to one podcast from just two 00:28:12.480 --> 00:28:13.760 random guys. 00:28:13.760 --> 00:28:16.880 That is you voting with your time, which in some ways is 00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:18.800 even more valuable than your money. 00:28:18.800 --> 00:28:22.160 You know, money is fungible, money is replaceable. 00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:24.960 You will never get the two hours that you spend listening to 00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:27.120 us back to do anything else. 00:28:27.120 --> 00:28:30.880 So when you spend it, you are voting with your ears. 00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:34.640 You're voting with with the sands of time that are that are 00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:35.440 fading away. 00:28:35.600 --> 00:28:37.760 they come and go and you can get them back. 00:28:37.760 --> 00:28:41.520 And so to spend them is it is an expression of a 00:28:41.840 --> 00:28:44.720 personal preference to say this is valuable to me. 00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:47.920 I would rather spend two hours listening to these guys talk about 00:28:47.920 --> 00:28:49.360 this than you know whatever else. 00:28:49.360 --> 00:28:51.520 You know, nice thing about a podcast, you know one of the 00:28:51.520 --> 00:28:55.840 reasons we don't want to do video or anything more demanding is 00:28:55.840 --> 00:28:58.320 that you can put on a podcast and you can wash dishes 00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:01.360 or mow the yard or play video games or you know there 00:29:01.360 --> 00:29:04.400 are a thousand things you can do and still listen and in 00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:07.120 some ways you can listen even better than if you were looking 00:29:07.120 --> 00:29:08.000 at our faces. 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:10.720 You know, I'm not bad looking, I wouldn't mind being on video, 00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:12.000 but there's no point. 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.640 I I find it stupid to look at people to listen to 00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:15.280 them personally. 00:29:15.280 --> 00:29:16.800 It's just I think it's dumb. 00:29:16.800 --> 00:29:19.520 I want to listen to the words that you're saying that maybe 00:29:19.520 --> 00:29:20.400 your face gets in the way. 00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:24.160 Maybe you make weird expressions or you have goofy eyebrows or something, 00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:25.760 and it's a distraction. 00:29:25.760 --> 00:29:29.920 So when you spend two hours just listening, you're saying this is 00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:31.680 of good use of my time. 00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:36.160 When you spend your dollars, your hard-earned dollars, on anything, you're voting 00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:39.360 with them and saying, of all the things that I could purchase 00:29:39.360 --> 00:29:42.800 with the time that I spent to earn this money, I choose 00:29:42.800 --> 00:29:44.640 to spend it on this. 00:29:44.640 --> 00:29:45.040 And And 00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:52.000 essential in the capitalist system is the claim that that is unique 00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:53.280 to capitalism. 00:29:53.760 --> 00:29:56.880 when you look at the history of money, it goes back to 00:29:56.880 --> 00:29:57.760 the beginning. 00:29:57.760 --> 00:30:02.880 Every civilization we've ever found not only has coinage, yeah, the Bible 00:30:02.880 --> 00:30:08.480 is filled with different kinds of coins, yeah, denari, shekels, all these 00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:13.680 different weights of gold and silver were specific coins that were used 00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:15.520 to pay certain debts. 00:30:15.520 --> 00:30:18.400 So, you know, when a man was paid his day's wages, he 00:30:18.400 --> 00:30:20.640 couldn't go home and eat the denarius. 00:30:20.640 --> 00:30:22.640 He had to trade it for food. 00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:24.720 that that's an economic system. 00:30:24.720 --> 00:30:26.080 That is a monetary system. 00:30:26.800 --> 00:30:28.320 it's free trade. 00:30:28.320 --> 00:30:30.720 You know, even if there was a king or a pharaoh or 00:30:30.720 --> 00:30:33.040 something else, he still decided what he was gonna eat that day 00:30:33.120 --> 00:30:35.120 and he spent his day's wages on it. 00:30:35.120 --> 00:30:40.240 So again, these these claims that capitalism has sold to everybody. 00:30:40.320 --> 00:30:44.960 They think, oh man, you know, before the advent of basically the 00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:47.440 Enlightenment, everybody was a serf. 00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:50.560 And that's kind of where the handoff fundamentally gets anchored. 00:30:50.560 --> 00:30:51.280 You know, it's not clean. 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:55.520 As Corey's saying, like there's there's a historical evolution that moved from 00:30:55.840 --> 00:31:00.880 the feudal system, which was the most recent version of something before 00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:05.920 full-blown capitalism, until we got to what we effectively have today. 00:31:05.920 --> 00:31:11.600 But all these things like prices and commerce and markets and individual 00:31:11.600 --> 00:31:16.080 trade for objects of value, it's been around forever. 00:31:16.080 --> 00:31:19.200 And another thing I want to read Max some some more from 00:31:19.200 --> 00:31:24.080 the Mises definition of capitalism, they claim tacitly here, but it's it's 00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:29.520 clearly implicit, specialization of labor is intrinsic to capitalism. 00:31:29.520 --> 00:31:32.160 So the what is capitalism goes on. 00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:35.680 Capitalism is mass production of goods to satisfy the needs of the 00:31:35.680 --> 00:31:37.120 greatest number of people. 00:31:37.120 --> 00:31:42.240 Capitalism was revolutionary by recognizing property rights for all, regardless of background 00:31:42.240 --> 00:31:43.280 and social standing. 00:31:43.280 --> 00:31:47.440 Under capitalism even the most vulnerable in society had an absolute claim 00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:49.200 to their own labor and property. 00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:53.680 This did not guarantee equality of property, but capitalism eliminated any right 00:31:53.680 --> 00:31:56.880 by anyone else to infringe upon it So there are two things 00:31:56.960 --> 00:31:57.520 going on there. 00:31:57.520 --> 00:32:02.240 One, when they talk about mass production, that is implicitly talking about 00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:07.040 specialization of labor, meaning that no man, you know, on the frontier 00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:09.440 in in the new world, a man had to be able to 00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:14.640 build his house, you know, chop down trees, butcher deer, kill deer, 00:32:14.640 --> 00:32:17.840 plant crops, you know, his wife had to be able to clean 00:32:17.840 --> 00:32:20.800 all that stuff to be able to prepare it for him. 00:32:20.800 --> 00:32:23.040 She had to be able to make clothes like out on the 00:32:23.040 --> 00:32:27.120 frontier, you had whatever little m amount you could carry with you, 00:32:27.120 --> 00:32:29.520 and you had to make the rest when you got there. 00:32:29.520 --> 00:32:32.480 That's the opposite of specialization of labor. 00:32:32.480 --> 00:32:36.640 That is a subsistence level of living where you basically have to 00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:40.160 be a full-fledged generalist and everything to the point that you can 00:32:40.160 --> 00:32:43.120 do anything that needs done because there's no one else around to 00:32:43.120 --> 00:32:44.080 help you. 00:32:44.080 --> 00:32:48.480 It's also in in economics, it's popularly used in the in the 00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:52.880 desert island example of economic theory, where you be on desert island 00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:55.600 where there are just two people there, you know, there's no money, 00:32:55.600 --> 00:32:59.120 there's no anything, and they have to you know they need food, 00:32:59.120 --> 00:33:00.160 they need shelter. 00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:03.920 How to they decide how to do things and so 00:33:05.200 --> 00:33:10.880 when specialization of labor comes along into you know a population group 00:33:11.040 --> 00:33:14.000 what that means is that one guy can focus on being a 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:16.640 farmer he can get he can get better at farming than he 00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:21.520 is at felling trees or building cabins because someone else can build 00:33:21.520 --> 00:33:23.920 his cabin for him or at least do m you know, help 00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:26.960 him out so this the hard stuff that someone else is more 00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:30.320 efficient at, he doesn't have to worry about because he's more efficient 00:33:30.320 --> 00:33:31.520 at growing food. 00:33:31.520 --> 00:33:36.400 And therefore, his specialization creates a surplus of food where he's producing 00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:38.160 more food than he needs for himself. 00:33:38.160 --> 00:33:39.440 He can sell some of it. 00:33:39.440 --> 00:33:41.520 And then he can exchange for other goods. 00:33:41.520 --> 00:33:45.200 And that specialization of labor builds up and builds up and builds 00:33:45.200 --> 00:33:48.160 up until you get to today, where most people can't they can 00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:51.520 do a couple things, you know, maybe kinda okay. 00:33:51.520 --> 00:33:53.280 And everything else, they're just at a loss. 00:33:53.280 --> 00:33:55.360 Like you have to buy it from Amazon and go to the 00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:58.560 store. If not for that, and you can't call somebody to help 00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:01.280 when something breaks, you have no idea what to do. 00:34:01.280 --> 00:34:03.280 That's where most people are today. 00:34:03.280 --> 00:34:08.240 And so work at the terminal end of something that capitalism takes 00:34:08.240 --> 00:34:11.760 credit for and to some extent, you know, I don't know whether 00:34:11.760 --> 00:34:15.440 or not to completely hang the state of man a man's incompetence 00:34:15.440 --> 00:34:16.800 today, including my own. 00:34:16.800 --> 00:34:19.200 Like there are tons of things I should know how to do 00:34:19.200 --> 00:34:20.640 that I can't. 00:34:20.640 --> 00:34:23.360 I don't know how much of I can hang on capitalism, but 00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:28.480 uh you can absolutely state certainly that specialization of labor is as 00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:30.240 old as mankind itself. 00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:35.680 We see in the beginning of Genesis when it describes Cain's children, 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:38.560 as it goes down the list before we get up to the 00:34:38.560 --> 00:34:42.240 men who lived at the same time as Methuselah and Lamak and 00:34:42.240 --> 00:34:47.200 Noah, it says Adab bore Jabal, he was the father of those 00:34:47.200 --> 00:34:49.200 who dwell in tents and have livestock. 00:34:49.200 --> 00:34:50.880 His brother's name was Jubal. 00:34:50.880 --> 00:34:53.680 He was the father of all who play the lyre and pipe. 00:34:53.680 --> 00:34:55.760 Zillah also bore Tubal Cain. 00:34:55.760 --> 00:34:58.800 He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. 00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:03.760 And even Cain and Abel themselves were a farmer and a shepherd. 00:35:03.760 --> 00:35:09.040 So this specialization of labor is literally as old as mankind itself. 00:35:09.040 --> 00:35:14.080 And interestingly also in that passage on Cain's genealogy prior to the 00:35:14.080 --> 00:35:18.000 flood, you have instruments of bronze and iron. 00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:23.360 Something emerged in the nineteenth century, the tripartite system of distinguishing epochs 00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:26.720 of man as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron 00:35:26.720 --> 00:35:31.920 Age. And this is this is used by anthropologists as they're digging 00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:35.120 stuff up to help determine kind of how old is something. 00:35:35.120 --> 00:35:38.640 Because even if you don't know anything about what you're looking at 00:35:38.720 --> 00:35:42.320 apart from where it is in the world, you can tell by 00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:47.040 what materials it's made from, the degree of technological advancement that the 00:35:47.040 --> 00:35:48.000 people have. 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:51.280 So I find it very interesting that bronze and iron are both 00:35:51.280 --> 00:35:52.000 mentioned because 00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:56.160 one of the things that's completely absent from a lot of the 00:35:56.160 --> 00:35:59.760 modern economic discussion is it goes back to the really ancient historical 00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:02.240 stuff, is it completely ignores the Bible. 00:36:02.240 --> 00:36:07.360 Almost all the stuff is really predicated on evolutionary thought related to 00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:12.320 man, where you know we were punter-gatherers and then started settling and 00:36:12.320 --> 00:36:13.920 consolidating in cities. 00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:15.200 And that's the theory. 00:36:15.200 --> 00:36:16.320 It's false. 00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:19.200 Cain left and went to another city. 00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:20.160 He built a city. 00:36:20.160 --> 00:36:21.520 His children built a city. 00:36:21.520 --> 00:36:23.040 There were cities from the very beginning. 00:36:23.040 --> 00:36:23.680 Were they big? 00:36:23.680 --> 00:36:25.200 No. There weren't that many people. 00:36:25.200 --> 00:36:26.960 They got bigger and bigger. 00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:30.480 So you have cities, you have bronze, you have iron, all before 00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:31.520 the flood. 00:36:31.520 --> 00:36:35.600 And that flies in the face of many of the modern timelines 00:36:35.600 --> 00:36:40.080 for how we're told that human civilization advanced. 00:36:40.080 --> 00:36:41.920 When you look at the Bible, if you just believe it is 00:36:41.920 --> 00:36:46.160 a historical record, it's the oldest, most reliable historical record we have 00:36:46.160 --> 00:36:49.360 of anything, because it was written by an infallible author. 00:36:49.360 --> 00:36:52.320 So when God says bronze and iron, and it's what those words 00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:57.440 actually mean, you know the the theories that relate to stone and 00:36:57.440 --> 00:37:01.520 bronze and iron age being these distinct things that happened over much 00:37:01.520 --> 00:37:06.080 longer periods of time cannot be true if if already prior to 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:08.000 the flood those things were occurring. 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.880 So there's a lot that's missing just from the historical economic discussion 00:37:12.880 --> 00:37:15.040 of these things because people don't believe the Bible. 00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:18.160 Again, it's not that the Bible's an economic treatise, but it's a 00:37:18.160 --> 00:37:19.120 historical record. 00:37:19.120 --> 00:37:22.240 If this was happening over forty, five hundred years ago, we can 00:37:22.240 --> 00:37:23.920 count on it. 00:37:23.920 --> 00:37:29.280 And so that specialization of labor is intrinsic to the definition of 00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:32.880 capitalism. And again, the second part of that definition when talking about 00:37:32.960 --> 00:37:34.880 revolutionary property rights. 00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:38.560 Again, it was preserved in the Code of Hammurabi. 00:37:38.560 --> 00:37:41.440 It was preserved in the the Ten Commandments. 00:37:41.440 --> 00:37:43.360 And other nations had similar laws. 00:37:43.520 --> 00:37:46.800 You know, the the fact that these codifications exist today because they're 00:37:46.800 --> 00:37:51.040 p Physical records that were preserved doesn't make them unique. 00:37:51.040 --> 00:37:55.280 It just makes them beneficial to show how old these ideas are. 00:37:55.600 --> 00:37:59.280 On the note of the history of coinage, I will put a 00:37:59.280 --> 00:38:04.000 link in the show notes to the Berlin State Museum, which has 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:08.720 one of the most impressive coin collections in the world, and conveniently 00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:13.520 they have digitized over thirty five thousand coins and those can be 00:38:13.840 --> 00:38:15.680 freely browsed on their website. 00:38:15.680 --> 00:38:20.320 So trying to claim that capitalism is any way connected with the 00:38:20.320 --> 00:38:24.400 rise in the use of money is absolutely ludicrous given the ages 00:38:24.400 --> 00:38:27.680 of some of these coins. 00:38:27.680 --> 00:38:31.200 I want to expand a little bit just very briefly on something 00:38:31.200 --> 00:38:35.040 I said previously, because I know that we do have Roman Catholic 00:38:35.040 --> 00:38:39.200 listeners, and I'm not being uncharitable to Rome when I mention that 00:38:39.200 --> 00:38:43.760 Rome permitted this to happen and in some ways oversaw it because 00:38:43.760 --> 00:38:48.800 Rome had a very big interest in this rise in the charging 00:38:48.800 --> 00:38:49.760 of interest 00:38:51.120 --> 00:38:53.280 for a specific reason. 00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:57.120 Rome was the biggest landowner of the time, and so they wanted 00:38:57.120 --> 00:39:01.040 to be able to profit from this system. 00:39:01.440 --> 00:39:05.680 of the individuals who actually wrote on this subject at the time 00:39:05.840 --> 00:39:10.000 was none other than Johann Eck, yes, the very same one, who 00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:12.800 was sent by Rome to oppose Luther. 00:39:12.800 --> 00:39:17.360 In fifteen fourteen he wrote a treatise arguing that charging interest was 00:39:17.360 --> 00:39:22.720 morally permissible so long as it did not exceed five percent. 00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:26.960 Luther in part responded to that treatise, but in general was just 00:39:26.960 --> 00:39:30.160 writing on the matter more generally because it was happening at the 00:39:30.160 --> 00:39:37.440 time. He responded with the traditional opposition to the charging of interest. 00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:41.360 Yes, in some places you will find in Luther, where he attempts 00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:45.360 to argue for for capping interest at five percent, but the reason 00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:49.200 that he did that, you have to know the historical context. 00:39:49.200 --> 00:39:52.640 Certain loans at the time, and the loans to which he was 00:39:52.640 --> 00:39:56.800 responding, charged as much as fifty percent interest. 00:39:56.960 --> 00:40:00.960 And so he was attempting to mitigate the evil when he was 00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:01.920 saying that. 00:40:01.920 --> 00:40:05.280 If you read all of his writings generally, no, he held the 00:40:05.280 --> 00:40:09.200 traditional position that interest was inherently wicked and should be banned. 00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:13.600 That's what he wanted to see in society. 00:40:13.600 --> 00:40:17.200 On the point of the specialization of labor, I would actually say 00:40:17.200 --> 00:40:22.000 that it is fair to say that capitalism, as it has evolved, 00:40:23.120 --> 00:40:28.400 Has resulted in men being less competent generally. 00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:33.680 Because historically, most men would have been producing, yes, they would have 00:40:33.680 --> 00:40:36.720 been specialized to a certain degree, but they would have been producing 00:40:36.720 --> 00:40:40.720 some concrete, some tangible good. 00:40:40.720 --> 00:40:41.040 And 00:40:42.240 --> 00:40:44.320 if you put your mind to it and you put in the 00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:46.240 effort, you will get better at that over time. 00:40:46.240 --> 00:40:50.240 If you produce shoes for 40 years, you're going to be a 00:40:50.240 --> 00:40:53.200 pretty good cobbler at the end of forty years. 00:40:53.200 --> 00:40:58.640 Today we don't have that because capitalism, and this is why you 00:40:58.640 --> 00:41:02.080 end up with the lack of competence. 00:41:02.080 --> 00:41:06.480 Capitalism pushes for profit and so-called efficiency. 00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:10.400 And if you push for those, what you end up with is 00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:15.200 cost cutting in as many places as possible, which typically means outsourcing 00:41:15.200 --> 00:41:19.120 and cheaper materials, and so you wind up with a product that 00:41:19.120 --> 00:41:23.360 is inferior to what would have been produced in an earlier economic 00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:26.320 system. The only benefit is that it's cheaper. 00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:29.440 But that's not actually a benefit. 00:41:29.440 --> 00:41:33.680 And the reason that it is not a benefit is because cheap 00:41:33.680 --> 00:41:36.160 products are not cheap. 00:41:36.160 --> 00:41:41.360 Cheap products are in fact extremely expensive, and that's not just in 00:41:41.360 --> 00:41:47.360 terms of resources consumed, including physical resources and time. 00:41:47.360 --> 00:41:53.440 It's expensive in terms of pollution and the environment, but additionally, and 00:41:53.440 --> 00:41:59.200 this is a a core point of importance, it's not even cheaper 00:41:59.200 --> 00:42:04.960 in and of itself, because a cheaper good wears out faster. 00:42:04.960 --> 00:42:08.560 And so for instance, a great example of this If you buy 00:42:08.560 --> 00:42:12.000 a cheap pair of shoes, and you are someone who wears out 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:16.640 your shoes, so someone who works at a physical job, you are 00:42:16.640 --> 00:42:19.840 going to need to buy new shoes practically every year. 00:42:19.840 --> 00:42:23.440 Perhaps even more often with how low the quality is these days. 00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:26.560 Whereas if you buy a good pair of shoes and they all 00:42:26.560 --> 00:42:30.240 used to be good, that's the problem here, capitalism has created that 00:42:30.240 --> 00:42:33.760 category of cheap, worthless shoes. 00:42:33.840 --> 00:42:36.640 If you bought a good pair of shoes, you could keep them 00:42:36.640 --> 00:42:38.080 for the rest of your life. 00:42:38.080 --> 00:42:41.600 Yes, you would have to actually treat them and repair them and 00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:44.000 occasionally resole them. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:48.400 But overall, they would actually cost you less money. 00:42:48.400 --> 00:42:54.080 So capitalism doesn't even achieve the goals that it says it does. 00:42:54.080 --> 00:42:56.720 It actually does the exact opposite. 00:42:56.720 --> 00:43:01.600 And so you wind up drawing out the specialized artisans, you wind 00:43:01.600 --> 00:43:07.440 up driving out the competent men, because most people don't think through 00:43:07.440 --> 00:43:10.160 the consequences of buying the cheap item. 00:43:10.160 --> 00:43:13.360 And so they buy the cheap item, which means the artisan who 00:43:13.360 --> 00:43:17.760 produces the more expensive item that actually isn't more expensive if you 00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:21.840 run the total cost of ownership calculation, he's driven out of the 00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:24.640 market. And so what you wind up with is the sort of 00:43:24.720 --> 00:43:30.800 system we have today, where it is an ocean of cheap, virtually 00:43:30.800 --> 00:43:36.240 worthless products, and then at the far other end, extremely expensive goods 00:43:36.240 --> 00:43:39.280 that are still made in a traditional way. 00:43:39.280 --> 00:43:44.640 And so these things that cost these exorbitant sums of money today, 00:43:44.640 --> 00:43:47.760 well that's just the quality that your great great grandfather would have 00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:51.040 been able to buy at the shop down the street. 00:43:51.040 --> 00:43:54.160 And he didn't have to spend that much money on it. 00:43:54.160 --> 00:44:00.240 That's the consequence, in concrete terms, for many goods of the capitalist 00:44:00.240 --> 00:44:05.120 system. You wind up with lower quality, and over the lifetime of 00:44:05.120 --> 00:44:10.240 your purchasing of that category of goods, it costs you more. 00:44:10.240 --> 00:44:11.920 Well, why is that a system? 00:44:11.920 --> 00:44:13.040 Why is that a thing? 00:44:13.040 --> 00:44:16.080 It doesn't make any sense, except it does. 00:44:16.080 --> 00:44:21.360 And the reason it makes sense is because capitalism benefits those who 00:44:21.360 --> 00:44:23.280 have the capital. 00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:25.360 Now I know some are going to say, well, that sounds like 00:44:25.360 --> 00:44:27.120 a Marxist critique. 00:44:27.120 --> 00:44:30.320 Marx was not one hundred percent wrong. 00:44:30.320 --> 00:44:33.440 This is a vitally important point that I am going to make 00:44:33.440 --> 00:44:38.160 here. Some of the things that Marx said were correct. 00:44:38.160 --> 00:44:40.080 That's not the important point. 00:44:40.080 --> 00:44:42.000 The important point is, some of the things 00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:45.360 Satan says are correct. 00:44:45.360 --> 00:44:50.960 When Satan tempted Christ, at least attempted to tempt Christ, he quoted 00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:54.640 Scripture. In so far as he was quoting Scripture, he was speaking 00:44:55.360 --> 00:44:56.400 the truth. 00:44:56.400 --> 00:44:59.680 Was he using it in a manipulative fashion? 00:44:59.680 --> 00:45:00.240 Of course. 00:45:00.240 --> 00:45:01.600 Was he misrepresenting it? 00:45:01.600 --> 00:45:02.960 Of course. 00:45:02.960 --> 00:45:07.920 But that doesn't change the fact that the core matter, the words 00:45:07.920 --> 00:45:09.200 themselves, were true. 00:45:10.160 --> 00:45:14.320 It is possible for evil men to speak the truth. 00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:19.360 In fact, evil men often do speak some truth. 00:45:19.360 --> 00:45:23.360 If you are a liar, if you are attempting to manipulate people, 00:45:23.360 --> 00:45:28.960 and you always lie, you always tell lies, you never tell the 00:45:28.960 --> 00:45:32.720 truth, you will not get anywhere because no one will ever believe 00:45:32.720 --> 00:45:37.680 you. The best example of this, one with which we are all 00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:42.400 unfortunately familiar these days, is the politician. 00:45:42.400 --> 00:45:44.800 We all know politicians are liars. 00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:45.840 Everyone knows that. 00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:47.200 No one doubts that. 00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:49.600 But they don't always lie. 00:45:49.600 --> 00:45:53.520 Because if they always lied, if they only lied, no one would 00:45:53.520 --> 00:45:56.320 ever support any of them in any way. 00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:59.200 No, they have to tell the truth, they have to say certain 00:45:59.200 --> 00:46:02.560 things to get into that position. 00:46:02.560 --> 00:46:06.880 The same thing is true of these systems, the same thing is 00:46:06.880 --> 00:46:08.640 true of capitalism. 00:46:08.640 --> 00:46:12.000 Certain things that it says are correct are true. 00:46:12.320 --> 00:46:15.440 But look at the consequences, look at the outcome, look at what 00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:19.360 eventuates from the system. 00:46:19.360 --> 00:46:23.520 And so when you look at capitalism, because we today have the 00:46:23.520 --> 00:46:26.320 benefit of being able to look at it from a distance of 00:46:26.320 --> 00:46:32.000 centuries. This began hundreds of years ago and has been developing since. 00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:37.680 We can conclusively say it has not delivered on its promises. 00:46:37.680 --> 00:46:42.240 It claimed certain things, it said we'll get efficiency, well we got 00:46:42.240 --> 00:46:45.760 efficiency. But at what cost? 00:46:46.080 --> 00:46:50.320 We supposedly got innovation, but you can't prove the counterfactual and say 00:46:50.320 --> 00:46:53.680 that well capitalism caused the innovation, no, because we see innovation in 00:46:53.680 --> 00:46:55.680 other economic systems as well. 00:46:55.680 --> 00:46:59.520 You don't see zero innovation in even communist China. 00:46:59.520 --> 00:47:03.040 You see significantly less than in the West, but that's for ancillary 00:47:03.040 --> 00:47:09.200 reasons. And so the claims of this economic system have not come 00:47:09.520 --> 00:47:13.120 true in time, and we can take that into account because we 00:47:13.120 --> 00:47:16.000 have the advantage of hindsight. 00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:19.040 Not that you can't look at men like Luther and others in 00:47:19.040 --> 00:47:22.320 the history of the church who very clearly saw where this was 00:47:22.320 --> 00:47:25.120 going. they saw exactly what was going to happen. 00:47:25.120 --> 00:47:29.600 If you read their treatises, their critiques of the system as it 00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:34.080 was arising in their day, they look prophetic. 00:47:34.080 --> 00:47:39.760 I'll just read here a very short quote from Luther. 00:47:39.760 --> 00:47:44.400 Daily the poor are defrauded, new burdens and high prices are abandoned. 00:47:44.400 --> 00:47:49.040 Everyone misuses the market in his own willful, conceited, arrogant way, as 00:47:49.040 --> 00:47:51.680 if it were his right and privilege to sell his goods as 00:47:51.680 --> 00:47:55.760 dearly as he pleases, without a word of criticism. 00:47:55.920 --> 00:47:58.800 I'll actually read one more quick quote just from the large catechism, 00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:02.800 so this is in the confessional documents of Lutherans. 00:48:02.800 --> 00:48:05.920 No more shall all the rest prosper who change the open free 00:48:05.920 --> 00:48:09.600 market into a carrion pit of extortion and a den of robbery, 00:48:09.600 --> 00:48:13.920 where the poor are daily overcharged, new burdens and high prices are 00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:18.000 imposed, and every one uses the market according to his caprice, and 00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:21.360 is even defiant and brags as though it were his fair privilege 00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:23.840 and right to sell his goods, for as high a price as 00:48:23.840 --> 00:48:26.880 he please, and no one had a right to say a word 00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:28.400 against it. 00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:31.680 Now certainly that echoes his earlier comment, these are from two different 00:48:31.680 --> 00:48:35.520 writings from Luther, but that's in the large catechism. 00:48:35.520 --> 00:48:36.880 That's hundreds of years ago. 00:48:36.880 --> 00:48:38.880 That's five hundred years ago. 00:48:38.880 --> 00:48:41.760 It's the same thing we see happening today. 00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:45.360 Because the system that was emerging in his day has reached a 00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:47.280 sort of maturity in ours. 00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:51.440 Now, of course, it will proceed from its current mature state into 00:48:51.520 --> 00:48:54.160 let's say its final form as it were. 00:48:54.160 --> 00:48:59.040 But you can't support this sort of system as a Christian when 00:48:59.040 --> 00:49:04.320 you look at the consequences of the system for your neighbor, it 00:49:04.320 --> 00:49:09.360 goes against that fundamental rule, the fundamental command of Christ to love 00:49:09.360 --> 00:49:13.360 your neighbor as yourself, because that's not what capitalism says to do. 00:49:14.240 --> 00:49:19.360 Capitalism says to charge your neighbor the highest price you can extract 00:49:19.360 --> 00:49:20.560 from him. 00:49:20.560 --> 00:49:24.320 And if you don't do that, you're a bad capitalist. 00:49:24.320 --> 00:49:29.360 That is the opposite, practically, of what Christianity says. 00:49:29.360 --> 00:49:33.040 The scriptures tell you to lend without expecting a return, not even 00:49:33.040 --> 00:49:36.800 not to expect interest, not to expect the principle back. 00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:39.920 And you certainly aren't supposed to charge your neighbor the highest price 00:49:39.920 --> 00:49:43.680 you can, you are supposed to sell your goods for a fair 00:49:43.680 --> 00:49:48.400 price. And a fair price essentially is the effort and the cost 00:49:48.400 --> 00:49:50.400 that went into the good. 00:49:50.400 --> 00:49:54.080 Not what the market will bear, not what your neighbor is able 00:49:54.080 --> 00:49:56.720 to pay, what is fair. 00:49:56.720 --> 00:50:02.480 That is the Christian standard, and it's simply not something that capitalism 00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:07.600 accepts. In fact, it is something that capitalism Explicitly rejects. 00:50:07.920 --> 00:50:12.160 It's worth paying attention to how Scripture speaks of these 00:50:13.280 --> 00:50:18.640 economic crimes in Ezekiel eighteen and the application of the Levitical law 00:50:18.640 --> 00:50:24.400 from twenty-five and elsewhere Ezekiel writes If he fathers a son who 00:50:24.400 --> 00:50:27.680 is violent, a shedder of blood, who does any of these things, 00:50:27.680 --> 00:50:30.800 though he himself did none of these things, who even eats upon 00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:35.520 the mountains, defiles his neighbor's wife, opposes the poor and needy, commits 00:50:35.520 --> 00:50:39.600 robbery, does not restore the pledge, lifts up his eyes to the 00:50:39.600 --> 00:50:43.920 idols, commits abomination, lends it interest and takes profit. 00:50:43.920 --> 00:50:45.680 Shall he then live? 00:50:45.680 --> 00:50:47.040 He shall not live. 00:50:47.040 --> 00:50:51.120 He sh he has done all these abominations, he shall surely die, 00:50:51.120 --> 00:50:54.240 his blood shall be upon himself. 00:50:54.240 --> 00:50:59.840 So in the same breath that God describes fornicating with your neighbor's 00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:05.440 wife, and committing robbery, and idolatry, and other abominations. 00:51:05.440 --> 00:51:08.480 Included among those are lending an interest and taking profit. 00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:10.400 And the sentence is death. 00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:12.160 That was God's law. 00:51:12.160 --> 00:51:19.440 Now, it is not necessary to agree that the Levitical 00:51:19.440 --> 00:51:22.640 law punishments must be enforced today. 00:51:22.640 --> 00:51:24.960 It is, however, necessary to agree that 00:51:25.840 --> 00:51:30.720 the Levitical law when it's calling these things abominations, is specifically speaking 00:51:30.720 --> 00:51:31.920 about moral matters. 00:51:31.920 --> 00:51:35.120 To lend an interest and take profit is a moral matter, and 00:51:35.120 --> 00:51:40.560 the sentence God provided to his people was death. 00:51:40.560 --> 00:51:44.240 Just finishing up with the Mises definition of capitalism because it goes 00:51:44.240 --> 00:51:46.400 with what Corey was saying. 00:51:46.400 --> 00:51:50.720 Capitalism empowered consumers rather than those empowered to influence what was produced 00:51:50.720 --> 00:51:51.840 in the economy. 00:51:51.840 --> 00:51:54.320 This happens via the profit mechanism. 00:51:54.320 --> 00:51:57.040 If enough people demand a good and it can be sold for 00:51:57.040 --> 00:52:00.320 more than it costs to produce, then that means the production of 00:52:00.320 --> 00:52:01.920 that good is profitable. 00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:04.480 Some of the richest people in the world today have made their 00:52:04.480 --> 00:52:07.600 money not from appealing to the rich but by appealing to the 00:52:07.600 --> 00:52:12.880 masses. Walmart's business model, for example, is geared towards selling goods cheaply 00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:15.280 to as many people as possible. 00:52:15.280 --> 00:52:18.240 Now Now, isn't that an interesting contrast to what Corey was just 00:52:18.240 --> 00:52:21.680 reading from the Large Catechism and elsewhere in Luther? 00:52:21.680 --> 00:52:29.040 When the pinnacle of capitalist accomplishment is Walmart, which they specifically highlight, 00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:30.800 they took from the poor. 00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:34.720 They took the poorest people in the world and extracted so much 00:52:34.720 --> 00:52:38.480 money that they there's an entire family of billionaires now. 00:52:38.480 --> 00:52:41.840 Not just a billionaire, but half a dozen billionaires. 00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:44.080 There is so much surplus to go around 00:52:44.960 --> 00:52:49.760 just from their portion of the profits on top of what the 00:52:49.920 --> 00:52:53.440 corporation took from all the poorest people in our country. 00:52:53.440 --> 00:52:55.280 And how did Walmart do it? 00:52:55.280 --> 00:53:01.120 By destroying communities, by destroying producers, by destroying local shops. 00:53:01.120 --> 00:53:04.320 Before we recorded, I looked up because I just had no idea. 00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:07.680 I wondered what would a pair of jeans cost on Walmart. 00:53:07.680 --> 00:53:12.160 You can buy a pair of jeans on Walmart.com for thirteen bucks. 00:53:12.800 --> 00:53:16.880 The libertarian capitalist argument for that is well, that's wonderful. 00:53:16.880 --> 00:53:19.200 If someone only has thirteen dollars, he can buy a pair of 00:53:19.200 --> 00:53:23.680 jeans. By itself, that's true. 00:53:23.680 --> 00:53:27.600 However, as Corey just said, you're buying a $13 piece of garbage. 00:53:27.600 --> 00:53:30.000 It's going to have a junk zipper, it's going to have junk 00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:32.960 buttons, the seams are going to be poorly done, it's going to 00:53:32.960 --> 00:53:35.600 be thin, flimsy material. 00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:36.960 It's going to wear out. 00:53:36.960 --> 00:53:39.920 If you buy a $13 pair of jeans, you're probably going to 00:53:39.920 --> 00:53:41.280 be buying several a year. 00:53:41.280 --> 00:53:44.240 Certainly if you're using jeans the way jeans are intended to be 00:53:44.240 --> 00:53:46.480 used, it's not going to last long. 00:53:46.480 --> 00:53:49.440 If you had had the money to buy a hundred and twenty 00:53:49.600 --> 00:53:52.400 dollar pair of jeans that was made the way jeans used to 00:53:52.400 --> 00:53:56.960 be made in this country, instead of in a sweatshop owned by 00:53:56.960 --> 00:54:02.960 the Chinese government six thousand miles away, in that case, your genes 00:54:02.960 --> 00:54:05.760 would last for many years and they would be easily repairable and 00:54:05.920 --> 00:54:10.400 be worth repairing, and you would not be worse off in the 00:54:10.400 --> 00:54:15.200 end. Spending more money and putting it in your neighbor's pocket would 00:54:15.200 --> 00:54:17.680 have made you richer in the long term. 00:54:17.680 --> 00:54:20.320 You as a consumer. 00:54:20.320 --> 00:54:23.840 There's nothing in the world more expensive than being poor. 00:54:24.400 --> 00:54:26.800 If you have enough money that you can shop at one of 00:54:26.800 --> 00:54:30.480 the regular grocery stores, you have a nice selection of food. 00:54:30.480 --> 00:54:33.520 Really poor people tend to do a lot of their shopping today 00:54:33.520 --> 00:54:34.960 at dollar stores. 00:54:35.200 --> 00:54:39.440 It's one of the fastest growing segments in the entire consumer economy 00:54:39.440 --> 00:54:44.160 in the United States, the dollar store, where everything is junk, everything 00:54:44.160 --> 00:54:47.440 is substandard, everything is small, but it's cheap. 00:54:47.440 --> 00:54:48.880 It's super, super cheap. 00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:53.280 So the poorest people in the country are buying garbage with money 00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:55.840 they don't have and it's getting worn out. 00:54:55.840 --> 00:54:59.280 It's not it's not worth what they're paying. 00:54:59.280 --> 00:55:01.840 It's far worse for them if they you know, you want furniture, 00:55:01.840 --> 00:55:02.480 what do you do? 00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:06.480 A really poor person, certainly if they're economically ignorant, is probably gonna 00:55:06.480 --> 00:55:08.720 rent. They're gonna rent a couch. 00:55:08.720 --> 00:55:11.600 When you rent from one of those rent a center places where 00:55:11.600 --> 00:55:15.520 usually you pay weekly, usually within like the first six to eight 00:55:15.520 --> 00:55:18.400 weeks you paid the entire cost of the thing and you're still 00:55:18.400 --> 00:55:20.880 going to be making payments for a year or two. 00:55:20.880 --> 00:55:26.160 That is the most exploitative, revolting, wicked thing imaginable. 00:55:26.160 --> 00:55:27.840 And it's everywhere in this country. 00:55:27.840 --> 00:55:32.000 You cannot drive down a single street in one of the poorer 00:55:32.000 --> 00:55:34.880 parts of any town in this country and not find a place 00:55:34.880 --> 00:55:38.480 where this sort of abuse of the poor is taking place all 00:55:38.480 --> 00:55:39.360 the time. 00:55:39.360 --> 00:55:42.080 And no one has any moral outrage at it. 00:55:42.080 --> 00:55:42.640 What do we do? 00:55:42.640 --> 00:55:45.040 We say, oh well, at least poor people can afford a couch. 00:55:45.280 --> 00:55:50.240 Sure, it's gonna cost them $1,500 for a $200 couch because they're 00:55:50.240 --> 00:55:53.280 poor and they're dumb and they don't realize what they're paying, but 00:55:53.280 --> 00:55:57.280 they can only afford $13 a week, so they get a couch. 00:55:57.280 --> 00:55:59.680 That's winning with capitalism. 00:55:59.680 --> 00:56:03.760 That is evil by any Christian moral standard. 00:56:03.760 --> 00:56:08.800 Yeah, that $13 pair of jeans put my uncle in North Carolina 00:56:08.800 --> 00:56:10.400 out of business. 00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:13.520 When I was born, you know, half my family's from the south, 00:56:13.520 --> 00:56:15.360 pretty much all in North Carolina. 00:56:15.360 --> 00:56:16.960 He worked for Wrangler Jeans. 00:56:16.960 --> 00:56:20.000 He was, I believe, a plant manager at Wrangler, back when they 00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:21.360 still had plants in North Carolina. 00:56:21.760 --> 00:56:26.400 Wranglers in the last forty years were still made in this country. 00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:29.760 His job, most of his job, you know, he started there, I 00:56:29.760 --> 00:56:32.320 think on the line, he pretty quickly made it up the l 00:56:32.480 --> 00:56:34.640 ranks because he was he was smart and hardworking. 00:56:34.800 --> 00:56:36.960 He was a tough guy. 00:56:36.960 --> 00:56:41.280 He ended up overseeing the transfer of Wranglers operations overseas. 00:56:41.280 --> 00:56:43.600 So he had to go, I believe, down to Mexico, which is 00:56:43.600 --> 00:56:45.440 where most of the stuff is made today. 00:56:45.440 --> 00:56:49.600 Because capitalism says it's not enough to make a good product, you 00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:52.320 must make it cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. 00:56:52.320 --> 00:56:57.120 Which is really interesting when you look at inflation. 00:56:57.120 --> 00:57:01.040 Inflation is at least several percent every year. 00:57:01.040 --> 00:57:02.240 Some years it's a lot more. 00:57:02.240 --> 00:57:05.760 Right now it's probably running about twelve percent across the board, maybe 00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:06.800 more than that. 00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:09.840 Which means that if you had a dollar a year ago, you 00:57:09.840 --> 00:57:11.200 have eighty eight cents left today. 00:57:11.200 --> 00:57:14.560 In that same one dollar, that's much purchasing power you have left. 00:57:14.560 --> 00:57:15.200 So So 00:57:16.080 --> 00:57:21.840 the value of your money is getting lower and lower. 00:57:21.840 --> 00:57:24.320 But the cost of goods is also going down. 00:57:24.320 --> 00:57:27.200 And on one hand, it's nice that, you know, you can it's 00:57:27.120 --> 00:57:30.160 still afford something when you have less purchasing power. 00:57:30.160 --> 00:57:34.320 On the other hand, what happened, you know, in in my uncle's 00:57:34.320 --> 00:57:38.960 case, and it happened to all of manufacturing in the United States, 00:57:38.960 --> 00:57:41.120 it was too expensive to make 00:57:42.160 --> 00:57:45.440 jeans in North Carolina, where they had a lot of jobs. 00:57:45.440 --> 00:57:46.960 There were a lot of good-paying jobs. 00:57:46.960 --> 00:57:48.960 I don't know if it was a union shop, probably not in 00:57:48.960 --> 00:57:49.360 the South. 00:57:49.360 --> 00:57:50.080 I I don't know. 00:57:50.080 --> 00:57:50.960 Maybe it was. 00:57:50.960 --> 00:57:54.400 But either way, union or not, they were They were paying they 00:57:54.400 --> 00:57:57.200 were making enough money in that community that a lot of people, 00:57:57.200 --> 00:57:59.680 you know, it's like the the joke if you've seen today The 00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:04.240 Simpsons, when that show first started, you know, Homer was a poor 00:58:04.400 --> 00:58:09.840 relatively single family in or single income household with two kids, three 00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:12.400 kids 'cause they they had the infant. 00:58:12.400 --> 00:58:16.400 It was a nice suburban two story home, more than pretty much 00:58:16.400 --> 00:58:17.600 anybody can afford today. 00:58:17.600 --> 00:58:21.760 You know, the house in the Simpsons probably goes for $500,000 today. 00:58:21.760 --> 00:58:25.920 And yeah, that was a lower middle income household when the Simpsons 00:58:25.920 --> 00:58:28.560 started in late 80s, early 90s. 00:58:28.560 --> 00:58:30.400 That's how much things have changed. 00:58:30.560 --> 00:58:34.640 And that's what happened with genes and everything else in the economy. 00:58:34.640 --> 00:58:36.800 Making it in this country too expensive. 00:58:36.800 --> 00:58:37.840 So what comes next? 00:58:37.840 --> 00:58:39.200 You ship it to Mexico. 00:58:39.200 --> 00:58:40.480 But then what happens? 00:58:40.480 --> 00:58:42.640 Labor in Mexico got too expensive. 00:58:42.640 --> 00:58:44.960 So most companies moved it to China. 00:58:44.960 --> 00:58:48.400 And then China got too expensive, so they moved it to Vietnam. 00:58:48.400 --> 00:58:52.000 And Vietnam labor got too expensive, so they moved it to India 00:58:52.080 --> 00:58:55.280 and Bangladesh and all these other places that a lot of people 00:58:55.280 --> 00:58:58.720 have never even heard of where you have You have people living 00:58:58.720 --> 00:59:03.920 on subsistence wages to make garbage that gets shipped at tremendous expense 00:59:03.920 --> 00:59:09.360 with tremendous pollution, 10,000 miles away around the world, so that someone 00:59:09.360 --> 00:59:13.120 can buy a $13 pair of jeans at Walmart that's probably marked 00:59:13.120 --> 00:59:15.600 up 30% still. 00:59:15.600 --> 00:59:19.200 The problem with the calc capitalist economic calculation that look, a guy 00:59:19.200 --> 00:59:22.640 can buy a $13 pair of jeans is that if instead of 00:59:22.640 --> 00:59:25.600 the thirteen dollar pair of jeans, if the only genes on the 00:59:25.600 --> 00:59:27.760 market were a fifty dollar pair of jeans. 00:59:27.760 --> 00:59:31.600 The capitalist system, the capitalist morality says that would make the world 00:59:31.600 --> 00:59:35.360 worse because his purchasing power has been reduced threefold. 00:59:35.360 --> 00:59:38.560 Instead of being able to afford three pairs of jeans for fifty 00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:41.520 bucks and four pairs, you can only afford one. 00:59:41.680 --> 00:59:46.720 The thing that's missing from that sort of single variable calculus is 00:59:46.720 --> 00:59:49.760 that if the pair of jeans that was made in this country 00:59:50.240 --> 00:59:53.760 that was made well the way things always used to be, you 00:59:53.760 --> 00:59:57.680 know, pair of jeans that would last him ten, fifteen, twenty years. 00:59:57.680 --> 01:00:01.360 If he could spend fifty dollars on that, yes, he would have 01:00:01.360 --> 01:00:06.560 less purchasing power in the moment, but he as a consumer would 01:00:06.560 --> 01:00:09.040 have genes that were going to last him for a decade or 01:00:09.040 --> 01:00:13.120 more. And that fifty dollars is going into the pockets of his 01:00:13.120 --> 01:00:16.240 neighbors. It's going to go into the pockets of somewhere someone in 01:00:16.240 --> 01:00:17.520 this country. 01:00:17.520 --> 01:00:20.960 That's a key part of what's missing from this discussion in all 01:00:20.960 --> 01:00:26.640 the capitalist calculation is no consideration whatsoever for neighbor. 01:00:26.640 --> 01:00:31.760 The only consideration is what is the lowest dollar amount I can 01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:33.360 spend on a thing. 01:00:33.360 --> 01:00:37.440 If that is your highest good, then your neighbor be damned. 01:00:37.440 --> 01:00:40.960 You don't care what happens to your neighbor because you're gonna have 01:00:40.960 --> 01:00:43.040 more money in your pocket. 01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:44.480 That's a moral calculus. 01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:46.000 That is that is a moral decision. 01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:49.920 You're voting with your dollars to say, I don't care about my 01:00:49.920 --> 01:00:53.200 neighbor. I don't care that if I spent $50 on these jeans, 01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:55.280 my neighbor would still have a job and he would have pride 01:00:55.600 --> 01:00:58.800 because he'd be able to feed his own family and not buy 01:00:58.800 --> 01:01:02.000 stuff at a dollar store that he knows isn't doing as much 01:01:02.000 --> 01:01:03.920 as he could if he could afford more. 01:01:03.920 --> 01:01:06.880 But the factory shut down, he can't find a good job anymore 01:01:07.040 --> 01:01:10.720 because all the jobs for guys who are just completely average, maybe 01:01:10.720 --> 01:01:14.880 a little below average, maybe a little above average, in poor neighborhoods 01:01:14.880 --> 01:01:18.880 and poor parts of the country, those jobs were all destroyed by 01:01:18.880 --> 01:01:22.640 capitalism. They were shipped overseas for one reason and one reason only. 01:01:22.640 --> 01:01:25.120 It was cheaper. 01:01:25.280 --> 01:01:31.520 I think that the prophet worship, the profit idolatry in capitalism is 01:01:31.520 --> 01:01:33.600 central to this entire discussion. 01:01:34.320 --> 01:01:36.880 You know, you know, as I said last week, now I'm Doc, 01:01:36.880 --> 01:01:38.560 so I can talk more about what I did. 01:01:38.560 --> 01:01:39.360 I worked at Apple. 01:01:39.360 --> 01:01:41.120 I left my 15th year at Apple. 01:01:41.120 --> 01:01:43.440 I worked in hardware and I worked in software. 01:01:43.440 --> 01:01:45.120 I always worked on the Mac. 01:01:45.120 --> 01:01:48.560 And since I was five years old, I've always used Apple products. 01:01:48.560 --> 01:01:49.760 I like them a lot. 01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:51.200 I know them inside and out. 01:01:51.200 --> 01:01:53.760 I'm actually a domain expert on that stuff, which is why I 01:01:53.760 --> 01:01:56.080 never talked about it. 01:01:56.080 --> 01:02:00.320 Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the universe in 01:02:00.320 --> 01:02:02.160 the history of everything. 01:02:02.160 --> 01:02:06.720 Their profit for 2022 was or their revenue, their gross revenue was 01:02:06.720 --> 01:02:09.920 four hundred billion dollars. 01:02:09.920 --> 01:02:15.120 Their gross margins for last quarter were about 45%. 01:02:15.120 --> 01:02:18.560 So what that means is that for the cost of goods, for 01:02:18.560 --> 01:02:22.400 every hundred, for every thousand dollars that you give Apple as a 01:02:22.400 --> 01:02:27.760 consumer, they will give you a product that costs them $550 to 01:02:27.760 --> 01:02:30.320 make in terms of manufacturing cost. 01:02:30.320 --> 01:02:35.040 Now, gross margin doesn't account for RD or advertising or salaries or 01:02:35.040 --> 01:02:36.240 any of that other stuff. 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:41.520 So their net margin after all their business expenses are counted for 01:02:41.920 --> 01:02:43.920 is about 24, 25%. 01:02:44.000 --> 01:02:47.680 We'll say 25%, just keep the numbers rounded nicely. 01:02:47.680 --> 01:02:50.240 So what that means is that for every thousand dollars that you 01:02:50.240 --> 01:02:56.080 give Apple for some widget, their total all-in cost is $750. 01:02:56.080 --> 01:03:00.560 So you're giving them $750 for a product and you were handing 01:03:00.560 --> 01:03:02.400 them an additional $250 $50 01:03:03.360 --> 01:03:06.400 just because they're Apple and that's the only way to get it. 01:03:06.400 --> 01:03:07.360 That's the profit. 01:03:07.360 --> 01:03:08.640 That's what profit means. 01:03:08.640 --> 01:03:10.720 It's above all costs. 01:03:10.720 --> 01:03:15.840 Now it's interesting when you actually think about the net profit. 01:03:16.240 --> 01:03:21.600 That's every supplier got paid, every bill got paid, every salary got 01:03:21.600 --> 01:03:23.440 paid, and there's some very high salaries. 01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:24.960 I can tell you that personally. 01:03:24.960 --> 01:03:27.920 Guys who work there make a lot of money. 01:03:27.920 --> 01:03:32.480 All of that, 100% of all that compensation all that reward for 01:03:32.480 --> 01:03:36.640 everyone involved in the production of Apple's products is encompassed in the 01:03:36.800 --> 01:03:41.040 $750 of the thousand that it costs for you to buy a 01:03:41.040 --> 01:03:45.120 product. And the extra $250 is pure profit. 01:03:45.120 --> 01:03:51.200 Now, the thing to focus on when we're talking about profit is 01:03:51.200 --> 01:03:51.520 that 01:03:52.720 --> 01:03:55.680 as Corey was saying earlier, when when Luther was dealing with this 01:03:55.680 --> 01:03:59.440 stuff, people tried to pin him down and get him to put 01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:01.120 particular numbers on things. 01:04:01.120 --> 01:04:04.960 Say, well, what is the threshold beyond which something is sinful? 01:04:04.960 --> 01:04:09.040 That's not possible when we're dealing with these are matters of wisdom. 01:04:09.040 --> 01:04:13.680 So where that comes into profit is scaling back from Apple for 01:04:13.680 --> 01:04:15.840 a second, let's take a very small example. 01:04:15.840 --> 01:04:19.040 Let's say that you decide that you want to start making dog 01:04:19.040 --> 01:04:19.840 biscuits in your kitchen 01:04:20.800 --> 01:04:24.640 and you want to sell them at a local convenience store, you're 01:04:24.640 --> 01:04:27.360 going to charge two dollars per dog biscuit. 01:04:27.360 --> 01:04:30.240 That you know covers what you consider your labor to be worth, 01:04:30.240 --> 01:04:32.240 it covers all your material costs. 01:04:32.240 --> 01:04:34.400 All in you can sell them for two bucks. 01:04:34.240 --> 01:04:37.920 And once you get those on store shelves, they start flying. 01:04:37.920 --> 01:04:41.040 You can't the store owners can't keep them in stock. 01:04:41.040 --> 01:04:44.240 You do a week's worth of production, you take it to the 01:04:44.240 --> 01:04:47.920 store, they list them for two dollars, and they're gone within three 01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:52.800 days. The capitalist morality says this is a price signal to me 01:04:52.800 --> 01:04:55.920 as a producer that I should raise my price. 01:04:55.920 --> 01:04:59.760 Because on one hand, I could produce more, I could be making 01:04:59.760 --> 01:05:02.560 more of these things, but until such time as I do, and 01:05:02.560 --> 01:05:06.880 to m to meet demand, I can profit off of the greater 01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:10.000 demand than I have supply by jacking up the price. 01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:13.760 And you know, there's the marginal utility calculation for, you know, maybe 01:05:13.760 --> 01:05:16.080 a dog biscuit is worth two bucks to some people, but at 01:05:16.080 --> 01:05:19.440 two fifty or three, maybe half your customer's like, No, I'm not 01:05:19.440 --> 01:05:20.720 gonna pay that anymore. 01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:23.520 But as long as there are enough customers to pay two dollars 01:05:23.520 --> 01:05:26.640 and fifty cents or three dollars dollars to continue to sell out, 01:05:26.640 --> 01:05:27.680 what do you care? 01:05:27.680 --> 01:05:30.800 You're getting that much more money from the same number of people 01:05:30.800 --> 01:05:33.760 it could possibly buy, even though it's pricing some of the people 01:05:33.760 --> 01:05:34.800 out of the market. 01:05:34.800 --> 01:05:40.000 So it effectively reorients for the consumer, who's going to get it, 01:05:40.000 --> 01:05:43.360 not who shows up first, but who is still willing to pay 01:05:43.360 --> 01:05:44.720 the higher price. 01:05:44.720 --> 01:05:47.120 Capitalism says that's perfectly fine. 01:05:47.120 --> 01:05:51.920 When you look at the historic moral arguments in these matters, it 01:05:51.920 --> 01:05:54.080 goes with what Corey referred to earlier. 01:05:54.080 --> 01:05:59.280 If it if you can comfortably make the thing for two dollars, 01:05:59.280 --> 01:06:02.640 as a Christian, it is not permissible to sell it for three. 01:06:02.640 --> 01:06:05.440 Just because you can doesn't mean you should. 01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:08.320 Just because you are able to get away with it in the 01:06:08.320 --> 01:06:11.600 market does not make it morally permissible. 01:06:11.600 --> 01:06:15.840 Now, the reason that there's wiggle room here is that, you know, 01:06:15.840 --> 01:06:18.720 you just start it in your kitchen, you were making, it was 01:06:18.720 --> 01:06:21.040 just fun, you know, maybe you had some extras left over from 01:06:21.040 --> 01:06:24.240 baking or whatever, and you didn't know how they were gonna do. 01:06:24.240 --> 01:06:28.400 When they started going like gangbusters for two bucks, you realize that 01:06:28.400 --> 01:06:31.760 you're you're just kind of getting by at two dollars, but you 01:06:31.760 --> 01:06:36.480 have ideas for scaling up and you know, maybe a bigger mixer, 01:06:36.480 --> 01:06:38.800 whatever, bigger oven. 01:06:38.800 --> 01:06:42.400 Maybe eventually you could scale the point that you'd actually hire someone. 01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:46.240 In order to do that, you're going to need additional capital. 01:06:46.240 --> 01:06:49.840 The way to get that is either take a loan based on 01:06:49.840 --> 01:06:50.720 your revenue. 01:06:50.720 --> 01:06:52.560 That's the capitalist way to do it. 01:06:52.560 --> 01:06:56.320 Another possibility is to increase your price sum and save that money 01:06:56.320 --> 01:07:00.400 and use it towards increasing your production output. 01:07:00.400 --> 01:07:04.400 So that you know, maybe you charge 225 or 250, the additional 01:07:04.480 --> 01:07:09.360 50 cents that you bank you will spend on more production so 01:07:09.360 --> 01:07:11.360 that you can meet the additional man demand. 01:07:11.360 --> 01:07:14.480 So as you scale up your what you're producing, you can get 01:07:14.480 --> 01:07:17.760 it to the point that you can meet all the demand for 01:07:17.760 --> 01:07:20.160 all seven days with seven days worth of production. 01:07:20.160 --> 01:07:21.840 They maybe continue to scale up from there. 01:07:21.840 --> 01:07:24.160 You get into more stores. 01:07:24.160 --> 01:07:29.040 So while it is okay for you to charge $2 for something, 01:07:29.040 --> 01:07:32.240 if you want to charge $225 or $250 because you want to 01:07:32.240 --> 01:07:35.520 make it available to more people, I think that's a case can 01:07:35.600 --> 01:07:38.800 be made that it's okay to charge $250, maybe for a while. 01:07:38.800 --> 01:07:42.160 Because what's going to happen, some people will be priced out of 01:07:42.160 --> 01:07:44.800 the market at $2 for $50 versus $2. 01:07:44.800 --> 01:07:48.480 But when you scale your production, a lot more people will be 01:07:48.480 --> 01:07:50.880 able to buy your product, which they want. 01:07:50.880 --> 01:07:54.800 And once you get scaled up, you won't need that extra income. 01:07:54.800 --> 01:07:56.080 You could cut your price again. 01:07:56.080 --> 01:07:57.920 You could take it back down to two. 01:07:57.920 --> 01:07:59.840 In fact, you might be able to cut it to maybe 180 01:07:59.920 --> 01:08:00.320 once. 01:08:01.440 --> 01:08:06.160 Because with the increased economies of scale from your more advanced production 01:08:06.160 --> 01:08:09.840 process, it's not actually costing you as much per batch. 01:08:09.840 --> 01:08:12.880 You know, if you're baking something, energy input is a lot of 01:08:12.880 --> 01:08:13.520 your cost. 01:08:13.520 --> 01:08:15.680 If you have a bigger oven, you can fit a lot more 01:08:15.680 --> 01:08:16.880 cookies in there. 01:08:16.880 --> 01:08:22.080 Suddenly your energy cost per cookie, your biscuit comes way down. 01:08:22.080 --> 01:08:25.520 So all these factors are are an important part of a cost 01:08:25.520 --> 01:08:30.320 calculation as a producer, and there's no There's no point, no one 01:08:30.320 --> 01:08:33.280 is gonna morally say you have to sell stuff at a loss. 01:08:33.280 --> 01:08:38.400 The question is, when you're taking profit, why are you doing it? 01:08:38.400 --> 01:08:41.200 If you're charging more than it's costing you, and obviously part of 01:08:41.200 --> 01:08:42.560 your part of your net 01:08:44.240 --> 01:08:48.080 coming into you is going to be what do I pay myself? 01:08:48.080 --> 01:08:50.720 Maybe there's there's wiggle room where maybe you pay yourself a little 01:08:50.720 --> 01:08:54.720 bit more, like you probably weren't paying nearly what the time was 01:08:54.720 --> 01:08:57.920 worth at the beginning, if you have room to pay yourself a 01:08:57.920 --> 01:08:59.360 little bit more, that's fine. 01:08:59.360 --> 01:09:00.880 So there's no hard and fast number. 01:09:00.880 --> 01:09:03.120 You're like your bacon dog biscuits. 01:09:03.120 --> 01:09:05.280 It's what's the value of that labor? 01:09:05.280 --> 01:09:09.760 There's a reasonable realm of discussion beyond which it's like if if 01:09:09.760 --> 01:09:13.040 you're raking in well into six figures as the as the cookie 01:09:13.040 --> 01:09:17.600 ba magnate in your kitchen, you're probably charging more than you should 01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:21.440 be. And so back to the Apple example, one of the problems 01:09:21.440 --> 01:09:25.760 with Apple is that they make really, really, really good products and 01:09:25.760 --> 01:09:29.600 they significantly overcharge for the upgrades, which is where a lot of 01:09:29.600 --> 01:09:31.120 that margin comes from. 01:09:31.120 --> 01:09:32.880 So if you were to get one of the new M3 01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:37.120 MacBook Pros or iMacs, they're really good machines. 01:09:37.120 --> 01:09:40.160 I I don't own stock anymore, this isn't conflicted, but they're still 01:09:40.160 --> 01:09:40.720 good machines. 01:09:40.720 --> 01:09:42.640 That's what I tell people to buy. 01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:45.120 If you were to buy it, do not ever buy the base 01:09:45.360 --> 01:09:50.240 config. Because to this day, Tim Cook, the Bean Counter, insists on 01:09:50.240 --> 01:09:54.800 making the minimum config eight gigabytes of RAM, which is obscene. 01:09:54.800 --> 01:09:56.000 It's way too low. 01:09:56.000 --> 01:09:59.200 It makes it a worse machine than it would be otherwise. 01:09:59.200 --> 01:10:02.640 So that $250 of pure profit. 01:10:02.640 --> 01:10:04.400 I did the math earlier. 01:10:04.400 --> 01:10:08.880 My guess, my best guess is that the the current base config 01:10:08.880 --> 01:10:13.040 of the MacBook Pro is eight gigs of RAM and half a 01:10:13.040 --> 01:10:16.880 terabyte of SSD storage. 01:10:16.880 --> 01:10:21.920 To increase that to one terabyte of storage and 16 gigabytes of 01:10:21.920 --> 01:10:24.320 RAM, which would be a legitimate base config. 01:10:24.320 --> 01:10:27.840 That would be a reasonable base config based on the general market. 01:10:27.840 --> 01:10:31.680 Would cost Apple on that sixteen hundred dollars, my guess best guess 01:10:31.840 --> 01:10:36.160 is probably about an additional seventy-five dollars per unit, which would take 01:10:36.160 --> 01:10:40.560 their margins on that machine overall, like just calculating the the total 01:10:40.560 --> 01:10:45.440 margins on average, that twenty-five percent net margin that they're making, if 01:10:45.520 --> 01:10:49.200 every if all they sold were max, probably closer to twenty percent. 01:10:49.200 --> 01:10:52.800 So that's still they're taking 20% more from you than it costs 01:10:52.800 --> 01:10:56.480 them. So when you give them a thousand instead of $750, the 01:10:56.480 --> 01:11:00.640 product is $800 and there's $200 of profit. 01:11:00.640 --> 01:11:06.560 What Apple is doing by gouging, by charging way more than they 01:11:06.560 --> 01:11:09.840 need, their profit comes from overcharging on the upgrades. 01:11:09.840 --> 01:11:10.880 And what do they do? 01:11:10.880 --> 01:11:13.840 They just they have they have an unfathomable amount of money just 01:11:13.840 --> 01:11:14.880 sitting there. 01:11:16.080 --> 01:11:19.840 it's something that today in capitalism is pointed to as the greatest 01:11:19.840 --> 01:11:23.200 success story really in the the history of anything, arguably. 01:11:23.200 --> 01:11:26.560 Like every other company wants to try to emulate some aspect of 01:11:26.560 --> 01:11:27.680 Apple's success. 01:11:27.760 --> 01:11:29.440 There's no doubt they're successful. 01:11:29.760 --> 01:11:34.800 The question is, could they be doing better if they charged less? 01:11:34.800 --> 01:11:38.720 If they were a less profitable company, would they be better people 01:11:38.720 --> 01:11:39.280 for it? 01:11:39.280 --> 01:11:41.440 And one of the least reasons I left was is it it 01:11:41.440 --> 01:11:44.560 was always a leftist pay place, but it just became worse and 01:11:44.560 --> 01:11:48.080 worse and worse and in the end for that reason, other reasons, 01:11:48.080 --> 01:11:49.760 I just I couldn't stand being there. 01:11:49.840 --> 01:11:52.880 Didn't matter how much money they were paying me, I couldn't stand 01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:54.240 another second. 01:11:54.800 --> 01:11:58.720 When somebody is just taking as much as they possibly can, when 01:11:58.720 --> 01:12:03.760 they're extracting the maximum amount, that is per se immoral. 01:12:03.760 --> 01:12:07.360 It doesn't matter what the money, what the exact dollar amount is, 01:12:07.360 --> 01:12:09.760 they're taking as much as they can. 01:12:09.760 --> 01:12:10.080 And 01:12:11.360 --> 01:12:15.200 again, this is the difference between capitalist morality and Christian morality. 01:12:15.200 --> 01:12:16.880 A Christian cannot do that. 01:12:16.880 --> 01:12:21.680 A capitalist not only can, as Corey said must, you must maximize 01:12:21.680 --> 01:12:28.400 profit. Now there's debate around to what extent that's mandatory, but it's 01:12:28.400 --> 01:12:29.600 certainly the brass ring. 01:12:29.600 --> 01:12:32.480 It's what everybody wants to be as profitable as possible, to pay 01:12:32.480 --> 01:12:34.240 as much, to make as much. 01:12:34.240 --> 01:12:35.360 That's avarice. 01:12:35.360 --> 01:12:39.200 That's just it's pure greed to have more than you need. 01:12:39.200 --> 01:12:44.320 Because for the capitalist morality, there's no such thing as enough. 01:12:44.400 --> 01:12:48.960 On the topic of that 13 pair of jeans, not to make 01:12:49.280 --> 01:12:53.760 myself seem too old, but I have a handful of pairs of 01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:56.800 jeans from when I was in high school that are just now 01:12:56.800 --> 01:12:57.920 starting to wear out. 01:12:57.920 --> 01:13:01.600 So they're older in fact than probably a fair number of the 01:13:01.600 --> 01:13:03.440 members of our audience. 01:13:03.760 --> 01:13:07.120 There's no chance that jeans I bought today, at least for anywhere 01:13:07.120 --> 01:13:12.160 near that price, even accounting for inflation, would last anywhere near as 01:13:12.160 --> 01:13:16.640 long. And so even in our own lifetimes, we've seen this precipitous 01:13:16.640 --> 01:13:21.680 decline in quality due to the incentives built into the system that 01:13:21.680 --> 01:13:23.840 we call capitalism. 01:13:23.840 --> 01:13:28.640 And Walmart, quite frankly, they picked a good example because Walmart is 01:13:28.640 --> 01:13:32.640 one of the biggest exploiters of this system. 01:13:32.640 --> 01:13:34.880 They underpay their employees. 01:13:34.880 --> 01:13:40.400 Walmart basically hires those who are on welfare and keeps them on 01:13:40.400 --> 01:13:42.720 welfare because of what Walmart pays. 01:13:42.720 --> 01:13:48.160 And so, in fact, the entire system is subsidizing Walmart. 01:13:48.160 --> 01:13:51.200 And so it's exactly what I pointed out about the system. 01:13:51.520 --> 01:13:57.680 The system is designed to siphon money from everyone and give it 01:13:57.680 --> 01:14:00.480 only to the wealthiest individuals in the system. 01:14:01.120 --> 01:14:02.960 This is not a Marxist critique. 01:14:02.960 --> 01:14:05.520 This is not class warfare. 01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:09.680 This is just what capitalism does. 01:14:09.680 --> 01:14:13.360 And we see this even in the beginnings of capitalism centuries ago. 01:14:13.360 --> 01:14:16.960 This is one of the things that was pointed out by the 01:14:16.960 --> 01:14:23.600 early critiques and the subsequent critiques in subsequent centuries of capitalism. 01:14:23.600 --> 01:14:29.760 It created this gulf between the poorest and the wealthiest in society. 01:14:30.160 --> 01:14:32.560 that historically had not been there. 01:14:32.560 --> 01:14:33.200 The only 01:14:34.640 --> 01:14:38.240 exorbitantly, if you want to use the term wealthy individuals in society 01:14:38.400 --> 01:14:41.200 historically, had been certain kings. 01:14:41.200 --> 01:14:45.600 And even then, not by today's standards, the 01:14:46.560 --> 01:14:51.600 extremely wealthy, the 1% of the 1% in our current system are 01:14:51.600 --> 01:14:55.600 wealthier than historical kings, with very few exceptions. 01:14:57.280 --> 01:14:58.800 Think about that. 01:14:58.800 --> 01:15:04.720 The king of a nation historically, relative to the poorest individuals in 01:15:04.720 --> 01:15:09.360 his country, had less wealth than is the case today for the 01:15:09.360 --> 01:15:14.160 wealthiest individuals and the poorest individuals in our system. 01:15:14.160 --> 01:15:20.240 And supposedly capitalism, as they frequently claim, raises people out of poverty. 01:15:20.480 --> 01:15:24.560 In reality, what it has done is it has enslaved the vast 01:15:24.560 --> 01:15:29.520 majority of those living under this system to a lifetime of debt 01:15:29.520 --> 01:15:32.080 slavery. The 01:15:33.040 --> 01:15:39.760 current highest rate charged on a credit card is 36%. 01:15:39.760 --> 01:15:41.440 That's obscene. 01:15:41.440 --> 01:15:44.560 And that's not even that high because there are other loans that 01:15:44.560 --> 01:15:47.680 are permissible in this country, despite the fact that we still have 01:15:47.680 --> 01:15:52.400 so called anti usury laws, they're not very strong, they don't really 01:15:52.400 --> 01:15:53.120 do very much. 01:15:53.120 --> 01:15:55.040 They're basically toothless. 01:15:55.040 --> 01:15:59.440 But there are loans that charge even higher rates than that credit 01:15:59.440 --> 01:16:04.880 card. And notably the credit card could charge more until they run 01:16:04.880 --> 01:16:08.080 up against some of those anti-usury laws, but they're ridiculous. 01:16:08.080 --> 01:16:12.080 The fact that this is permissible in our system should have Christians 01:16:12.080 --> 01:16:12.880 up in arms. 01:16:12.880 --> 01:16:17.360 This is disgusting that these things are allowed. 01:16:17.360 --> 01:16:21.920 And bear in mind that those who are exploited by this primarily 01:16:22.240 --> 01:16:25.920 are the poor and the ignorant. 01:16:25.920 --> 01:16:29.600 Those who are less intelligent are going to be more exploited by 01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:33.520 this system, because, quite frankly, if you are numerate, you are going 01:16:33.520 --> 01:16:37.040 to be able to navigate this system better than if you are 01:16:37.040 --> 01:16:42.160 not. And so the particularly poor, and those who are below average 01:16:42.160 --> 01:16:46.400 in intelligence are those who are most exploited by this system. 01:16:46.400 --> 01:16:49.520 And so you'll have those who will argue that oh well capitalism 01:16:49.520 --> 01:16:52.720 did away with feudalism and slavery and all these systems. 01:16:52.720 --> 01:16:53.760 No it didn't. 01:16:53.760 --> 01:16:58.240 It enslaved these people even more under worse conditions. 01:16:58.240 --> 01:17:03.280 Those who live in the dregs of our society, as it were, 01:17:03.280 --> 01:17:07.840 in the lowest echelon of society today, live under worse conditions than 01:17:07.840 --> 01:17:12.880 those who were serfs in the past, or even slaves, because serfs 01:17:12.960 --> 01:17:17.600 and slaves were still provided for, to some degree, by their lords 01:17:17.600 --> 01:17:18.720 and masters. 01:17:18.720 --> 01:17:20.720 That is not the case to day. 01:17:20.960 --> 01:17:28.400 Because today you have exploitative corporations who see these individuals as employees, 01:17:28.400 --> 01:17:32.800 and employee, quite frankly, is just a term for abject slave when 01:17:32.800 --> 01:17:35.920 it comes to some of these larger corporations, granted, it's going to 01:17:35.920 --> 01:17:40.160 depend on where you are employed and at what level. 01:17:40.160 --> 01:17:45.040 But if you're employed as a stalker at Walmart, Walmart doesn't care 01:17:45.040 --> 01:17:45.600 about you. 01:17:45.600 --> 01:17:50.400 Walmart sees you as entirely replaceable, and they will drop you at 01:17:50.400 --> 01:17:53.200 a moment's notice if they think they can do it and make 01:17:53.200 --> 01:17:54.960 more money somewhere else. 01:17:54.960 --> 01:17:58.880 They have no interest in you, they have no relationship with you, 01:17:58.880 --> 01:18:02.160 they have no duties to you, and that is simply not the 01:18:02.160 --> 01:18:03.760 case historically. 01:18:03.760 --> 01:18:08.320 For instance, under the feudal system, a feudal lord got all of 01:18:08.320 --> 01:18:10.880 his food from his serfs. 01:18:10.880 --> 01:18:14.320 That kind of gives him an interest in their welfare. 01:18:14.320 --> 01:18:19.760 There was a relationship there, there was a natural outgrowth of hierarchy. 01:18:19.760 --> 01:18:22.720 And not only that, but the feudal lord was probably related related 01:18:22.720 --> 01:18:26.480 by blood to the serfs, granted at some attenuation, but at the 01:18:26.480 --> 01:18:28.880 level of a distant cousin. 01:18:28.880 --> 01:18:34.000 And so you have this natural ordering of things, this natural relationship 01:18:34.240 --> 01:18:38.000 between and among the individuals in the system that you do not 01:18:38.000 --> 01:18:39.520 see in capitalism. 01:18:39.520 --> 01:18:43.680 Because under a capitalist system, I have no relationship to the person 01:18:43.680 --> 01:18:46.320 who for instance, this iPhone I'm holding. 01:18:46.320 --> 01:18:49.120 I have no relationship to the person who built that. 01:18:49.360 --> 01:18:50.480 I don't know that person. 01:18:50.480 --> 01:18:52.240 I will never know that person. 01:18:52.240 --> 01:18:54.560 It doesn't mean that you have to know every person who made 01:18:54.560 --> 01:18:56.480 every good that you buy. 01:18:56.480 --> 01:18:59.360 But if he's a man in the next town over, that is 01:18:59.360 --> 01:19:03.280 vastly different from if he is some faceless person employed by a 01:19:03.280 --> 01:19:06.640 corporation that employs millions of people on the other side of the 01:19:06.640 --> 01:19:11.840 world. And corporations know this and can exploit it, as we've mentioned 01:19:11.840 --> 01:19:15.920 before, if you can create divisions in your labor force, you can 01:19:15.920 --> 01:19:20.640 drive down their ability to organize and their ability to demand fair 01:19:20.640 --> 01:19:24.720 treatment. Capitalism encourages this. 01:19:24.720 --> 01:19:28.320 That is one of the incentives built into the system First it 01:19:28.320 --> 01:19:33.040 is done by exporting, it is done by importing goods from faraway 01:19:33.040 --> 01:19:36.480 lands where they can be produced far cheaper and often with no 01:19:36.480 --> 01:19:42.960 regulations, including environmental regulations, and then it is done by importing those 01:19:42.960 --> 01:19:45.200 people into your own lands. 01:19:45.200 --> 01:19:46.240 Because guess what? 01:19:46.240 --> 01:19:48.160 That's even cheaper. 01:19:48.400 --> 01:19:54.240 So capitalism always exerts this downward force practically in every single way 01:19:54.320 --> 01:19:57.440 and in every single area it touches. 01:19:57.440 --> 01:20:00.000 And it just continues to cause this harm. 01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:02.960 And we are now living at sort of the tail end of 01:20:02.960 --> 01:20:07.200 it. We can see perhaps not how bad things can get because 01:20:07.200 --> 01:20:10.720 things can always get worse, but we can certainly see how bad 01:20:10.720 --> 01:20:12.400 they have gotten versus 01:20:13.360 --> 01:20:17.360 what we were told would be the good and what we were 01:20:17.360 --> 01:20:20.000 warned by certain men would be the bad. 01:20:20.960 --> 01:20:25.440 Well the good hasn't materialized, but the bad most certainly has. 01:20:25.440 --> 01:20:29.440 The fact that you can buy that thirteen pair of jeans does 01:20:29.440 --> 01:20:31.360 not make your life better. 01:20:31.360 --> 01:20:36.160 Because quite frankly, the existence of the thirteen pair of jeans is 01:20:36.160 --> 01:20:39.760 the reason you can't afford the good pair of jeans, if you 01:20:39.760 --> 01:20:41.280 cannot afford them. 01:20:41.280 --> 01:20:44.240 And even if you can't afford the good pair, it's going to 01:20:44.240 --> 01:20:47.520 cost you relatively more than it would have cost you in the 01:20:47.520 --> 01:20:53.280 past to acquire the actual well-made good, as opposed to the cheap 01:20:53.280 --> 01:20:56.800 knockoff that we have today. 01:20:57.120 --> 01:21:00.240 What we're talking about Talking about for those who are versed in 01:21:00.240 --> 01:21:02.880 economics, perhaps some of you are screaming at us because we haven't 01:21:02.800 --> 01:21:06.960 used the term yet, but we're talking about externalities. 01:21:06.960 --> 01:21:13.600 There are many external costs to the things that capitalism encourages those 01:21:13.600 --> 01:21:15.360 within the system to do. 01:21:15.360 --> 01:21:20.160 And those externalities are not, or at least seldom are, taken into 01:21:20.160 --> 01:21:22.000 account. And so 01:21:23.440 --> 01:21:27.040 Apple, we could use Apple for an example. 01:21:27.040 --> 01:21:32.560 Even though Apple's products are expensive, because they are, even though they 01:21:32.560 --> 01:21:38.640 make a significant profit on them, the actual total cost of that 01:21:38.640 --> 01:21:42.720 device is not represented by the price. 01:21:42.720 --> 01:21:46.960 Because it does not take into account how much of American manufacturing 01:21:46.960 --> 01:21:47.840 has been hollowed out. 01:21:47.840 --> 01:21:50.000 Now, I'm not saying that Apple's the one who did this because 01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:53.760 this was This was done before Apple, Apple has benefited from it. 01:21:53.760 --> 01:21:59.120 Apple has certainly not really reversed it, except to some small degree, 01:21:59.120 --> 01:22:02.320 as they've been incentivized to do so. 01:22:02.320 --> 01:22:06.800 But you don't take into account the hollowing out the manufacturing, the 01:22:06.800 --> 01:22:10.000 brain drain that accompanies that, because if there are no jobs in 01:22:10.000 --> 01:22:13.280 the field, people aren't going to go into the field. 01:22:13.280 --> 01:22:17.360 And all of the other things, all of the follow-on effects from 01:22:17.360 --> 01:22:22.640 that. Because if someone loses his job, his good manufacturing job, well 01:22:22.720 --> 01:22:24.800 then his family becomes poor. 01:22:24.800 --> 01:22:28.400 If his family becomes poor, that increases the burden on the welfare 01:22:28.480 --> 01:22:31.280 system. If you increase the burden on the welfare system, you have 01:22:31.280 --> 01:22:32.160 to increase taxes. 01:22:32.160 --> 01:22:34.720 If you increase taxes, other people become more poor. 01:22:34.720 --> 01:22:39.920 This is a vicious cycle that destroys the country. 01:22:39.920 --> 01:22:45.520 Eventually, capitalism destroys any country that adopts it. 01:22:45.520 --> 01:22:49.600 It is only a matter of time, and the biggest factor in 01:22:49.600 --> 01:22:53.840 how long it will take for capitalism to destroy a given country, 01:22:53.840 --> 01:22:56.880 and by country in this case I mean the political entity that 01:22:56.880 --> 01:23:02.560 constitutes the sovereign over a nation, properly understood. 01:23:02.560 --> 01:23:06.080 But the biggest factor that determines how long it takes capitalism to 01:23:06.080 --> 01:23:09.760 destroy a country is inertia. 01:23:09.760 --> 01:23:16.880 If behind that country you have centuries of built-up infrastructure and 01:23:16.880 --> 01:23:20.240 all of these various systems that are somewhat resilient because of how 01:23:20.240 --> 01:23:23.680 long they have been around, it will take longer to destroy the 01:23:23.680 --> 01:23:25.600 system. And that's what we see. 01:23:25.600 --> 01:23:29.600 It took a long time for capitalism to destroy the West. 01:23:29.600 --> 01:23:34.640 Now there are those who will say, Well hasn't capitalism benefited East 01:23:34.640 --> 01:23:36.080 Asia, for instance? 01:23:36.640 --> 01:23:39.840 And the answer to that is no. 01:23:39.840 --> 01:23:46.080 What happened with those abjectly poor areas is that capitalists were able 01:23:46.080 --> 01:23:50.480 to bring in capital in order to drain it from other parts 01:23:50.480 --> 01:23:55.280 of the world, and this looks like you have a benefit to 01:23:55.280 --> 01:23:56.960 the local population. 01:23:56.960 --> 01:24:00.960 It seems like you have raised them out of poverty to some 01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:04.000 degree, but if you actually look at the long term, the real 01:24:04.000 --> 01:24:09.840 consequences, those living in these areas are still living in abject poverty. 01:24:09.840 --> 01:24:12.320 Now they're just enslaved to corporations. 01:24:12.320 --> 01:24:16.800 Yes, before they were serfs to a feudal lord, and then above 01:24:16.800 --> 01:24:18.960 him to a king, or whatever it happened to be in a 01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:21.360 given area. 01:24:21.360 --> 01:24:25.520 But they haven't exchanged slavery for freedom. 01:24:25.520 --> 01:24:29.200 They've exchanged one kind of slavery for a worse one. 01:24:29.200 --> 01:24:32.480 You have factories in China that install suicide nets on the outside 01:24:32.480 --> 01:24:34.080 of their buildings. 01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:38.720 That's not something that you saw under feudalism. 01:24:39.280 --> 01:24:46.720 Employees of large corporations live worse lives than did feudal serfs. 01:24:47.760 --> 01:24:51.120 that's just the fact of the matter, and it's insane to think 01:24:51.120 --> 01:24:57.520 that people today will say that capitalism has created this wonderful world. 01:24:57.520 --> 01:25:02.880 Medieval serfs worked fewer hours than you, had more time with their 01:25:02.880 --> 01:25:07.200 families and their loved ones than you, had more holidays than you, 01:25:07.200 --> 01:25:10.960 and practically took off most of winter. 01:25:10.960 --> 01:25:14.400 And yet somehow we're supposed to believe that those who are working 01:25:14.720 --> 01:25:19.120 forty or more, depending on your field, certainly, uh other attorneys out 01:25:19.120 --> 01:25:23.280 there will laugh at the number forty, but forty hours a week, 01:25:23.280 --> 01:25:28.480 fifty or more weeks per year for basically your entire life, and 01:25:28.480 --> 01:25:31.920 somehow that's supposed to be better than these historical systems. 01:25:31.920 --> 01:25:35.680 The claims of capitalism work only if you take them at face 01:25:35.680 --> 01:25:38.320 value and do not assess them at all. 01:25:38.320 --> 01:25:41.600 If you actually look at them in their historical context, and you 01:25:41.600 --> 01:25:44.880 look at the consequences and you look at the promises versus what 01:25:44.880 --> 01:25:50.240 was delivered, it becomes absurd to believe that this system is good, 01:25:50.240 --> 01:25:54.960 even if you don't look at the scriptural requirements, which it clearly 01:25:54.960 --> 01:25:58.000 violates left, right, and center. 01:25:58.000 --> 01:26:01.200 There is no way to look at capitalism and square it with 01:26:01.200 --> 01:26:07.360 Christianity. The only reason that Christians, particularly in the US, for their 01:26:07.360 --> 01:26:10.800 historical differences between the mindset in the US and Europe on this, 01:26:10.800 --> 01:26:14.240 but particularly in the US this has taken deep root. 01:26:14.240 --> 01:26:20.080 The reason that people support capitalism is because we have been propagandized 01:26:20.080 --> 01:26:24.240 to believe that the only alternative is Alternative is communism. 01:26:24.240 --> 01:26:28.800 And if the only alternative to the system presented is communism, that's 01:26:28.800 --> 01:26:30.000 not a very hard sell. 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:32.560 Because you can look at what communism did, and yes, that was 01:26:32.560 --> 01:26:34.720 worse. To some degree. 01:26:34.720 --> 01:26:37.760 Because if you look at the longitudinal consequence, if you look at 01:26:37.760 --> 01:26:42.320 the long term outcome of what capitalism has done in the West, 01:26:42.320 --> 01:26:45.840 capitalism has been just as destructive as communism. 01:26:45.840 --> 01:26:47.600 It went about it a different way. 01:26:47.840 --> 01:26:51.840 Communism usually lined people up beside a ditch and just shot them, 01:26:51.840 --> 01:26:55.920 or exported them to a frozen part of the world. 01:26:55.920 --> 01:27:01.760 On the other hand, capitalism has undermined the family, it has undermined 01:27:01.760 --> 01:27:03.840 basically our entire economy. 01:27:03.840 --> 01:27:06.400 It has undermined traditional manufacturing. 01:27:06.400 --> 01:27:10.480 It has undermined not just manufacturing, but really the traditional production of 01:27:10.480 --> 01:27:11.600 any and all goods. 01:27:11.600 --> 01:27:13.520 It has caused brain drain. 01:27:13.520 --> 01:27:19.120 All of these consequences are in fact arguably harder to reverse, to 01:27:19.120 --> 01:27:23.120 overcome, than what happened in communism. 01:27:23.120 --> 01:27:28.400 But in either case, both of these systems are anti-Christ. 01:27:28.400 --> 01:27:30.480 Both of these systems are evil. 01:27:30.480 --> 01:27:33.440 And so as Christian, we don't have to support either one. 01:27:33.440 --> 01:27:38.560 If someone tells you that you have two choices, unless they're offering 01:27:38.560 --> 01:27:41.680 you food, they're probably lying. 01:27:41.680 --> 01:27:44.960 Or at the very least, you should assess whether or not that 01:27:44.960 --> 01:27:45.920 person is lying. 01:27:45.920 --> 01:27:49.040 Yes, sometimes there is a real binary choice. 01:27:49.040 --> 01:27:50.400 It is heaven or hell. 01:27:50.400 --> 01:27:51.760 There are binaries. 01:27:51.760 --> 01:27:53.840 But a lot of times when someone tells you you can choose 01:27:53.840 --> 01:27:58.240 A or B, they're attempting to get you not to consider C 01:27:58.560 --> 01:28:02.880 and D and E because they want you to choose B because 01:28:02.880 --> 01:28:04.800 A is so abhorrent. 01:28:05.040 --> 01:28:06.320 And that's the case with this. 01:28:06.800 --> 01:28:09.040 When someone tells you, oh well, you have to be a capitalist 01:28:09.120 --> 01:28:13.440 or else you're a communist, they're not telling you the whole truth 01:28:13.520 --> 01:28:14.960 because there are other options. 01:28:14.960 --> 01:28:20.240 And we know that because historically, you didn't have capitalism or communism. 01:28:20.240 --> 01:28:24.880 But you had an economy, because people bought and sold, markets existed, 01:28:24.880 --> 01:28:26.400 they had coinage. 01:28:26.400 --> 01:28:31.760 And so if there is historical precedent for other options, then no, 01:28:31.680 --> 01:28:34.320 the options are not capitalism or communism. 01:28:34.320 --> 01:28:36.000 That is a false binary. 01:28:36.000 --> 01:28:38.880 The person who tells you that is trying to mislead you. 01:28:38.880 --> 01:28:42.880 And so as Christians, what our duty is, is to look at 01:28:42.880 --> 01:28:46.720 what God has said on these issues, and then to deal with 01:28:46.720 --> 01:28:51.040 our neighbors in love, because love your neighbor as yourself is the 01:28:51.040 --> 01:28:53.280 second greatest commandment. 01:28:53.280 --> 01:28:57.120 You can't do that and be a good capitalist. 01:28:57.120 --> 01:28:59.600 And if a system tells you that you have to do X, 01:28:59.600 --> 01:29:03.200 Y, and Z to be a good member of that system, a 01:29:03.200 --> 01:29:06.560 good advocate for that system, and you look at X, Y, and 01:29:06.560 --> 01:29:09.360 Z, and then you look at scripture and it says, do not 01:29:09.360 --> 01:29:13.520 do X, do not do Y, do not do Z. 01:29:13.520 --> 01:29:15.760 Well there's a very real problem here, and you're going to have 01:29:15.760 --> 01:29:20.480 to choose one or the other, the system or scripture. 01:29:20.880 --> 01:29:24.800 One of the other fascinating aspects of comparing things as they stand 01:29:24.800 --> 01:29:31.840 today with serfdom is the positive obligations that the Lord had to 01:29:31.840 --> 01:29:33.040 his serfs. 01:29:33.040 --> 01:29:37.040 Yeah, Cory mentioned that they were the Lord, you know, the manor 01:29:37.040 --> 01:29:41.280 was dependent on the serfs for his food, he was obligated to 01:29:41.280 --> 01:29:42.960 them to protect them. 01:29:42.960 --> 01:29:48.480 Just as today, you know, I pay property taxes and my town 01:29:48.480 --> 01:29:51.680 is obligated to protect me with police protection. 01:29:51.680 --> 01:29:53.040 Except they're not. 01:29:53.040 --> 01:29:56.640 Because there's been a Supreme Court ruling some time ago that ruled 01:29:56.640 --> 01:30:01.120 that the police have no positive duty to any individual to protect 01:30:01.120 --> 01:30:02.080 them from anything. 01:30:02.080 --> 01:30:04.960 You individually are completely on your own. 01:30:04.960 --> 01:30:08.560 Even though there are police and even though they have a monopoly 01:30:08.560 --> 01:30:12.720 on violence in your area, if they fail to protect you, they're 01:30:12.720 --> 01:30:13.600 not liable. 01:30:13.600 --> 01:30:16.720 They have not failed in their duty in any legal sense that 01:30:16.720 --> 01:30:18.960 they can be held accountable for. 01:30:18.960 --> 01:30:19.280 So 01:30:20.240 --> 01:30:22.640 that was not true of the Lord. 01:30:22.640 --> 01:30:26.720 Now, you couldn't necessarily take your baron to court if he didn't 01:30:26.640 --> 01:30:31.600 protect you from marauders, but if he didn't do that, A, he 01:30:31.600 --> 01:30:34.400 was not going to be able to eat, and B, the serfs 01:30:34.560 --> 01:30:36.720 were likely to rise up and hurt him. 01:30:36.720 --> 01:30:39.040 Maybe they burned down the manor. 01:30:39.040 --> 01:30:44.560 Possibility of violence against the head was all Was always present in 01:30:44.560 --> 01:30:46.960 those hierarchical systems. 01:30:46.960 --> 01:30:52.160 And so undergirding the entirety of the capitalist argument 01:30:53.680 --> 01:30:59.120 for the betterment of the world is that it increased individual freedom. 01:30:59.120 --> 01:31:04.000 Now the problem with saying that you've increased individual freedom is freedom 01:31:04.000 --> 01:31:05.200 to what? 01:31:05.200 --> 01:31:11.600 Freedom to buy worse, more dangerous products, freedom to live a life 01:31:11.600 --> 01:31:13.920 that is detached from your neighbor. 01:31:13.920 --> 01:31:16.240 These are all inherent to capitalism. 01:31:16.240 --> 01:31:20.720 And they are freedoms in the sense that capitalism granted a license 01:31:20.720 --> 01:31:24.240 to behave in ways that Christians would not have done in the 01:31:24.240 --> 01:31:25.440 past. But 01:31:26.720 --> 01:31:29.840 this is why we've gone after freedom in the past is it's 01:31:29.840 --> 01:31:31.760 it's not a positive good. 01:31:31.760 --> 01:31:34.880 You are always a slave to something. 01:31:34.880 --> 01:31:38.560 And the blessing of Christianity is realizing that as a slave to 01:31:38.560 --> 01:31:45.760 Christ, you are free from these sorts of appetites, not completely, but 01:31:45.760 --> 01:31:51.120 you are given grace, you are given sanctification to be able to 01:31:51.120 --> 01:31:55.440 resist the desire to be avaricious, to envy what your neighbor has 01:31:55.520 --> 01:31:57.520 and try to have more than him. 01:31:57.520 --> 01:31:58.160 Now 01:31:59.440 --> 01:32:02.240 There's certainly a case to be made that when you see, you 01:32:02.240 --> 01:32:05.280 know, if you're a young single guy and you see a married 01:32:05.280 --> 01:32:08.480 guy with you know a new kid and a pretty wife, you 01:32:08.480 --> 01:32:11.840 should absolutely admire that and you should say, I want that for 01:32:11.840 --> 01:32:14.640 myself. That is not envy. 01:32:14.640 --> 01:32:17.520 At least not that's not envy in any sinful sense. 01:32:17.680 --> 01:32:19.760 When you look at that and you say, I want that for 01:32:19.760 --> 01:32:23.200 myself, you're you shouldn't be despising the man because he has something 01:32:23.280 --> 01:32:24.400 you don't. 01:32:24.400 --> 01:32:25.760 You shouldn't be 01:32:27.040 --> 01:32:30.480 lusting after his wife and saying, I want to take her and 01:32:30.480 --> 01:32:35.280 make her mine you shouldn't hate God for giving him blessings that 01:32:35.280 --> 01:32:36.800 you have yet to receive. 01:32:36.800 --> 01:32:40.720 Those are all the ways to handle that situation improperly. 01:32:40.720 --> 01:32:44.160 The proper way is to say that guy is further along in 01:32:44.160 --> 01:32:44.960 his life than me. 01:32:44.960 --> 01:32:48.480 He's has stuff that I want for myself that I know are 01:32:48.480 --> 01:32:50.960 blessings from God, that I know that I can want with a 01:32:50.960 --> 01:32:52.080 clean conscience. 01:32:52.080 --> 01:32:54.720 I'm gonna do what I need to do in my life to 01:32:54.720 --> 01:32:57.200 try to achieve those things myself. 01:32:57.200 --> 01:32:59.600 And then it's up to God the w whether or not he 01:32:59.600 --> 01:33:01.920 delivers it to you. 01:33:01.920 --> 01:33:04.000 Capitalism doesn't work that way. 01:33:04.000 --> 01:33:11.360 Capitalism is dependent on you fundamentally envying the lifestyles of others and 01:33:11.360 --> 01:33:15.120 trying to emulate and to outdo them, not because you want to 01:33:15.120 --> 01:33:18.480 share and joy, but because you want to want to just have 01:33:18.480 --> 01:33:19.520 more stuff. 01:33:19.520 --> 01:33:22.320 That that's really what it comes down to. 01:33:22.320 --> 01:33:25.680 And when you look at the the arguments on the Mises webpage 01:33:25.760 --> 01:33:29.920 and pretty much any place where there's an argument for capitalism, it's 01:33:29.920 --> 01:33:34.480 predicated in terms of lots more freedom and lots more stuff. 01:33:34.480 --> 01:33:38.480 And pro-capitalists will say, well, that's an increase in standard of living. 01:33:38.480 --> 01:33:42.000 As Corey just said, there are many standards of living by which 01:33:42.000 --> 01:33:44.560 serfs lived unimaginably better than us. 01:33:44.960 --> 01:33:48.560 Yeah, maybe they had their homes in some case well, twenty years 01:33:48.560 --> 01:33:50.960 ago it would be true to say that their homes probably weren't 01:33:50.960 --> 01:33:55.200 weren't as nice as many of ours today, with the completely deranged 01:33:55.200 --> 01:34:01.360 housing market, which is itself incidentally a terminal state of capitalism playing 01:34:01.360 --> 01:34:02.800 out in the endgame. 01:34:02.800 --> 01:34:04.560 I mean, look at housing in particular. 01:34:04.560 --> 01:34:06.640 I think it's a perfect example. 01:34:06.640 --> 01:34:10.560 For the last 20, 30 years, what have we had? 01:34:10.560 --> 01:34:16.000 Mexican laborers and other South American immigrants, so called, they're aliens, they're 01:34:16.000 --> 01:34:20.320 invaders, most of them are illegally, come to this country and they 01:34:20.320 --> 01:34:24.880 will do jobs like roofing, any other things in in the housing 01:34:24.880 --> 01:34:30.720 sector that displaced a lot of blue-collar white men in this country. 01:34:30.720 --> 01:34:33.760 My parents, when they were redoing some stuff on their house, they 01:34:33.760 --> 01:34:36.320 were so excited a bunch of Mexicans showed up to do it 01:34:36.400 --> 01:34:37.680 because they were cheap. 01:34:37.680 --> 01:34:39.360 Every boomer is like that. 01:34:39.440 --> 01:34:42.560 You get the cheapest labor, you get the best deal, and you 01:34:42.560 --> 01:34:43.440 nailed it. 01:34:43.440 --> 01:34:47.600 And that's that's in the it's seen as a moral victory when 01:34:47.600 --> 01:34:52.880 it happens, not considering the externality that when there are a bunch 01:34:52.880 --> 01:34:55.760 of Mexicans up on their on your roof, that means there are 01:34:55.840 --> 01:34:58.320 a bunch of white guys who can't feed their kids the tonight 01:34:58.640 --> 01:35:02.880 because you didn't give them twenty percent more than the illegal alien 01:35:02.880 --> 01:35:05.760 would have cost to do a worse job than the white guy 01:35:05.760 --> 01:35:07.280 would have done. 01:35:07.280 --> 01:35:13.360 When your choice is profit or failure as a capitalist, you're always 01:35:13.360 --> 01:35:14.320 going to chase the money. 01:35:14.320 --> 01:35:16.720 You're always going to take the cheapest option. 01:35:17.120 --> 01:35:21.440 the Mexican illegal day labor would have to be really, really bad. 01:35:21.440 --> 01:35:24.560 And even then, most people today are still probably going to roll 01:35:24.560 --> 01:35:25.680 the dice. 01:35:25.680 --> 01:35:29.680 And then when all these boomers go to sell their houses, what 01:35:29.680 --> 01:35:30.480 do they do? 01:35:30.480 --> 01:35:33.280 They try to get top dollar for the house. 01:35:33.280 --> 01:35:38.720 Now, in a vacuum, you could debate whether or not that makes 01:35:38.720 --> 01:35:42.080 sense. I think that the existence of the housing market as it 01:35:42.080 --> 01:35:47.200 stands today is fundamentally dislocated from fundamentals in so many ways that 01:35:47.200 --> 01:35:51.280 that's there'll be a separate podcast series just to discuss that. 01:35:51.280 --> 01:35:51.600 But 01:35:52.800 --> 01:35:57.680 one of the key moral elements that's present in every housing sale 01:35:57.680 --> 01:36:00.160 is to whom are you selling your house? 01:36:00.160 --> 01:36:03.520 And over and over, we have all seen stories, or hopefully, if 01:36:03.520 --> 01:36:06.480 you're paying attention, you've seen and heard stories from 01:36:07.920 --> 01:36:11.120 At least until the housing market blew up in the last two 01:36:11.120 --> 01:36:13.040 years. You'd have a young family. 01:36:13.360 --> 01:36:16.640 Maybe the dad's thirty, he has a new wife, they have their 01:36:16.640 --> 01:36:20.560 first kid, he's finally saved up enough that he can afford to 01:36:20.560 --> 01:36:22.160 make a bid on a house. 01:36:22.160 --> 01:36:25.760 He can finally he thinks he can finally just barely squeak into 01:36:25.760 --> 01:36:26.560 a home. 01:36:26.560 --> 01:36:30.880 And what happens in the housing market, in the free market? 01:36:30.880 --> 01:36:34.480 This man, this young man with not a lot of resources, he's 01:36:34.480 --> 01:36:38.400 at the upper limit of what he can afford, is in competition 01:36:38.400 --> 01:36:45.520 with banks, with enormous commercial real estate operations, with 01:36:45.520 --> 01:36:51.360 housing flippers who are buying places, marking them up and reselling them 01:36:51.520 --> 01:36:54.880 with people who are for a while were buying them as Airbnbs 01:36:54.960 --> 01:36:58.560 just to use as profit farms, even though it would destroy the 01:36:58.560 --> 01:37:01.120 quality of the neighborhood when they did it. 01:37:01.120 --> 01:37:01.600 And so 01:37:02.800 --> 01:37:05.360 as a buyer, you're helpless. 01:37:05.360 --> 01:37:07.440 As a seller, you are not helpless. 01:37:07.440 --> 01:37:08.720 You are culpable. 01:37:08.720 --> 01:37:11.680 If you own a house and you're putting it on the market 01:37:11.840 --> 01:37:15.600 and you are given a choice between a couple like the young 01:37:15.600 --> 01:37:19.520 couple that's trying to buy their first home and a cash pyre 01:37:19.520 --> 01:37:23.760 that's going to pay fifty thousand dollars more, you are sinning if 01:37:23.760 --> 01:37:26.080 you don't sell the house to the cheaper buyer. 01:37:26.080 --> 01:37:29.120 It is evil to give it to the person who's gonna give 01:37:29.120 --> 01:37:32.800 you more money for it when they don't need it as much. 01:37:32.800 --> 01:37:36.560 And we're all really allergic to the idea of need, but when 01:37:36.560 --> 01:37:41.520 you look at the basic situation there, it's easy to figure out. 01:37:41.520 --> 01:37:44.960 The young guy whose k is just barely right at the edge, 01:37:44.960 --> 01:37:47.120 frankly, you should probably cut him a break. 01:37:47.120 --> 01:37:50.880 In those circumstances, I would you know knock knock another five percent 01:37:50.880 --> 01:37:51.120 off 01:37:52.000 --> 01:37:53.520 to help them out. 01:37:53.520 --> 01:37:56.640 That's completely within your discretion as a seller. 01:37:56.640 --> 01:37:59.520 You can sell to anyone anyone you please, and you can sell 01:37:59.520 --> 01:38:01.120 for whatever price you please. 01:38:01.120 --> 01:38:05.760 Capitalism, the morality of this religion says the fifty thousand dollar greater 01:38:05.920 --> 01:38:08.480 cash buyer, that's the one you got to take. 01:38:08.480 --> 01:38:10.320 Sorry guys, I have no choice. 01:38:10.320 --> 01:38:11.920 There's a better offer on the table. 01:38:11.920 --> 01:38:13.120 I have to take it. 01:38:13.120 --> 01:38:16.400 Nonsense. Complete horse crap. 01:38:16.400 --> 01:38:18.560 You can sell to whomever you wish. 01:38:18.800 --> 01:38:22.720 And when you fail to sell to someone who's your actual neighbor, 01:38:22.720 --> 01:38:26.800 who actually has a fundamental need, not only like, hey, this guy 01:38:26.800 --> 01:38:29.440 needs a house, but this man is forming a family. 01:38:29.440 --> 01:38:32.080 He's He's establishing roots in a community. 01:38:32.080 --> 01:38:36.480 He's doing everything that we all know needs to occur in communities 01:38:36.480 --> 01:38:38.480 for them to be sustained and preserved. 01:38:38.480 --> 01:38:41.200 That guy is the guy who needs to be rewarded. 01:38:41.360 --> 01:38:44.480 If that means that you don't get as much money, if if 01:38:44.480 --> 01:38:48.080 you're selling your house for a hundred thousand dollars more instead of 01:38:48.080 --> 01:38:51.440 a hundred and fifty thousand dollars more than you paid for it, 01:38:51.440 --> 01:38:53.280 it should be a no-brainer. 01:38:53.280 --> 01:38:57.600 And yet because of capitalism, every buyer in virtually every such situation 01:38:57.680 --> 01:39:01.600 is gonna take the greater offer and just shrug and say, yeah, 01:39:01.600 --> 01:39:03.920 that's the market. 01:39:03.920 --> 01:39:08.480 This is a complete despising of neighbor to do such a thing. 01:39:08.480 --> 01:39:10.960 And yes, completely normal in capitalism. 01:39:10.960 --> 01:39:14.560 I I think that is the key element of all of these 01:39:14.560 --> 01:39:21.280 calculations, regardless of what other system might meet our lofty ideals when 01:39:21.280 --> 01:39:24.560 you are willing to screw over your neighbor for a few more 01:39:24.560 --> 01:39:26.400 bucks, you're evil. 01:39:26.400 --> 01:39:29.360 It's an impermissible thing and is a sin. 01:39:29.360 --> 01:39:33.600 And you should you should consider those profits to be blood money 01:39:34.240 --> 01:39:37.200 because you have hurt your neighbor for the sake of what? 01:39:37.440 --> 01:39:40.080 Of more money than you needed in the first place. 01:39:40.080 --> 01:39:42.240 So that you can have more stuff. 01:39:42.240 --> 01:39:45.600 See this religion just builds up and builds up and so it's 01:39:45.600 --> 01:39:47.520 intern it's internally consistent. 01:39:47.520 --> 01:39:49.840 You look at that whole thing and like, well, I got an 01:39:49.840 --> 01:39:50.720 extra fifty grand. 01:39:50.720 --> 01:39:52.320 I I can give more to charity. 01:39:52.320 --> 01:39:55.040 I can you know all manner of things you can do. 01:39:55.280 --> 01:39:58.000 I'm not saying that's wrong to take a profit on something when 01:39:58.000 --> 01:40:00.320 you're selling a capital asset like that. 01:40:01.200 --> 01:40:05.040 It's the question is to whom are you selling it to? 01:40:05.040 --> 01:40:10.080 Because when you're doing harm to someone, that is the greater moral 01:40:10.080 --> 01:40:13.120 imperative than how much money you make for it. 01:40:13.440 --> 01:40:17.040 Neighbor is the essence of this entire argument. 01:40:17.040 --> 01:40:20.960 When you try to produce a good more efficiently, and that means 01:40:20.960 --> 01:40:24.720 you have to use cut rate parts, maybe parts from further away, 01:40:24.720 --> 01:40:27.600 where if you could just spend you know 10% more, you could 01:40:27.600 --> 01:40:31.120 buy from someone closer, maybe someone in your own state, even your 01:40:31.120 --> 01:40:36.480 own town, your neighbor, someone who actually matters in your community just 01:40:36.480 --> 01:40:38.640 as much as you would hope to matter. 01:40:38.640 --> 01:40:40.080 Capitalism says don't do that. 01:40:40.160 --> 01:40:42.400 It says don't give it to the guy who's nearby because he 01:40:42.400 --> 01:40:43.680 costs more. 01:40:43.680 --> 01:40:45.280 Same with competition. 01:40:45.280 --> 01:40:46.560 You know, it's very common. 01:40:46.560 --> 01:40:51.360 You will see two grocery stores side by side or very near 01:40:51.360 --> 01:40:55.680 each other, two different chains or a chain store and a local 01:40:55.680 --> 01:40:57.920 store. That is evil. 01:40:57.920 --> 01:41:01.520 Zoning in local communities should forbid that. 01:41:01.520 --> 01:41:04.320 I don't I don't think there should ever be a case where 01:41:04.320 --> 01:41:07.040 you have one grocery store right near another. 01:41:07.360 --> 01:41:10.640 Why? Because a grocery store is a neighborhood source of food. 01:41:10.640 --> 01:41:16.320 And the only reason to set up another one adjacent is direct 01:41:16.320 --> 01:41:18.800 competition to undercut the other guy. 01:41:18.800 --> 01:41:22.080 Now when it's mega corporations that are doing it, they could care 01:41:22.080 --> 01:41:24.880 less. The communities are just a place for them to extract as 01:41:24.880 --> 01:41:27.040 much profit as possible. 01:41:27.040 --> 01:41:29.920 We in our communities have a choice about what sort of behavior 01:41:29.920 --> 01:41:30.960 we permit. 01:41:30.960 --> 01:41:33.520 And we don't have to put up with this crap. 01:41:33.520 --> 01:41:37.120 There are some places where it's actually possible for locals to shoot 01:41:37.120 --> 01:41:40.560 down those sorts of things, say no, not in our neighborhood. 01:41:40.560 --> 01:41:43.360 There should be more of that, not less. 01:41:43.360 --> 01:41:45.360 All these things are moral calculus. 01:41:45.520 --> 01:41:51.120 They're moral calculations that we undertake every day, usually unconsciously. 01:41:51.120 --> 01:41:56.160 It's usually you just you have some sort of internal compass, and 01:41:56.160 --> 01:41:59.280 you're like, I would rather buy American, you know, made in the 01:41:59.280 --> 01:42:01.600 USA was a thing for a while, buy local. 01:42:01.600 --> 01:42:02.960 These are good things. 01:42:02.960 --> 01:42:05.120 The more local, the better. 01:42:05.120 --> 01:42:05.440 And 01:42:06.400 --> 01:42:10.400 you need to do it with the full awareness that it's reducing 01:42:10.400 --> 01:42:11.680 your purchasing power. 01:42:11.680 --> 01:42:15.120 You're going to have to pay your neighbor, who's growing stuff on 01:42:15.120 --> 01:42:20.480 a smaller plot, more than you can pay Walmart for your vegetables. 01:42:20.480 --> 01:42:24.800 There are times when your resources are so tight that if the 01:42:24.800 --> 01:42:28.080 only possible way you can feeb your family is to buy the 01:42:28.080 --> 01:42:31.520 cheapest thing, that's what you have to do. 01:42:31.520 --> 01:42:34.640 We're not making a cut and dried argument that it is always 01:42:34.640 --> 01:42:36.960 impermissible to do X. 01:42:37.120 --> 01:42:40.400 We're trying to make the argument for is that your neighbor is 01:42:40.400 --> 01:42:44.320 always they're right there with you, whether you ignore them or not, 01:42:44.320 --> 01:42:48.560 there's always someone nearby to whom you could be buying or selling 01:42:48.720 --> 01:42:52.320 or trading or cooperating or assisting in some other way. 01:42:52.320 --> 01:42:56.240 And when you ignore him and your sole focus is on what 01:42:56.240 --> 01:42:59.360 is going to be the most profitable thing, that's how you end 01:42:59.360 --> 01:43:03.680 up with Amazon trucks and Amazon boxes everywhere in the country. 01:43:04.160 --> 01:43:07.840 There's probably more Amazon boxed litter than anything else in our landfills 01:43:08.080 --> 01:43:12.080 because they have managed to undercut every single local store through their 01:43:12.160 --> 01:43:13.600 semp centralization. 01:43:13.600 --> 01:43:16.320 And now Jeff Bezos, I don't know if he is currently, but 01:43:16.320 --> 01:43:19.120 he's certainly one of the three wick richest men on the planet. 01:43:19.120 --> 01:43:22.080 As Corey said, historically he's one of the richest men in the 01:43:22.080 --> 01:43:23.840 history of the universe. 01:43:23.840 --> 01:43:27.920 And money is power, and just like the Walmart guys, he didn't 01:43:27.920 --> 01:43:30.880 accumulate that by selling things to rich people. 01:43:30.880 --> 01:43:33.680 He did it by selling it to the normal everyday guy to 01:43:33.680 --> 01:43:36.240 us. I buy a lot of Amazon stuff less now. 01:43:36.240 --> 01:43:38.880 I mean, I don't buy much anymore of anything, but 01:43:41.280 --> 01:43:43.760 We're not trying to make the case that we're guiltless in in 01:43:43.760 --> 01:43:49.280 these calculations, but they should always be part of the Christian life. 01:43:49.280 --> 01:43:52.640 To think, am I doing the best thing for my neighbor? 01:43:52.640 --> 01:43:56.400 And that question should always come before am I turning a prophet? 01:43:56.400 --> 01:43:59.520 And just back to scripture beef briefly, you don't have to look 01:43:59.520 --> 01:44:02.800 very far anywhere in scripture to find that that is the norm. 01:44:02.800 --> 01:44:04.640 Am I helping my neighbor? 01:44:04.640 --> 01:44:06.640 Is a Christian question. 01:44:06.640 --> 01:44:07.200 Am I 01:44:08.160 --> 01:44:10.240 getting more profit? 01:44:10.240 --> 01:44:11.520 You won't find that. 01:44:11.520 --> 01:44:14.000 You will never find that in Christian discourse. 01:44:14.000 --> 01:44:17.440 And the fact that today it's so common among Christians, including some 01:44:17.440 --> 01:44:23.680 of the most right, staunch Christians, conservatives, super conservatives, are often the 01:44:23.680 --> 01:44:28.000 most ardent defenders of capitalism, is a tremendous problem. 01:44:28.000 --> 01:44:31.760 It's a huge problem because there's a morality that is baked into 01:44:31.760 --> 01:44:35.520 their decision to say this is good and right and moral because 01:44:35.760 --> 01:44:40.080 profit and efficiency and competition and neighbor just goes out the window. 01:44:40.080 --> 01:44:42.160 You won't hear them talk about neighbor. 01:44:42.160 --> 01:44:45.040 Except, well, I saved a bunch of money so I can donate 01:44:45.040 --> 01:44:45.440 it to someone. 01:44:46.080 --> 01:44:49.280 Well, what cost did that come from? 01:44:49.280 --> 01:44:51.040 Is that blood money or not? 01:44:51.040 --> 01:44:53.280 And in a lot of cases it's going to be. 01:44:53.600 --> 01:44:53.760 I 01:44:53.760 --> 01:44:57.280 want to briefly give a fact pattern and I want you as 01:44:57.280 --> 01:45:00.000 the listener, or if you're listening in a group, we know some 01:45:00.000 --> 01:45:04.160 of you do that, you as the listeners, try to figure out 01:45:04.160 --> 01:45:07.680 the decade in which this took place. 01:45:07.680 --> 01:45:11.760 So in this fact pattern, there is a political sovereign. 01:45:11.760 --> 01:45:17.200 He directs his attorney general to look into the monopolization of certain 01:45:17.200 --> 01:45:18.960 parts of the economy. 01:45:18.960 --> 01:45:22.240 That attorney general does as he is told. 01:45:22.240 --> 01:45:27.520 He finds monopolization amongst certain players in the economy, to use technical 01:45:27.520 --> 01:45:28.960 language here. 01:45:28.960 --> 01:45:35.280 He begins proceedings against them under the existing anti-monopoly laws to to 01:45:35.280 --> 01:45:40.960 prosecute them for their monopolistic exploitation of the market. 01:45:40.960 --> 01:45:41.600 Then 01:45:43.120 --> 01:45:49.760 some individuals related to that monopolistic player go to the political sovereign, 01:45:49.760 --> 01:45:54.720 and remind him By the way, you owe us a great deal 01:45:54.720 --> 01:45:59.040 of money on these loans we gave you during your last election 01:45:59.040 --> 01:46:03.120 cycle. It would be a shame if those came due, including all 01:46:03.120 --> 01:46:05.120 of this interest. 01:46:05.120 --> 01:46:11.920 That political sovereign, unsurprisingly, then directs his attorney general to cease the 01:46:11.920 --> 01:46:15.920 proceedings against that monopolistic player. 01:46:15.920 --> 01:46:21.840 Now for those who are versed in legal history and related matters, 01:46:21.840 --> 01:46:25.040 that probably sounds like something that has happened any number of times 01:46:25.040 --> 01:46:26.480 in the last hundred years. 01:46:27.600 --> 01:46:30.720 The gentleman who, in this case, it was a letter that he 01:46:30.720 --> 01:46:36.000 wrote to the sovereign, was actually Jakab Fugar, of the Fugar banking 01:46:36.000 --> 01:46:40.080 dynasty. This happened in the 1520s. 01:46:40.080 --> 01:46:44.240 So lest you think that this what we have today, the sort 01:46:44.240 --> 01:46:50.800 of corruption we see, is something that is unusual for capitalism, we 01:46:50.800 --> 01:46:56.400 see it happening right at the very beginnings of the capitalist economy 01:46:56.560 --> 01:46:58.240 with the banking system. 01:46:58.240 --> 01:47:01.120 We see this sort of corruption at the beginning, and we see 01:47:01.120 --> 01:47:02.240 it today. 01:47:02.240 --> 01:47:05.840 This is inherent to the capitalist system. 01:47:05.840 --> 01:47:08.800 This is not something that is novel, it is not something that 01:47:08.800 --> 01:47:14.400 happens only in our day, it is not something that is avoidable. 01:47:14.400 --> 01:47:19.760 And one of the most perverse things about this system is that 01:47:19.760 --> 01:47:25.040 not only does it make everyone guilty, because inevitably it does, but 01:47:25.040 --> 01:47:29.680 because of the way it works, because of these feedback loops, every 01:47:29.680 --> 01:47:36.560 time someone participates in this system, it entrenches the system by making 01:47:36.560 --> 01:47:40.320 things worse for everyone else, and also worse for the individual who 01:47:40.320 --> 01:47:42.640 has participated. 01:47:42.640 --> 01:47:45.200 But it also at the same time makes it very difficult not 01:47:45.200 --> 01:47:50.000 to participate in the system, because it becomes all encompassing. 01:47:50.000 --> 01:47:54.160 Which is really the economy has become effectively what the United States 01:47:54.160 --> 01:47:57.200 is. The United States at this point is a bazaar that happens 01:47:57.200 --> 01:47:59.120 to have a very large military. 01:47:59.120 --> 01:48:01.440 That's what capitalism has done. 01:48:01.440 --> 01:48:05.440 And so when you buy something from the big box store instead 01:48:05.440 --> 01:48:09.920 of the small farm down the street, well, not only have you 01:48:09.920 --> 01:48:14.400 got something that is almost certainly going to be lower quality, But 01:48:14.400 --> 01:48:18.800 you've impoverished your neighbor because that was a sale that could have 01:48:18.800 --> 01:48:21.840 gone to him, and he could have used that money to fix 01:48:21.840 --> 01:48:24.640 his roof or pay for something for his children, any number of 01:48:24.640 --> 01:48:25.680 other things. 01:48:25.680 --> 01:48:30.880 And because he doesn't have that money from that sale, he has 01:48:30.880 --> 01:48:33.200 to go and buy cheaper goods as well. 01:48:33.200 --> 01:48:38.080 And so he buys something cheap also at another big box store. 01:48:38.080 --> 01:48:41.520 And that puts out of business the cobbler down the street, or 01:48:41.520 --> 01:48:45.360 the tailor, or any of a number of other merchants who would 01:48:45.360 --> 01:48:49.760 have been in business if not for that patronage of the large 01:48:49.760 --> 01:48:53.600 corporate store that has come in and destroyed the local economy. 01:48:53.600 --> 01:48:57.040 And that's the feedback loop that capitalism creates. 01:48:57.040 --> 01:49:00.400 And again it is that ever downward pressure 01:49:01.440 --> 01:49:03.600 that impoverishes everyone. 01:49:03.760 --> 01:49:05.760 Ultimately that is what capitalism does. 01:49:05.760 --> 01:49:07.920 It does not raise people out of poverty. 01:49:07.920 --> 01:49:09.760 It does not make life better. 01:49:09.760 --> 01:49:13.600 It impoverages it impoverishes everyone. 01:49:13.600 --> 01:49:17.440 Sucks all of the wealth out of the local economy, and basically 01:49:17.440 --> 01:49:21.040 reduces everyone to the level of a debt slave. 01:49:21.040 --> 01:49:24.400 That is the ultimate outcome because that is the goal of the 01:49:24.400 --> 01:49:27.760 system. It is designed to do that. 01:49:27.760 --> 01:49:32.160 Satan is Satan is very fond of A B testing. 01:49:32.160 --> 01:49:36.240 For those who aren't familiar with the term, the most common form 01:49:36.240 --> 01:49:40.320 of A B testing is if you have a website, you will 01:49:40.320 --> 01:49:42.960 put up two different versions of either a sales page or 01:49:44.000 --> 01:49:48.240 copy, whatever it happens to be, and you will see which one 01:49:48.720 --> 01:49:51.360 leads to a greater conversion percentage. 01:49:51.360 --> 01:49:53.200 Conversion is just whatever your goal is. 01:49:53.200 --> 01:49:55.920 If it's a product, it's to sell the product. 01:49:55.920 --> 01:49:57.280 And that's A B testing. 01:49:57.280 --> 01:49:59.760 You'll see which one performs better, and then you go with that 01:49:59.760 --> 01:50:02.240 one, and then you'll test that one against another B. 01:50:02.240 --> 01:50:05.360 And you keep doing that and you keep refining as you go. 01:50:05.360 --> 01:50:07.840 Satan does the same thing, he's very fond of it. 01:50:07.840 --> 01:50:10.400 He's done it many times in history. 01:50:10.400 --> 01:50:13.920 One way that he did it in the last century or so, 01:50:13.920 --> 01:50:18.080 last couple centuries, was he paired off capitalism and communism. 01:50:18.080 --> 01:50:20.560 Well which one is more effective? 01:50:20.560 --> 01:50:24.880 Which one will cause the greatest amount of human suffering possible because 01:50:24.960 --> 01:50:27.120 that's his goal. 01:50:27.120 --> 01:50:29.440 Turns out that both work pretty well. 01:50:29.440 --> 01:50:31.520 Capitalism works better. 01:50:31.520 --> 01:50:37.280 Because capitalism makes everyone complicit in the system. 01:50:37.280 --> 01:50:41.440 There were many who lived under communism who accepted communism only because 01:50:41.520 --> 01:50:46.080 the alternative was to get shot and dumped in a ditch. 01:50:46.080 --> 01:50:50.240 On the other hand, many of those, particularly men who claim to 01:50:50.240 --> 01:50:53.760 be Christian, will ardently defend capitalism. 01:50:53.760 --> 01:50:58.480 You didn't see men who were Christian ardently defending communism. 01:50:58.480 --> 01:51:02.320 Communism destroys a society. 01:51:02.320 --> 01:51:07.840 But But communism is so inherently per se on its face wicked 01:51:08.000 --> 01:51:11.360 that Christians really are not going to be suckered into it. 01:51:11.360 --> 01:51:14.800 Anyone who claims to be a Christian and also claims to be 01:51:14.800 --> 01:51:18.160 a communist is one of those two things, and I think we 01:51:18.160 --> 01:51:20.080 all know which one it is. 01:51:20.080 --> 01:51:24.240 But there are many men who in good conscience seemingly claim to 01:51:24.240 --> 01:51:26.000 be Christian and capitalist. 01:51:26.000 --> 01:51:29.840 They'll even go so far as to claim that capitalism is the 01:51:29.840 --> 01:51:34.320 most moral economic system and that Christians must support it. 01:51:34.320 --> 01:51:38.000 And so it is capitalism that is more destructive, that is more 01:51:38.000 --> 01:51:43.520 wicked than communism, ultimately, because of the outcome, because of how much 01:51:43.520 --> 01:51:46.960 damage and how pervasive that damage is. 01:51:46.960 --> 01:51:49.840 And we're living, again at the tail end of it. 01:51:49.840 --> 01:51:56.400 We are living in the consequences of capitalism. 01:51:56.400 --> 01:52:00.480 And in some ways, I have to envy Luther, because when I 01:52:00.480 --> 01:52:07.200 read Luther's writings on these subjects he is able to address himself 01:52:07.680 --> 01:52:11.600 to perhaps not Charles V, who was not very fond of Luther 01:52:11.600 --> 01:52:14.800 at this point, but he is able to address himself to godly 01:52:14.800 --> 01:52:18.240 sovereigns. He is able to address himself to a Christian prince, to 01:52:18.240 --> 01:52:20.880 a Lutheran prince. 01:52:20.880 --> 01:52:23.920 He is able to tell these men in his sermons, and he 01:52:23.920 --> 01:52:27.680 does so quite boldly in his sermons and his treatises, you have 01:52:27.680 --> 01:52:30.320 a moral duty to fix these things. 01:52:30.960 --> 01:52:36.080 You have a moral duty to stop these men from monopolizing these 01:52:36.080 --> 01:52:40.480 markets and exploiting the poor, from charging interest, from usury. 01:52:40.480 --> 01:52:43.680 Those two are synonymous, from all of these various things 01:52:44.560 --> 01:52:49.520 You, to whom God has given the sword, have a duty to 01:52:49.520 --> 01:52:50.960 address these matters. 01:52:50.960 --> 01:52:55.120 As a Christian you are duty bound, you are morally bound, and 01:52:55.120 --> 01:52:58.720 he goes so far as to say I am burdening your conscience 01:52:58.720 --> 01:52:59.680 with this. 01:52:59.680 --> 01:53:03.440 This is your duty, and you are not a Christian if you 01:53:03.440 --> 01:53:05.200 do not do it. 01:53:05.200 --> 01:53:06.640 And I envy him 01:53:07.600 --> 01:53:11.200 because he gets to say that and we don't is we don't 01:53:11.120 --> 01:53:14.800 have Christian rulers, to whom we can address our complaint. 01:53:14.800 --> 01:53:19.200 We don't have Christian princes, to whom we can say Scripture says 01:53:19.200 --> 01:53:22.240 that you are sinning by permitting this evil to continue in your 01:53:22.560 --> 01:53:26.880 lands. We today do not have that luxury, because we live under 01:53:26.880 --> 01:53:28.160 a wicked government. 01:53:28.160 --> 01:53:33.280 We are governed by evil pagans, not by Christians. 01:53:33.280 --> 01:53:35.920 And so that leaves us in a different position. 01:53:36.560 --> 01:53:39.920 It leaves us in a position where we have to do things 01:53:40.240 --> 01:53:44.880 entirely locally, and perhaps this is good to some degree, because most 01:53:44.880 --> 01:53:47.040 things should be local. 01:53:47.040 --> 01:53:51.840 But we as Christian men have to start by doing things locally. 01:53:51.840 --> 01:53:56.080 We can build up from there, but we can't appeal to a 01:53:56.080 --> 01:53:58.080 prince because we don't have a godly prince. 01:53:58.080 --> 01:54:00.400 So we don't have the option of top down. 01:54:00.400 --> 01:54:02.080 We don't have the option of enforcing 01:54:02.960 --> 01:54:07.280 regulation and rules that will change these matters for the better, that 01:54:07.280 --> 01:54:10.400 will push them in a Christian direction. 01:54:10.400 --> 01:54:13.920 Now if you happen to live somewhere where that's actually an option, 01:54:13.920 --> 01:54:16.640 you're very lucky and you should pursue that. 01:54:16.640 --> 01:54:21.200 But generally speaking, most of us our options are going to be 01:54:21.200 --> 01:54:26.080 amending our own personal behavior on a daily basis. 01:54:26.080 --> 01:54:27.600 And so if you have the op 01:54:28.800 --> 01:54:33.200 to shop at the small family store, by all means do so. 01:54:33.200 --> 01:54:38.080 If you have the option for your neighbor to do your gardening, 01:54:38.080 --> 01:54:40.160 if you don't happen to have the time or the skill to 01:54:40.560 --> 01:54:41.040 do it yourself. 01:54:41.040 --> 01:54:42.000 By all means, do that. 01:54:42.000 --> 01:54:45.440 Don't hire the illegal alien. 01:54:45.440 --> 01:54:48.160 These are the little things that matter. 01:54:48.160 --> 01:54:52.480 You have to build the relationships with your neighbors, build that network, 01:54:52.480 --> 01:54:56.000 build a community, because that is what Christians are supposed to have, 01:54:56.000 --> 01:54:59.600 that is what an actual functioning society looks like, but it is 01:54:59.600 --> 01:55:03.120 most certainly one that Christians should build. 01:55:03.120 --> 01:55:07.520 What we have today does not look in any way, shape, or 01:55:07.520 --> 01:55:09.520 form Christian. 01:55:09.520 --> 01:55:13.040 And that should terrify each and every one of us who lives 01:55:13.040 --> 01:55:14.800 under this system. 01:55:14.800 --> 01:55:18.720 Because surely God is going to ask us, why did you willingly 01:55:18.720 --> 01:55:19.760 participate in that? 01:55:19.760 --> 01:55:24.160 And not only participate, but many of you defended it. 01:55:24.160 --> 01:55:26.880 That is not what we are supposed to do as Christians. 01:55:26.880 --> 01:55:30.160 As Christians, we are to hold to what God says in his 01:55:30.400 --> 01:55:34.640 word. We are to love our neighbor as ourself, and we do 01:55:34.640 --> 01:55:37.920 not do that when we simply think, Well, I can get this 01:55:37.920 --> 01:55:41.520 item fifty cents cheaper if I go on Amazon or a dollar 01:55:41.680 --> 01:55:43.680 cheaper, whatever it happens to be. 01:55:43.680 --> 01:55:48.240 Spend a little more money, and again, with the caveat, if you 01:55:48.240 --> 01:55:51.920 are able to do so, we recognize that this system, as we 01:55:51.920 --> 01:55:57.360 have said many times in this episode, creates poverty, creates debt slaves, 01:55:57.360 --> 01:55:57.920 creates 01:55:59.120 --> 01:56:02.400 quite frankly, a set of perverse incentives. 01:56:02.400 --> 01:56:07.120 We recognize that is true, but if you are able, patronize the 01:56:07.120 --> 01:56:12.880 local business, help your neighbor, hire your neighbor, have you Don't participate 01:56:12.880 --> 01:56:18.800 in the evil system if you are able to avoid doing so. 01:56:18.800 --> 01:56:23.440 And so at your church, get a list of men who have 01:56:23.440 --> 01:56:24.400 certain skills. 01:56:24.400 --> 01:56:28.960 If you need a plumber, hire the plumber who sits next to 01:56:28.960 --> 01:56:30.480 you in the pews. 01:56:30.480 --> 01:56:33.680 If you need a roofer, hire the one who sits next to 01:56:33.680 --> 01:56:35.040 you in the pews. 01:56:35.040 --> 01:56:38.080 That man is your neighbor, at least he should be your neighbor. 01:56:38.080 --> 01:56:40.880 I hope you don't have to commute three hours to church. 01:56:40.880 --> 01:56:45.600 If that man is your neighbor, then you should be dealing with 01:56:45.600 --> 01:56:47.760 him if you can. 01:56:47.760 --> 01:56:53.520 The Christian solution to the problems we face is local. 01:56:53.520 --> 01:56:59.120 If we are faithful in these matters, I do believe that God 01:56:59.120 --> 01:57:02.080 will give us a faithful leader, a faithful prince. 01:57:02.080 --> 01:57:04.240 At some point at some point. 01:57:04.240 --> 01:57:08.320 I'm not as pessimistic about the end necessarily being right around the 01:57:08.320 --> 01:57:10.080 corner. It could be, I don't know. 01:57:10.080 --> 01:57:13.680 I won't speculate. 01:57:13.680 --> 01:57:18.800 But when it comes down to it, as Christian men, we ultimately 01:57:18.800 --> 01:57:22.640 have control only over our own actions. 01:57:22.640 --> 01:57:27.120 And so it is those actions that we should conform to Scripture, 01:57:27.120 --> 01:57:31.520 that we should conform to love of neighbor, and from that will 01:57:31.680 --> 01:57:37.280 grow these networks of relationships, these interconnections that build up a Christian 01:57:37.280 --> 01:57:42.000 society. It is a lot easier to stand up a Christian prince 01:57:42.480 --> 01:57:46.640 in a Christian society than it is to just sit and hope 01:57:46.640 --> 01:57:49.680 that God will give us a Christian prince and he will impose 01:57:49.680 --> 01:57:52.640 a Christian society on a pagan people. 01:57:52.640 --> 01:57:56.720 The latter is unlikely to happen in this day and age. 01:57:56.720 --> 01:58:00.880 And so it is our duty, as best we can, with what 01:58:00.880 --> 01:58:06.320 God has given us, to act as Christians in our lives, and 01:58:06.320 --> 01:58:12.080 that includes in our economic dealings, which should be, by and large, 01:58:12.080 --> 01:58:15.680 with our immediate if possible, neighbors.