Rev Left Radio - Expropriate the Rich: Billionaire Rule, Class War, and the Socialist Solution

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Economist Rob Larson joins Breht to discuss his book Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do With Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More. Together they explore the billionaire class not merely as a collection of rich individuals, but as a ruling class whose ownership of corporations, finance, media, housing, technology, and political access gives them extraordinary power over society. They discuss the staggering scale of wealth inequality, the grotesque lifestyles of the ultra-rich, the myths used to justify their rule, and the psychological and social damage that extreme inequality inflicts on everyone; rich and non-rich alike. They also examine how concentrated wealth makes genuine democracy impossible, why capitalism is structurally incapable of solving the major crises of the 21st century, and why taxing the rich is not enough. Finally, Rob makes the case for socialist expropriation: taking the productive wealth of the ruling class out of private hands and reorganizing society around democracy, human need, ecological sanity, and collective flourishing -- before advancing his positive vision of human civilization after capitalism.   Check out our other two episodes with Rob HERE Outro Music: "Rich People" by Carsie Blanton   ---------------------------------------------------- Check out our brand new merch here: https://rev-left-merch.myshopify.com Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's show, we have on Professor of Economics, Rob Larson, to talk about his most recent book. It actually dropped in 2024, but I only recently became aware of it to my great shame, and I wanted to have him on to talk about it, although his book has only become more pertinent and more relevant than the intervening two years. The book is mastering the universe, the obscene wealth of the ruling class,

what they do with their money, and why you should hate them even more. just a really social, psychological exploration of the ultra wealthy and of wealth inequality more broadly. How it distorts the psychology and morality of rich people, how it imposes certain forms of consciousness on non-rich people, how it undermines the very possibility of democracy and increasingly a livable biosphere, how it's completely untenable and unsustainable as a socioeconomic system that is in slow, collapse all around us. And one of the things I really do appreciate about this book and him and his work more broadly is that he doesn't end it with some call to like tax the rich, right?

Some liberal or social democratic call for some policy changes. His call at the end of this book is expropriation of capital, of assets, of big banks, of health care, of data centers, of everything that is socially necessary should be owned. owned and socialized and democratized by the people who those things impact. And that is a much more properly and principally socialist position than a lot of the stuff that would come out of like, you know, the social democratic left. So we have a great conversation kind of talking about all of this at times kind of sardonic and witty and ironic and funny, but also deeply embedded in like genuine economic research

and raw statistics and kind of puts together a narrative of how, you know, the wealthy on this planet are delusional and are increasingly standing between the rest of us and not only a flourishing economy for the mini, but a livable planet for all of us. So we touch on so many things throughout this fascinating conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. As always, if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio, we are 100% listen to listener funded. We are true independent media. There are not many sponsors and big corporations and big money donors looking to fund a Marxist podcast. So we have always and we'll continue to always depend on our listeners. And I would never ever throw an ad in your face. I would never

ever take money even if it was offered by any corporate power or big money donor. This is 100% DIY. We love keeping it the way that way. And the way we're able to do that is because we have people sign up on patreon.com forward slash rev left radio in exchange for only $5 a month you get access to a bunch of bonus content community zoom call meetings meditation talks and you know if you're into that aspect of RevLeft and bonus episodes that I put out and much more we do um raffle things so like every month will i'll raffle off a free book on my bookshelf and i'll put some stickers in that and write a personalized note um as i'm writing my own book i sometimes tap my Patreon community for advice on, you know, stuff like the most recent thing is,

which cover should I use for my book? And we took a big vote and the vote won out and I went with that decision. So it's just a really cool little community we're building over there. And again, it's only $5 a month. You get access to all of that. So that's how this show continues to happen. It's how we put food on the table for me and Dave's family. And we deeply appreciate everybody who supports us. All right. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Rob Larson. on his 2024 book, Mastering the Universe. Enjoy. Hi, Professor Rob Larson. I'm an economics teacher for 20 years now at the college level. And I've taught for that long and written a number of books on the economy,

including capitalism versus freedom, the toll road to serfdom. And most recently, my book on the ruling class, Mastering the Universe. And always happy to talk about it. Absolutely. It's an honor to have you back. we've had you on several years ago at this point to talk about capitalism versus freedom. Had a wonderful conversation. I somehow it skipped past my radar, the mastering the universe, but I found it recently. And I'm like, oh, this is perfect.

Let's have Rob back on to talk about this book that I believe came out in 2024. Is that correct? Yeah, I think so. So, you know, we caught up with it, though. Cool. Yeah, better late than never, for sure. And this is actually not only a great book, but actually it might even be more timely now as we are looking at the world's first trillionaire. And all of the economic trends, of course, in your book and before, have only accelerated in the meantime.

So I think this is even perhaps more timely than in 2024, sadly. Yeah, part of the idea in writing, it was kind of figure to only get more grotesquely relevant as time or birth. Absolutely, absolutely. So let's go ahead and I have many questions. And I also want to end on kind of a discussion about what our positive vision is for, you know, a sort of world that is transcended or the possible. of our species transcending class society and all of its stupidities and brutalities. And one thing about the book we'll also talk about I really loved is this emphasis, which is really a socialist emphasis on the necessity of expropriation versus the mere sort of liberal or social democratic

pseudo solution of, you know, taxing the rich, quote unquote, which of course we'd both support, but it doesn't go far enough. We'll get to all of that. But my first question for you is kind of, why did you write this book? What did you want to accomplish with it? And kind of if you can maybe just give us some of the most jarring statistics, perhaps, on the grotesque dimensions of wealth inequality globally and nationally. Can do. That is not a problem. We have plenty to choose from there. Most of the time with this book and since then, I like to refer people to the world inequality database. People may be familiar with me hawking these guys, but includes also. your like great contemporary hard scholars of the wealth distribution guys like Piquetti and Zuckman and Saiz and we take a look at it. It was very nice presentation quality data on how the different kinds of assets are split across different kinds of households in different countries in every different way.

But the broadest picture is that right now in the U.S., the wealthiest 1% of households, so one in 100 families, owns about 35. percent of the wealth in the United States, whereas the bottom 50 percent of households owns 1.5 percent of that wealth, which is fairly drastic, not that far from the global picture worldwide, richest 1 percent own 40 percent of the wealth, bottom half owns 1.6 percent. So very similar numbers there. One thing I always like to draw people's attention to is just the ownership of stock. So I think still. to this day, sometimes people kind of see there's rich people or oligarchs and there's, you know, large corporations and they're alarming.

People don't necessarily know the connection, which is just that big corporations, you know, are owned by their equity investors, people who hold their stock and, you know, directly or indirectly through their investment portfolio. And what we have on this was mostly Richard Wolfe's data, an economist, but recently the Federal Reserve's been doing. distributional accounts, which are better resourced and luckily give us similar results, which is encouraging. There we see that the wealthiest 1% again of households owns about 40% of all the stock. So that wealthiest 1% of households again owns about 40% of corporate America. They own two out of five shares. But the wealthiest 10% of households owns 84% of traded equity. So that means it's, you know, most.

that's most of the equity there. So a big part of wealthy people's fortunes as they go up the ladder and get wealthier is seeing their cash or a real estate proportion of their wealth gets smaller. And most of that wealth starts going into investing in equities and the stocks. And you can participate in the stock market boom that people with assets have been excited about for so many years. So those are kind of the drastic pictures that we're looking at. When one out of 100 households owns more than a third of the wealth, you're looking at a really lopsided distribution there. And that has effects on how stable the economy is, on what people make businesses to produce.

It has really broad effects, of course. Yeah, I mean, incredibly broad effects. We'll get into a lot of that. An obvious point to make there as well is that when there is massive wealth inequality like this, It translates seamlessly and automatically into wildly disproportionate political power, which has been leveraged to re-entrench and deepen the inequality already. I mean, we'll get into the fact that it destroys the very basis of democracy. On the way to over here to record this episode, I actually was watching something about, you know, Joe Rogan just kind of being this microphone for the ruling class now. the new Fox News with regards to having all these billionaires on and things sort of like,

you know, giving them incredibly soft interviews and even going, you know, billionaires really work hard for their money and, you know, they should, they deserve all of it. And he's talking like Mark Andreessen. And Mark Andreessen is giving these statistics. I mean, one of the most, I mean, can't even listen to him speak. It just, it raises my hackles. But he was saying, you know, the wealthy, we pay so much of the taxes. Like, you know, he gave some example from California where 1% of the richest people in California paid, you know, something like 50% of the state tax, you know, state taxes or whatever. And putting that, juxtaposing that little whiny crybaby stat next to your panoply of global statistics, it's like, yeah, you do pay most of the taxes

because you own all the shit. You own all the money and all the assets and all the wealth and all the stocks. And so there's something kind of proportional about the taxes you pay. And, you know, if you didn't own everything, perhaps that that would change. But of course, all that background info is left out of that conversation. He's just whining about tax rates. And Joe Rogan is mindlessly nodding along with him. Yeah, that is a really true point. I pay the huge proportion of the state states taxes. Well, sounds like you have all of the money of it then also. Taxes are kind of imposed where there is money to tax. And if you're complaining about your share of the taxes, you're sort of indicating, yes, that you have a disproportionate share of the wealth in the first instance or else how are you in a

position to pay all these taxes? Are you paying a rate that, you know, is adequate for us to sustain the state and provide services to all the people who you are richer than. And great, you're paying 50% of the taxes. Well, do you own 50% of the wealth or maybe more? Like that doesn't itself tell you anything except sound high, which is, you know, sounds like a high number, which is, you know, stimulating for Joe Rogan, not so exciting if you're kind of looking at the issue comprehensively. Absolutely. And of course, he's still a billionaire multi, Mark Andreessen, a billionaire multi-times over complaining about his tax rate. It's like, well, you're obviously not tax nearly enough. But let's go ahead and give up your money. If you're sick of all these site taxes, give up your fortune. Problem solved. Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing I really like about this book is that, you know, it is talking about inequality, but it's not just another one of these, kind of like, I would say more liberal, well-intentioned books about wealth inequality that kind of ends with, you know, we should tax the rich. But you really teach people that the ruling class is this group of people. It's not just a handful of rich people. This is inseparable from the people who rule over us. And so when we know that this is

the ruling class, this is the elite, that changes a lot of things, I think. So what do you think changes politically when we stop thinking of billionaires as like just really rich individuals and start understanding them as really an organized ruling class. Yeah, I mean, that is sort of the crucial step that people do resist making, of course. Yeah, but for all of our tendency to individualize issues and, you know, individualism is real. We live our lives as individuals. That's fine. The reality is when you have a small number of people who have a lot of economic and political power and it distinguishes them from the large majority of other people, it becomes reasonable to discuss

a segment of society or a caste or a class depending on what the mechanisms are and what kind of system you're looking at. You know, it's only sensible to do that. And I would point out, like, class analysis is something that people who resist it very strongly will do if it's, like, for some other country. So they'll refer to, like, the Iranian mullahs and their staff and the IRGC as the Iranian ruling class. Like, they'll use the word for societies that we don't like or that we're mad. at or are attacking. Like we're willing to use the concept. We'll talk about the Russian oligarch ruling class. People are often willing to kind of tolerate that level of class analysis. But as soon as you apply it to our wonderful tech entrepreneurs and so on, it becomes very untenable.

But all it is is recognizing that different people in different sectors of society, they each have their own economic and material interests. And they may diverge, you know, in the feudal system, You have lords and the church and the serfs and they have different interests because they represent different classes, different strata, as we say, of society. And naturally they have their virtue of interest that they share. And often that means that they will work together collectively to advance or defend their interests. That's the definition of what it means to refer to a class in society. So when people resist this, I just want to remind them, you're happy to break it out for any other society than heart. And also, it's just an irresistible concept.

Like, every society has a class. Even if you think our ruling class is good, like they clearly form a distinct stratum in society. I feel like it's just one of those ideas like evolution, which, you know, intellectually, you don't really have a leg to stand on if you oppose it. But, you know, people find a way. Yeah, absolutely. You know, a quote that I was thinking of when I was reading your book and reflecting on it and thinking, I often think in terms of, you know, studying American history trying to see what period of time we're in. And it's very clear. And many people are talking about it now that we're living in a second Gilded Age. And one of the

great books to come out of the first Gilded Age was, you know, the great Gatsby. Many high schoolers are kind of forced to read it. And we've all seen the films and everything. But there's a quote in there that I think is a good lead into this next question. Fitzgerald says in the book, of course, quote, they were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made. That's really resonant 100 plus years later, of course. It speaks very well to our own time. And that leads into this question, which is something you cover in the book, what does extreme wealth do to the rich

psychologically and morally? Does it merely reveal corruption or does it actively produce a sort of, you know, deformed kind of human being. Yeah, well, I mean, that's a natural kind of question that we ask in these circumstances. And, you know, we should mention before we get into that, that naturally, you know, wealthy people, you know, there are individuals

and some of them accumulate this wealth and, you know, these, like, real ruling class wealth, but we'll kind of continue to live relatively, modestly, you know, modest houses, not a lot of direct staff and so on. Like, you're Warren Buffett type, for example. But the

typical case is for people to have multiple huge properties. And just the transition that happens there, you know, a lot of people, you know, you'll watch videos online about people who are rich and like, look at this mansion, look at this big yacht and so on. Just you need to realize when you have assets on that size, your assets on that scale, you need staff. Like you need, it's a huge mansion and you have a few of them. So you need people to like be working there and cleaning them.

And often that means people are like living on site, you know, to do the, you know, to do the large amount of working name. So the transition to having household staff, I think, is a major threshold that households cross. Even if, like, a lot of wealthy people, you just have someone who comes by every two days and cleans and does your yard work, we tend to develop these very pseudo-social relationships with them. And, oh, you know, that's our gardener, you know, Hispanic name.

And, you know, he loves working out there in the eat or our domestic staff person, international name. She, you know, loves cleaning up after us and doing everything. People have a tendency to want to treat these people, not as the abject subordinates they are. That's considered more of an American wealthy thing is sort of effacing that class barrier in the moment when it's convenient to you. The moment something actually, you know, inconveniences you or these people screw up. Of course, suddenly that professional distance will reappear quickly. But having people in your home, let me just consider this for a moment.

Listeners, like having someone in your home. home. And it's not you, it's not your family or your loved one. It's like a, it's professional people and they're there because they're paid. Not by you directly, of course, but by your household manager who's someone who you pay to manage your bills and pay your expenses for you and pay those large household utilities and all of your big transactions. You have a manager to do that stuff. And you have other people who are cleaning and you're going to have a professional chef. Of course. These are very conventional hires that people make once they're in that very high, wealth echelon bracket that we're talking about.

Just consider what that does to your daily sense of people, like many of the people or maybe most of the people you interact with every day are deferential to you and do whatever you want because you sign their paycheck or your employee staff member does. And now everyone

you deal with is, you know, subordinate to you and defers to you and they do whatever you want. Maybe you're a corporate CEO and all of your corporate cronies are also falling all over themselves to flatter you for promotions. and so on. Like the tendency is for these people to become inflated, you know, have these inflated egos where they see themselves as God Almighty. And the people who are more down

to earth kind of see what's happening to their relationships as they get rich. And they tend to go down the road of like, well, who are any of these people actually my friends? I have these friends in my entourage. Do they actually like me? Do we actually have a good time? Or are they kind of waiting for the moment when they can ask me for a house? Which is a thing you could do if you know someone of that wealth level you know so i think you get like various unhealthy psychological responses from uh you know having your ass kissed constantly by your entourage or your staff you get huge egos and you get that masters of the universe crap people have on wall street you know or you withdraw into a paranoiac i can't really trust anybody none of these people are

really my friends they're still in it for a money and of course you know you can have both of these in your life or go back and forth. But the point is, you know, for wealthy people's intellectual health, we should expropriate their money. Like, we should take their property just for their own benefit. It, like, you know, it gives you warped social relationships.

And it's hard enough having healthy social relationships when you're on a comparable economic footing, you know, to start with. So just for these people's goods, we should euthanize capitalism and nationalize their property quickly, you know, as a mental health wellness intervention. Absolutely. And while, why

that kind of sounds glib, it's also deeply fucking true, that, like, socialism would liberate these people from their golden cages, their psychological, moral, and social cages that they find themselves in. It really would, like, to come back down to earth, to be an equal human being amongst human beings, to have meaningful relationships that are reciprocal

instead of transactional. This is actually a liberating thing that a lot of these people are deprived of. Yeah, and in the book of, I mean, right now, you know, we're discussing, this in the book, naturally. I have lots of sources where people have

done a lot of extensive interviewing with wealthy people and psychologists who cater to them. These are like the commonly reported issues that people discuss. We're not just speculating here. I will just throw in here, just for my academic dignity, that we do have.

This is an area of study because these people have so much of the wealth and they're so important. So it is possible to learn about these issues that these people struggle with, including again, from the staff. I have a section in the book where we look at a training academy for in-house staff, you know, like a Butler school, basically. And it's fascinating stuff, you know. One big thing is they discuss, like, don't let the principals get too close to you. I should say principles is the

word that they use for the wealthy people you serve, by the way. I should be clear about that. Like, which is a great term. Like, they're the principal. Like, you're an accessory. They're the main thing. They're the principal. You're just kind of also here. staff person who makes their food and cleans their floors and does everything for them. The help. They're not to become too friendly. But I remember this is just a bit from Frank Rich who had a book on these guys. And, you know, Frank Rich is a business reporter, by the way.

He thinks this stuff is all positive. But I just like this little segment here about the students from the service school, if I may. He says, if a principal wants to feed her shih Tzu braised beef tenderloin steaks every night, the butler should serve it up with the smile. If a principal is in Palm Beach and wants to send his jet to New York to pick up a bottle of Chateau Latour from his Southampton cellar, the Butler makes it happen, no questions asked. It's don't judge your employers for being a bunch of shallow, selfish, inconsiderate bastards. Like that's apparently a significant part of the China. Yeah, no, the reading of that part in particular was just so stunning and so skin crawling to read. And it's just like capitalism, it really does.

bring home the point that capitalism reproduces this dynamic in class society, starting in ancient slave societies, master and slave, and in feudal societies, the king and the serf or the, you know, the landlord and the peasant who works the land. And now it's just boss and worker or a rich person and the help. It's just so patronizing, it's so condescending. And of course, these people are not what their ego tells them they are. They're not some brilliant, they're not brilliant people. They're not particularly talented. In a lot of cases, they have to be. a very narrow skill set and got really lucky. And then, of course, the narratives that a capitalist society will tell about itself,

then gets hijacked by the individual ego, namely, oh, I actually am smarter than everybody else. I actually did work harder than everybody else. I really do deserve what I have. And once you start down that road at all, which is a great story that the ego can tell itself about itself, then yes, you naturally and sort of automatically start seeing the people around you as less than you aren't as brilliant as me you didn't work as hard as me you you're not as deserving as me and therefore you quickly become a means to my ends and we're literally

replicating nobility in that sense i mean what's the difference now between you know the way that rich people in a castle kings and queens and princes and princess is treated their you know in in castle help compared to how the billionaires and the ruling class of today treat theirs. I mean, maybe they wear blue jeans instead of, you know, crowns on their head. But it's the same basic social dynamic. It really is. And, of course, over the long years, I mean, many of us on the left have drawn our parallels between the ruling class of today and the historical ones of previous systems, you know, and of course, every ruling class of different eras have their own peculiarities

and, you know, historical differences. But that strong tendency, I mean, you really recognize if you, you know, like me, have spent, you know, a lot of time studying these guys of the last few years, these contemporary ruling classes, and just compare them to, you know, what you just learn casually about, you know, exactly monarchs and nobles and so on in the past. Like what they, I mean, all kinds of difference is, you know, monarchs, it's a much, you know, it's pre-capitalism mostly, so it's a much poorer era. But wealth, wealth there is, we monopolize it. But what's great about it is you see that shared instrumentalism, that shared instrumentalism, that share. shared treating of people, yes, instruments as means to an end rather than means to themselves exactly. Like that is consistent like across classes.

I mean, just hierarchies in general. The whole point of a hierarchy is to, you know, I tell you what to do. So at least while you're part of this institution, you do what I tell you to do. And you are an instrument of my will, at least to the extent that you're on the clock or working for me in the monarchy or the church or, you know, a modern global corporate platform company. these things, I mean, you know, it's hierarchy. It's class relationships.

These things, you know, they don't transcend systems, but they endure across systems for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that's deeply in the nature of class society itself, which perhaps we'll get to later in this conversation. But I kind of want to invert the question a little bit now. And I'm curious about what this massive inequality kind of does to the consciousness of everyone else. I work a job where I work with everybody from 19 year olds to 65 year olds on construction sites. So a lot of like young men in particular that I'm surrounded by in their 20s or something. And they are almost so many of them are kind of in this, you know, you're in that young man era where you're trying to find yourself.

You want to become a provider. You want to build a family. You want to have some sense of agency in the world. And, you know, you'll find them time and time again. again, not having a systematic analysis and then falling into a lot of this internet stuff, which can range, you know, from Manosphere, reactionary politics to like more subtle forms of like grind set hustle stuff, which is like Calci and Polymarket and Robin Hood, giving these young men a sense that they could somehow some way influence their economic future

and their well-being and their status by jumping on these corporates. sites that are for-profit and rigged against them in every sense of the way. But that's only one way that this impacts people's consciousness. I think a lot of other people feel a sense of shame that, that, well, if the rich people worked hard and they're successful, I must be a failure because I'm in debt and I can barely pay my rent. The constant sense of precarity and fear that dominates in the background of every working-class person's mind. How am I going to retire? How am I going to cover a surprise medical bill, take care of my children. You know, that translates to politics in a whole bunch of weird ways.

But, you know, how do you think massive inequality impacts the psychology of just regular working people who might not have a fully developed sort of structural analysis that you and I have and they're kind of left to the narrative soup of the dominant culture? Yeah, you know, it does vary exactly because the cultures do tweet, do a, treat capitalist elites kind of differently. You know, in some, it's a sort of grudging acceptance, but you don't really put them on a pedestal if you go to a, you know, for example, European society or they certainly have, you know,

a wealthy ruling class. Some of the richest billionaires in the world live there after all. But they don't have the same tendency to put them on a pedestal or treat them as, you know, be more worthy, whereas none of, you know, no one else has done anything. That kind of specific thing of, you know, if you're smart, why aren't you rich and you know these people did this if you're poor it's a comment on you that's considered to be a little bit more of a Anglo-American thing you know and a lot of the great you know US novelists over time some of their best work is about like dealing with

this like you know I'm from Indiana personally so I like Kurt Vonnegut the old you know Cold War you were novelist and you wrote about this quite a bit about how people who are fairly downtrodden by the economic system will you know they look up at people and say well you know, that's, you know, they made the right choices or the right investments or stayed in school when I didn't. And of course, people project all kinds of weird personal failings or episodes they've gone through in the past on this stuff. But definitely in countries like this, this strong tendency is to encourage people to see these people as sort of a cut above you. You know, like look at all these jobs or products they're alleged to have created. And they may or may not have done any of that stuff.

Usually it's not the case. You know, companies get built up through capital in capitalism and through markets. and through markets, even if you're an efficient business person and you're strategic and thrifty. You only play a modest role in that process. Lots of people are hardworking and innovative and end up with nothing, you know.

But it's a strong enough tendency in the U.S. that people really do, especially if you're kind of online and into certain subcultures, as you said, the grind set stuff. Those are the harshest ones because those kids, we talk to some of these kids.

many, many college students I've had come through my class over the years. And sheesh, I mean, these kids will just see themselves as being very little compared to these other figures. And they must be so great. You know, and partly this is because I teach in a business program where we're getting young people who are especially likely to look up to those things. But people absolutely do put themselves in an inferior box in their mind sometimes because of this stuff. And yeah, that does lead them to get into these like really depressingly. hopeless online hustles. Crypto, of course, was the big one for years.

I had so many students talking, yeah, but Bitcoin. You can't lose money with Bitcoin because it's a bubble. You goofball. And, of course, it crashes and they lose everything. And you watch them go through that. These days, like crypto is becoming so mainstream and so incorporated into the establishment to my horror, of course, that I think people are, yeah, are, as you said, now turning more to the newer wave of how we vaguely tell young people to get

ahead, which is gambling. Like, holly market, calce, it is not different from draft kings and fan duel. Like, there is not a just, I am interested in learning the distinction from anyone who wants to tell me what it is. This is gambling. Struggling young man, trying to find your way in society so you could be wealthy and famous like Joe Rogan. Have you tried gambling your way to wealth? Just a stunningly psychotically offensive thing to tell young people to do to make their way in society. See if you have good.

skill as a gambler. No one has gambling skill. That's not a thing. It's a statistical process. Anyway, that's, yeah, that's an especially bleak thing to see. I see my students dealing with it all the time. And it's tough to tell the young men, you know, like, well, instead, commit

to college and resist using AI. And in 10 years, you'll be done and you'll have the ability to still think while everyone else is using AI to think for them. It's a harder sell for me than it used to be. I got to tell you. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I, I think the antidote really is like the raising of class consciousness. If you can do it, if you can pull it off and make a young person kind of see the class dynamics

and actually start to positively identify like, you know what, my parents are working class, my friends are working class. I am working class. That's not a source of shame. That can be a source of like pride and solidarity and a sense of meaning. And I can view the world through a different lens that is not hyper individualistic. That's not telling me, you know, invest in big. Bitcoin looks max, hit yourself in the face with the hammer so you can raise your status

or all the other insane shit that, you know, that goes down on the internet, which is just if you're a young man on the internet, the algorithm will just start pumping that shit into your feed regardless of what other interest you might have, right? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I mean, I've, my whole last book was about these platforms and it's a whole issue in itself. But, you know, it's amazing how much people, whatever platforms they may or may not be on, like once people are on one, the tendency is to see the algorithm and to increasingly see the world through the algorithm.

And this is what people are talking about. This is what people think about this subject. Amazing the amount of persuasion that's available on the infinite scroll format. It is impressive. Absolutely. And I kind of increasingly think of the algorithm itself as a product of like the superstructure of our society, the way these algorithms kind of come into being and, you know, manifest themselves on the Internet. are actual products of a material base of corporations trying to profit, so it's all pretty gross.

But one of the things you do in your book that I really enjoy, and I think can go a long way in helping kind of chip away at the exact sort of stuff we were just talking about, are these myths surrounding the ruling class. I truly believe that even over the course of my life, these myths are believed in less and less. There is a falling away of this idea. I remember even 10, 15 years ago, you know, the idea that job creates. creators. Like, that was real. The, the idea that, you know, society was more or less a meritocracy. Most people believe that. The idea that, like, rich people, they innovate and they take risks and they do things that you're too scared to do. And that's why they're rich. Like, people believe that. And I think more and more and more people are starting to see through that as their quality of life materially sort of declines year after year. But of all the ruling class myths

that you dismantle, what do you think are perhaps the most pernicious or the ones that might still have more momentum than the other ones? Or you kind of take that question wherever you want. Yeah, that's an interesting question. Yeah, difficult call because philanthropy is so strong. I mean, I think it depends on just like who you're talking to. Like liberals, you're very likely to hear about philanthropy and innovation. I find with like, you know, kind of work a day folks, you're more likely to hear about job creation and the innovations in there. Because so many of our contemporary and highest profile ruling class figures come from tech.

You know, tech, it's complicated. It's inventions. So obviously they're rich because they invented this stuff. And if you look at Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, I mean, there's very little that they invented or nothing that they invented. At least Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google did create a successful search algorithm at least. I don't know if that entitles them to be a global ruling class forever, but that's at least. there was something there. So I think it sort of depends on the audience. Generally, the job creation innovation thing is very, very strong. You know, these people created, he invented something and it gave us all jobs.

Like what a simple, idiot-proof, abject bullshit story that is. You know, you could see how effective that is just on the face of it. And if you don't like that, oh, but he gives them all up to philanthropy, doesn't he? Amazing, these guys, they give money to philanthropy. And yet their fortunes keep increasing. It must be, there must be a bookkeeping era somewhere in there. they're all pretty strong. Honestly, I find a hard time to say any one of them is particularly harmful. I think they're all kind of, you know, they're all tools in the toolbox of lies in the ruling class job site of our lives, if you will. Yeah, no, absolutely. And even the philanthropy thing, like, you know, in the first gilded age or whatever, that was kind of more of a thing.

There was an ego aspect to it, you know, named as library after Carnegie or whatever it may be. But there was still, like, it seemed to be that the ruling class, the robber, errands of that era. They did launder their reputations in a lot of ways through philanthropy. And it seems like the, especially the tech oligarchs of today are just like less and less interested in even pretending of even putting on a facade of giving a fuck. And I think that does speak, I think, to the overall cultural decline that has happened perhaps since the first gilded age. Perhaps, you know, other people have different opinions on that. But yeah, I think it's, I don't know, it's crazy. And your whole point.

there what you kind of said in that answer is, you know, somebody does one thing. And sure, it might be a helpful thing. You might have just been in charge of that thing. You invented PayPal or in Joe Rogan's case, you were on some sitcoms in the fucking 90s. And now you're just rich forever. And then once you have a bunch of money, of course, you can turn that into other things. You can spend all day smoking weed on a five-hour podcast in 2010 and, you know, develop even more money or invest in the market or whatever it may be. And we, we, we, we, see this time and time again. So yeah, I just wanted to make that point about philanthropy in particular, but I want to move forward and discuss the subtitle of your book. The book is titled

Mastering the Universe. The subtitle is the obscene wealth of the ruling class, what they do with their money and why you should hate them even more. A great title. But what is the political role of class hatred? And how do we distinguish perhaps, or what do we do with righteous anger, that keeps us away from perhaps mere resentments, mere moralism, or even some forms of nihilism that might despair that arises in the face of like, yeah, I see it, I hate it, I can't do anything about it. Yeah, that's an annoying question. Because I've got to tell you, the subtitle on this book was sort of a

negotiation between me and the publisher, and I was the one who added the bit about why you should hate them even more. the number of well-meaning liberals who said, well, one should never hate another person. And yes, of course, it's not mentally helpful to feel hatred. But, I mean, what do you think about, you know, Hitler and Netanyahu? Oh, you hate them as you should. Exactly.

Like, it's sensible to feel hatred towards exceptionally evil events, institutions, or figures. And again, we all recognize this as soon as it's case we agree to. Like, what do you think about Vladimir Putin, the warmongering vass? Oh, I hate him. Of course they ate him. Deserves hatred through the many people he has killed, probably. And the same is true here, of course. But my God, the amount of surface level commentary I got on this was so extensive. I just have to mention that.

Of course, you know, class hatred, my God, I mean, that's, you know, any social revolution we might want to point to, you know, including the American revolution. You know, your classic bourgeois revolutions, they're all built on condemning the lazy voluptuaries of rentier. social strata and how we need to free up the economy for economic growth when we talk about overthrowing systems we don't like. We're happy. A press that would never talk about how it makes sense to hate the rich will happily run interviews with, you know, Iranians saying they hate the regime or report on, you know, people on their hatred for Stalin when they rose up in the 90s in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. People are happy to countenance this stuff. As long as it sits in systems that are far away from us.

You know, people hate slave owners, the American South. People have no problem with that. And, of course, the reality is we have people now who are far worse because they're doing us. They're destroying the environment, which we can talk about later if we wish. It's a big theme of the book as well. There's a legitimate reason that you would loathe and dislike and have intense feelings of anathema to other people because they're powerful people who are cruelly ruining our

lives of destroying everything around us. What are you supposed to not hate them? Like, you would hate them. It's a reasonable thing. And if we put that feeling, you know, I think any good therapist would say you're entitled to your feelings. You channel your feelings into a productive direction. And, you know, last night, you know, we had several Democratic Socialists of America candidates in New York sweeping their democratic primaries. And, you know, DSA is lots of drawbacks. And, you know, that's a strategy and his institution. You know, it's not the end all. all of radicalism or opposing capitalism, obviously. But that's a healthy step forward, you know.

And partly that's happening because people are voting for them because they hate their landlord and exploding them. And they hate to see their money going to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Like hatred is a natural human feeling that is part of most healthy waves of social change and people should stop lifting up their skirts in shock when they see that subtitle, damn it. That's my answer. Absolutely. And then kind of like the way that I would approach it is everything you said is incredibly essential.

And then there's two other things I think is really helpful here because I mean, yes, you said the hatred is normal, natural. It's actually good because these people running the world are destroying it. They're destroying human lives, human lives in the form of genocide, endless war, pollution, robbery, and miseration. And undermining, you know, the health of the planet in general. and they deserve our disdain and disdain and hatred is a compelling force for us to act in the world. And that's, I think, the big difference is if you're just sitting in your house doing nothing, doom scrolling, and feeling hatred and impotent rage, well, yeah, that does kind of like, you know, spiral into various forms of unhelpful psychological states. But if it's ultimately rooted in love for other people, you know, like when I see what Israel is doing in whatever, Palestine in particular,

but across the region, I hate the people doing it, but why do I hate them? Because I love innocent people. I love regular people, and I can't stand when enormous violence and injustice are inflicted against them. You know, why do I hate the rich? Because I love my family. I love my community. I love human beings.

I love the people that they are hurting and robbing and exploiting to get to that position. So love is a good counter force here. And the other one is, I think, what you were alluding to very well there is, you got to channel it into something. And I think the best thing you can do is like channel it into political education and political organizing that seeks to take part in this bigger movement to actually do something about it. That kind of lops off that feeling of impotence. And yeah, you alone and your little organization aren't going to change the world, but you can change your city. You can change your community.

You can change the life in those tenants in that apartment owned by that slum lord down the street. And by getting active in that way, I think you, you, you, you. sort of hedge against the despair and the nihilism and the impotence of it, you're doing something about it and you're rooting yourself in love and participating in healthier activities in the process. Yeah, 100%. And of course, that's exactly the right button we should add on that. You know, fundamentally, this book and, of course, our movements, you know, they're about solidarity and building up bonds between people that capitalism is pushing apart, which is all of us and all of our different ways to the individual level and within the social groups.

we have. So bringing people together in solidarity, I mean, that's an enterprise of love, of course. And we have the, you know, cliche guvaraism about that. But I think that's a completely indisputable fact. That's a good way of putting it. Absolutely. So kind of shifting forward, your lifestyle section in the book is genuinely hilarious, but it's also politically, you know, serious, the sections in which you talk about the lifestyles of the rich. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you cover in your book. And then also I'm really interested in this question of what is the social function of obscene luxury consumption? Like, you know, is it just decadence or does it might or might it also operate as something like spectacle or aspiration or even like intimidation and class discipline? I often think this is not necessarily luxury consumption, but an effect of it is poverty and homelessness in every major city in the richest country to ever exist on planet Earth. And it's not it's not that homeless people exist because the ruling class. conspired to litter them throughout the cities to discipline us. But it does function as a sort of class discipline when you're on your way to work and you have to step over homeless people. That is just an implicit reminder that, hey, there's no safety net catching you either.

You know, you miss a couple paychecks and you're sitting right here next to me. It doesn't have to be the intention of any rich person or any ruling class cabal to still function in that way. So talk about luxury consumption and then what is the social function of obscene luxury consumption in your opinion. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, we mentioned earlier the concentration of wealth and the numbers. And obviously, you know, that's important. We need the numbers.

That's a lot of work to come up with them. But, of course, it comes down to the lives that we lead, you know. And, yes, some of these lifestyles just, you know, you have to be seen to be believed. We mentioned, you know, many of us. I'm familiar with this are a few paychecks away from the street. I mean, that's most people, really. Most people, if you miss a few paychecks, that's, you're defaulting on your mortgage or you're behind on your rent, it's hard to catch up.

But I always say to people, the first thing to realize about, like, wealthy households is, you know, you're not renting. You don't owe money. You don't have rent or a mortgage. You're not a borrower. If you're a wealthy family, you're a creditor. You're a source of funds that go into the credit system to loan to people. So you own assets.

You own your home. I mean, just that alone, frankly. And that's just like a boomer era, a middle class thing. The idea of owning your own home. Can you imagine the sense of security that comes with that? I can't personally. But then you're owning multiple homes. And like large, you know, ranches or estates or mansions or really fancy city, penthouses, you know.

So you have multiple properties that you own. They belong to you, you know. And the money that gets spent on these things is kind of nuts. I mean, I think people watch some YouTube videos about this or, you know, you see movies where Iron Man is a very, very rich entrepreneur and look how wealthy is. Like the realities of this stuff is kind of crazy. You know, a lot of this information, I should say, comes from the Wall Street Journal, which of course is America's biggest circulation newspaper and is owned by Rupert Murdoch,

the right-wing billionaire who owns Fox News, of course. But on Fridays, the physical newspaper has a section called Manshay. And this section is not published on the website version of the paper. And you look at this thing. It's partially, of course, really high-end expensive real estate listings, no doubt. But mainly what it is is, you know, comparative overinvestment in gaudy, ludicrously, over-costly housing furnishings. So I'm reading some mansion write-up. And this is from a few years ago, of course, but these numbers, I think, you know, still speak to themselves, even if we don't adjust them for inflation.

I saw an article in Mansion. They were discussing a renovation, not even a new property, a rent. renovation of a large-ish Hampton's estate. And there was a home improvement bill of $30,000, which is a lot of money. I mean, 30,000 in some parts of the country, that's a down payment on a house. It's at least a very large, fancy new car. $30,000. And the $30,000 was spent in one room on the curtains, specifically.

It's interesting. Another recounting of a particularly large estate in Los Angeles was that they mentioned that the state had 40 rooms or 60 if you include the servants borders and the walk in silver, fur and wine vaults in the basement. This is real ruling class stuff. If you're more of a Wall Street person, you don't want these big stuffy mansions necessarily. That's fine. You can get a really fancy penthouse in New York, for example.

That's still where the U.S. all-time property transaction record was set by the. hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who bought a huge fourth street penthouse for a $238 million. It's a quarter billion dollars for one property. And some of these really high-end condos and penthouses in New York City, you can get them with parking spaces that cost $1 million a piece to park in. These are the realities, you know. So then the question was, what's the social function of this wealth?

Because obviously, you know, once you own a few, few homes and they're filled with nice things. If you have a, you know, middle class $300 set of curtains from Target versus a ruling class 30,000 set from, I don't even know where you get that stuff, you know, from a custom home redesign operation, you know, a custom high-end renovation entity, does that really improve your life? Only in the most shallow way. So, you know, we'd talk about this a little bit in the book. I mean, the classic way that we on the left look at this is through the idea of conspicuous consumption. And half the

point of this stuff is to show off your wealth rather than to like be consumed as wealth. We always use the example of like young Wall Street kids who are getting paid a lot. A common thing is for them to buy like a fancy sports car, you know? Were you going to drive your sports car around Manhattan? Like

probably not. It's not really a drivable environment. You get it so you could show off. You know, you drive it on your date and you have the valet, you know, park it for you and your date can be impressed at your fancy, expensive car. Like, it's for conspicuous use. It's to show broader society.

And, of course, your fellow rich people. Look how wealthy I am. Oh, you have that. I'll get something to signal back at you. You'll see. So I think that is a big part of it. And then also, I mean, you mentioned the social discipline of it. It is interesting. If you read

Veblen's original text, his kind of culminating example of wealthy people spending money excessively just to impress people with the spent money, is what he called, this is from memory, or something like surplus staff. You know, you're wealthy, your peers, and you have many estates, and they're very nice,

and you have tons of people waiting on you and maintaining the property. If you're really well off, you'll have some staff that basically don't do much. You know, a valet. You're usually not driving, or you'll have extra household staff who just stand around.

You're showing, not only am I wealthy enough to have this big place, not only am I wealthy enough to have all this staff, I'm so wealthy. I have staff who don't even really do much. Like they just kind of stand around and impress everybody. So I think there is a significant labor market tempering role here. Like I have so much money, you can't have health insurance,

but I'll pay you a little money to stand here and look like I might come in and ask for something maybe. And that'll impress my house guests or people who look over our Hampton's hedgerow at our pool service, you know. So you've got to figure that signaling is such a big part of it. These billionaires are so obsessed with one another and who's seen to be in ascendancy and who's getting the, you know, who's getting the best of one or another of each other. That's a huge deal for these people. So I got to figure that's a part of it. Now, you mentioned this earlier, but I'm just kind of curious here about the level, like, especially currently, the level of perhaps fear and paranoia that the rich might be beginning to feel because there is a sense that there, like, it has to be. present in at least some of their minds, that this is an untenable situation, that they're amassing these fortunes, these unfathomable fortunes, in some cases more than whole countries have. And everywhere

around them, the mass majority of people, even in their own societies, are becoming increasingly emiserated, increasingly desperate, and increasingly hostile to them and their existence. And, you know, you see it sometimes manifest in the form of like they're building bunkers or like, you know, fucking the Facebook guy, Zuckerberg is buying like huge swaths of Hawaiian lands so he can be as far away from. Peter Thiel just moved to Argentina under the anarcho-capitalist leader of Javier Malay

in part because he fears what's coming for the rich in the United States as if the Argentinian masses aren't also going to eventually want to put heads on spikes. You know, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, they've just, they're having this whole crisis happening, I believe, off an island off of Albania, because they were on one of their friends, I think one of the Rothschild's famous yachts, and they're swimming in the ocean, and they stumble across this beautiful, uninhabited island. Now they want it. And it's like, it's our family dream to have a wonderful island all to ourselves, you know? And it's like, we can just, we can just, you know, tap out of all the busy rat race stuff and just really can.

kick our feet back. But this is like another country land. And now they're like rioting and preventing construction from happening, even though there's these obvious corrupt deals. So the hatred of the rich is becoming more palpable. It's becoming more widespread. It's becoming just like in the nomenclature of society. You know, eat the rich is one of the many slogans taking off.

And I just wonder if you have any insight at all into the perhaps increasing paranoia of the rich in the face of this. Yeah, it is interesting, you know. And it's something they've always talked about historically and talked about recently. I remember the billionaire early Amazon investor Nick Hanauer said that he sees pitchforks in the future. You know, we're just giving people nothing and they're eventually going to come for us. And said paranoia is a big thing now. I mean, many of us are aware of, you know, Peter Thiel, Palantir founder and prominent evil oligarch. having, you know, many passports as a bunch of these people do, and building sort of post-apocalyptic

designed, you know, compounds in New Zealand or other areas that they forecast will do well. That paranoia is very real. And I mean, I think that they're, you know, just observing what's happening, like figures like Sanders and even Trump, like get breakout support because they at least say that they're going to disrupt the system. Obviously, they may or may not do that, as we know. But there's like enough support there that, you know, when they see figures like mom, Donnie able to, you know, help build support for these often political upstart DSA people and then see them just romp all over these establishment Democrats in New York City, many of whom have a ton of APAC funding now, along with the traditional support from the corporate community and the chambers of commerce. Like, that scares the rich. There's nothing that scares them more than seeing Bernie Sanders win Nevada.

Like, that's the stuff that makes them afraid. And so, you know, it's a reasonable, I don't think it's unreasonable for Hannah to do that, like exactly how that affects. them. I talk a little bit in the book about this stuff about, you know, some of the few relatively well-known instances of these really powerful figures trying to develop escape strategies or consult with people about how to maintain loyalty among their security forces after the, after some big apocalyptic event or something. And it seems to be mostly about, you know, more along the lines of shock callers for security staff rather than cultivating a community where people actually like you because you gave back or something like that.

So you could see where the paranoia is coming from. I don't mean, it's justified. People are really mad that their lives have been ruined while you get a second solid gold rocket car, like those things. People see that. Absolutely. Yeah, I think one of the strategies, though, especially by a lot of these tech oligarchs, is just like an accelerationism, just like a fuck it.

There's a sense of like maybe if we can develop AI fast enough and if we can get entrenched in this reactionary, administration, we can actually dismantle the democratic mechanisms that regular plebs would use to expropriate our wealth or to tax us in any meaningful way. And I think like this whole, you know, when Trump gets inaugurated, he's behind him are all the heads of all the tech corporations. And that's in part, of course, to push their AI fever dreams. But it's also, I think, because they realize that this is untenable long term. And if democracy continues to exist in any meaningful way that that democracy will eventually turn against them and take away their enormous

privilege wealth and thus their power. And so they're kind of like going all in on this dark enlightenment idea, which Peter Thiel is an explicit sort of proponent of, that, you know, corporate dictatorship basically, and we're going to use AI tools and mass surveillance police state to basically keep all of you at bay, why we continue to, you know, rape and pillage, and take everything that we want for ourselves and rub it in your face. And so that there's this hubris and this accelerationism

that is also present alongside the obvious, like, you know, paranoia that might exist among some of them. Yeah, accelerationism is an interesting way to put it. And yeah, that's a funny term really to apply to conservative billionaires. But, I mean, yeah, I think many of them are seeing, oh, you know, no one's going to stop us from hoarding all the wealth. We're not going to meet these climate goals.

Things are falling apart. We're getting unpredictable political outcomes. Yeah, exactly. I think that's broadly how we see it, how they see the issue and to the extent that we have any visibility into what they say. It's basically along those lines. Yes. So not a lot to disagree with. And you mentioned climate change and that's obviously a part of your book. And one of the arguments of your book is like, you know, extreme wealth and equality kind of undermines our ability to effectively solve the major crises of the 21st century. And to be a human being in 2026 is to realize that. are systems that are ostensibly there to, I mean, they take our tax money to use that tax money to solve our social problems ideally and, you know, create social goods for everybody. That's no longer happening. If there ever was a social contract, that's being ripped up. And when you try to pursue policies, you know, whether that's housing, health care, or, you know,

trying to confront climate change, you're met with this brick wall of like the moment you try to do that, you're going to have to take money and power. from these rich people and they're not willing to do that. So why does extreme wealth inequality and how does extreme wealth inequality make these major crises sort of effectively unsolvable within capitalism? And maybe you could specifically talk to the environmental cost of this insane system. Yeah, that's difficult. I mean, unsolvable. Yeah, kind of meaning there are real limits to what can be done through reform. I mean, it is the case that, you know, if you can have a big enough movement and you built with the CIA

and you have a wave of sit-down strikes. You can get the National Labor Relations Board and you can get Social Security and those are great major achievements that were won by generations of totally unknown labor and socialist and communist activists, you know. And those make a huge difference for people

every day in this system. At the same time, you know, it's very difficult to legislate away private property without a major social movement happening outside of the government. Yeah. So when we're looking at it, at the level of policy,

you could do a lot with perform and reform can go some distance, but it has limits. Like, you're not going to have real security in society, as long as, you know, employment is contingent and social security is stingily funded. And you're not going to be able to deal with climate change when we're failing to even get a cap and trade system in where there be some limit on our greenhouse emissions.

Firms would have to trade the right to pollute to be able, to continue growing. I mean, we're seeing it's just a huge block of resistance for just the most modest of reforms like cap and trade or Medicare for all. And we look back when we got these movements. How do we get the institutions we have now?

And it's thanks to a huge tidal wave of social movements, like we said. And you come to realize like we're going to have this huge movement and all the sacrifice and suffering and work that comes with that. Why are we just reforming this crap? Why don't we actually change

system fundamentally so we don't like leave property in the hands of the rich. And of course, as I've argued in this book and elsewhere, fundamentally the reason all of this is happening, the reason neoliberalism has dominated all of our lives for 55 odd years now is because for everything that the New Deal and European social democracy did, and it's not nothing, man, we never expropriated the ruling class of their productive wealth. We never said we oil refineries and data centers and agricultural land and factories and hospitals. These things are too important to be one man or one corporation's property. So we're going to go through a process where we have a democratic process on this.

We decide what to do with these assets and perhaps you'll get some compensation that you don't really deserve. But that would be the big step. But instead we left these figures with big tax burdens, tons of regulation, antitrust enforcement, but they still own the capital. We still had capitalism. And, of course, figures like FDR and Kennedy were always mentioning this for all of people's hysteria about how the minimum wage is communism, you know. We maintained private ownership of productive property and a market economy, which is the definition of capitalism. And so because we never took the wealth away from these figures, once we hit, you know, once the New Deal, great society era and social democracy,

Once they hit a real economic crisis in the 70s, with hyperinflation due to the Vietnam War and spending on the great society in addition to that, you get high inflation along with the economic weakness and recession, they see their opportunity. They bring in a hyperreactionary like a Thatcher or Reagan and they smash the labor movement and they smash that social democracy. Because we never expropriated their wealth, they retained the tools to do that if they didn't have that wealth and that source of wealth, that. productive capital constitutes, you know, we would not be in this position right now. So to me, that is the real thing. These things are insolvable within capitalism because they require changing ownership of broad capital and how we decide what to do. And that's private property and markets that we're talking about changing there. So it makes sense. You know, societies, you know, again, in the past, they struggled to deal with their flaws and they

reformed what they could and then they reached a limit and then they would break. I mean, that's so many societies have gone through that. And that's just something we need to recognize here. You know, we should fight for reforms. Medicare for all and stuff would believe a huge amount of human suffering and also show people that there are achievements that you can make through the public sector and activism and you don't need markets for everything. You know, they can represent positive, hopefully non-reformist reforms, at least potentially, obviously. It depends on how we view them. But that's, I mean, naturally, the horizon that we look to, right? I mean, within capitalism, how can we hope to fix any of these things fundamentally?

Even if we fix them for now, they'll come back later and we'll have future neoliberalism. Who wants to go through all this again? Absolutely. And I think that's, you know, you make so many good points there. And I think one of the limits of the 20th century social democracy is that they can and will be rolled back when they are no longer useful or needed or wanted by the wealthy when they're no longer able to, you know, share a little bit more of the pie. I mean, after World War II, you have this really extraordinary. situation where Europe is in ruins. The U.S. you know, sort of emerges as the global hegemon militarily, but also economically. They do the Marshall Plan. They rebuild Europe.

And you're in this really particular moment where the capitalist class is willing to share. They're also forced to do it through the New Deal, which itself was a compromise with capitalism and, of course, racism, but was a product of mass movements from below, often much more extreme than FDR and the New Deal social democracy wasn't the first place. And I really always talk about Reaganism and neoliberalism as capital dismantling the new deal. Like we don't want this anymore. We're going to do away with it. And that speaks to a bigger truth about capitalism, which is like all positive reforms

that benefit regular people in any way are always susceptible to being clawed back. And we've been living under the neoliberal assault, which is the clawing back of that and more. And so what do we, what do we find ourselves in? As I've said before, the Gilded Age where we were before the New Deal. And so like that happens again and again and again.

It's like how many times can we live through this doom loop? But I think that that speaks to a core argument of your book, which is expropriation is utterly necessary. The big banks, data centers, AI, energy production and distribution. They need to be socialized.

They need to be democratized. They need to be operated by, of and for. regular people. And one of the things that you would no longer get if you had a truly democratic expropriated societies in the way that we're discussing, you wouldn't get endless war. You wouldn't get empire and going across the planet trying to take other people's resources and slaughter other people because we would use the wealth and resources of our society to increase human flourishing, widespread human flourishing. And there would be no need to go and do that. The reason that you need to do

that is, you know, we can talk about Lenin's. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism or the military industrial complex, who profits from war, who's in charge of society, who actually makes these decisions. And time and time again, you come back to the same fundamental root cause, which is the way we

organize our economy, and thus our society, is geared towards the interest of a very small elite of incredibly rich and powerful people who are detached from the lives and well-being of regular people. And taxing the rich, sure, like, let's try it, but we all know what's going to happen. They're going to find

ways around it. They're going to lobby as much as they can to blunt it. They're going to use the Supreme Court or checks and balances or, you know, the parliamentarian or whatever they have to to stop it. And the Democratic Party itself will be at least an epicenter of a reaction against that. Even if you have progressive, social democratic, or even socialist Democrats, the party elite and the donor class itself will also be an enemy of that faction, as we've seen over the last 10 years of the Democratic Party. So we have to go farther than merely, you know, taxing the rich and thinking everything's going to turn out just a okay. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that's, you just look at the arc of the 20th century. I mean, nothing could make it

clearer than that. Absolutely. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. I know there's a couple more questions here, but I just kind of want to go to the last one here and let you let you go. I really appreciate your time and I really encourage people who are interested in this conversation to actually go get the book and dive much deeper into all this stuff we're talking about today. But, you know, beyond taking wealth and power away from the ruling class, democratizing it, socializing it, kind of what is the, what is like the positive, what is your positive vision? I don't know if you would consider yourself a communist, maybe you consider yourself just a socialist, whatever that may be. what's your ultimate long-term vision as a socialist for humanity?

Do you see the transcendence of class society as desirable or possible? I'm just kind of interested in your particular positive vision. Yeah, sure. I appreciate that, man. Yeah. And, you know, I got such a pleasure to be back with you guys. Always happy to do it, you know, come back again on the next book. Yes, absolutely.

But, yeah, you know, for the positive stuff, well, I would definitely see myself as more going well beyond a kind of DSA social Democrat vision here. I mean, yeah, I think that private property should, the legal standards should be that private property cannot be bigger than a single house at the most. Like personal property is one thing. Any large-scale property that produces any kind of wealth like that, just by its nature, it's a natural major source of power in a capitalist society. And I, you know, classlessness, I think, is definitely something.

we can aspire to. I think that that will, you know, even in a future where things go broadly as we might hope, which is not the future that we have grown up within so far. If that were to happen, I think that a classless society, you know, a communistic society is one that we would be pursuing for some time because, you know, as the man says, it's all history is the history of class societies. And, you know, even if we had a great, you know, real socialist, a positive revolution, you know, where you have a mass labor of movement and we have a, a mass sit-down strike and a dominant socialist party passes a expropriation law that gets a strong popular vote while people are sitting down to really nationalize the property,

you know, because who believes you can do this stuff just through a vote? That's important to vote on it. You know, that's the Democratic in it. But fundamentally, you know, you have to take property from capitalism for the other allow themselves to be expropriated. Like, I think that's something we should really, really be striving for. And all the time, when I talk to people along these lines, people are always interested in what they can get right away because, you know, they're suffering. And, you know, they need health care and they can't afford medication and they can't pay their rent.

So rent controls and Medicare for All and publicly produced pharmaceuticals incredibly important. And that is how I think we bring people in the door. That's how more radical movements that were successful in the past, you know, have done it. It's not just by laying out a fancy blueprint for new society. It's by helping people now. But we got to realize, as long as broad capital is privately owned, we will never be free of any of this stuff. Artificial scarcity, wars, having all of our information system going through private companies that get money from ads placed by other scumbag companies. Like all these dreadful conditions, we should move radically beyond this at some stage.

And I think that's something we should absolutely hope for. Because as I was saying, when people, when you discusses, this with people. Like they're very interested in what will help them now. But they want to hear about what a better society would be all the time I remind people of how unbelievably unpopular capitalism is with people, especially young people, especially people who aren't white in particular. And people will say, yeah, but what else? So we should have democratic socialism. If a piece of capital is so important that our economy can't live without it or that all the jobs in a town depend on it, Why does some single person or some corporation with an earnings per share target to meet, and that's its only legal obligation, why should they be in charge of what happens?

Capital is too important to be left to the capitalists. We should socialize that stuff through a nationalization law and a general strike. So when you go to work, you get up in the future in a socialist society and you go to work, who and your colleagues are in charge of what happens. You don't just get told by your bosses, minions who work for some. distant owner somewhere on an island. You don't get told what to do. You decide how you're going to run the workplace and you federate with other workers up and down your production chain. So you figure out how much of these things are going to make and you will be informed by a national economic plan.

And we can have a planning staff that does central economic planning and we get to as a public vote on which plan we want. Like very sensible, achievable goals. if you sort of explain to people, Democratic workplaces, voted upon central economic planning, so many people's eyes open and go, I mean, why can't we do that? Oh, we can do that?

Okay, why can't we do it? Because everything around us is someone's property and they're looking to wring another penny out of you. That's why we can't have these things now, you know? So that to me is what we should want. You know, a society where you get up in the morning, it's not what is the boss going to tell me to do today. we have an economic plan that we all did our best to vote on and in the workplace, you know,

there's not one person who will say, okay, we're more efficient. So a third of you are fired. You will say we all get to work one third less. Like now, productivity is like a curse on workers because it means you lose your job. If productivity goes up in your industry, we don't need so many workers. It should mean we work less to produce the goods of society. And that's exactly the kind of common sense thing that we cannot possibly have with capitalism. And if you say this stuff to people, you know, they are interested in a vision of a world where you have democracy and freedom ruling society rather than private property and markets in corporate hierarchy.

In my experience, if you even paint this picture to people, they are dying to figure out what they can do to help bring it forward. So I think there's a lot of suppressed public support for a post-capitalist society that people are, yeah, as you said, just kind of now sort of waking up to it. Absolutely. Yeah. incredibly well said. I totally agree with that basic vision. I agree that the historical timeline is such that you and I are just simply not going to see communism

in our lifetimes. I do hold, you know, our fight is the fight for socialism and the overthrowing of capitalism. And if you look at the time it takes to transition from modes of production, feudalism to capitalism was 500 years of a transition unevenly across the planet.

And so, of course, you know, these timelines exist, and we've been in class society since roughly the agricultural revolution. These are thousands and thousands of years. Our goal is to struggle for socialism. And I think you made a really good point there, which we're also interested,

not just socializing and democratizing the banks or health care, all of that, but actually capital itself. The distribution of capital will be a collective social decision for the benefit of the whole in a democratic context. It's not going to be the whims and decisions of one guy or a small board of really rich people, depending, deciding where capital does and doesn't flow. And then the sort of socialism that you outlined there beautifully, I think, would also help

prefigure and build not only the objective conditions for the possibility of transcending class society altogether at some point, but also the subjectivities that are needed to inhabit a truly communist world. And so I think there's a lot of interesting, rich material to investigate in that aspect of it as well. my friend the the book is mastering the universe the obscene wealth of the ruling class what they do with their money and why you should hate them even more by professor rob larsson has been an absolute pleasure to have you on today before i let you go though can you just let listeners know where they can find uh your work and perhaps you online oh for sure man yeah thanks uh i'm on all the dreadful platforms uh under my name or ironic professor is the handle uh a lot of my writing is for current affairs i'm the house economist there um but i cover the backlash for Jacoban as well. So people can dig those up pretty quickly and get more sardonic left-wing economics analysis in their lives. Absolutely. I really appreciate your work and your

voice and everything you do and keep it up. And yeah, next time you release a new book, I'll make sure to invite you back on immediately to discuss it. And yeah, I just really appreciate you coming on today, my friend. Let's create you. My pleasure. lies and fires and wars and crime They try to tell me who I ought to blame But I know who it is Because it's always the same I'll be ashamed if you get confused

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