The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - The Ills of Capitalism: Professor Richard Wolff

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, NYC. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. He is the author of several books including, Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism and his most recent, The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.

This is Live from the Table, a Comedy Cellar-affiliated podcast coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Dog and the Lap Button Podcast Network. Dan Natterman here along with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, wearing a brown cable-stitched sweater. I like this new setup, Nicole. We have a parallel Asian brand who looks like a cat burglar with her black sweater and black hat.

And Nicole Lyons is behind the computer. I don't know what she's wearing. Probably jeans and a hoodie, if I know Nicole. This is cashmere, then. Oh, it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too.

And here we are. By the way, Noam, a compliment. You know, music night every Monday night we have here at the Olive Tree Cafe, which is a restaurant upstairs from the Comedy Cellar. You brought a new song into your repertoire at Nowhere Man. How was it?

I thought it was very, very good. The harmony was really good. Yeah? And just when I think I've had enough of these fucking Beatles after 50 years of listening to them, just when I think it's enough is enough, hey, I hear a Beatles song,, oh, shit, it was good. That's a good one because it's a popular one, but you don't hear it played a lot because it requires three people to sing in harmony, which is not easily – people don't always have that.

So just so you guys know, I played the mandolin last week and I got, I think, two. It's an avalanche in the mailbag. Two emails complimented me. But so I bought this – got this great red 1920-something Gibson mandolin. And it belonged to somebody in my third grade class's grandmother. I don't know if I told this last week. You did, but you can tell it again. So I played a little bit on it and I sent it to the guy who sold it to me.

Oh. And he gave it to his – he sent the recordings to his brother who is apparently some sort of music producer. Wow. And then they want to hire me to play sessions. That's so cool. Or – it's not clear what they want to – yeah. So now, of course, I don't want to do the session. But it's just because

it's just flattering to be asked it's like a girl you know it's like you don't need necessarily to sleep with her half the time just knowing that she would sleep would have slept with you sometimes that's better no i don't well it's definitely better for her well i agree with you and for the people hiring me for the session. By the way, was it last week or two weeks ago, we had that woman talking about trans and people. Chaya Rejcik. I did have one. I've been thinking about it, and I would like to make a point.

Go ahead, Dan. Even though it's from two weeks ago. Sure. You said that you wanted. Oh, it's a point against me? It's not against you. Maybe it is a little bit. But you had said that in school you should stick to reading, writing, and arithmetic.

And I brought up the point, you know, when I was in school, they used to harass us all day long about don't do drugs. Yeah. And you said, well, that's fine because we all agree that drugs are bad. So that's okay. Basically, is that a reasonable summation of what you said something like that yeah okay so so my question to you is if it i think it's just uh equally as obvious evident and clear that bullying is bad so at a minimum would you advocate that teachers tell their students don't bully trans people and if are trans, don't feel like you're crazy or insane.

Talk to your parents about it, whatever you want to tell them. But is that at a minimum something that clears your barrier for being sufficiently obvious, intuitive and correct that it could be said in schools? I don't know. Well, it seems. I think that a lot of this is age dependent certainly if they need

I'm not even sure they need to teach kids don't take drugs I would not be surprised if all the effort in telling kids not to take drugs had zero results but it's certainly not a bad thing it's not a bad thing in health class in high school

it's also part of – it's part of appropriate education as you get older to understand the effects of alcohol and addiction. This is part of being an educated person I guess. But – and we hope that these kids are taught not to bully. And if – of course that includes trans people. I wouldn't have a special thing about not bullying trans people. But I, I would have maybe start with Jews. No, I mean, well, well I think that to tell also to tell kids, and I think I did allude to this two weeks ago that if you are trans,

you're not the only one, if you have these feelings and, and you know, you're not, it doesn't make you a bad person. I mean, I think that would be something appropriate for a teacher to do. Look, I cannot stress enough how much I am not, not only not worried about anything my kids hear about this stuff, but how much I'm generally supportive of the idea that I hope these kids are taught in their homes. Well, you hope they're taught in their homes not to do drugs either. To be tolerant and not bigoted

and all of it. But at the point when the schools force down the minds of seven, eight, nine-year-olds, things that their parents either don't agree with or feel that's not appropriate for somebody other than them to explain, I'm generally on the side of the parent. So that includes, you know, like,

you know, you've heard story about they want to teach kids about that masturbating or something you know i i don't know it's maybe that's a bad example i'm just i think you get my point the lines have to be drawn you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good it shouldn't extend to the teacher having to pretend that they're not trans or anything like that. I think there's a basic right of the teacher to be who they are and not ever have to pretend there's something other than who they are. Even if that's controversial to the parent, I would side with the right of the teacher in that regard because nobody should have to deny what they are. That's asking too much.

But subjects that are not naturally part of a grammar school education, but we are inserting into the grammar school education because it's something that we're concerned about societally or politically at the moment. So we're going to shoehorn it into a type of education, which really is a time for learning very basic skills, being taught by people who are not expert in the field, who would not be able to answer properly questions. Right, but again, the drug, they're not necessarily experts on drug use either. I mean, I think there's some principles that are so basic and so clear and so obvious and so important that to address it in the schools cannot possibly be a bad thing. And one of those is not to do drugs, and one of those is if you're trans, you're not bad.

You're not crazy. You're not – Do you want them teaching third graders about heroin? Well, we started probably in fifth. I don't know what grade is best, but I know we started in, I think, at least fifth grade with the drug stuff. I mean, obviously, once kids are in high school, it's a different ballgame. No, but grammar school. Yeah.

I mean, do your kids know what drugs are? My kids know that drugs are bad. I don't know what they know, what they don't know. I mean, my son, you know, my son Manny, first of all, it's funny, you know, I have certain political ideas, but when I hear them

come out of my son's mouth, they're disturbing. And he doesn't get them from me, but I think that somehow, like, maybe what I might listen to on YouTube creates an algorithm that comes up on his YouTube – I don't know what it is. Or maybe he just heard it. So he – we were having this argument with a friend of ours, not an argument, a discussion about race and all this stuff and what should be taught in the schools. And she's in the schools and her husband is black and my wife's color, blah, blah, blah.

And we were just having these arguments. And then my son Manny starts going over and Googling stuff. Like he's like a real time Googling, like what's going on in our argument. And then he comes back. He says, look, dad, did you know that only white farmers, I mean, only black farmers got aid during the pandemic. That's not fair. And I'm like, I don't think it's fair, right?

But hearing it come out of a nine-year-old's mouth, it felt wrong. Like he's too young to be taking the side. Believe me, this kid knows he's anti-racism. He hates racism. He thinks it's crazy. He can't even believe. He will, in a different context, be very moved. Like how could they do that? You know, but in a very, you know,

but it's kind of natural for a child's mind to say, well, you told me racism was bad. So why would they be excluding the white? Like, anyways, so I just said, so listen, Manny, it's not quite what you think. It's not the way it seems, but you know, we'll talk about it another time. But don't repeat that in school, please, Manny.

Do not say that to anybody in school because they'll think – Doesn't Manny get a bit of a pass because he is of color himself? Sort of. I mean to look at him, he doesn't scream white kid to me. He doesn't? No, not really. He certainly doesn't scream it. He might whisper.

I think anybody is surprised to learn that Manny – of my three kids, my youngest one looks like straight out of Central America and Mila looks – she could be like swarthy Italian. Is that the right word? But my son Manny looks like any white boy to me. Right. Well, not to me. But we'll agree to disagree on the phenotype of Manny Dwarman. Yeah. You're right.

He would get somewhat of a pass, but I'm just saying like some of these views, they're harsh when they come out of a child's mouth. They don't have the world experience. Well, you're also whenever you hear these views, not in the case of Manny, but you always wonder what's behind them is what's behind them. A good a good goodwill or ill will. Yeah. And so you don't really know. And so when we were talking with that woman two weeks ago about trans rights, now she said some things that maybe you agree with, but you were still a little put off because you didn't know whether it was coming from a place of ill will or a place of goodwill. Yeah, I don't want to. Well, I'm always a little bit tolerant of religious people for their views that I find wrong or even offensive. Like I know that Christians believe or many Christians believe that Jews can't go to heaven because they're not baptized.

Well, the joke's on them because there is no heaven. I think it's silly to clutch your pearls and things like that. Not that these views can't do a lot of damage in society. Right, that's what I was going to say. But these are things that religious people believe. And you have to make a certain allowance in some way for the fact that they're going to believe what it is they're raised with day in, day out. That's just real life. Yeah, but those have like really damaging and detrimental effects to other people who don't believe that? Why do they get a pass just because they believe it? Well, because you have to ask yourself,

had you been raised in that precise environment, what would you believe? It doesn't matter. Well, it matters when you're assigning moral culpability. I mean, you try to dissuade them as best you can because you're correct, these views can be damaging. But when you're assigning moral culpability, you have to take into account at least somewhat that they were indoctrinated as children. It's not. That's fine. I understand. OK, then we're in agreement. Now we can move. Look, I understand the point. These are hard questions. But anyway, I I I just take a little bit differently knowing that she comes from an orthodox religious background. Nevertheless, you know, I'm uncomfortable agreeing with somebody who

is not, as Dan said, coming from a different place. So, like, I might be against affirmative action, but I definitely don't want to, you know, be on the radio with David Duke agreeing, you're right, David, his affirmative action is messed up because for obvious reasons, that's uncomfortable.

But sometimes you're going to agree with somebody, you know, who – Reprehensible. Somebody bad, yeah. By the way, no – But I don't generally agree with her. And as you know, I end up disagreeing with her about stuff. I disagree in general, and this is way more than the trans issue. Like I told you, my daughter came home in the first grade and said,

Daddy, are you – do you treat people badly? I'm like, why are you asking me that? She goes, well, we learned that white people treat – no, she said, Daddy, you're white, right? I'm like, yeah. She goes, do you treat people badly? I'm like, no. Why would you say that? Well, we learned in school that white people treated people badly.

So that annoyed me. Like why are you teaching my first – I mean assuming, by the way, that that's actually what she was taught. She might have been taught some white people have treated people badly and she interpreted it. Yeah, but she's in first grade. She thinks – as I said, she believed in Santa Claus at the time. It's so inappropriate to be discussing that kind of stuff with my daughter in the first grade. This is kind of informing my point about trans. They're not teaching my

daughter that white people used to treat people badly in the first grade because they think that's part of her fundamental education in the first grade. They're doing this because this is where their head is at right now politically and the kids are a captive audience and they feel good

about this. But they shouldn't be doing that. And that doesn't mean that I'm soft on racial issues. Just leave my kid alone in the first grade. That's all. Noam, any switching topics, as I sometimes do, sometimes abruptly. Any progress last week? You had mentioned something about a new property in which to

put a comedy club located in the neighborhood any progress on that there is progress Dan I might have some news next week oh next week oh shit I thought there was something news was dropping this week no I thought so but you don't have it alright whatever okay now

we have a few minutes and And I would also say that – Are we getting back to the trans? Having an inter-ethnic, interracial home is interesting because these issues are more complicated in my house than they are in other houses. Would you ever find yourself disagreeing with your wife because, you know, you come from different perspectives on a racial matter? She will from time to time hate the man. She'll from time to time go full like white people suck. And sometimes I'll disagree with her. Like she got pulled over and she got a ticket

and she said it's because she's not white and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, did you make the illegal left turn? She's like, yeah, I did, but that's beside the point. I'm like, well, I don't know how to respond to that because people get pulled over when they make an illegal left turn. But on the other hand, she could be right. I don't know, but she'll get really angry with me because she said, you don't understand. Well, do you think that possibly that's true, that I don't know. But she'll get really angry with me because you don't understand.

Well, do you think that possibly that's true that you don't understand? I think it's possible also that she doesn't understand. Of course, that's the answer. Look, there is always the possibility that somebody is treating you differently because of your race or whatever it is. But – There's also the possibility that you think that but it's not true. Right. But you need – I would think you would want some fact which is fishy.

Did he treat you bad? So she gets a sixth sense. How do you argue with a sixth sense i don't know well i wonder you know i wonder if uh harry and megan have those issues i was i was watching harry and megan and um you know and i said to myself i wonder if harry's just saying some of this stuff just because he doesn't you know because he's married to – like Harry's become quite woke. I understand that guy. In any case, so I was asking myself – I wonder how woke he really is or if he's just like, well, my wife, I got to say these things. Well, I've been listening to his audio book.

I listened to the first half an hour of it. My wife and I were on a road trip and he's insufferable. I mean just to listen to his tone of voice. But the part, I'm sure you heard the part about putting the Yves Saint Laurent cream or Elizabeth Arden cream on his penis. Did you hear that part? I might have done. Y'all do remember. He had frostbite on his penis.

Was this when he was in the Army? I don't know how he got the frostbite. In the cold, for sure. Well, that's how one had frostbite on his penis was this when he was in the army i don't know how he got the frostbite in the cold for sure well that's how one gets frostbite yeah had frostbite on his penis and somebody said well you know what's good for that is um elizabeth oh and it was his mother's and he put the cream on his fingers and his smell transported him to memories of his mother and i was flooded with memories of my mother. And then I took the cream and put it down there. What kind of fucking psychotic person puts this in an audio book? He's a prince of England. Who does that?

It's sick. Well, it was very weird watching this documentary just to see him in a documentary. Because the way it was shot, all these documentaries are sort of similar. So it kind of reminded me of the Kardashians. And it's shot, you know, there are all these documentaries are sort of similar. So it, it kind of reminded me of the Kardashians, you know? And it's like this. Yeah.

He's the Prince. He's the member of the Royal family. It seemed undignified that he'd be doing this, but I don't know if he's, he's, I guess he's still a Prince, right? He still is entitled to use that,

that, that, I don't know. First, first and foremost, I've always felt this way. To me, there is something low class about

going public to burn down the house to try to hurt the people close to you. And that's what he's doing. There's no particular story that he's told which rises above the level of maybe

there's some resentment there or something offended him, for him to go public and try to humiliate and just ruin everybody who is close to him and cares about him is just despicable to me. Take it up privately. You know, it reminds me of when Ron Reagan Jr. spoke at the Democratic Convention. Now, his father, Ronald Reagan, he was the Republican, right? That was like his 11th commandment. Don't take sides against another Republican, whatever. So he had a mixed relationship with his dad.

I don't know the details. So he goes to the Democratic Convention to speak. Now, nobody cares what Ronald Reagan Jr.'s views are in politics. The message was, look at Ronald Reagan's son is ready to speak for the Democrats. And to me, he humiliated himself. It's just – I'm not saying he's wrong about what he resents his father for. It's just not – whatever problems I ever had with my father, I would never, ever fucking go public about them to try to hurt him. Dead or alive. I've had trouble telling stories about him, about things that embarrassed him 20 years after he died because I feel – I just can't bring myself to do it. I just know if he were alive, he wouldn't want that said. So I just can't say it.

I have resentments. Every child has had problems with their parents. It's just – I think it's disgusting. It's narcissistic is exactly the word for it. That's the way I feel about it. Sometimes forbearance, stiff upper lip, shut up. I think that's the best thing. We do have – is our guest here, by the way?

Not yet. Okay, not yet. Well, we have our choice of topics. We can go into the fact that I don't have a will, which you were berating me about prior to the show. I think berating is a little bit dramatic. No, you were reprimanding me. What time is he supposed to come on? 5.45. You might text him.

I just did. Yeah, you should have a will, Dan. I should have a will. You don't have a will? Shut up. Of course, Noam has a will. No, I'm writing one now. Well, you didn't have a will up until now?

I had one, but it was woefully insufficient. Now, it's true. When you die in test date, it's everything would go to my wife, which is— What would happen anyway, more or less. Yeah, yeah. So it's not— Except for the comedy, which goes to Robert Kelly. Yes, except for the comedy.

No, so— Yeah, you should have a will, Dan. Well, I don't have kids. So, I mean, you know, to have a will, as we know from the intestacy laws, as you just said, first it goes to your wife. If she's not, if there is no wife, it goes to your children. If you don't have children, it goes to your parents. If you don't have, parents are no longer living, it goes to your siblings. If they're not there, it goes to, I believe, your grandchildren.

And then I think your cousins or something like that. I'm not. Well, you know, I never thought it's funny to say that I inherited $10,000 from my grandfather's brother. Because everybody else was dead and he was in test day or you just happened to. I don't know. Do they split among, it didn't make sense to me why I was in that.

He has kids, I think, or so you think somehow through some lineage, maybe he had a will which left it to somebody. I don't know, but I inherited 10 grand from my grandfather's cousin.

Very strange. That is odd. Yeah, because I would think at that point, because at some point, well, was it by the will or by intestacy or you don't know i don't know you would think i would have looked into it i said give me the money i'm probably it's probably the will and then the person in the will probably was dead and then it went to you something like that i yeah because i don't think the intestacy laws would cover your grandfather's cousin.

But at a certain point, if you don't know this, if you don't have any close relatives, you die without a will. At some point, it goes to the state. If you have no living relatives or no living close relatives, then the state gets your whole estate. He might have left it to my father. And maybe he didn't change the will, but it went to your father. The will wasn't changed. Because it went to your father, then it has to go to you. Because my father lent him money one time, I remember, as a child.

I'm sure he never got paid back. Nobody ever pays back. So that might be why. Maybe he left something. Well, you just got a call from a lawyer one day and said? I got a letter. Okay. And I had to say, we have money for you.

I had to fill out the thing or whatever. It wasn't a Nigerian prince. It wasn't a Nigerian prince, and I got a check. It was for – I think it was a violin. He was a famous violinist, and they sold the violin. Okay. And I got my share of it. And it makes sense because – it's all coming back to me now because I think my father lent him the money because he wanted to buy a violin.

So maybe when he bought the violin, he left part of it. And he became a famous violinist? He was a famous... Then why did he need money to buy a violin? A famous violinist should be making money. No, it doesn't work that way. So that's how my family ended up in America. My father's brother was...

You mean he was famous in his village or he was legitimately famous? My father's brother was a child prodigy. His name was Zama Dwarman, but he went by the name of Tasha Samaroff. It was his stage name. And he, through his talent, came to America. He played before kings at like eight years old or something. He wound up in America. And then he arranged for the rest of my family to get to America.

He became concert master with the NBC Philharmonic, which is an important orchestra. If you Google his name, I think you see he's on some sessions with Frank Sinatra and stuff like that. But this is not a job that you get rich at. A violinist is, you know. Well, but Jascha Heifetz was rich, I think, and Yitzhak Perlman. These are people who could fill Carnegie Hall just on his – so maybe famous is too strong a word. He was very well known within the professional violin community, considered one of the best violinists. But he was not one of that small group like Isaac Stern or Yitzhak Perlman or Yasha Heifetz who was super –

Anyway, congratulations on your windfall, Noam. I mean it doesn't mean that much to you. I don't know if you're doing anything in particular with that money or just threw it in on the pile. Well, at the time I inherited it, I didn't have very much money. I haven't had much money for most of my life. I know that people don't believe that because the places were always busy. But that's the case. And my that because the places were always busy, but, um,

that's the case. And my father, he died with almost no money. I'm telling a story about the cash. Yeah. You tell me about the cash. Yeah. So, um,

I guess I should tell the listeners when my father was, uh, a few days from death, he, uh, he calls, he says, no,

I'm come here. I had in our, in my bedroom, in the the closet there's a panel is he here he's here but you can finish there's a panel and you lift the back of the panel off there's money go get the money like oh my god there's money if i go to the house turn up over the closet there's a panel i take the panel there's these big, like the hefty bag, garbage, lawn bags, like for, for leaves, you know? And I open it up and it's clearly the first, it's the green of cash, bags full of cash.

It's all singles. It was, it was the jukebox money. There was a jukebox in the olive tree and he'd go home and he'd grab the money from the jukebox and take it home. He was like, it was like $2,000 or something like that. But that moment of, oh, my God, all this money, you know, to, you know. Okay, go ahead. Richard Wolff is with us.

Hello, Richard. Hello. How are you? Hello, sir. Let me give you an introduction. Worthy of you is a professor of economics emeritus at UMass Amherst and a visiting professor in the graduate program in the international affairs of the new school here in New York City. Founder of Democracy at Work and host of the nationally syndicated show Economic Update. His latest book, The Sickness, is the system when capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself.

Which can be found along with his other books, Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism. Richard Wolff. Sorry for the extra long introduction. But in any case, here he is. Welcome to our podcast. Glad to be here. So, Mr. Wolff, or Professor Wolff? No, you could just call me Rick, you know. Rick.

So, Rick, let me tell you why I invited you on the show. I heard you on this show with Glenn Lowry. Yep. And I was very impressed with it. And I said, well, here's a guy who can give an educated and informed defense of, now I'm not sure if it was communism or socialism or both or what the difference is, but of this kind of left wing economic system that I've never really heard and doesn't doesn't get done justice in most conversations. So I was happy to have you on. And of course, I want to challenge you on some of the

stuff based on my own personal experience. But I but would like, and I think it'd be very good for people who never hear this to hear a real expert explain why capitalism is bad and why socialism or communism would be better. Can I start by asking a question? Absolutely. Go ahead. So this is my overall question. If you were to describe an economic system as you would set it up in the United States of America, what would it be and how would it be? is to tell you what you were pointing toward a minute ago, which is, you know, sort of what's wrong with the capitalist system we've got as a way to get into what a better system might look like and what a better system I think would be. For me, I look at almost everything through a lens of history. I've always felt that the past is the lessons that we need to use to make a better future. And I noticed that most human beings think that in one way or another, that the human race has been for thousands of years interestingly composed

of people convinced that we can do better as a community than we are now doing. Even if what we're doing now has its good points, that's not the question. It's can we do better? And we've done better and we have moved forward. Sometimes it took a long time. Sometimes people for a while were convinced they couldn't. But really what has never happened is that the progress stopped. We've never gone into a situation that I'm aware of where there weren't lots of people willing and able to say we can do better than what we have now. A socialist, in my mind, is a person who is saying that now. In other words, if capitalism was, as I think it was, an advance over what preceded it in Europe,

feudalism, or an advance over what preceded it in many other parts of the world, including here in the United States, slavery for a long time. We did better than slavery. We did better than feudalism. Capitalism is a—but I have no reason to believe that history ever stopped, and I certainly have no reason to think it stopped now. In fact, I find it kind of bizarre that people should suddenly imagine when every other economic system that we have had as a human race for thousands of years shows the same pattern. It's born out of the death of another one, it grows and develops, and then it dies. Well, the capitalism we have now was born, it has developed, and I hate to tell you this, but the next stage is that it passes away and we get something else, hopefully something better.

All right, so what is capitalism for me? Well, it's not what a lot of people seem to think it is. I find that sort of strange and probably a little suspicious. It's not a market system because a market system existed in feudalism and a market system in slavery. Markets are not new and markets are not peculiar to capitalism or vice versa. Likewise, markets are not about individual initiative. We've had that all along. And it's not about individual enterprises.

We've had them for long periods of time, too. What is sort of unique about capitalism is actually the following, which I find remarkable. The unique thing about capitalism is the way it has organized production, how we go about producing the goods and services that we as a community want to consume, our food, our clothing, our shelter, all of that. We know that through most of the history of the human race, this was done by a community. People got together in a community and worked out the division of labor. You take care of the chickens, you make the bread, and then we distribute amongst ourselves what each of us have contributed to the common pot, if you like. Then, later in history, we had this slave system. Very interesting, very different. A small group of people run the society. They're masters, and the rest of us are slaves. And then in feudalism, I'll speed it up,

there's a few of us that are lords and a bunch of us that are serfs. Here we go. And in the present, we have copied slavery and feudalism. We have a very small group of people at the top. We call them employers. Then we have an army of people at the bottom, and we call them employees. If you want, I can give you the numbers. Here in the United States, the employers, if you have them all together in a big place, maybe 1% of the population. If you have employees together in the same space, it's about half the population.

So there's no contest. It's a very small group of people who sit at the top, like the masters and like the lords. And you can see where I'm going. If you believe in democracy, you couldn't possibly endorse capitalism because that's an undemocratic way of organizing production. Okay. So let me ask you, I own the comedy cellar. Tell me under your system, what would be different? I would, first of all, who would, who would put up the money to open the comedy cellar? Let's just start there. And really, I want to follow it step by step because who would open, who would open the Comedy Cellar? How would it exist?

Anybody who has money. Okay. So let's say I opened the Comedy Cellar. Let's say I had money somehow. We won't get into how I got them. Let's say I opened the Comedy Cellar. Now, would I be in charge of it? Probably at the beginning to start it up.

You got cut off. Probably what? Probably at the beginning, if you were the, I mean, the way you described it, you're the initiator. You're the one who wants to do this thing. And since we've put aside the question of where the money comes from, okay, let's assume you got it somehow. So you're now the initiator. You set this thing up. So there are private businesses. Now, so I have employees. Sure. And how does the democracy come in to the picture

of my day-to-day fulfillment of my vision of, you know, my idea? I took my money. I risked it on this comedy seller. Plenty of places go broke. I'm successful, let's say, because I was in charge at the beginning. And now you introduced the concept of democracy. What would that mean? Well, it would mean at a certain point, your commitment to democracy or mine or the society's would indicate that this now has to be set up as a democratic community in which everybody has a say as to what happened. But they didn't put up their money.

Yeah, you put up the money and let's let's reward you for that. We'll give you a pension. Well, OK, so so so that means. I mean, We'll give you a pension. Well, okay. So, so, so that means, I mean, you don't, wait a minute, you don't have to do that, but then don't claim you're a Democrat with a small D. No, but either you run your business, either you run your business democratically or you, if you don't care about that, which I understand, if you're an employer, you don't want to, you don't want to share anything. You want to be in charge because you had the idea. Yeah, then you reject the notion that the enterprise, the workplace, should be run democratically.

And I understand that. That's the reality. I thought this would be by law in your system. This would be the employer would be required to be democratic, no? At a certain point, yes. So at that, if we, if there's a disagreement about... If democracy, if democracy is a value, if you believe in democracy, then there's no basis for you to reject it in the workplace, which is where most people spend most of their adult lives,

is in the workplace. It's irrelevant whether I believe in it or not. This is the system I'm living under. And now I have to. So does this mean that my employees take a vote on who should be performing, what the lighting should be, the volume, the menu, like everything is up to them? Well, it's up to a vote. Absolutely.

It's a collective democratic decision. Now, I'm there. Is there private property? I can own the real estate or the lease. The landlord has me. I'm the one that has to guarantee the lease. So what I'm getting at is what if an employer, what if the employees vote a certain way and then they quit? In other words, there's short-term decisions made in business, long-term decisions made in business.

The boss, at least this boss, has very long-term goals and I will make decisions thinking about where I'm going to be 20 years from now. That's an employee doesn't have that string attached and he may not even consider that he might ever

be there 20 years from now. So he may vote for certain decisions that put more money in his pocket in the short term and then quit. And then I'm stuck holding the bag. How does the system deal with that? How does any system deal with people who have different perspectives and different ideas and different goals? You work it out, you argue it out, then you vote. I mean, either you believe in that democratic system or you don't. I understand, then you vote. I mean, either you believe in that democratic system or you don't. I understand that in our system. I'm asking you for your system. I'm

taking it, yeah, my window that that's the system. Fine. Fine. If that were the system, you're absolutely right. You would have to come in just like everybody else, put your cards on the table, explain what you would like to do, try to persuade other people to agree with you for whatever reason, and then you win or you lose. I want you to make less money now because 10 years from now when you're not working here it'll be better for me. These are the problems. Look, I have a similar thing, kind of a cousin of union rules.

I have a club in Vegas. And so, for instance, in New York, if somebody in the audience is making noise, we can ask the waitress or the waiter, can you go to that table and ask them to keep it down? They're disturbing the show. In Vegas, I'm not allowed to do that. The union democratically has decided that they you can't ask the servers to do that. You have to call somebody on the phone. So this is not this is not a system which works. When there is a problem, the show is ruined and. The waitresses, the servers there don't make any less money because of it.

They don't care. And it's not a workable system for a long-term thing, all of which is to say that it's not that I'm for democracy or against democracy, but we're not all in it together. And that's a foundation of democracy. You all have to feel like you're in it together. But if one person puts up the money and the other people are just making money, that's not a formula that you can build a democracy on, is it? Leaving aside the issues of talent and better, you know, well, let me let me take a different way. Let's say I was in the Beatles. Am I supposed to open up my Beatle decisions to other people that work for me? You certainly are in my system insofar as you're running a business, absolutely. Everybody in that business has the right to pursue their own interests, and if you get together with them, you as a singer and they as a, I don't know, let's call it a designer

or whatever else function they perform, you've got to work like any community. People in it have something in common that makes them in a community, and then they have lots of differences that they have to navigate and negotiate, like in any other relationship. Capitalism cuts it short by saying a few of us are going to be in charge, and the rest of you do what you're told or you're gone. Okay, that's not a democracy. You know, we got rid of kings because we didn't want someone telling us what to do politically. But how then do we support and endorse and give inside the workplace little kings, little CEOs who can do there what we don't permit in the political sphere. The employer doesn't depend on

the votes of the employees. There's no mechanism like that. They can't fire him. He fires them. My other co-host, you know, if there was a class of people in America that we knew was only here for three years and they're going to leave. Right. There would be a logic to saying, listen, they shouldn't be voting on certain things because they're not in it for good. They're not citizens who are going to spend the rest of their lives here. I don't see the analogy between a democracy where we're all citizens and all for the long haul. And a democracy is in a situation where people are in completely different positions, where the incentives of the majority are to benefit short term. And the incentive of the guy who's the owner is not just that he put up his money. It's also that he wrote the song. It's his vision.

Steve Jobs may have made a billion dollars, but he had this vision for an iPhone and he forced everybody to do it the way he wanted. And he was right. And democracy wouldn't have created that iPhone as it's recounted, at least in those books. But this was his thing and and the people around him, and these were not proletariat. These were sophisticated, talented, and talented is the wrong word,

skilled people. They were free to leave and go work for some other company where their skills would work, but they chose to work at Apple, and in the end it was his way or the highway. And I don't see that as – I mean it is undemocratic, but I don't see it as like I'm endorsing something bad by saying, yeah, a guy with a vision who's ready to put his money on the line, who has the talent. We should let him do it his way, let him start, let him develop it, but why does he have to run roughshod over the different needs and interests of his employees?

Give him a bonus. Give him a reward. Put a statue in Central Park to give him whatever it is he needs to justify or to celebrate what he contributed. But lots of other people working around him, I can assure you, contributed a lot, have their own visions. Don't they have an equivalent right to try to find a life for themselves the way he did. And by the way, but you do know that in most cases, even if he had, quote, the money with which to start, he had to go out and get other money. And money is highly concentrated in the United States. You have to please the same people. BlackRock and Blackstone and Vanguard, they own all of this stuff. They're the ones in the end who decide who gets the money and who doesn't. A lot of these companies, including Apple, started out as garage-type endeavors. Steve Jobs had done that with money. Right. And they would have stayed that way,

and we would never have heard of them if they didn't get somebody else, a tiny group of people, to give them the money who have made out like bandits from what they did. You know, everybody takes a risk. The initiator of a business is not the only risk taker. The investor is not the only risk taker. What about the family that moved to San Jose from wherever they lived, uprooted themselves to come and to take a job? They took a risk. They took a risk that their kids would come out of one high school and go to another and be really shaken up by the process. They may have got all those people have an entitlement to be part of the decision making. How could you possibly rule them out? It seems to me you're presuming that people are equally talented and that, in other words,

that the Beatles should be democratic about their songwriting with all the people in there as if we're going to pretend that Paul McCartney isn't a genius. And if you were to force him to be democratic about his work product, obviously the work product is going to suck. And then everybody's out of the job. The people who work for Steve Jobs are lucky to be working for Steve Jobs. They'll be worse off if their dopey opinions take over the iPhone. No? But you do understand, but no, you do understand where I'm coming from, right? It's an insult to the workers there. They know very well where the talent lies.

They know that their jobs depend on that music being produced and that music being generated. They're not going to be stupid. They're going to run their business, but they're going to insist that their needs, and they're not the songwriters and they're not the musicians, but that their needs as working people are taken into account because we believe that everybody's needs ought to be. Do they have to commit to staying at the job? to account because we believe that everybody's needs ought to be. Do they have to commit to staying at the job? There's something that rubs me the wrong way about somebody being able to have an equal vote and then saying, by the way, I quit. You guys deal with this decision we made. That seems totally unfair and congruous. It doesn't add up to me. I happen to agree with you. And I think one of the things that that community should do, a democratic community, is take up that question.

Do we all get an equal vote? And if we do, what's the responsibility we all have? Maybe we only should have a vote if we make a commitment to stay at least 10 years. Or sure, all those rules, I believe in rules and organization, but I want them to be done democratically. I actually take the idea seriously. And I don't think our society would suffer. I think our society would be one hell of a lot better off

if there were more democratic participation. We're a country tearing ourselves apart these days. You know that, and I do. I don't know who your publisher is. If Random House sent your manuscript out to 500 employees and asked them to, you know,

go ahead, this is all of our books, I think you would see it differently. I'd say, this is my goddamn book. You know, write your own book. No? No, I agree with that. But I think I would go to the community

and I could make that case. Yeah, try writing an anti-trans book and going to the community and make that case. And I'm using an outrageous example, but the point is, you may be saying something unpopular. Let Galileo take it to the publisher and see if they're going to allow him to publish his book the way he wants it. At some point, it's your opinion.

Look, now it's the opinion of who the publisher is. I'm talking about making it a democratic opinion. Is that going to avoid all mistakes? I'm sure it isn't. But we're not in a position to point out mistakes. This is a system that produced the Edsel. This is a system that made Trump president. Last question.

Come on. Tell me the truth. Because you seem like a very, very nice man. In your heart of hearts, everything in life is probabilities, right? What probability do you put on the fact that these things you believe are very idealistic but just might not actually work in the practical world? Oh, sure. I understand. Look, I could be wrong.

I've been wrong in my life before. I can be wrong again. I can be wrong about all of this. But I do think I'm on solid ground when I say this to you. And I'm not happy about it, but I say it to you. I'm a professional economist. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life. I come out of what this country believes to be its best universities. They aren't, but it's thought that they are the best universities. So here's what I'm telling you. Capitalism, and this is going to be troublesome for you, I know, it's over. It's really not a question anymore of what's

coming next. All that we're clear on is that this system that we've enjoyed and suffered from in mixtures for 300 years has peaked out in the West, in Western Europe and North America. Look, every other system peaks out. Every other empire- I carry a phone, a supercomputer in my pocket that tracked me from a satellite within five inches of my location

all the way to work today for free. This is, and every poor person I know has the same satellite tracking phone in his pocket. Why is it peaked out? Well, for the last 30 years, this economic system cannot grow the way it once did. That's a telltale sign. No, it isn't. That's not the way we measure growth.

You can't. Maybe they're not measuring it right. If I can make. Well, look, it's one of the few things that everybody agrees to. Call me stupid. There is. No, no, no. What everybody agrees to is how you measure economic growth.

Not the particulars about the phone. We have a system around the world, whether you're in Europe or Asia or Africa, we have a measure. It's called the GDP, gross domestic product. It basically measures the size, the footprint of an economic system. Literally, it measures the output of goods and services in one calendar year. And so we look, that's what we do statistically with the government and private and universities, we study how different economies are managing economic growth.

From about 1820 to 1970, the United States experienced the greatest growth of any country in the world. That's why we have the apples and the, we grew. And every 10 years, the wages grew. That's why people think America's exceptional. Nobody else quite managed that. It stopped in the 1970s and it never resumed. The only reason the standard, let me finish.

The only reason the standard of living went up after the 1970s was what we switched, because we were already in trouble and we stopped being an economy that produced wealth and then distributed it. We became an economy dependent on debt. Debt is what carried us from the 1970s until it crashed in 2008 and 2009 and it's never recovered. The GDP of the United States over the last 35 years, 40 years, has grown on average about 2%, 2.5% a year. People's Republic of China GDP has grown 6 to 9 percent year in and year out for 40 years. Game over. This is not an endorsement of China any more than it's a critique of the United States.

But the growth, the core of capitalism, its growth moved. It moved from England to the U.S. in the 19th century and from the U.S. to China in the 21st. Dan, you're on deck for sure. First thing is, if the measure of my wealth stays exactly the same, but everything around me, my medicine, my food, my heat, my technology, the price that I pay for televisions, the price that I pay for clothing, if everything improves drastically, yet the way economists measure it shows that I'm stagnant, then I would feel on firm ground as saying that there's an additional measurement needs to be had. Number one. Number two, if part of the reason China is growing so quickly is because they have,

through almost slave labor, managed to become our manufacturers of everything. And this has somehow undermined our economy. And then that undermining now becomes evidence that our economy needs to be revised. with that logic because they are the problem because what they're doing is immoral. And that immorality might be undermining our economic growth for the time being until they catch up, things stop and start. But I don't understand why we would compare an oppressive system that is showing some short-term results. And I would say, I don't believe, you can't prove it, that this will continue in China because at least we have a business cycle. When things get excessive, people adjust because of the business cycle. In China, my feeling is about dictatorships

that are become bloated and bloated and bloated and eventually make terrible mistakes and crash because you need total freedom for – in an economic system in the long term for people to be able to say that things are not working, to contradict the boss, to venture out with better ideas, a million reasons that I'm sure you know better than I why an economic system under a dictatorship can eventually fail. But it bothers me that China is being used as evidence that we are, am I wrong? I guess he's going to say you are running out of gas when the reason we're running out of gas may be largely to do with China. Well, no, it's not so much that you're wrong. It's just you want to hold on to something. And I don't mean to make your life difficult. I really don't.

But you got to think about some things that contradict the way you're looking at the world, which is always difficult, right? Let me give you a couple more. Over the last 35 years, the real wage—that's what we call in economics when you take the wage a person gets, but you adjust it for the prices that person has to pay when they go out and buy something. So if you get 10% more wage, but all the prices go up 10%, your real wage hasn't changed because you can't buy more stuff with your new wage than you could with your old one. So by measuring the real wage, the real wage of workers in the United States is roughly the same now that it was in 1978. In other words, they've got more money, but they have to pay more prices, and there's no change.

So if American workers are able to consume more, the only reason is they are borrowing up the wazoo. Mortgage, car payments, credit card, college loans, a level of debt no other country in the world has yet achieved. That's what we're sitting on, a mountain of debt. Over the same last 40 years, the average real wage of a Chinese worker, the average wage of a Chinese worker, where you take the money they got, adjusted for the prices they pay, quadrupled. You understand? There's no comparison. They are experiencing in China what the United States experienced 150 years ago, and it's a repetition of what has existed before.

China went from one of the poorest countries on earth half a century ago to the big contestant for the United States, which is due to surpass the United States in its total output by the end of this decade, the 2020s. I mean, you have to face what that's all about. And talking about who's free and who isn't, they look at the United States with its unequal distribution of wealth, and they draw conclusions about liberty and freedom that are, how shall I put it, with a bit of a twinkle in their eye. We can call them whatever names we want, but the achievement that they have delivered to a population whose number one goal was to get out of the poverty that they had had for centuries

and become a powerful modern society, and they've done it. And that's why they're quite secure in their position. They're not ripped apart in their culture the way we are now. We have to face that, otherwise we're not going to solve the problem either. I think we can solve the problem. I think we need to come to terms with learning from what the Chinese did. If we keep dismissing it as no good, you know what we'll be like? We'll be like King George III in England, who dismissed the colony there in North America as a bunch of savages until we defeated them in the Independence War, defeated them again in 1812, and they woke up one day and realized, you better come to terms with this United States because you ain't going to beat them. We're in the same position, unfortunately,

on the British Empire side, and I am hoping that we don't destroy ourselves on this planet because we haven't learned the lesson of coming to terms with this. And this is not an endorsement of China. They've got loads of problems over there. But what they have done is figured out what the vast majority of people on this planet are most concerned about. Overcoming poverty, having their children live to be adults, getting a decent education, getting a basic medical care program, and so on. And they're delivering that. And history has a way of rewarding the people who do that best. Okay, so we lost Professor Wolff.

And so we'll have to comment on him without him being here. Now, I want you to be careful what you say, Dan, because he's not here to defend himself. And I don't like that. But go ahead. Say what you want. Well, I mean, he's a public figure, so we can certainly comment on his ideas. Yeah, of course. And did you

find them as completely untenable as I did or am I missing something? It seemed like utter insanity. That's exactly what I was saying. But if I strongly disagree, is there a better way I can say that? Well, yeah. Am I allowed to him? You wouldn't say that to him. He seems enough that he would he wouldn't care about that.

Listen, I think that it's utterly naive. To think that a democracy of employees also, you know, it's a small number, you know, part of democracy. Relies on the notion of sample size size or anything where you have a small. So if you have 15 people voting on something like a poll, right, you would never poll just 15 people to try to get the sense of something. So the idea that a small group of people would have wisdom is statistically not a good argument. But let's just presume that wasn't the case. Talent is what drives things.

And hard work. No, no. Talent is what has changed the world. But it's not enough, just talent. Sheer talent is never going to be enough. No, but what he's... You have to couple it with effort. What he's describing is a system that assumes that if you have a room full of 20 people, that they all should have an equal say, rather than assuming that this room was convened

by somebody with extraordinary talent who hired people to do his bidding because he had a particular vision of talent. A particular vision from his talent. And I think... I don't think that's what he's saying. I think that he's also saying... He said that the Beatles should open up

their... I thought he laughed at me. Their songwriting. Correct me if he didn't say this. I don't think they should open up their, he actually said, I thought he laughed at me, their songwriting. Correct me if he didn't say this. I don't think they should open up their songwriting necessarily, but well, maybe he did say that. I said that. What he said was, and maybe I'm mistaken, but it was that all of the people would agree that Paul McCartney was the genius and they wouldn't, they would agree not to interfere with his songwriting. Listen, this is what I think he would say.

He would say, I don't think he would deny that there are trade-offs, but I think where he's coming from is that the greater good that would be served by somehow equalizing society in a more egalitarian way would be worth the potential loss of unique vision and innovation.

But would he think, and I never got the chance to ask him this, would he think that everybody would be better off materially or that there would be some other benefits that aren't material in nature, but somehow people just feel better because they have a say? Well, he also believes in price controls and wage controls, and we didn't get into that, and hopefully we'll have him on again, what his vision is of who would make the decisions about those things, what the consequences would be.

That's why I asked him. I said, you know, do you think in your heart of hearts that this just may be naive and utopian? And he smiled, you know. But is he looking to maximize material wealth or maximize some other? He's looking to minimize human suffering. That's what I believe is what he's looking to maximize material wealth or maximize some other? He's looking to minimize human suffering. That's what I believe is what he's looking to do.

Well, I think what he was also saying is that just. And why are people suffering just because they're. He made this dichotomy. Most people are employees and a relative handful are employers. And the notion that this is a bad thing presupposes that being an employee is a bad thing. But well, look, it's interesting what he said about many of employees make good livings and are happy being employees and they don't want to be the boss. They don't want to have that responsibility or that workload necessarily. And they make a good living. And if they don't like

it, they can go somewhere else. You know, I agree. I don't I don't feel like capitalism is running out of gas I think there are stops and starts and like I said I thought I made a legitimate point that he was kind of pointing to China's growth but obviously we know China's growth is based on a lot of very problematic systems there and to the extent that they've undermined our growth temporarily, also we didn't get into immigration.

You know, if wages are, we don't know the answer to this. People have had, economists have disagreed, but if wages are not growing, one way to make the price of labor go up is by reducing the supply of it. At least that's what some people say. Krugman used to say that. Now Krugman says that low-skilled immigration doesn't do that. But who knows?

Usually more left-wing people believe that. One thing he did say at the top of the conversation, I think the thing was somewhat interesting, is he said, well, there are systems, they come and they go, and why would capitalism be the ultimate perfect system? Is it at least conceivable that there's another system that would be better and that would come along? Or is capitalism maybe just the best system that's possible and will never do better?

He's presupposing that that can't be because nothing is ever the best or the ultimate, but maybe it isn't. that I can think of one, but any system which reduces the flourishing and the impact and the influence of those most gifted once-in-a-lifetime talents will be an inferior system in terms of the progress of humanity. That's what I think. There could be other systems. I mean, from everything we've been taught in basic economics and colleges, that wage controls don't work, price controls don't work. I believe that because I've been taught it, and I've seen examples where they don't work. But if somebody could uncrack that code and find a way that employers who are making a lot of money had to pay their employees more, I know, I listen.

It doesn't seem plausible to me. That would be a different system, I guess. We can always improve our safety net. We can always try to, you know, provide for the poor better. I don't know if that's a different system. It's just a matter of reallocating how we prioritize everything. But no, I don't think capitalism is the economic version of freedom. And I don't think there's a better system than allowing people to be free.

That's my point. I mean, yeah, I agree. I think that his initial point was interesting, but I think flawed. His initial point being is why should we believe that capitalism is the best system when throughout history, systems have come and gone. I just don't feel like this country is doing badly. I know that people want to say that and there are segments that are doing badly. Was the middle class worse off today than they were in the 50s? Certainly technology is much better now so that a middle class person is living longer, I think. By some measures, I'm sure the middle class has not grown or has not continued their

trajectory of doing better. By some measures, I didn't really understand why the fact that everything we do is improved. Like Harry Enten did a thing on CNN about how some toys, the same toy from the 1970s, they cost like one-tenth the price today. Remember buying a $1,000 television set in like 1995 with a 32-inch? Now televisions are so cheap that we put one outside. We don't even care if it's stolen.

It's like it's almost disposable. By $19.95, the television set costs like $75. But also there's huge, there's also things that, that's something, right? There's also things you literally could not buy in 1995 because they didn't exist. Yeah, like life-saving medicine. Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of things that are much, much better. I don't, I don't know how they measure GDP. Across decades. Yeah. I don't know how they measure GDP across decades. Yeah, I don't know how to compare.

It's like somebody, I was reading, somebody was saying, oh, the richest man of all time was Mansa Musa, this guy, and he was in Africa, I forgot. But he lived in the year 600. It's like, well, how do you compare that? He couldn't buy anything. The richest person alive. He couldn't buy air conditioning if he wanted to. He couldn't buy air conditioning if he wanted to. He couldn't, you know.

That's right. The richest people in the 1920s, they had certain creature comforts, which. Well, look, they could get laid because they were the richest people. No, they might have a big house compared to today. But in many ways, they were poorer. I'm using scare quotes, than poor people today. In so many things they didn't have. If they get an infection, they die.

And all these innovations come from capitalism. Right. And what they had, as I was alluding to, is they had the ability to brag and say, I'm the richest. Which carries some, there is some benefit to that. You know. But like the king, the emperor of France couldn't, I mean, he couldn't drink the same quality of wine that you can go and buy in any bar in New York right now.

Anyway, it's interesting. It's an interesting conversation. I really liked him, and I liked his spirit. And, you know, I'm sorry that we lost him. Hopefully we have him on again. He was a character. He was a character. I mean, I, you know, all right. So, you know, we may, we'll have him back. And it may be some way people are very quite idealistic. Like he is,

they focus a conversation in a certain way, which may cause good results in other ways. In other words, you might not agree that his suggestions would work, but by focusing on what he's trying to accomplish, which is having people do better, have suffering whatever it is it forces the capitalists to start really figuring out ways that they might be able to accomplish that through their system but I don't and they might not undertake that otherwise so there's something good sorry it's no no it seems like the capitalists aren't interested in that like that's not part of the equation equation. Like Steve Jobs isn't trying to, and I'm not saying. He wasn't worried about his daughter.

We know that. That he wasn't trying to get the input of all of his employees. It's like you said, he had a vision and everybody there was either help me carry out this vision or go find another job. Sounds reasonable to me. You know how many people did better off for that? Again, I'm saying I'm not saying one way or the other, but you said that the capitalists might.

The other thing. I mean, if I had to vote, if I was entitled to a vote on how the comedy cellar was run, I would like breakfast food at night. I've said that time and time again. And you and you have and you have, in fact, alluded to that possibility, but never come to pass. Why don't you take a vote of the menu of all of the- I have made, and there are some things I would put up to a vote, but I have made certain procedures about, you know, how things should be handled on the floor of the- No, but do something fun, like food or like something that Dan can actually sink his teeth into. I have made a number of decisions in my career that I know that worked out very well for myself.

That worked out very well for me that if I had put them up to a vote, they would not have ever happened. There would be no comedy at the Village Underground if I put it up to a vote. The staff mutinied. They were furious about it. And quite a few of them left because it took a while to get going. They were making less money. The regular. I said, I need to do this. So was he saying like when you're saying, well, it's this these singular talents that are really changing the world? And was Professor Wolf saying that it's not. He wanted us to call him Rick, by the way. So was he saying that that wasn't important,

more important than the needs and the dreams and the hopes of all of the employees or that those things would still happen? But everybody else's needs would also be attended to. I guess what he was kind of saying is that for some period of time, the boss has his way. And then I guess the subtext there and then he gets to make a lot of money. And at some point, once he's made a lot of money, it's not our concern anymore that he continue to make a lot of money. And then going forward,

he should then relinquish. So there's got to be a committee set up to investigate each and every business to decide when the boss has made enough money. Or he would say after five years or after ten years, whatever it is. That everybody agrees on that too. Is that the point? But also, isn't this the way that the jury is? And what if the boss loses everything? And the investor, the person who started, what if the comedy seller had gone under

after five years? Yeah, these are unanswerable questions because the boss is still here. As I said, the employees can just leave. Isn't this the way the jury system works in this country? What's that? That like you have 12 people who are making a decision and everybody's opinion is of equal measure and they come from all different walks of life. No, it's supposed to be of your peers.

But yeah, they might come from different walks of life. But we don't require that. Yeah, that is. You didn't know that's how juries work? Well, obviously, I did know that that's how juries work since I just said that. We're talking about the judicial system, not the economic system, which is not supposed to be a democracy. I mean, he's he's saying like democracy is some sort of absolute good and maybe it is in the political system. But, you know, not in the world of private property, not

in the world of business. OK, well, I thought you're the left winger. You believe that that businesses should be run by a vote of their employees? No, but I did like a lot of what he said. And I do think that there's some real value into recognizing that just because you're not Steve Jobs doesn't mean that like, you know, if you have, I'm just using his example, are, you know, doing some other kind of labor. It's like the kibbutz system in Israel. That didn't work out. No, it was a disaster, actually.

If you talk to psychologists who have talked to the children who grew up in the kibbutz system, it was really fucked up. They moved away from it. Well, it's also very small. Maybe on a very small scale, it can have some people that are... I don't know. No, I think it's been well documented. But even in a kibbutz, when you're a small group of people threatened

from the outside farming, you can hold together in certain ways. When you have an owner who's put his life savings into something, has training, experience, and then he hires a kid, and then he's supposed to pretend that this kid now ought to have a say in how the business is run, that just seems wrong to me. The professor's, Rick's, you know, concession to that was that, well, hopefully the boss could persuade the young buck that he should just go along.

But what if he doesn't listen? Is my livelihood to have to depend on the fact that he wouldn't listen? And who would, under this system that he proposes, who would even take the risk of opening up a business? You wouldn't have opened up the Comedy Cellar under that system, I'm assuming? No, I would have refused to inherit it. Well, you could have. Your father might not have ever started it.

No, no, of course. Circling back to that, do you think that we could revisit our will conversation, or is that done? That's done for today. We've already been an hour and a half. I thought it wasn't on air, though. I thought that didn't happen.

What conversation? That doesn't have to be said today. That's not a time-sensitive or date-sensitive discussion. No, but he just said inherit, so I thought... But we've been at this for an hour and a half. You've always talked about short and sweet. sensitive or date sensitive discussion no but I'd inherit so I thought okay but we've been at this for an hour and a half you like you you've always talked about short and sweet we don't even act shit on it's of no direct relevance other than the fact that it has tangentially related to the I think we

should we should put a bow on okay well then go ahead that's no my you in accord I didn't hear what she said well should we should we should we stop or should we continue? We can stop. But what is it that you want? She want to talk about the will. I felt like we didn't. OK, well, there you go. I got voted out.

OK, thank you for listening. It's my podcast. Thank you for listening to live from the table. A comedy seller affiliated podcast. Nicole's going to have to edit this together unless we unless we take a vote and decide she shouldn't. Well, that's... Well, it's your podcast, so it's your call. Yes, this is one of the advantages of not being the boss is I don't have to...

The other thing I didn't get to ask was who pays if the company loses money? I think he would say the boss does. I think that's what he would say. Everybody should chip in. I think we should vote on it. Well, everybody should chip in. You know, if everybody's having a vote, everybody should chip in to cover this month's losses.

All right. Thank you for everybody. We'll see you next time. Podcast at ComedySeller.com for questions, concerns, and suggestions, please. Thank you.