The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW Street Economist: How to Economics So That Even a Socialist Can Understand

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Will the Peronista cult of Evita Peron continue to drag Argentina to socialist hell of hyperinflation and taxes? Will Taylor Swift fans' self-owned, "Swifties Against Freedom Advances" hurt libertarian economist Javier Milei's chances in 10 days of turning the country around? How would YOU answer a socialist who says nonsense like Obama, that free markets are a tool of slavery and colonization? Axel Kaiser, author of "Street Economist, Fifteen Economic Lessons Every Citizen Should Know" joins to give you intellectual ammunition to defend libertyFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

joining us now is the author of this book uh the street economist subtitle is 15 economic lessons every citizen should know axel kaiser is the author who is joining us now and he has um he's an internationally known a writer and economist he is involved involved with many different in Central and South America. He's a Chilean-German lawyer. He's also a senior fellow at the Atlas Center for Latin America based in Miami, a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Besides being a best-selling author and well-respected in terms of his ability to explain things. And that's the key thing. If you really understand something, you can simplify it for people.

And that's what he does. He's got 15 simple examples. It's not a lot of economic analysis and not a lot of jargon. It's just an everyday street terms. And it's been very successful in terms of getting people to understand what is happening. And when you combine an explanation of free market economics with a hyperinflation in Argentina, that surprise, strong showing by him in the first election as a libertarian economist. He came in first place. And since we spoke, there's now been another election. And I wanted to get Axel Kaiser's comments about that because he knows Javier Malai, who's in Argentina. Again,

Axel is in Chile. So thank you for joining us, sir. Thank you very much for having me. Now, since we last talked, as I said, we've had this election, and Javier Malai came in second. I was surprised to see that the guy who is the socialist candidate, who is now the finance minister, edged him out in first place, but there's now going to be a runoff between the two of them.

Tell us a little bit about that and how you see this. Why did that happen? Well, actually, you know, you have a problem in Argentina that it's called Peronism. Peronism, it's a religion. It was developed by Juan Domingo Perón, a general who ruled in the country for many years. And he was a fascist, basically. A collectivist, a statist, not a communist, but he didn't believe in free markets. He didn't believe in economic freedom.

He believed in these sort of corporate arrangements. and that the state had to basically control people's lives and the economic system and give everyone benefits and social rights and things like that. And this became, over the decades in Argentina, sort of a religion in the country. It's like if you would say about, maybe we would talk about Saudi Arabia or any of these Muslim countries and you could not imagine them without being Muslims, you know what I mean? And so to some extent, Peronism became part of Argentina's identity. And it's the mythology that gives Argentinians a large part of the population in Argentina, a, of belonging and also meaning and all of that.

It's a very- Very connected to Evita Peron and We Got It in America, you know, the Broadway show Evita and all this other kind of stuff. And so they attach a personality to it and people get attached to that person, like a celebrity. You know, you got a celebrity politician that everybody wants to follow. And so that's a big part of it as well isn't it yeah but it's even more than a celebrity because evita peron you have the culture personality until today it became like um let's let's think this in religious terms uh it's like, you know, it's like having saints in the

Catholic religion, like, or the culture of Maria Magdalena, for instance. A patron saint of yeah, it has a religious component. So it's not like, oh, we admire Taylor Swift, or whoever it is and then when she's dead no one cares it's this goes way beyond that they they manage to create a very strong as i said mythology and um with that with religious favor so the people who follow this are fanatics this is one element that i think we usually tend to underestimate the importance of ideas, culture, the mentality, no?

And now we are seeing this war between Hamas and Israel. You can have a new grasp on the importance of ideology or fundamentalism and ideas. So in Argentina, you have this. And the other problem is that they, Hamas and the Peronists, they control the government. So they can mobilize lots of resources in order to win the election, The other problem is that they, Massa and the Peronists, they control the government. So they mobilized lots of resources in order to win the election, to bribe people, to tell

them that if Millet wins, they are not going to receive the benefits anymore. This is actually what they did. If you went to the train stations and the bus stations in Argentina, previous to the, before the first round, you saw signs that were put up by the government, by Massa, showing people how much the price of the train ticket and the bus ticket would increase in case Millet was elected, or as compared to the price of the of the uh

transportation tickets if Massa was elected and so Millet was like 10 times 10 times high 10 times higher and so they scared people into voting against Millet by telling them that all these subsidies were going to go away and then they would have to pay much more for transportation which in a country like argentina without you know 150 inflation almost and a ruined economy it makes a huge difference for people who have to take the train every day to go for work right and and with that kind of inflation i when i reported on it i said you know again masa the guy who is his opponent the perernista, is a finance minister. And so he did a big tax cut, and then he gave some new entitlement programs or an increase in entitlement programs as well, didn't he?

I mean, essentially throwing gasoline on the dumpster fire, right? Didn't he do that as well, besides the propaganda stuff? Well, yeah, of course. They lowered taxes, and also they give a lot of money away so people can you know with both of them this is a classical assistentialist uh policy and mentality we have seen in latin america but especially in argentina for percent for over a century i would say even and so there's nothing new there now it's it's very hard uh for me late to win but it's not impossible i think he he has a good chance of winning and next sunday i think it's the election and yeah the 17th all

right and the person who came in in third place who'll be moved out um that was a conservative person is that correct so you expect that he'll get he'll inherit In this three-way race, that conservative vote was being split between Millay and this other person who's now eliminated. Is that correct? Yeah, Patricia Woolrich came in third place, and she already has endorsed Millay, and also Macri has endorsed Millet. I mean, that doesn't mean that necessarily all of her voters will go and vote for Millet because the ability of politicians to mobilize the people that supported them has decreased over time. So it used to be the case that one politician would say, okay, I support this guy and many people will follow him, but that's not the case that one politician would say okay i support this guy and many people will will follow him but that's that's not the case anymore but a percentage of them will go for me late so that that's why he still has a has a chance and he he said they're going to be starting from a you know

a clean slate because there were lots of uh attacks and aggressions between the two of them during the campaign. And now they are together and trying to win the presidency. Because if they don't do it, then you will have the same cronies and criminals. Basically, there are a bunch of criminals, the people who are running Argentina now. Massa even had ties to the narco cartels and things like that. And so they don't have a chance in my opinion i mean if argentinians really vote again for burnished in a country where the finance minister has the people living with 140 inflation with uh fifth almost 50 under the poverty line and where a country is broke and no investments are available and

so on and so forth then you can only explain this in terms of ideology and uh more even so than in terms of you know um mobilizing resources by the government so that people will vote for you which is something they will do anyways I think that's not enough because people are really suffering now. It's not, not like they have a lot to lose if they, if they vote for me late. Let me ask you this because when, uh, in the comments of the, uh, after the election mainstream media here in the United States was going back and looking at comments from people who voted one way or the other. And I don't know if it was just the way that they selected it. If it was truly representative, you've got to try to always try to see through the smoke in the mirrors that

the mainstream media is using. But what they were doing, at least in terms of what they were talking about, they said most of the older people were supporting Masa, I think is his name, the Peronista. And it was mostly young people who were saying, we've got to try something different. This just isn't working. We're supporting Javier Malai. Is that kind of similar to what you see there? A generational gap where people that are older maybe are buying into this personality cult, this religion of the pernistas there is a generational gap there is no doubt that mile has managed to um create a structural change in public opinion in in Argentina that means that younger generations

who vote for him they they are not permanentsists anymore. I mean, they are lost to the Peronists. And so that is a great achievement. I think it's unbelievable what has been going on there because this is like converting Muslims into Christians, you know? It's like something, yeah, it's huge. So even if he doesn't win the presidency, I think that is part of his success, and no one can deny that.

But of course, in the older generations, the Peronist mythology is much more prevalent, and they tend to embrace it, you know, in a stronger way than the younger generations, who are also very much worried that they will have no opportunities in this country and actually many young people are living argentina um to other places they're going to states or europe many of them have european passports you

know and so uh i happened to do. I had a girlfriend for a long time who was from Argentina and all of her family had already left and many of her friends. We're talking about 20 25 year old people 30 year old people because they think there is no hope in this country. And, and human capital is the first one to leave and so they all support me late all of them the older guys uh tend to live a lot from government assistance you know the pensions and things like that and they are still in this mindset they have still have this mindset of uh golden has to take care of us and give us everything and feminism is good and and masa is the guy but there are also um in the you know generations um let's say the baby boomers

there are many who who vote for melee because they just are anti-establishment they don't want the same people to be in power anymore because the corruption scandals and all that has been completely insane in Argentina over the last years and decades. And so they could vote back for a fairness that they consider honest in in a couple of uh you know years uh from now but uh so i think if mele um would i mean if if it was only uh with people under 30, Millet would have won in the first round. I mean, the election took place between, you know, people above 18, under 30, Millet would have won in the first round.

But that tells you something about the future of the country. So I think I'm optimistic in that sense. I agree. In the medium term, very hard. Yeah, it is. Yeah yeah people who just want to get rid of the corruption that has been so ingrained there um but uh i have a comment from a listener alc28 says pay close attention to the psychological aspect behind the dependent relationship that people have with their government many people are afraid of freedom and they really are you know

they'd rather have the free stuff than freedom. You know, they will give up their freedom. They think that they can purchase their security and their comfort by giving up their freedom. And, of course, Benjamin Franklin said, that's not going to work, never worked. But that is the calculation that they're doing with that. So I think that may be it. But, you know, it's interesting, Axel, the New York Times saw this and said, well, you know, we think that Javier Millay is appealing again to the younger voters who are not attached to the Peronista personas. And they they see that it's not working. As you pointed out, they're even leaving the country to try to find economic opportunity that is not there.

And so the New York Times says, yeah, but, you know, he might have a problem because there might be these taylor swift fans who are going to attack him and they've organized a group called swifties against freedom advances and that's because he's called his isn't that funny they don't see the irony of that i guess because freedom advances is uh malaysia party so they're arraigning themselves against freedom advancing pretty much self-owned aren't they right yeah but uh let's talk a little bit about that because i had an article uh obama has come back and has now commented on uh you know his his uh disdain that he has for the free market because he's kind of our peronistas, part of that group. And this headline from Washington Examiner says,

Obama warns about the dangers of market-based systems being compatible with slavery. And I'll just read you this, two sentences that he had here. He says, just because an economic system generated wealth and innovation doesn't mean that it guarantees a good society he said market-based systems have been compatible with slavery caste systems colonization war uh fraud autocracy and the poisoning of our natural environment it's like wow this guy really does hate free markets he's not even talking about you know, which some people might attribute to crony capitalism. He's talking about the free market and your ability to have a choice there.

It's all about colonization and exploitation and fraud and autocracy. But at the very beginning of it, he says, just because an economic system develops wealth and innovation, well, that's what an economic system is supposed to do, isn't it? You know, Obama makes a fundamental mistake there because he's ignorant in economics. I wish he could read my book, Street Economics, to learn something. But the fundamental mistake that he makes, and many people on the left make, is to confuse the free market and something that is uh you know something that exists like free market institutions with things that have existed all over you know throughout human history that's right for instance i mean slavery for example yeah the roman empire had slavery they didn't

have free markets exactly and they didn't have a free market so the right question would be for obama to ask where are the places where my ideals let's assume it's democracy and human rights and you know prosperity and social mobility where where are those places that um or what what you know characteristic do those places have where you find respect for human rights and you have prosperity and social inclusion and things like that and the and the thing that you will find is that all of these places with no exception have a market economy there is zero exception to this to this rule and now if you go to places where you have zero market economy or almost no market economy you will find none of these things that Obama claims to value so so the real question is what would happen in the absence of the free

market and not if you have you know a paradise because you have a free market and in the absence of the free market and not if you have you know paradise because you have a free market and in the absence of a free market you wouldn't have prosperity inclusion social mobility you wouldn't have respect for human rights and so on and so forth and uh when you have a free market it's a necessary condition for having a free society that is inclusive it's not a sufficient condition but it's a necessary condition and this is what obama doesn't understand and that's why he doesn't value the free market because yes you could have spaces of free market where you have uh slave trade for instance but uh that doesn't mean that you have the slave trade because you have free markets you you would have, you would have the slave trade, regardless of the type of economic arrangement that you have in that society.

And that's what, what happened throughout human history. Yeah. So when we can look at places like communist China and we can see that we've got autocracy, we've got fraud, we've got corruption. We have the poisoning of the natural environment that they have in China. We say that we have all that stuff because of an authoritarian, centrally controlled and planned economy. That is inherent in that system that you have all those things. And that's also another point. It's the same mistake that Pope Francis makes.

If you take a look at the countries that respect the environment the most, it's all capitalist, free market economies, countries. It's not the socialist countries. It's not underdeveloped countries. It's not Haiti or some country in Africa or even the former Soviet Union. It's not what happens. I mean, the Soviet Union was an environmental disaster. It. It's horrible. And people don't know a lot about this, but it was much worse than any Western capitalist country that you could see. And because we have a free market economy,

because we have innovation, we can not only provide food and shelter for everyone, but we can improve the technologies so that we can become cleaner and cleaner in the way we produce stuff. And this is what has been going on actually over the last decade. If you take a look at the amount of CO2, for instance, produced per dollar GDP of output, you can see that it has dramatically declined everywhere in the US and even in China. But if you take a look at the soil pollution and and water pollution and

things like that air pollution there's a famous study that was um that was made a decade ago years ago i don't remember exactly the date but it showed that when you surpass 15 000 in per capita income around that uh benchmark then all these pollutants start to uh to decrease and so water starts becoming cleaner air starts getting cleaner and so on and so forth so economic development thanks to free market economies uh make the the world a cleaner in the end of course you can always say well know, if we went back to the Stone Age when we wouldn't have any poisoning of the air and things like that, which is also not entirely true because back then we had some volcanic eruptions that were much worse than anything

we have ever seen. But that's not reasonable to argue, you know? And that's the problem with the extinctionists nowadays. They say, say oh humans are a plague we have to more or less everyone has to die not us but everyone else has to die so that the earth we know will be clean and and and and pure again which is uh an anti-humanist and and and genocidal way of thinking i'm not saying obama thinks like that but uh he's very confused when it comes to um to the free market it's like saying well democracy is also compatible with corruption it's also compatible with human rights violations it's also compatible with you know um all sorts of uh evil stuff that doesn't mean that it is because you have democracy that you have that

it's when you have democracy and you have that. It's when you have democracy, and liberal democracy especially, that respects fundamental rights, where you have less of these sort of evils in general, as a general rule. You have exceptions, of course. And so he wouldn't say that if he was speaking about democracy, but because he hates the free market or because he doesn't like it, he just cannot think clearly about it. That's right.

Yeah. Cause and effect. You know, what actually caused it? Or is this something that was there, there before and after? Again, the book is The Street Economist, Axel Kaiser, 15 Economic Lessons Every Citizen Should Know. And Obama should know these too, but he doesn't. So, you know, and you got to say say look this uh centrally controlled uh uh economies

work really well for people like uh xi and china and obama you know he's he's done really well in terms of trying to plan economies and other people's lives and take away their choices but talk a little bit about one of the lessons that you've got in there you say uh only two ways to make a living uh from your own work or from somebody else's work and i guess you would say that uh obama and the peronistas are making their living from somebody else's work right so yeah you know this is a very fundamental lesson and a very deep thing if you really think about this um when we were in paradise and all you forms of utopianism um you know offer a place where you will not have to work or you will not have to put so much effort in order to um you know provide for your life and your father's life and and so socialists and collectivists and people like Obama tend to believe that there is a moral value when you don't have to really put your own effort into achieving something like providing for yourself.

They think it's their responsibility of the community, of society, to make sure that everyone has enough to survive. And when they do this, they basically promote policies that destroy incentives so that people can create wealth and they create incentives. And you see this in Argentina, of course, and also in the US to a different extent, that people will live at the expense of someone else. Because as I say in the book you have only two ways of supporting your life you can work for yourself and provide for yourself or you can live out of someone else someone else pays your bills basically that's what what we do as parents we pay our kids bills why because they are children they cannot provide for themselves it's it's a natural order of things right but when you are an adult and you are not providing

for unless you are real and you have some sort of uh different problem and you are not providing for yourself someone else has to provide for yourself and this is the promise that is offered by the left worldwide that you will not have to worry because someone else has your back they will pay for your bills it's of course not the politicians who promise this that take their money from their pockets in order to pay for them it's uh through the tax system your neighbor or someone who is rich or has a better situation than you and and you will take away from him and will give it to you because to some extent they they feel that it is unfair that some people have more than others and they feel it is also unfair to have to work for uh making a living it's a

fundamental problem that you have with this mindset which is the utopianism behind it it's the idea that life is unfair because you have to work in order to make a living and if we if we just were in the perfect place in paradise again we wouldn't have to work and they are trying to offer that they're trying to tell people you know don't worry this time is not God who is going to provide for everything in paradise. This time is the state, is the government. It's us in charge of the government. It's Godverment. It's like I call them.

And we had this in spades, didn't we, with the lockdowns? And I don't know what they did in South America, but you know, we had the lockdowns and then they gave people stimulus checks. Don't work, stay home, I'll give you this money. And that was training for universal basic income uh is that something's being pushed uh by uh i'm sure it is it's a globalist agenda i'm sure it's being pushed in south america the universal basic income we've even got former economists that like charles

murray that i really respected when he talked about how how a welfare state had actually harmed the people was supposed to help and made them dependent on the state. And now he's pushing universal basic income. It's truly amazing to see how this is being pushed. But it also, I think it's amazing, Axel, how quickly people caught on to that and how quickly they became dependent on it, saw that as an entitlement. And I shouldn't have to go to work. I want to stay home and continue to collect my check and so forth. And stimulus check, not even, you know, working from home with a Zoom, but I want to stay home and get that stimulus check.

It worked really well. Yeah, that is a big trend nowadays to argue for UBI, especially because of all the technological innovation that is coming and the argument that it will replace jobs and destroy jobs and machines are going to do everything in the end. Actually, Elon Musk recently had an interview, I don't know if you saw this, with the Prime Minister of the UK.

And he said that he believed that all jobs were going to be destroyed by ai all of them all of them no exception basically and that we wouldn't have a ubi but we would have a universal um high income or something like that he called it because we would have so um much resources that uh so much money in the end that we would have would be able to provide everything you wanted for everyone. And no one will have to work unless you wanted to. Well, this sounds like a point in time where you don't have the economic problem anymore, which is how to provide and to get the resources. But I don't like the UBI because they are, first of all, they are arguing for the UBI on top of all the welfare measures that we already have.

It's not like we are going to shut down the welfare state and we are going to give a UBI to people who cannot reach a certain amount of money so that they can support themselves. It's apart from everything the government is already doing, they want to introduce a UBI, which I think is horrible. And even if you got rid of all the welfare of the welfare state, and you had a very small government, which would be much better for everyone. The problem with the UBI is what you just said, you make people dependent on these handouts. And this has not only of course, you solve the economic problem of the resources that you need for eating and shelter and all that but you have another um element that you have to take into account people need to find meaning in life and they need to feel useful members of society and there is no better way to achieve that than through work. And so if you have people depending on government

and money that is being just given to them, their sense of dignity, of self-worth is going to dramatically plummet. And we have seen this in welfare states all over the world, even in countries like Sweden or Denmark, you have that problem. And, and, and then you will have, um, a social crisis and, uh, you know, probably this disenfranchised people that will go on streets, burning cars, like you see in Europe, migrants that you see destroying things in Europe are on welfare. All of them. Yes.

Most of them are young men who are not even working. And they don't have any direction. You know, when I looked at asymmetric warfare centers here in the U.S., and you had these military people who were analyzing what was happening in these other countries, they said, you know, the thing that's motivating them is not Islam or any kind of radical religion. What motivates them? These are typically, the profile is typically somebody who's in their 30s.

They're well-educated. They might have been an engineer or something like that. But now, they see that they have no control over their future because, you know, we've come in and bombed their country and we're occupying it. So, they see that they have no control over the future. That helplessness radicalizes them, turns them into terrorists. Then they turn to religion, but they're radicalized by having absolutely no control or purpose in their life that's been taken away from them. And so when you look at the people that are being brought in, where they open borders into Europe and into the United States, we know that they're bringing them in. It's going to develop into a sense of

hopelessness and frustration. They want them to be radicalized in that. But, you know, when we look at what the we look at what the technocrats are doing, George Gilder said these Silicon Valley people, he called them neo-Marxist, Axel, and he said the reason he called them neo-Marxist, he said they've got a fundamental conceit like Karl Marx that who said we have with the Industrial Revolution, we've got we can make more physical goods than we ever need. And now we just have to figure out how we're going to distribute those, and we'll let the government do it. And so George Gilder said that's what the Silicon Valley people are saying.

They say we've got all this technology, we've got genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotech. All we have to do is just figure out, we have infinite physical goods, we just need to put it out there. It sounds like that's what Elon Musk is telling Rishi Sunak. What do you think about that? Does that sound like Marxism to you? Well, you know, the problem with Marxism promise something like having a utopia where no one will have to uh where they will really freedom from want right yeah

like exactly that's what in terms of technology yeah yeah and that machines will do everything and will create all of the prosperity for us that this is a mindset right now in march utopia uh it would be the communist society that would create all of this wealth uh he didn't really detail how this was going to happen of course because of the hand waving going on there yeah he was selling the dream you know and and of course i mean i have the thesis that marx knew very well that he wanted to create dictatorships and destroy the existing order and send millions of people to their death. And the way he had to, the way he solved this was by saying, at some point we are going to be so happy and no one will need to work much more

than he will have to in order to provide for himself and his family. and we will be so wealthy, everyone will have so much from everything. So that part of the story is similar to what Marx envisioned. Now, I think there are other utopias, not only Marxism, that had promised something like this. This is why I, in my view, the idea of paradise is so powerful, because almost all sorts of utopias, not all of them, but offered something like a paradise on Earth, where people will live and, you know, insecurity, and you will not have this existential fear that you will not be able to find food or mean resources to provide for yourself and your your family and and so I think in Silicon Valley

right now you are seeing this form of Utopia only there are better reasons now to believe that this could happen actually because if it is really true that general artificial intelligence can surpass human beings in everything we do and produce limitless resources more or less then yes at some point you will have super abundance and and the economic problem will be over i don't think this is going to happen, but if it's true. Yeah, you know, it's interesting when we had Michael Bloomberg running for president in the 2020 cycle briefly, he made a statement that a lot of people got very angry with him because he denigrated farmers' contributions. They're stupid. Anybody can do that job. People said, no, it's a

complicated job. You've got a lot of different things that you've got to manage. You're an entrepreneur. You're taking risks. You've got to be able to fix equipment, all this kind of stuff. But what he was saying in the context, Axel, was he was saying, well, we had the agrarian culture, and we replaced it with an industrial culture, an industrial society. And he said, so those people who were working on the farm, they worked in the factory. But he goes, now those of us who are smart can replace all of them. And we're working on how we take everybody's jobs. And he said, we have to figure out how we're going to keep them, after we take their jobs, how we keep them from coming after us with guillotines. That was what he said.

And so that's exactly the way I see this UBI. You know, these people sell us these utopias that you're talking about. And now we're going to have everything that's going to be handed to us on a silver platter you know the artificial intelligence is going to do this says the world's richest man and uh and and then he's just going to share that wealth with you and um and yet the reality is is that it's really more of a pacification it kind of reminds me of um what hg wells did with the time machine you know he goes forward in the future and he sees little pink creatures that they have everything for them, it seems like, and he calls them the Eloi. And then at night, the Morlocks

come out from underneath the ground and harvest which ones of those they want to eat. And that's really what I think is in the mindset of these billionaire technocrats who are telling us about this utopia that's on its way, I think they're setting us up to be Eloy. Well, you know, I think in the case of Elon Musk, maybe he's even worried about this. He didn't set this when he was speaking with Sunak, but he doesn't seem to be like one of these hardcore ideologues in that sense. He's very worried about artificial intelligence going wrong and maybe becoming a threat to humanity. But he believes strongly that we will come to a point where the machines and artificial intelligence can provide for everything so you will have your personal trainer will be some some sort of robot and you will have a

uh your psychologist will be some ai that knows you better than yourself and things like that uh but we have to we have to think about what it means to be human because now we are entering an age where this is going to be the defining on the most challenging question and if we get it wrong i think we will we are heading to collapse and to widespread chaos in the world um even if we have ai producing, because we have AI producing all of this free stuff. So yes, there is some element of that. What you are saying is like, okay, we are the rich guys. We are going to give you the cramps of everything we are producing so that you are not coming after us and creating a revolution. But you could have this revolution anyways,

because if you are on UBI and you used to work as a lawyer or you used to work as whatever white or blue collar works and you are on UBI and you have the other very smart people who are running the show you will have a caste system

basically and that is very I would say, incompatible with human nature and the way we humans work as a, you know. I agree. And I think that caste system, I think that caste system is a technocracy, you know, and that's exactly.

And so and so we will feel like we are not even the slaves because there was something that you could say at least if you were slave who a slave you were forced to work for someone and you could always think i mean i could be free someday or i could you know or this is an abuse that is being committed against me but if you are on ubi you don't even have that it's like you are just some sort of uh dependent like an infant and these very bright people are are feeding you and are giving you stuff so that you know you are just remaining peaceful and and not bothering them too much that's right yeah and they've been very obvious about the fact that's what they want to do. Yuval Harari says, yeah, the future doesn't need you.

We just need to find a way that we can pacify you. Maybe we can do it with entertainment until you guys just kind of breed yourself out of existence or whatever, or we find some way to quietly kill you. I mean, it's very sinister when you look at it, the big design that they have. And that's why, you know, when you look at, that's what I like about your book. You talk about real tangible issues and how economics is at the center of what we do in terms of helping us, giving us a mission, part of our humanity, how entrepreneurs are social benefactors,

uh, and not just doing it for their own good, but, uh, society in general benefits from that. You take away all that, you take away the entrepreneurship, you take away the pride of, of, uh, being able to create something, uh, that's really destroying us at our core of humanity. Isn't it? Exactly. Like, like let's go and tell, and tell, tell you know painters and artists and people who work

agricultures who really love what they do or at least they feel like like they are needed you know because otherwise society doesn't work and we all do things that other people value that's why we get some income and and now you will tell them we don't need you like you are completely uh not only replaceable but your existence doesn't matter to anyone yes in terms of collaboration and in terms of you know this is a very hard appeal to swallow I don't believe that it's going to work I don't believe this is going to end well if if ai starts producing everything and you know no psychologists will have a job no doctor will have a job because ai will do everything no architect no nothing what we're gonna do all day watch watch movies

with fake actors that are being played by ai i mean what are we gonna do that's done by ai and recycling other people that have been around there. It is crazy. And yet, you know, this is kind of, again, what is the fatal conceit of all these utopian societies is that somebody that's designing the society knows how to run everything. That they've somehow got godlike intelligence and they know how to run it. And so now what they've done is they've moved this away to try to make this feasible to people since they've run that into the ground oh but we'll create artificial intelligence that has godlike intelligence and it will tell you what to do uh it is uh there's a yes i tell you what you know my spidey senses are going off you don't want to hear this kind of stuff happening all the time yeah more more than utopia we are going to get dystopia. We're going to have more along the lines of Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

We will have a totalitarian technocratic society where we're going to be just like cocks in the machine. And then they're going to tell us, not even that, because we will not even be part of the machine. Maybe we will feed the machine like in matrix you know exactly so that's that's all all what's going to be left for us i mean it's very hard to really foresee what's going to happen but i could not imagine uh having you know hundreds of millions of people unemployed with nothing to do at being peaceful and just happy you know meditating the whole day. This is not going to happen. I agree.

Yeah. Jason Barker. Let me give you this comment from one of our listeners. And of course he's also got a broadcast. He says, uh, um, nights of the storm, as well as the Fox will report. Jason Barker says the new cast system they want is about removing hope. There is no mechanism to get out. That's why the 15 minute cities and the death

of private transportation. Uh, do you agree with that? To me, that sounds spot on. I think that's exactly. I agree with that. If you lose hope, you lose everything. And you have hope where you yourselves are not, uh, you cannot envision a way in which you can somehow, somehow fulfill a potential that you have and that potential that that you can fulfill or develop needs from others and needs the K. I mean, you have to be able to make the case that you are useful to others and that other people value you for what you are capable of offering as a human being in different aspects of life. And yes, of course, people can tell you, but you will still be able to love to have children and your family and this is important

of course that's all very important I hope that AI doesn't replace that replace that because now you will have like AI girlfriends that will look robots like all in these movies and they look like like humans and they are pretty and you know so even that it's going to change uh if this continues to develop in that direction but i think i think we will live in a hopeless society and when you have that you have the perfect um you know ferment for a social explosion and a revolution that's right because someone will come and say enough and they will try offer you and offer you uh some sort of hope and if you take a look at the Nazis it's exactly what Hitler did with the with the German people that were completely despair because they I mean desperation because

they were you know hyperinflation depression and they had no hope then you had this guy you had the same thing in the Russian revolution and the same thing in the French revolution, the great, the three great revolutions we've had and genocidal revolutions we had in the last, uh, in modern times.

Why wouldn't that be the case? Uh, well, now in an age of super abundance, it could be the case. Yes, of course. Yes.

It could happen. Yes. Yes. Uh, because again, you know, life is more than just about what we own. And, uh, but these are, uh, existential questions really that you give very simple answers to in terms of,

uh, and I say existential issues because, uh, this is the, these are, are, it's a thin book. It's easy to read. And it is a way for you to try to explain to people who have been deceived into what this is about. Why these utopian systems, why these centrally controlled systems really don't work, and why it's doomed to failure, why it is doomed to despair. And so this is a great way, this book,

you do a great job, Axel, of distilling these arguments, giving real world examples that people, if you look at this, you can explain it to your children. You can explain it to your friends if they are hearing this siren song of free stuff forever. And they're going to keep us safe if we just surrender everything to them. Thank you so much for joining us. And very interesting. We'll be watching again. You said the Argentina election is what, about two weeks away or so? Yeah, it's November 17th.

So I think it's next week. Yeah, it's almost, yeah. Okay, on the weekend. Okay, we'll be looking and keeping our fingers crossed that things will work out better for the people in Argentina, that they can take a step back towards reality and away from hyperinflation and authoritarian socialist policies. Thank you for all the work that you do. And thank you for this excellent book, The Street Economist by Axel Kaiser. Thank you very much, Axel. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, we're going to be coming right back. Stay with us. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about what's happening with banks still happening in the United States. We're still having some problems with the processing stuff, as well as some updates on the pharmaceutical industry and its machinations about controlling us.

We'll be right back. Using free speech to free minds. It's the David Knight show.