The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 498: Bill Whittle—Communism for Dummies

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

What exactly is communism—and why has it failed so spectacularly everywhere it's been tried? Bill Whittle has spent years answering those questions, and in this episode, he makes the case in a way that's hard to misunderstand. Bill is a writer, filmmaker, and political commentator whose work includes Empire of Terror, a detailed examination of the history and ideology of communism. Here, he breaks down the fundamental differences between individualism and collectivism, explains how free markets actually work, and makes the case for capitalism and the constitutional republic that makes it possible. Using simple analogies, memorable examples, and plenty of common sense, Bill tackles some very complicated ideas without burying them in complicated language. Why does individual freedom matter? Why do markets work without a central planner telling everyone what to do? And what happens when a government decides that the collective is more important than the individual? If you've ever wondered why capitalism works, why communism doesn't, or how the two systems actually differ in practice, Bill Whittle has a few answers—and he makes them surprisingly easy to understand. Big thanks to our terrific sponsors PureTalk.com/ROWE—Switch your phone service today and enjoy your first three months of talk, text, and data for just $15 a month regardless of which plan you choose. NetSuite.AI/MIKE—The #1 Cloud ER. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, try NetSuite Nextfor FREE. AuraFrames.com—Named the #1 digital picture frame by Wirecutter. Use code MIKE to get $35 off select frames plus FREE shipping. Digs.com/MIKE—Less rework. Less confusion. And a much smoother build experience for homeowners. Get 40% offyour first 3 months

Hey guys, it's the way I heard it. My guest today is Bill Whittle. If you're a long-time listener, you've heard Bill on here before. He's a historian. I don't know exactly what his qualifications are in the traditional sense of being an historian. I just don't know anybody, Chuck, who's better read and more well-versed and more committed to understanding our history, and in particular Russian history, sidebar communism, comma, socialism. And since these things are in the headlines today like never before, and since I just kind of blew up last week on the social media's writing about it, I thought we might introduce a little segment called communism for dummies.

I like it. That has turned into a whole episode. Yes, yes, it has. And boy, oh boy, Bill feels deeply. He does. He really does. And he's got a lot to say. This is a guy who produced and starred in a series called,

Empire of Terror. Thank you. You're welcome. Empire of terror. I saw it. It's crazy. You just won't believe all of this. I highly recommend it because you won't believe how cruel and inhuman people can be to one another.

Well, I currently am having a hard time believing how the word communist can exist in 2026 as anything other than a profound pejorative, an insult. Yeah, it should be right up there with Nazi. Absolutely. Yeah. But it's not. Yep. It's not the DSA right now, just by way of backstory, and maybe it's too much information, but I shared a clip that Bill Maher put up a week or so ago where he shared lots and lots

of quotes from members of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, who were self-proclaimed communists, who were talking about the need to elect more communists. And it just seems like socialism and communism are both on the march. This is an uncharacteristically political episode. But it's not really coming from a political place. For me anyway. It's just coming from a sudden realization that I think K-12 has failed in so many ways. But I think we have a lot of people, decent people, our fellow citizens and our neighbors,

who just truly don't have any. historical reference. Yeah, and communism sounds real good on paper. Socialism sounds really good on paper. It's just never works. And socialism always leads to communism. Well, you know, reasonable people spend a lot of time arguing about that very thing. I don't know the truth of it. I just know that in general, communism has never ever worked anywhere. Correct. It's never been realized anywhere and its defenders often say that well then how can you condemn it if it's never been fully realized in its utopian form the way it's supposed to be it's this thing that just keeps calling people back to give it another shot because we're not robots is the answer to that question because

we're humans who have free will and who are petty and are greedy yeah well we have ourselves a national moment, I think. And it's an opportunity, I believe, for enlightenment or at least a conversation. I get it. Nobody wants a lecture. Nobody wants a sermon. But we need to start talking about the reality of what these ideologies have meant historically and what they could mean again. And look, as I said in my post, which, by the way, not that anybody cares, but this thing's been shared hundreds of thousands of times. It's a topic. It's in the headlines. People are truly talking about it. And people are getting elected. And people in positions of power are literally tweeting things like elect more communists. So I thought we ought to have a conversation. And Bill Whittle starts, as he always does,

but things get heated. And he cares deeply. And I do too. And I hope you will as well. We're calling it communism for dummies with great respect to everyone, really. But you know the title of that series. And if there was ever time for a compendium, a helpful guide, perhaps it's now. And perhaps Bill Whittle can help us in our journey toward enlightenment right after this. After switching to pure talk and then bragging about him for the last year or so, I got to admit, I was very proud. to see that they were the only wireless company in America to get five stars in every category from the latest massive consumer opinion survey.

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In other words, you can save $150 over the next three months while you kick the tires on the only high-speed network to get five stars in every category. That's any plan, including their top-tier unlimited plan, which I'm personally delighted with for $15 a month for the next three. months. This part's important. No contracts. No commitments. Just a ridiculously good deal on a high-speed network from the only five-star American wireless company out there. Pure Talk. They are the real deal. Give them a try. PureTalk.com slash row. That's puretalk.com slash row. So for those of you watching on YouTube who missed the preamble properly introducing Bill Whittle and the reason for his presence here on this episode of the way I heard it. Let me just say, first of all, thanks for doing this. My pleasure. I think it's only a matter of national security,

freedom, justice for all, and our collective future. And happiness. And happiness. Yeah. Let's put that at the top of the list. The episode is called communism for dummies. And I mean no disrespect. But everybody knows what that title means. And as I said in the preamble, I just feel Bill like, do you remember in saving Private Ryan the scene where it's hand to hand, it's toward the end, and the American Jewish soldier, right? It's a knife fight. Yep. It's one of those moments.

To me, it's the most chilling moment in the whole film. But beyond just the intensity of it, it's where things get hyper real, right? And there's that moment it was like, okay, okay, okay, okay. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Like we, we. What I'd be saying, too, if somebody was about to drive a dagger into my heart. Right. So I'm looking at the elections.

I'm looking at the conversations that are swirling around, not just my social media, but every major headline in every major newspaper is trying to understand what is happening with the DSA. Is it the DSA or the DSM, Democratic Socialist? DSA. DSA? Okay. Movement. of America. Whatever it is, it seems like this lurch toward socialism and communism is being supported

by two groups of people. One group are the people who completely understand what it is, what's at stake, and have a vision for transforming the country. The other group, which I suspect is probably a larger cohort, at least I hope they are, are just people who we failed them in K-12. We didn't educate them. We're not teaching history. And I think maybe they just don't know. So without being lectury, nobody wants a lecture, nobody wants a sermon. You and I've known each other a long time. I know where you're coming from personally, but I also know just from and as a source of accurate information, can you give us some kind of compendium as to what's going on in our country, beginning with why is free stuff bad? Well, let's start off with what you're

you said about having failed them in education. From the people who are in charge of education, they haven't failed them at all. They've succeeded perfectly. They've succeeded in exactly what it is they set out to do in the beginning, and that is make sure people know as little about the two systems as possible. So it's not a failure in terms of like, gee, Cosmic Ray came in and they missed a socialism day that day at school. They were sick with the flu. The entire purpose of it is to make sure that you know as little about both of these systems as possible, but especially about the history of socialism. Sounds a little conspiratorial?

No, it's not. Like, okay, who? Who sat down and said, I know what we're going to do. We're just going to pretend the 30s and the 40s didn't happen. Or the 50s or the 60s or the 70s? No, we'll take part of the 50s and then we'll focus on the McCarthyism and we'll make sure people know there was a terrible prosecution in the country, but we won't quite connect the dots.

That's right. In other words, from a marketing standpoint, it's awfully. bad these days to be called a Nazi or a fascist. Sure. Communists? No. Maybe. What's that all about? Well, we want to be fair. And if we want to convince people, we want to be fair, which means being intellectually honest, which means presenting both sides of the argument, the way that somebody who would believe that would say, yes, that's a fair way of looking at it.

So let's put the communists aside for the time being. We'll just start with socialism and the whole idea of socialism. So you ask me, you know, what's the matter with free stuff? I've become, over my life, a rock-ribed conservative, but my first vote was for Walter Mondale. I voted for him because he said he was going to raise taxes. And the reason I voted for him because he said he was going to raise taxes is because I wasn't paying any taxes at the time. Now, I'm not trying to be flip here, but that has a pretty big significant aspect of this. So when I go to colleges and I debate people on this subject, somebody will often say to me, why are you against free health care? And my response is, I'm not against free health care. I'm 100% in favor of free health care.

I think everybody should have free health care. What kind of a dick would I be if I was to sit there and say, no, no free health care for you. I don't like the way you look. No free health care. I believe you'd be the rapacious capitalist dick. That's right. So I'm 100% in favor of free health care. The problem is health care isn't free. If you have an operating room where they're doing open heart surgery on somebody, it's hard to imagine a more expensive little square patch of earth than having the best cardiologists in the world, anesthesiologists. You've got the nurses, you've got all of the equipment, you've got all the gear. It is a fabulously, incredibly expensive operation to perform. It's not free. If it were free, I'd be in favor of it. What kind of a jerk would I be to say no free stuff for you? Okay. Why do I have to pay for it? It's not my fault that I'm sick. So now we're down to an entirely different argument. We're no longer talking about why can't I have free stuff? Because if it was free, I'd say take all the free stuff you want. It's not free. It's expensive. So now we have to start talking about how we're going to pay for it. So in a socialist system, the health care is administered by the government.

They take a lot more of your taxes. They take a lot of ours as well here, but they take more of your taxes. You are prepaying for your health care. You're paying for your health care whether you need it or not. It's coming out of your paycheck. It's coming out of your taxes. It's coming out of whatever the case may be. Okay. But in a socialized system where there's one source of failure, this is one thing we're going to come back to a lot during this hour. that single point of failure. In a socialized system, a socialized healthcare system, if the system decides that you're either not worth the money

or you're too old or you're two, whatever, you're done. You don't get to go to another national health service. I had a chance to speak in Ottawa, Canada, and a guy who brought me up there was a Canadian doctor, Canadian oncologist. And he said, look, I get calls every day from friends who know me. And they say, my wife has been diagnosed with stage four cancer.

They call it terminal. She went to the health care system, national health care system in Canada. They said, we're going to give you some pain medication so you can go home and die peacefully. And he said, I'm calling you to see, is there anything that we can do to keep her alive? And this guy told me, he said, well, the University of Alabama is running a test that's showing 63% reduction in tumor size over the course of two years. And there's this program. He said to me specifically, he said in Canada, when the government decides you're dead, you're dead. In America, you're not dead until you're in the ground.

And that's because there are many different areas that you can go to that are in competition with each other often, so that if you get a point of failure in one area, you've got options for other ones. This is the fundamental problem with having one person decide your future. I'm pro-immigration, pro-legal immigration. I married an immigrant. And I was in the office of Immigration and Naturalization Services. And I was sitting there with my wife, and it was our first interview since she arrived. We'd applied for the green card, and we walked into this man's office, and the first things out of his mouth, sorry, the last things out of his mouth after the interview, was he said, I've decided to approve your application.

He didn't say you have met the requirements for the application. He said, I've decided to say that you can stay with this woman that you're married to. I've decided, because I have the power of the state behind me, I've decided that, yes, we're going to approve her application for a green card. And I remember coming out of her thinking, what if this guy had had a really crummy day? What if this guy had had some sort of horrible? What if this guy didn't like blondes or Russians or guys with great hair, let's say? Well, what happened in a case like that, right? No.

So the problem with socialism is actually pretty simple. By the way, let's start by defining some terms, okay? Because there's been left-wing, right-wing, conservative liberals. I'm a conservative because I'm fighting for traditional liberal values. It's all a mess, and it changes all the time. There's only two terms I've found that are consistent throughout the entire argument and throughout history, and that is the individualists and the collectivists. The individualists believe that the individual takes precedent over the state.

The collectivist believes that the state takes precedence over the individual. I think that's a fair definition that people who are collectivists would agree with. They would say that the common welfare is more important than your individual welfare. That's a collectivist argument. But the obvious contradiction is we're an elective representative republic, constitutional republic. Constitutional Republic. So we're electing a government to make sure we can be individuals. To be honest with you, we have established a republic that in principle, if we followed the letter of the law of the Constitution, we have created a government that has built an impenetrable

wall of security around every individual that the government cannot penetrate. Now, a collectivist government will say here is a protected group. You can fill in the blank and whatever that protected group will be, but we all know this is a preferred group, this is a preferred group, this is not a preferred group, and so on. But if they decide to change that, then too bad for you. The idea of a republic is that there are inviolable laws that protect you as an individual.

Your right to free speech is not given to you by the government. The First Amendment doesn't say you have the right to free speech. The First Amendment says the government can't take away your God-given natural-born right to free speech that comes with you into the planet. when you're born. Inalienable rights. Exactly. It is an inalienable right.

So all a democracy can really do is vote away your freedoms, really, when you get right down to the bottom line of that. But what I want to do is go back to the collectivist argument about how whatever is better for the group is better, it's a better way to live. That's fine unless you are a person who has been decided that, for example, no, we're not going to treat your cancer. It's too expensive, Mike. You're too old. You're 78 years old, not you whoever the person is in question. You're 78, those resources could be better spent on young women's neonatal care or whatever this case may be. So go off and die.

The fundamental aspect about collectivist societies and collectivist thinking is that individual human rights are not even really the point. It's individual human life is at the whim of the state. And I don't like having my life or my wife's lives or our lives or anybody else's lives in the hands of anybody other than. myself. I don't either, but isn't part of the argument from the other side to say, okay, but what's the difference between a person who the state determines can't have access to life-saving care and an individual who has access but no funds to pay for it and is therefore similarly denied? Well, it is a common belief throughout Europe and throughout many countries in the world that if you get hit by a bus in America and you don't have insurance, you're just left on the street to die.

And that doesn't happen. If you don't have money to pay for your treatment, then you get the treatment for free. Now, they can put a lien against your holdings, put a lien against your salary, they can ask for their money back. They'll never get it. If it's a $100,000 operation from somebody, they'll never see it. It's not like you don't get treated. Okay? So this idea that in the capitalist system, even the lowest people are just left out on the street to die, it's just not true.

No one has ever driven past a hospital ever in this country and seen 15 or 20 people lined up on cots outside the building waiting to die. No one has ever seen that because whether people have insurance or not, they get treated. And the cost of treating them is passed on to the people who do have insurance, which raises everybody's insurance rates and so on, you have all of that. Look, the American health care system is kind of a mess, and I'm not saying it's perfect by any means. But what I am saying is if you're paying for your own health care, you get to do what you want to. Here's where we get to where socialism gets to be very, very subtly pernicious.

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NetSuite.AI slash Mike. Let's take an example. Let's say I like to ride a motorcycle, okay? And let's say you like to ride a motorcycle. Riding a motorcycle is dangerous. It's not a hundred times more dangerous. I think it's something like 600 times more dangerous than driving in a car.

Okay, so if everybody is paying for everybody else's health care, if I'm paying for your health care, you're a motorcycle rider, I have the right to say, I don't think you should be riding a motorcycle, Mike. because it's dangerous. And if you get hurt, I have to pay for your health care. You're making all of the health care more expensive with you and your damn motorcycle. I'm paying for the risk that you're assuming for yourself. Precisely correct. And so therefore, Mike, we've decided as a society, it's best if we just simply ban motorcycles and you can go without a motorcycle. It's not going to kill you. It's not going to be the end of the world. Okay. That's how the system works when there is a government central control over the pot of money. Now, if you have your own health care and you pay for your own health care, you can go off and do whatever the hell you want to. It doesn't matter to me.

I don't care. The risk you take is going to be paid for by you. It's not going to be paid for by me. So I'm not in a position of envy or control. I have no moral stake in telling you how to behave. And once you realize that that one example applies to everything in life under a socialist government, you begin to realize that everybody's life eventually boils down to whatever is not forbidden is mandatory. Sure. That's the rule, right? Whatever is not forbidden is mandatory.

By default. By default. Okay. So just to say the same thing in a slightly broader way, the motorcycle thing is a great analogy, but most people don't ride motorcycles. Okay. How about sugar? Okay. How about cigarettes not so long ago, right? If the argument, and there seems to be a growing awareness that sugar might be responsible for more.

overall health care problems than nicotine almost yeah and fentanyl yeah and all the drugs all the drugs so would you rather be in a world where you have to pay for the sugar junkie and I say this I think just watched the guy put three Splendous in his coffee only three but I mean suddenly every single thing becomes well how much risk why am I paying for his lifestyle choices. So let's take an example that young people talk about a lot today, the body positivity movement, right? There are a lot of people out there that say that being heavy, being overweight is not a health problem or whatever the case may be. If you're one of those people out there who believe in socialism and believe socialism is a good thing, and you also believe the body positivity

movement, you believe if you want to weigh 300 pounds, that's your business. Well, in a socialist government, I get to say, look, I'm physically fit. I'm not costing us any extra. You're the one that's going to have to lose the damn weight. Not me. you're going to have to lose the weight. You're the one that's at risk for diabetes. You're the ones at risk for health disease. You're the one that's at risk for all these other things that I have to pay for. So you can't be in favor of both of these things at the same time.

It just doesn't work that way. If we are collectively responsible for each other, then everybody has a say over everybody else's behavior. And I don't want to live that way. And the people that believe in socialism don't want to live that way either. They don't want people telling them that they can or cannot ride a motorist. cycle or a jet ski. They can't or cannot eat an extra donut or an extra case of donuts or whatever the case may be. So many young people have been told that socialism just means free

things, but they don't realize the strings that come attached with these free things means control over those things. And you won't like what the logical outcome of this is. Because if the thing isn't free, then it doesn't exist. Because all that's forbidden is mandatory. Right. And nothing is free. Actually, I take that back. Your right to free speech is free. My right to free speech imposes no cost on anybody else. Nobody else has to work harder or do anything or pay any money because I get to say what I want to say.

But if you say that health care is a guaranteed right for everybody, that everybody has a right to free health care, state-run health care, that means that I have to work harder, pay taxes. That means that doctors have to work at whatever rate the state sets for them and so on and so on and so on. imposes an obligation on people that they are required by law to meet. And now we come to the real problem with socialism, and that is that socialism nowhere, in the best case scenarios, we're starting off at the top, we're going to work our way down. In the best case scenarios, you cannot have socialism and volition at the same time.

You cannot have socialism and choice, because your choice has to be removed, your individual choice has to be removed for the greater good of the collective. And that's simply just a logical truth. There's no real discussion or debate about it. And when you start climbing down the ladder from ideal socialism that many young people think would be swell, you start walking your way all the way down

to what happened with the communists, and we'll get to them in a minute because it is not, you don't get to stop anywhere on this line. Sooner or later, you're going to get all the way down to the bottom, but I'll get to that in a minute. you have a question of control over other people's lives that nobody really wants. And there's two main problems with socialism that are human nature problems. And the first one is the idea is that everybody is going to be generous

and everybody's going to be giving and everybody's going to work harder and everybody's going to do for the common good. Let me simplify this. Socialism is the belief that you will work as hard for somebody else as you will work for yourself. Okay? You will get up in the morning and do the same amount of work that you would do for yourself to get extra overtime to go on that vacation. Nope, you're going to work that hard for somebody else as you would for yourself. I had a chance to go and when I was first talking about this had a chance to speak at Oberlin College.

Oberlin is where reason and logic go to die. What are you doing in Overland? I was doing this. And we were talking about socialism. We were talking about capitalism. And I asked people in the room, do you consider yourself a socialist? This was 12 years ago. And four out of five people raised their hands.

So here's what I said. I said, OK, socialist, just a socialist. What I'd like you to do is what kind of phone do you have? Just hold up your phone. What have you got? You have your iPhones. They're basically saying, why do you want to know what kind of phones they have? I said, look, look, I'm not a socialist.

I'm not going to take them from you. I'm just curious. What kind of phones do you have? I don't know iPhones, all this, other stuff. OK, socialists only. Come on down to the front of the room. Bring your iPhones with you. And what we'll do is we'll put them in a basket.

We'll put them in a big basket. And then all of us together, not me, I'm not going to walk away with your phones. All of us together are going to go downtown, Cleveland, I guess would be the closest town, I think. We'll go to downtown Cleveland. We'll find a pawn shop. We've easily got $2,000 worth of electronics here. We've probably got $10,000 worth of electronics here. So what we'll do, if we've got $2,000 worth of electronics is we'll get $120 bills,

and then we'll drive through the streets of Cleveland, and we'll start handing them out to people from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, So bring them down. And guess what? Nobody brings them down. Because people like the idea of having wealth redistributed to them, but when it comes time for them to redistribute their wealth to other people, all of a sudden they're William F. Buckley.

And that is human nature. I would say to them, why don't you bring your phones down so we can give these to people who are in greater need than you? And they would say, but they'd be like brainlocked, but this is my phone. Well, technically it's your dad's phone, but let's not split. Harris, okay? Yes, yes, this is yours. When somebody said to me at the same event, they said, well, you can't possibly defend the idea that somebody could have two homes when there are so many

homeless people. You can't possibly defend it. And I said to this person, how many songs do you have on your iPhone right now? Just take a quick look. He said, oh, I don't know, 300 or something. This is back before Apple Music, right? I said, 300 songs, so that's roughly a buck each. So you've spent $300 on music. How many songs do you listen to at any given time? Of the 300 songs that you own, couldn't you get by with 10? Could you get by with 10 songs? 20? Why did you have to have 300 songs? Why didn't you just have 50 songs and give $250 to poor people in need? And they say, what, I like to listen to music. In other words, you like spending your own money on what you want to do with your own money. You and I are exactly the same. There's no philosophical

difference between us whatsoever. Of course it's your business if you want to spend $300 on 300 songs. and tell you you can't do that. Is it possible, though, then maybe you can find instances, lots of instances, where we are asked to behave as one. Like we can all drive different makes of cars, right? And we can spend a little or a lot on transportation, but you can't legally go over 55 on the highway. And, you know, that's the rule.

You just can't do it. we're all subject to the same rule. And I think we would agree that that makes sense. You have to have rules. You have to have laws. Otherwise, there's chaos. And I wonder if the other side looks at that and goes, well, that's what we're saying here.

We all have to drive the same speed. We all should have the same this. And so maybe nuance goes out the window? Well, this brings us to the second inherent flaw in socialism. And that is socialism means, that everybody has to run the race at the speed of the slowest runner. So let's assume we take 10 people off the street and let's assume that we're talking about a foot race. And by the foot race, we're using this as an analogy for how well you do in life financially and so on and so forth.

Okay? We take 10 people off the street and we line them up on the end zone on a football field. And we say, okay, ready, on your mark, get set, go. And it's a race to get to the other end zone. That's a 100-yard dash, right? Two or three of these people are going to be more. athletic than other people. So most people are going to fall in the middle. This is how bell curve works. People are going to just jog their way through. There's going to be one or two people who are

going to have trouble walking and so on. And so somebody is going to get to that finish line first. And then there's somebody going to come in second. And then there are some people that are going to take better part of a half an hour to do this. Well, if we all have to be in the same place at the same time, that means we all have to run at the speed of the slowest runner because the slowest runner can't run any faster than their fastest speed. And so you're telling me that this is fair. You're telling me that this is fair if we all cross the finish line equally with the same amount of money in the same exact house and the same car. But how is that fair for the guy who's a faster runner? How is that fair to him to be shackled to the slowest runner or the laziest person or whatever the case may be?

We're not going to shackle them. We're just going to make him start further back. How's that? Well, is that fair to him? Well, no, it's not fair. But it's no one's fault that they didn't get the jeans that he got. So we end up with the fundamental question now, and the question is, which really drives the entire argument is, are we in favor of equality of opportunity or are we in favor of equality of result? Equality of opportunity means that we all start on the same line.

Now, look, there's no question that there are people who have privileged starts in life. These people start on the 30-yard line or the 40-yard line. Now, I'm not talking about being in favor of that. I don't think anybody should have, I'm not saying you take away their money. I'm just saying, look, those are the way the cards are drawn. That's the person's birth. But the point is, equality of opportunity means if everybody starts at the start line in the same way, they're going to end up in different positions.

First guy's going to come in first, last guy's going to come in last. That's equality of opportunity. Equality of result means everybody has to cross the finish line at the same time, which means that you have to slow down nine out of those 10 runners. And how is that fair to them? How is it fair to a guy who gives up his youth? I went to the University of Florida, which was a professional. professional party school as a theater major.

That I have to work hard? No, it was a piece of cake. There's nothing to it. But how is it fair for me to go out and have a beer with my friends and talk about theater and all life and all this other stuff? While there's a guy who's back in the dorm studying to be a brain surgeon who's throwing away essentially all of the fun he's going to have in his 20s and is working on doing this extremely difficult thing.

If you're talking about equality of output, how is it fair that a brain surgeon makes the same amount of money as a guy who sleeps till three in the afternoon, smokes dobies, and plays video games and has a night job at 7-Eleven. How is that fair to the brain surgeon? You know why I have three or a digital picture frames in my home? Because I love them. That's why. And because I've got over 20,000 photos in my iPhone that I'm just never going to look at. These frames, they cycle my favorite photos constantly. Every time I look over, there's a new face, a new a new landscape, a reminder of a memory, something I thought was worth taking a picture of, but then immediately forgot about. And now they're there. You know, I got one on my mantle,

I got one on the kitchen counter, got one upstairs. I've given half a dozen for gifts. I don't know that I can offer a better endorsement than that. They're just a delight to have around. It takes two minutes to set up. You get free unlimited storage. There's no hidden fees, no monthly subscriptions, none of that stuff. You can text photos straight to the frame. You can Use their app, which actually hit number one in the app store on Christmas Day this year. And you can preload your favorite photos before it even ships, which makes it a tremendous, truly personalized gift, named number one by wirecutter. You can save right now by visiting auraframes.com for limited time. Listeners get $35 off select frames, including the carver mat, the Aspen and the Walden, plus free shipping with code, Mike.

That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. promo code mic a u r a frames.com promo code mike a u r a ura ura ura ura ura frames dot com slash mike if you can explain to me how that is a just cause how it's a just outcome for that person who's worked so hard then i'll buy your system but if you tell me that you're going to enforce the system on top of people people, what it means is you're not going to have the slack or going to be a brain surgeon. That's not going to happen. It's not capable of doing it. All that's going to happen is the brain surgeon is going to realize, look, I'm going to make the same amount of money whether I go out and party and get drunk every night or whether I stay home and study, which means you're going to have a lot fewer brain surgeons. You're going to have a lot more 7-Eleven clerks. And I have no disrespect for 7-Eleven clerks. Anybody with an honest job has my undying respect. But this is what I'm talking about. You can't raise the bottom. You can only bring the top down. Which brings us to the central, what I think is the central driving emotional motor of socialism.

And people aren't going to like to hear this, but I'm going to paint this in a way that can make everybody connect to it. And that's envy. Okay, it's envy. They don't like the fact that some people have more than they do. Now, let's take a look at Elon Musk. He's a trillionaire, right? He just became a trillionaire. So you would say, well, that's not fair.

He's got trillion dollars, and some people have some, let's just say you've got a regular standard income. Okay? Let's just say you're making 50 grand a year. Does Elon Musk live a trillion times better than I do? Does he live... I'm not a wealthy person by any means. Does Elon Musk live a trillion times better than I do? Does he have...

Is his car a trillion times better than my car? No, he has a nice car. I've got a decent car. He's got a bunch of cars. I've got one car, but a decent car. He's got air conditioning. I've got air conditioning. He's got a bigger house than I do,

but I've got a big enough house for me that I rent. Right? He's not a trillion times more comfortable than I am. It's nuts. It's nuts. But here's the envy argument, and I love this. So stay with me on this, folks. This is a capitalist argument, okay, about envy.

Let's say that you work for an insurance company, and you're on the top floor, and there's 200 people there, and they're all in their cubicles, and it's a Friday afternoon. And just before you clock out for the weekend, Mike, a guy comes over and taps you on the shoulder, and he says, Mike, hey, it's me. I'm Jim Johnson. I'm the president of the company that you work for,

and I just want a few moments of your time. Listen, Mike, we've been watching you. We've been here for 20 years. You've done extraordinary work. You've stayed late. You've done above and beyond the call of duty. And we wanted to let you know that we've been keeping our eye on you. And we want you to have this check for $100,000.

Absolutely taken. We paid the taxes on it and everything. It's $100,000 for you, for your hard work. And we just want to let you know how much it means to you. Got it. And how do you feel now? Well, my heart three sizes. I feel appreciated.

I value the gratitude. I feel rewarded. I feel seen. I am literally bursting with affirmation. And you start thinking about what you're going to do with the $100,000 that just fell out of the sky. Maybe I can get my roof fix. Maybe I can go on vacation. Maybe with college kids fund, all of this stuff.

You're $100,000 better off than you were 30 seconds ago. So in your joy and your excitement, you grab your check and you walk into the middle of the room. And you go, everybody you won't believe this. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to rub this in or anything, but the president of the company just came by. And because of the hard work I've done here, he gave me this check for $100,000. And everybody else in the room looks at you and they said, he came to all of us and he gave us a check for $250,000. And all of my gratitude turns to ashes in my mouth. Yes.

What, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Yeah. It turns to ashes in your mouth. You are a hundred. $100,000 better off than you were 10 seconds ago, but now you are no longer thinking about what you could do with $100,000. You're thinking about what you could do with $250,000, which is what you should be getting, because Mary's an alcoholic, and we know she does nothing do anything. She comes in at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I cover for her, and then Jim,

Jim is doing nothing but playing fantasy football all day. I have to finish his reports and all of this other stuff. And so people look at that, and they go from gratitude to envy at the snap of the fingers. But now let's take the same exact situation. And you say, instead of the other people getting $250,000, let's say they say, you've got $100,000. And over there, Joyce Turner got $250,000. And you think, well, Joyce never goes home. Joyce is here over the weekend.

Joyce works her tail off. I've never come to the office where Joyce wasn't already here, never left when she didn't stay. She deserves the money. She earned it. You're not wanting to throttle Joyce because she got more money than you. she got more money than you because she did more work than you did and you're fine with it. And that envy, that sense of envy is built into the human heart and it's not something that can go away. I just used a perfectly capitalist example to show you that any rock-grip capitalists would be filled with burning envy if that situation were to occur to them.

Is it just that or is there something, is there justice in this as well? Like right now, I think a lot of what's happening in the country and I'm not sure it's bang on to the topic we're at, but something horrible happens when you believe the fraud is not being corrected, when the justice isn't being meted out. It offends us, and the more it goes on, the more offended we become. That's not quite envy, but in your example, Janet Turner, it's just that she would get more than I did,

because I don't dispute that she works harder, she accomplishes more. So therefore, the envy doesn't sink in. But if I see her as a slacker, then the envy's there, but it's really a symptom of something fundamentally unjust. Something unfair has transpired right in front of me. And that needs to be corrected. Otherwise, I'll mope forever. But the big issue, and the reason I use that example is this, how is it possible to all of a sudden go from joy to rage, you are $100,000 better off. And I'll tell you something, Mike, if you made this analogy and you took it to it and you added one more clause at the bottom, and the clause at the bottom was everybody has to accept the check or nobody gets the check.

There are people out there who would turn off, they would turn down $100,000 rather than see somebody else get $250,000. Absolutely. And that is the root. of capitalism envy. It's the root of what drives socialism. It's a sense of, I am more busy looking at what somebody else is doing than what I'm doing. It's a great joke that the Russians tell all the time, and it's about this guy who's a peasant, and he's very, very devout, and he gets up every day. It's just a dirt village, just a mud trail.

There's two little puny little farms. They go with these little grape-sized potatoes, you know. It's just raw poverty. But this one peasant gets up every day, and he prays to God every day. He prays and praise and praise and praise, praise for a cow. He says, my Lord, please, if I had a cow, I could provide cheese for the village. I could feed my kids. I could use, you know, to pull the plow, please, please, all of a sudden one day, bing, shooze, bing, golden light comes down.

There's a cow. And his neighbor looks at this and sees that over the course of the next several days, this guy is doing that. He's pulling a plow. He's growing better crops. Everybody's getting milk. Everybody in the village is getting better vegetables. Everybody's succeeding. Everybody's benefiting.

and this guy gets down on his knees. He prays to God, praise to God. Finally, this golden light comes down and says, what do you want? And the guy says, I want you to kill my neighbor's dim cow. Right, and that's the fault in our stars. That's the fault in our stars. But why don't we come at it the other way, too, before we transition to communism, which I think seems to be the pressing matter.

But I get it. Envy is a vice. The vice is the fault in our stars. And a socialistic approach to managing and governing the species brings out the worst in us, which is envy. What's the virtue? Maybe is it initiative? And if so, which ideology best encourages initiative?

A willingness to take risk. A desire to show up early, to stay late, to volunteer for the crappy tax. ask to become indispensable, right, to win that race. It almost seems like incentives versus disincentives, right? Socialism is dangerous because it promotes envy. Capitalism is different because it maybe inspires initiative. Well, capitalism leaves you alone. What capitalism does is it basically says,

look, if you want to make just enough money to have a one-bedroom apartment and play video games all day and you just need to work a couple shifts at 7-Eleven or whatever, that's your business. If you're comfortable on $18,000 a year and eating ramen noodles or whatever, that's your business, right? It's not saying that everybody has to do that. It's not saying that no one is allowed to do any better. It's not saying that no one's allowed to work harder. Let's take something really concrete and simple. Let's just say that you're out on a vacation someplace, you're on at a beach, and you get a chance to ride a jet ski and you decide, I really want a jet ski. I would like to be doing this all the time. That's a nice, simple objective, right?

That's not a, it's not I want a private jet. That's something that every working man can pretty much get their hands around. So if you want the jet ski, you come in early, you stay late, you put in overtime, you put in extra hours. You produce more work than you would do if you didn't want this extra thing. And you work, maybe you'll work a second job and so on. What you have actually done is you have created more value in society by working longer than you would have otherwise. You've made society richer and you have gotten the reward of, extra money that you then spend on a jet ski. Now, if you live in a society where people say,

no, jet skis are dangerous. Not only can you not have a jet ski, you are forbidden from having a jet ski, that is a miserable life. And I don't want to live a miserable life. I want to live a happy life. I want to live a life where I get to do what I want to do so long as I don't hurt other people doing it. And I had a friend who is a huge influence on me. He was a Bulgarian poet. He escaped from Bulgaria during the communist era. And he was really kind of like underneath the river with you know, with a straw and hearing the guards and see his cigarette bouncing around. They're coming out to shoot him, right? He was an intellectual, so he got to see Western libraries, and he got to see what the West

was really like, so he decided to risk his life to get the freedom. And he said, the worst part about living under socialism is this. It's not the secret police, it's not all the enforcement, although that's always there. We'll get to that in a minute. He said, the worst of it is that every second of every day you're reminded of how unimportant you are, of just how absolutely unremarkable, unimportant, undeserving you are. You have to wait for everything. One of the pithiest things I ever heard about the difference between capitalism and communism or socialism is, for that matter, is that in socialism you line up for bread, and in capitalism,

bread lines up for you. If you go to the, you go to a supermarket and you look at the bread section, I mean, my God, man, it goes on for half a mile, practically, right? Why? Because we produce more. We produce more because we have a reason to produce more. I want something. And since I want something, I am willing to give up my time and effort in exchange for money to get that. And I should be allowed to do that. So let's say you've got a kid who's mowing lawns, right? Let's say he gets $50 to mow a lawn.

Now, if this kid all of a sudden wants a $400 pair of Nikes, right, he's going to have to mow more lawns. And under capitalism, he's allowed to do that. Not only does that benefit the kid because he eventually gets enough money to buy the shoes that he wants, it benefits society because more loans are being mowed. It's a win, win, win for everybody. The essence of capitalism is that it's a voluntary trade, the miracle of wealth creation that capitalism creates is, and this is the thing that most people will not get until I'm finished,

and then you'll get it perfectly. But when two people trade things, if I trade something you want with something I want, and we both go our own way, which one of us goes away, Richard? Do do do do do do do do. If you build houses for a living, you need to know about Diggs. This is an AI-powered platform built specifically for home builders that's changing the way homes get built. It's software powered by AI that connects every single thing from takeoffs and selections to homeowner handoffs and warranties. So instead of losing information between various phases of the build, Diggs keeps everything connected in one visual.

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home built, please make sure your builder knows about Diggs. It'll make life better and simpler for both of you. 40% off at Diggs.com slash Mike. Can you dig it? We go away equal. Both of us go away, Richard. You'd rather have the hamburger. McDonald would rather have the 350. They've got lots of hamburgers.

You've got 350. Everybody wins. So let's take an example. We've got two different tribes of people. We've got the people that live in the lowlands, and there's not a whole lot of stuff to be hunted down there, so they're mostly gatherers. So they have a lot of practice weaving baskets.

They're very, very good at that. In fact, their baskets are so good to practically hold water. So they're master basket weavers, and they've all got good baskets in that village down there. Meanwhile, up in the mountains are the hairy-browed mountain people, and they don't do much gathering because there's not a lot up there, but there are the occasional mammoths, so they make excellent spears, solid spears. The spears that the gatherers make are just twigs. They hardly know how to make a spear.

The baskets that the people up in the mountains make look like birds' nests. They're essentially useless. So now two people meet halfway through, and one guy is from the mountain, and the other guys from the lowlands. And the guy with the spear says, that is an excellent basket. And the guy with the basket says, I've never seen the spear quite the like of that before.

Want to trade? And they trade. So now they both go back to their respective villages. Now the guy who took the good spear down to his village has the most valuable object in the village. Likewise, the guy who took the basket up to his village has the most valuable object in the village. And then, if one of them is a socialist,

say we'll use the basket until it falls to pieces but if he's a capitalist I'll say now wait a minute I need to make two spears a week that's how many I lose and break but if I get up early and I stay up late I bet you I could make five spears a week I bet you I could you I could now if I stay up early get up early stay up late I bet I could make five spears a week so he does so now he's got three extra spears that he doesn't need he goes back down to me it's the same guy who had the exact same idea about the basket so now we've got three baskets going down, three spears going up. And now what happens? Well, the people down in the lowlands, all of a sudden, all of them have better spears than they had before. The people up in the

highlands now have better baskets than they did before. Who loses here? Nobody loses. Nobody loses. Both societies are infinitely better because they have better things that are made by experts, But, but the guy who made the extra spears has more seashells or whatever you're using for money, and people look at that, say, hey, this guy's got more than I do. Yes, he's got more than you do because he got you this incredible village full of these baskets that were never available to us before. Of course, he has more than you do. We're back to the envy thing again.

Voluntary trade, nobody trades down. Anytime two people make a voluntary trade is in capitalism, what capitalism is. It's free market economy. I'll give you this for this. Yeah, fantastic. I'm happy, you happy? Great. That creates wealth for both parties

because it gives both parties something they didn't have before that they value. And you can't take that part of it away. That's what makes the whole machine work. And when you say, no, you are not allowed to have more seashells than the other guy, even though you made those extra spears,

even though you stayed up late, even though you went trekking down there all the way down there, hauling these spears, bringing them back, those things you don't get to have more than anybody else then why am i going to get up early and make some more spears why why would i do that what what reason would i have yeah incentive initiative envy that's my only point i think no matter what direction you come at it from you still wind up wrestling with how are we wired and what really do we like the wealth tax there's a big push for this in

in California as we speak. And a lot of people are looking at it as sort of the canary and the coal mine. We'll see what we can do with the rest of the country. I would imagine you would say that all of that is indicative of we just have to take from them because it's... Because they got more than I do. Okay. There's nothing more transportable in the world than a rich person.

That is the easiest thing in the world to transport. If you put a wealth tax in here, all the wealthy people who are already paying a lot of taxes into California will simply leave California. the way that Tesla did, the way that SpaceX is going, the way that Boeing left Washington, all of these ideas to tax these businesses that provide thousands of jobs and give thousands of people the money to buy their own video games or buy their own cars or by their own door dash or whatever they spend their money on. All of these people are leaving because of the policies that these socialists are imposing on them. It's not like you can get away with it. You still get to vote in this country.

vote with your feet. You can mandate a $20 an hour minimum wage. Right? And if you do, what you find is the cafes go out of business because the margins are thin. People will have to, if you mandate a $20 minimum wage and the coffee used to sell for $5, now it's going to sell for $8. And some people don't want to pay $8. You're going to put people out of business. Whenever you raise the minimum wage, people lose money. They lose their jobs. They lose their income. You can have an idea, but that doesn't mean reality has to obey your philosophy. And by the way, let's get into some of the juicier parts of this whole socialism thing, because it's sold to people as fairness. But Fidel Castro, for example, came to power in 1959. It came into the world, same time I came

into the world. He came into power in 1959, and he put his people through 65 years of poverty. In the name of this idea, we're all poor together, right? Castro, always dressed in that simple outfit, never wore anything ostentatious, claimed to live in a fisherman's hut. You know how much money Fidel Castro had in his personal account when he died? Do tell. $800 million. $800 million is how much money Fidel Castro had in his personal account when he died. $800 million.

Hugo Chavez comes to Venezuela and says, it's not fair that some people are richer than others. We have all of the oil resources of the country. What we're going to do is we're going to make all of this and share it with everybody. What happens when he's finished? Well, first of all, the people are so hungry because these economic policies are so poor that they're eating the animals out of the zoo. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a starving tiger before, but you don't want to. It's not a pretty thing to see a tiger that is dying of starvation with its ribs showing.

But guess what? You know what? How much money Hugo Chavez's daughter is worth? $4 billion. $4,000 million is what she's. Chavez's daughter has right now because of the people who are generally speaking good-hearted people who want things to be fair. It's a suckers game, Mike. It's what people use to amass wealth and power when they don't want to go out and work for it. So then the argument becomes, well,

you know, it's not the ideology's fault. It's the individual's fault who had assumed the power, right? Can we have a look at socialism implemented through decent people? Or do decent and people simply not exist. Are they all the person in the cubicle whose gratitude turns to ashes in their mouth? I will direct that question to any person or especially any young person who is watching this who's in favor of socialism.

Okay, I'm not going to make it about some mythical person. Can we have a good person? Can we not have a good person? I'm going to direct it to you. Okay. Are you willing to give up your Xbox in order to feed a family in Africa for a year.

What are you willing to give to other people in order to achieve this? Are you willing to work Saturdays for the common good, which was required in the Soviet Union, every other Saturday or every third Saturday, you just had to go in and provide free work. Hooray for the people. Are you willing to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning on your Saturdays? Not some mythical person, not some you, a good, virtuous person who wants equality, who wants fairness, who wants everybody to be the same and equal and so on, are you willing, to get up and do that work for somebody other than yourself.

And if you say you are, I'm going to have to call you on it because one out of 100 of you will be the kind of person that will do that. Most people will say they like this because it sounds good and it sounds fair, and most people think that wealth redistribution means I'm getting a check. What they don't realize is that the average American lives so much better than anybody else in the rest of the world, the same people who are calling for open borders. If there is no such thing as open borders,

then if you are a poor American, you're richer than 93% of the rest of the planet. What personal wealth of you, talking to you out there on YouTube land, what do you own that you're willing to sell to give money to people in greater need than yourself? I want a list of the things that you're willing to sell right now so that you can send the money to people who are in greater need than you.

And I'm telling you, there are people who say I will do it, but they don't, and they won't. And I'm also here to tell you there's nothing wrong with you for that. That doesn't mean you're a bad person. All it means is that you want to hold on to the fruits of the work that you've been. Work is life. When you go to work, you're giving up your time. We only have so much time in this world.

And when I work for eight hours a day for somebody else in exchange for a check, I'm giving them eight hours of my life that I don't get back. And if I get that eight hours and I get a check for it and I want to buy a video game console, then I should be able to keep that video game console. I earned it. It's mine. No one has the right to tell me I have to give that up to somebody else. Life isn't fair.

It's not fair. It's clearly not fair. People are born millionaires. Other people are born in dirt poverty. And that's just the way it is. And nobody's going to change that. The essence of life lived happily, I think, is to accept the fact that no one. two people on the planet are born into the exact same circumstances. Everybody gets a hand of cards

dealt to them at birth, and some hands are much better than others. Some people are born with four aces in a king. Some people don't have a pair, right? But the purpose of life is, and the beauty of life is, and the beauty of capitalism is, you get to play the hand. You get to play the hand. You don't have to have the hand that you were born with. You get to play the hand. You get to discard, pick up a card. You get discard, pick up a Your hand is getting stronger. You get a stronger hand now. You can bet a little harder. Now you get to continue to improve the hand.

If we lived in a perfect world of equality, then we'd all go completely mad. We talk about equality in this case because we want people to make the same amount of money. But what if everybody was exactly the same height and what if everybody was exactly the same skin color? And what if everybody was exactly the same, this and exactly this and that and so on? Should basketball players be able to be able to be? allowed to get paid more money than much more money, much, much more money than a regular average person? How many socialists, not a whole lot of them tend to be sports fans, been my general observation, but if you are a socialist and a sports fan, how can you argue that

LeBron James is allowed to be so much richer than the people that go and see his games? Well, your obvious answer would be, well, he's the best player in the league. He may be the best player of all time. Well, yeah, but why does that mean? he gets more than other people. Shouldn't he get the exact same amount? Shouldn't everybody in the NBA get the exact same amount? Shouldn't LeBron James get the exact same salary as the worst player in the NBA?

And by the way, how come the NBA only lets in people who are good at basketball? That's not fair to people who aren't any good at basketball. What about the short people? Yeah, what about the short people? Or what about the people who don't like to play basketball or can't play basketball? What about the clutches and the uncoordinated dweeps?

Look, you're preaching to the choir. But back to health care real quick. it's not a jet ski. It's not an indulgence. I'm still not clear in a capitalistic society. I mean, I agree with you. We don't turn people away. If you're sick, you get treatment.

Right. Right. But who ultimately pays for it? Who should pay for it in that world? I'm going to come right out, admit this openly. The U.S. health care system is an absolute catastrophe. And it's a catastrophe because of the lack of volition. It's a catastrophe because of state control.

So basically here's what happens. Old, old, old timers like you and me can remember a time when we had a family doctor. And that family doctor would often come to our house if we were feeling sick. And that was called a house call. And he had a little black bag. And I'd say, ah, here's two aspirins, drink plenty of fluids. You've got the flu. You'll be fine in three days.

Okay. That was when you gave, if you gave a dollar, let's say you gave the, $50 to the doctor, you gave $50 to the doctor, the doctor gained $50. The situation we're in today is, if I've got a problem, I go to a doctor, well, first of all, of that $50 that I'm going to pay, you know, 30 of it goes to the insurance company, 20 of it goes to, or 15 of it goes to the government oversight committees. The doctor gets $6 or $12 or whatever, which means he has to may see three or four times as many patients just to stay afloat.

He's got malpractice insurance that he has. He's got $250,000 every single year that he has to cover before he even treats his first patient. That's just what it's going to cost for him to stay in business. It's a mess. It's a complete mess. And I'm not defending it in any way. There are plenty of solutions to the health care system. And the simplest one, really, would be to treat health care the same way you treat automotive care.

All of these people that are in favor of national health care, why is it that they want me to have one choice, but my car gets to have a hundred choice? My car gets to choose between 100 different people that want to insure my car. I get to decide exactly how much coverage I want. I get to decide my deductibles. All these people are in competition. The prices are going down on everything. Why does my car have 100 choices and I only have one? Why don't we let people compete for the health care dollar?

Why don't we do that? Well, because the government, the insurance companies and the doctors are locked in this iron triangle of a dependency and doctors are no longer able to run their own businesses. Used to be you'd hang out a shingle. You're your own corporation. Dr. Michael. I'm a corporation. I pay my taxes and people pay me and that's it. Now, more and more doctors are going to work for these health care centers and they check in at 8 and they check out at 8. And if somebody's coming in with a broken leg at 805, it's not your problem. This is not the way to run a society.

It's just not. Why don't we just go back to giving the dollars directly to the doctor? Well, a lot of it is the legal system. So for example, another example. Back when you had doctor-friendly, back when we were kids and so on, you'd go into his office, because you sprained your ankle. You'd go into the doctor's office and he would put you on the table and he would examine your ankle and he'd move your foot around a little bit and he'd feel it here and a little tender there and move this and say, you got a sprained ankle, Mike. We're going to bandage it up, just stay off it for two weeks. You should start feeling better in about two weeks. That'll be $50, please. What happens now? Same exact thing. You've got a sprained ankle. You think you've got a sore angle. You go into the doctor's office.

He manipulates your foot, does all these other things. He says, Mike, I'm pretty sure you got a sprained ankle. But we're going to have to get an MRI for this, and we're going to maybe have to run another couple of tests as well. But we definitely need to do an MRI. Why do you need to do an MRI, doctor? You know it's a sprained ankle. I need to do an MRI because if somebody decides to sue me because of my ankle, not healing the way they want to, now I have to have the evidence that I exhausted every possibility. So now it's not here's $50, doctor, thank you.

Now here's $50,000 or $5,000 or whatever the case may be in order to avoid the legal consequences of a society that rewards this kind of predatory lawsuit kind of thing. I get that. But go back to I don't have $50. What I have is a broken ankle. Okay. Now, will you fix it for me? Yes. Okay.

Thank you. Have a nice day. Dr. doesn't get $50. He can't run a business. that way? Who compensates the doctor for a service? Well, first of all, if you don't have any money, you don't go to a doctor, go to an emergency room. And that's why most people's health care comes, most people without health insurance, the emergency room is their, is their doctor of choice. So let me

just change the conditions to match reality a little bit. You got a broken ankle, you go to the emergency room at the hospital. Will you be treated? Yes, you'll be treated. Who pays for this? Is it free? No, it's not free. The cost of treating you for free, you will get treated and you will go. They'll send you a bill, but you won't pay it because you don't have the money. Okay, so yes, you got treated for free, didn't cost you anything, but it's going to be paid for by the person who came in before you and after you with broken ankles who have health insurance, who do pay the hospital, they're going to raise the rates on those people to cover their losses for the people that aren't insured. Now I'm starting to feel like the guy whose bonus wasn't that big. Why am I paying for that guy's broken ankle? Because he didn't have the initiative I had.

He had, why doesn't he have $50? What kind of person doesn't have $50? It's kind of an interesting question to ask. I'll give you one more quick example, because analogies usually really help with things like this. Let's say society consists of 100 people. And this is the argument against socialism. Let's say that society consists of 100 people.

And let's say that there's a giant cart that'll seat 100 people, and the cart is pulled by people. So in a society, a healthy society, let's say a free market society or something, you've got 10 people out of the 100 who can't pull the cart. They just can't. They're too old. They're too weak. Maybe they're born without legs.

Maybe they've got some kind of horrible diseases. They're sick. They're whatever. Broken ankle? Whatever it is. That's right. Ten people get in the cart. We've got 90 people pulling.

We got 10 people in the cart. No problem. Right? No problem. Now what happens when somebody starts getting a little bit tired? You know, I'm feeling a little winded. Well, you know, I guess maybe I'll just go riding the cart for a while. Now you've got 20 people in the cart and you got 80 people pulling.

But that's not where the danger is. The danger is what happens when one guy comes along and says, you know, goes all the way through the line of people pulling the cart. He says, you know, if you vote for me, I can get you in the cart. If you vote for me, you don't have to pull anymore. I'll get you a spot in the cart. And he starts walking his way up and down that line. And more and more people decide they'd rather ride than pull.

So now you got 10 people pulling 90 people in the cart. What's going to happen? Well, it's not even going to get to the point where the cart stops. The 10 people doing the pulling are just going to walk away. They're just going to leave. There's nothing in it for them. You're just a sucker at that point. You're like the poor Cuban peasants who had to live under 60 years of Castro

so he could retire with $800 million in his bank account. It's just, no, the cart stops moving. And what happens? Then the people who are genuinely sick, the 10 people who genuinely needed the help, who needed to be in the cart and who should be in the cart, who have a moral right to be in the cart in a just society, the society I believe in as a capitalist, of course there has to be room for people

who cannot do whatever they need to do to survive. Of course I'm in favor of aid and resources for people who are not capable of pulling the cart. I have no problem with the safety net. It's the safety hammock I have a problem with. And the bigger that hammock gets, the harder the rest of us have to work. And suddenly this situation flips

when it's no longer the right, thing or the smart thing to do by pulling the cart, now you're a chump. And that's when society breaks down. Well, I'll tell you what else might break it. I can't even say this without sounding ridiculous. I've had a wonderful life, and I've worked hard, and I feel like I've prospered. And I pay an awful lot of taxes, and I don't cheat. And I can live with that. I can live with it. right up into the point where I see how it's been squandered and how badly it's been administered and how the train to L.A. barely made it out of the gate. 16 miles of track or something they laid.

Right. So it's not just the guy who suddenly is, you know, I'm fine. I still feel and am fundamentally grateful. But I'm not a billionaire either, and I don't want to leave California, but I understand why Rogan did, and I understand why Musk did, and I understand why a hundred billionaires have already left. And I see all of this happening. And I guess the question is, will it get better when it goes splat? Can we come back from a splat? What does a splat look like in this right now?

Because, look, we haven't even talked about communism. But a lot of people in the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, are outright saying, no, I am a communist. I want communist things. And I'm quoting from the Communist Manifesto. So in the time we have left, draw some sort of line between socialism and communism and suggest whatever you want to suggest. What can we do to somehow? amplify the awareness that it sure feels like we need to amplify. You mentioned earlier that it's one thing if you get called a Nazi

and it's another thing if you could call a communist. And the reason that it's not reprehensible to be called a communist is because there's no photos. It's just that simple. There's no photos. We have photos and we have films of what the Nazis did to people. We have films from the death camps. We have films of bulldozers piling up bodies like cordwood,

dumping them into a pit. We have photos of all these things. We have Auschwitz. We have, we have, we have evidence. We have a lot of evidence. There's a place in the Soviet Union called Colima. Colima was one of the gulags. There were 430 of these working-to-death camps. Nobody's taken any pictures in Colima. But the number of people killed in Colombe was somewhat disputed, but generally the low estimate is probably around 750,000, and the high estimate might be as high as one and a half, maybe even two million people work to death in this gulag. Now, if the high number is true, that means that Kolema is a deadlier place than Auschwitz. But if the low number is true, it means Kolema is the second deadliest place in the world.

The communists killed the second number of people. Nazis killed the most people at Auschwitz. Then came the communists at Kolema, then came the Germans again at Treblinka. So these two philosophies are both identical. And I might point out to the people who are big fans of socialism, that the non-examines of socialism, that the Nazis and the communists both named themselves very carefully for a reason the Nazis Nazis an acronym and it's an acronym for the national socialist German workers party when you call somebody a Nazi you are calling them a socialist worker national socialist German workers party

NASDAP is what it stood for so they called themselves socialist because they wanted to grease their road to power and authority and ambition with words that sounded friendly. Now let's look at the communists. What was that country called? It was the USSR. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They didn't call themselves the Union of Soviet Communist Republics because communism has a bit of a bad flavor to it. Now, I didn't name the USSR, and I didn't name the National Socialist German Workers Party, Adolf Hitler, and Lenin did that. They did it because they knew that it had a nice sound to it. It sounded fair, but that's never what the intention was. The intention was, the intention was all.

always absolute power over other people's lives. The Nazis never had a majority. The communists at the time of the revolution, the communists, the Bolsheviks, I should say, before they became known as the communists, Lenin's party never got more than 30% of the vote. And the second they got 30% of the vote, they outlawed all the other political parties,

shut down all of the other newspapers, and basically shot anybody who decided to get in their way. And the Nazis did the same thing. these people use the word socialism to cover their totalitarianism. It's not like communism and socialism. Who was it? It might have been Jonah Goldberg, I think, who said this. He said the difference between the Nazis and the Communists is the difference between Coke

and Pepsi. They're both totalitarian states. They're both colas. They both believe in single leader. They both had secret police. They both had extermination camps. They both had all of these things. Because you cannot force people into something as unnatural as getting up to work.

for other people without murdering several million of them. And so when you get to the communists, you end up in a world where the power is everything. It's the worship of power. And there are people that have this genetic defect of having to tell other people what to do. These people used to be known as aristocrats, they would be poshs, or they'd be sultans, or they'd be emirs, or they'd be kings or earls or dukes or barons or counts or whatever the case may be. Two hundred and fifty years ago, here comes this country where all of a sudden we're going to try letting individuals run their own lives, see how that works. We produce more wealth and more health and more happiness than in the history of the world.

And we've produced so much happiness, so much wealth, so much success, so much ease and leisure. And we are so far away from the wolf at the door that we can now speculate about what it would be like to make something better because the thing about socialists and communists is they always compare societies to perfection. They never compare them to other exacting societies that exist on the earth. They always compare them to perfection. Perfection where everybody works as hard for the collective as they work for themselves. Perfection where all of the leaders are absolutely uncorruptible. Perfection where everybody is equally happy.

No, the world doesn't look like that. That's why they can never produce an example that works. I've heard people say many times and so of you, well, they didn't do communism the right way. That's the problem with communism, just didn't do it the right way. Well, my answer to that is this. I've studied communism. I know communism very well. It's not that they did communism the right way.

It's not that they did communism the wrong way. They did it the only way. And the only way to do communism is to enforce your will on the people by being ruthless enough to murder enough of them so that the rest of them will do whatever you tell them to do. And you don't get to go to another government. You don't get to do any of that. You live in a state of perpetual fear.

And the communists in Russia killed 20 million of their rights. own people. The communists in China killed 50 million of their own people, starved him to death on purpose. What are they going to do? They're going to go get another government? They're going to walk down to the corner and try a new government? You don't get to try a new government. You don't get to go to, if you don't like what the prices are at Macy's, you can go to marshals. When you have one government that has all of the power, there's no escape. It's you versus them. Somebody asked, Stalin was trying to break a guy. He was trying to break a guy who was resisting torture. And they couldn't get a confession out of him. And he said,

said, what does the Soviet Union weigh? Well, what do you mean, comrades? What does it weigh? What does the Soviet Union weigh? Well, it's immeasurable. Well, then why is it that the weight of the Soviet Union cannot break this man? Get back to work. So they beat him to death.

And these bodies are there. The bodies are there. In downtown Moscow, there is a place called the Lubeianka. The Lubeianka. The Lubeianka. The Lubeianka is right. right next to a toy store. It's a bright yellow building, very cheery looking. There's a toy store 20 yards away. Kids Paradise. In the basement of the Lubianca, they said the Lou Bianca is the tallest

building in the world because you can see Siberia from the basement. But the Lubianca for 40 years or so would start at sunset and they would bring people in and they would be six of them. They'd strip them of all their clothes. They'd line them up against wooden doors. They gave them hope that they were just going to go through some sort of doors. But the wooded doors didn't lead anywhere, they didn't open, they didn't even have hinges. The wooden doors were there to stop ricocheting bullets from coming back from the people that were doing the shooting. Six checkists, that was the first name of the secret police. They changed their name six or seven times, but the original name was the checkists. Would lower their revolvers and

a guy would drop a stick and bang, bang, bang, bang, six people dead. They go down into the ground. There's water on the ground. Other checkists come and put them on a trolley. There's a little mini rail set up in there. Put them on a trolley, haul them to the back. Somebody's pulling them up on ropes, putting them in a truck. Six more naked, crying, weeping people come in. Bang, bang, bang, in the back of the head. You're an enemy of the state. We can't take chances. We don't know whether you're guilty or not. When Stalin launched the Great Terror, he said there must be 70,000 people in Murmansk who are enemies of the state. So I want 70,000 people in Murmansk killed. He didn't say find the enemies of the state. He said kill 70,000 people in Murmans because that's what we think

the number of enemies of the state in Murmansk is. And so you know what happened? The people who were executing the people in Mermansk don't want to be executed themselves. So they write a letter back to Stalin. They say, come, it's Stalin. You won't believe it. We didn't find 70,000 people in Mermansk. We found 320,000 people in Mermans. And we executed all of them, too.

Aren't we doing a great job? And this is how entire populations were eliminated. People would have family photographs. And as time went on in the Soviet Union, you would see their faces disappear. They would literally take a pencil eraser. and they would erase the face of an enemy of the state because they didn't want anybody coming into their apartment thinking they still cared about this person.

Oh, God, no, no, no, we knew it was a bad egg from the beginning. And of all the stories that I had, and all of the stories I had to work with when I did this Empire of Terror on the Soviet police state, I think the one that was the clearest to me, just because it's the one that's easiest to imagine, was that in these apartment complexes, the secret police would come in at about two or three in the morning

at your biological low, right when you're at your most emotionally vulnerable and most likely to be asleep. So around two or three o'clock in the morning, these black marias, these black police fans with bars on the windows, would pull up outside the building. And then you'd hear the front door, and then you'd hear the footsteps below. And then this creaky, creaky old elevator. And you'd hear it start coming up. And you are lying in bed every single night of your life. You are shivering and terror.

It's getting louder and louder and louder and louder and louder. And then maybe it would pass your floor and keep going and keep going and keep going. and then stop, and then you could sleep for three or four hours until six o'clock when you had to get up and work for the motherland again. But these people would find out who had been killed that night because they would find out what apartments were available. Hey, no apartment opened up. It's nicer one than I have. Let's move over there. We've got one bathroom for the entire floor. News spreads quickly. But that sound, that image of lying in bed with your wife and your kids in the next room and wondering if that elevator is going to stop on your floor and take you and maybe your family away,

never to be seen again. You can end up in the basement of the Lou Bianca, or maybe you'll go to LaForteau or whatever. They're all buried in Moscow, by the way. They've got parks in Moscow where there's 60,000 people buried in this park. Show me the man. I'll show you the crime. Yeah. Would you put that quote back up real quick from Sea of Weaver?

This is what I was thinking about when I said earlier. I know we've got to wrap this up, but that was the moment in saving Private Ryan, right, where it's like, oh, my God, this is just getting so, in light of everything you just said, this woman is running the mayor's office for, what, home development or something? Yeah, yeah, she's, I forget her title. Hang on. Look, she's important, and she works for a guy who just got elected running, as certainly as a socialist. And that's her tweet, elect more communists.

I wonder how many illegal aliens she has living in her house. She's the director of the New York City mayor's office to protect tenants. I wonder how many low-income tenants she has living in her apartment. I wonder how much communism she is willing to partake of. If she's got, I bet you she's got a rather nice apartment. I'll bet you she's got more room than she needs for herself. How many homeless people off the streets of New York is she housing today? I want to know.

Because if she's not housing any, then communism is a lie. And she's a liar. And she's a damn liar. If she has an apartment to herself and there's room for other people in there and they're not in her apartment, then she's a damn liar. And she is trying to enforce a morality and an ethics that has killed more people than anything on this earth, including war, than disease. Other than disease, communism has killed more human beings.

and anybody else, and she's proud of it. She should receive the same kind of treatment as somebody walking down the streets of New York with a big giant swastika on their t-shirt. Well, I don't disagree. I just think that we've entered into this weird place where you can put a giant swastika on your chest and walk bare-chested down the street

and have people go, well, yeah, maybe there's something there. Because for whatever reason, for whatever reason, the C-word does not have the mark of Cain. Well, the reason that the C-word doesn't have the mark of Cain is because most of the people in the entertainment business are left-leaning. So they don't want to make movies about Colima. I do. I want to make a movie about Colima. I very much want to make a movie about Calima. Can we make it a musical?

We make anything a musical. It's a springtime for Gullogs. But the people that are in charge of our news media and our entertainment industry, all lean left, and they know it's embarrassing to them, that their philosophy has killed so many people. You know what the greatest thing about being a conservative is? For me, my personal experience is, my personal experience is the best thing about being a conservative is I get to say one thing and then do the same thing. That's a really nice feeling. Well, look, for me, this dust up, you're here because last week I shared a video from Bill Maher. And Bill Maher,

I think spoke the truth to his tribe. He said, he put up that same quote, and many others like it and just said, look, if this is what's happening in my Democratic Party, then my vote is in play. Because that's not who we are. Now, at the same time, Gavin Newsom is saying,

this Democratic Party needs to be a big tent. And we have to have room for the DSA, otherwise the midterms are going to be a problem. What I wrote when I shared that clip and made reference to those things was that America is a big tent. We have room for the DSA in America. We have room for the Green Party. We have room for the Constitution Party, the American Freedom Party. We even have room for fringe.

We have room for the proud boys in the KKK. Right. We have room for the American Nazi Party because that's the tent of America. But does the Democratic Party or the Republican Party are their tents so big? What would happen if the Republicans welcomed in the oathkeepers or the proud boys or the American Freedom Party? So I have no idea how to handicap this. I don't know what's coming, but those quotes. And by the way, it's not me either.

And the thing that Bill did that I thought was interesting, and I wound up going on a show as a result of this, he's like, I'm not accusing them. I'm quoting them. Right. These aren't my words. These are quotes from people who have been elected or who are about to be, who have somehow secured a wild amount of support from the masses. And I just, I'll just end it where we started by saying, look, I don't know if anything we just,

didder said was persuasive, but the evidence does demand a verdict. And I appreciate you prosecuting the case. The problem with the evidence of the jury in this particular case is that my witnesses are all dead buried underneath the tundra. I didn't get to present my witnesses. I didn't get to present my witnesses because they're all dead. That's the problem with my case. I made the point when you talk about 20 million people being killed, let's say there's a hundred thousand people in a Super Bowl. So imagine that you're sitting there and you are at the entrance to the Super Bowl and there's only one exit. Everybody has to go through that exit. So imagine a Super Bowl full of people and you have to stand there and you have to look at the face of every single person

that comes out of that Super Bowl. Every little girl, every man, every woman, every child, you've got to look them in the eyes as they walk past. Once they walk past, it's 100,000 people. You only have 199 more Super Bowls to go before you find. the number of people that have been killed by this ideology. So you think about that for a minute. You think about how much time it would take for you to see 100,000 faces walk past you and realize you need 199 more Super Bowls to show the number of people that have been murdered by this philosophy that this idiot is tweeting about as if it's no big deal.

I can't show you those people. I can only tell you about them. I can't show you the faces. I can show you some of them. The largest photo archive in the world belongs to the KGB. There are thousands and thousands of faces. You know what the main expression on those faces is, Mike? It's not fear, although there's a lot of fear, and sometimes people are crying.

It's shock. Confusion. It's surprise. It's like, I'm a good communist. Why am I being singled out for execution? Why me? Because there's 70,000 enemies of the state in Murmansk, and it's just tough luck for you, buddy. Maybe you have a relative who lived in the West, or maybe you're a physicist or a musician

who's been exposed to Western literature and had your mind polluted by free people. But I got 20 million. I got 20 million victims, and I can't show your faces. I can't show them to you. You have to imagine them. But no one's denying the numbers. And of all the things that makes communism miserable, the most miserable thing about it is they will talk to you and say, it wasn't 20 million.

It was only 6 million. It was only 6 million people that we killed. Okay. All right. So that's what happens when you value the power of, the state over the power of the individual, make your choice, choose wisely. This country's not going to go to these people. The vast majority of the American people are not going to put up for this. And if it turns out that they do, they're going to find out what we're finding out here

in California. We're just going to go someplace else. We're going to go someplace else. And if there finally is no place else to go, that's when we'll finally what we use our second amendment for. Last question. Do you think the choice in November will be as simple as here's a party that has disavowed communism and socialism? and here's a party who is not? Well, it could come down to that. The problem with the Republicans is we've been so, conservatives and Republicans suffer from Stockholm syndrome.

We've been demonized by so many different voices for so long that we're starting to almost agree with them. When Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama in 2012, I said, Mitt Romney didn't even believe his own story. They said, Mitt Romney, you know, you're worth $200 million. And I said, if I was Mitt Romney, I said, whoa, whoa, I'm not worth $200 million. I'm worth $250 million.

I worked really hard for that money. People gave me that money freely in exchange. I don't live 250 million times better than everybody else. I've paid millions and millions and millions of dollars in taxes that have gone to the poor. What have you paid, Mr. Community Organizer? How much money have you actually paid into the system that actually provides meals for poor people? I put tens of millions of dollars of my own income into that. On top of that, I have hundreds of thousands of employees.

I paid all of their bills, all of their meals, all of their taxes, all of that stuff's gone into the pot. What have you done? So the problem isn't so much that we're going to be facing that choice. The problem is finding Republicans who are clear-minded enough to be able to go against this social pressure of, you're a Nazi, you're this, you or that, and stand up for it. And I'll tell you who does it and who I think is terrific at it and who would be my choice. And that's Marco Rubio. And Marco Rubio, if it turns out in 2028, this does come down to this fight.

Marco Rubio will be able to tell you personal stories about communism. So here's your last lesson for the day here, folks, who's still on the fence about this. There have been hundreds of thousands of people that have had a choice between communism and capitalism, free market economy, a free country. No one, no one has ever gotten to a beach in Fort Lauderdale. No dentist ever loaded up his family into the minivan, drove to the beach in Fort Lauderdale, strapped a couple of inner tubes onto a Chase lounge, and then set out 90-mile, south through shark-infected waters to get to the free health care down in Cuba.

That's never happened once. The direction of the rafts between Cuba and the United States, if it was 60-40, that would be a pretty strong argument for America, but it's not 6040, and it's not 75-25, and it's not 90-10, and it's not 95-5, and it's not 99 to 1. It's 100% of the people who move and risked their lives and watch their families drown in the Gulf of Mexico before their eyes, did it to get away from socialism and communism, and communism to come to free countries. No one ever got shot at the Berlin Wall trying to get into East Germany. Those are people who paid with their lives. This isn't academic for them. It's not an

academic argument. It's not a copy shop argument. It's not a teacher's lounge argument. These are people who talk about risking their own lives and their family's lives and not one of them, not one ever in history, ever was killed, gave their life trying to go from a capitalist society to a communist one. Never. It's never happened. I don't want to get the quote wrong, Chuck, but I believe she said elect more communist. Yes. Yes, she did. Okay.

Bill, I appreciate it a lot. If I can get you out of your shell next time, I think you're... No, look, it's important. And, again, is it persuasive? We'll see. I try to be fair. Look, you have a platform and you have a resume, and for what it's worth, I do too, and I don't want to sit this one out. I just don't.

I don't want to look back and feel like, oh, well, you know what? You had your foundation. You had this and that. But you kind of kept your mouth shut on this one. Most people that buy the socialism argument today are good-hearted people. Most of them are good-hearted people. They have purposely not only been not educated, they have been diseducated about this subject. And they've been diseducated by the kind of people that want to end up with $800 million in their bank account, but they don't want to work for it.

To be continued? To be continued. Anytime. Bill Whittle. be remiss to where should people go. To learn more. Bill Little.com. Clever.

Thank you. That's with an H. Yeah, don't forget that H. Yeah. Thanks, Bell. You're welcome. When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do,

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