People shouldn't work for a living.
That's a bad idea.
I don't see myself right now as working.
What I'm doing is creating value.
That's what we should be doing for a living.
Right now, the three of us are trying to create value for our audience.
And it's that creating value that is what we should be focused on.
And if that's what we're focused on, the rewards will probably come.
all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the space tomatoes podcast i'm one
your host havoc on the other one lx hey today we're joined by a guest dr doug cardell economist
economic policy expert and author of why socialism struggles welcome to the show
welcome happy to be here awesome so is this your first book
yes it is okay well that's that's that's an awesome thing um and i imagine you went to school for for
uh economics and yes i have a phd in economic policy okay i didn't want to assume that that
was the case that's that's pretty cool um and and what brought you to decide to write this particular
book. Well, I'm concerned that we may end up in a socialist country accidentally. I think there
are too many people out there that are advocating socialism that don't really know what that means.
and that worries me.
Socialism is not a thing that is helpful to the people
in the countries where it's been advocated.
Sure.
I think there's abundant history that shows that
it is not a successful economic...
You know the thing.
Sorry.
But why don't we start with the basic definition for people that may not know exactly what we're talking about with socialism when we use that term.
Yeah. Socialism is an economic system where the government owns all property and the means of production.
That is, anybody that produces stuff, that's owned by the government, not by individuals.
And that becomes...
Is there a big differentiation between socialism and communism?
Are they essentially the same thing?
You can think of them as the same thing.
Communism is basically a myth.
Marx's view of communism was that socialism would become so successful that the government would wither away, was his phrase.
And like that's going to happen.
And I've never seen a situation, I also have a degree in history, and I've never seen a situation historically where a government has, anybody in power has given up that power willingly.
Right. And I would say that that goes across all government forms, not just that.
That's a human thing.
Right. And then when you add in the incentives of socialism, where the government then controls all industry, all input, all output, you've basically given a power hungry mob carte blanche to society, everything.
yeah and i might add too that that while we're doing definitions fascism is very very close
they're they're cousins people some people have been taught that they're the opposite which is
just ridiculous um in fascism the government controls the means of production and property
so it's it's a it's a difference without it's a distinction without a difference that
if the government is in charge of the economy, the government is in charge of the economy,
and exactly how they do it is unimportant. And so in economics, we lump them under the term
centrally planned economies, or CPEs. And that's the first problem with socialism,
is that CPEs don't work. Yeah. And I guess, so the question I'm going to ask,
I think I kind of already know the answer.
I believe I might, at least as far as a majority thought process, but Keynesian or Austrian?
I'm sorry.
Keynesian or Austrian economics?
Which school of thought do you subscribe more to?
An Austrian?
Austrian.
That's kind of what I thought.
Austrian, sure.
Me too.
I have no idea what either of those are.
The Austrian school is basically based on evidence rather than on ideology.
An awful lot of economists, particularly in the United States today, do economics by starting with the conclusion that here's what we would like and then trying to find ways to make that happen.
And in evidentiary economics, what we look at is what works and can we find evidence that shows that it works.
A good example of non-evidentiary economics is John Lennon.
I'm a big Beatle fan. I love the Beatles. I love John Lennon, but he wasn't an economist.
and he wrote a song, Imagine, you've probably, I'm sure, heard it.
Imagine there's no heaven, imagine there's no possessions, you know,
and no countries.
And that's what, but he at least titled it correctly.
It's imaginary.
And you can't build an economy based on an imaginary philosophy.
It just doesn't make any sense.
But unfortunately, a lot of people, that's what they're trying to do.
And to me, that's part of the threat is that people imagine the world away
without looking at what the evidence says the consequences will be
if we actually had that world.
Yeah, and if it...
It worked pretty good in sci-fi utopian movies, I think.
When you remove all the reality and you can kind of bend reality to your will,
then of course it's going to work.
Um, so I would also add that, you know, uh, the, between the two economic, uh, ideas, schools of thought, I guess, uh, in, in our society is largely Keynesian, right? The United States.
And the idea behind Keynesian economics is also one of government intervention into the economy when things aren't going the way you planned them to go.
Whereas the Austrian school is we don't intervene.
If it's failing, it fails.
The next thing will come along and be successful because of the failures, not in spite of the failures, not because of them.
Right.
So, I guess, you know, one of the questions I would have right off the bat, I mean, you know, so you're, I think your fears are grounded, right?
I think there is a younger generation that's been fed this utopian ideal that socialism could work if only we did it right, right?
And the problem is that does not account for the human factor.
However, I would also argue that we've been traveling down that road for quite some time. You could go back to, you know, from a pure economic standpoint, you go back to Jekyll Island in 1913 and look at that as a purely socialistic intervention into the economy of the United States. Would you agree?
Yeah, yeah. I think it's really important to draw a distinction between tinkering with the economy and having solid guardrails to prevent other interference into the economy.
and so I was having a discussion with some people in a book signing the other day and
a woman said well capitalism caused slavery and I said well how do you see that happening
well they were buying and selling people and I said yeah but that isn't capitalism that's
a problem of government it's government's job to legislate what can be bought and sold
and clearly buying a zoning people is not something we want to see happening.
But that's not a problem in the system.
That's a problem in the guardrails.
And so we have to make sure we distinguish between Jekyll Island,
and for our listeners who don't know,
we're talking about the formation of the Federal Reserve,
and tinkering with the economy.
In fact, it was the Federal Reserve's, the fairly new at that time,
Federal Reserve's tinkering that caused the Great Depression. They meddled in things they
didn't understand. And I should be careful to point out that the Fed is not incompetent.
They're smart people. I'm not saying that they're doing anything wrong,
other than the fact that they're meddling. In fact, a large part of my research was to study
personal consumption expenditures over a 30-year period, which is a good measure of
what's going to happen in the economy, how to predict the economy.
And over that 30-year period, I looked at what the Fed predicted and what happened a year later.
They were right 46% of the time.
They could have literally done better flipping a coin.
Now, again, I'm not saying that they're stupid people.
I couldn't have done any better because here's the problem.
In order to plan an economy, you have to be able to predict.
And the economy is a chaotic system like the weather.
And a guy named Lorenz back in 72 proved that the weather would never be more predict, never be predictable more than about two weeks out.
Mm hmm. That's where the phrase the butterfly effect comes from.
That very, very tiny inputs like a butterfly flapping its wings. His famous quote was,
can a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil precipitate a tornado in Texas?
And yes, it can. I could say the same thing about the economy. Can someone buying a pair of shoes
in Brazil precipitate a depression in Poland? Yeah. Because very, very tiny inputs in a chaotic
system can make big, big changes in the outputs. And that happens because the system is very often
at a tipping point, where just a tiny nudge one way or the other causes something to happen.
And so because of that, we can't predict into the future. And the economy is even worse than
the weather in terms of prediction. Because let's think about what I would have to do if I were going
to predict what we needed to manufacture a year from now. I'd have to be able to look into the
minds of 9 billion people and think, what are they planning to buy next year? What are they
planning to sell next year? Okay. That's a ridiculous idea. I don't know what my wife is
planning to buy next week, let alone what all the people on the planet are trying to buy and
going to plan to buy next year. It's just an impossible task. And that's one of the main
reasons why socialism fails. Now, you mentioned, of course, that it fails on a human level.
And that's, of course, true, too. But even if we could somehow turn, I remember when I was
probably about 12, somebody tried to convince me that communism was wonderful. And I said, well,
that's not going to work. And she said, well, why not? I said, well, it assumes that people are
saints, and we're not. Because, yeah, in order for communism to work, we would have to give up
self-interest. We would have to say that the interest of the group is more important than
my interest. And there is no life anywhere where that happens. This is not just a human thing.
It's a life thing. If you put a plant in a room with a window, it's going to grow toward the
window. Now, I don't think it thinks about that. It doesn't have a conscious self-interest,
but all life has to pursue a self-interest or it dies. Yeah. I think, so I will say that I do think
that you, that there are examples of this at very small scale with a number of willing participants
in this. You can look at, you know, people, uh, you know, farmsteading, right. Uh, and I'm a
farmsteader and that's not my ideology, but Hey, more power to you. Um, but, uh, you know, you can
take a group of people together and they live on a farm, they grow the food. They, you know,
maybe someone is a cobbler, maybe someone is, you know, good at construction, a welder, et cetera.
You can make it work in that aspect. But the thing that's missing is there's no central planning. There's nobody standing at the top going, you know, you're going to do this. You're going to do that. We're going to make this. We're going to have these. And and so I would say that, you know, both of those systems in in various forms can exist. But once you get outside of, I'd say, maybe a dozen people, it's a complete and utter disaster.
and i would say it would it would have to be geographically located located in in a very
similar you know location right it could not be dispersed otherwise again you you run into that
problem so you're exactly right i'm sorry go ahead go ahead i was just going to say when you
get that one central person in charge of everything that's kind of how you get a cult
Sure.
And even the kibbutzim in Israel found pretty quickly that as the kibbutzim grew, it stopped working.
Because you're right, it can work in small situations where, like for example, a family.
And the original kibitzum were indeed extended family groups.
And so if you're in a situation where everybody truly loves each other, yes, you can make something like that happen.
But even in groups of 100 or so, it doesn't work.
So, for example, we can look at the two earliest American colonies, Jamestown and the Mayflower Colony.
and both of those started as collectivist enterprises.
Again, they weren't truly socialist because there was, as you said, no central planner.
But even collectivism fails on a human level.
And at a time when the people involved would have required their utmost effort to survive,
they weren't putting out their utmost effort.
In fact, there were a lot of people that were, you know, malingering, I guess you could say, because they saw that if they didn't do the work, somebody else would.
And so they stopped working or didn't work as hard as they could have worked.
And they entered what was called the starving time.
And they ended up eating their shoes, digging up corpses, eating pets.
um it didn't in either circumstance it didn't end well until they introduced capitalism
and gave people private property and then in both cases the colony rebounded and succeeded
yeah i think capitalism is at least you know
at least from my eyes a a real a more real form of capitalism is is definitely a desirable
outcome. Um, you know, and I think it's an interesting take as well. And, and you see this
a lot again, like you had pointed out in, in the younger generations where they, they attribute
what they see in our society to actual capitalism when it's more akin to something like a corporatism
or a cronyism or a corporate cronyism, right? It is not true capitalism. True capitalism is
actually a wonderful design. You have something I want. I have something you want. We agree on a
value and a fair trade and we both go our own ways with a new thing that we wanted. That's,
that's capitalism. And, you know, and there's no like, Oh, you know, we're failing as a business.
oh well let me just in check inject liquidity into your your business and and help you out
that it doesn't exist you fail that's it you know that all revolves around one key thing that people
don't understand uh i was actually on a podcast yesterday and somebody said that
that capitalism was a little bit messed up because people chose beta over vhs
Recording tapes we're talking about for the audience that doesn't remember that.
His assumption was that by his definition, Beta was a better system.
And so capitalism screwed up by choosing VHS.
But that's basically a fascist notion.
It's saying that I know for someone else better what they need.
And that's the inherent fallacy in any centrally planned economy is that we all have our own values and none of us have the same values and we don't even have the same values from day to day.
And so the fact that let's say the three of us go to a restaurant and I like salad and Havoc likes bread and LX likes Brussels sprouts.
And so we arrange a three way trade and we all get what we like.
does it make any sense then to look at the menu prices and say somebody got screwed because the
menu price of brussels sprouts was higher than the menu price of bread and salad and of course
that's not true we all got what we wanted and that's what capitalism is based on is that i find
my bliss, I find my talents, and then I use that to create value for other people.
And I would suggest that even young people if they understood that that what capitalism was could support it
I mean, how can you argue with that?
That people say, well, capitalism is inherently competitive and we should be cooperative.
And it's a fallacy.
We are competing to cooperate.
In other words, right now we're on a podcast and presumably we are competing with other podcasts.
Now, why are we doing that?
Well, I may make a few bucks on my book.
You might get some additional sponsors or whatever.
But I'm here because I want to create value for our listeners.
And I'm betting that's why you're here too.
And so we are competing with those other podcasts out there to find out who can create the most value.
And so the competition is competition, but it's to cooperate with those listeners. It's to find the best thing for them. And again, I don't see that there is a counter argument. I can't, I mean, I can't imagine how one could argue with that and say that it's a system that's inherently evil.
I would argue that it's the ultimate in morality.
You can't have a system more moral than that that says, my mission in life is to create value for others.
Yeah.
I mean, on the flip side, so what you're saying is you don't think Joe Rogan should just give us like a couple million of his followers?
I mean, you know.
No, of course not.
I mean, you know, you're exactly right.
I mean, we're competing, yes, but we're competing to find out who can do the best for others.
And in that same vein, it's not unreasonable for people to be rewarded in...
I could paraphrase the Beatles really quickly and say, and in the end, the value you take should be equal to the value you make.
And in that regard, I can't fault Bill Gates.
I'm on a PC right now.
We're on the Internet.
We couldn't be doing this at all if it weren't for Bill Gates.
And I'm also on Starlink because I live out in the middle of nowhere.
And if it weren't for Elon Musk, we couldn't be doing this.
And so those guys changed the world.
and yeah, they created more value than you and I did. That's just a fact. And I'm not jealous
about that or upset about that. They deserve what they got. And so the idea that we should
take it away from them for some odd reason, because they have, quote, too much. I mean,
what does that even mean? They created huge amounts of value and they deserve what they've
got from it. Yeah. I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, the spirit of what you're saying. I agree with,
right. I, I think there, there definitely has been so, um, oftentimes winners are chosen,
and not necessarily based on the merits of their products or their output, right?
And I think that both of those gentlemen have greatly been lifted up by situations exactly like that, right?
I'm not going to throw shade in general because it does nobody any good,
But I would say that, you know, I'm I'm more a fan of of, again, what I call true capitalism.
I even go so far as to, you know, I don't know that IP is a good thing.
In fact, I think it's largely a bad thing for us.
And why do I say that?
Once you have IP, nobody else can make that thing.
And even if they tweak it to be a little bit better, you'll be in violation of a patent.
Well, the whole idea behind capitalism is I make a good thing. If I want to compete with you, I'm going to make a better thing at a better price point. And someone else is going to come along and try and do it better than I do at a better price point, or they're going to add something or change it just enough.
And so I'm more a fan of those styles of capitalism than I am of anything that that has that intervention in it, which I get it. That's also a fairly utopian type of a stance.
but at the same time that is what capitalism is right and and once you step outside of that and
there is even something to the effect of oh well you're going to create jobs maybe in this location
we're going to give you a building and land we're going to put a railroad right up to your building
etc you've chosen a winner that's not capitalism capitalism is i i built up the capital to actually
finance the railroad to put it up to my building that I finance, that I put, you know, that's
capitalism. So that would be my only. That's precisely the difference between those guardrails
and tinkering with the economy. Because what you're referring to now is not a weakness in
capitalism. It's a weakness in government surrounding capitalism. And yeah, to the extent
that Gates or Musk were helped by government, that's a bad thing. That's not the job of
government. Government should not be picking winners and losers. They're bad at it. History
has shown over and over again that they are incapable of it. And it's back to the beta
versus VHS thing. Government or no one else is capable of choosing what's best for someone else.
It's just an impossible thing to do.
I'm also a musician, and I have a lot of friends that are musicians,
and a lot of them don't do great economically,
particularly those for whom it's their full-time gig.
And so people talk about, well, everybody should have a guaranteed income,
And some people refer to musicians as being or artists as being in that category, people that should be subsidized.
My friends that are musicians and that's their full time gig and aren't doing well financially are perfectly happy that way.
They aren't asking for a handout. They are doing art for art's sake, not for money's sake.
And and that's a great thing. That is not something we should put down.
But it's also not something that anybody is asking for help with.
In my book, I use the comparison of the Beatles and the Grateful Dead.
The Beatles made a lot more money than the Grateful Dead did.
But I don't think the Grateful Dead is upset about that.
They chose their path, and they were happy with that path.
And I think they're just as happy as the Beatles.
And they own their own buses.
And so whoever bought Jerry's guitar is pretty happy.
Did you see that thing sold for $14 million?
Yeah.
That's not incredible stuff, but yeah.
Crazy.
Yeah.
But, but so we, none of us are capable of, you know, I can't, like I said, I can't even
choose what's best for my wife in a lot of situations.
And so the idea that I could possibly choose what's best for people I've never even met is just dumb. But yet that's exactly what government or any other, you know, including, for example, labor unions, tried to get a $15 minimum wage.
I understand that they think they're well motivated, but they're tinkering in an economy they don't understand.
And it's going to have consequences that are not what they expect.
I mean, and again, history has shown this back in the 70s.
The Ladies Garment Union had some of the most successful strikes in American history.
And managed to get wages raised dramatically.
and not long after this
I don't know if you are old enough to remember
but they came out with this old jingle
look for the union label
when you're buying
that blouse dress or coat
and
people did look at the union label
but they also looked at the price tag
and saw that
and what happened
there is no longer a women's garment union
why not
because no women's garments are made in the US anymore
Yeah. And so they increased the wages for their workers, but now their kids can't get a job.
And so there are always tradeoffs in an economy and tinkering with it almost never works because it assumes that we can plan stuff that we can't possibly plan.
it's like the butterfly in the weather the tiniest thing can make a big difference yeah
i i honestly uh i think um milton friedman uh as well as you know sowell and and rothbard and
quite a number of others you know really hit the nail on the head the the real
minimum wage should be this always yeah that's right it's it's not designed you know minimum
wage was never, you know, an entry level position was never meant to be where you end up, right?
This is, this is you getting experience, learning how to work in a lower paying job, and then
progressing with your knowledge and your skills into a higher paying position, potentially most
often at another company, right? Or, or potentially as an entrepreneur for yourself. But yeah, that,
and and one of my favorite quotes from him just amazing brilliance the guy was i i personally
am very fond of him uh you know if you get if you put the federal government in charge of the saharan
desert in a matter of years you'd have a shortage of sand yeah um well yeah and i mean you you
You mentioned starting out in lower wage jobs.
Many of the jobs that I had as a kid no longer exist, specifically because of minimum wage.
I was a paperboy when I started.
My first job was when I was 11.
I was a paperboy.
And of course, now that would be illegal.
You can't even hire somebody if they're at age 11.
But that certainly helped build in me a strong work ethic.
I mean, here I was at 11 years old getting up at 4.30 in the morning, I think it was, to go deliver papers before school.
And I did that, I guess, I don't know, three or four or five years.
And then I became a capitalist and started a lawn mowing business, which also would be illegal now because at that age, I wouldn't have been allowed to get the permits and everything necessary to mow other people's lawns.
Then I did some gas pumping and I was laid off ultimately because people decided it was better to pump gas themselves than to pay me to do it for them.
And all of that's legitimate, but that's all because of minimum wage. If I had been allowed to be paid less, we may still have gas pumpers today. And at my age, I was making enough money to make me happy doing it.
and I gained hugely valuable experience that now young people are deprived of.
And I think that's really sad.
I think that we're robbing them of things that could be hugely beneficial to their lives.
And that's the part that particularly the young people today,
but those leaning towards socialism don't understand.
It's not a matter of capitalism being harsh or not wanting to help people.
It's exactly the opposite.
It's in seeing that anti-capitalism deprives people of things.
It deprives those young people of a chance to really grow and learn.
And, yeah, it's just sad.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think part of the problem is they see I'm going to get this for free.
We all know it's not free, but they think they're going to get a free bus pass or a free car or free rent or free everything.
And they think, oh, this is great.
You know, I don't have to work for it.
It's a fantastic.
You hear exactly that from all of the socialistic pitches.
You know, it's not, you know, government, you know, it's not taxpayer funded health care that people want.
They want free health care.
It's not free.
It is taxpayer-funded health care is what they're asking for.
And, oh, boy, look at the way the VA does things.
Go find some VA, you know, people that have to use the VA.
And I don't want my health care to look like that.
I just don't.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's back to the idea that people aren't seeing that, okay, let me put it this way.
People shouldn't work for a living.
That's a bad idea.
I don't see myself right now as working.
What I'm doing is creating value.
That's what we should be doing for a living.
is right now, the three of us are trying to create value for our audience.
And it's that creating value that is what we should be focused on.
And if that's what we're focused on, the rewards will probably come.
Now, certainly, it could be that we're doing something wrong
that's preventing us from getting those rewards.
Maybe we're not doing enough market research.
You know, some of the musicians I know play jazz.
And they are some of the ones that do least well financially.
And they say, well, but jazz is so much better than pop.
And well, OK, I get that you think that.
but yes, you could certainly argue that it has greater complexity at some level, but
it's not what people want. And so like in my case, I play 50s and 60s rock and roll because
that's what people want. I mean, and if you're trying to create value for people,
you have to first acknowledge that they are the ones that get to create what you get to decide
what value is. I can't impose what I think is valuable on someone else. I have to say,
what is it that you value? And then find a way to provide that.
And too much of the time, that's what I mean why we say we shouldn't be working for a living,
is that we're doing stuff that without even thinking about, are we creating value for others?
And so particularly where young people are concerned, I think that's the most important message to get across is to help people see that if they focus on creating value, it changes your life.
It makes everything different because now you're not like imagine somebody sitting in a burger joint.
They're flipping their burgers and they're bored.
They don't like it.
But what if they change their mindset and go, that person that just pulled up at the drive-thru came here because they're hungry.
They don't have time to cook.
I'm going to make them the best burger I can make them.
And I'm going to serve it to them cheerfully, happily.
I'm going to try and make their day.
Now, here's what's going to happen.
In a week, I guarantee that burger flipper is going to be happier.
I guarantee it.
Because they're going to start seeing the value they're creating.
and probably in a month, they're going to start seeing greater rewards. They're going to get a
raise. They're going to get a promotion because the people that are employing them are going to
see that they're creating value. They're making the enterprise more successful. Now, there are
going to be times when their boss is going to be jealous or not a smart boss and see that this
person is helping, then they're going to have to go find another job. But if their goal is
creating value for others, they're not going to have that job long. They're going to be moving up.
And not to like brag about it, but another job I had early on was as a carryout boy at,
I think it was TGNY. Another job that doesn't exist anymore. For those listeners who have never heard about this, my job was to carry the groceries of the shoppers out to their car and, you know, put them in the trunk and stuff for them.
and since I had a good background of work ethic,
I did that as well as I could.
I would chat them up,
and in I think it was three days,
they moved me into sales and menswear,
and I pursued that the same way,
and probably a month after that,
they made me assistant manager,
of menswear.
And I think, if I remember right,
I ended up as manager of menswear.
And this is, I was probably 19.
But then I ran into one of those bosses
who said I was a threat to him.
So I got fired for being too good.
And that happens.
That's part of the world.
and we have to deal with the world as it is, not whine about it. And I didn't. I mean,
I understood even at that young age that the world is not built as a fair place. There are
jerks out there, a lot of them. And that's going to cause what you might call unfair things to
happen. So you deal with it. You learn from it, you move on and you say, okay, it didn't work this
time. Now I'm going to keep my eyes open from now on. And if I think I'm in a situation where
I'm going to run into a boss like that, I'll change ahead of time before I get fired.
Yeah. You know, I'll have to keep my eyes open and learn about that. And I did. And there were
a lot of times when things like that did happen. And I saw what was coming and I said, okay,
I want to go somewhere else. And that's another thing I think that worries people about capitalism
is it's messy.
There's no arguing with that
because it's not controlled.
It's like the weather.
It messy And you know like with the weather you can plan all you want for a big outdoor barbecue and it may rain that day
And that's just the way life is. And you can whine and say, well, it's not fair that it rained, but hey, it happens.
And fairness has nothing to do with it. It's messy.
But we have to acknowledge that this economy, true capitalism as an economy, is the ultimate thing to help people.
It has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system ever imagined.
Even in 1950, 30% of the world lived in extreme poverty.
Now it's down to 9%.
it's it's without question the the biggest factor in reduction of poverty there's no question nobody
you cannot deny that so what do you think so i'm going to go out on a limb here and maybe i'm wrong
but i'm going to say the vast majority of the younger generations have not studied marx probably
don't even know who angles is and probably recognize the name stalin or lenin but couldn't
point to you know their actions so and and i i get this in my interactions with some because of their
desire for or belief in this ideology but don't understand it uh outside of a very basic form
and can't articulate what the benefits of it would be outside of, again, a very basic form.
So what do you think is driving all of this? What do you think the drivers are? And how do you
suppose that whatever those drivers are, are being kind of ingrained into people
without even giving them enough information to be able to debate this topic?
well i think part of it is some of the things we've talked about already um i think we all
tend to think that we know what's best for other people and i think that's one of the things that
is a driver is it is it that we tend to think that we can decide that something is better for
somebody else. And I was in the sad situation recently of dealing with an alcoholic that was
very close to my family. And three or four of us did an intervention, took her to an AA meeting.
and she I don't she said I don't want to stop drinking I don't want to period and she did
literally eventually killed her and and that kind of stuff is really sad but but
as well motivated as we were we couldn't decide what was best for her I can't I can't know what
was going on in her head. I can't. But I've got to believe that at some level, she thought that
what she was doing was better for her than the alternative. And I don't understand what her
alternative was. You know, I don't know what pain she was masking. But I'm sure that that was
basically the idea, that she was masking some kind of a pain that to her was literally worse
than death. And, you know, I'm kind of tearing up a little bit, but it's that kind of stuff,
sad as it is, is evidence that we just can't decide what's best for somebody else.
We're incapable of it. And so we have to honor that. And that means that we have to let other
people decide for themselves. And if they want to be a jazz musician and make barely minimum wage,
that's their choice and that's fine. It's not my job to butt into that and tinker with it.
I think another thing that we've talked about already that's a big driver
is the idea of creating value for others. It's hard to be happy when you're working.
if what you're really doing is just doing something that somebody else has told you to do
without any vision of how that is something that's helpful to you,
without seeing that you're achieving something, it's sad.
I mean, if we could get people to see that creating value was important, and in fact, if you look at two people, Maslow and McCollum, both have different scales of human happiness, if you want to call it that.
But in Maslow's, the highest is self-actualization. In McLennan's, it's achievement. And we tend to mix the things up. We look at things like wealth, and we don't see it as a reward for achievement. We see it as like some freaky accident.
And obviously, if you win the lottery, that's probably true.
But what people should be looking at is not admiring or wanting wealth, but wanting the achievement or the self-actualization that the people that have acquired wealth have gotten from it.
and like if you look at the 10 richest people in the world,
which right now happen to be Americans,
all of them are in that category.
Not one of them has inherited wealth.
Every single one of them made big changes in the world to do that.
And so they've achieved.
They're approaching that self-actualization.
and I think that's what we would like young people to start thinking about is how can they go out
there and find their bliss find something you really love and then exploit that develop a
talent around it and then go out and create value for others and if that's what they're doing
they're going to be happy I'm absolutely convinced I've never seen it fail and
And yeah, I think that's, I think people are, too many people are stuck in a work situation that can't ever make them happy.
Because they aren't doing it for self-actualization.
They aren't pursuing achievement.
They're pursuing, I've just got to make the next dollar.
And that's even true of some people that do really, really well.
I'm sure there's some hedge fund manager out there that tonight is probably going to commit suicide.
I mean, it's sad, but it's likely.
You know, the poem, I think it was an unknown author, but it was done by Simon and Garfunkel, Richard Corey, about a rich guy that owned half of the town.
They say that Richard Corey went home last night and put a bullet in his head.
It's an old poem and a song by Simon and Garfunkel about that, that it isn't money that we should be pursuing.
Money doesn't make you happy.
It's what you're doing to get that money, if you're doing it right, that makes you happy.
and so what the three of us are doing right now
is not something that we're going to be unhappy about
you know we're doing this joyfully
we love what we're doing
and we're going to make what we make out of it
and hopefully we'll create enough value
that we will be rewarded in kind
mind, but it's only if we create enough value to do that.
And what's that old saying? If you enjoy what you do, you'll never work a day in your life?
Something like that. I don't know who to attribute it to, but.
Yeah, that's a really good one. I mean, that's the way the world is. And again,
that's why it's so important to look at evidence. We want to look at the world the way the world
really is, not the way we would like it to be. Another really good example of how this all works,
capitalism functions on what's called spontaneous order. And like I said, it's messy,
but spontaneous order means that order evolves from nothing. And it does. You look at herd
animals, for example, and you can watch the way the herd circulates. And it puts some animals in
a more dangerous position, but over time it equalizes the danger as the herd changes positions
spontaneously. Another example of spontaneous order like squirrels and bees. Squirrels are not
out there going, got to get nuts, got to get nuts, got to get nuts. And then going, because I want to
plant trees, I want to plant trees, I want to plant trees. No, squirrels don't know anything about
planting trees. That thought never crosses their minds. They're not trying to help the environment.
They're trying to save food for next winter. Same with bees. Bees are not out there trying to
pollinate flowers. They're trying to collect pollen to make honey. They could care less about
whether flowers get pollinated or not. And that's how spontaneous order works. It just happens in
nature. And a really good example is inside our bodies. Our bodies function on spontaneous order.
We like to think our brains are in control, but they're not. In fact, more than half the cells in
our bodies aren't even human. They're viruses, microbes, bacteria, fungi. And that's a literal
fact. Most of the cells that exist in our bodies right now are not human cells. So even if we could
control the human ones, it wouldn't work out well. But even the cells that are human, right now,
you've got a cell in your liver. And it's doing its little liver cell thing. It does not know you
exist. It is not under the control of your brain. It's just doing what it needs to do to survive in
its environment. You happen to be that environment. But it's just an environment. It doesn't know
about you. It doesn't care about you. It's just doing what it needs to do to keep alive and
multiply as a cell.
It's sort of a...
I was just going to say it's very
akin to chaos
theory, right?
Yes, yes, it is. It for sure
is, yes. Spontaneous order is
a part of chaos theory.
And
now sometimes,
and here's where we get to the guardrails,
that process gets out
of control.
That's what we call cancer.
that's when the cells get so greedy that they are glomming onto resources
that they shouldn't be glomming onto.
And that's the time when the brain has to come in, the government,
and say, we're going to do something about this.
I've got to go get chemo or radiation or surgery,
because we've got to stop those evil cancer cells from messing up the body.
And so that's the difference between guardrails and tinkering.
I can't tinker with those cells in my liver.
If I were to try to, imagine this, you've got trillions of cells in your body.
If you could send one command a second, it would take hundreds of thousands of years for you to send a command to every cell in your body.
But that's exactly what we're trying to do when we tinker with the economy.
We're messing with stuff that can't be understood.
It's impossible to do it right.
And so, but we do have to have those guardrails.
If there are bad actors out there doing stuff to mess with the body like cancer, we got to get rid of that cancer.
How do you feel about the stimulus checks they sent out a few years ago?
What I was going to say is instead of guardrails like what you're talking about, what we end up having, unfortunately, is a system where they go, well, just print, you know, I don't know if there's a trillion cells, let's just put four more trillion in there and that'll counter it.
Which, of course, devalues the worth of the original trillion cells.
so what do you think what do you think is you know an actual actionable solution to this what
are some ways that you think this can be countered because you know part of me really looks at this
as uh you know um sorry parents uh but i'm i'm gonna look at some parents out there you know you
You are the person in charge of your children's education and upbringing and everything else.
And yes, they should be allowed to form their own opinions and ideas, but you should not let that go unchecked.
You should also counter those.
Ask them why, you know, find out.
And I would also say that a big portion of this push is coming from our educational facilities.
So that being said, what would you say are some good ways that we at large can kind of counter this in a way that is more akin to what I was just talking about?
well and this is going to sound like a plug but the first thing is buy my book
because um and i i do i i say that in the spirit of creating value that's part of why i wrote that
book is that i want i i think before people can get on board with solving the problem they have
to understand the problem i think einstein is famous for saying that if i my life depended on
and we had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend the first 55 minutes analyzing the problem,
and then the next five solving it. And yeah, if you don't understand the problem,
a solution is hopeless. And so the first thing that I think we need to do is find ways to educate
people about what the differences between socialism and capitalism are. And I wrote the book for two
kinds of people. First, to change people's minds if they were leaning in the socialist direction.
But second, to provide good arguments for people who weren't leaning that way and wanted ammunition.
And so I tried to write in the book
the kinds of stuff we've been talking about today,
to make arguments that are very, very hard to argue with,
to explain it in ways that are very, very easy to understand,
that doesn't involve complex economic theory or anything.
Now, there is some of that in the book.
So, for example, one of the reasons the economies are so hard to predict
are boom and bust cycles, like the 2007-8 housing boom.
people know the government certainly played a role in in that particular way but lots of them
have existed without necessarily help from government i mean the first famous one was the
tulip boom and bust cycle in holland in 1400s where people were flipping tulip bulbs but flipping
that means you buy something with the intent of selling it very shortly after for a big profit
because the price of it is escalating.
Well, that's what exactly what happened in the housing market.
People were flipping houses.
They were buying them and hoping to sell them a month later for a profit
without adding any value.
In the book, I outline a strategy for how to fix that.
It's basically a scaled capital gains tax
where if you buy something today and sell it tomorrow for a profit,
we're going to tax that at like 99.9%.
If you sell it a week later for a profit, it might be down to 99%.
If you sell it a month later, we might be at 98%.
Even a year later, we're probably going to be at like 90%.
But if you keep it for 30 years, no tax at all.
So it gradually goes down.
So the faster you flip the asset, the greater the tax on it.
Now, we're not talking about the tax on the principal.
just the profit you make.
So we're not taking people's money away.
But the idea here is to discourage greed.
Flipping is caused by greed.
It's I want to make money without making any value.
That's the whole point of flipping something is I'm not planning to put any value into this.
What I'm planning to do is make a profit for doing nothing.
that's why people get in fights over uh pokemon cards and all that other stuff at costco
exactly right exactly right and those kinds of things are not good for the economy now on the
other hand investment if it takes 20 years you know we've all got our 401ks and or what whichever
particular kind of thing you've got. And that's really great for the economy. That kind of stuff
helps a lot. It allows businesses to grow and improve. It also would apply to things like your
house. Right now, if you sell your house at a profit, even if you've had that house for 30 years,
you're going to get taxed on that profit a lot. Under this scheme, you wouldn't get taxed at all
if you had your house for 30 years.
So what would you say then?
Because I'm going to go back especially to the early 2000s.
So, yes, there was plenty of flipping.
There were also plenty of people that got duped into no-doc loans
and basically told, oh, it'll be fine.
In a couple of years, you can refinance and you'll be in a better position.
And, you know, bat on them, right?
Read the terms, right?
It was my same response for the student loan people.
You signed the docs.
You had full access to every bit of what was coming, and you decided this was a good deal.
Nobody forced you into it.
No, you don't have to go to college.
You can have a successful life without going to college, and you can even go later.
In fact, most corporations, if you go work for one, will pay for that.
but um it happened again um but so how do you okay so yeah your your your idea incentivizes not disincentivizes the the you know investment firm the the you know et cetera
However, there were a lot of people that actually did create value and they came into neighborhoods where homes were fairly cheap and loans were easy enough to get.
And then they took an aged old ranch house and, you know, fixed it and added value and made it a nice place to live and increased its value as well as all of the homes around it by doing so.
But now you're going to tax that person at an exorbitant rate.
No, we would not.
Now here's where I have a rub on that, right?
If you haven't figured it out, right, I'll just give you the basis for where I'm coming from.
I identify myself as far as, you know, I'm apolitical.
I am a libertarian with a small L, not the big one that is a noun and party affiliation.
And so my my issue here is that whenever you ask government to do something, they don't do it in a way like, oh, well, if you're doing this and you're adding, there's none of that.
It's we're going to add the tax and it's across the board and everybody gets it.
And so now you could set up a disincentivization for actually people going and putting in their sweat equity and their own money to build a better place and create value.
Yeah, that wouldn't be affected because part of their cost basis would be their sweat equity and the money they put into it.
And so the only profit they would be charged on would be profit that was not created by their value, by their added value.
So anything they did that would actually added value is part of their cost basis.
And so it's unaffected. We're only talking about flipping. That is buying and selling without getting any value.
So you did, I haven't read the book, my apologies, but very busy schedule.
And so I'm guessing that that is detailed in your book?
Okay.
Yes.
All right.
So that's why I missed that piece.
And I retract my objection, although I am going to maintain my objection to taxation in general.
But okay.
Well, again, that's the beauty of this tax.
It's a tax that if implemented would never be enacted.
No one would ever pay it because they would be disincentivized from doing the activity that would cause them to be taxed.
True enough.
And so it's a tax that no one would ever pay.
That's good.
So what is your take on the state of our economy here in the United States?
Because whatever news outlet you watch, you're going to get a differing answer depending on what that is.
And even that, your interpretation of it seems to kind of come down to what color political affiliation you are.
What's your take on it?
It's as it always is.
It's a mixed bag.
I mean, when people make predictions about what's going to happen, they're almost always wrong.
And so I typically don't like to fall into that trap.
I can see possibilities for very good things happening.
A lot of the stuff that the current administration is doing is things that have promise.
If they go as planned, things could go very well.
in general
the libertarian idea of reducing government
is a good thing
and so to the extent that they're doing that
I think that is really helpful
there are things
also things that
it's too early to tell
tariffs for example
if tariffs are being used
strictly as a negotiating tool, I think that's probably a good idea. If we're talking about
something that is basically protectionist, particularly if it's protectionist against
nothing. In other words, if England raises tariffs on us, I can see why we should raise tariffs on
them. But if we're just implementing tariffs because somebody else is making a better product,
that's wrong. Free trade should be free trade. And we should only be tinkering with that
in response to somebody else's tinkering. In other words, if we have to do it in self-defense,
fine. And like I said, as a negotiating tool, if we're trying to get someone to change their
behavior in a non-economic sphere, and we think that imposing a tariff might do that,
I can see a point in doing that.
So a lot of this stuff is stuff that we just have to wait and see how it plays out.
You know, there are things that I can't answer and nobody else that's being honest can.
Anybody who thinks they know where things like that are going is either a fool or a liar.
They're making predictions that are unmakeable.
I'll just go right back to Milton Friedman, Saharan Desert, shortage of sand. Sounds like an impossibility, but, you know.
government tends to tinker more than it should in fact like you mentioned things like student
housing loans and student loans and stuff like that um most of the messes that we have
particularly in health care and secondary or college post-secondary education um
caused by government
both in the healthcare industry and the post-secondary or college education
sphere, the government has intervened enough to separate the producer and the consumer.
Anytime you separate the producer and the consumer, you mess up the economy.
because capitalism is based on the idea that we negotiate prices.
That the consumer and the producer make a deal.
We say, I see what you're offering.
I'm going to shop around and see where I can get the best deal.
Yeah, I mean, again.
That doesn't happen in education and health care.
I went to the doctor a couple of days ago.
My eyes checked.
I have no idea what I paid.
Not only did I not know ahead of time and have the ability to shop around,
after it's done, I have no idea what that cost.
None.
It could be $5,000.
It could be $500.
I can't even make a good guess.
No clue.
And so as a result, insurance companies and practitioners make a lot more money because there is no negotiation happening.
And now I'm not saying I'm against insurance.
A long, long time ago, people could shop for insurance individually.
That doesn't happen anymore.
People don't go out and say, now let's see, in my system, I'm only allowed two choices.
And that's it.
So I choose one of them.
But there are, I'm sure, tons of other providers out there that could do it better.
But I don't get that choice.
And that's because of government.
Government has incentivized the healthcare industry.
it started out back in when roosevelt put in wage and price controls in the 40s but it's it's it's
just pure incentive incentivize it say it incentivization it is it is on on who you can
actually go to i can't go to a provider outside of my state i have to go to the only ones that are
listed as agents in my state. Uh, whereas I could theoretically go to someone, you know,
in a different state and probably pay, you know, far less for the same services, maybe even better
services. Um, but you, you don't have that ability. So it's, it's interference in, in other ways as
well that again, choosing, choosing the winners, which is not capitalism. That is not capitalism,
has nothing to do with capitalism.
And so people blame health care,
but say that health care is unaffordable
and that's why we need socialized medicine.
And it's semi-socialized or semi-fascist medicine
that got us in this place.
It's not a fault of capitalism.
My grandfather was a physician
and, you know, he made house calls.
He did a lot to help people,
and he certainly didn't get rich doing it
because he was doing it before modern health care.
He, you know, he lived in probably a 1,400-square-foot house
and had a six-year-old car and, you know,
a far cry from what practitioners get today.
And, you know, I'm not saying that they don't earn that.
I mean, part of their problem is they paid a ridiculous amount for their education
because government interfered in that.
And so they have huge debts to pay back and a huge amount of their time right now.
my GP from most of them or much of my adult life quit a couple of years ago because he got sick of
the paperwork. He literally said, I got into this business to help people and I'm not getting to
help people. All I'm getting to do is fill out a bunch of stupid forms for the government.
Yeah. And so government interference is what caused this. And you look at the education system
in colleges, and the government decided everybody needs to go to college.
And so they put in place a bunch of money.
Let's throw money at the problem.
Lots and lots of money.
And so what it did was, again, separated the producer and the consumer.
The kid that's ready to go to college doesn't have to look at how much it costs
and can he find cheaper alternatives and blah, blah, blah.
All he has to do is rake in the government cash.
and as a college professor i know that there were some students that would
get their loans and two weeks later drop out and then they would come back next next semester and
do the same thing they get their student loan take the cash two weeks later drop out and use
the cash for other things. Yeah, it's crazy stuff. And what's happened? The salaries of
college professors have gone up dramatically. The salaries of college administrators have gone up
dramatically. There have been tons and tons more college administrators added. Every student union
in the country now has a climbing wall, a waterfall. So the building's got a big boost,
but student, what actually goes to the students has gone down. And so we've made education
eight times more expensive in inflation-injusted dollars to give them a worse education than they
were getting before. And all because the government intervened and tried to tinker
with things by thinking people needed to go to college. People don't need to go to college.
We need welders and ski instructors and lots and lots of people that don't need to go to college.
And I'm going to interject there as well that it doesn't, not going to college doesn't,
especially nowadays, does not limit you to those types of things. Look, college libraries are free.
You can go to one and you can sit there and read books. You have all access. You can get on the computer systems. You can, in a lot of cases, take the exact same lectures, the exact same class coursework that any student would be. You're not going to get a piece of paper at the end.
the paper isn't what matters. It's the knowledge you can get it. It's literally free. Just give up
your time, you know? So I would say again, you know, you can get into a tech position. You can
become, you know, software coder, a developer. You can do all of these things without college.
You don't need it. Now, if you want to become a CEO or something, yeah, there's going to be
scrutiny on that, but there are plenty of them out there that came from nothing, started their
own business and didn't go to college. So, you know, it's one of those things you don't have to
suffer that expense and you can get that information and knowledge with a little bit of sweat equity.
Absolutely. Yeah. But MIT has all of their courses free online. Now you can get an MIT education
for free anytime you want it. You just don't get the piece of paper. Yep.
And so, yeah, all of that.
And it's going to take time for the world to adapt to that.
But hopefully the world will.
And people will start looking at not the piece of paper, but find ways to evaluate better what people actually know.
And part of that is by being more human.
in our discussion i i suspect that you have come to the conclusion that i know a little bit about
what i'm talking about without question and and i'm guessing it's not because i've got letters
after my name piled higher and deeper doesn't doesn't mean the world but it doesn't it does
mean you put on sweat equity.
And I think that ultimately that's the more human way to do it.
If HR people spend two hours interviewing somebody, they can find out a lot more than
they can find out by looking at what letters they have after their name.
Because there's a lot of, I mean, I've taught in the system and there are a lot of people
with those letters after their name that are clueless.
And there are a lot of people that don't have those letters
that know what they're about.
And so we have to make it a more human system,
a system that says, I'm going to look at this as a person,
not a job application.
And once we start focusing on those things, things will change.
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
I think we're getting at a good place to start wrapping up.
So right off the bat, very first thing I want to do is, you know, aside from your book, what are you working on?
What do you got going on?
Where can people find you?
And most importantly, is there a better place to buy your book that translates to more value for you?
No, not really.
Probably the easiest for most people is Amazon.
but it's also Barnes & Noble, Target, all the usual outlets have it available,
either as an e-book or as a hard copy.
I have a website, DougCardell.com, that I update pretty often.
Once a week is what I shoot for.
And it has a lot of the same stuff in it.
I'm working on my next book
Why Capitalism Struggles
Which will deal with a lot of the stuff
We've talked about today
Crony capitalism
And the things that keep people
From appreciating capitalism
For what it is
There was some of that in the first book
But I think it would be better
In the second book
Be dealt with better
More completely
um i obviously i'm doing podcasts to try and get the word out
and that keeps me pretty busy uh and plus there's all the usual stuff like
my musician gigs and uh and taking care of this place uh we've got a few acres here and
we have to use a tractor to grade the road and blah blah blah same
lots to do but it's all fun it's all creating value and um and and hopefully that's what i
wish for for our audience is that they that every single one of them goes goes home today and starts
thinking about how they can find their bliss and and develop talents around that bliss that will
allow them to create value for others. I love it. Absolutely love it. And our, our one scripted
question, if you will, uh, we, we talked about earlier is, you know, throughout our lives we
encounter, you know, it could be writings of an author. It could be a historical figure,
sixth grade science teacher. It could be mom. It could be whoever, uh, someone that makes a,
a profound impact in our lives. And we always like to give our guests an opportunity to shout
out that person well so so many but i guess i'd have to say my wife um she's my partner and uh
as has by far the biggest impact on what happens to me has happened to me for the last 40 years
that's an amazing thing and and congratulations on over 40 years that's that's a beautiful beautiful
thing. And I personally probably mirror that not with 40 years, but you know, Hey,
well, awesome. Awesome. I really appreciate you coming on. And honestly, I think I'd love to
extend the offer now when your next book comes out, I'd love to have you back on the show.
Talk about that one as well. I'd be happy to anytime. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you
everybody for giving us a bit of your time and thank you, Dr. Cardell for giving us your time
as well. If you liked us, you know, thumbs up. If you didn't give us thumbs down, leave a comment,
tell us we suck, whatever you want to do. We don't care. You can find us everywhere. It literally,
we are now hosting off of fountain.fm as well. So if you'd like to go check that out,
Uh, you can find us on fountain.fm, which is a value for value or podcast podcast to
dad.
Oh, uh, instance.
And, uh, yeah.
Remember wherever you are, whenever you're watching this, have an amazing day.
See everybody.
Thanks for coming on.
Take care.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.