Dead Men Walking Podcast: The Biblical Principles of Capitalism

It's just some rock and roll for y 'all right there.

Oh man, Deadman walking back in studio. I love it. So silly. My favorite hour of the week.

You ever notice whenever that thing ends, you always go, yeah! And I go, yeah! Ha!

I don't know. All right! You become like a black gospel preacher.

I don't know, or either that or like a rock and roll, all of a sudden, you know, rock band. Well, it's just a good riff.

Yeah, yeah. We got to sit down and get some more of that. Yeah, man. I'm down. Let's do it. Whenever you want. Jason, how you doing, brother? I'm doing awesome, man. How's your summer going? I haven't really seen you much.

Oh, pretty good. You're on vacation all the time. Do you have a job? Yeah. Where's the drop? My job is vacation. It's been going good. You know, we had no rain in June. We had nothing but rain in July.

Yeah. Going to head to Lake Michigan next week for a week. Nice. It's going to happen with the family and some other homeschoolers and friends that we have. Homeschoolers. Oh, yeah. Got to keep homeschooling weird, man.

Yeah, you do.

I love it. I love it. It's been good. How about you? Yeah. We took a little vacay last week to St. Joe's, Michigan, and it is absolutely gorgeous. Three different beaches, ran up the dunes. My family decided to pick the dune that was straight up, and it was like the ski slope, you know?

It's like, what is that? The Black Diamond? Black Diamond, yeah. Okay, yeah. So I was doing that going up, and I was holding the Hemsley all the way up, and yeah. So once I got to the top, I was just breathing heavy and sweating and thinking how I wish I wouldn't have ate that second donut.

Yeah. And now you're like, why did I eat a Chipotle burrito before I came to the dunes? Oh, man. That's the one you look up at, and you're like, this is for the family. I know, right? Kids will like it if I climb this thing.

Yeah. I'll be down in a little bit, guys. No, but it was a lot of fun. Oh, man. But yeah, we're having a, summer's, jeez, over halfway over. Yep. And it's a little depressing, because the older I get, the more I love summer, too.

It's wild. I'm sure some of the listeners out there, especially the ones in the south, that it's always summer, man. Right. They just have a different attitude down there. Yeah. And the older I get, though, the more I'm like living in flip flops.

I know. Yeah. And sandals. I know. I'm usually like dress up, put the shoes on, the jeans. I was a real fall person. And now it's just like, get me in the sun. I'm outside working without a shirt on. Well, it's around.

Well, I wouldn't go that far. Well, I had to put up a 45-foot garage so people couldn't see me from the road.

I don't want them to get blinded. I was just talking to Mandy about something the other day about how in your 20s, you're like, oh, man, I'm ready to debate a person. Let's go after it. Let's talk about something.

Sure. Right? Republican against liberal. Blah, blah, blah. Once you're in the 30s, it's like, blah, blah. A little slower. A little slower. And then by the time you're in your 40s, it's like, I just want a sandwich.

You know? It's one of those, man. I think around 35, I started wearing the flip-flops.

You just don't debate anyone unless it's over lunch. Yeah, yeah. It's like, where do you want to go to dinner? Can we grab a gyro?

Why don't we talk about this? Man. Because that's the only way I'm going to do it. But how many times do you have to ask your significant other where she wants to eat? If you do go out to eat, right? Yeah.

Or do you not have that?

Do you have that? No, not too much. We usually are pretty set on one or two places that we like, but we don't try a lot of new places.

Oh, we try new places all the time and we're always like, oh, let's go, you know, let's go down here to Benchmark. Let's go over to Mancy's Italian. I don't know. You know? And you're trying to figure out, oh, should we go downtown?

You know? See, but I have a life hack for that because I'll go to my wife, I'll say, guess where I'm taking you out to eat? And she goes, where? And I'm like, guess. In the first place she guesses, that's where we go.

That's where you go. That's where we go. It's called the internet life hack. I love it. The internet is good for something. Yeah. Right. Oh, well guys, thanks for joining us on the podcast. We're going to talk about capitalism today.

Capitalism, Free Markets, and Biblical Principles

Ooh. Oh, you guys ready? I should have had my drop ready. Do it. We'll try it again. We're going to talk about capitalism today. Oh man, you need to do voiceover work as an evil genius.

I think I could do a few different ones, you know? Oh, but you know. Only you.

Oh my goodness. You got a set of lungs. Oh, I'm sorry. Man, I'm surprised you can still do that. Smoking cigars. I know. Yeah. Cigar. The cigar life. Oh man. But yeah, we wanted to talk about it a little bit because everyone's talking about it.

I feel like this whole generation over the last five years, a lot have been looking at capitalism a different light than previous generations, right? Like I feel like our parents and our grandparents understood what it meant to be in a capitalist society.

But now we have the younger generation saying, well, you don't want capitalism. We want socialism.

They want the benefits of capitalism, but they don't want the capitalism.

And then just making, maybe reading some proof texts in the Bible and, you know, I'd ever want to be that person that's like, Jesus was a libertarian. Jesus was a Democrat. Jesus was a Republican. Jesus was a capitalist.

But it's like, there are godly principles that define how the world works. And there are some economic systems that actually, I don't want to say exploit those, but take advantage of those godly principles, right?

Reaping what you're sowing is a godly principle. What you put into the ground, that's what's going to grow. And we're going to get into some of that, but I think we want to do, do we want to do a little newsy news?

Yeah. Let's do a quick little newsy news. What do you think? Yeah. Let's do this up. Now, I have not heard any of these subjects, so who knows? It's just one. Just one subject. Okay. Let's talk about it.

Here we go. News. The news. The newsy newsy news.

The news. The news. The newsy newsy news. News. We got some news. News. And there it is. Tom Askell's favorite song. Tom Askell's approved newsy news.

And if you don't know what we're talking about, go listen to our Tom Askell episode or watch it on YouTube.

So today, I just wanted to give a couple factoids from our buddy from Blaze TV, who was on the podcast a little while ago. We saw him out at the rally in South Dakota. Mm-hmm. Mr. Steve Dace, if you are listening, we are using your Facebook messages.

Your proper name. I called him the wrong name for the whole episode. I know. I know, right? Well, to be honest, I just learned that it was Dace. But yeah. Okay. So anyway, here we go. The CDC just placed Israel on its level three travel advisory for COVID, which is its second highest alert.

Israel is the second most vaccinated nation on earth.

Israel's the most second most vaccinated?

Is the second most vaccinated nation on earth. But they are at the level three travel advisory for COVID, which makes zero sense.

I thought the vaccine gets rid of COVID. Exactly. No.

And yeah. And it's just, I don't know. The narrative is just breaking down. Oh, so breaking down, right? Yeah. So, oh, and by the way, he posted that today. What is it? July? I don't know. When is this being pre-recorded?

Is this July 27th? 7th? 6th? Yeah, we'll go with 27th. Okay. And here is the second newsy news from Mr. Steve Dace. This is from yesterday, but this is from July 25th. July 25th was the 12th consecutive day Sweden, a nation of 10 .2 million, failed to record a single COVID death.

Country has the lowest mass compliance in the EU and reports just 39 fully vaccinated. Wow. So herd immunity actually does work. Right. And they never shut down, did they?

No, they did not shut down. And then we just saw, I think Steve also posted a few days before that, that I read about a study done. I want to say by Embry From Emory? Emory. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. About how, yeah, people who have had COVID have a robust immune system for what, months after.

Right. And this is a top 20 university in the world. So like you just said, Jason, the talking points, the narrative is really breaking down and it's getting harder and harder for government officials, politicians, bureaucrats to cling to that false narrative that we're all going to die.

We all have to mask up. We all have to lock inside. When in fact, some of the more fringe personalities of our culture were actually right. Using data. Using data. Yeah. And just going, well, let's analyze this.

Yeah. Logically and with science and with all these tools that God has given us. And I saw a meme a few days ago and some guy, he posted, no, not a meme, it was a tweet. And he said, honestly, conspiracy theories should just be called spoiler alerts.

Because it was like That's awesome. Conspiracy made in the Wuhan lab. And it was like, nope. And it's like, conspiracy, Fauci was paying them, funded them. And it's like, nope, that's true now. That's actually true.

You know, conspiracy. It's like all these conspiracies that for the last year and a half, people have been made fun of and ridiculed and now it's all coming true. And it's like, I think one, spoiler alert, it's a conspiracy theory.

But I think the word conspiracy theory is thrown around way too loosely, just like racist is. Yeah. Everyone is a conspiracy theorist. No one is. If everyone is a racist, then no one is. So it's kind of just crazy to me.

Like you said, this is breaking down and hopefully, hopefully we don't try, I saw a few states here in the United States try to, you know, I know California said, oh, we've got 11 people that are sick.

We want to LA County. We got to go back into the mask. And it's like, it didn't really fly. So I'm thinking people's common sense overall, the conscience that God has given us is hopefully stronger than, you know, these idiots at the top.

Well, you know, I, I also heard a, a, a, I think it was Ben Shapiro. It might've been who it was, but he said that six out of 10 people are afraid to say what they think or believe. Wow. Yeah. There's a new study done.

Well, that's, that's the point. It's like, yeah, the authoritarian, you know, regime is just saying, no, this is, this is what you need to do. If you don't agree with me, I'm going to get in your face.

I'm going to, you know, come after you. What did Maxine want? Didn't she say that? She said, get in their face, you know, break them down, you know, and it's, and it's all about this. Like you better, you better go along with what we say or else situation.

I mean, that's the playbook authoritarianism. That is the playbook. Like silence, all objections, uh, silence the enemy. So then you can, you know, run rough shot over whatever it is that you want to do.

Yeah. And uh, man, that's sad. Six out of 10 people. Cause I do not live that way. Yeah. I really don't care what people think. I know you don't, but you're much more, I wish I could get a little more,.

Oh, what's the word?

Like Couth or like? I tried to strategically. Strategic. Yeah.

That's a good word. Say what? I was going to say lube up the conversation. Yeah. Well that, that doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. You might need to cut that out. Mechanics use lube. I'm not talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. But yeah, no, I, and I think this goes along with what we were about to talk about with capitalism. I mean, we're, we're definitely running into, um, yeah, right. I mean, we're, we're running into a generation that, um, wants the benefits.

Like I said earlier, wants the benefits of capitalism, but does not want capitalism. And that, you know, I mean, you know, what we're about to talk about is possibly, could this, could this be the one that breaks the camel's back?

Could this be the one that people are like, I am not listening to these guys ever again. Well, listen, we've already. They love Jeff Bezos and every millionaire.

And that's not what we're saying. A bunch of Dr. Evils, business owning Dr. Evils on that podcast. Well, if you're more of a liberal leaning, uh, Christian or non-Christian and you're listening to this, we've already triggered you because we've said the word capitalism and Ben Shapiro.

So I mean, right. I mean. And authoritarianism. Oh, whoops. Which Ben Shapiro, the first ever Jewish Nazi. Did you know that? Serious? He's been called a white supremacist Nazi. He is a Jewish person.

He's ahead of his time. Interesting. It's a new trend. Yeah. Oh man. But, uh, yeah, we were going to get in trouble for that. That's fine. Okay. Uh, we, we want to talk about it, but I also just want to, you know, and like I said, I'm not making a case for, I don't know if I'm going to, you know, I want to necessarily make a case that that capitalism is biblical because there's lots of things wrong with capitalism too.

Yeah. Because there's also, there's, there has to be safeguards in capitalism because you can get to a point to where greed, um, you know, uh, profitable above all employees wrong. And that's, and that's going to happen because we live in a fallen world.

Yeah. Right. But I look over the landscape of all the different economic systems that I'm familiar with, whether it be communism, dictatorship, monarchy, socialism, and capitalism. And you look at the history of capitalism and you see that capitalism has done more good and has lifted more people out of poverty in the history of this universe in mankind than any other economic system ever.

Okay. We actually, if you look at global statistics, you'll see that, uh, more people are being lifted out of poverty because of capitalism at a higher rate in the last 50 years than ever in the history of the world.

Now, what does that mean? Well, that means people, because it's generational, the wealth is generational. I don't think people necessarily see it. If you talk to a 15 year old or a 20 year old right now, and they say, well, we're at the poverty line, right?

Yeah. My family is at the poverty line, which I believe someone can fact check this, but I think if it's a single, a family parent, a household income of under 26 ,000 and it's like under 32 ,000 now is if, if your dual income is considered poverty.

But if you look at those people who are saying that they own televisions, they own multiple cars, they own, uh, they own tablets and phones. Yeah. Um, they're usually doing some type of extra curricular activity, three meals a day.

Um, and that's our, that's our standard now for poverty. Now go back 150 years in this country or somewhere else, go back 200 years, go back 500 years and see what the standard for poverty was. Right.

So we've even capitalism has actually lifted the standard of poverty to a point to where 50 years ago, uh, or not even 50, 20 years ago, if you had a, a blu-ray DVD player, you were pretty well off. Oh yeah.

Now guess what? You have a blue ray, essentially better blu-ray DVD player in your phone.

Do you remember the poverty level, the CD player when it was like $700 or something outrageous.

Yeah. I was technically growing up in, at the poverty level and we had the first, my father was in a computer wholesale and we had the first CD-ROM in our neighborhood. People didn't even know what it was.

They go, what is a CD-ROM? That's back when you still put ROM on the end of it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it was like random access memory. I don't know what it stood for, but, uh, and that was pretty funny living in a little 50 foot trailer and I had a, I had a $900 CD-ROM drive.

But my whole point was, is that capitalism has lifted people out of poverty to, to the point to where now the standard for what impoverished is, is much, much higher. Right. And when we're talking about capitalism, I think we should define that too.

That, you know, it's, it's in a mutually beneficial exchange for labor and goods. Right. Okay. Uh, that's free market and that's capitalism. And I, and I'll probably be saying those words closely because free markets usually follow capitalism and capitalism usually follows free markets.

Yep. Did you have an official, uh, definition? Yeah, I could read it. Yeah.

What's the Webster's definition? Uh, an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state. Wow.

Awesome. So my first thought there is one, um, I love the freedom that capitalism allows you to have in personal choices and the Bible is full of people making personal choices. In fact, um, you know, capitalism protects personal property rights.

It protects, um, uh, uh, workers rights. Uh, and if you look at like even the 10 commandments, three of the 10 commandments are very capitalist and even libertarian in nature that they deal with personal property rights and per and personal rights.

Yeah. Uh, you shall not murder. I'm not allowed to go. Why not? I'm not allowed to go harm someone else. Right. That's me and myself. That's my personal, my personal property. You shall not commit adultery.

You can't, uh, take someone else's privacy, tell them that God's gonna cut you down. You shall not steal. Ooh. If, uh, if God was okay with the redistribution of wealth through an economic system, um, I don't think you would have made that commandment.

You shall not steal from someone or a group. Yeah. And what people have to realize is, you know, socialism and communism is a form of theft by force. If I come in and a government owns the means of work, which is socialism, or the government controls, uh, the, the work and the people in the personal property, which is communism.

Well then now, now how are you getting that personal property or that labor? You have to remember too, you know, when a government demands that someone perform something for someone, right? You have to perform abortions for X, Y, or Z.

Well, you're stealing their labor from them. And the Bible says you can't steal labor from people. So it's still theft. Yeah. Right. And they do it, they do it with force. They do it with the, you know, Hey, we're going to send guns to your house, right?

Force you to do it by law. Um, everyone has to realize that when you're in a system to where a government body takes and redistributes, it's always at the end of a gun. And I know that sounds like harsh language, but, um, it is because eventually you don't pay your taxes.

You're going to have police show up with guns, with a warrant, arrest you. If you are stealing from someone or you're not doing a, uh, you know, a government law, it eventually is always enforced with a gun and by force.

Yeah. Right. And in capitalism, you have the freedom to make deals that are mutually beneficial to.

Each person. And that's, and that's the thing that always throws me off. Whenever someone is saying, I'm not making enough somewhere, well, you agreed to what you're getting paid from that employer when you show up the first day, you know, or in your interview or whatever.

And it's like, well, if you have a problem with what you're getting paid, your compensation, um, I mean, you know, without bringing in every argument you could think of, um, go to your boss and talk to him about that and see if there's a way around that.

Um, I think, I think with capitalism, we paint the CEOs that make millions, possibly billions of dollars, you know, as just these people that are just money hungry and all this other stuff. And it's like, yeah, possibly because evil is in the hearts of men.

Right. So, I mean, here we are, um, you know, where people now are saying, I want to flip a burger and get paid $15 an hour. Well, guess what? There's people that, you know, are educated that can't even find that $15 an hour job and not to say that you can't be educated without going to college without, you know, whatever.

I mean, like you can still, you know, make a, make a great wage obviously. But all I'm saying is $15 an hour to flip a burger, um, without it being like a fancy restaurant. You know, we're talking about fast food.

We're talking about, you know, uh, flipping the fries over, you know, or whatever, but.

That's a good distinction is if it's a fancy restaurant, those burgers are selling for maybe 15 or $20 to where a McDonald's is not. So it comes down to a profit margin as well. But I, but I would say to those people, uh, I want more money and your boss says, no, well then maybe that's what you're worth.

So then you have to introspect, which people don't like to do, and especially the younger generation to then look at yourself and say, okay, how can I become more valuable to the company or to another company?

Right. Um, because the Bible talks about people agreeing to certain wages and being grateful for that wage that they agreed to. Yeah. Where is that? That is like, yeah, we can read it really quick. It's like math.

Labor, Wages, and the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

Yeah. Matthew 20. Um, we'll read it very quickly here for the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard about nine in the morning.

He went out and saw other standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, you also go and work in my vineyard and I will pay you whatever is right. So they went, he went out again at about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing about five in the afternoon.

He went out and found still other standing around. He asked them, why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing? Because no one has hired us. They said. And he said to them, you also go and work in my vineyard.

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, call the workers and pay them their wages beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first. Now listen to this last part. The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came in each received the denarius.

So when those who were hired first, they expected to receive more, but each one of them also received the denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. These who were hired last worked only one hour, they said, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.

But he answered one of them. I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who has hired the last, the same that I gave you.

Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? Wow. That's awesome. And obviously it finishes with the famous Christianese verse that everyone knows is so the last will be first and the first will be last.

And I think this is such a good representation of an economic system to where people are free to choose whether or not they want to work. And they are also free to choose a wage, right? When you go to a job and they say we're hiring at $20 an hour, well, you can choose to apply there and expect to make $20 an hour.

And in turn, you're making a contract, whether verbal or written, that you are going to produce $20 an hour worth of value to that company. Or guess what? They're probably going to lay you off, fire you, get rid of you when they don't need you.

I always told my sales staff, if you're getting paid $20 an hour, do $25 an hour worth of work and you'll never be fired. Because that just makes good business sense for the business owner. But unfortunately, even within the church, a lot of workers now are very ungrateful towards businesses that provide them a wage.

I saw it all the time in Fortune 500 companies. Oh, we hate this company. They're evil. They're this. And I'm going, you're making $85 ,000 a year as a salesperson in the mid -2000s with full benefits.

Like, be grateful. Exactly. You know, which the Lord commands us to, to be grateful in all things.

And I mean, I did work at Ford and I was in a union. And again, I mean, the union does fight for you. You know, and it's one of those situations where it's like some people are just like, man, I'm just happy to be in here.

I have benefits, you know, and then you kind of have the split down the middle where some are just saying, I'm, you know, they're, they're a billion dollar company and I'm only making, you know, so much money.

But again, I, my, my first argument that I just said, and what Greg just read, I mean, this is, you agreed to a certain wage, you know, and it's not to say that you don't have, you know, your union can't try to, you know, make things happen.

And yet, like I know everyone has this straw man that they're thinking of right now, right? What's that? This, this just like, well, you know, but they're doing backdoor deals and they're doing this and they're doing, and it's like, no, just, just try to stay on course with the capitalism conversation, you know, right?

Well, that's always going to happen in a fallen world. How much worse is that going to be under socialism or communism as well? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's true. I would say it's like, we're not, like we said, we're not sitting here and I want to defend capitalism and say it's a hundred percent perfect.

There's crony capitalism, which I hate. Yeah. Corporations getting in bed with government to make laws that benefit them. That is not true free market. Right. You know, the best way I can explain a true free market would be, you know, there's a, there's a guy and he's standing in his yard and he needs a whole dug for a apple, apple tree that he's going to plant and he's got $20 in his pocket and he goes, man, I really don't feel like digging that hole.

Right. There's a guy walking by and he goes, what are you doing? And he says, well, I need a whole dug guy goes, yeah, how much would you pay someone to dig it? It was a $20. It'll probably take an hour.

My guy goes, yeah, I'll dig it for you. Guy hands him $20. He starts digging the hole. What just happened there was that the man that had needed the whole dug needed the whole worse than he needed the $20 and the man who walked by needed the $20 worse than he needed his hour of labor.

Yeah. Okay. That's a mutually beneficial free exchange of labor and money. Yeah. That's a free market. That's what capitalism tries to induce because when everyone is free to make a mutually beneficial exchange like that, not only do you get the most profit in the end, but you get the most productivity, you get the most efficiency and you get the, and you usually get the most innovation.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because I love it when you have the younger generation tweeting from their thousand dollar smartphone about the, you know, the qualms of capitalism. It's like, well, put, put down your designer phone, your tablet, your phone, your go build, go build something, your safe car that you, that you, that you, you know, drive.

It's just, it's just ridiculous that we can long grass is greener, right? We long for something that we think is better when in fact we have a, we have a global history of socialism and capitalism that has just murdered millions of people in destroyed countries.

And we go, Oh no, we want that because there's free stuff. Well, I mean, free stuff does have a very strong draw. You're right. Right. Yeah. Proverbs says as much like the, the sluggard can barely roll over in his bed to eat, to eat in the morning.

He's got to lift it, lift his arm up, lift his hand up from the bowl because he's so used to, you know, being given things. And you know, when I read the Bible, when I go to like Proverbs 31 and every Christian believer who's a male here who is not married yet, wants a Proverbs 31 wife, right?

It's a cliche, but that's what we look for. Proverbs 31 says this versus 16 through 18. She considers a field and buys it. Okay. First of all, she's buying, she's smart. She's buying private property.

She's smart. She's investing with the fruit of her hands. Oh, work ethic, right? She's working that property that she owns. She plants a vineyard. So she's creating a product. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.

Not, not afraid to roll up the sleeves and do a little work. This goes for men and women. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Oh, the P word. That's the new P word that no one likes to profit.

Like it's a bad thing, which we can talk about that. And her lamp does not go out at night. So what does that mean? Her lamp doesn't go. She's working long hours. She's got a product. She's making sure it's profitable.

That sounds like a business owner. Exactly. That sounds like a, it sounds like a capitalist. So here we have the most wise man in the Bible, Solomon, talking about what a wise woman looks like. And he's basically describing free markets and capitalism, a small business owner.

And so when I look at verses like that, once again, I'm not saying capitalism is strictly Christian or Christianity strictly has to be capitalism, but capitalism employs so many principles and characteristics, biblical principles of God that it's almost hard not to lean that way if you're a believer and understand why it works so well in this world.

If your engine runs on WD -40 and you put in a different weight and it doesn't run as well, well then what did you expect? This world was created by God with certain principles. And when you have a certain economic system that like I said, takes advantage of those, well then yeah, you're gonna see, you're gonna be prosperous.

There's a lot of, and we've talked about it before, Jason, there's a lot of non-believers, non-Christians that are very successful in business and innovation. Using Christian principles. Using Christian principles.

Because the Lord set the world up that way to work that way. You know? Yeah. Hard work and trying to fulfill people's needs through business and rolling up your sleeves and working late and buying something that you know is profitable.

These are all godly principles. And this is something that socialism and communism just simply can't do. Yeah. Because man has fallen. Like Jefferson said, government is a necessary evil. It's necessary but it's always evil because men's hearts are evil.

Yeah. And if you give full control, right, to a government in socialism or communism without anything mutually beneficial, because you're taking that away. Now you have a government at force saying, I own the means of production.

I own private property. What is the government's incentive for it to be mutually beneficial? Right. Unless they lock every single person up, then they would go, oh man, we gotta stop locking people up so we actually have some workers.

Yeah. There isn't any. I mean, have you ever noticed a secretary of state or a DMV, they don't care how long it takes. They're not tracking their call times. They're not following up with a survey. What are you gonna do, go to the competition?

The government has no competition. It's forced. Hey, you have to pay $250 a year to put license plates on your vehicle or go to prison. Yeah. That's not mutually beneficial. That is a threat with force.

Do it or you're in prison. I mean, that's literally what will happen in Michigan if you don't pay registration, they will take you to jail.

The Limits of Crony Capitalism and the Value of Diligence

Right. Yeah, well, going back to what you were just talking about with just the, well, you kind of alluded back to the pay gap. I'm all over the place, man. No, no, this is great. This is awesome. I love this because I know how much you've studied this and read up on it.

I'm just trying to keep up here. But yeah, man, I think that there's a disconnect whenever we start talking about meeting in the middle as the CEO and the guy scrubbing the toilets or whatever the lowest job is.

I don't, I, you know, whatever. So anyway, I've been there. I've done that. Sure. I have definitely done that at companies. But anyway, I mean, this whole idea of the CEO and the person at the bottom making the same amount.

Well, I think one thing that I start to think about is you don't know what it took the CEO to build that company. You don't know what the CEO does every day. Someone doesn't know where his money actually goes.

And no, I'm not fighting for Jeff Bezos right now. I'm not fighting for the millionaire.

I'm just saying. Very quickly though, Jeff Bezos worked 60 plus hours a week and out of a garage for almost 20 years before he became the Jeff Bezos you know now. Exactly. So let's not act like someone just gave him $148 billion.

He was working hard to get there, right? And I mean, you know, and I might be on the cusp of this argument. What I'm about to say might be a little bit controversial, but sometimes I do think like, how much is too much?

100%. You know, and I mean like 148 billion, congratulations, right? But then again, that is his company, what he has generated, you know, and it's like, you know, how do you even step into that argument?