Based Camp - Starbucks Communism： Consumerism & Austerity in Communism and Capitalism

00:00:00.000 You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both capitalism and austerity.

00:00:07.240 Why do we promote these in combination?

00:00:09.980 It is because capitalist systems are just more efficient than other systems.

00:00:16.760 All right.

00:00:17.460 It isn't because we assign any sort of like theological or moral value to capitalism.

00:00:21.880 And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason.

00:00:25.640 Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things.

00:00:31.280 Communist systems, historically speaking, for obvious reasons, have always glorified austerity.

00:00:36.420 What is this?

00:00:37.360 This rocket is decadent and wasteful.

00:00:39.780 If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless like a Russian turnip.

00:00:45.860 And this made sense if you're actually trying to operate at any level economically functioning communist system.

00:00:53.360 But the new communists aren't like this.

00:00:57.600 So you have gotten this totally unique to modern times combination of communism and consumerism.

00:01:06.200 Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it.

00:01:08.220 It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and in constant self-affirmation.

00:01:13.680 Would you like to know more?

00:01:15.200 Hello, Simone. 0.69

00:01:16.720 Hi.

00:01:17.100 I am so excited to be here with you pushing through another pregnancy.

00:01:20.980 Your upended turtle wife here. 0.97

00:01:22.780 No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:01:24.840 You are an amazing picture of grace.

00:01:29.660 And I want to talk about something here because it's something that I was thinking about that

00:01:33.460 is just so fascinating because I was thinking about us pushing austerity, which we often push

00:01:41.720 on our podcast, you know, austerity in your lifestyle.

00:01:44.520 And this isn't to say that we don't sin.

00:01:46.440 You know, I know I drink.

00:01:47.320 I know I shouldn't do that.

00:01:48.320 I know I indulge myself occasionally.

00:01:50.720 It's white man water. 0.89

00:01:52.100 You have to drink that or you'll die. 0.98

00:01:54.100 I, I, yeah, right.

00:01:55.140 I recognize I, I'm like a robot from a Futurama.

00:01:59.280 My God, you're a mess.

00:02:00.900 Leave me alone.

00:02:02.860 Look at that five o'clock rust.

00:02:05.000 You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you?

00:02:07.500 Please, Bender, have some malt liquor.

00:02:09.540 If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.

00:02:12.200 You know, I need alcohol or I'll go crazy.

00:02:14.500 You are a very European genetically. 0.95

00:02:17.620 Like if you look at your 23andMe, you're extremely European.

00:02:20.580 Your people have lived off beer as their primary like nutritional water source.

00:02:25.280 So people may not know this and we should actually elevate this point that she's making

00:02:28.280 here because it is actually interesting.

00:02:30.260 During parts of European history, because especially after we began to urbanize, because the water

00:02:36.580 supplies became toxic often and you couldn't drink from them, the only thing that you could

00:02:40.960 be almost certain did not, wasn't going to get you sick was alcohol.

00:02:44.740 It was Coors Light.

00:02:45.660 Well, that Coors Light, but watered down alcohol specifically because they would water down

00:02:49.560 their alcohol historically.

00:02:50.920 A lot of people don't know this.

00:02:51.940 Like wine in, for example, Athens, when you hear about them drinking wine all the time.

00:02:56.620 In Symposia, yeah.

00:02:57.880 It's heavily watered down.

00:02:59.820 And we know this because they called like the Macedonians barbarians for not watering down 0.99

00:03:04.020 their wine. 0.86

00:03:04.580 They were like those maniacs, drink wine, spray.

00:03:09.520 And it was actually the same with beer in a historic context. 0.71

00:03:12.140 It was mostly meant to remove the microbes from it, but they consumed prodigious amounts.

00:03:17.120 So I am not that dissimilar from my ancestors.

00:03:19.880 Well, your body's kind of built for it.

00:03:22.420 I'm just saying. 1.00

00:03:23.580 Yeah, I'd actually say though, people give you shit for drinking beer flavored water, but 0.98

00:03:30.180 in the end, beer flavored water, just like furries, is the most traditional. 0.99

00:03:34.580 It's the most traditional path, okay?

00:03:36.320 It is.

00:03:36.920 It is the most traditional path.

00:03:38.540 I'm a trad for drinking Coors Light.

00:03:40.680 But anyway, this is a completely off topic.

00:03:43.500 Yeah, sorry.

00:03:44.320 It's, yeah.

00:03:45.040 I've had a long day.

00:03:46.380 I'm too pregnant for this, as Candace Owens famously said. 1.00

00:03:49.720 I mean, on the topic of austerity, we often talk about austerity, and it is actually pretty

00:03:53.840 rare these days for people to think about the combination of austerity and capitalism

00:04:00.580 as moral systems.

00:04:03.300 Historically, austerity was more associated with the communist system, whereas consumerism

00:04:10.460 was associated with, I call it consumerism slash hedonism, was associated with the capitalist

00:04:16.280 system in sort of a historic context.

00:04:19.340 Well, and I would say, you can tell me I'm totally off base here, but it occurred to me,

00:04:24.400 even when you look, and we're talking, you know, blur your eyes here, cross your eyes

00:04:28.060 a little bit, but when you compare historical cities like Athens versus Sparta, or, you know,

00:04:34.300 kingdoms essentially, Sparta was, you know, the more communist kind of place.

00:04:39.860 And it was definitely way more austere in comparison, you know, Athenians were these 1.00

00:04:44.520 effete, wealthy, you know, high class differentiation groups.

00:04:49.420 So let's talk about why this is the case, first of all, because this is, I mean, if you are

00:04:55.040 trying to functionally implement capitalism and you want to promise people something to

00:04:59.000 get them to go along with the system that leads to a level of inequality that you don't

00:05:02.260 get within communist systems, you promise them that even the poorest will have a better

00:05:06.080 life or even like the, like, let's say lower third will have a better life than your average 0.59

00:05:10.460 person in a communist system.

00:05:11.840 And this is true, generally speaking.

00:05:14.740 Also, when people historically have been implementing communist systems that are meant to practically

00:05:18.960 work, well, you need to get them to be austere for the system to produce enough goods.

00:05:23.600 You need to elevate austerity as a value system.

00:05:27.240 The problem is a couple fold here.

00:05:30.320 One is, is that today the communists don't actually plan to implement their system or are not

00:05:34.840 seriously thinking about it.

00:05:36.200 And so they can promise whatever they want.

00:05:39.280 And so now you've gotten this weird mix of communism plus consumerism slash hedonism,

00:05:46.060 which in a historic communist concept is a complete historical anathema, which we're going

00:05:50.660 to talk about in a second, but I'm going to take this box it up, put it aside.

00:05:54.580 But first we're going to talk about the weird mix of capitalism and austerity, because you

00:05:59.140 have seen this in a historic context and actually where you've seen this in a historic context,

00:06:04.560 you got supercharged capitalism.

00:06:07.660 This was in the, so for people who aren't familiar with this, there's a famous book on

00:06:11.080 the subject of Calvinism.

00:06:12.440 To read the Wikipedia entry on this book, because its subjects are pretty important to this particular

00:06:17.620 discussion, the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism is considered a founding text

00:06:23.140 in economic sociology and a milestone contribution to sociological thought in general.

00:06:28.600 In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant,

00:06:33.140 particularly Calvinist ethic, influenced large numbers of people to developing their own

00:06:38.600 enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment.

00:06:43.240 To make a quick quote from the book that will help you understand how the iteration of Christianity

00:06:49.560 that the book describes here aligns very, very closely with Simone and mine's own view of

00:06:55.100 the world.

00:06:55.660 Quote,

00:06:55.920 Remember that time is money.

00:06:58.540 He that can earn 10 shillings a day by his labor and goes abroad or sits idle one half

00:07:03.560 of that day, though he spends but six pence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to

00:07:09.440 reckon that the only expense he has really spent or thrown away to be five shillings.

00:07:15.220 Remember that money is the prolific generating nature.

00:07:19.220 Money can beget money and its offspring can beget more and so on.

00:07:23.500 Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven, and three piece, and so on, till it becomes

00:07:30.280 a hundred pounds.

00:07:31.340 The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker

00:07:36.380 and quicker.

00:07:37.280 He that kills a breeding sow destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation.

00:07:42.260 He that murders a crone destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.

00:07:47.780 We call ourselves secular Calvinists, but it's important to note that our value set is actually

00:07:53.300 very similar to the historic Calvinist value set, and Calvinists are often seen as inventing

00:07:58.620 modern capitalism because they did so under the context of austerity, which is to say you

00:08:04.640 have a free market, but not just a free market, but a free market where you reinvest your profits

00:08:09.720 in increasing productivity of the system, which was not done under non-Calvinist early historical

00:08:16.160 systems.

00:08:17.080 So I need to give a bit of a history lesson here so people understand why this happened

00:08:20.440 and why it led to America as we know it today.

00:08:23.300 So for people who don't know, America was the majority-

00:08:26.860 I'm so excited for that.

00:08:28.180 Let's go.

00:08:29.180 A majority Calvinist country, at least among its white residents, when it was founded, I think

00:08:33.480 it was like 61% in one of the things I saw from the Heritage Report.

00:08:36.400 So this is something that's like, well, no, a lot of people don't seem to know this.

00:08:40.720 I think it was one of the minority beliefs or one of a few beliefs.

00:08:45.020 It was one of a few beliefs that came together, but it was by far the dominant in colonial America.

00:08:49.660 Well, it held the belief in a kind of prosperity doctrine, which was to say, if God wanted to

00:08:58.320 show you that you were meant for heaven, he would reward you with success in your career,

00:09:04.760 which would lead to financial success.

00:09:07.860 However, there's a big caveat that makes it very different from the modern prosperity doctrine.

00:09:12.880 Spending any of that success on yourself proved that he didn't actually favor you.

00:09:19.980 It proved that he tested you with that money and you failed.

00:09:24.160 So you were supposed to make lots of money, but you weren't allowed to spend it on self-aggrandizement.

00:09:29.400 You resist temptation. And only the most powerful can resist the amount of temptation you get from great wealth, right?

00:09:35.860 Yes. And this temptation came in many forms. You were supposed to resist any form of overstimulation.

00:09:43.440 This included dancing, but also any sort of food that excited the mind or something like that.

00:09:48.380 So they would often eat. This is where Kellogg actually came from in this early whatever movement, right?

00:09:52.920 Where it was like, we need to make a cereal that is the most boring cereal in the world for people to eat,

00:09:58.440 because we don't want them to be overexcited by too many flavors.

00:10:01.820 And that's a whole different thing we can get into.

00:10:04.320 But the idea was, is that you would eat very plain food.

00:10:08.120 You would not have servants.

00:10:10.200 You would not dress in fancy outfits.

00:10:13.360 And very importantly, you would not donate to charities.

00:10:16.780 Because charities were seen as a form of self-aggrandizement, because, you know, whether it's a church or anything else.

00:10:23.340 Because keep in mind, Calvinist churches, anyone who's been to the traditional Calvinist churches,

00:10:26.720 they were simple wooden buildings without art.

00:10:29.680 Any form of aggrandizement was seen as a idolatry, so you wouldn't have that.

00:10:33.960 So there was really nothing to donate to, right?

00:10:36.560 So what did the people do with all the money that their entire lives were dedicated to earning?

00:10:41.200 You know, they weren't allowed to have any fun.

00:10:42.440 They had to spend all their lives working.

00:10:43.920 And success in work was the sign of a gift of God, but you weren't allowed to spend it on yourself.

00:10:48.100 They reinvested it all into the system.

00:10:50.740 They reinvested it all into their companies.

00:10:52.720 And they reinvested it into starting new companies.

00:10:55.620 And that creates scientific advancement, amazing infrastructure, really cool things, right?

00:11:00.060 Well, yeah.

00:11:00.460 Well, it ended up creating a hyper-charged, ultra-capitalist early economy.

00:11:04.900 And for people who are unfamiliar with the Calvinist trope of this period,

00:11:07.860 Ebenezer Scrooge was the Calvinist trope of this period.

00:11:10.660 If you read the book, you know, when they talk about him,

00:11:13.920 he ate gruel every day.

00:11:15.220 He did not eat fancy food.

00:11:16.780 He kept all of his, he didn't even keep full candles on in his house all the time

00:11:21.480 because he was trying to save money.

00:11:22.920 And he wouldn't give away money to charities or family members.

00:11:27.040 This is all said pretty explicitly.

00:11:28.980 I often joke that Ebenezer Scrooge is for the American Calvinist value system,

00:11:34.360 like a corrective grape story. 0.92

00:11:37.260 So people who don't know what corrective grape is, it's like, oh, that person's a lesbian. 1.00

00:11:41.180 But if some, if they just had sex with a man, then they'd realize how great it was. 0.79

00:11:44.820 And so this is for this, this, what I'd consider a more Catholic view toward Wells is to say,

00:11:50.340 well, if he just gave it to the poor, he'd understand how great he would feel.

00:11:54.540 And then he would be broken from this cycle.

00:11:57.100 But Ebenezer Scrooge was not keeping the money for himself.

00:12:00.400 It is made clear in the story that he actually lives incredibly frugally.

00:12:04.200 And that, that is, you know, with the end goal of this traditional Calvinist system.

00:12:08.600 Anyway, also Ebenezer is one of the most Calvinist names ever.

00:12:12.180 It would be like calling a character like, you know, Noah Greenberg or something.

00:12:19.940 You know, it's like, in fact, in the, in the guide to Puritan spotting,

00:12:23.880 that a Star Slate Codex, Scott Alexander wrote, do they have a relative with the name Ebenezer

00:12:28.560 is, is one of the, the boxes.

00:12:30.680 But anyway, you got to go back to the story here.

00:12:33.000 So in early America, you had a combination of capitalism and austerity as a value system.

00:12:38.200 And it led to an explosion of economic and cultural potential.

00:12:43.400 But we as a country lost that.

00:12:45.440 Why did we lose that?

00:12:46.640 Because surprise, surprise, people didn't like to stay in this system.

00:12:49.960 Systems that urge this level of personal austerity and industry in combination do not do a good job

00:12:57.180 of maintaining adherence intergenerationally, especially given how pro-science the value

00:13:02.680 system was in a historic context, which led to it secularizing about a generation before

00:13:08.000 the Jews secularized.

00:13:09.620 So it was like more Jewy than Jews, which, which people often accuse the Calvinists of being

00:13:13.920 because they were very tight with the Jews, you know, even to like, I'm going through my

00:13:17.700 own family history and just again and again, we see our family being very close with Jews

00:13:22.180 and Catholics, which in our community was seen as quite a bad thing.

00:13:25.640 Like that was one of the reasons we were fighting the Klan so much as it's actually interesting

00:13:29.640 because I was reading some family documents is, is when they were fighting the Klan, the

00:13:34.300 justification, at least if you're going two generations back and so multiple generations

00:13:37.800 back, was the Klan's opinion of Catholics.

00:13:40.460 Anyway, don't need to get into all of this.

00:13:42.560 We need to get back to topic here, which is very interesting from the whole communist perspective.

00:13:46.900 You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both capitalism and

00:13:53.360 austerity.

00:13:54.320 Why do we promote these in combination?

00:13:57.060 It is because capitalist systems, systems in which you allow independent things to compete

00:14:02.600 against each other, are just more efficient than other systems.

00:14:08.040 All right.

00:14:08.380 It isn't because we assign any sort of like theological or moral value to capitalism.

00:14:12.720 It is just the better working of systems for almost any goal.

00:14:17.420 And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason.

00:14:21.140 Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things.

00:14:26.660 So this is our core drive.

00:14:29.300 I mean, do you have thoughts on this further before we go into the communist side of things?

00:14:32.840 I mean, I just like it.

00:14:35.900 I think that when most people think about capitalism, at least when I think about what I was taught

00:14:41.200 about capitalism as a kid, I think inequality, I think haves and have-nots, and I think rampant

00:14:48.660 consumerism.

00:14:50.160 When you're right, I mean, the type of capitalism that gets us excited and the type of capitalism

00:14:54.820 that we see being undertaken by at least many of the business leaders we admire most is definitely

00:15:03.120 this Calvinist form of, this is about building something bigger.

00:15:07.060 This is not about the money.

00:15:08.840 This is about the vision.

00:15:10.700 Well, it's a capitalist system that tempts the best in that system.

00:15:15.540 The smartest and hardest work ethic in most industry people.

00:15:19.380 Yeah.

00:15:19.780 It tests them with temptation.

00:15:22.420 Yeah, well, you can argue that capitalism is treated in our and a general Calvinist framework

00:15:29.700 similarly to how emotions are treated.

00:15:32.000 It's a signal.

00:15:33.320 It's important to know because it tells you if you're doing well or not, right?

00:15:37.380 Like if something generally feels good and is not painful, it's probably a sign that you're

00:15:41.560 not hurting your body, at least depending on the factors.

00:15:44.660 In the absence of modernity, I should say.

00:15:46.180 But your job is to rise above that thing, be it in an emotion or money.

00:15:51.600 And accept it as a signal, but not let it run your life, right?

00:15:56.580 So neither are you saying money.

00:15:58.340 It's a system.

00:15:59.440 Capitalism is a system within this mindset to test the most industrious with the most temptation.

00:16:08.700 Yeah.

00:16:08.940 So that they can prove their worthiness as the most industrious through not succumbing to that

00:16:14.360 temptation and redeploying that capital to improving society's overall efficacy and efficiency,

00:16:21.700 which is very different from the way we view capitalism often in a modern context, which

00:16:27.720 is that it tests the individual and then rewards them with hedonism.

00:16:32.120 Sorry, getting close to the birth year right now.

00:16:37.160 Yeah.

00:16:37.500 So you're going through a lot, which I appreciate.

00:16:40.440 You know, you're still out there creating these videos despite the pain you're going through.

00:16:44.400 And that's the type of austerity that I genuinely admire and will make my children better than

00:16:50.120 me.

00:16:50.400 Maybe they won't succumb to this in the same way I have.

00:16:53.100 No.

00:16:53.280 But anyway, next, communist systems, okay?

00:16:58.260 Communist systems, historically speaking, for obvious reasons, have always glorified austerity.

00:17:03.720 If you look at the communist propaganda, the perfect communist was the man who didn't take 0.97

00:17:08.580 all of their rations, who didn't take all of their luxuries that was offered by the state.

00:17:13.380 He would eat his turnips raw, you know, and that was his favorite food was raw turnips because,

00:17:19.400 you know, that's the easiest to produce source of calories, right?

00:17:22.060 He showed that he didn't succumb to the consumerism that was seen as the core temptation that the

00:17:28.080 bourgeoisie would use to try to bring him over.

00:17:30.580 Mm-hmm.

00:17:31.520 What is this?

00:17:32.560 This rocket is decadent and wasteful.

00:17:34.980 If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless like Russian turnip. 0.77

00:17:43.580 Ah!

00:17:45.320 I ordered from Meaty McMulligan's.

00:17:47.700 I hear it's awful, but if you don't like it, we'll just throw it out.

00:17:50.940 What? Oh, that's so wasteful.

00:17:53.080 Nonsense.

00:17:53.800 Your mom's enthusiastic spending is exactly what Jesus had in mind when he invented capitalism.

00:17:58.380 And this made sense if you're actually trying to operate at any level economically functioning

00:18:04.940 communist system.

00:18:06.740 But the new communists aren't like this because they don't actually have real aspirations of

00:18:13.240 operating a communist system.

00:18:14.420 They're mostly just complaining about the system they're in.

00:18:16.360 Or at least they haven't thought through.

00:18:18.380 Like, they haven't thought through the consequences of what if I succeed with this message I'm

00:18:22.960 telling people.

00:18:23.600 All they want to do is undermine capitalism.

00:18:25.660 They don't think about what happens next.

00:18:28.720 And so you have gotten this totally unique to modern times combination of communism and

00:18:36.520 consumerism.

00:18:37.400 Where the communists are told you have the wealth so you can afford your iPhones and Starbucks.

00:18:46.580 In your communist system, you're still getting Apple products, of course. 0.53

00:18:51.800 We wouldn't deprive you of that.

00:18:53.800 You're still getting your fashionable, funky, niche subculture brands instead of having to

00:19:01.660 dress in like, you know, rice sacks, basically, because they're using this to lure people in

00:19:10.780 to what has drifted from modern communism is now more like a cult because it's not really

00:19:14.360 meant to work as an economic and political system.

00:19:16.640 It's meant just to convert and to tempt people. 0.85

00:19:20.340 Yeah, it's so funny because, yeah, there is this vision of communism that I feel like I

00:19:25.940 kind of grew up with, with the Cold War, which is people making immense sacrifices for their

00:19:33.420 nation and living very uncomfortable lives in service of a larger vision.

00:19:38.100 Yet now everyone I know who has a Marxist bent is more arguing that they shouldn't have to work

00:19:47.900 and they should be given their fair share of resources.

00:19:53.300 And it's not about, well, I want to contribute.

00:19:56.980 I'm going to take less than I need and give more, which is really wild.

00:20:01.580 So they're basically arguing that the UBI was in a capitalist economy is really what they're arguing for.

00:20:07.860 But I mean, where did we go off the rails here?

00:20:10.940 We do.

00:20:11.320 I'm telling you where we went off the rail.

00:20:12.900 Old communist systems were designed to work, not just designed to be popular.

00:20:17.220 New capitalist systems are just designed to be popular.

00:20:20.360 To be popular.

00:20:21.480 And I should point out that we have moved so far that, that to be a communist these days,

00:20:26.700 you have to be completely blind to reality.

00:20:29.200 I mean, I think we're watching a lot of CHOP slash CHAZ videos recently, you know,

00:20:32.960 the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or District or whatever you want to call it.

00:20:35.960 And it is the, and we might do a full video on this, the perfect representation of why communism doesn't work.

00:20:44.960 Because the moment you begin to implement true communism, you know, communists will always say,

00:20:49.100 well, real communism does work.

00:20:51.100 It just hasn't been tried before.

00:20:52.720 We're like, no, people keep trying it.

00:20:55.260 It just falls apart day two.

00:20:58.520 You know, they tried originally to implement real communism in the USSR.

00:21:02.940 They tried to implement real communism in CHOP.

00:21:06.060 But the moment they do, because it has no standing military, right?

00:21:11.840 It's immediately taken over by a warlord, you know, Razz Simone in the case of CHOP. 0.99

00:21:17.620 And then it's immediately taken over by warring factions that lead to violence on the street

00:21:22.760 with people trying to take resources from other people.

00:21:25.060 Because, quote unquote, real communism, as they define it, is a hierarchy-less society.

00:21:31.920 Which, unfortunately, means you do not have people in positions to create the structured systems you need

00:21:41.040 to prevent bad actors from manipulating the system to their advantage.

00:21:45.920 And this is why, whenever people try to create real communism,

00:21:50.100 it always ends up being taken over by bad actors who say,

00:21:57.280 oh, well, some people are more important than others.

00:21:59.620 Some, you know, economic systems are more important than others.

00:22:02.680 And they're like, come on, this doesn't happen every time.

00:22:05.640 It's like, okay, first of all, it literally does happen every time.

00:22:08.440 You can't even keep a Reddit thread without this happening.

00:22:12.080 You know, look at what happened with our anti-work, right?

00:22:16.100 Where this monster ends up taking over and speaking on behalf of the community.

00:22:21.840 You know, the community is like, how could you do that to us?

00:22:24.260 And it's like, the moment these people get the ounce of power, they take it and run with it.

00:22:30.440 Because, you know, you're not able to create systems where people don't abuse the power

00:22:35.540 that you have handed them.

00:22:37.320 And so, and people are like, well, come on.

00:22:39.880 What the far left in the United States is fighting for,

00:22:42.040 they've already included a racial hierarchy in their ideology.

00:22:46.420 Okay, bro?

00:22:47.360 Like, they've gone full, like, not-so-communism already.

00:22:52.400 And they haven't even gained power yet.

00:22:55.260 If you look at CHOP, they did things like put signs in the community garden 0.98

00:22:59.860 that said, for black people only.

00:23:01.800 They did things like, you can watch speeches from there where they said, 0.95

00:23:05.180 okay, everyone in this audience has to give $10 to a black person in the crowd.

00:23:09.600 They created a racial hierarchy, okay?

00:23:14.080 And like always happens, whether it's a Nazi or a communist system,

00:23:19.500 the races that they put at the bottom of the hierarchy,

00:23:22.080 like, you know, there was that productive farmer ethnic group within the Soviet Union.

00:23:26.500 I was thinking of the Cossacks here.

00:23:28.240 That they had to completely demonize.

00:23:30.420 Because an economically productive group must be demonized by the communist system.

00:23:35.200 In the same way that the Nazis demonized the Jews for making more money,

00:23:38.940 or the progressives demonized white males for making more money and contributing more to the economy.

00:23:43.520 They need to demonize the individuals who contribute the most to the economy.

00:23:47.640 Because that's how these systems work.

00:23:51.640 It's how they recruit people, and it's how they endear themselves to the individuals they've recruited.

00:23:55.820 And yeah, it is scary to me that we are getting a communist system that is somehow literally worse

00:24:06.060 than any communist system that's ever been attempted before.

00:24:09.160 It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and constant self-affirmation.

00:24:14.940 Well, no, no.

00:24:15.680 It's where the problem is, because I don't care about the orgies.

00:24:19.420 I don't care about the polyamory.

00:24:20.580 It's communism without anyone doing the work.

00:24:24.880 And that's...

00:24:25.760 No, they plan to make slaves do the work. 1.00

00:24:29.040 They're former capitalist overlords.

00:24:30.960 That's what communists always does.

00:24:32.260 They take whichever groups they see as being in power, and they treat them as a labor class.

00:24:36.580 I mean, yeah, but that doesn't work, and then it falls apart.

00:24:41.280 You can't do that sustainably.

00:24:44.380 I mean, yeah, it doesn't necessarily fall apart.

00:24:47.140 I mean, slavery, you mentioned Spartan as a communist system, and it was.

00:24:50.160 It was this communist system among the ethnic group that was considered human, and then

00:24:55.800 the rest were slaves, the helix, right?

00:24:58.540 That's what you have within the progressive movement today, and that's really what they're

00:25:02.140 planning on.

00:25:04.560 And I just, the white males who are fighting for this, or the white females, or the black

00:25:11.860 males, like anyone who is either male or white or cis who is fighting for the system and doesn't 1.00

00:25:17.660 understand that they are meant to be the helix class in this system, is incredibly stupid. 1.00

00:25:23.580 They are signaling this to you as loudly and clearly as they can. 0.99

00:25:29.920 You will not have rights.

00:25:31.660 Your views will not be heard, okay?

00:25:34.660 And you will have everything taken from you, and everyone who thinks or looks or has the same 0.98

00:25:41.680 sexual orientation as you. 0.55

00:25:45.620 Yikes.

00:25:46.480 Yeah.

00:25:47.400 But yeah, that's, I think it's important at least to highlight that the Marxism being sold

00:25:53.620 to people today is not, from my understanding, what was supposed to be, which is interesting.

00:26:02.860 No, I know, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, you could say it's different from historic Marxism,

00:26:07.260 blah, blah, blah.

00:26:07.940 It doesn't matter.

00:26:09.300 It's the way Marxism always turns out when implemented.

00:26:12.680 And that's what matters.

00:26:14.840 Okay.

00:26:15.740 The real communism has never been tried, TM thing.

00:26:19.820 It's so disgusting to me.

00:26:21.940 It's like, what do you think that literally every attempt at implementing a communist system, 0.66

00:26:26.820 even chop, even our anti-work was a bad acting, like, like was just all bad actors.

00:26:33.320 No, they tried.

00:26:36.260 As we say in our book, it's like trying to build an upside down pyramid.

00:26:40.240 It's an intrinsically unstable structure that collapses into the same shape.

00:26:45.300 Every time you do it, you are building an unstable governing structure.

00:26:50.040 But what's worse is you are building it extra unstable because you are including within communism,

00:26:56.640 hedonism, and consumerism.

00:26:59.980 You're including all your brand name nonsense.

00:27:03.400 And so I think that if we can build a system, what's really interesting about this is the

00:27:08.240 communists were not wrong about the uplifting of austerity as a cultural value system, right?

00:27:14.160 Where people can earn cultural points and achieve higher cultural status through being more austere.

00:27:22.680 I think when you combine, that's what the communist got saying was right. 0.82

00:27:25.960 They were right about that.

00:27:27.260 When you can combine capitalism with austerity, that's the perfect economic system.

00:27:31.540 Austerity is a cultural value.

00:27:32.640 Whereas the perfect evil cultural system is communism plus consumerism slash hedonism.

00:27:39.960 Yeah.

00:27:40.520 And Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it.

00:27:43.280 Starbucks communism.

00:27:44.580 I like that.

00:27:45.320 That sounds fun.

00:27:47.260 Starbucks communism.

00:27:48.280 Or Apple communism.

00:27:49.420 I don't know what I like more.

00:27:50.420 You like Starbucks communism more or Apple communism?

00:27:52.340 Starbucks communism.

00:27:53.280 Yeah.

00:27:53.460 And, you know, they've been made fun of this for a long time.

00:27:59.500 Like, how can you be communist and have your Starbucks cup, right?

00:28:02.360 But I think that that was because people fundamentally misunderstood that these individuals were actually the perfect communists from their value set.

00:28:08.860 Because communism's goal for these individuals is not to distribute equality across society.

00:28:15.460 It's to distribute people like them the things they want, which includes not working.

00:28:20.820 But the core difference between, in reality, a communist economic system and a capitalist economic system is in a capitalist economic system, you go to work because they'll pay you.

00:28:31.400 And in a communist system, you go to work because if you don't, they'll shoot you.

00:28:35.100 And that's going to be just as true now as it was historically.

00:28:39.520 And people can say, like, well, what about AI?

00:28:41.320 Can't AI create UBI?

00:28:43.220 Yeah.

00:28:43.440 But if you're a total drain on the economic system, the AI has no more use for you than the other humans in that system, okay?

00:28:50.820 Well, I mean, people would argue, of course, that AI would be programmed in this case to always take care of people and just give them who they want.

00:29:01.480 Like wealthy people?

00:29:03.420 You say, who's creating this AI that's going to care about you?

00:29:07.240 It will not.

00:29:09.360 Okay?

00:29:10.360 I'm just stating their position.

00:29:11.920 Nobody.

00:29:14.540 Within a system, people don't care intrinsically about the economically unproductive because they're not relevant to the health of the system.

00:29:22.340 And people are like, well, there's enough of us who want this stuff.

00:29:26.140 We'll just force them to give it to us.

00:29:28.840 And I'm like, this is the point.

00:29:31.120 And so often people are like, why do you focus so much on economic productivity of groups?

00:29:37.620 And it's because groups without economic productivity do not have the power to push other groups to do things or to resist more economically productive groups when those groups want them to do something.

00:29:51.780 You can say, well, there's a lot of us, but it doesn't matter that there's a lot of you if you can't go to war, if you can't organize.

00:30:01.300 And you can say, well, we can vote.

00:30:03.540 And I think, you know, we should be at a point by now in the American system that you should know just because you have a lot of people who will vote for something.

00:30:14.060 Unless it's the overwhelming plurality, which you don't have, that doesn't mean what you want will come to pass.

00:30:21.060 You have been convinced by your own ideology that your opinions and human dignity matter to other people.

00:30:32.000 When it is clear and plain to see when we look at the world today that they just don't.

00:30:40.660 I'm not saying this is a good thing.

00:30:42.960 I'm just saying they don't.

00:30:44.740 What matters to other people is your ability to produce things that they want.

00:30:50.520 And if you can't do that, i.e. industry, economic productivity, then you have no power to influence the opinions of others.

00:30:59.740 This is going to become increasingly important and clear as AI replaces more and more of the population in terms of its productivity.

00:31:11.280 Yeah, well, and that's, I mean, that's why in the end, I'm not terribly worried about a lot of these ideologies.

00:31:19.500 I mean, okay, they should, I should be terribly worried because they can cause immense amount of damage while they play out.

00:31:27.240 But over the long run, there's just no way that they can sustainably exist because if you don't create value, if you don't advance human society, if you don't use the resources that you have well and conserve them and make the most of them and innovate better ways and more efficient ways to do things and empower people to do that and figure it out on their own, then you're going to fail.

00:31:48.400 So these systems are destined to fail, and that should give me comfort, but I guess I should also be very concerned about.

00:31:55.040 Well, I mean, just hope that existentially that none of our descendants ever end up in a system that's beginning to turn communist.

00:32:01.260 Right.

00:32:01.620 And that we teach our kids to leave the U.S. if it's moving in that direction, because people will die.

00:32:08.000 That's the way this always works.

00:32:09.960 Yeah, that's, that's the part I'm not thinking about enough, and I should probably be planning around and worrying about a whole lot more.

00:32:16.480 Yeah, you could read more books about the killing fields, you could read more books about the revolution in Cuba, you could read more books about the revolution in Russia.

00:32:23.680 There's plenty of books, I just think that you would find them too disturbing, because I know you react so emotionally.

00:32:28.480 Especially if, yeah, children or babies are hurt, which obviously, I'm sure they were, so let's just not.

00:32:34.660 Yeah, I don't want to go over the horrifying things that happen in Cuba.

00:32:40.280 Don't, don't, don't, don't.

00:32:41.440 Man, I love you.

00:32:42.660 Okay, I won't go into it.

00:32:43.700 I love you too, Simone.

00:32:44.960 If people want to read about horrifying things happening to children, read the Killing Fields.

00:32:49.440 A great book about, I think, pretty generic communism, and this is agro-communism, but it's horrifying, horrifying.

00:32:58.480 The Red Scarf Girl is also a pretty girl, but not quite as horrifying.

00:33:02.860 Yeah, no, nope, nope, nope.

00:33:04.660 Nope, nope, nope, I love you.

00:33:05.920 Let's go hug our children.

00:33:08.860 All right, love you too, Simone.

00:33:11.900 Oh, God.

00:33:14.240 All right, is this the right order, or do I move myself?

00:33:16.920 Sorry, I'm waiting for Claude to explain.

00:33:22.000 Oh, God, everything hurts.

00:33:24.700 I'm sorry.

00:33:26.280 It's fine, just prodigiously large.

00:33:29.840 Well, you won't be soon, and then you'll be sad about it, because I know how you are.

00:33:33.600 Honestly, I won't.

00:33:34.760 After Titan was born, I was like, you know what?

00:33:36.900 I'm not sad about being pregnant anymore at this point.

00:33:41.360 Well, then I am happy you're in pain, because I remember how sad you got after the first couple pregnancies.

00:33:46.220 Yeah, well, that's because both of our boys were like, I mean, Torsten was like five pounds, Octavian was seven, and we had Titan at almost nine pounds, and I'm pretty sure industry is going to be over nine.

00:33:57.380 Oh, easily 11 or 12 or something.

00:34:00.140 No, she's not going to be 10.

00:34:01.200 She's going to be nine-something. 0.97

00:34:02.680 She's significantly larger than Titan. 0.87

00:34:04.600 She's freaking huge.

00:34:06.460 Anyway. 0.87

00:34:07.160 She's huge.

00:34:07.260 I love you to death, Simone, and you will survive.

00:34:12.320 You'll make it through, but I'm going to start.

00:34:13.600 I'm going to say.

00:34:13.920 You'll so��.

00:34:14.160 You'll so��.

00:34:14.220 Oh, okay.

00:34:14.240 I'm not.

00:34:14.920 I'm not.

00:34:15.180 I'm not.

00:34:15.320 But you're not.

00:34:16.320 I'm not.

00:34:17.300 I'm not.

00:34:18.240 You're not.

00:34:18.540 You're not.

00:34:20.540 I'm not.

00:34:20.740 You're not.

00:34:21.080 You're not.

00:34:22.360 You're not.

00:34:23.280 You're not.

00:34:23.540 I'm not.

00:34:24.740 But you're not.

00:34:25.780 I'm not.

00:34:26.860 I'm not.

00:34:27.840 You're not.

00:34:28.700 You're not.

00:34:29.120 No.

00:34:29.720 You're not.

00:34:30.260 You're not.

00:34:31.400 You're not.

00:34:32.060 You're not.

00:34:32.680 You're not.

00:34:33.060 You're not.

00:34:33.740 No.

00:34:33.920 You're not.

00:34:34.780 You're not.

00:34:35.160 No.

00:34:35.840 You're not.

00:34:36.180 You're not.

00:34:38.040 You're not.

00:34:39.220 You're not.

Based Camp - April 12, 2024

Starbucks Communism： Consumerism & Austerity in Communism and Capitalism

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